Major long term issue - map design

I think the map design in A2 in general is poor for the purposes of the actual end game loops and playing the game for the overall population of the game.

In general if you compare the A2 map compared to the A1 map, I much prefer A1 because it is an open map, A2 has purposefully been created in a way that is it very closed, it has impassable cliffs everywhere and bottlenecks everywhere. There's bottlenecks just to enter the desert and tropics areas! Most areas are impassable by caravans except for the roads which imo is boring.

I say these design issues being a hardcore player but these will cause major issues for the majority of the population who aren't in the top 5% of PvPers on the server, then the game will have no population left.

The main reasons I believe this to be bad design:

1. For the end game loop of caravans, it makes it so attacker and top PvP guild biased. All the attackers need to do is have alts/scouts waiting at choke points AFK to hunt caravans, they don't even need to actively scout, there's so few caravan routes that can be taken as caravans mostly can only travel on the road and everywhere is so hilly or you have to go through choke points.

This has been actively shown on the EU server already. Sol Deus guild (I have nothing against them, they are just playing the game) have actively camped some of the main caravans choke points and attack or make a deal with caravans to make gold with little effort. Then they have snowballed so hard with their gold lead going into enchanting they are way further ahead than any other guild in terms of gear.

Solution: flatter map with far less choke points: 1. The attackers have to actively scout and therefore have less advantage. 2. The less hardcore player caravans have a chance of choosing routes that get undetected and being creative. In general I believe it makes it better for everyone and more interesting.

2. This also affects PvP that happens in the open world in particular node wars, at the moment some of the areas that are in different ZOIs are just really rubbish to fight in because everything is cliffs and hills etc, and you have to get to the top of it to fight with the advantage and it's going to create annoying stand off's or winning because of the vertical advantage.

Personally I thought A1 overall design was better, the map was flatter with lots of stuff in it and there was still verticality in the game where it didn't make the game feel bad.

Getting totally dominated by a guild over and over again is a really feelsbad for the game for the lowbies.

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Comments

Veeshan

you forgetting bout ocean routes when we have ocean a heck of alot of routes open up. also note we have the underrealm too which is subterrainal passages that can be used to bypass chokes and give alternative routes for caravans

SmileGurney

Caravans should not be used for printing money for players. Full stop. Caravan trade should only speed up / feed into the node development resource pool. Then the node citizens would have more an initiative to organise and defend them.

truelyyy

Veeshan wrote: »

you forgetting bout ocean routes when we have ocean a heck of alot of routes open up. also note we have the underrealm too which is subterrainal passages that can be used to bypass chokes and give alternative routes for caravans

Oceans will help however current land map design all caravan routes will be full of chokes and camped with no active scouting from attackers, subterranean passages isn’t going to fix that.

truelyyy

SmileGurney wrote: »

Caravans should not be used for printing money for players. Full stop. Caravan trade should only speed up / feed into the node development resource pool. Then the node citizens would have more an initiative to organise and defend them.

I like the idea in theory , I assume the archeage caravans are much easier to get through.

Blrrgh

Probably need to get some security for your caravan or team up with other players and organize. Right now the choke points are weighted in favor of raiders, but we only have a fraction of the map in play. The terrain difficulty allows for tactical decision making, and also is arguably better for limiting zerg effectiveness. I reserve my judgement until we have full scope.

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