Guild Wars 2

STRONGHOLD. And new guild Leaderboards.

It’s pretty much GvG from GW1 but as the WvW guys have taken that name, it’s now called Stronghold.

New PvP mode is PvE! Yippee! Where are the arenas! Where is the real PvP!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

LOL op you beat me to it GVG (stonghold) with guild in game ladder , omggggg

so happy

What is it exactly?

He said some stuff about destroying loot and then killing their base??

Builds??

Guild leaderboards sound like they’d be who’s the fattest most grindy guild if they use the same philosophy as the current leaderboards.

TBH though.. sounds like MOBA/WVW…

Wasn’t the game mode i was expecting…maybe the specialization system will be fun i guess.

We had a lot of images about this game mode in the past so it’s not really a surprise.

The new Guild Leadearboard is also really interesting + new profs specializations (engi hammer, Necro GS, Ranger staff etc.) and the new class (ravenant).

I think they are enough changes to shake a lot of pvp scene.

My first question regard Strongholds: For how many players are those designed?

Teutos.8620:

My first question regard Strongholds: For how many players are those designed?

This is a really good question.

EDIT: this was an old image about the explanation of the new map

http://imgur.com/WDiywjl

Dunno if they change something but i think the general goal is the same.

I would’ve preferred no new game mode to what Stronghold seems to be. NPCs and babysitting them, no thanks. Keep the casual PvP in WvW.

I think we need more details before judging.

It could be really interesting (very similar a moba style) or boring/too much pve oriented.

Dunno, i think we need to wait.

But for sure, conquest is a not a succesful game mode.

i agree there is not yet enough information for us to judge how the new game mode will be.

Probably not enough information but from what they said it seemed like there’s gonna be quite a lot of NPC’s involved. I must say I’m pretty disappointed about this, I was hoping for 2v2 or 3v3 arenas.

Laraley.7695:

Probably not enough information but from what they said it seemed like there’s gonna be quite a lot of NPC’s involved. I must say I’m pretty disappointed about this, I was hoping for 2v2 or 3v3 arenas.

They are thinking more group play it’s an mmo after all 1v1/duel is definitely out of the way.

Sagat.3285:

Laraley.7695:

Probably not enough information but from what they said it seemed like there’s gonna be quite a lot of NPC’s involved. I must say I’m pretty disappointed about this, I was hoping for 2v2 or 3v3 arenas.

They are thinking more group play it’s an mmo after all 1v1/duel is definitely out of the way.

I understand that, not even asking for 1v1 arenas. But honestly I think lots people have been asking for smaller scale arenas, rather than bigger ones. I think for example courtyard would be quite fun to play if it wasn’t 5v5. Oh well, we’ll have to wait for details. I just really hope they won’t ruin it with too much pve content.

LOL ppl get mad at courtyard/skyhammer/spirit watch and now the new mode? Dude come on wtf do u want? 2v2 3v3? LMAO its called hotjoin make a game and have fun with 3 of your ppl.

Who was talking about conquest 2v2 or 3v3? No one. WoW for example have both and people do play it. I don’t get your point. Smaler scale pvp doesn’t mean less people in a conquest map playing.

Too little info to say anything l but downed state and aoe cap limit ruins pvp of greater then 10 people or so imo.

Solstice.1097:

i agree there is not yet enough information for us to judge how the new game mode will be.

You can infer quite a lot based on the info given and the data-mined maps from a few months ago.

NPCs
First, NPCs will be an important part of the map. NPCs in PvP tend to drag down the competitive aspect. If the NPCs can put out equivalent damage to players, then it’s not fun; NPCs will come along and +1 a fight and win it. If you want to make NPCs deal reasonable damage, they also have to have lower HP pools like players. But because of AI, they’re susceptible to kiting and exploitation of their pathing. So they’re useless without players around to babysit them. And what about CC? In PvE we either have NPCs that can be CC’ed for days or unshakeable ones which can’t be CC’ed at all. Neither fits well in PvP.

The only NPC archetype which minimizes those issues is the low-damage “HP punching bag” like the tower and keep lords in WvW. It has enough HP/armor to weather repeated CC, can’t be burst down quickly, but doesn’t interfere heavily a fight between players. It does enough damage over time to make it difficult to 1v1, but at the same time, it feels useless in a larger fight.

Map Design
Second, based on the data-mined map, each team has a lane for its NPCs to go to the enemy base, and each team has a trebuchet that can hit their enemy’s NPC lane. The goal of that design is to split up players so that it’s not blob vs. blob. Players need to defend/attack trebuchets, defend their NPCs, hinder enemy NPCs, and run supply to get more NPCs. Sounds great, right?

Well, it works for casual players. When you try to make this format competitive, you’ll run into a few problems:

1. The lord rush. What’s to stop each team from just ignoring all those mechanics and zerging to the lord and whoever kills it faster wins? The gates need to last long enough to delay that and allow for defenders to respawn or come back and defend. Which causes:
2. PvDoor. This gets boring quickly, and it makes the NPCs feel more integral to the game compared to the actual player vs. player combat. And if NPCs are integral, you need:
3. Supply Mules. Someone gets stuck doing the boring job or running supply to keep the NPC army flowing. If there are no restrictions on it, then you’ll have high-mobility builds like sword + greatsword warriors running it non-stop. If they put heavy restrictions on supply runners to prevent that, then you end up with the orb from spirit watch minus any abilities, which makes you a sitting duck and makes the task even more boring. Both alternatives suck.

Darnis.4056:

Guild leaderboards sound like they’d be who’s the fattest most grindy guild if they use the same philosophy as the current leaderboards.

TBH though.. sounds like MOBA/WVW…

Or by the time it gets release the leaderboard would be a at better shape?

Exedore.6320:

Solstice.1097:

i agree there is not yet enough information for us to judge how the new game mode will be.

You can infer quite a lot based on the info given and the data-mined maps from a few months ago.

[b]NPCs[/b]
First, NPCs will be an important part of the map. NPCs in PvP tend to drag down the competitive aspect. If the NPCs can put out equivalent damage to players, then it’s not fun; NPCs will come along and +1 a fight and win it. If you want to make NPCs deal reasonable damage, they also have to have lower HP pools like players. But because of AI, they’re susceptible to kiting and exploitation of their pathing. So they’re useless without players around to babysit them. And what about CC? In PvE we either have NPCs that can be CC’ed for days or unshakeable ones which can’t be CC’ed at all. Neither fits well in PvP.

The only NPC archetype which minimizes those issues is the low-damage “HP punching bag” like the tower and keep lords in WvW. It has enough HP/armor to weather repeated CC, can’t be burst down quickly, but doesn’t interfere heavily a fight between players. It does enough damage over time to make it difficult to 1v1, but at the same time, it feels useless in a larger fight.

Map Design
Second, based on the data-mined map, each team has a lane for its NPCs to go to the enemy base, and each team has a trebuchet that can hit their enemy’s NPC lane. The goal of that design is to split up players so that it’s not blob vs. blob. Players need to defend/attack trebuchets, defend their NPCs, hinder enemy NPCs, and run supply to get more NPCs. Sounds great, right?

Well, it works for casual players. When you try to make this format competitive, you’ll run into a few problems:

1. The lord rush. What’s to stop each team from just ignoring all those mechanics and zerging to the lord and whoever kills it faster wins? The gates need to last long enough to delay that and allow for defenders to respawn or come back and defend. Which causes:
2. PvDoor. This gets boring quickly, and it makes the NPCs feel more integral to the game compared to the actual player vs. player combat. And if NPCs are integral, you need:
3. Supply Mules. Someone gets stuck doing the boring job or running supply to keep the NPC army flowing. If there are no restrictions on it, then you’ll have high-mobility builds like sword + greatsword warriors running it non-stop. If they put heavy restrictions on supply runners to prevent that, then you end up with the orb from spirit watch minus any abilities, which makes you a sitting duck and makes the task even more boring. Both alternatives suck.

Unless you can see into the future, your comments are not really useful. Instead of speculating yourself into torture how about you take a wait and see approach.

Zoso.8279:

LOL ppl get mad at courtyard/skyhammer/spirit watch and now the new mode? Dude come on wtf do u want? 2v2 3v3? LMAO its called hotjoin make a game and have fun with 3 of your ppl.

People didn’t like those maps because they’re bad.

Skyhammer has very interesting and fun mechanics. Lots of people loved it when it first came out. However, those map mechanics are too prevalent and overshadow PvP combat. It could be a great competitive map if its issues were addressed properly.

Spirit Watch has poor map flow in regards to the capture nodes coupled with a bad secondary mechanic. The raven node is a pain to defend, but if you have map control, it’s very hard to break it. The stairs also screw up a lot of movement abilities. However, the orb is what makes this the worst conquest map. You can’t teleport with it, but you can use leaps, super-speed, etc. It can be dominated by a handful or builds, most notably warriors.

Courtyard is hated because it’s in the conquest queue and 5v5 is too much for team deathmatch. 5v5 leads to AoE and CC spam within small corridors or instant damage on a called target from 5 people in order to down a single person and then snowball. At the same time, it’s not good for 2v2 and 3v3 because it’s size size makes delay tactics too easy to execute.

if the strong hold aka guild hall / map , in gw1 the guild halls also counted as a map to fight on and could hold up to 150people last i remember but it also had a UI for 8vs8s and worked on a lord vs lord basis rather than base vs base though it can be the same idea since some maps already have that base/base , cap point set up.

so remove the cap points and it is a base vs base situation but in a 8vs8 battle where you can still do 4v4 and have the other 4 attack or defend or use Siege? to defend against ninjas, trying to get the one up on the lord .

i really do hope these new maps for this stronghold mode have tighter choke points on the map where its not too easy to sneak through and steal the match.

what if the NPCs only attack the gate, and its the only way to destroy the gate?

then the only reason you have to kill the NPCs is to keep from having your gate destroyed because you failed to stop the other team from hiring them because they beat you in a team fight.

there are so many possible ways it could be implemented it makes no sense to start forming opinions just yet.

I would love to see less MOBA and more RTS in the Stronghold mode.

Just using Age of Empires II as a pattern, we could have tons and tons of strategies, some mix between AoE, Dungeon Keeper with whole Guild Wars 2.

Returning to the AoE II scheme – “Do we rush or do we build up?” “Do we upgrade or do we hire more NPCs?” “What unit composition may counter the other group’s forces the best?”

I am all for combination of RTS and Guild Wars 2 in the Stronghold mode, but I don’t want to see any more MOBA specifics apart from truly basic we see now, like 3 lanes

Guild Wars 2’s combat is too good to have a game mode that emphasizes mostly macro strategy instead of combat. The macro strategy needs to rely on the ability to win fights.

It sounds like a MOBA. I welcome this…. Hopefully Anet will make it raw knowledge and skill based, and not “who has the more PVE skillz”. Although, LoL and Smite do have PvE, and with Gw2’s combat system, it could be the next step in MOBA, ofc we still do not know much yet on the details.

Lopez.7369:

It really hinges on how much of a role NPCs play. If they just do one-off tasks, that’s fine. If they’re actively involved in combat, it’s a shame the PvP team wasted so many resources just to release a horrible mode no one will play.

It might attract a lot of other people (who don’t play conquest) though.

Anyway, I’m excited to see how it pans out.
One of Conquest’s problems is its focus on something as a boring as points (not the ones you hold, but the ones you get from 0-500). It’s just not fun as a viewer to watch a score tick to 500 and it’s prone to snowballing.
In Stronghold it’ll atleast be a GuildLord you’d have to kill (instead of aiming for the 500 mark). This alone should have interesting consequences for the gameplay and build choices. But I’m slightly worried about the ‘hiring soldiers’, (did I hear supply in that presentation too?) and treb gameplay.

Lopez.7369:

It really hinges on how much of a role NPCs play. If they just do one-off tasks, that’s fine. If they’re actively involved in combat, it’s a shame the PvP team wasted so many resources just to release a horrible mode no one will play.

You mean something you won’t play.

A lot of people who play GW2 also happen to play Dota2, Smite and LoL. I don’t play mobas, but I welcome the style into GW2. It brings something besides conquest into the game. If it catches the attention of the people who do play Mobas and gives people options of game mades I don’t think the pvp team wasted any resources.

^ How about a Necro’s epidemic eh? Mesmer’s focus pull, followed by Ranger’s Entangle elite then a nice epidemic to top it off :P ….or wells… and a meteor shower. Ok… enough.

I can’t wait for this game mode… especially if it involves guild battles. I’d be interested to see how many players will be involved here because even if it’s 10v10, I doubt it will be zergy because there could be multiple objectives that smaller groups (two groups on the same team with 5 people each) have to hold and coordinate. I dunno, I think it will be more like deathmatchy than standard sPvP where you are holding points, which reminds me a bit of GvGs in WvW, which it seems like it will be very exciting. Mix in the Revenant and different profession specializations…. kaboom

Lopez.7369:

It’s 5v5.

PvP modes will never be bigger because of e-sports.

doubt it , the custom areas have options for 8vs8’s its only a matter of time before those that do 5vs5’s with guilds or as a guild want somthing that a little more difficult than rotating between two points and ts#ing need help mid.

this stronghold map with buildings and npc soilders would be used to enforce defenders to make sure the numbers are even not at all times but hired when needed if you expect a sneak attack and you are all alone then need that npc soilder to help defend.

the treb combat i saw on the video suggests the buildings can be Destoryed removing cover from other ranged attacks and reduces the options the opposing team has for attack opportunities with less cover or places to fight enforcing choke points where 3 people with siege support could hold off 5 players or 8 if the postion is good.

though the esports in gw1 was 8vs8 with a ghostly hero in tow so i expect somthing atleast half way for gw2 esports.

compaired to the spam i see on the screen for dota and league gw2 could easly include more real time stratage into the combat when it comes to 8vs8 theres enough people fighting to allow this kind of mode.

who knows you might enjoy it.

Teutos.8620:

My first question regard Strongholds: For how many players are those designed?

Hopefully at least 8 but up to 15 people or even 20 people.

If its 5v5 that’s sad, they did it wrong.

If you look at sizes of guilds, theres a bunch of 490+ guilds out there and guilds 100-300. With ACTIVE players.

So stupid to have a 5v5 when you got a massive player pool.

If its 5v5 its dumb, anet looked at it wrong.
They looked at the PvP population and considered information from that to decide how to do GvG.

They should’ve looked at the actual guild population, the PvE and WvW population and based there information off of that.

Because lemme tell ya, the PvP population is nothing but a bunch of solo que whiners.
Theres no guilds from the PvP population, just a few players together, like 6-12 people that just play under a team name, they aint no real guild, they don’t do guild kitten. Only possible actual guild from PvP on NA is GASM.

You see those big guilds, promote that they PvX, none of them do PvP because theres no guild kitten for them within PvP.

You keep trying to make kitten based off the PvP population you dumb.

This better be at minimal 8 people per team but I’m hoping its a 10v10 up to 20v20.
I hope you issue challenges to other guilds, and if one guild doesn’t have 20 players, than do vs whatever they got, like if they got 12 players and your guild has 50 players, set the game to 12v12 (best 12 of the 50).

Solstice.1097:

what if the NPCs only attack the gate, and its the only way to destroy the gate?

Then the NPCs become too important to gameplay and makes it feel less like PvP. In addition, that turns it into a payload archetype (carry or escort resources across the map). Professions with good mobility would dominate.

In response to the “wait and see” comments: there are many different game types used in multiplayer games and most have been applied to MMORPGs, which have unique characteristics. Flaws in the core mechanics of each game when applied to the MMORPGs genre are present in any MMORPG which implements it. Each game tries to mask those flaws, but you can never get rid of them.

Lopez.7369:

It’s 5v5.

PvP modes will never be bigger because of e-sports.

There’s no confirmation on it. The only thing we got was that it won’t be something huge like 15v15 and would be closer to 5v5. link

One key to having good competitive PvP in an MMORPG is to keep the number of players in an individual battle down to about 2-3 on each side. That’s why you have nodes on conquest and supply, trebuchets, and two lanes in Stronghold. If you have more people than that in a single battle, it begins to limit viable build options and leads to stalemates. So as long as you have enough objectives to divide players, larger than 5v5 is viable.

Stronghold isn’t necessarily a bad format; it’s very similar to MOBAs, which are very popular. The main reason for the discord is that it’s not a good competitive format compared to conquest, yet it’s being presented as a format for competition. While stronghold may be great for getting more casual players into PvP, it doesn’t address current PvP issues.

Environmental factors like npc’s and terrain add depth to the game. There is a reason mobas are so popular. There is opportunity for various types of players to excel. I think stronghold is a brilliant move as it may make pvp more accessible to different specs and players. Balance will be way easier for devs. Inclusion will make gw2’s pvp bigger, which is a good thing.

just don’t do it with pve buffs, gear levels and so on and it’s gonna be fine, keep it in pvp environment…otherwise it’s just another noskill wvsw bs with reterded guys shouting blast blast blast on ts while zerging like headless chickens, and noone is gonna give a single kitten to it

It’s obviously gonna be the equivalent of guild wars 1’s GvG (something like 8v8 or maybe 10v10, might fit gw2 better) and not gonna be like WvW, it’s gonna have pvp gear. I just hope they make the maps and the whole concept as good as it was in GW1, and if it is, it might just be the best news in GW2 so far and what’s gonna bring me back to playing actively

People on this forum are already complaining that forming 5-man parties is too problematic and yet some posters here wants to play 10v10 or even higher. Ok, that’s not gonna backfire at all.

rotten.9753:

People on this forum are already complaining that forming 5-man parties is too problematic and yet some posters here wants to play 10v10 or even higher.

Because there are many casual players on this forum who refuse to learn the game and it’s easier to get carried in a group of 10 than in a group of 5.

witcher.3197:

rotten.9753:

People on this forum are already complaining that forming 5-man parties is too problematic and yet some posters here wants to play 10v10 or even higher.

Because there are many casual players on this forum who refuse to learn the game and it’s easier to get carried in a group of 10 than in a group of 5.

^

From the Massively HoT Article

Stronghold, a new PvP game mode, was a particular focus during our conversation. According to Johanson, Stronghold was developed as a way to offer a more dynamic PvP experience that’s as fun to watch as it is to play — even for non-PvP players. “You might be somebody who’s not as good at killing enemy players,” he says, “but the thing that you love is gathering supplies, hiring troops, and trying to get them to the stronghold.” Stronghold will give players more roles to play in PvP and ensure those roles are fluid throughout the progression of a match. Match times and team sizes aren’t nailed down, but it sounds as though they’ll be quicker rather than longer and will fall somewhere within the current PvP skirmish size.

Exedore.6320:

From the Massively HoT Article

Stronghold, a new PvP game mode, was a particular focus during our conversation. According to Johanson, Stronghold was developed as a way to offer a more dynamic PvP experience that’s as fun to watch as it is to play — even for non-PvP players. “You might be somebody who’s not as good at killing enemy players,” he says, “but the thing that you love is gathering supplies, hiring troops, and trying to get them to the stronghold.” Stronghold will give players more roles to play in PvP and ensure those roles are fluid throughout the progression of a match. Match times and team sizes aren’t nailed down, but it sounds as though they’ll be quicker rather than longer and will fall somewhere within the current PvP skirmish size.

Thanks for posting that. It sounds like Anet’s take on a moba style gameplay… mixing mini wvw with conquest objectives. I have to admit it sounds sexy on paper.