Guild Wars 2

Heya all, Colin Johanson popped over to our reddit thread about the ESL 6v6 GvG tourney yesterday, here’s what he had to say about new game modes and GW1-style GvG rules in GW2:

Colin Johanson

It’s certainly one of the game modes we know well, but we’re exploring all game mode options right now to try and find what works the best for the game.

For me, the best parts of watching a PvP game experience is being able to see cool tactics or actions in play that don’t require me to understand every single skill or ability players are using. Even if I can’t tell every detail about why people are killing one another, if the game mode allows you to see the strategies and key moments and visually understand why they worked, those make the best games to watch (and often to play.)

Conquest is relatively easy to understand and watch, but lacks at times a really clear sense of momentum being shifted because the cap points constantly change hands so often, and aren’t unique from one another. Of all the maps, legacy of the foefire is the closest to this (to me) of the conquest maps, because it has a secondary objective that requires a clear strategic shift in game-play, is easy to understand, and creates that moment of true excitement and momentum (even if you fail to kill the lord.) The GvG style rules of this 6v6 tourny, and Gw1 style GvG really embody a lot of the best parts of that concept.

Game modes that have more definitive clear moments of strategy, that are visually clear, easy to understand, and easy to explain but loaded with strategic depth will be some of the best options for us (in my opinion.)

Anyway this thread is really about the tourny and why it’s awesome, but there is some saturday evening random thoughts

Here’s the permalink to the topic! Let’s hear what you guys think! I know we’ve had this discussion before, but how do GW1-style GvG rulesets work in a GW2 combat system? What sort of mechanics would have to be introduced to make the game mode work better in GW2? What other game modes would be as good/better to watch/play? Thanks all!

I didnt play GW1.
I dont exactly know GvG.

But Colin sounds like the only reason, we dont have seen any new gamemodes (as long as you dont count Skyhammer Golf as an Gamemode) since Launch is, that they have some ideas but “there might be a even better new game mode out there”.

Those ppl gave us freakin’ Skyhammer!

And now they say, they want to make sure, to give us “what works best”?
If under this agenda Skyhammer was created,
I dont even want to think about, what “works worst” would be.

The fact that they still are “exploring all game mode options”, even if other game modes were announced pre launch, I m asking myself what those guys have done the last year.

The new modes must be understandable for low skill level players, so we won’t get anything like most decent players want I guess.

I played in the 6v6 GVG tourney and it was awsome , even tho we lost there is so much more build diversity and support play , ATM conquest is just bunk points so i hope they build on this gvg Success

Thanx to bloodytech/anet/esl

I was going to post about how this is typical non-response from anet that mentions things we want but commits to nothing, but then I noticed his first sentence:

It’s certainly one of the game modes we know well, but we’re exploring all game mode options right now to try and find what works the best for the game.

(emphasis mine)

It very much reads like “yes we know it’s good, but we’re looking elsewhere” which really confirms for me that anet is some kind of hipster organization dedicated to avoiding anything gw1 did well.

Colin needs to think on WHO is going to watch the PvP streamed game. A new player? Hell no, players who have already fallen in love with the game will. And players who love the game, are already complaining that conquest is NOT fun to watch. Yes, it’s new player-friendly, but what do you think, that a new player is gonna get excited about PvP if he sees points being capped and a boss being killed? Hell, even when he says he doesn’t need to understand why players are being killed it’s wrong. Of course you’ll want to know why and how they’re killing each other. That’s the exciting part, the combat. The strong aspect of GW2 is its combat. Can we please focus on that, and not capping?

@Decrypter: 6v6 is fun to play, just like 15v15, but it fails on stream. You can’t see what’s going on, people dying from few hits from thiefs, etc. I tried to watch it, but it was boring as hell.

I think 2v2s are more fun to watch nowadays. I believe it’ll be one of new game modes in the future.

This part from Colin’s quote, I 100% agree with:

For me, the best parts of watching a PvP game experience is being able to see cool tactics or actions in play that don’t require me to understand every single skill or ability players are using. Even if I can’t tell every detail about why people are killing one another, if the game mode allows you to see the strategies and key moments and visually understand why they worked, those make the best games to watch (and often to play.)

However, I think this is one of the biggest reasons that conquest is so boring to watch and why GW1 GvGs were so much more interesting.

Conquest maps are so small that 90% of the action is based around small team fights on concentrated sites with very little movement between spots. GW1 GvG on the other hand, had larger maps with much more going on. Sure, small maps put players in the action immediately and frequently, but the game borders on a big clusterf*** of action.

Just to pick up on what he was talking about in terms of maps I’d have to agree that from a spectator PoV Legacy is probably the ‘best’ map, it has much larger comeback potential than most maps and as he mentioned it’s easy to see the objective shift and understand why,

If I was going to put maps in order of spectator value it’d be Legacy>Temple>Forest>Khylo. Legacy has the most exciting comeback mechanic with the Guild Lord, Temple has the bottom and top buffs, in a close game Forest is amazing to watch and Khylo is just generally pretty boring.

In terms of all round maps though I would rate it:

1. Temple is simply the best all around map, it has big objectives, it has small objectives, split up fights and a lot of tactical depth.
2. Khylo is the most strategically and tactically deep map because you constantly have 5 PoI’s on the map and it really shows a teams ability to rotate and skirmish well.
3. Forest is pretty mid focused but also has the side objectives which can swing the game pretty drastically if you have complete control (50-100 bonus points is nothing to laugh at).
4. Legacy is probably the worst map, it’s very mid fight focused and drags on for a long time because of how easy it is to bunker the node, also the Guild Lord is quite easy to kill in a well executed all in leading to imbalance there.

Dahkeus.8243:

This part from Colin’s quote, I 100% agree with:

For me, the best parts of watching a PvP game experience is being able to see cool tactics or actions in play that don’t require me to understand every single skill or ability players are using. Even if I can’t tell every detail about why people are killing one another, if the game mode allows you to see the strategies and key moments and visually understand why they worked, those make the best games to watch (and often to play.)

However, I think this is one of the biggest reasons that conquest is so boring to watch and why GW1 GvGs were so much more interesting.

Conquest maps are so small that 90% of the action is based around small team fights on concentrated sites with very little movement between spots. GW1 GvG on the other hand, had larger maps with much more going on. Sure, small maps put players in the action immediately and frequently, but the game borders on a big clusterf*** of action.

I agree, larger maps with more secondary mechanics (and less capping) make for more interesting matches to play and watch due to the added strategy

Team Deathmatch: Win by annihilating every single player of the other team. Is it that really complicated to watch/understand?

I don’t give a penguin’s flippers about secondary mechanics/objectives. I just want to kill other players.

I think GvG battles of all sizes are the thing of the future.
One thing is for sure.
If Anet doesnt do something soon, they will lose more and more players.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Team Deathmatch: Win by annihilating every single player of the other team. Is it that really complicated to watch/understand?

I don’t give a penguin’s flippers about secondary mechanics/objectives. I just want to kill other players.

Isn’t that what WvW and custom arenas are for?

GW1 GvG its very nice…

But if they are thinking in a new game mode, why not try Team Deathmatch ?

Its not hard to watch TDM.

GW1 have the best PVP style arenas and types. bring it to GW2 or keep loosing players to other games…

If Anet want to see a large number of viewers watching the matches, I fully agree that they should bring these types of game to GW2.

I heard that some players are coming back to play gw1…

It all sounds great, but they are really good at putting out great sounding podcasts/blog posts, actually implementing them, well…

Lets just say it took them months to shave Healing signet by 8%, so I’ll just sit back and wait to see how long it takes for anything to materialize from this

They’re repeating them selves over and over again: “We wanna try what works best and whatnot bla bla…”.

It’s like figuring out what their customers want by not talking to them and hiding stuff from them. And we all seen how well that worked out so far.

Decrypter.1785:

I played in the 6v6 GVG tourney and it was awsome , even tho we lost there is so much more build diversity and support play , ATM conquest is just bunk points so i hope they build on this gvg Success

Thanx to bloodytech/anet/esl

The problem with it: it’s passive Support. You don’t need to actually play actively to heal and prott your allies as it was in GW1 the case. That will be a serious problem for deathmatch here.