Is it possible to Redesign Desert Borderland?

This is a question directly for the Devs, and is related to the recent change to Ogrewatch in Eternal Battlegrounds. I am curious if it is possible to somehow redesign the layout of objectives on the desert borderland to make them more strategic like on Alpine.

I believe that the fatal flaw of the map is the placement of the objectives, they pretty much have no purpose aside from providing points for a server, therefore there is little desire for many players to play on the map unless they care about winning matches. This will often result in the red team allowing their home map to be ktrained all week.

One of the best things about Alpine is the strategic layout of objectives, it provides a sense of progression for groups. For example, taking a tower, which can then be used to treb a keep. Pretty much everything has a purpose and can be used to attack the next objective. I believe that having this focus for map design is the key to encouraging player activity.

I'll bump this because this has been a persistent issue.

@X T D : well said and constructively worded

Red border has important psychological effect to WvW players. Most commanders wouldn't leave eb otherwise. First they consider hopping, then realise Desert map is red map. After all that, Alpine map doesnt seem too bad.

I am sure desert borderland was designed to looks cool.

It's possible to redesign the desert borderland....It's just not possible that Anet would redesign the desert borderland.lol

@Strider Pj.2193 said:I'll bump this because this has been a persistent issue.

@X T D : well said and constructively worded

Thank you :)

i hope theyd make shrines usable to all. that alone will make travels less hard

@Sovereign.1093 said:i hope theyd make shrines usable to all. that alone will make travels less hard

Well shrines provide effects so it would not be appropriate if everyone could use them, they should be controlled by one team. Traveling is more of a qol issue, although a big one with DBL. I do think it has gotten easier thanks to gliding, but a lot of areas are still a pain.

travelling must be addressed. its really not easy to defend. unless perma scouts.

Redesign: lots of work, probable bad results.Remove: less work, definite good results.

@Sovereign.1093 said:travelling must be addressed. its really not easy to defend. unless perma scouts.Traveling was adressed. You can teleport from the shrines across the map.

Either way, we told Anet this was the issue as soon as HoT was released - DBL doesnt follow the principles of WvW which in simple terms is keeps threaten towers which overlook camps and threaten other keeps, turning the hamster wheel of conflict. ABL do it in a north/two south config while EB does it across the map. DBL doesnt do it period. That grinds said hamster wheel to a halt right from the start. As such it is fundamentally broken and unfixable without a major redesign and shuffling around objectives.

All they did was fix central cannon, add the shrine tps and remodel some terrain. All good changes (they have made it "playable") but this did nothing to fix the above. I am not sure they even consider this a fault of DBL.

Considering how much whining moving single tower brought I very much doubt they will ever want to touch whole map. No matter what they do or how they change it, there will still be huge amount of upset and angry players.

hope they change how we travel in red. so slow to respond from one side to another. shrines are easy to capture, therefore enemies can disable it immediately. those shouldn't be the measure of travel.

@FogLeg.9354 said:Considering how much whining moving single tower brought I very much doubt they will ever want to touch whole map. No matter what they do or how they change it, there will still be huge amount of upset and angry players.EB and DBL having "huge amounts of upset and angry players" in common would be a sight to see.

Now I want Anet to do it not to fix DBL, but to spite EB players and watch the response.

Thanks alot, you ruined me :(

@Sovereign.1093 said:hope they change how we travel in red. so slow to respond from one side to another. shrines are easy to capture, therefore enemies can disable it immediately. those shouldn't be the measure of travel.

One side to the other SHOULD take a while. If you are not Red, holding both keeps should be a pain in the arse.

From Hills to bay takes just about as long. (And yes, it is longer on DBL, but by a small amount.)

We (Elona Reach EU) have been on the red side now for like half a year? (at least it feels like that, might be even longer)Most of our People really hate DBL but since we have to Play it pretty much everytime i kinda get a hang on it.

There are several issues with this map:It is too big.There is so much vertical movement within Close ranges.The Pads for the Middle Keep shrines are a plain joke. You only get them if you have all 3 and even then they do not really provide any tactical Advantage.All Towers on this map are in a place where they provide absolutley no tactical Advantage.As a defending squad you are not able to reach objects that are attacked in time. If the map would be fully played by three squads you just have no Chance to fend both of them off if they are equally strong.The keeps are all super hard to defend. There are so many spots to overlook and so many ways to go you simply can*t guard all of them. Even if you are well prepared you often get caught by surprise. And then your zerg cant make it there in time.The inside of the keeps has by far the worst vertical differences.

There are too few spots where you can fight properly. Of course there are lot of interesting tactial Options by the Terrain but nobody ever really uses it. The east camp is a good example. You could actually go on the first floor instead of staying bottom to fight an Opponent or move unsee but it is rarely ever used since no one there is fighting or having the time to properly set up.The Palace Lord is still somewhat unfair compared to pretty much every other Lord because he can kitten up your squad hard times which no ther Boss can equally.The spawn is so far away from everything else, you actually will not reach anything if you have to port there and not to the Castle in the middle.Even if this map can provide place for two 50 man zergs of each fraction it is mostly Little troups of 5 People roaming around and taking Towers and so on. Most of the Action is going somewhere. open it sneaky and then take it by surprise. Since everything is so big you will, even if you Scout sth., most eventually miss some place.Since you are running from one place to another most guilds wont Play on this map.Since the Environment is so big, lag is a big issue especially for People with weaker pc's.

What can you do about it?

Really hard to say... Mounts would be an Option. but only on this map. And you could take the whole south area and put it aproximately on the ground lvl of the middle area. So you dont have this stupid up and down south of the keeps.Cut the East and the west of the map. Therefore cut the area inbetween the bloodlust and the keeps and flatten it.Move the defensiv Towers more towards the spawn.Move the offensive Towers more towards the sides /keeps.
Move the south camp away from the edge of the map more towards the North (a bit)Maybe give a the spawn a third Exit straight out to south.Instead of jumppads make the shrines Change you into something with a movement skill. (gets reverted as soon you get in combat) just like the elemental shrine in eotm. you receive it when you talk to the shrine. (40 % movement is just a joke)keeping eotm in mind, maybe use wormholes ? or skritholes?

My personal wishes(definitely not perfect):

1. Make it less "gloomy". C'mon give it some sunlight and a blue, crystal clear sky. Make it visually more attractive.
2. Make a way to glide directly inside the defensive tower from spawn, just like the alpine borderlands. We have have one more gate to get in, but there could be a zerg waiting for us behind the gate. By gliding you can choose to land on the walls or the ground. Necropole is also much easier to take than the right defensive tower on alpine (people can glide straight to the lord, and people can shoot from the keep).
3. Switch the spawn area with the north camp and give the spawn a third path to the north, that way, we are closer to the keep and both towers. Move both elevator a bit to the left and right to compensate, but make sure it takes exactly the same seconds to reach the boss room as alpine.
4. Fix the spawn jumping bug, which makes your character fall down if you jump into the gate.
5. Move both camps from the bottom(south west and south east) to a direction that is not "directly" visible if you choose another path. In alpine, you can choose to go straight to the tower, or to either of the camps in a seperate direction. You can't see the tower from the camps and vice versa. In the desert border, the camp is visible even if you choose to go to the middle path, which makes it much easier to defend for green and blue team.
6. Make the same "area" for both desert and alpine. For that, I mean map size. Desert borderlands is currently ~7% bigger than alpine.
7. Make the all desert bosses less supportive/strong, the players should decide the outcome, not the lord. Weaker also means the bosses in the towers become more soloable, which is the same as alpine (more efficent recap/spread of players). Also, the defensive tower and palace boss on the east side are harder than the west side, make them equally strong.
8. Make bigger objective more "visible". There are too many hiding spots for mesmers compared to alpine.

@"X T D.6458" said:This is a question directly for the Devs, and is related to the recent change to Ogrewatch in Eternal Battlegrounds. I am curious if it is possible to somehow redesign the layout of objectives on the desert borderland to make them more strategic like on Alpine.

I believe that the fatal flaw of the map is the placement of the objectives, they pretty much have no purpose aside from providing points for a server, therefore there is little desire for many players to play on the map unless they care about winning matches. This will often result in the red team allowing their home map to be ktrained all week.

One of the best things about Alpine is the strategic layout of objectives, it provides a sense of progression for groups. For example, taking a tower, which can then be used to treb a keep. Pretty much everything has a purpose and can be used to attack the next objective. I believe that having this focus for map design is the key to encouraging player activity.

In reality I don't think it's viable for ANET to do anything in regards to map design. Especially if the suggestions are along the lines of "Make it like Alpine," which would mean they're better off replacing it with Alpine at that rate (or replacing Alpine with Desert). Mechanically the major difference between the two are the Shrines, so technically that makes it harder for Desert to be balanced in a similar manner to Alpine (in regards to objectives). There are obviously other differences that others have noted previously (including myself D: ).

Furthermore, I wouldn't necessarily trust the majority of players for map design (you'd end up with a C- minus mish-mash idea). But that's what happens when you haphazardly average their thoughts together. It should also be noted that one of the major map designers for DBL wanted to make PvE maps, if we are to believe the Wooden Potatoes interview (at time-code 6:16). So I can see how Theme Park design might have leaked into DBL, given that is a common way of dealing with MMO map design. Overall, this makes me feel like it'll be a 50/50 in terms of payoff if they somehow do something for Maps. Good luck anyway!

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@"X T D.6458" said:This is a question directly for the Devs, and is related to the recent change to Ogrewatch in Eternal Battlegrounds. I am curious if it is possible to somehow redesign the layout of objectives on the desert borderland to make them more strategic like on Alpine.

I believe that the fatal flaw of the map is the placement of the objectives, they pretty much have no purpose aside from providing points for a server, therefore there is little desire for many players to play on the map unless they care about winning matches. This will often result in the red team allowing their home map to be ktrained all week.

One of the best things about Alpine is the strategic layout of objectives, it provides a sense of progression for groups. For example, taking a tower, which can then be used to treb a keep. Pretty much everything has a purpose and can be used to attack the next objective. I believe that having this focus for map design is the key to encouraging player activity.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying it should be changed to be identical to Alpine. I used it as an example to describe a more preferable layout of objectives. EB is good as well, but that style would not be appropriate for a home bl.

Maybe the next expansion will have competitive content.

They should trial mounts in desert border, the biggest reason for me disliking that border is its size, getting around just takes way to long to get into the action, I think mounts could actually improve this map and dare I say it actually make it kinda fun., it's worth a try at this point.

Why not move the shrines we have, make them no longer attached to a keep (the keep gets the buffs for leveling up tiers) and make the shrines neutral so that they can be used by everyone?Or, still as said above but the shrines can be claimed by a team but the catch is that the fight has to be activated by the team wanting to claim the shrine, you can only teleport from a shrine that you own but you can teleport to any shrine on the field regardless of if you own it?

In both situations, each team gets a shrine in their spawn so you can get back to the fight faster, like frustratingly fast. However, there would be one shrine in the centre and then a few scattered around the edges, so there should be no situation in which you can immediately reach a keep without a little effort, but reaching camps or towers will be easier.

EDIT: And the RI would be shorter than all other ones.

There are several things I think ANet could do with DBL, but one of them - even though it doesn't affect me, I have PoF - should not be trialing mounts for this map. Not everyone has PoF - some players never bought into either x-pac - and some are playing for free. Mounts move far faster than swiftness, than superspeed even. Doing this would create disparity in groups, with "haves and have-nots" and in some groups the former may exclude the latter. Gliders did not cause this because you only move at a swiftness pace and you can only keep this pace until you come down.

It has been my argument (quoted entirely from the old forum, after my response to this thread) that this map is just too large. This map could probably, and if it can then it should, be rescaled. Simplify the layouts of the keeps, remove any objects, trees, grasses, etc. that are too clustered post-scaling, and widen or open-up any paths or tunnels that are too small. Whether ANet would even consider additional work on a project that they have put so much work into already is unclear. I think they'd lean no, since they have long-considered this map to be complete - twice! - but I really wish they'd go "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

And now, my tl:dr argument from an old forum thread, WvW Poll 14 June: Desert Borderlands (Closed)

@abasedfear.6051 said:I enjoyed the sights of the Desert Borderlands, and considered them to be a welcome challenge, though I also appreciate the removal of the barricades. Also, “straightening the curves” was very helpful, but I’ll tell everyone here what I tell my friends and guildmates of the DBLs: Its the sheer size of the map that turns people away. It’s not just big; it’s too big! A DBL is even bigger than EBG, but has only as many points to take as an Alpine. It takes too long to move across it and there’s this huge chasm of an oasis in the middle that sees no use*** and takes forever to go around – even when Skysplitter was running, the Oasis was too layered to traverse quickly.

I understand the original purpose of a larger map with the same number of points to defend: Since people would be forced to run farther to defend, zergs may have been forced to leave more defenders or break the zergs into multiple groups to operate within the same map. It didn’t quite work out. Instead, large areas of the map would not change hands for hours, only for the lack of trying. A large zerg would occasionally take to the map and run a circle around it. It perhaps would sit that way for an hour or so before a commander would notice it and would go and flip it back, usually never running into a decent defense – maybe someone on an arrow cart for a couple minutes before abandonment. For the most part, servers stacked the EBG queues, while the DBLs sat vacant.

To be an effective map, it should be expansive. We are talking about a desert, after all. It should not be so large that a large-scale defense would be difficult without waypoints – even given good advance notice from scouts. A map size that is between the current DBL and ABL would be a good size for borderland maps, as many say that the Alpines are too small, though many also believe that the Deserts are too large. Any map size that approaches – I’d say 90% or greater size – or even exceeds the size of Eternal Battlegrounds is too large. Also, the keeps; the DBL keeps are nearly SMC-sized and they’re infernal mazes, to boot. I’m all for variety, but it’s easy to get lost in those things.

***Note: The oasis now has ruins, akin to those on Alpine Borderlands, but still takes a while to move around.

Money, money, money :# :#

I'd love to see the map redesigned and all the vertical design fixes (including gliding) removed as unnecessary.

Is it possible? No, I do not belive ANet has the competences left to redesign the map properly. If anything they just add even more movement gimmicks from PvE and invisible walls to block siege projectiles; and mounts because PoF has so little value to WvW players.