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WvW Map Design Series Alpine Borderlands


GDchiaScrub.3241

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What's up queue'd warriors? Here is the third map critique for this mini series, featuring Alpine Borderlands. Tried a slightly different format to make things concise, and give more time to game mechanics. I think I shaved off a few minutes overall, huzzah!

Summary

My thoughts on Alpine Borderlands.

1. In Regards to Immersion.This one really lacks art direction in the sense of establishing a narrative(setting) or showing off game mechanics. At the very least, the lines/pathways clearly lead from objective to objective. The various issues were probably due it being reworked a few times...but I will leave that discussion for later!

2. Those Map Mechanics.It's not as overblown with mechanics like...Eotm. That being said, the transition of mechanics for gliding/territories was rough for the central areas. You can also argue Hills was made even more valuable with gliding compared to Bay.

3. Sightlines!!!"I can see clearly now that the rain is gone. I can see all the obstacles in my way. It's going to be a bright, bright sun shiny day." - A songOn the other note, objectives are all tied mechanically together in one way or another. This creates lots of conflicts, although...there are still top issues with centaur/skritt camps being useless...

Eternal Battlegrounds video should be next to go. If you have any questions or significant additions I will try to put that into a final Wrap Up video. Unless I can answer them here, of course!

Have any suggestions? Feel free to leave a comment. Or just troll me, that works too I guess. (This will be posted on both the new forums and WvW Reddit)

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@Magnuzone.8395 said:Yeah the top most areas in each corner. They are pretty much a waste of space. They could make something strategically out of it.

The reason those corners are left dead is because there is nothing that can be added competitively that would be balanced nor strategic.

DBL tried to utilize the northern corners more but the towers ended up just defending dead space.

Even EBG has huge dead spaces. Krait, Oak Boss and a large portion of the green spawn area are the first that come to mind.

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@Justine.6351 said:

@Magnuzone.8395 said:Yeah the top most areas in each corner. They are pretty much a waste of space. They could make something strategically out of it.

The reason those corners are left dead is because there is nothing that can be added competitively that would be balanced nor strategic.

DBL tried to utilize the northern corners more but the towers ended up just defending dead space.

Even EBG has huge dead spaces. Krait, Oak Boss and a large portion of the green spawn area are the first that come to mind.

Indeed. Even if you decided to add more objectives to make "inactive" spaces more "active" you would have to add the same amount of objectives to Desert Borderland (if you care about balance). Which is one of the big issues of "Home" Borderland design to begin with: they have to be kept similar for the sake of point balance. However, sameness gets stale. The easiest "solution" is to remove, and not worry about trying to fill the bounding box of the map. Or just leave it as is for budget concerns.

More on this later in the Wrap of Video I think. There is a bit more to it.

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@Cerby.1069 said:I don't see how removing something should be avoided over budget concerns....especially when it will create lesser load times and some stress relief for the servers.

I think we would be surprised. There would be some man hours in the act of removing stuff itself, but then there is more than likely a bureaucratic ladder of signing it off to actually allow the update. And I suspect updating it on the Chinese version has its own hoops to jump through. I also doubt it would do much for load times, and server stress (which is mainly when player blobs collide anyway).

But hey. I don't know their engine. Maybe it does affect loading times! D:

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