Guild Wars 2

In the recent SotG the devs mentioned they are monitoring the secondary objectives, since they have really made some exciting point in some recent matches- especially the Foefire map.

I’m putting up this thread so for those of you who wish to put forth some suggestions and feedback can do so, – I’ll mention a couple myself, and if there are a few good responses, I’ll edit out this post and write down the popular suggestions for each map.

Foefire map:

This seems to be one of the most exciting SOs if pursued. In SotG there was mention of perhaps increasing the number of points earned on slaying the lord at a later time or perhaps making the lord harder to kill.

Forest map:

I was watching a recent video (I believe hosted by SOAC) and there was mention that a 3rd npc spawning in the graveyard section below the keep was once considered. I would really love to see if this would be implemented, especially if the npc is scarier than svarnir/chief.

Capricorn map (at least for hotjoin):

I know, I know, everyone seems to bear an irreconcilable grudge against underwater. One of the problems with underwater I believe is the downed state- it can really take ages to finish off a player. A small suggestion (for spvp) would be that, the downed health depletes much faster (as if the player were drowning), so you have only enough time to get a few strategic attacks in before you must rise to the surface in order to negate this rapid downed health loss.

My note would have to be to turn secondary objectives into regular objectives and make capture points not the primary objectives. Then they are one step closer to a decent game.

The idea Jon mentioned where you would instantly finish off an underwater player by ripping off the mask made me smile.

The current secondary objectives on the 3 “main” maps could use some serious tweaking. While secondary objects are supposed to be that, secondary, they current ones offer very little in terms of tactical depth during the match.

When an objective does not pose a more or less constant concern the game gets boiled down very quickly to a rather simple 3 point equation. It is often pretty easy from that point to predict the opposing teams moves based upon res timers ect.

Ex. If you are in the process of wiping them in a mid fight and they are in control of their point, they will more often than not going to send something (depending on what resses) to push your home point in hopes of getting a neutralize or cap to negate your teams point gain from the mid cap. There are of coarse many factors that could sway this, but in most cases it is the correct move to send something with good escapes to attempt a neut. The only other reasonable option available is to not push anything, group up and defend the losing team home point, and make another group push mid.

That’s one example, there are many more due to the simplicity of only having to worry about 3 objectives with 5 people most of the time. Now, in the heat of the moment, while you are in the middle of a team fight, worrying about 100 other things, thinking this far ahead is not always easy and that is where mistakes are made, however as players improve you see this happen less and less. Most matches at the current top level are decided much more on who can win more fights and are not all that tactically “deep”. Compare this to League where there are whole team strategizes based around not team fighting or winning straight up fights and instead split pushing objectives or poking ect.

The secondary objects should be where they extra level of complexity is and right now they are quite weak with the exception of Temple.

Forest:
Neutral monsters are a concept that has worked for many games as an objective and there is no reason they shouldn’t work here as well. However, due to the small, very compact, size of the map. Positioning of monsters right next to capture points, and small points gain/buff they give these monsters often have little impact on the outcome of a game (there are some exceptions). Bosses are often taken in response to losing or winning a fight. Did your team just lose a fight on their point? Group up, secure your capture point, take the boss, push mid. It’s a very straightforward line of thinking.
There are several ways these bosses could be improved upon. Making them easier to kill (less HP) while keeping their benefits the same could promote a solo player killing bosses quickly while your team stalls. Making the map larger and positioning the bosses further from home nodes makes it harder for a team to protect their boss and home node at the same time (something that is very easy to do now). Adding a 3rd boss to the mix away from cap points would help to spread the map out more, but where would you put it? In the middle closer to the beach, that will often be much more favorable to the losing team as they will be spawning close to it with full HP. All in all Forest falls short much more due to the map layout than the secondary but that discussion is for another thread.

Foefire:
The lord allows for some very epic come back victory’s for sure, but it only becomes a factor when a team nears 350 points (or is in such a demanding lead that the lord kill only helps to speed up a win). Until a team nears 350 it is disadvantageous to send 1,2, or more people into the enemy’s team base (killing the door is a different story). You lose too much presence on the map to split someone off into the base early and it will lead to lost team fights and capture points, meanwhile the person in the base more often than not cannot manage to kill the lord in the meantime. It is far more effective to keep all 5 players worried about team fights and capture points to continue your strangle hold on the map and then to lord rush at 350 as it is near impossible the defend when executed correctly.

Forefire cont.

Most of the suggested improvements here have been simply to change the point value the lord brings or to add more defense around the lord to make rushes easier to defend but these changed do not fix the root of the issue with the objective, the fact that the objective has 0 impact on the game until a team hits 350. Instead what I would like to see is even more of a Gw1 style with some more NPCs scattered throughout the base, each giving a small amount of points (10-15?) and being fairly easy to kill solo. NPCs in the lord pit would also give points and the lord would be dropped down to 75? 100?. Lord rushes can still happen in close games then, but it also opens up the door to having a mobile player pressure a teams base during the game thus leading to interesting decisions. If you ignore someone killing your outter or lord pit NPCs it puts pressure on your team to either send someone to respond, split to their base, or to crush a team fight much MUCH closer to the decisions players had to make when playing against a split team in Gw1 GvG. Things such as VoD or a buff for killing the lord could also be implemented with or without this change to add more depth.

Khylo:
Khylo’s secondary is a strong one that can have a huge impact on the game but is very hit or miss… literally. The treb is very clunky which leads to many ineffective uses of it, however when it does land at a crucial moment the implications are huge. All in all I think again the map suffers much more from bad layout than the secondary but this does not mean that the treb couldn’t use some tweaking to make it more impactful while not making it mandatory to use yourself.

TL;DR
Secondary Objectives need to put importance on the map AWAY from capture points to help spread out the map and make match ups more tactical. Forest and Khylo’s problems have more to do with map and objective layout then they do the mechanics of the objective. Foefire’s objective needs to have an impact throughout the whole match and not just after a team hits 350.