Guild Wars 2

Hello guys, I have some ideas that could (in my opinion) improve the feeling of pvp.
Disclamer: I’m playing pvp in a casual way and don’t follow the high lvl (and i have the feeling that in gw2, ten peoples really follow the high lvl. Not like in gw1 where even the 100% pve player known some of the most competitive teams thank to the “Team X won the hall of heroes :p”).

My opinion about the current state of pvp: Now, the pvp (excepting Courtward) is based around the conquest mode. I doesn’t dislike this mode but I have this little feeling saying to myself “This mod is just a chaotic mess, GW1 pvp was better”.

After thinking about the why of this feeling, I have founded two main reasons.

The pvp is too much fast paced and death is not enough punishing. I explain myself, the map are small and the respawn time too. I can’t count the number of time the same guys go to our close point, is killed, then 10 second later has already re-spawn and rushed our close again, it’s again killed…loop that scenario to death. I’m maybe a noob that can do better of his time, but because of that “rushing far in loop” guy, i need to stay close (and maybe i can help my team 2 seconds before the need to comeback to the point).

Regardless of the performance of the other part of the team that are in 4v4 I think i’m not enough rewarded by killing in loop this guys. I keep a point and i have 5 free points every 15 sec and in an optimal world, my team can at least keep middle and win the game. But in the real world, my team may not keep the middle point. I have two options. Staying at close and watching my team dying or going helping them and watching that guys i already killed 10 times before that captures our close. In a magical world, we wipe the other team, my team capture the 2 points and i come back to close. And then after the re-spawn of the other guys, my team that can’t stay in a circle lose the other points and we are back to the loop.

By a good rotation you can win, but it’s chaotic and laborious. In fact, it’s not clean.

My following suggestion are inspired by GW1 and some moba.

First punish more the deaths by a longer re-spawn time (choose one in the following):
- More you die, more you must wait. Add a re-spawn debuff. Each time you die you gain a stack of re-spawn debuff. More stack you have, more you need to wait.
- I need a priest to rez me. There is a priest, an magical orb, Traherne or anything that wait in your base to rez you. It need to channeled a spell during x second and can rez only one guy at time. There is no penalty for isolated death, but if the team is wiped, they will need 5x seconds to be all rezed.
- Priest variant. Just add x sec to each rez counter each time a guys of the team dyes. Exemple: A 2 thief need to wait 4 sec to rez (from a total of 10 seconds). A guys dyes. The thief need to now wait 4+x sec and the new dead guy 10+x sec.

Transposed in my use-case. With option 1. I kill the guys for the 10th time and i can go help my team in 5vs4. The other guy wait 4 year to re-spawn during this time. With other options, after killing him, i go helping my team (and sacrifice close when he come back). If we wipe them, they will need a long time to come-back again.

With that we found back a similar feeling to gw1 where after killing the other team…you win.

That can lead to more difficult and impacting map objectives.

-Buff Svanir and Chief and Buff the point they reward
-Let the priest be accessible by the other side (like the guild lord in bastion mode). If the priest is killed, the team can no longer re-spawn.

That can lead to two types of maps (oh, it’s the same than right now :p)

-Conquest. It’s a mode based on the control of the map. You need to attain a certain number of points (or have more point than the other team at the end of the time out). In the mode, the priest is protected in a base not reachable by the enemy. Objectives on the map can help you to fill this number of points faster. The only difference with the current mode is the re-spawn timer (that can influence the difficulty and reward of the objectives as a team wiping the other has more time to do them).

…

-Annihilation. It’s a mode based on the annihilation of the other team. In this simpler form, there is a priest protected by some guards accessible by the other team and a little map. You kill the team and the priest = win. Largely inspired by the first maps of the Hall of Heroes. In courtyard, let the respawn point be reachable by the other team, add a priest and two guards and it’s done. After the wipe of the other team, the match is ended in 30 sec. You just need to deal with the case where just 2 running tank are still alive after the death of all priest and can’t kill each other :p

For hot join and custom server add an option to enable “invisible wall protecting the entrance of the base” so people can murder each other in loop if they like that.

Annihilation can be expanded to form the “Bastion” mode. Instead of killing the other team, you just need to kill a particular objective…like an old thing, a guild lord, a sacred sheep or anything. This thing can be protected by wall so the player need to seek the help of npc…it’s the Bastion mode :p

The important thing here is not to re-invent existing pvp, but to add a framework to build a comprehensible and competitive environment.

The thing is not confusing for new players. Three types of objectives…. killing the other guys, killing an important thing, like a guild lord or fill a certain number of points.

With that, you can build more and more complicated maps. From the basic map with no respawn where you just need to kill the other team to complex map where you need to kill a guild lord, protected by multiple wall, with the help of npc and with the presence of “conquest points” on the map that don’t lead to victory when the right number of point is reached by instead invokes an overpowered npc to help you (What ? That is HoTS ? Don’t know that, never eared about !).

Right now, Ranked Mode had nothing to do with competition. You jump in ranked mode, you are in a random team, with random guys and have roughly 50% of chance to win. Where is the competition here ? You have a rank somewhere in a leaderboard somewhere in the internet. Ok, best competitive mode ever. For the common guy, there is 0 differences between ranked mode and unranked.

The minimal thing is to add a rank in-game. The medium thing is to add a reason to win. Now, you win. Ok you have x rank points more than before the game and you won… incredible. Just add a little thing, after the end of the game, a vote to keep the same team for the next game. If 3-5 vote, the team stay together and the guys that said no are replaced by other random guys. And then, add a counter of winning streak and display it at the beginning of the game. From a “ok… i won 50% of my game with random guys”, you have “OMG, WE ARE ROXXOR THAT ARE ON OUR 15th VICTORY AND BEAT GUYS WITH 351 VICTORIES ! OMG !” or “OMG, ITS OUR FIRST GAME AND THEY HAVE 42 VICTORIES ! WE ARE DOOMED !”. Majority of matchmade teams sux, so if we have a good one, just let us keep it…

That lead to the final thing, the summum of pvp…the Hall of Heroes.
You are matched with team with similar winning streak.
- Low winning streaks are on fast map. Annihilation with one priest, Conquest with one point and only 150 points to fill.
– Medium winning streaks are on more lengthy maps, with priest behind walls, npcs to help, multiples teams (3 or 4 ?).
- High streaks of victory lead to the Hall Of Heroes, an awesome map, with multiples objectives and lengthy conditions of victory. Winning on this map can be only for the true winner, with impacts on the world (opening of a specific mist elite dungeon ?) and true rewards. After one win in the HoH, the winning streak is reseted (you need to have a streak of victory again) and a new indication is added at the beginning of the match (Team X with X Victory in the current run and X Victory in the HoH).

Some little idea of objectives:
- The closed door: The team need to stay on a point to fill a little counter and be able to open the door. This principle is like a channeling but you only need to be first at staying in the point. When you don’t control the point the counter can decrease over time (or not). That can be an alternative to just “destroy this thing to be able to move on”.
- The overpowered environmental weapon: Completing an objective can give you an environmental weapon that can be battle changing.

That were my thought about pvp. If you have opinions or ideas, feel free to write them !

Some of the idea’s are cool I think!

I think the rank and “purpose of playing ranked” are important things that would be nice to add. I think the new modes require some work and time, which I think Anet does not have right now. (But it might be fun for the future)

I think the respawn times aren’t that bad though. The fun thing about fast respawn times is that players can actually play instead of waiting when they are dead. For more strategic games like stronghold longer times would be okay. But I think for conquest games it would typically go like this:

- Team A kills 2 or 3 members during a group fight
- Team A captures points and zergs the remaining guys
- Team A is spawn camping team B.

The larger the respawn times are, the bigger chance you create that one of either team is going to camp at the enemies spawn. (Since the enemies are all there anyway)

But I think a Hall of Heroes mode would definitly be ultra cool. Or Random Arena’s and Team Arena’s. This way teams are purely random and you don’t have a chance to encounter a premade team or you can choose to play with a Team.

Anet, employ OP as PvP Dev please.

Morwath.9817:

Anet, employ OP as PvP Dev please.

Thank you ! I was afraid that nobody sees the post and it will sink into the deep of the forum. At least one person likes it !