Drizzle Map & Its Meta - I Liked The Design - Thumbs Up @ Arenanet

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

This map has the best feel & flow of meta out of any other map imo. I feel like this map & its meta and the achievements, were completely spot on.

Why?

1. It starts right out with multiple zones to cap like wvw yet there are two distinct lanes so players can easily organize around that. The design promotes combat engagement almost 100% of the time with REASON to be in combat, not just random combats. Every combat has a purpose towards advancing the meta. This is all good.
2. If a push fails it restarts quickly so there isn't much downtime to test the patience of players organizing the meta.
3. Blue dot teleporting is great. This really helps keep the pace for players who want to work hard in the map meta so they aren't spending large amounts of time traveling long distances to the next important event.
4. Even when traveling long distances or off into random places, there are actually reasons to do that. The achievements are designed in such a way that almost every single nook & cranny of this map has something that counts for progress.
5. The achievements - They're all focused on combat oriented aspects, which is great. The idea of legion commendations and the achievements tied to them was excellent. This means that no matter where you go and what you're killing, you are getting progress towards those achievements. I'd also like to point out that the idea behind more combat achievements and less easter egg hunting was the right way to go. And even the things that were sort of "Easter egg hunt" were given in the right dosage in the right places. Example: stomping propaganda speakers, which are almost always located by large mobs that engage you in combat and also count towards legion glory achievements. I could go on and on about this, but the way it was done was perfect. Nothing felt like "You have to go out of your way for hours on end away from the content to wait for some rare event to spawn or to find a string of hidden objects" nah, this was all much better than that in Drizzle. The achievements here kept players engaged in the map meta all of the time <- THIS is like, huge advancement for the feel of the game imo. No matter what achievement a person was trying to aim for, they are still participating in the meta while doing that achievement. Not sure if the designers quite realized what they did here, but that is just how things should be designed, that's great.
6. After the post-meta ends, there is like no downtime before the map resets. This feels good while playing.

And then aside from those aspects ^ I'll say that the way the events were designed in this map were just plainly fun.

[aspirine.6852]

I think that like silverwastes it could use a timer for it all begins again.

[mindcircus.1506]

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:This map has the best feel & flow of meta out of any other map imo. I feel like this map & its meta and the achievements, were completely spot on.Agree with some of what you said but three things about the meta and map stand out to be as being a little lacking:

1.While Inspiration may have been drawn from wvw, it lacks the enemies being able to back cap the locations. This is part of what makes the WvW experience and really would have taken this map where it needed to be.As of now, the enemies are never enough to back cap a fort. It reduces the battle to a two lane push and a predictable game play loop of pushing forward, doing events, then pushing forward again. In this way it becomes less like WvW and more of a scaled down version on Dragon's Stand with siege.... and that's fine and all...but...Man if a small group of Dominion could come in and ninja a fort back from the good guys? Or at least make a reasonable attempt? If the players had to rely on each other for callouts instead of giant notices across the interface?

2. The last three metas (Dragonfall, Bjora, and Drizzlewood) all use the exact same champ train loot phase after the successful meta. I mean it's fine and all and gamifies the experience far better than Tarir or Gerent... but the experience is starting to feel "samey" at this point.Also a good idea to point out that the Ley Energy buffs for the champions have not changed since the Bounty Boards were introduced in Path of Fire.Some new way to get us the bonus loot that isnt just picking up chests or a champ train would be a welcome change. Even the simple mechanic after Bitterfrost Frontier's meta would kinda be nice.
3. Why can't my Warclaw use the chain pull on the gates? I'm not one of these people who thinks the Warclaw needs some kind of reason for being in PvE, I get that it's a WvW mount and I am ok with it.... but giving that mount a little relevance on this map would have been cool.

Overall it's a great map and a fun meta. It just missed the mark on a couple of key points for me.

[Burrito.9750]

My thoughts:

1. Nice maps, but unless you have a large group, there's not much you can do solo. There are times when the map is packed, and there are times when there's hardly anyone there. It's very much hit or miss. I feel once something new comes out, it will be hard to find people on this map.
2. Very hard to traverse, especially the northern part.
3. If you participate in the META event, which takes about two hours, you're only given 10 minutes to open all of the chests that are available. Time should be much longer.
4. If you die during the last part of the META event, you're pretty much screwed on being able to get back to the fight. Need more (contested?) waypoints.
5. In general, META events throughout the game happen too frequently and there are too many of them. Big events such as this should happen, maybe, every four hours.

Just my two cents.