Guild Wars 2

GW2’s PvP population hasn’t been so great due to various reasons: balance, matchmaking, and the main game mode itself – conquest. I want to start by saying that if you’ve been on these forums for a while you’ve probably seen these suggestions by me a couple times…but it’s not like any of them have been implemented so I see no harm is bringing them up again.

Changing the Decap Mechanics

This is an idea I’ve borrowed from the Battlefield series. One of the most popular modes in those games is also conquest, but it has very different mechanics. The major difference is that a single player cannot totally deny the capture if the other team has more players on it. Whichever side has more on point will start to decap – at a reduced rate.

So as an example say red sends two players to the enemy point while one tanky blue player is defending. The blue will be able to delay the capture, but eventually red will take it. In terms of how slowly it decaps, I do think it should be MUCH slower than normal so that we don’t make tank builds totally worthless. It should allow enough time for backup to arrive while still being worthwhile to send those two red players.

This change, combined with the next couple of suggestions, would make certain builds much less frustrating. In addition, it would make it possible to bring back some of the more sustain focused stat sets since sitting on your own home point will no longer have the potential of locking down multiple enemy players for a long period of time.

Capture Points are BORING

Another major problem conquest has is just how repetitive fights can feel. With only a couple of exceptions, every capture point is just flat ground with a small circle. This will clearly encourage certain builds focused on AoE since there’s not much to be done to avoid them. It also has the nasty side effect of making team fights this big colorful mess that harms both playability and watchability. Even knowing how the game mode works it can be hard to follow what’s happening when watching a pro level game.

If capture points were larger, had actual terrain decorations, and less regular shapes (while still trying to keep them all roughly symmetrical on home points ofc) fights would be much more varied. Now, the original Skyhammer tried too hard to make the environment a factor but having slightly different elevations and maybe a destructible wall or two could make each game feel a bit more unique. It should still come down to skill, being pulled or pushed into a pit isn’t generally fun, but at the same time have an effect on the fights.

MORE FREQUENT BALANCE PATCHES

I know the devs like to let the meta settle, but one major patch every 4-6 months is far too infrequent. Having your main be weak or a single build dominating for months gets dull very quickly. Balance isn’t easy and will never be perfect, but if you’re making little tweaks every few weeks it’ll at least stay fresh and sometimes it’s exciting for something to be just a little OP so long as there’s options to counter it. Also, utilize skill splitting more often as it feels awful to have your build be gutted because it’s too strong in PvE or WvW.

More frequent balance patches will also show the community you’re invested in PvP as a whole. Having some sort of test client to try out changes before they go live like Overwatch does would also help to iron out the edges may also be beneficial if possible. In fact, I could even see the possibility of making a PvP only client and making it F2P and pushing the cosmetic side of things.

Conquest is not a bad concept, but the execution in GW2 has never been particularly interesting to me because I’ve seen it done better in other games. If you can improve your main game mode enough to draw players back that will hopefully solve the matchmaking problems some and maybe you’ll even be able to add some form of TDM 5v5+ once there’s less worry on splitting the community. I want to come back and play PvP more consistently, but as it is I just can’t feel justified in investing my time in it when there are more frequently patched and balanced games out there with a larger player base.