Guild Wars 2

tldr; You can’t place a new mode in with the same maps if you are using existing MMR. The MMR for each Mode needs to dictate the matchmaking and thus you need to have Stronghold get it’s own queue. Option: Keep it in the “Practice” rotation.
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When the new MMR system came out, everyone’s performance was based on the Conquest strategy. Now that a new mode is coming out, would the MMR for that person truly reflect how well they will do in Stronghold? As was shown last night from my fights, you can be great at Conquest and horrible at Stronghold. However the people who grouped up were ultimately better than the soloq folks because of builds and coordination.

One could say that MMR for good players and teams will naturally go up but I also think that MMR may actually deflate due losses in soloq for Stronghold. This would in turn lead to bad matches over all for mid tier players . With build diversity being different for stronghold, stronghold using the same MMR (since it will be grouped with other maps), and the lack of templates, the matches will not pair well for those games which will lead to a negative view of the map. Having groups and soloq mixed together will also create more complaints once it’s released.

My advice, strongly, is that Stronghold have it’s own queue and it’s own MMR for balanced matches. You could counter this argument with saying that everyone will know the basics coming from conquest however that comment is countered by the continued need for tutorials even though people know how to play this game coming from PvE.

I personally like the game mode but people will not enjoy it if matchmaking is not balanced. I don’t think that new players will also be able to handle the two play styles within their first outing into PvP. I think that soloq vs teamq for Stronghold will be “ok” for the people that play that mode the most. They will naturally flow into their roles but I think putting it within Conquest and using the same match making will lead to a bad time.

You could leave it in with the practice servers since you can rework your build on the fly during the match. This is more “forgiving” rather than the 1 minute window you have to switch out builds without templates.