Guild Wars 2

I know a lot of you will state class balance is the biggest problem for spvp, an argument with strong reasoning behind it, but I would like to suggest something to the contrary. The biggest problem plaguing spvp is the conquest game mode.

What is the whole point of spvp? The whole basis for spvp is king of the hill. You can call it conquest all you like but it really boils down to is at it’s core spvp is king of the hill. Who can stay on a point the longest. A lot of people will say “what’s wrong with that? Get Gud, Praise the Sun,” but the biggest glaring problem is that each class is not built to stand on a point, there are multiple different play styles and this king of the hill game mode limits many of them.

As we’ve seen throughout the seasons, Anet has been trying to balance this by removing amulets, making everyone glassier and glassier but this in itself creates more problems. From the start of Season one, bunker was king/Queen. The class that can shrug off damage and stay in a small circle the longest would win. It’s why we’ve seen a massive reduction in toughness, vitality and healing power on all amulets, some being taken out completely. Some classes this wasn’t a problem, others it has killed them.

I propose changing conquest from a king of the hill game type to a static capture the flag. Flags would replace capture points at their current locations. Flags would start out neutral, once a player captures the flag, there will be a set amount of time until that neutral flag becomes their team colour, allowing the start of point earning. When capturing an enemy flag, the enemy team can recapture that flag within the allotted time period to change it back to their colour. If the flag is allowed to completely change to the opposite team, then the process will start again. Flags would only allow point earning when they are completely your team’s colour, not during the flag capture period.

In my opinion, this would reduce the need to limit amulet choices and increase the overall build diversity to be competitive in Spvp.

TL:DR: King of the Hill Conquest modes limit class, build and amulet choices leading to a reduced spectrum of play styles. Changing points to a flag capture system would greatly improve diversity.

Sororita is right about conquest convoluting our perspectives of balance in spvp.

We need different match types that test different strengths/weaknesses of class capabilities. If this were to happen however, we would also need a save/load build template option for fast build swapping. <- This should have been done in year 1.

Without a point to fight on you’d have a lockdown/kiting meta no?

duster.7013:

Without a point to fight on you’d have a lockdown/kiting meta no?

But at that point the balance perspective would change no?
We would not see support/bunkers designed classes being constantly at the centre of griefing/nerf threads, conquest based balance has ruined the fun for many in other game modes.

How many times did ele get nerfed because of its ability to hold a point?
-RTL nerf?
-fire line nerf?
-dagger off hand fire nerf?
-tempest nerfs?

I don’t need to go on to get my point through

Yeah, a team-deathmatch mode would be kinda fun and more balanced.

Well you’d see people complaining about DH on conquest maps and people complaining about mes on kiting maps. That would only work if you had to choose a single class to play a season with, which could be interesting, or 2-3 characters to play the season with.

So long as you can play every class, map based balance won’t change anything, since there would always be bad classes on certain maps.

Theres is 2004 game where the devs really made pvp fun and more player skill driven than aoe spam game made by Anet.

here is the link for that: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Random_Arenas

note* since this is not gw2 related miiight get deleted.

Yeah, why there’s not any other arena type than Conquest, right?

Wait a minute… I feel something… there’s a word I feel talking me something from the otherside… something forgotten…

COUNTRYARD!!!!!!!

STRONGHOLD!!!!

How the hell I forgot it?

Countryard and Stronghold (expecially Countryard) gave to all the players the chance to play something Different to the actual Conquest arenas.

But when Countryard came up everyone played it and everyone hated it. Why? Why everyone want to play the conquest meta build and no one want to play deathmatch why to play that they have to change they’re builds and playstyle, why every balance had been made based on Conquest arenas and a lot of classes are highly Op in countryard, classes and builds that are useless in Conquest. That make your team a Op or a really Bad team based on if you find in the roulette a conquest map or the so hated countryard.

Same thing for Stronghold, but there ANet gave us the chance to play it with all the other conquest maps, don’t play it or also play only it.

Conquest make the meta what it is, but if you change the playstyle there will be only another meta, not any more balance that what we actually have.

All the try from the devs to change the community playstyle had failed why everyone want to play conquest maps 8expecially the oldest maps).

We have other options for sPvP but the community ignore or hate them.

Silv.9207:

Yeah, why there’s not any other arena type than Conquest, right?

Wait a minute… I feel something… there’s a word I feel talking me something from the otherside… something forgotten…

COUNTRYARD!!!!!!!

STRONGHOLD!!!!

How the hell I forgot it?

Countryard and Stronghold (expecially Countryard) gave to all the players the chance to play something Different to the actual Conquest arenas.

But when Countryard came up everyone played it and everyone hated it. Why? Why everyone want to play the conquest meta build and no one want to play deathmatch why to play that they have to change they’re builds and playstyle, why every balance had been made based on Conquest arenas and a lot of classes are highly Op in countryard, classes and builds that are useless in Conquest. That make your team a Op or a really Bad team based on if you find in the roulette a conquest map or the so hated countryard.

Same thing for Stronghold, but there ANet gave us the chance to play it with all the other conquest maps, don’t play it or also play only it.

Conquest make the meta what it is, but if you change the playstyle there will be only another meta, not any more balance that what we actually have.

All the try from the devs to change the community playstyle had failed why everyone want to play conquest maps 8expecially the oldest maps).

We have other options for sPvP but the community ignore or hate them.

1)Courtyard was badly made because it emphasized what people hate the most in conquest :fight bunker/support+dmg
-Small area that makes splits impossible and unnecessary, better move as a massive blob where the blob with most sustain/dmg wins always…no strategy required…no secondary objective
-Deathmatches = permanent death

2)Stronghold has stupid AI bots that can be healed, the gamemode favour a rush fight
-This is how is done…ha the irony is that we’re talking about the same company
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Fort_Aspenwood

Galtrix.7369:

Yeah, a team-deathmatch mode would be kinda fun and more balanced.

No it wouldn’t. It would simply be down to whatever has the best survivability-to-damage ratio. What’s worse is that since there are no points there are no rotations which means you can not use mobility and whatnot to fudge viability.

TDM is a terrible gamemode.

Crinn.7864:

Galtrix.7369:

Yeah, a team-deathmatch mode would be kinda fun and more balanced.

No it wouldn’t. It would simply be down to whatever has the best survivability-to-damage ratio. What’s worse is that since there are no points there are no rotations which means you can not use mobility and whatnot to fudge viability.

TDM is a terrible gamemode.

It was great on GW1 , it required muchmore skill/team work than gw2 needs.

due how skill were designed

Silv.9207:

Yeah, why there’s not any other arena type than Conquest, right?

Wait a minute… I feel something… there’s a word I feel talking me something from the otherside… something forgotten…

COUNTRYARD!!!!!!!

STRONGHOLD!!!!

How the hell I forgot it?

Countryard and Stronghold (expecially Countryard) gave to all the players the chance to play something Different to the actual Conquest arenas.

But when Countryard came up everyone played it and everyone hated it. Why?

This is copy pastad from a previous thread, but it still is relevant in this discussion.

Courtyard wasn’t even a new game mode, it was an tacky and poorly implemented add on. Did it get it’s own que like stronghold? No. It was a slideshow of a feature with little effort involved and nothing more. Deathmatch could still be implemented in the game, however courtyard had to be the worst implemented version of deathmatch I’ve seen in a Mmo. And the solution to this problem is simple, and which there is more than 1.

- Make deathmatch round based, no respawn. Meaning for example if it’s 5v5, if one team kills the other team once, the round is over. And make it best of three rounds. This would simply fix why Courtyard was such an utter failure. The way courtyard was, if someone died they would simply run back in creating a snowball effect, because by the time they were to re-enter the fight, chances are their team is probably already dead. Therefore you tweak the game mechanics to where this doesn’t happen.

Not only would this work but it would encourage the people your playing with to stick together, rather than going in guns blazing like a bunch of mindless chickens with their heads cut off knowing they would simply respawn to try again.

- Make it some type of 3v3 team deathmatch tag match like blade and soul. It’s fun, engaging, and simple to watch. And with any of these suggestions I would say make the team consist of 3 people or less.

Countless

Indeed, Team Death match in Courtyard went poorly for several reasons including those mentioned above. And many of those reasons compounded each other.

1. The map was too small for 5v5.

2. The size of the map limited mobility professions (my poor Thief).

3. It shared a rotation with Conquest maps, so it was a chore to switch builds every time the map was chosen. And people wanted to play Conquest intead.

4. There was no incentive to use each type of build to its stregnths. If a mobility build got isolated (that’s what Thieves do), then it became an easy kill and stomp.

5. Snowballs and camping. The first fight could easily determine the entire match. And that could last a long time with little hope to catch up.

6. Getting a stomp was so difficult! Again, instead of giving each type of build the incentive to do its own thing, the focus was to stay together 100% simply to protect against the stomp.

So yes, I think if the downed-state was removed from Team Deathmatch, it would go a long way to making it feel more rewarding. That and also making the maps bigger. Why not just offer Team Deathmatch on the Conquest maps?

Silv.9207:

Yeah, why there’s not any other arena type than Conquest, right?

Wait a minute… I feel something… there’s a word I feel talking me something from the otherside… something forgotten…

COUNTRYARD!!!!!!!

STRONGHOLD!!!!

How the hell I forgot it?

Countryard and Stronghold (expecially Countryard) gave to all the players the chance to play something Different to the actual Conquest arenas.

But when Countryard came up everyone played it and everyone hated it. Why? Why everyone want to play the conquest meta build and no one want to play deathmatch why to play that they have to change they’re builds and playstyle, why every balance had been made based on Conquest arenas and a lot of classes are highly Op in countryard, classes and builds that are useless in Conquest. That make your team a Op or a really Bad team based on if you find in the roulette a conquest map or the so hated countryard.

Same thing for Stronghold, but there ANet gave us the chance to play it with all the other conquest maps, don’t play it or also play only it.

Conquest make the meta what it is, but if you change the playstyle there will be only another meta, not any more balance that what we actually have.

All the try from the devs to change the community playstyle had failed why everyone want to play conquest maps 8expecially the oldest maps).

We have other options for sPvP but the community ignore or hate them.

The problem with Game modes other then Conquest is that it was the only mode for a long time, so the game was balanced around it.

Additional problems that make other PvP modes nonviable:
- The utter lack of build saving and loading. So if courtyard pop-up, ppl need to play their Conquest build or start messing with their builds.
- Courtyards problem is the constant spawning. It should be a best 2 out of 3, just like RA and TA in GW1.
- The lack of maps for other PvP modes.
- The other PvP modes are not integrated into the PvP system and UI.

Simply put, the other PvP modes are essentially mods for PvP. Their not integrated, lacking in tons of features, of course ppl didn’t like them, they are poorly made with very little thought put into them.

EDIT: PS, Stronghold should be have fixed classes and skills. Kind of like Snowball Fight, Costume Arena (I know it existed in GW1, not sure about 2). Essentialy playing heroes, just like in MOBAs, pick a hero and play. Then the ppl can focus on just playing the map and the Devs can balance it much more easily.