The different types of maps in gw2 and their aspects

[hugo.4705]

This is the second part of a post I made quite long time ago, it took me a lot of time to prepare this post, which is by the way a simplified version of a more long an complex version.The original post is the following one https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/118306/what-makes-a-good-map.

Here is the key informations needed to get my thinking: (you can skip it, copy paste from the other post)

! Firstly, for me there are 3 big notions that come in mind concerning a map:! -> STORY: Showing the big threat lurking at the horizon / Showing everyday life of the locals and their conflicts / Introducing a race and their culture and habitat.! -> FACTIONS: The races implied in that map, peaceful / evil / neutral. All having a role regarding the story said above. How heavily they are used.! -> What the factions are doing regarding that story. But they also increase fun within the map. It has a role in replay ability.!! Secondly:! -> QUESTS. It refers to the heart quests on your map but also the tasks you are asked to do in story steps. In both case, events can happen to progress it and it follows the story of the map.! ENVIRONMENT. The factions shape the surroundings and create interactions, good, neutral or bad based on story. But also, the living impression and ambient dialogues.! It involves factions, implied in events. The faction will make a mini-meta (event chain) to try to extend their territories / fighting another faction or a big threat.!! Thirdly, ACHIEVEMENTS, (Not present on the graphs but gonna comment on it for each map type) which have 3 meanings:! -> The feeling of self-Accomplishment of finishing something and discovering what is coming after. Or simply finding an easter egg or hidden dialogies or killing the meta boss.! -> Being rewarded for doing an event or doing a task with items or AP. With a longer event or task, a greater reward is expected. Have to be an easy task. Or lead to boredom.! -> The fact of successfuly making the player understanding the story and goal of the map. Leading ultimately to a dragon or important threat or making the map living. Can have an impact on the will to return there later.

I started to rate each map of GW2 on different criterias (shown above) but then I realized that I can group maps together into types; making the analysis easier. The diagrams obtained were quite similar, so instead of doing a mean of all the maps that are already quite similar on graphs I made one graph for each map type that you will see below.

Maybe it is subjective but it allowed me to rate all the maps and sort them into types/categories with particular caracteristics, pros and cons.Let's start, for each type you will find the corresponding maps at the left, the graph corresponding to those maps at the top and a description/analysis below.

WARNING. Ton of text and images incoming.PS: Originaly it was a triangle to analysis map, but it became an hexagon, because each criteria is in fact as much important. I'm gonna discuss rapidly about the feel of accomplishements of each type under the description.

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Sadly, the cities don't reward you, because there is no events in them. The feel of accomplishement is more of the first type: Discovering easter eggs, hidden dialogues locked behind being part of an order, a character creation parameter or an ambient dialogue you never heard before. The third aspect is not really there, because to understand the story of the map, and inderectly the race, you need details, lore books, be able to explore any corner. Why isn't the case, and you will face many forbidden areas / closed doors. The svanir closed lounge in hoelbrak, the asura dormitories and dock warehouse with forbidden access, polymock arena you can't travel too, the not more used nolani ruins of black citadel, sewer of divinty reach you will never see. For aspect 2, not here, because no events, so no rewards, no AP. So you are no reasons to come back in a city apart from the services, doing home farm, or for few story steps happening mostly in home instance. So thoses maps are the less efficients, they don't reward you, there is no event nor quests, and even if you go there, 90% of it is useless apart services and home instance.

The starter maps, could have said they are very rewarding if the champions farm train was still here. But hey, not anymore. We have now, awakened invasions from time to time that can appear in those maps. However, the world bosses are a good surprise of those maps. There are easter eggs, like in the necromancer hut of the queensdale swamp, or the steam ogre boss of thaumanova reactor to only cite a few. Through there is nothing pushing you to go back into those maps apart those world bosses. Those maps to me are better than cities and contain way more lore, hidden dialogues, and secrets. The differents events have a lot of branching depending if you fail them or succeed them, leading to different outcomes. I really think that bringing back champions al around those maps could make them more replayable or at least, increase the constant population in them. 3 of those maps have dungeons, this can be attractive, but it doen't make you wander around the map. Having to view a vista or complete a jp doesn't help either, because today it sums up to use mount or portal and then go away.

Here, it's a funny coincidence, all those maps have beetle racetracks. Those are cool and I like the rewards associated to them which are tonics and guild hall decos. I would like to see more rewards tied to events or world bosses you complete in the starters and transition maps. Like roller beetle racing, you could make an npcs overseeing world boss hunting, another one that admire your work of helping the map through events. I really think that the scouting scrolls sold by pact agent should be removed with the maps rewards system and be replaced by a reward track similar to the version you see in WvW / PvP. This way you are progressing toward earning a dungeon armor, a living season map currency while doing events in maps.Those maps have a good load of events and the materials dropped are also interesting. The easter eggs and surprise are more from the story, never would I have suspected to discover there is an aetherblade base, some hidden arcane eyes labs... the others are from playing with guild and gaining access to proxemics lab as example.

So big and impressive events and half of them don't even reward you properly. You sure earn a world boss chest from taidha and one from ulgoth. The corresponding metas are long, and it doesn't feel at all like your time is rewarded (Well at least you have a kind of dumpening with the waves of centaurs giving mats during ulgoth pre-capture events). Think of field of ruin, the meta of the assault on ogres camp is long, and the only rewards earned is 4 or 5 champion bags for a long meta, sad. It is worst if you think about dredgehaunt cliffs, doing all the conquest, clearing dredge camps, to just face the comissar... dunno, but at least in some of those metas there is a rare chance of dropping an item worthy of a lot of gold...

Those maps try their best by hosting either a dungeon, world boss, a farmable and rewarding meta or ley line anomaly from time to time. Dry top and Silverwastes added nice weapons skins set: The ley line set, and armors: luminescent and carapace one. Grothmar added a good load of charr weapons and armor skins in addition of some decos. The khan ur vault is kind of good idea to me, using loot of events as key to unlock even more loot. But overall it is not joy, it is still more rewarding to do leather farm or fractals.

Really, most of those maps give good loot and good rewards. Completing temples events act like a world boss and the chest can give you expensive weapon skins. Many of those maps are farmable, and have great metas with even more rewarding chests: Tarir with octovine, Dragon Stand with mordremoth mouth, Tangled depths with chak gerent, Verdant brink during the assault of the night... you have the legendaries destroyers of draconic mons, you can farm in loop the champions around ember bay, Bitterfrost is the berry farm... Bjora, drizzlewood and dragonfall you can farm the reward chests... Jahai, vabbi you have bounties and thunderhead peak you have north and south meta.

Another good load of materials farm maps: Sandswept, Istan, Kourna, Lake doric. Southsun you have a world boss. Siren is the abaddon vault. The others ones you can farm bounties and champions. Special note of the desolation which has a big meta event with a big reward chest at the end. The replayability of the desert maps is mostly about the bounties and eventually treasure hunts. There isn't any real world boss happening there.

Some may argue that dungeons aren't rewarding, I think I can get behind this comment and saying it is not good in rewarding gold. But, it does offer a consequent amount of reward, not less than three armor sets, a weapon set, a rune and a tonic for each dungeon. It also reward you with ton of lore and info about the corresponding evil faction, and you have not less than 4 paths in each dungeon (story + 3 explorable) apart 5 in arah.

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If I have to conclude, I regret there is no more interaction between the npcs and the player, I would like to cite https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Riff_Sootclaw. This is a kind of thing I would like to see way far more, you meet an npcs in an expected spot, it challenges/ask you to do something, and if you succeed, you get an unique armor/weapon skin.The second thing I would like to see more present is https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mini-dungeon. They are so much present in core maps, and there is so many LS maps that could have afforded to have one with an npc requiring being escorted in it. Finally really I would like to see city more living, even the new lion's arch, it saddens me the more I look at it. I really regret the real pirate vibes city.

[ugrakarma.9416]

i guess the fun of gw2, is really the taste of randoness that we have with real world regions, this is the true "genius" work.... so the problem with all this data, is if they try follow some pattern to attend some standarts, the taste of this randoness is lost.

the only real un-random pattern i see is the "square maps"+"every map border is a mountain", but this a something the nature of game enviroment force.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"hugo.4705" said:If I have to conclude, I regret there is no more interaction between the npcs and the player, I would like to cite https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Riff_Sootclaw. This is a kind of thing I would like to see way far more, you meet an npcs in an expected spot, it challenges/ask you to do something, and if you succeed, you get an unique armor/weapon skin.The entire design of GW2 revolve around not having quest NPCs like in other games. You're regretting that a square peg doesnt fit a round hole.