The problem with PoF/LS4 maps..

.. is basically that the whole theme is getting tired. for me at least.

Living World Season 2 and Season 3 were widely praised for their own reasons, which is what lead to our current success:

The former was praised for giving us an entire new environment (desert) that we never had before, adding new maps to the game that had previously been dry of new content, and coming up with new systems of presenting that content (i.e Dry Top and Silverwastes are very unqiue, mechanics-wise).

The latter built upon this system, as well as the mechanics introduced in HoT, to give us even more variety and diversity, to the point where in LS3 we were going all over Tyria and experiencing a wide array of environments and wildly different mechanics, e.g Bitterfrost Frontier plays nothing like, say, Draconis Mons.

People expected this kind of thing in PoF/LS4, but instead we have: Crystal Desert. Crystal Desert. Crystal Desert. everything is there. EVERYTHING. and even though ArenaNet has tried to add a bit of diversity to it for the most part all of the maps are the same too, and with few exceptions, they all play the same as well, which is to say very casually and in a way that doesn't even feel "serious"-..even in the latest episode, where we are supposed to be fighting war, it feels nothing like warzones such as Orr and Maguuma, at least to me.

Outside of the story (which is better than ever), Its like the whole game has just gone to sleep and is coasting through on autopilot.

And on top of this, developer resources continue to be spent on expanding the Crystal Desert more and more when we already have an overwhelming amount of Crystal Desert content--if you take the size of the maps into account, probably about the equivalent of half of Central Tyria, all dedicated to a single environment.

I feel like not even Central Tyria, which makes terrible overuse of its environments, has had this much repetition. Let's be honest, Elona is an entire continent, we could've seen alot more diversity than we have, and like I said, the developers have tried, but it feels like they keep coming back to "Crystal Desert' even for the areas that aren't even close to where the Crystal Desert was located on the map during the time of Guild Wars 1, which is just this missed oppertunity for exploration.

I hope that the future will see use returning to the diversity that established GW2 as it is..there are still many places to travel, many things to see. wasting an entire year in one place is just becoming.. exhausting.. is the best that I can explain it.

Agree to 100%. The LS after HoT was imo much more diverse. Hopefully after our buisness is done on this LS map we maybe get the new epiosde with an other biom than dessert and sand.

I don't understand arenanets direction in making beautiful looking maps but with nothing to do in them, this constant cycle of throw away maps does not do it for me, I loved HoT maps with their interesting map wide meta's, everything since with the exception of Istan has felt like filler. Arenanet need to give us maps with better meta events, so that those maps can live and breath, because the maps they have been making for some time now are basically dead on their feet out of the gate.

I will take sandswept isles over tangled depths ANY day.

And here I'm thinking that there's not really that much desert in the desert.

By that, I mean there's way fewer (and smaller) areas of open, rolling dunes than I expected based on the GW1 desert.

It was a sound idea to keep things in one place since the major criticism of ls3 was the jumping around from one end of the world was a bit strange and the narrative suffered. However, given how poor this episode narrative was, that no longer seems to apply.

You also have to remember that Elona in gw1 wasnt really the most interesting place. Kourna for one had little to make it iconic and was very bland. That has stifled a lot of their creativity. Compare that to say Draconis Mons where they had full freedom and made something very unique and fun (if u like vertical map). As a result, we ended up with possibly the weakest ls map yet with Kourna.

I dont think every map needs sweeping metas though. Sandswept worked perfectly as it was and managed to make stories out of the smaller chains it had. Istan and Kourna were fairly uninteresting though and rather than be well thought like say Silverwastes, they are mindless zergfests which fail to do much beyond slow everyones fps and make everything unviewable anyway. Too many big metas and we end up with HoT problem and long term we will have too many to reasonably be able to complete with a split population.

The S3 maps are really great and I enjoy revisiting them from time to time.

As for LS4, I expect a change of region sometime soon. Next episode or the one after that.

@"Vavume.8065" said:I don't understand arenanets direction in making beautiful looking maps but with nothing to do in them, this constant cycle of throw away maps does not do it for me, I loved HoT maps with their interesting map wide meta's, everything since with the exception of Istan has felt like filler. Arenanet need to give us maps with better meta events, so that those maps can live and breath, because the maps they have been making for some time now are basically dead on their feet out of the gate.

Fully agreed. That's been the problem with all LS maps in season 3 and so far season 4, they feel soooo "throwaway". They're the utmost designed-for-temporary-consumption theme park rides of GW2. They're forgettable through and through. You can really feel how much they need to rush creating these :angry:

It's just so meh. I'd rather have the content devs work on new WvW maps to rotate in ,work 3-4 releases on slowly permanently transforming a single giant LS map, or - even better - do the in-map-transformations of living story season 1 and 2 again, where we had an actual living story. As in, it went on even if I am not there.

@Randulf.7614 said:It was a sound idea to keep things in one place since the major criticism of ls3 was the jumping around from one end of the world was a bit strange and the narrative suffered. However, given how poor this episode narrative was, that no longer seems to apply.

You also have to remember that Elona in gw1 wasnt really the most interesting place. Kourna for one had little to make it iconic and was very bland. That has stifled a lot of their creativity. Compare that to say Draconis Mons where they had full freedom and made something very unique and fun (if u like vertical map). As a result, we ended up with possibly the weakest ls map yet with Kourna.

I dont think every map needs sweeping metas though. Sandswept worked perfectly as it was and managed to make stories out of the smaller chains it had. Istan and Kourna were fairly uninteresting though and rather than be well thought like say Silverwastes, they are mindless zergfests which fail to do much beyond slow everyones fps and make everything unviewable anyway. Too many big metas and we end up with HoT problem and long term we will have too many to reasonably be able to complete with a split population.

The only interesting bits would have been in Vabbi but most of that has been destroyed.

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:It was a sound idea to keep things in one place since the major criticism of ls3 was the jumping around from one end of the world was a bit strange and the narrative suffered. However, given how poor this episode narrative was, that no longer seems to apply.

You also have to remember that Elona in gw1 wasnt really the most interesting place. Kourna for one had little to make it iconic and was very bland. That has stifled a lot of their creativity. Compare that to say Draconis Mons where they had full freedom and made something very unique and fun (if u like vertical map). As a result, we ended up with possibly the weakest ls map yet with Kourna.

I dont think every map needs sweeping metas though. Sandswept worked perfectly as it was and managed to make stories out of the smaller chains it had. Istan and Kourna were fairly uninteresting though and rather than be well thought like say Silverwastes, they are mindless zergfests which fail to do much beyond slow everyones fps and make everything unviewable anyway. Too many big metas and we end up with HoT problem and long term we will have too many to reasonably be able to complete with a split population.

Indeed. I liked the idea of new Vabbi with a population embracing Joko, but a full third of it was that awfully designed brandstorm area which from a gameplay and overall design pov, just wasnt good at all imo.

Only se2 had maps that u were supposed to come back to making them worthwhile. Se3 dodnt build on that instead u just go from place to play fprgeting the previous place making them disconected.

Se4 overall feels much more connected and under the same banner which in generao is good but its starting to get boring. Both in se3 and 4 the maps are build to just do the story and nover go back so ofc they gonna feel useless coke next episode.

guys if you agree with OP thumb man's post up. That's how it gets seen.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:guys if you agree with OP thumb man's post up. That's how it gets seen.

I don’t have any complaints about the maps.

@Etria.3642 said:I will take sandswept isles over tangled depths ANY day.

I'll take Tangled Depths over enitre PoF any day. With it's depth and complexity that map had me coming back and having fun for a looooooong time. Infact i'm still coming back to it, not only for materials but because i like it.

Dont forget that ls2 only added a whooping total of -two- new maps, so they had to reuse a lot of assets.

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

@Etria.3642 said:I will take sandswept isles over tangled depths ANY day.

I would rather have a pine tree growing sideways inside my kittenhole than set a foot again in Tangled Depths.Tangled Depths is the prime tutorial on how to not design a map.

The quality of a well written story and dialogue is much more important than introducing yet another vertical map (those are boring, because they are created to keep people artificially busy without providing anything of interest, really) and new movement mechanic no one needs (because you can't use them outside of the map, plus it is simply becoming too much; this is an RPG and not a platformer for kids' and teens' Xbox). And in that regard (i.e. the quality of writing), PoF and especially LWS4 are shining way, way above an awfully written LWS3.

Kourna heavily recycled textures of Silverwastes. It looks like being in a silverwastes with more water.

@Etria.3642 said:I will take sandswept isles over tangled depths ANY day.

Hate Tangled Depths with a passion. Glad I am not alone.

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

@Etria.3642 said:I will take sandswept isles over tangled depths ANY day.

Tangled Depths appealed to one type of fan and those fans seem to think they are the ones that matter. People need to learn that not everybody enjoys those sort of maps and there are many types of people who play this game and there has to be a reasonable compromise

@melodyca.8921 said:

Crystal Desert appealed to one type of fan and those fans seem to think they are the ones that matter. People need to learn that not everybody enjoys those sort of maps and there are many types of people who play this game and there has to be a reasonable compromise.

See what i did there? (evil grin).I'm fine with you guys getting your flat maps, as long as guys like me (even if minority) get a bone thrown at us too. But recent times you guys are being catered to 100% while fans of true vertifcal map design are being left in the wind each damn release starting core PoF...

not like ls3 is invalid anymore. All is endgame. more variety is good. Something for everyone. dont try to impose your desires on everyone else.

@Vavume.8065 said:I don't understand arenanets direction in making beautiful looking maps but with nothing to do in them, this constant cycle of throw away maps does not do it for me, I loved HoT maps with their interesting map wide meta's, everything since with the exception of Istan has felt like filler. Arenanet need to give us maps with better meta events, so that those maps can live and breath, because the maps they have been making for some time now are basically dead on their feet out of the gate.

They don't want to do that likely because they don't want more metas on the Event Timer. It can throw something off.

@Ashantara.8731 said:The quality of a well written story and dialogue is much more important than introducing yet another vertical map (those are boring, because they are created to keep people artificially busy without providing anything of interest, really) and new movement mechanic no one needs (because you can't use them outside of the map, plus it is simply becoming too much; this is an RPG and not a platformer for kids' and teens' Xbox). And in that regard (i.e. the quality of writing), PoF and especially LWS4 are shining way, way above an awfully written LWS3.

I agree. You shouldn't do verticality for the sake of verticality. It should be done if it serves the story and the gameplay.

I am getting bored of the desert environments though(I've never really liked deserts to begin with, it's why I stay away from BDO :lol: the name alone immediately repulses me). Istan and Sandswept Isles were refreshing as they weren't all desert desert but more tropical. My favorite areas in PoF were the Elon River Delta, and the snowy areas in the Desert Highlands. Now Kourna is basically just desert again.

That gets me to what I think is the largest, glaring issue with Living World and even expansions. It pigeonholes ANet into a fixed story, and the result is they can only deliver certain kind of content. Currently involving Joko, and Joko is in the desert. Hence, we get desert.

The first instance in PoF hints that there were supposed to be story beats involving the dwarves and maybe the Brotherhood of the Dragon, hence Ogden's presence there. That idea is further accentuated by the fact there's a massive dwarven complex in the Desert Highlands. It seems to me that there was supposed to be some story beats there as the environment seems way too intricately made for simple open world stuff. Ultimately it probably got cut due to scope issues, the second act of the story is way overblown compared to Acts 1 & 3 as it is. Worked out well enough in the end but I'm sad for the missed/wasted opportunities. It could've shed some light into what was/is the final destiny of the dwarves.

From what I can gather, one of the goals for LWS3/PoF was to conclude the fates of the elder races. We're 4/5 now. The Mursaat and the Seers are gone, the Jotun are a shadow of their former selves, and all the remaining Forgotten are pawns of Kralkatorrik now. Only the state of the dwarves remains unclear. Are they all returned to lifeless stone by Destroyers or are they still fighting Primordus's minions deep underground? And why is Ogden above ground unlike almost the entirety of the rest of his race?

I sometimes wish they'd take a break from the story(or do some shorter, unrelated side stories), and just drop a map at random into the game. ANet doesn't seem to understand the importance of variety sometimes, instead they shy away from it because of not-that-great previous experiences. They haven't done varying storylines in PoF/LWS4 because it was the biggest point of complaints from LWS3. I don't think plotholes/inconsistencies are necessarily a bad thing, they bring mystery to the world and give room for speculation. While LWS4 has been consistent and delivered good story, it has done a poor job at world-building. PoF was much better actually.

@Vavume.8065 said:I don't understand arenanets direction in making beautiful looking maps but with nothing to do in them, this constant cycle of throw away maps does not do it for me, I loved HoT maps with their interesting map wide meta's, everything since with the exception of Istan has felt like filler. Arenanet need to give us maps with better meta events, so that those maps can live and breath, because the maps they have been making for some time now are basically dead on their feet out of the gate.

^This. I don't mind the environments, but I miss having good events. Istan did a good job, but this latest map. I mean, what is up with the meta there? Are they going to add more later? Seriously, that's it?