Issue I see: the 2 hour timers, for 3 of the 4 maps, seem forced. Forced because of some clunky interactions with the meta events. GW2 had always been a game where you could jump in, do some stuff and jump out. In fact, fractals was changed in order to allow people to participate in them in just a 20-30 minute intervals.
Note: if you are concerned about a particular map, skip there and comment on that, dont need to read whole wall of text here. I know its alot, but this is about all 4 maps.
Silverwastes, though it had a couple flaws, functioned very well. There were always maps going and always at multiple progression stages for people to get in to. The issues with the map were 1) the chest train, which both the verdant brink/tangled depths and auric basin approaches solve rather well. Dragon Stand being a mix of both. 2) breach hopping, which was addressed in the personal participation level and map progression rewards, though personal participation should play a larger part in the final main map events (octovine, gerent, mouth of mordy). The new maps did address those 2 main issues but created a different issue with the hard timer.
We now have all 4 new maps of HoT tied to hard 2 hour timers. Each map interacts with this timer in different ways, and I’d like to look at each of them and make some suggestions.
Verdant Brink
This is the only map where a hard defined 2 hour timer actually makes sense. The map is based on day/night. There is some lag time between the last of the day events being finished and the night events starting, but there is a defense event on the far west end of the map during that time and an achievement tied to it. One suggestion I would like to make about VB: if the main event chains are completed early, the map should be rewarded with the ability to begin upgrading the rally points early. Once all main events are done, the time can be spent actually “preparing” for the night. This would make perfect sense thematically. It is a warzone full of scattered troops, preparations should be being made for the night time event before night hits. Allowing early finished maps some time to upgrade all the rally points once before night even hits and then allow that progression to be counted toward the night security level would reward good day organization (though it isnt hard to get T4 day) and provide a buffer for night to make T4 a little easier at night. besides making thematic sense.
Auric Basain
This map has no thematic reason to be on a timer. As such, the map should be decoupled from the timer and individual instances allowed to progress at their own rates. The event chains are a decent length, but can result in some periods of longer downtime. The biggest thing about this is that you only notice this downtime on the more organized maps. These kinds of annoyances shouldnt be more prominent on the more organized maps. Organization should be rewarded. Once the primary events are over and all pylons are active, the mordrem should lock out the city and the challenges should start. Once enough armor have been claimed, the retaking of Tarir should begin immediately.
If this map for some reason needs to be on a hard 2 hour timer, the above should happen and all extra time should be after the octovine. Some extra events of priory explorers exploring interesting places beneath the various pylons inaccessible while the pylons are either not active or while the mordrem are blocking Tarir. These bonus events could give rewards based on the personal participation made during the initial event chains and the octovine events without progressing the personal participation. in this way, those that were in that specific instance longer are rewarded more. Maybe these events give exalted chest keys instead of just aurillium, or maybe you are able to find auric dust in these events.
Tangled Depths
This map is the biggest offender. The map is on the same 2 hour timer, but there are only 40 or so minutes of actual event chain to be done. Once the lanes are at “full strength”, there are a couple extra events and then a single event chain that, just ends up repeating 3-4 or more times during the wait from the time the events are complete to the time that you get your personal T4 reward and the main event starts.
What should happen: A new map progresses the lanes to full strength. Once this is complete (all 4 lanes), players should get their T4 participation reward immediately and there should be NO MORE than 5 maybe 10 minutes before the “prep” phase of the Gerent event starts. As it stands, players are needing to wait 45-60 minutes just to get their participation reward. If extra downtime is desired to allow for map exploration, some extra events, hero point runs etc, this could be given as a 20-30 minute time period after the gerent event is complete. However, players create these times themselves on maps not dedicated to the event. Just look at the different types of silverwastes maps.
Now, the question will arise, why wont players just Gerent hop as they do some in vinewrath? The personal participation reward for completing the prep events (which would now happen directly before the gerent) should affect the Gerent event loot: some function of prep event participation should act as a multiplier to gerrent event rewards something like <=100% prep event = 100% gerent event loot (which is of course affected by you participation in that event, which is a good thing) and 200% prep event participation = bonus 25-50% gerent event reward.
This would allow people to come in, do the events and gerent in the time that it actually takes to do the events rather than including such a long wait time. It would make ley line crystals MUCH easier to get because it doesnt include the wait. it would increase the number of Gerent runs being done, therefore the amount of practice, and ultimately, the number of kills. I have not personally done the nuhoch lane yet, so I wont comment on any need to alter the respawn rate of pods (or whatever it is you have to smash)
After a certain amount of time from the beginning of the prep events (the same 1:35 it is now) the gerent events can still go off and would, of course, cause the map meta to fail and reset.
Dragon Stand
My biggest complaint here is, again, the 2 hour reset timer, not that maps shouldnt be forced to fail or complete at the end of 2 hours. There are 2 different things that I think could change the map for the better.
1) EVERY map only closes at the end of 2 hours regardless of when it completed. If a map completes the entire event and kills Mordy by 1:15 after it began, that map should be given extra time to farm Noxious pods, do hero challenges, map completion etc and only kicked at the end of the 2 hours (or at the end of up to more like 30 minutes instead of 10).
2) Lets suppose we go for the 30 minute approach (preferred over the hard 2 hour span). At the end of that 30 minutes, lets say for the sake of the story (and something that could be used in either Steve or primordus’s story arch) the residual ley energy left by a dead dragon blows a crater in that portion of dragon’s stand and knocks everyone out of the map. The people in that map are all placed in a new fresh map together regardless of the progression/time left on other map instances. they can then either give it another run or disband.
