Guild Wars 2

WHAT: WvW free for all fun night for science! (& death, lots of messy falling from great heights death )

WHERE: Green desert borderland map no matter your world, region or tier

WHEN: Friday November 13th, previous regular reset time (on NA 6pm PST, 9pm EST)

WHY: Too queue a desert borderland map on all three sides and test how it plays in that capacity regardless of tier or rank using the green map on a Friday before Saturdays reset to get maximum players with minimum impact to over all score, leave your PPT at the door.

What say you WvW forum goers? Want to give this a try? I am no one here or anywhere really to get something like this going but I’ve found if you start the ball rolling and it is a workable suggestion good things can happen, like GvG’s in OS, duels at Windmill & back in the old days when DAoCer’s would declare a zone for a mythical 8v8 nite. Sure sometimes some griefer decides to hide in the Ice Giants shoe and pull a three-way agro wipe, but still plenty of good fun to be had all around.

I could use a lot of help on this if it is agreed to be a decent thing worth trying so if you could drop a link to this thread on your favorite guild, world, reddit, anime, ex-girlfriends mom or darkness forbid, ign forums that would be lovely. Maybe we can even pick up a few red tag posts to help us along. Gaile loves a good player driven event, even if it is just a WvW one. I want to give this crazy layered yet oh so beautiful environment a fair shot and so far it has been very hit or miss out there for me. Judging from these forums, I am not the only one who feels this way so lets try to do something about it. It’s turning into a self enforcing negative feedback loop which is not good for anyone.

If this thread quickly falls off the front page we will know it was a bad idea and let it die a merciful death.

I’d rather just have each world get a different Emblem, and show just that emblem colored to their team’s color, next to just the word “Invader”. Something like the world completion badge, just slightly bigger and before the word instead after.

For example, Baruch Bay would have Stefan’s chain coif as an emblem, Isle of Janthir would have the Eye of Janthir as en Emblem, and so on.

There could even be “WvW” armors that show your world’s emblem, the same way Guild armors show your guild emblem.

Why just “Invader” next to the emblem? Because Invaders Must Die . That’s the sole purpose of their existence. It should be made very clear.

Then selecting the enemy would show the full nameplate, world name, guild name, titles, and the like in the ‘selected target’ UI element.

TL;DR: A system similar to PvE and PvP where a combination of your servers tick and personal participation gives you regular progress to WvW Reward tracks.

As most of us agree, WvW rewards are currently in a terrible state. For those who don’t believe it I recommend playing 3 hours of WvW, after it go to Silverwastes for 30 minutes and then compare what you get.

Thing is that WvW rewards need to be not abuseable, this leads me to my proposal.
My idea is to combine two systems that are already in the game and combine them for WvW rewards: HoT meta event rewards and PvP reward tracks.

It’s kinda simple:
As in PvE you have two bars: One for your personal participation (Let’s say 1 event counts 30 minutes towards that, events that include defending something 60 minutes) and the other bar for the “meta” event. As “meta” event we use something that makes it necessary for players to compete with each other: the tick. As result of this rewards are given every tick (= every 15 minutes).
Three types of rewards here, highest reward for the highest tick, medium for the 2nd best tick, lowest reward for the lowest tick. These however need to be balanced well enough for encouraging the competition but not giving a too huge disadvantage to weaker coverage.
So for example when a tick ends you get 80% (personal participation) of the reward for the lowest tick.

What can this reward be?

Here we use the second system I mentioned above: Reward tracks.
This allows as in PvP a wide variety of possible rewards and to make the rewards more individual. Examples for reward tracks could be a blueprint track, a melee food track, a ranged food track, tracks for skins, special finishers or stuff from pve maps (so we don’t have to farm Silverwastes for shovels and sand for example).

For every tick you get progress towards your reward track based on – as mentioned above – personal participation and tick quality.

Issues:

- This kinda forces people to ppt for progressing their reward tracks, but not everyone likes ppt:
Solution for this could be to rework the rank up chests. Killing people gives WXP -> rank up chests. Insted of the current 2 green items, proofs of heroics and 20s, rank up chests could reward 20s, proofs of heroics, a reward track progress tonic (as for pvp dailies) and the current chance of 0,1% for an exotic or ascended as additional reward.

- This favors strong nightcapping servers, they will get max rewards for hours:
This is true, but those players have fewer enemies so less fights (-> less fun) and less loot bags.

- Rewards for winning the matchup are still somewhere between poor and non-existent:
True, maybe this could be used to adress this as well.

Conclusion:

I’m sure a system like this could significantly improve the current situation, seems to be kind of fair and gives a lot of room to bring the rewards for playing WvW more in line with the quality of rewards in PvP and PvE.
However as for every WvW reward system it needs careful balancing to avoid favoring dominant servers too much and not to lead to WvW becoming just a farm spot. It has to be interesting enough to care about it, but cannot be unfair.

Thoughts?

PariahX.6970:

They thought they could create one map that would please everyone with every different kind of play style

That’s very possible. It’s like a parent asking their kids what they want for dinner, 1 kid says fish sticks, 1 says pizza, 1 says ice cream, instead of picking 1 the parent tries to please them all and tosses all the food into a blender with a bunch of vegetables (pve) that they didn’t ask for but the parent wants them to have. What you end up with is an inedible mess that no one enjoys.

I remember when EOTM came out and it was suppose to be as i understood it a place you go when queue for wvw was taking long. But it makes no sense, because you can not be in queue for wvw while in EOTM.
I have been saying that EOTM gives wvw’ers fair weather players an escape when wvw is boring no commander/losing they can just run off to EOTM and ktrain themsevles to completion instead of working hard for their server.

Random.4691:

The glicko system is a failure, not the server system. How matchups are determined is a failure, not the server system. As far as rewards WvW would be just as fast if not faster if all sides agreed not to attack one another and just play musical keeps. There are plenty of ways to make the server system work while avoiding that garbage EotM system.

No the server system is a failure for exactly the reasons we can see now with the overall decline in population. It is inflexible, vulnerable to changes in population and population imbalances across timezones.

If people stop thinking of their whole Home BL as “theirs,” and instead consider a part of each map to be “theirs,” then people might enjoy the BL’s more in the current environment. Less running, less complex travel, and faster reinforcements are some of the benefits of splitting up.

By splitting up your perceived territory across all the borderlands:

• You have a waypoint available in each of your territories.
• You have a short, non-barricaded route from spawn to a keep, tower, and camp in each territory.
• When waypoints are unavailable, Invaders have an advantage when running to defend their spawn-side Keep compared to people running from Citadel.
• The barricade system can drastically slow down Defenders trying to run from citadel to defend the side keeps.

The waypoints we are accustomed to having went to other maps… maybe we are supposed to as well.

Problem
Originally EotM was added as a waiting map, for when you were in a queue for regular WvW. Hard to believe at this point but true.
Well it is clear now that WvW is not as active as it was 2013, and EotM just sucks additional potential players away from the other maps, lured by the constantly-populated megaserver matchups. So it not only has outlived its usefulness as a waiting area, but is actively detrimental. There is no reason anymore to include a waiting map if the regular WvW maps aren’t filled to the brim, or indeed played on much, at all.

Solution
Make EotM a regular WvW map. I do not think it is as well designed as Alpine or EB with its insta-death opportunities galore, but it would keep the map in the game while solving the issue of it vacuuming away players. EotM could then be further improved for core WvW gameplay.
In regards to a waiting map, if there are n people currently in queues across all regional servers, copies of one of the four maps are created and queueing players are asked if they want to visit such a copy. It would only persist for a single few-hour match. If there are no or very few queues globally, there would be no such option.
Also I realise many people have become fond of the KT gameplay of EotM, but considering it only exists as a perversion of the original purpose and actively harms the parent game mode, I think the change I suggest is reasonable.

I can see a sea of tears from ktrain people… lots of “gold” and “platinum” ranked heores.

Eotm became a farm fest and it is a complete separated game mode. I confess that I went there a good number of times to level alts and recently to farm heroe points. But other than the map current state is useless for roamers and defenders.

Talking about the map design I like it, and think it could be fun if it was included in the regular wvw with ppt, it would be nice to have maps with different styles that demands different strategies as desert and eotm does.

I have been talking about having the 4 maps in regular wvw instead of 3 clone borderlands, servers does not need home borderlands, they all could be like EBG or Eotm, just the spawn and a keep with wp close to it. No citadels are needed let us conquer it like we do with SM.

Chase.2798:

Long post….0.0

Tried to cover all the angles so its clear what Im attempting to describe.

Meant mainly for the devs, just hoping someone will read it and take away something useful, so if people find it lengthy and start to doze off, well… perhaps it can benefit insomniacs as well /shrug

Totally in support of this. The old nameplates without ranks displayed were much neater (“Darkhaven Invader”, “Sea of Sorrow Invader” etc.) and display-wise, it would make sense for each player’s wvw rank to be displayed below that nameplate, in place of titles. Or as a small badge/icon beside their name.

It totally blocks visibility when you’re in the thick of a zergy fight, and what’s worse is that some servers will have significantly longer names than others, which can create the perception of a larger zerg than there really is, which is an imbalancing issue. Especially if a player is running their game on lower settings where not all enemies’ models are shown (and therefore the nameplates are their gauge for the size of the opposing forces), it can seem unfair. And it is an issue, because a lot of blobbies run around with their giant backpacks for exactly the same reason: to make the group seem bigger and more intimidating.

I’d also be in favour of an ultra-minimalist nameplate for enemies, even replacing it with just an icon of their server’s colour. Bam, done, ultra-simple, aesthetically pleasing, all the info I need. Even better would be a simple icon denoting their rank, in their server’s colour. WTB.

Towers/keeps fix if gliding is added:
Invisible walls

Gliding for all in wvw fix:
WvW Gliding Mastery (Only good for wvw maps.) -Spec into it as you do with wvw xp points. Basic gliding for non HOT accounts, and expandable mastery for HOT accounts. Could be simple things as gliding quicker, using updrafts, ect…

That is the only thing I can really think of if they keep the “new” maps that might even make players not avoid the new maps all together, as movement around the map would be increased speed wise.

Gliding – 5 ranks
Use of updrafts – 8
Speed Control – 13
Stealth – 21
Infinite endurance – 34
You could have an anti-air track as well, which might look like this
Targeting – 5 Missile weapons you control can hit flyers
(including siege)
Reduce Endurance – 8 Hits you make reduce flyer endurance
Cripple – 13 Your hits knock people out of glide mode for 2s;
If you ground, you are stunned.
“Radar” – 21 You can see/track stealthed flyers in range (similar
to HoT mastery’s which let you track invis mobs.)
Shoot Down – 34 Your hits take people out of glide for 30 seconds
(similar to reveal invis mechanics)
Consider also, any control effects (stun, launch, immobilize, cripple, chill, slow) would knock someone out of glide mode as well.

Im not sure how I feel about knocking people out from gliding mode. (As they would almost instantly die anywhere on the new BL’s.) However for the most part I like the idea of the mastery.

Since badges of honour are fairly abundant, could you perhaps add a merchant to the maps that sell the more common types of food used in WvW in exchange for say 20 badges?

So you trade 20 badges of honour and receive a 30 minute food that is account bound allowing players from riches to rags to be able to continually afford food for playing in WvW without haemorrhaging gold.

Chase.2798:

I think they should base it on guilds, make it actual guild wars…you challenge a guild set up a time (1hr) where you get a map basically attack and defend one of the old alpine maps and at 30 mins u switch leading team at end wins…would need a leaderboard with challenge messages…maybe be able to challenge 10 ranks above and 10 ranks below….not sure if this is actually doable or not but it could be a new way to implement pvp and guilds together…it would succk for smaller guilds but they could challenge other small guilds for better fight…they could gdt rid of eotm then and make wvw like eotm meaning making 3 factions instead of 24 servers…guild fights would reduce the number in wvw and would reduce the queue times…6 factions might be better tbh not sure on gw numbers

I do not agree with the creation of extra niches for WvW making it even more imbalanced.

The true glory of WvW will be achieved when the vast majority of GW2 players participate in it for the fun and the rewards.

For the guild vs guild challenges I think the PvP system is more appropriated to have it.
The PvP system is well balanced, allowing all players to fight with the same level equipment, and has always been the place for the more professional and serious players.

In the past, I’ve always been an advocate of playing for the sake of playing. I WvW because I want to go take camps, get into fights, and get myself into situations that would make a good story. Something super exciting/thrilling doesn’t happen every day, and that has been the case since the game released for me, even on Alpine.

However, I do personally think that WvW needs to be much more rewarding. As much as I don’t understand it, incentive is the key (and sometimes the only) driver for people to do things in an MMO, and I don’t think the WvW population will stop deteriorating until more non-PvPers get involved.

One thing I’ve been wondering though, is that many people have mentioned the loot as a draw. What loot exactly is a draw in this game? Are we just talking about the ascended mats, or like the weapon/armor drops as well? I’ve played the game around 1600 hours, and every single weapon/armor drop I’ve gotten has been garbage. No precursors, I think maybe 3-4 exotics, maybe. I believe 1 exotic sold for 10 gold once. I’m inundated in terrible loot all the time. The main fortunate thing I ran into was that, recently I leveled Weaponsmithing and happened to have all of the tier crafting mats necessary to get me to 450 without having to buy anything. Otherwise, the loot in this game is almost universally awful, and I personally hate getting it. It’s like I’m playing vanilla Diablo 3, only I’m not expecting upgrades because ascended items can’t drop, so I’m flooded with things that will never be good.

What is it about the “loot” in WvW that people currently like?

Firelysm.4967:

1

• Where are seasons? 1 season in 3.5 years WTF ? So disrespectful. Seasons should be 2 months long with 14 days break.

Just going to have to respectfully strongly disagree with this point as I am sure many other regular WvWers would as well. Did you read the forums during seasons where lots of people were begging for them to end or go away entirely? Seasons are meant to be something special for once in awhile where worlds really try to work together and play a bit harder. If they were more frequent it would become like any other match up and no one would care or still be totally burnt out from the last one. I think more seasons would hurt WvW participation more than the new maps in the long run.

Frankly I think ANET is aware of all the base line mechanics that need to be changed or improved in WvW before they can start tinkering with the top layers. You wont see another Season until after they finish off whatever these big bunch of WvW improvements that couldn’t fit into the xpac and given their development cycle I don’t expect we will see that for another 6 months so maybe they squeeze a spring tournament in there by April.

I just wish we didn’t have the new map until all those changes were in place. Whatever they are, I expect the map would play better once they get all that other stuff worked out. Sure its delay would have caused a kittenstorm across the forums but I am pretty sure we would all been happier to waste our time in the pretty new PvE maps without the added stress of needing to test and worry about how to get around in the new Desert borderland.

Or symbols for each colour, and you see the full name of the server only once you select a character. It could then be outlined by rank of the player. None for a rookie, bronze for a bronze, a gold border for a gold rank, etc. (a nice echo to GW1 cape days).
If servers were turned into a faction system (e.g. greatly diminished number of “servers”), it would also become possible to make fully unique, recognizable symbols for each new faction.

Also reading great suggestions like those in this thread always makes me excited, then depressed.

What about this?

No more home map. Two maps (alpine + desert) with three starting points each.
So ist not 3 Maps per Server its two and these are diffrent.

Both maps exist. A small redesign seting a new start point at the top, one less selection bar and off we go. Ranking deside start positions on the two maps.

Effect more players on one map, both maps used.

How would getting gold from killing other players as a new reward impact wvw ? I was imagining a system where the higher the ranks, the higher the reward.

Will this suffice to tone down k-train and / or promote an open world pvp environment ?

How badly can such a system be abused ?

Would this be healthy for this game mode ?

Hi,

I think it would be great to be able to name the personal bank tabs, just like you can do it in case of guild bank. Also, additional cool thing, would be to have a number of free spots on the top of the tab – so you can have all of them closed, but could have them categorized and with glimpse you would now how much free space you have.

That just a though. With big number of tabs it is hard to keep track, even with the search utility.

Cheers!

Christonya.3856:

Ayrilana.1396:

Christonya.3856:

When legendary crafting was first announced, it was talked about how the most frustrating part of obtaining a legendary weapon, was of course: The precursor.

https://youtu.be/gxLkfXwxLTs?t=34m49s

Now. This had me pretty excited, since throwing money at the TP was… Well, not fun. Now I finally completed the first collection for Zap. I got my pattern, learned it, and went to check and see what I needed to craft this item. It became immediately clear, that the cost of materials, was not going to be part of the world, but rather, the TP. I find myself at an impasse. Where moving forward requires me to do, what I had hoped I wouldn’t have to do.

I have two choices. To throw money at the TP. Or avoid crafting this precursor. I had expected, or I suppose hopped that moving through the collection would have me doing challenges, and working towards obtaining the item. Not just simply buying the materials off the TP. To make matters worse, the crafting items in question are ascended, which means: Time gating.

So I really just don’t understand it. I thought the idea behind the collection was to have players running around completing challenges to obtain this amazing item. Not throwing money at the TP, as if the collection just didn’t exist.

Or you can play the game and treat it like a checklist of things to get.

The problem is, ‘playing the game’ for me involves being in fractals, or the maguuma jungle. Neither of which give me access to iron, mithril or many other materials needed to craft the ascended items needed to make the precursor.

SO I have to buy them. But if I am going to buy them, then the cost of the item in question is about as high as the actual precursor on the tp

SO why would I do the precursor crafting when it results in doing the same thing as just buying the item, except I have to jump a few hoops as well.

And here lies the dilemma with Legendary item crafting: It’s such a long, tiring, grindy experience, so much so that it’s off-putting.

This is why I’m going to save money and outright buy Eternity (or any other Legendary/Precursor/Hard-to-get item for that matter) off the TP.

“But then it won’t feel like an adventure, and the hard work, and yadda, yadda, yadda…”

Oh, there’ll be hard work. In the form of my job and having the paychecks roll in. It’s a goal I have, and I’ll work for it. Simple.

Why all this? Cause one thing is a month or two of reasonable, yet understandably challenging tasks, and another is several months/upwards of a year of excruciating grinding and time-consumption. If I had the time to play GW2 all day, then I probably would’ve taken on the challenge, but I don’t.

I’m not asking for a Legendary/[insert rare item here] today. But I don’t want it five months from now, either.

When does waiting becomes waiting for too long? That’s the question. There’s a boundary where the whole experience becomes off-putting. If players do not enjoy something, or rather, if an activity does not provide pleasure, then people will simply shy away from it. I’m not asking for 100% enjoyment, but rather 70% or 60%. What’s sad is that the percentage is far, far lower than that.

Upgrade Times:

• Keep – Secures after 30 minutes, Reinforces after 2 hours, Fortifies after 6 hours.
• Tower – Secures after 30 minutes, Reinforces after 2 hours, Fortifies after 6 hours.
• Camp – Secures after 10 minutes, Reinforces after 30 minutes, Fortifies after 1 hour.
• Yak – Every yak that reaches an objective takes 5 minutes off of the upgrade timer.
• 2 minutes and 30 seconds of Real Time can be equivalent to 7 minutes and 30 seconds of Upgrade time from a single yak getting in uninterrupted.
• The Earth Keep with 4 yaks coming in, can upgrade incredibly fast.
• Patch Bug – Immediately after a patch, structures can be paper, reinforced, and fortified all at the same time with multiple guards and multiple walls and gates inside each other. When the structure upgrades, it appears to fix itself.

Yak Frequency:

• A yak reaches Fire Keep from NW camp every 2min20s
• A yak reaches Air Keep from NE camp every 2min20s
• A yak reaches Earth Keep in about 4.5 minutes from NW camp.
• A yak reaches Earth Keep in about 4 minutes from NE camp.
• 2 yaks reach Earth Keep every 2min30s from North camp.
• The yak from SW camp dies from mysterious lava burning on the path before reaching Fire Keep.
• No yak spawns that goes from SE camp to Air keep.
• Hidden/bugged Yak Event is visible near Air keep’s main gate by the cliff stairs.

Yak Details:

• After arriving, a live yak will respawn in 10s or less.
• A dead yak will respawn after 5 minutes.
• Yaks can be protected from most damage by having a player nearby.
• Yaks can be sped up with Swiftness.
• Yaks can be crippled for 4 minutes by a Sentry.
• Yaks can be cured of cripple with the medkit at the sentry point.
• Sometimes the sentry is able to cripple a yak twice before it gets out of range.

Oasis Laser Event

• Starts 3 hours after the previous Oasis Laser event on that map ended.
• Happens at different times on different maps.
• A player can solo it in 30-40 minutes.
• Power Cores left on the ground despawn after 1 minute.
• There is a 1 hour time limit to do the event and a 15 minute warning before it starts.
• The laser event can completely destroy paper gates.
• The laser event can damage reinforced gates down to about 15%.
• The laser event can damage fortified gates down to 50%.
• The laser event also destroys enemy siege, oil, npcs, and players caught in the blast.

Repair Notes:

• Inner Earth Keep gates are the fastest to repair because the supply is very close.
• Tower gates are the slowest to repair because the supply is very far.
• Barricades can be repaired immediately with a single person’s supply.
• Fully Repairing a fortified gate that has been hit by a laser requires 220 supply. Requires 15 supply runs for someone carrying 15 supply.

Nodes:

• Nodes respawn in 1 hour.

Special:

• The Egg in Fire Keep respawns in 1 minute and transforms a player into a Fire Hound for 15 minutes.

For Defenders: If a zerg flips your map, try to flip the camps back immediately. This will give you 6 hours to take back your stuff before it fortifies, and during that time you may get 2 chances at the laser event if you need the help. With clear supply lines, the Earth keep can fortify extremely fast.

For Invaders: Your zerg may enjoy running around the map as a blob, but if you don’t take and hold the camps behind you, your stuff won’t fortify for several hours. By holding down the camps, you can achieve a longer lasting grip on what you have taken. To hold the north, it helps to have your waypointed spawn tower fortified, which you can do quickly by holding the 2 camps nearby.

TLDR: Kill yaks = slow fortify. Hold camps = fast fortify. Fight over camps. Stuff.

Steelo.4597:

Soooo you did 2 hours of PVD for ppt and then busted some rams defending your garri, all of this while not having a single open field fight – and you had a blast.

Yup, we had a blast.

There was some open field fighting on EB, but not much. There could have been on the borderlands, but I think for reasons already explained, the groups weren’t there. I’d rather they were; even if I’m not participating in them, they add a lot to the whole tempo and spirit of what happens in WvW.

The fight defending our Garri was fun – at least as much as an open-field GvG or ZergvZerg fight, as far as I’m concerned.

So, to your bait, the open field fighting was missing – and I do think that’s a critical part of WvW – and needs to be addressed. But other pieces which are good and fun are still there.

If nothing else, I mention what seems to be working right so it doesn’t get screwed with. I’m sorry your open field stuff is missing. I really hope things change to bring it back for all of us.

jdallen.5179:

Once there, the consensus was, we liked the layouts and the mechanical changes which make defense easier and force attackers to think, but dislike the increase in size and gratuitous complexity of some of the structures. Our thought is they could have been designed with much of the same creativity and artfulness, and but far simpler to find our way around in.

This is the conclusion of the new maps. It should be more compact and there is no need of the siege laser. The general design is pretty nice and refreshing.
I would still prefer three diffrent maps including one being the old alpine map.

Had nice camp fights with my friend yesterday dueling a three man romain group. First two we won, then they got there revenge twice ^^.
The thing was we did just use a small corner of the map.

An the maps don´t look to be desigend for open field battles. I like the positional layout ist just feels to long to run around an find soemone … also the build in traps are a bit nusiance. Don´t know if this is a good thing.

(4 November) Tonight, my guild (albeit small – all 7 of us) did a run through WvW (Borlis Pass).

We started helping out a fellow guild in EB. The map there was pretty evenly divided – we were getting about 180-200/tic – and after flailing around there generally, we decided to break off and stir up trouble in the enemy borderlands to draw people off of EB.

Pretty much without interruption, we jumped on to Kaineng and took Farmstead, and then circled back to take Depot. We picked up a couple of PUGs, and were able to grind through the wall in about 4-5 minutes using two cata’s. With 9 of us, fairly well geared and used to working with one another, taking the lord down went pretty fast, even with his increased toughness.

We shifted over to Anvil rock and did much the same; first starting with Outpost, heading over to Depot, taking Farmstead again for more supply so we could drop two rams to speed things up.

In all of this, tearing apart their BL, we saw exactly one (1) AR player trying to slow us down.

We got ambitious next; we resupplied and headed to Palace, taking two shrines along the way.

Here we lucked out, finding a wall already almost 80% down. We dropped a cata, fetched more supply, and then went in. It was rather difficult finding our way around, and ended up on the SW inner gate. We got the rest of the way in without resistance and after a hard fight, took the keep.

Total time – 3 towers, 4 camps, 2 shrines, 1 keep, about 1 hour, 45 minutes during which (outside of EB) we saw no more than 3 AR or other PC’s.

We finished in our own BL. There a modest AR zerg/oversized havoc group – 20-30 total – had broken through the outer defense of our Garrison. The 7 of us plus a few others went to the defense. With the new layout, and limited siege, we were able to turn away 3 successive assaults on our inner gate by the zerg. Total time before they lost interest was about 30 minutes.

Summary: We had a blast. It was very neat to be able to mount an effective defense – 10ish players versus 2-3 times their number. The AR group I think could have beaten us, but didn’t manage their supply or what siege they used effectively. We were able to use the defenses effectively to break their rams, and, then chase them back out.

We had the option, but chose not to mess with the monster center of zone siege cannon on either enemy borderland, though a couple of the folks who had run with us split off to prevent anyone from activating it in ours. Our conclusion was – activating it really wasn’t worth the time.

We missed seeing numbers; a very small number of enemy players could have prevented us pretty easily from accomplishing much of anything. It implies most of them were either in EotM or EB (or Maguuma…).

The new properties of the towers, siege and guards seemed to work as ANet designed and intended – to shift the balance back somewhat towards defenders – and force attackers to be both better organized and creative.

Crossing distance is still a big issue – even taking advantage of the buffs at shrines (which we used). It is really noticeable shifting from EB to a home borderland just how much more distance you need to cross, and how much harder it is to get to places. Further, the complexity of keeps themselves in specific, is irritating. It slows down the attacker – but is just as much of a hindrance for the defenders. It took several minutes for us to find our way into the new Garrison and just find where it was being attacked; easily 2-3 times as much time as the trip out of Citadel to Garri took in the old maps.

Once there, the consensus was, we liked the layouts and the mechanical changes which make defense easier and force attackers to think, but dislike the increase in size and gratuitous complexity of some of the structures. Our thought is they could have been designed with much of the same creativity and artfulness, and but far simpler to find our way around in.

Give us gliders in WvW and we may overlook this

Best regards to Anet and the rest of y’all

Hezekiah MacFarlane, The Black Dogs, Borlis.

Wait. Is there an “add more PvE” thread in the WvW forums, when everyone is demanding that the new BL map has “too much PvE”?

I’m going to literally die.

The funny thing is that some people have complained that Revenant, with weapon swap, legend swap, energy, CDs, etc. is overly complicated. I don’t agree with either view (that it is too simple or too complex), but I find it interesting how widely opinions can vary.