What's wrong with Spirit Watch?

So I just recently learned that Spirit Watch isn't included in Ranked PvP (which would explain why I wasn't seeing it very often...). This disappoints me, because it is and always has been my favorite PvP map in this game. I know a lot of people dislike the map, but I haven't seen anyone give concrete reasons why. Could someone explain to me why it is that they dislike Spirit Watch, and why it's considered unfit for Ranked mode?

Because people are boring and addicted to meta builds. These builds are often, but not always, team oriented, so players want the ability to bounce between two points quickly to support one another. In Spirit Watch the capture points are not very close together so players have difficulty fighting as a team. Also there is a lot of open space which is perfect for snipers and similar builds people often consider cheesy. Also there are platforms that are high enough to kill you if you were in any way damaged and knocked off (which again, people sometimes consider cheesy). Also, Anet nerfed the core mechanic in the map to be as un-fun as possible in the name of 'balance' even though different classes have different armor and vitality by default.

Those are the main reasons I imagine people dislike that map. I personally find it very fun apart from the orb (which used to be fun).

Spirit Watch has less access to the mid node than any other map, which kind of disfunctions the working class metas that are designed for the other conquest maps. It's objective "the orb" also promotes snowball mechanics rather than comeback mechanics.

Pretty sure those are the main reasons.

It's hard for the meta players

what is META?

M = MostE = EasyT = To tell you the truth, Teddy Roosevelt was a ....A = AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Terrible map, terrible mechanic. Occasionally you'll see people just afk this map in unranked, and really who can blame them?

Too easy to snowball and random pugs tend to get carried away.

Meanwhile Skyhammer is still in ranked..

Everything. Everything is wrong with it. Close and far are basically the same point, you run into enemies before you even get to your close node, it snowballs like hell, the secondary mechanic is very strong in theory but awful in practice (you won't cap the orb unless you're either spawnfarming the enemy or it's a complete clownfiesta), the map design sucks mighily and overall it carries the odium of scrub achievement farmers derping around in PvP and irritating the actual PvP players. This map should have gone the way of Courtyard and Battle of Champion's Dusk long ago, but unfortunately it was kept in Unranked.

What is "snowball"?

It's different and change is the devil!

@Falan.1839 said:...and overall it carries the odium of scrub achievement farmers kitten around in PvP and irritating the actual PvP players.

Just yesterday there was a guy PMing enemy players, offering gold for them to come suicide on his node. I just ignored him, but apparently one of my teammates made like 10g that match lol.

Too much is wrong with Spirit Watch to easily fix it. The secondary mechanic needs a hefty re-design and the map structure itself needs a lot of work.

Map Structure causes Snowball Effect If your team wins a couple fights, you can camp on the ridge near your opponents spawn and intercept them going through mid or to their home node. They have to jump down from spawn into a fight where they're on low ground in the open, or take the long way around and again fight up-hill to their home node. In most other maps, spawns have multiple very separate exits or favor defenders with some kind of terrain advantage.

Orb is too hard to balance and limits fun The problem with any "capture the flag" variant in MMORPGs is that there will always be a few very strong flag carriers. Initially a few classes which could teleport with the orb were best. Those abilities were restricted, but soon you saw sword + GS warriors using mobility abilities to outrun their opposition and cap. So the orb was changed to have its own abilities and disable your character's. But that made carrying the orb a death sentence. If you let players use abilities while carrying, there's always a few which are too strong, and that leads to a myriad of special rules. Why could a warrior leap, but a thief couldn't use a short-range teleport (similar distance)? When you put in special orb carrier abilities, players get frustrated because they can no longer play their character.

Orb disproportionately benefits team with map control The point of the secondary objectives on conquest is to offer a catch-up or shake-up mechanic which favors the team who doesn't control the map. If the team who controls the nodes goes for a secondary objective, they give up control of at least some of the nodes. The team without control has less to lose by going for a secondary objective and can take advantage of the situation. The orb is hard to run without map control. If you try to run it without map control, what usually happens is that the carrier dies or loses a ton of HP (orb abilities can't compete with your normal ones) and the team who isn't running the orb wins the fight and walks a short distance to cap it. If you have map control, it's a pretty safe run to a node for extra points.

Map Structure favors teleports too hard Normally teleports to different levels of maps give a short advantage - other players have to go around, but mobility skills can make up the distance. If you can teleport up to the large platforms between nodes, you've made a free escape (unless your opponent also has a teleport).

Mid node is hard to guard On most conquest maps, you can call incoming early for a mid node. On Spirit Watch, the mid node cuts off most line of sight from at least one side. The stairs so close to the node also make it hard to stall movement with range or fight up onto the node. It could be argued as something unique to the map, but it often feels more frustrating than fun.

Not enough good LoS objects Ranged classes have a pretty big advantage on this map when aiming down into the middle or attacking left node.

@Ovark.2514 said:Also, Anet nerfed the core mechanic in the map to be as un-fun as possible in the name of 'balance' even though different classes have different armor and vitality by default.

Honestly, ArenaNet forgetting that different professions have different base stats is a theme throughout the game. Pretty much every time a story step or something expects me to use a special weapon for that instance, there's a part of me groaning inside: elementalist gives up health and armour in exchange for attunements and the benefits of their weapon skills, but when they're not using their weapon skills, they're getting nothing in return for those sacrifices.

Personally, I hate this map with a passion.

Partly, because of its verticality, which is a bit too much.It's not really a huge map in terms of spatial size, but if you want to get from point A to point B by simply running, without dashes and blinks - you gonna have a bad time.And not all classes have blinks. Which creatws an unbalance.

Also, this:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:It's objective "the orb" also promotes snowball mechanics rather than comeback mechanics.

This, i think, is the main reason. This is why Temple of the Silent Storm is my favorite map forever and ever.When you win a game, which you were losing by 200 points - I think it's priceless.

Spirit watch is a great map apart from the Orb running. Clap

I like Spirit Watch because it's different, but then again I was a big fan of the Space CTF map back in Quake III Arena heyday.

This map is horrible. Has nothing to do with being hard, or change, it's just a mechanically bad map to play. Baffles me how anybody could possibly like this map.

It seems like most people dont even kniw that the spawn has 2 exits

The pit in the middle is a good deathatch arena and the terrain lets you spawn camp easily