Guild Wars 2

So, while or after you have watched this mode, I wonder what would be going on in your mind.

But this game mode is too good. So good that I cannot see it co-exist with the current Conquest maps in the same queue. It’s not because the builds designed in conquest are not going to work here. It’s not because the rules are too complex. It’s because this map—and this mode on the whole—-is what we have been waiting for. Not just the PvPers, but all Guild Wars players.

For an exclusive PvPer like me, this Battle on Champion’s Dusk is Legacy of the Foefire with truly active and diverse NPCs, plus the excitement on Battle of Kyhlo, the close-quarter-tension on Forest of Niflhel and the graphic level of Skyhammer. I don’t see it co-exist with any Conquest map in a queue because it is in its own right the reincarnation and combination of ALL Conquest maps. And if the rumors are right, this is just 1 among multiple Stronghold maps.

Stronghold is in my summary a PvP mode that possesses WvW elements but is on a 5v5 therefore on a comprehensive and competitive level, and even the most stubborn PvE players would love it. There is no stupid player separation with this mode. If you like or can tolerate the good old Conquest I do, your strategies can work here because whatever you did on Legacy of Foefire can be done here and work——and no more boring backcapping and guardian bunkering. If you like WvW then Stronghold is essentially your game shrunk into a much faster and smaller map, with much more decision making and an excitingly fast pace. If you’re a PvE there are summoning and killing NPCs and all kinds of people (such as Skritt and Tangu) you have come to know and love are present in Stronghold and builds that excel at killing A.I-controlled creatures can have an impact. Hell, these heroes you summon even got some background stories with them!

I hate to use League of Legends as an example but this is the Summoner’s Rift of Guild Wars 2. Any other existing map look like nothing but a simplified portion of this thing. I don’t know about you but there is no point for me to go back to Conquest once this mode is launched. Because in the old Conquest setting we have 2 choices: Bunker or Roamer (or turret engi~). Anything that fall outside these 2 are not encouraged and should go to PvE or WvW.
With Stronghold, this is the thing that unites all three player bases—-it is a PvP mode with the very spirit of Guild Wars 2: a bit of everything for everyone. Here’re my suggestions:

(1) Take down/remake the Conquest maps at HoT launch
Even if I have to play Champion’s Dusk all day long, so be it. But in my opinion most existing conquest maps have the potential to be remade and be reborn as a stronghold map. Take them down at launch, and let people focus and practice on the entirely new PvP experience which I can safely say makes Conquest look like pre-Alpha.

(2) Re-release remade Conquest maps as Stronghold, 1 at a season
-Legacy of Foefire is already quite close to this mode at the moment. Add in the portals to summon NPCs and some outer gates at the roads between far and home points.

-Battle of Kyhlo comes next in line. Expand the spawning location and merge it with the Trebuchet into one operational base. Put the NPCs summoning devices and Guild Lords there. Make several routes to the enemy base that can be opened/sealed by the NPCs or the Trebuchet (for example, a rock tower that collapses to seal the tunnel when hit by the treb. NPCs can then be deployed to reopen the tunnel.)

-Forest of Niflhel has this exciting opportunity for ambushes and rushes at the beach area already. Expand it by putting some more stuffs in that area. Maybe an outer gate that is more easily broken than the ones at the Keep. Svanir and Chieftain should be harder to kill now and should reward more strategically impactful buffs, such as the ability to summon forest creatures to storm the enemy gates once killed. Lower the altitude of spawning locations/bases so enemies can walk into them, put the Guild Lords there and replace the wooden doors with the portals/gates with the ones that resemble Legacy of Foefire

(3) Redesign the Leaderboards
The current leaderboard which tracks only the win/loss rate of players is too simple to be e-sports. Add in the league system which I am sure is already under development. Add in charts that track hero/NPC summoning on different Stronghold maps and Supply contribution——make it so that people reading the leaderboard can see how different ways of playing the same mode can lead the same victory/defeat.

There you go.

I’m no PvPer but the Ready Up has done a superb job of explaining Stronghold objectives and strategies.

I’d say the only unclear thing to me is the hero spawn: Can either side spawn a hero at either point when the three minute point comes, or can you only spawn the hero on your side when it’s up?

You compare stronghold to Summoner’s Rift from Legue of Legends. LoL also has another map, The Crystal Scar, which is essentially conquest. Dominion, the game mode played on the CS, is a joke in the LOL community. Very few people play it, simply because a laning game mode is so much more fun.
I expect that when Stronghold is released, it’s player base will likely eclipse that of conquest. Anet probably won’t need to remove conquest. It just won’t be played. The only problem I see is tHat they said that both modes will be in the same queue, which I think is silly. In every other pvp game, you can pick your desired mode of play. Randomly getting the wrong game mode because of the way the map selector works is stupid. If they do create two different queues, conquest queue times will be so long that no one will bother trying.

Very nice post to see here.

I agree with most of things you said. Although I’d say that they should leave Conquest maps as they are right now (they are not bad, it’s a Conquest game mode and they fulfill their purpose). With this, I’m not saying they can grab a major idea from any current Conquest map and do a new Stronghold map.

Donari.5237:

I’m no PvPer but the Ready Up has done a superb job of explaining Stronghold objectives and strategies.

I’d say the only unclear thing to me is the hero spawn: Can either side spawn a hero at either point when the three minute point comes, or can you only spawn the hero on your side when it’s up?

Glad you like it! We need to grow sPvP population for it get better.

Regarding your question: as far as I understand, every three minutes a Hero will spawn on either side (north or south). When the 12 minute mark gets, the first Hero may be able to channel on north side or south side, it’s random. Then when the 9 minute mark gets, the second Hero will be able to channel on north side or south side, random again.

This is, at least, how I understanded it works. Anyways, you can watch some actual Stronghold gameplay on Youtube, so there you should have a good view of when they spawn, where, etc… Hope I helped you.

So, people who don’t buy the expansion, will still be able to pop queue with Stronghold? My biggest thing, is they speak of ‘being top guild, on new guild based leaderboard’….. how would that accomplish anything if it’s pugged/same queue as conquest.

I really really hope that they do not add it to same queue, if my guild is going strong in stronghold for the leaderboard, I don’t want to have to rearrange build structure due to getting the lame wheel and stuck in something like khylo.

Stronghold will be fully available for everyone who owns the base game, that is, expansion is not necessary to play it.

I don’t know how the Guild based Ladder will work with the shared queues, etc… either

Poliator.7021:

Very nice post to see here.

I agree with most of things you said. Although I’d say that they should leave Conquest maps as they are right now (they are not bad, it’s a Conquest game mode and they fulfill their purpose). With this, I’m not saying they can grab a major idea from any current Conquest map and do a new Stronghold map.

Donari.5237:

I’m no PvPer but the Ready Up has done a superb job of explaining Stronghold objectives and strategies.

I’d say the only unclear thing to me is the hero spawn: Can either side spawn a hero at either point when the three minute point comes, or can you only spawn the hero on your side when it’s up?

Glad you like it! We need to grow sPvP population for it get better.

Regarding your question: as far as I understand, every three minutes a Hero will spawn on either side (north or south). When the 12 minute mark gets, the first Hero may be able to channel on north side or south side, it’s random. Then when the 9 minute mark gets, the second Hero will be able to channel on north side or south side, random again.

This is, at least, how I understanded it works. Anyways, you can watch some actual Stronghold gameplay on Youtube, so there you should have a good view of when they spawn, where, etc… Hope I helped you.

Thanks! As I understood the stream commentary, it’s random which spot gets the first hero, but thereafter it alternates between the two spots. My question is, if I am on the team attacking from east to west (hence the south lane), and the spawn is in the north lane, can I channel the spawn or can only those on the other team? I.e., the hero heads towards the tower lord as the stream explained, but can the hero go either direction from the spawn based on who summoned him/her? Or must the team wait for the chance to summon the hero dedicated to their side?

as someone who loathes the secondary mechanics in conquest this map just looks like pure secondary mechanics, and i feel hate just by looking at it. it’s got loads of npcs, trebs, heroes that buff players around them, and gives so much role choice (running supply, defending, attacking base, treb etc) that i can see it being an awful map to play solo considering how dumb the average pvp random seems to be, especially with the influx of new players.

i may be proven wrong, but unless the map is upped to 8v8 or 10v10 i can’t see it happening. can’t wait to be in a good fight and then a huge npc rocks up, buffs all your enemies and kills you. nicccceee. pvp with the npcs #SWAGGGGY

We will have to see. I’m sure we will have a lot of fun on Tuesday.

I’d say that they really done well with this game mode, I’m not sure if it wouldn’t work better as 8v8 or 6v6 though. As it stands now, every player has to fill multiple roles scattered around the map and it could push Necromancer out of game and make thief mandatory in yet another game mode before we kick off.

But hey, that’s why we have open beta.

Ferik.3127:

… I cannot see it co-exist with the current Conquest maps in the same queue. It’s not because the builds designed in conquest are not going to work here….

@ Anet: this is an issue for me. What are we expected to do? Change build/gear/runes/sigils/utilities every time a match starts? What if we want to play one class in conquest and a different one in stronghold?

The biggest reason I don’t pvp more is because I can’t choose what game mode I want to play. I freaking hate the Courtyard and I hate seeing players who wanted it play ‘deathmatch on mid’ and ignore everything else because they didn’t get their map.

… The only sensible reason I can think of for this is that there aren’t enough players to support separate queues. Maybe you’d get more players if we could play the game we want.

This looks amazing! I can’t wait to play it myself.

Donari.5237:

Or must the team wait for the chance to summon the hero dedicated to their side?

Nope. It doesn’t matter which side Hero is ready to channel, any player of any team can channel it.

P.S.: sorry for the offtopic

In game development, any game or feature which isn’t yet released is the best thing ever and will render all existing similar games/features irrelevant. Until it’s released that is…

Play stronghold for a week and then see how it compares to conquest.

Ferik.3127:

(1) Take down/remake the Conquest maps at HoT launch
Even if I have to play Champion’s Dusk all day long, so be it. But in my opinion most existing conquest maps have the potential to be remade and be reborn as a stronghold map. Take them down at launch, and let people focus and practice on the entirely new PvP experience which I can safely say makes Conquest look like pre-Alpha.

(2) Re-release remade Conquest maps as Stronghold, 1 at a season

Hell no!!!
While I am also happy to see a new map I am a little bit skeptical about these new „pvp experience”. This map is full of NPC’s (archers, doorbreakers, guards, heroes, the lord) and gimmicks. As far as I remember PvP means Player versus Player and not Player versus NPCs or Player helping NPCs to open Doors. Every week there are dozens of threads from people complaining about the much AI (turrets, minions, pets, illusions …) in PvP and this map is full of AI. So I think we should wait and test the map before we go crazy and convert everything to stronghold.

Hmmm I won’t completely judge it by a video, but yeh I kinda will.

It looks VERY casual. The player himself in the video said it himself, he is a PVE’r and did quite well in both matches.

From 1st impressions I was not blown away by anything. It seems like something a 10 year old could grasp, and way less complicated than say WoW’s Alterac Valley. I’m sure most of the players were trying out the Rev so maybe that’s why the actual ‘PVP’ interactions looked so sloppy and uncoordinated.

I’ll definitely try it out on the 14th, (with guildies as this looks like a PuG nightmare), and I do hope it introduces some fresh build ideas. However I’m mostly concerned that this is going to be highly player vs. NPC combat, and some kitten spamming treb all match.

Can some of the players who have actually played this chime in? Curious to see how team dynamics worked in this mode specifically with fields, finishers, lane designation, etc.

Shylock.4653:

Ferik.3127:

(1) Take down/remake the Conquest maps at HoT launch
Even if I have to play Champion’s Dusk all day long, so be it. But in my opinion most existing conquest maps have the potential to be remade and be reborn as a stronghold map. Take them down at launch, and let people focus and practice on the entirely new PvP experience which I can safely say makes Conquest look like pre-Alpha.

(2) Re-release remade Conquest maps as Stronghold, 1 at a season

Hell no!!!
While I am also happy to see a new map I am a little bit skeptical about these new „pvp experience”. This map is full of NPC’s (archers, doorbreakers, guards, heroes, the lord) and gimmicks. As far as I remember PvP means Player versus Player and not Player versus NPCs or Player helping NPCs to open Doors. Every week there are dozens of threads from people complaining about the much AI (turrets, minions, pets, illusions …) in PvP and this map is full of AI. So I think we should wait and test the map before we go crazy and convert everything to stronghold.

You know what, I agree with your points. Luckily, 14th April is not far away so it will soon be quite relevant for us all to comment on this. The current Conquest does have one thing I enjoy which is minimal A.I. from the maps themselves

Conquest should stay as Conquest. I don’t like Conquest but I know it works as it should. If in the future the popularity of Stronghold outweigh Conquest then they can do something or simply ignore it and let the Stronghold take over. Conquest isn’t broken and they shouldn’t fix something that isn’t broken. If they have so much free time in their hands they should use that to balance all the classes better.