Guild Wars 2

Well I’ve participated in all the ranked seasons but not so much last season 5 I could only stand so much with crap players. It looks like season 6 will be the one I don’t even attempt because we are now forced to play a crap pvp map style. I’m sorry not everyone is into contrash and we want ranked stronghold back.

It sucks you just straight took stronghold out as a option and forced those players to play a game mode that just sucks with all the maps. It takes one stupid team member and it’s over you lose. In stronghold you can at least carry bad players

So it will either be pve for me while ranked season is on or ill go play Battlefield 1 lol. Ugh anet why do you have to suck so much at times?

i had completely forgotten stronghold even existed.

Conquest is great. Stronghold is the crap PvE race mode.

Ziggityzog.7389:

In stronghold you can at least carry bad players

That’s exactly what is bad about Stronghold.

Stronghold is the only PvP map I like. Two separate ranks for Stronghold and Conquest would be fine, stop Conquest players from complaining that we can share a rank with them by playing Stronghold. So you could be legend in Stronghold but the lowest of the bronze in Conquest or legend in Conquest but think you get the gates down in Stronghold by attacking them with your weapon.
Seems kind of a big cost to Stronghold fans for a small-null benefit to Conquest fans. We lose the game mode we want to play in ranked, big cost to us, they get a bit of pride that we can’t share a rating with them.

Stronghold is for casuals. Not competitive players. Accept it.

Stronghold is for anyone that enjoys it, and is pvp just as Fort Aspenwood was in GW. Some people just want to battle arena style and hate variety, which is ok as long as they don’t try to downplay a thing just because they don’t enjoy it or have an elitist attitude.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Stronghold is for anyone that enjoys it, and is pvp just as Fort Aspenwood was in GW. Some people just want to battle arena style and hate variety, which is ok as long as they don’t try to downplay a thing just because they don’t enjoy it or have an elitist attitude.

How can you say people who love battle arenas hate variety when Stronghold is legit 1 map while conquest has a bunch in rotation?

i was replying to the poster above who thinks Stronghold is PVE. I think Conquest is good, and stronghold offers a change of pace and strategy.

vesica tempestas.1563:

i was replying to the poster above who thinks Stronghold is PVE. I think Conquest is good, and stronghold offers a change of pace and strategy.

Stronghold is PvE though? Don’t get me wrong, you can PvP in the mode but it’s centric focus is killing NPCs, Using Npcs to knock down doors, Getting Supply to summon NPC’s, using communes to summon stronger NPC’s, to win the game you kill a boss NPC and you defend by healing a NPC….. That might be why people refer to it as a PvE focused game mode?

To me it’s a hybrid WvW/PvP mode, it’s fun on roamer classes but it still doesn’t change the fact that everything revolves around who NPC’d the hardest which is probably why it should be left out of ranked.

Won’t say no to separate ranks for each game mode though.

Ziggityzog.7389:

In stronghold you can at least carry bad players

Then you’ll be able to carry bad players 100% of the time now since nobody competitive will be playing it for now on. You should be thanking them.

vesica tempestas.1563:

i was replying to the poster above who thinks Stronghold is PVE. I think Conquest is good, and stronghold offers a change of pace and strategy.

If you want to win, you play stronghold as a PvE race and ignore other players. You don’t have to kill players ever in order to win.

What’s stronghold?

Exedore.6320:

vesica tempestas.1563:

i was replying to the poster above who thinks Stronghold is PVE. I think Conquest is good, and stronghold offers a change of pace and strategy.

If you want to win, you play stronghold as a PvE race and ignore other players. You don’t have to kill players ever in order to win.

Really depends what the enemy does. If they are escorting mercs it is beneicial to kill them. Though what sometimes gets me is when the defenders go for the doorbreker instead of the player killing the guards. Stop the player from kiling the guards and the doorbreakers will go like moths to a flame.

sephiroth.4217:

vesica tempestas.1563:

i was replying to the poster above who thinks Stronghold is PVE. I think Conquest is good, and stronghold offers a change of pace and strategy.

Stronghold is PvE though? Don’t get me wrong, you can PvP in the mode but it’s centric focus is killing NPCs.

GW1 GvG in a nutshell everyone.

I prefer Stronghold only because there is much more diversity in what people bring. But I also don’t hate Conquest like I used to and do play it.

Warcry.1596:

sephiroth.4217:

vesica tempestas.1563:

i was replying to the poster above who thinks Stronghold is PVE. I think Conquest is good, and stronghold offers a change of pace and strategy.

Stronghold is PvE though? Don’t get me wrong, you can PvP in the mode but it’s centric focus is killing NPCs.

GW1 GvG in a nutshell everyone.

I prefer Stronghold only because there is much more diversity in what people bring. But I also don’t hate Conquest like I used to and do play it.

GW1 GvG was nothing like stronghold. You had to kill the lord to win, true, but also had to wipe the enemy team to do so. Stronghold is a PvE race where you can ignore all the enemy players as long as you are keeping doorbreakers alive and safe from guards.

You see more diversity in stronghold because it’s a super casual gamemode for unranked and the ~r10 people who play it don’t bother bringing what’s best they just bring random stuff. There is an optimal way of playing stronghold with 2 druids, 1 tempest, 1 rev, and 1 something else preferably a nec. This brings enough healing/cleansing/stealth to get to lord under 3 minutes and win while doing enough damage to kill lord.

It’s a joke of a gamemode.

Actually you didn’t. There are no barriers preventing one team from walking straight to Lord. Sure, doing so was suicide due to the other team, but there was technically zero obligation to fight. I’ve done GvG where all we did was Lord rush as touch rangers and won that way. Zero pvp combat at all.

Stronghold has barriers needing to,be destroyed, usually met with opposition from players.

I’d be fine if they brought it back but it needs to be seperate from conquest and have its own rewards and ranking etc totally seperate from conquest.

Ziggityzog.7389:

So it will either be pve for me while ranked season is on or ill go play Battlefield 1 lol. Ugh anet why do you have to suck so much at times?

So if Stronghold (PVE) is not available you will go back to PVE. ok.

Please turn Stronghold back on, with a separate ladder. (Personally I’ve liked and played both in ranked)

It’s far more interesting in concept from a tactical/strategic point of view. That is to say, it has potential.

There was no reason to give up on it so quickly. Why don’t we have three maps by now? Why don’t we have a class of combat that is more kin to a MOBA on a competitive level than anything else in the game, if you say you’d like GW2 to be Esport-worthy? There is a reason, you know, why games like LoL make it large…

Seriously, some of the mechanically apt twitch-fingered kids playing in GW2 these days have no concept of actual strategy, and much of that has to do with the simplistic conquest format. You could fix all that by creating stronger barriers to the PvE-race known as the battle of champion’s dusk. Turrets are a huge part of MOBA’s for a very good reason, and it’s precisely the lack of real danger in attacking that killed this map. All it needs is some well placed ballistae… (oh and an anti-stealth mechanism, like a turret with true sight)

Been playing battlefield and going on wvw now n then. I don’t mind stronghold having it’s own ranked system compared to conquest. Hell in season 2 i went 102-12 (7 losses were from conquest games i joined) win loss ratio in ranked Stronghold. At least there is a strategy to Stronghold compared to sitting on dots and having points tick. In Stronghold one stupid random team member doesn’t bring your whole game down.

I could carry 2 maybe 3 bad players because it was strategy and the other team couldn’t handle it. Contrash needs a revamp bad because playing ranked in it is not worth anything when you want to gouge your eyes out from playing it with your heart and one stupid player ruins it for you.

sephiroth.4217:

To me it’s a hybrid WvW/PvP mode.

This is pretty much exactly how I see it. It’s like a mini-WvW battle, but one with an equal number of players on each side so it is actually tactics and skill that decides the winner over WvW where the winner is often decided before the first offensive skill lands and it’s just a question of whether the loser realises this in time to escape.

(Granted, you get some Stronghold games that were effectively decided as soon as the game started for various reasons, but that happens in Conquest too.)

Having Stronghold as a separate ranked ladder does seem like a good approach to me.

Exedore.6320:

Stronghold is for casuals. Not competitive players. Accept it.

GW2’s PvP is for casuals. Not competitive players. Accept it. That’s why you can’t paid players to play GW2’s PvP serious. It’s also why GW2’s atm struggles to get 5k viewers while other actually competitive PvP games get 50k plus. But then again what do I know. I’m only a ex-serious core GW2 PvPer turned casual. Who now enjoys competitive PvP elsewhere.

Now that we’ve cleared that up. Back on task. Stronghold modified can, and will be a very healthy addition to the ranked scene in GW2. The problem was that players was able to heal the door guards. Fine add or take away the line of code that prevents players from healing the the npcs.

Other then that we can sit here and argue about how class stacking some classes or random match maker comps, creates many non competitive lost at the start matches in conquest in GW2. Which in fact is worst then stronghold. And that’s before we even talk about the lack of balancing being done by ANet for PvP in comparison to Raids and Fractal on the PvE side of things. IE. Condis, Boons, more and more power creep being adding each patch. All of that is being done to make PvE content more inviting to a wider range of players. At the high expense of PvP integrity in GW2. At the moment there is not only no integrity in the GW2’s conquest PvP, but also it is soo frustrating because of the amount of RNG from the top to bottom of the game mode mechanics and match maker that the players ANet was paying to play their game have moved to other games. But we ignore the fact of that last sentence right?

And here you are hurr hurr hurr stronghold is casual compared to conquest. When in fact both stronghold and conquest are currently at the same level in terms of casual and competition. Just in different light. It’s like heads and tails on a coin. The two sides have different faces, but at the end of the day, they are one in the same, made by the same materials, and have the same worth.

Now, good day to you, troll.

@Reaper Alim.4176

Nice strawman. Actually quite a few of them.

Competitive != money tournament. And Conquest actually did fairly well. The 5k viewers were for weekly tournaments; finals pulled in far more. Conquest was on the rise until HoT’s awful balance and power creep destroyed everything – not just PvP.

You’re just a stronghold fanboy. You view it through the lens of what you want it to be, not what design flaws led it to become: a PvE race. This is PvP, not player ignores players. You even admit to one of many major flaws in stronghold.

You then proceed to blame the matchmaker for Conquest being random and luck-based. When in reality, players have a lot of control over their comps and working together. There are a few bad eggs which can’t work together and spoil games, but those aren’t enough to negate the rating. In fact, the rating system is fairly accurate.

And I actually wouldn’t mind stronghold, even in competitive, if it was fixed such that it wasn’t a PvE race. But let’s face it, that’s never going to happen. It’s another half-finished project.

From my perspective, though, you’re essentially attacking a strawman too.

Sure, Stronghold CAN be a ‘PvE race’… but only if the players allow it to be. If both sides go full offensive, then it’s really just a question of who wins first. And that’s the fastest way to resolve a match, so if people are just out to farm PvP, agreeing to make it a PvE race is a good way of achieving that, kind of like the “red resigns” farming that happened in Guild Wars 1 PvP for a while.

However, what happens if one team sends a player to interfere with the other? Just killing the other team’s initial wave of doorbreakers will put them on the back foot, likely allowing your team to win the race if they don’t do the same to you.

If the all-in team ignores attacks on their doorbreakers, then this can still be a ‘PvE race’, as the doorbreaker-killer’s objective is likely to do the deed and escape before being killed by overwhelming numbers (possibly to rejoin their team’s all-in attack). However, at some point the ‘all attack’ team is probably going to try to defend their doorbreakers by killing the player trying to kill them. At that point, you get PvP.

Beyond that, Stronghold gives a significant defender’s advantage. One or two players defending can generally stall the enemy’s attack more than they can speed up their own team’s attack by going on the offensive, if they know what they’re doing. So, generally, if one team goes all-in and the other team has a defender or two, the second team will generally win. Accordingly, most teams will split their forces between defence and offence, generating PvP on both fronts. Successful teams are those that find an efficient balance between offence and defence.

Heroes are, essentially, your means of offsetting the defence advantage. However, they tend to be hard-fought over – and that fighting is all PC versus PC.

Are there PvE elements in there? Certainly. But if you want to win, you’ll want at least some of your team fighting the other team. The PvE race you’re talking about only happens if the players allow it to, and while it can be the most efficient way to farm PvP if you’re so inclined, if you actually care about winning the match in front of you rather than maximising rewards from a PvP track or coin-tossing your way to Ruby, you’ll want to fight the other team directly.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Stronghold is for anyone that enjoys it, and is pvp just as Fort Aspenwood was in GW. Some people just want to battle arena style and hate variety, which is ok as long as they don’t try to downplay a thing just because they don’t enjoy it or have an elitist attitude.

I spent entire days playing fort aspendwood and the enjoyment I get from stronghold is far from it. 5 man conquest with 3 nodes feels right, the size is good. Stronghold lacks something, either in pacing or in size.

Anyway I feel stronghold is not quite there to come back to ranked.

That does raise an interesting question: What about Fort Aspenwood makes it more enjoyable?

I am inclined to agree myself that FA worked better than Stronghold does (although I do still enjoy Stronghold) – but would it be possible to identify the features that made FA work well and incorporate them into a Stronghold-style map? Could we make the defences weaker, but implement a method by which the defences can be renewed rather than being gone for good? Would a map style with an explicit attacker and defender, allowing for multiple attack paths, work in the GW2 setting?

draxynnic.3719:

From my perspective, though, you’re essentially attacking a strawman too.

Not in the least. When stronghold was played with even moderately organized teams, the best approach by far was just to full-on push with doorbreakers. Defenders were unable to kill the DBs in time when the attacking team was all there with them.

So the argument that defense works and it’s not a PvE race ignores the reality of the game mode. If stronghold was in ranked, players would take the most efficient route to winning, which factors in the least time/effort. PvE race is the outcome.

The idea that stronghold is incredibly diverse with many roles is only true when it’s played by people who have no inclination to actually win, i.e. casual players.

draxynnic.3719:

That does raise an interesting question: What about Fort Aspenwood makes it more enjoyable?

I am inclined to agree myself that FA worked better than Stronghold does (although I do still enjoy Stronghold) – but would it be possible to identify the features that made FA work well and incorporate them into a Stronghold-style map? Could we make the defences weaker, but implement a method by which the defences can be renewed rather than being gone for good? Would a map style with an explicit attacker and defender, allowing for multiple attack paths, work in the GW2 setting?

IMO FA works better for several reasons :

- The map is bigger and there are more players. It means you could have very distinct roles on both sides and commit to them fully because you new you could rely on ~10 other people to fit the other roles. In stronghold, I often hesitate on my role since a +1 on attack, defense or summon can shift the game entirely.

- The emphasis was put on the turtles and the juggernauts. Fights were focussed mainly around those and created phases in the fight. The turtles and juggernaut were precious, you had to pay attention to them as you couldn’t really have more than 2-3 turtle waves. In stronghold the door breakers have little values, it’s easy to summon them again.

- There are not really tactical positions to hold. Remember the space between two doors ? It was really easy the pressure the attackers there but if they held, they new that past the second door, they gained an advantage. That was a rewarding moment for both side in case of victory. Once again defending against door breakers doesn’t mean much in term of satisfaction, they respawn really easily.

I think it would work on a 10 man team, 5 in defence and 5 in offence. Is the map big enough ? same for the player base ? I don’t know….

We want FA and JQ 2.0 This hold points and wait for a teef to take it as soon as you leave has got to stop. Contrash is not competitive it’s a joke. Maybe its time to try another pvp idea since you tossed away a good one with stronghold.

Exedore.6320:

draxynnic.3719:

From my perspective, though, you’re essentially attacking a strawman too.

Not in the least. When stronghold was played with even moderately organized teams, the best approach by far was just to full-on push with doorbreakers. Defenders were unable to kill the DBs in time when the attacking team was all there with them.

So the argument that defense works and it’s not a PvE race ignores the reality of the game mode. If stronghold was in ranked, players would take the most efficient route to winning, which factors in the least time/effort. PvE race is the outcome.

The idea that stronghold is incredibly diverse with many roles is only true when it’s played by people who have no inclination to actually win, i.e. casual players.

In my experience…

That was the case early on. When people got better at learning how to use the map, however, it turned around a bit. If you try to stay and fight against the whole enemy team, of course you’re going to die. But doorbreakers are pretty fragile, and with certain builds, killing one, two, or even the whole pack is possible.

There’s also the element that the doorbreakers pretty much take the same time however many friendly PCs are around. So until you’ve got the inner door down, and especially when you haven’t even got the outer door down, all you really need if you’re unopposed is enough PCs to keep the guards off the doorbreakers and kill them, which generally doesn’t mean the entire team. So you can spare a couple of players to go after the doorbreakers.

I think one of the other contributing factors was that the early days also coincided with a time when certain healing builds that have been toned down since were just too good, so if you had one or two of those (and premade teams usually would) it made it a LOT harder to kill off the doorbreakers.

Are there flaws that could be improved? Certainly. But “PvE race” is not an accurate representation.

+1 support for returning stronghold to ranked, just removing party queue for it

Reaper Alim.4176:

GW2’s PvP is for casuals. Not competitive players. Accept it.

I read the same thing on every video game forum I read, seriously… and even thoses with moneyprice…
but you know what? some moba are clearly MORE casu-friendly than gw2, by far. Some mmo too (like Wow).

Bring stonghold back but make it solo que only for ranked. That makes it interesting. Don’t just dump it season 7. I want to play pvp ranked but I’m not about to waste hours on crapquest. I’ll do something else in game or play another game rather then play ranked crapquest.

My issue with Stronghold is that we already have a PvP mode with PvE elements – WvW. sPvP as I understand it should be player competition with as little extra gimmicks as possible (which, sadly, most current sPvP maps don’t achieve).

leduk.2643:

Reaper Alim.4176:

GW2’s PvP is for casuals. Not competitive players. Accept it.

I read the same thing on every video game forum I read, seriously… and even thoses with moneyprice…
but you know what? some moba are clearly MORE casu-friendly than gw2, by far. Some mmo too (like Wow).

I will eat my boots before believing WoW PvP is casual friendly. I’ve played that game. GW2 PvP has a learning curve yeah, but you can start doing that at level 2(when you leave the starting instance). And you can get decent at it by the time you hit the level cap. In WoW that is your starting point…

Yannir.4132:

leduk.2643:

Reaper Alim.4176:

GW2’s PvP is for casuals. Not competitive players. Accept it.

I read the same thing on every video game forum I read, seriously… and even thoses with moneyprice…
but you know what? some moba are clearly MORE casu-friendly than gw2, by far. Some mmo too (like Wow).

I will eat my boots before believing WoW PvP is casual friendly. I’ve played that game. GW2 PvP has a learning curve yeah, but you can start doing that at level 2(when you leave the starting instance). And you can get decent at it by the time you hit the level cap. In WoW that is your starting point…

lol yep, wow is the least friendly mmo out there, a game that gives veterans at a 10% power advantages over players who don’t do end game raiding – because feeding players with continual power buffs so they don’t leave is more important than balance.

draxynnic.3719:

That does raise an interesting question: What about Fort Aspenwood makes it more enjoyable?

I am inclined to agree myself that FA worked better than Stronghold does (although I do still enjoy Stronghold) – but would it be possible to identify the features that made FA work well and incorporate them into a Stronghold-style map? Could we make the defences weaker, but implement a method by which the defences can be renewed rather than being gone for good? Would a map style with an explicit attacker and defender, allowing for multiple attack paths, work in the GW2 setting?

what made fort aspenwood better imo is that there was space to have an 8v8, and its the 8v8 that makes it different/interesting.

Yes Stronghold has pve elements but then you could say the same thing with alot of conquest maps. A giant laser cannon? Npcs for a point advantage and so forth.

Stronghold at least makes it balanced because you have to use pvp tactics otherwise you go back to restart. There is the strategy of push or hold. Defend or attack. In Contrash all you have is everyone saying “GO TO THE MIDDL”E. If maps had tred marks from all the use then the mid point on all contrash maps would be worn out.

What made FA more interesting and successful tended to be the class specialization, unlimited targets on AoE spells, larger number of players, random matchup element
…and, not least of all, Kurzick/Luxon faction points.

It was the rewards driving the popularity, I believe, while the game was fun because of the asymmetrical map and the glut of casual players bringing unexpected twists with their builds. But, all this is a bad comparison since we’re talking about Ranked GW2, which is an entirely different concept from the heart of FA.

A better comparison is the MOBA market, where other games have things like two-way streets that force PvP, and turrets that punish greedy, careless, defenseless tactics.

What I really think is the problem is the unwillingness of devs to put resources into rethinking the single stronghold map and branching it out into a few unique attempts. On the whole it would have been good, but all together the champions, trebs, gates, supply, etc., crowded each other. A series of “great expectations” …that all flopped.

Stronghold needs clarity of strategy to make room for a variety of tactics.

Agreed it needs some branch out changes and it could be great. It already beats contrash hands down with strategy and just overall fun. The potential is there but anet instead decides to kill stronghold and focus on the least fun way of pvp there is. Sit on a point then move and sit on another point… yay

Unless you have a speed teef on your team its over in contrash and that’s not fun. That’s boring zZzZz ZzZzZ

I wish stronghold was available for rank for season 5 and 6 since now it goes off of w/l my season 2 102-12 mostly stronghold game wins would have been fun to see up lol. Now im forced to not play PvP at all.

Shwyx.8190:

My issue with Stronghold is that we already have a PvP mode with PvE elements – WvW. sPvP as I understand it should be player competition with as little extra gimmicks as possible (which, sadly, most current sPvP maps don’t achieve).

To me, this is actually a good thing. While I enjoy Conquest as well, I enjoy PvP that feels like you actually have an objective to attack and defend that makes it feel vaguely like an actual battle, rather than an arena based on capping points.

Conversely, the problem with WvW is that it doesn’t even try to be an even playing field. In the larger fights, the server with the greater numbers wins. In roaming and such where you’re more likely to come across 1v1s and small group fights, gear and food can make the difference.

Stronghold fits in between. It has clear objectives to attack and defend and NPCs to support it – however, it uses PvP gear rules and equal team sizes so that the playing field is even.

Strong hold would be fine.. if they updated the map.

You don’t just bring out a map like that without updates. It needs monthly revisions but Anet doesn’t have the resources to keep up with it… so they left it as is.

There’s a plethora of revisions they could have, should have, made to it. They simply haven’t touched it since its launch.

Anet just needs to add more maps to Stronghold, or make new game-modes in general. Problem solved. Also, different rank scales for different game-modes would be amazing.

Twyn.7320:

Anet just needs to add more maps to Stronghold, or make new game-modes in general. Problem solved. Also, different rank scales for different game-modes would be amazing.

Bingo why dump it? Make a map with a cannon instead of a treb or what not. Or a new map system 5v5 not SH or Conq. I enjoyed having the freedom to choose and found my favorite like others did. Tho to just plain rip it out and toss players who enjoyed it to the side just sucks. If season 7 is no stronghold i may just have to quit till the next expansion to make it interesting. I’m not one to enjoy the pain of yelling at simple minded pugs to do something productive. I’ll do something else to kill time.