Guild Wars 2

Secondary objectives should always be designed around helping the losing team make a comeback, rather than helping the winning team create a snowball effect. This helps keep matches balanced and players interested in continuing to play in that match rather than AFKing. Players begin to AFK when they feel like they are in an impossible to win snowball match. If secondary objectives encourage hope of a momentum shift in the match, players tend to stay and keep playing. The secondary objectives should always be a gamble to pursue for the winning team but advantageous for the losing team and an opportunity that they can’t ignore. This is an important dynamic to have attached to conquest objectives so that the matches are fun, interesting and less predictable blow outs.

Good examples of well designed secondary objectives:

• Lord in Legacy – Not really advantageous to push for a dominant win. Can often result in throwing your lead with a bad push but a great objective for a losing team to launch a comeback. Legacy is the map I see the least amount of AFKs in, simply because people always believe in that potential to possibly pull a lord kill or at least pull the enemies off their points to defend their lord, leaving exploit for back caps. This is all good design that promotes a come back mechanic, not a snowball mechanic.
• Beasts in Forest – Risky to push for and punishing if kill is stolen. Generally a winning team should leave beasts alone and maintain their hold due to the gamble involved. The beasts do however offer clutch moments for a losing team to take that risk and possibly get ahead in points. It works because if you are already losing, why not take the gamble if the moment is advantageous? Again, it’s good because it doesn’t create snowball for the winning team vs. losing. It offers the losing team a gamble of keeping pace with the winning team with a few precise beast kills. If pushed too hard by a winning team, it also offers opportunity for the losing, to steal. This all rewards the idea of a come back mechanic, not snowball.
• Shrines in Temple – Very well designed for conquest actually. I think the only reason why this map isn’t favored over Legacy is because people prefer the map layout of Legacy. The shrine system is in my opinion, the best secondary objective system for too many reasons to list here. In a nutshell: It can create a snowball, yes. But it is also the most rewarding comeback tool out of any other map. I’ve seen more crazy comebacks in Temple than in any other map.
• Treb in Khylo – Lots of debate could go on here but one thing is certain, this surely isn’t a snowball promoting mechanic. If anything, it’s just something advantageous to do when a player is off re-spawn and decides to drop a couple rounds on mid before peeling to far. Generally it is used in desperation by the losing team who is unable to hold points. Once again, it’s a good mechanic because it offers the losing team an alternative method to possibly clear a point that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, with a gamble taken. All the while, not really something the winning team wants to worry about because it involves getting off point. It’s all designed well.

Objectives that need work:

• New Skyhammer – The effect seems to be no longer worth the time spent off point for the winning or the losing team. It needs a slightly altered design to encourage the idea of a stronger comeback mechanic. Honestly I don’t even notice the Skyhammer anymore while playing this map. It needs a stronger come back design that would be hard to exploit as a snowball effect.
• Orbs in Spirit Watch – This is the strongest snowball design out of any conquest map. A team who is already losing team fights and combats in general will not be able to run that orb and even if they somehow do, the time spent off point isn’t worth the nodes lost. This objective encourages a winning team to run orbs simply to end the match more quickly. Orbs are almost inaccessible to the losing team actually.
• Bell in Capricorn – It’s like it’s a great mechanic… but then due to the positioning of nodes on the map, it just ends up being a snowball mechanic. I would suggest adding some obstruction to this extra node or even moving it further away from the mid point. This would make it so a winning team would need to invest much more time and effort to leave other points to take the bell. It would then become a gamble to leave normal nodes and vie for the bell but would again, offer a solid option for a losing team to send 1 person to cap. Don’t know, either way this objective needs more comeback design and less snowball opportunity. Right now the extra node isn’t a gamble for either side, it’s just a node worth points like any other node, with just as easy of access as any other node so of course a winning team will snowball this objective.
• Artifacts in Eternal – Way too far out of the way and not potent enough to worry about for non-teleporting classes but too easy to get for highly mobile classes. They offer too much snowball potential and not enough come back potential. These buffs are an excellent way to ensure a dominant victory for the already winning team because when they send the losing team on a wipe, they can easily with little gamble taken, send 2 players to get each buff and return to the team fight before the other team is even off re-spawn. These buffs are almost never advantageous for a losing team to pursue in place of normal speedy rotations, keeping points decapped/neutralized/held their color. These buffs need some work. The buffs should be more accessible to less mobile classes and less accessible to the winning team who is holding mid. Right now these artifacts more often than not, fuel snowball matches. Maybe the artifacts could spawn somewhere much closer to the mid point?

It’s interesting to see after taking the time to write this, that the most popular maps all share one thing in common and it is that their objectives are advantageous and rewarding for a losing team to pursue but quite a gamble for a winning team to leave their nodes to pursue.

Thoughts? Comments? Criticism?

I don’t think TotSS secondaries are well-designed; if one team commits to Tranquility and mid, the other team can simply send one person to each side node and quickly recap, as it takes very long to get from the temple to the side points. It’s only useful against disorganized teams, or in other words, it’s most effective against the losing team. Therefore it increases snowball potential rather than negating it. Stillness’ buff needs to last longer to be significantly impactful either way.

Otherwise I think it’s all true. The main issue with these secondaries is that they frequently require fighting, which again gives the advantage to the more skilled team. Were the objectives purely won through speed, or were a logic puzzle made as a secondary, it would give teams with low fighting potential a different way of bridging the gap.

I’m surprised you haven’t gotten any more comments on this. I would say something about the Coliseum artifacts but I think those have been covered pretty well in other threads already.

Super weird that this is getting no feedback.

Interesting perspective on the secondary mechanics. Analysis is put together well, however, @Huskyboy raised some valid arguments against Temple mechanics. You didn`t consider the full extent of their snowball potential.

In a capture-node game mode with x nodes, the periodic appearance of an effective extra capture node (making it x+1 zones to be accounted for) is a design that will always be though to get right.

Surprised as well this topic didn`t get more traffic. Certainly deserved it compared to that big necro qq and rant thread.