Guild Wars 2

Recently, I have tried to persuade a few PvE-minded friends to give structured PvP a shot, promising that it is both fun and rewarding. I was appalled to discover that only stronghold maps are available for players under rank 10.

I realize why there’s that restriction, and I don’t dislike stronghold, but it is a terrible way to introduce someone to structured PvP. Strongholds can be confusing even to veteran players, and much harder to explain than the Battle of Kylho.

Moreover, this makes unranked stronghold worse for experienced players, as it guarantees that most players in the map will be new to PvP in general.

I realize that it doesn’t take too long to get to rank ten, but for many of my more casual friends, that’s a lot of messy stronghold matches to endure. At the very least there needs to be a conquest bracket for players under rank ten, as that would greatly improve a new player’s introduction to PvP.

This. If stronghold was the first and only map I could play at the start, I’d have stopped pvping a long time ago. And conquest is easier to understand when you first start.

I don’t know about easier to understand... If you could ask everyone arriving at a point, strategically speaking, why they went there, I bet 90% wouldn’t have a clue.

That being said, I agree that there shouldn’t be a rank requirement to play the mode. We wanted a requirement to play ranked because it was meant to be for more competitive matches, which implies those queuing should have experienced the maps already. Unranked though, should have no rank requirement. We want to get more people into PvP, not make them regret even trying it.

In fact, there’s an idea. Stick the rank 10 requirement on Stronghold to be sure no one new to PvP plays that first, to improve the chance of them not running back to WvW, PvE, or away from the game.

+1!

Maybe throw in more game modes Anet? Deathmath, Capture the Flag, Offense-defense maps, etc. PVP game modes are abundant in other games.

Outsider.6051:

+1!

Maybe throw in more game modes Anet? Deathmath, Capture the Flag, Offense-defense maps, etc. PVP game modes are abundant in other games.

Spirit watch. Make the side nodes perma-capped – one for each team. Put a team’s orb there to be snatched by the other team and carried to their point. Get rid of the orb at the centre, and replace the mid point with a map mechanic. Now Spirit Watch actually fits into a single game mode category, might not be the worst map in the game, and you have a new game mode.