Guild Wars 2

the new change in making 5v5 mandatory in conquest spvp was a terrible idea. I have yet to play a game in hotjoin that didnt finish correctly. I’ll get into why i don’t arena later on.

In previous 8v8, if a person got demoralized and left the game, it would have been a slight disadvantage, but with 5v5, it’s a huge disadvantage. With the departure of one, often comes a domino effect. It is fairly typical to have an entirely new roster on the losing side, often at the expense of autobalancing 2 or 3 from the winning side. This is a very big problem. Almost no game can be finished without feeling cheated, either because you’re being flipflopped autobalanced, or your teammates have left.

I also hate 5v5 inherently, in conquest mode. I hate conquest mode period, i’ve said that many times before, but 5v5 is even worse. With 5 people on your team, and 3 nodes to capture and hold, this usually means either you’re outnumbered because you split up your team to more nodes than the other team, or you’re losing on points because your team stuck together. Or, in the case of hotjoins, your team has no synergy because they’re not an arranged team with a strategy, so your team could be losing both on the points war, and outnumbered in every fight.

In simple words: this sucks! This means there is almost never a fight that is even numbers on both sides! This also means that, assuming you leave a buddy to guard a node, you will not ever be able to play with all your friends at once. And guess what, people want to play alongside their friends, i know that’s so surprising, right?!

I’ll also repeat my long criticism of conquest mode. I believe that a more skilled player is someone who demonstrates more knowledge of a game’s core mechanics, as well as better intrinsic attributes like reflex or twitch, mouse eye coordination, and situational awareness. A skilled player should obviously be rewarded for his/her dedication, and hopefully the more skilled player wins the match.

Such is NOT true for conquest mode. Conquest mode has always been about cheesing, particularly in finding optimal ways to hold points without actually fighting back. Remember the aforementioned parts on player skill, like knowing core mechanics, having fast reflexes, and good situational awareness? You can throw those all out the window for cheesing. Who needs fast reflexes when you have a spec that is hard to kill? Who needs much situational awareness when your job is just to sit on a piece of turf? Of course all those things help… certainly in no circumstance does being a more skilled player hurt your game, but it doesn’t carry very far, not nearly as much as it should, in conquest mode.

All those attributes that make a skilled player, thrown out the window, replaced by how much can a person stall. Guess what… stalling is boring. Yes stalling is necessary and a legitimate tactic, but stalling for an entire match is plain stupid, and bad sportsmanship. Can you imagine a boxing or mma fight where all one guy does is stall? I’m not talking a clinch or a push here and there, i’m talking stalling the ENTIRE match. He just runs around the ring, never throwing punches. Now can you imagine the guy WINNING for stalling? That’s what conquest mode is. You have idiots that have no idea how classes work, they just copy or discover a cheesy build that stalls well, and sit their butts on a node and win.

If my words are scalding, then i hope i got my point across. It’s such a terrible shame, that such a well made game, artistically, musically, and core gameplay wise, has no legitimate pvp ranking system or game mode. It’s such a shame to see many who have no idea how many class mechanics work, but can get by or even succeed to the top by cheesing. All this, i have let go, i’ve never cared much to be recognized in this game as opposed to others i’ve competed in the past. However it can be frustrating to see teammates constantly drop out of the game like flies, and quite simply put, many people are NOT having a fun time.

You mentioned something about not queuing for arenas for a reason but never stated that reason. It definitely seems that getting together a team of your friends and doing team arenas might at least alleviate the aggravation of the one-sided hotjoin battles.

And I definitely agree that more map modes are needed. Conquest definitely gets old. But saying bunkers that sit on a point require no skill is very far from the truth. Against an enemy using a balanced build, sure, it isn’t hard to survive his attacks, waste his time, and hold the point. But when going up against an enemy that is built for nothing but damage, it is significantly more challenging.

I play a bunker Engineer. And to help my team I have to sit on a point and survive, while distracting as many of the enemy team as I can before calling for help. Thieves will burst me down fast. Condition builds are extremely dangerous due to the Engineer’s lack of condition removal. And AoE skills are devastating because I can’t leave that tiny point. Trust me, it is not easy surviving against 2 or 3 players or against enemies with bunker-destroying builds.

Hotjoin has always been a huge problem. It was a cool idea/experiment, but it just doesn’t feel/work good. The chances of seeing good, satisfying fights are low, since there’s no matchmaking, and the good players will usually all join the same side, leaving the inexperienced players a man down most of the time and hopelessly outmatched.

I disagree about conquest. The forums have continually tried to tell people since launch that conquest is about bunkering down on nodes and not “real fighting,” and to this day it’s easy to see the teams/people who believe that in team/solo arena. Hint: they’re not winning. Conquest is about controlling the map by winning fights. If you’re not winning any fights, you’ll lose. If you’re winning fights but only by balling together and zerging around the map, you’ll still probably lose.

The good thing about a mode that encourages team splits is that it promotes build diversity. Mobility plays a huge role in conquest, but not in TDM. Teamfighting is also extremely important—there are constant 4v4s at mid. Small fights have their place also. You’ll see a lot of side-point 1v1s, 1v2s, and 2v2s. I understand that you just want to fight alongside your friends, so strategic team splits can seem annoying. But without them, the game would be reduced significantly, more along the lines of what you’d see in a WvW train (probably several hammer warriors, a guardian, and a necro/ele in each team, balled together constantly).

It’s cool that you need good teamfighting, mobility, spike damage, and dueling capability to succeed in GW2. You should try some arenas, I think you’d like them. You don’t need a full group of five—just queue up with a friend or two and enjoy.

wait a minute you lost me at

“With 5 people on your team, and 3 nodes to capture and hold, this usually means either you’re outnumbered because you split up your team to more nodes than the other team, or you’re losing on points because your team stuck together.”

How does the other team not have this scenario but you do? You’re either outnumbered or losing on points with 5 players…. against 5 players?

This is just a L2P issue – conquest may not be ideal game mode but it is certainly much more enjoyable when you “get good” at picking your battles.