Delete desert map

[Song of Eternity.8613]

Love Desert. Definitely need to replace one Alpine with a Canthan theme. Or replace both Alpine with a fully Hot theme and Canthan theme. EBG covers the Alpine theme.

[Svarty.8019]

On 3/30/2022 at 5:01 PM, Deniara Devious.3948 said:

I also vote for 3 Alpine maps + Eternal Battlegrounds.

Sometimes less is more. Desert borderlands is map, which is NOT fun to play and the distance between the towers and keeps make them tactically unimportant towards each other.

I have thousands of hours vested in WvWvW. No amount of hours in Desert BL makes it even remotely fun. It is pain to play it.

 

As much as I disagree with the sentiment of the post, I do agree with the criticisms here. Rather than delete the whole map, I'd like to see it modified to make objectives closer together - and fix all the other tactical stuff that the desert map artists clearly weren't informed about. Perhaps a do-over might be preferable, with the central tenet being to keep it simple! No giant space lasers ploox.

 

 

[Felicia Sexopants.4713]

Absolutely adore this map, really the only place where me and my two friends can get into consistent fights that don't involve zergs and also where we can flip towers and sometimes the odd keep if we are lucky. 

[Xenesis.6389]

#CORNERSTONEGAMEMODEWHEN!?

#ALLIANCESWHEN!?

#BALANCEWHEN!?

#DELETEDESERTMAPWHEN!?

#COMMUNICATIONEVER!?

[TheGrimm.5624]

29 minutes ago, Svarty.8019 said:

As much as I disagree with the sentiment of the post, I do agree with the criticisms here. Rather than delete the whole map, I'd like to see it modified to make objectives closer together - and fix all the other tactical stuff that the desert map artists clearly weren't informed about. Perhaps a do-over might be preferable, with the central tenet being to keep it simple! No giant space lasers ploox.

 

 

 

Weren't informed or didn't know what requests players would make after the map was released? The original design funneled people along the edges of the map unless they took the towers down. That way they acted as both informants of activity or limited travel. The keeps were designed big enough that you could still skip the towers and have plenty of points to attack from which is the complaint that people had years ago (and still do) that the keeps on ABL are too small and limits angels of attacks. Now the people complaining about the barricades came in a number of varieties too mind you. From the ones that didn't want to see the alpines weakness of a few scouts are all you need to spawn camp an attacker into the map because you could just park a squad at the towers and thereby block multiple entry points. Ranging to the ones that just wanted free movement so that fights could occur anywhere and not have a forced progression. If we are back to the forced progression but still want the freedom of movement change up the rules, don't change the art. There are a number of ways that could be done. Example if the issue is to have the towers act as bigger warning areas, increase the radar coverage. If you want the towers to act more like stepping stone to taking the keeps then make the keeps stronger when the towers are not controlled and weaker when they are held. Again the keeps are big enough that a scout actually has to scout them when under attack so you don't need to bring the towers into a range that makes them a threat to them too. Now to fair if they were to use any artistic time would prefer that in creating a new map to replace at least one of the ABL or redesign them both.

Or again, replace one the ABL with a copy of EotM map and add in the missing features of gliding and mounts. If they bring EotM over to WvW as a map they could even flip out EotM's map itself with a copy of EBG if we end up with overflows after Alliances or if people still wanted a more standardized spots for GvG. 

[Serephen.3420]

Ideally here should be a different map for each borderland. Keeps things fresh and not stale, gives each bl a different strategy.

Personally I think EBG needs an update but there are some people/servers that worship it so not sure how well that'd go down.

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, Serephen.3420 said:

Ideally here should be a different map for each borderland. Keeps things fresh and not stale, gives each bl a different strategy.

... then just take the complaints of people ending on the "bad" color and multiply by 10. Each BL having a different strategy doesnt work when they are all supposed to be HBL for 3 evenly matched worlds. 

Thats the real issue with DBL today. Your victory or loss in the matchup is directly linked to how much the 3 worlds loathe DBL and if you got the lucky draw. Your world love it and the other 2 hate it? +100 PPT right there that you barely need to defend. A 10 man guild on the enemy side that love it while you cant even get 5 people to defend T3 garri with a 50 man queue to EBG? Good luck holding anything.

Your suggestion is like saying "oh yeah thats great lets go with that!".

Ideally the 3 borders should have been basicly the same map with different visual themes and minor design changes to fit that - 3x alpine with vanilla, we should have gotten the "jungle alpine" with HoT and "desert alpine" with PoF. EoD could have randomly mixed in a "jade alpine".

[Song of Eternity.8613]

13 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

... then just take the complaints of people ending on the "bad" color and multiply by 10. Each BL having a different strategy doesnt work when they are all supposed to be HBL for 3 evenly matched worlds. 

Thats the real issue with DBL today. Your victory or loss in the matchup is directly linked to how much the 3 worlds loathe DBL and if you got the lucky draw. Your world love it and the other 2 hate it? +100 PPT right there that you barely need to defend. A 10 man guild on the enemy side that love it while you cant even get 5 people to defend T3 garri with a 50 man queue to EBG? Good luck holding anything.

Your suggestion is like saying "oh yeah thats great lets go with that!".

Ideally the 3 borders should have been basicly the same map with different visual themes and minor design changes to fit that - 3x alpine with vanilla, we should have gotten the "jungle alpine" with HoT and "desert alpine" with PoF. EoD could have randomly mixed in a "jade alpine".

The issue with this logic is that EBG should then be symmetrical. You learn to adapt to what you are given and move on.

[Caedmon.6798]

Imagine being a developer working your kitten off to create an amazing looking map and then seeing a thread like this where  "Timmmehhhh" comes in asking to delete it.


Peoples complaints were Travel time. They removed the walls blocking travel,they removed the mid event. They gave you kitteners mounts. Theres several Faster ways to travel ontop of that if You Hold Ze Shrines aswell. Most of you are just nitpicking. Theres much more room for tactics on this map compared to EB and Alpine,but i dont think many of you are a fan of that.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Caedmon.6798

[LetoII.3782]

40 minutes ago, Caedmon.6798 said:

Imagine being a developer working your kitten off to create an amazing looking map

People's complaints were Travel time. They removed the walls blocking travel,they removed the mid event. 

Yeah, looks real pretty.

But let's not skim by that mid event quite so fast. They built the whole rest of the map _around_ that event. Then, never bothered getting it to stop making the whole borderland comatose when it was active... Too hard, whole budget spent on glitter: event deleted. I'd have loved to see murderball as a new central event. I'd also have been cool with just a new map scenario for traditional PPT wars.. But to blame players for not appreciating a half-kitten(albiet well drawn)version of both? Nah

[Song of Eternity.8613]

I love how people focus on the trivial stuff rather than the real issue with WvW. That is highly active WvW guilds stacking on one or two servers so that there really isn't any competition against them. As long as people pay to switch, Anet turns a blind eye to this imbalance.

In a sense, WvW is the biggest pay to win part of GW2.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Song of Eternity.8613

[Thornwolf.9721]

On 3/30/2022 at 12:14 AM, Threather.9354 said:

Kinda self-explanatory comparing kill counts on that map. It is also much better to have 3 alpine maps for fair matchmaking.

 

And no, 2 alpine maps aren't enough. There are so many alpine mappers that we need all 3. This isn't about Desert map being unplayable, this is about 3 alpine maps being the fairest and most player catering choice.

 

Actually I would prefer if we also had 2 EBs but I don't think people are up for such a drastical, but absolutely brilliant, change.

OR remove alpine and make new maps. Like in reality if people don't like desert then it comes down to laziness and an unwillingness to move away from dated maps; Whom of which have less dynamic choke points and ways to fight.

~I like desert map. Remove that and I might be less inclined to come on and join in the borderlands and likely will stick to EB where I'll solo roam until there is no roaming to be had. I personally wish we got a far shiverpeaks and canthan maps but given how ya'll receive and act with this... it makes sense as to why we get no new content. I wouldn't want to develop for the community either lol

[Xenesis.6389]

44 minutes ago, Song of Eternity.8613 said:

I love how people focus on the trivial stuff rather than the real issue with WvW. That is highly active WvW guilds stacking on one or two servers so that there really isn't any competition against them. As long as people pay to switch, Anet turns a blind eye to this imbalance. In a sense, WvW is the biggest pay to win part of GW2.

What do you mean? there's been complaints about that going back to 2012 lol, at some point we're bound to get tired of talking to brick walls. Also complaints about the current meta, but well it mostly favors the highly organized guilds, so you're not going to hear them complain anet catering to them, let's see what happens when everyone else around gets tired of it.

[TheGrimm.5624]

7 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

... then just take the complaints of people ending on the "bad" color and multiply by 10. Each BL having a different strategy doesnt work when they are all supposed to be HBL for 3 evenly matched worlds. 

Thats the real issue with DBL today. Your victory or loss in the matchup is directly linked to how much the 3 worlds loathe DBL and if you got the lucky draw. Your world love it and the other 2 hate it? +100 PPT right there that you barely need to defend. A 10 man guild on the enemy side that love it while you cant even get 5 people to defend T3 garri with a 50 man queue to EBG? Good luck holding anything.

Your suggestion is like saying "oh yeah thats great lets go with that!".

Ideally the 3 borders should have been basicly the same map with different visual themes and minor design changes to fit that - 3x alpine with vanilla, we should have gotten the "jungle alpine" with HoT and "desert alpine" with PoF. EoD could have randomly mixed in a "jade alpine".

 

No, that won't do it and would be a cope out. Its ok we have to use different tactics on different maps, if anything I would say that was a design flaw from the beginning and lead to people leaving because the content was too stale. By now time wise we should have weekly map rotations where people need to mix up and go with tactics as they needed based on which maps rotated in.

[TheGrimm.5624]

3 hours ago, Song of Eternity.8613 said:

I love how people focus on the trivial stuff rather than the real issue with WvW. That is highly active WvW guilds stacking on one or two servers so that there really isn't any competition against them. As long as people pay to switch, Anet turns a blind eye to this imbalance.

In a sense, WvW is the biggest pay to win part of GW2.

 

I hate to say it, but this aspect will be worse with Alliances since people won't need to transfer, they will just move to a new Alliance together or switch what guild is their WvW guild and wait for the next remix. Now the good news, people that do that so they can "win" will either grow bored or get in their mind, I don't need all these other, this subset is the crew I need and they will break off to form the next 'A' team. So I am say now, plan on a bumpy ride.

[coro.3176]

8 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Thats the real issue with DBL today. Your victory or loss in the matchup is directly linked to how much the 3 worlds loathe DBL and if you got the lucky draw. Your world love it and the other 2 hate it? +100 PPT right there that you barely need to defend. A 10 man guild on the enemy side that love it while you cant even get 5 people to defend T3 garri with a 50 man queue to EBG? Good luck holding anything.

That sounds familiar.

If Anet ever adds real rewards for winning post-alliances, I think people will adapt and grudgingly play desert. That, or they'll just lose, and depending on how good the rewards are, will be very very salty about it.

[Xenesis.6389]

39 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

No, that won't do it and would be a cope out. Its ok we have to use different tactics on different maps, if anything I would say that was a design flaw from the beginning and lead to people leaving because the content was too stale. By now time wise we should have weekly map rotations where people need to mix up and go with tactics as they needed based on which maps rotated in.

I believe the original plan was to rotate them like every quarter, too bad for anet this was one instance they didn't wait to release wvw content on it's own and decided to rush it with the expansion, because it obviously needed more time to fix and polish. Then we had six months for everyone to get to know the map, but also get to hate the map, to the point players were queueing ebg all day to avoid it and cries to bring alpines back already.

 

Fact of the matter is more people hated the desert map than the alpine map, the players are even lucky they both exist at the same time now despite the hate and how unbalanced the differences of them make to each other. Maybe after 7 years now three desert bl's would be more acceptable, maybe they could go ahead and test that theory.

 

If anything, if they decide to go to a rotation I would prefer they have three different versions of the maps. For desert turn all the sand into snow for one map and grass for another, for alpines put in more trees for a forest map, maybe flood the map more for a semi water map on another. But I'm sure they have their artist busy already designing living story maps, black lion weapons, and the "boatload" of other cosmetics every month. Regardless of the arguments, we're not getting new maps, we're not getting revamps, everyone will have to live with what we have.

 

The biggest mistake they did was having home maps, the second biggest mistake they did was making a second type of home map.

[Riba.3271]

Honestly, I can see the argument for having desert map around if wvw was PvE gamemode, but once you have matchup you're trying to win 1 of the following cases will always occur:

1.  You have desert map, meaning you can't mass numbers to defend it. As long as enemy server is willing to log in to take it, they will.
2.  One of the enemies has desert map. This means 2nd enemy won't even bother with it and you have to do twice as much work just to keep Red server down. While having less numbers on that particular map.
3. You have desert map but enemy isn't willing to go there. Meaning you get a free win of a matchup. Great right? Until you realise it means without points WvW is literally just fighting and any downtime of that means you log out. Your importance of being online is dependant on enemies showing up, not you.

Of course if WvW was as simple as choosing what map you want to play on, it would be great, but as your performance in matchup decides how much fun you will have next week, some people and groups are forced to play that map.

So it isn't about Desert map being unpopular, it is that unpopularity causing matchmaking to fail. While also causing reducing options for playing on alpine maps. Playing on server X alpine map is not same as playing on server Y alpine map. Often both those options are terrible or queued whereas server Z alpine map would be suitable option.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Threather.9354

[Strider Pj.2193]

2 hours ago, Threather.9354 said:

 

So it isn't about Desert map being unpopular, it is that unpopularity causing matchmaking to fail. While also causing reducing options for playing on alpine maps. Playing on server X alpine map is not same as playing on server Y alpine map. Often both those options are terrible or queued whereas server Z alpine map would be suitable option.

So, I am in the ‘get rid of it or completely rework it to essentially mirror alpine’ group, but there are SOOOO many other things that ‘cause matchmaking to fail’. 

[Mabi black.1824]

I think there's something wrong with this post guys. the request should not be to delete a map, at the limit ask that it be corrected where you deem it necessary.

also, but why are we talking about a new map? please let's make 12 new maps and run them every month. keep the logic of the towers, castles and fields and make sure that they are placed equivalently between all 12 maps. where is the problem of having a little novelty in this mode?

we have in the world pve immense, if I were to start playing in pve probably it will take me 3 years to explore it all. it is true that my job is not the programmer, but is it really so complicated to create maps having all that pve stuff available?

[Jarlaxle.6315]

People really just want the Alpine grindfests apparently.  I greatly prefer DBL to the other two maps. There are actual consequences to over-extending rather than just a quick runback from spawn. The terrain is varied and you can actually plan a surprise attack.  Air and Fire are actually interesting. Does anyone really prefer Bay to Fire/Air except that you can easily take Bay with 3 players off-hours? 

[Xenesis.6389]

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I think there's something wrong with this post guys. the request should not be to delete a map, at the limit ask that it be corrected where you deem it necessary.

Hi, welcome to the forums, and welcome to the delete/revamp desert conversation that's already been around since 2015.

 

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

also, but why are we talking about a new map? please let's make 12 new maps and run them every month. keep the logic of the towers, castles and fields and make sure that they are placed equivalently between all 12 maps. where is the problem of having a little novelty in this mode?

we have in the world pve immense, if I were to start playing in pve probably it will take me 3 years to explore it all. it is true that my job is not the programmer, but is it really so complicated to create maps having all that pve stuff available?

The problem? It takes them a year to make one wvw map (no really that's what anet stated).... you want us to wait 12 years for the payoff? Imagine how long it would take the one maintenance mode dev to make a wvw map these days.

 

2 hours ago, Jarlaxle.6315 said:

Air and Fire are actually interesting. Does anyone really prefer Bay to Fire/Air except that you can easily take Bay with 3 players off-hours? 

I do.

Also you can easily take any keep with 3 players if no one is looking, it's happened plenty of times to air and fire even if there's no double cata walls there, but because of the fact that a whole lot less people like to play on desert in the first place.

[Mabi black.1824]

48 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

The problem? It takes them a year to make one wvw map (no really that's what anet stated).... you want us to wait 12 years for the payoff? Imagine how long it would take the one maintenance mode dev to make a wvw map these days

wow a year to program a map wvw. luckily I'm a plumber, if I was a programmer I would have died of boredom.😅

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 4/5/2022 at 4:15 PM, Xenesis.6389 said:

Regardless of the arguments, we're not getting new maps, we're not getting revamps, everyone will have to live with what we have.

 

The biggest mistake they did was having home maps, the second biggest mistake they did was making a second type of home map.

 

Considering how good ANet is at designing maps when you look at the PvE maps I am not giving up hope yet. That said we have had 2 maps when you compare to...well I am don't want to count them considering how many of them there are for PvE. So I will question them when they say maps are hard to make. Posted before and will again, some of those PvE maps would make wild WvW maps, strip stuff out and give us objectives and it would a wild ride. Would still like to see a fifth map that is a copy of whatever the latest living story map is with added objectives to it and it would be a good tie-in between living world and WvW. If it was a fifth map is could just have less scaleable capture points like keeps that would promote more open field play that people asked for. Picture a map without supply camps but has more overall objectives to take and maybe more scalable guards that are empowered through another system like the shrines in DBL. So areas that need to be capped but instead of walls you are able to scale up through a hold over time mechanic and scale up by controlling other objectives around the map. Instead of walls an area may need to have multiple points capped at the same time to lockdown, picture 4 rings that all need to be controlled at the same time to capture. That would make both modifying the overall artwork easier and give WvW player new tactics to consider to use while both defending and attacking new style of control points.

I have said before and will again, I play a number of games because I like to see how devs take on different challenges and answer the question differently. So for this issue I gather inspiration from Sid Meier's Civilization series of games (which is now at Civ 6)  and their stated goal for new development. They stated in the past that their formula was to take 33% of what people love now, 33% of something new to try and 33% of something they let go and bring back. And I will admit, it works, after 25 years of playing their games I will buy their games, expansions and DLCs without a blink even if I like some versions more than others. If I was ANet developing it, I would take aspects of ABL, EBG people like now, aspects of DBL and EoTM that worked for people that like it or liked it in the past and something new that people hadn't tried.

Now you may ask what that looks like? For the ABL, EBG styles have towers that threaten keeps and makes people defend smaller objectives to not allow those smaller objectives to threaten larger ones. Direct paths between these objectives that people can take if they have the numbers and points that allow them to quickly get back to it. For the DBL/EoTM concepts that people liked have larger keeps that can't be double breached by single wall spots and might create fights between walls because attackers need to be set a second set of siege to take down both walls and scouts need to actually scout versus AFK in a spot where they can see all attack points without moving . Have towers that block passage from at least one direction and force attackers to move wider around areas to attack keeps directly if they don't take the towers first. Indirect paths to objectives depending on what your side controls, knowledge of the maps and indirect paths around that allows for people not to be spawn camped and ways for smaller groups to escape larger groups and points for ambushes.  For something new, that's the wild card where Devs could play and see what worked and what didn't and then adjust those 33% rules as (to steal from Halo) combat evolves.  Their imagination is the limiting factor here. If you are picturing a style of home map, maybe each side has less requirement to take something and the further from spawn requires more organization. Or objectives you can flat out take that requires longer to cap, unless you took all of these other objectives first to reduce the cap time at the final objective.

There are a lot of potential mechanic changes. But the key is the mix of them. Change too many and you lose people, remove the ones they love and you lose people, not change enough and you lose people, that's where I think Civilization learned a good balance and I would take one from their playbook. Good gaming.

Edited April 7, 2022 by TheGrimm.5624
Typos

[TheGrimm.5624]

13 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

wow a year to program a map wvw. luckily I'm a plumber, if I was a programmer I would have died of boredom.😅

 

I am not sure I buy that line. If you are comparing pathing for an AI versus triggers that update to create a meta event's requirement and pathing there, I doubt it further. Now I think this is more of an aspect that a PvE map may get 10 resources and a WvW map might get 1. So yes it requires more time. One IT buzz term in the past was in 'agile' programming which was used to sell a reduction in time/cost which simply meant create code in smaller manageable pieces that could be reused by linking these smaller pieces together to make something bigger. With artwork and maps, there might be options here to use PvE maps as great starting points for WvW maps.