Guild Wars 2

Hi Everyone,

Needless to say I smashed out about 19 hours of stronghold on Tuesday/Wednesday, and want to give some feedback and suggestions on the game mode.

Also wanted to say that overall I thought it was great. Builds I never thought would work were excellent, and the potential for group ‘plays’ etc seemed huge.

…that being said here’s some suggestions for improvement.. you asked for feedback so here we go..

This stuff is more in depth than a lot of posts I’ve seen, were people are making comments on overall gamemode decisions. Here are some suggested tweaks to more subtle things like LoS terrain, point allocation etc, as well as highlighting some rather unrewarding mechanics in the gamemode currently…

Heroes

Winning through the point system seemed to rely almost entirely on channeling heroes (completely dwarfing other swing factors such as pk’s.

The dynamics of hero proximity were a bit underwhelming. Yes they made you less vulnerable, but it was still very difficult to prevent them being killed, and as they were the only thing focused in transit the damage reduction had little to no impact on gameplay.

Perhaps by increasing offense in players too? Or a telegraphed cc mechanic in transit would make things more interesting.

Essentially heroes felt like primarily for channeling points and after that a more resilient doorbreaker. They need to provide a real aggressive impact on a match on a PvP level, beyond being a meatbag hammering at the doors.

Supply running

Intercepting supply was the most disappointing aspect here. You ended up with some dropped supply, on completely the wrong side of the map to use it. Furthermore the act of running supply didn’t feel very engaging; with no impact in movement speed or abilities such as running the orb on spirit watch. It didn’t feel like you were carrying precious supply, or that there was any realistic threat of interception.

The one game I had against the devs they all rushed our lane at the start; maybe that’s a valid tactic I didn’t see in the wider beta, but whenever I pushed to intercept supply it always felt like I could be doing something more useful – despite the clear risk of sandwiching yourself in a position your team wouldn’t normally be near to.

The Timer
Winning on points was never fun. This may be due in part to the current point allocation system – as mentioned above hero channels felt like the biggest factor. I understand your requirements from the offset have been to keep the games under 15 minutes; and it already feels like the average match time will be much longer than that of conquests, however there needs to be a debate about making stronghold ranked matches potentially longer during these even stand-offs. It looks like others gave the same feedback on that.

They are after all the games we want to play provided the matches are even due to an evolving strategic counter-play (not cheesy comps and ‘boring’ strategies stalemating).

The Map
There are bits that feel like they need more built on them for LoS (line of Sight; i.e using terrain to avoid attacks) purposes. Most small scale skirmishes on conquest maps were focused around areas that had a ton of potential for LoS – really all of them if you count porting too.

I really felt there were parts of Stronghold where that open field brawl feel worked well, such as just after the first gates are broken. Suddenly the ability to disengage as a defender drops massively (there’s a small exposed ramp to your left and a very open and exposed road behind).

It works here because it changes the pace of defense dramatically. The offensive team wants to make a push at this point because killing the guards allows them to maintain the momentum of doorbreakers, and the defending team will try and stop this despite their terrain changing dramatically, introducing verticality, less disengage etc.

There were points on the map however where the terrain was too punishing, especially for glassier builds. The area that stood out the most was the treb hills.The LoS potential here felt limited to the degree I didn’t want to go up there on some builds, because some (power necro/ turret engineer etc etc) was waiting to autoattack me to death. The defender already gets to freecast as I come up, it seems a bit unforgiving when you get to the top only to find there’’s nowhere to hide.

The LoS terrain based around the hero channeling points also felt underwhelming. Those areas seem to be designed as swing factors in otherwise even matches, however again there didn’t feel like much diversity with just one rock to run around – especially as it opened up into a lane making disengage even less forgiving. There needs to be interesting fights here if they are going to decide matches, and an open area encourages too much ‘build wars’ for my liking as it limits play style to a slog fest.

The third (and perhaps the most important) LoS issue was with the terrain outside the second (and final) gate. There wasn’t any. As it seems almost inevitable defenders are outnumbered in ‘their’ lane, during that final lord zerg as a defender you end up either playing peek-a-boo from the gate portal or just constantly making a push from spawn (or spamming bombs from the other side of the gate trololol).

There really is nowhere to run once you’re defending the final gate;, let alone to counter-push as a solo or duo.

I’m not suggesting you put obstacles right by the gates, as you need to be exposed while cleaving mobs, however being able to dash across to the other side of that top plain and hold up somewhere there without being sniped out by two power rangers while a shoutbow trails you would be nice. Solo defense at this stage needs to be at least a little bit useful because at the moment it felt like offense was the only way to go after a certain stage for the whole team, let alone leaving sufficient players defending to meet aggressors in an open field.

Conclusion/Positive bits

What I’m most excited by with Stronghold is that there looks to be so many ways to approach a match. That’s what Guild Wars 2 needs more than anything else to be more viewer-friendly.; unpredictability and variety. It feels like this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Edited and got rid of self deprecatory bitsss…….

but we like self deprecation…

hackks.3687:

but we like self deprecation…

I don’t deserve to be liked

I agree on the timer, it’s too short. We would’ve won a fun, close match if it wasn’t for the timer (enemy team had 1-2 more kills)…

Some of my concerns on the map were fixed by this patch (LoSing outside the final gate), probably just coincidental, but thanks all the same!

Sadly was working till late today – no long post for nobody to read this time!