Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone!

I played about 8 hours of Stronghold and I’d just like to give my feedback.

First of all – I actually think Stronghold is great, and what I’m suggesting are just minor tweaks that (I hope) are not too difficult to implement. I’m really looking forward to playing this and I wish Anet the absolute best in developing Stronghold!

Game Timer
This is kind of the only major gameplay change I would like to see. Personally I think an ideal game timing for this mode would be 25-30 minutes rather than 15 minutes.

This comes from an existing problem with Conquest. If the game is too short, a high MMR queue time will extend to close to the duration of game time, which is really unhealthy for high level playing/streaming and consequently the popularity of the game. And right now in Conquest I see top streamers having as high as 13-14 minute queue times, in which case 40% of their stream time would be spent in queue.

Therefore, I suggest extending the game time by X minutes each time a gate to a Lord room is destroyed. So say X = 5 minutes, the game time can be extended by up to 10 minutes if both teams push to the lord room. (Of course it doesn’t need to be that long, this is just an example.)

Additional reasoning for my suggestion: this would also make the game more interesting because you’d have to pull off a good turtle in order to not let the enemy team get to your Lord and extend the duration you have to defend. But if you’re attacking, you have to pull off a good enough attack so you can extend the timer and give yourself more breathing room.
It’s also healthier for spectator viewing because in a game with two turtling teams, game would end on the minimum timer.

Terrain
I really like the new boxes that were introduced in the second beta!

One tiny beef I have with it though – it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put a bunch of unsightly crates right at the entrance to the lord room, since he’s, you know, the lord and all. I suggest changing it to a nice fountain, a brazier, or a Dwayna statue.

Voice Acting
The voice byte and notification on hero on being summoned seems to be confusing for new players. (10-second video demonstration) I suggest changing it to something like “A hero has been summoned for Red/Blue team”.

Hero Channeling
I personally don’t see this as a huge problem, but I hear some people saying the hero channeling node favors professions with easy access to stability or invulnerability.

I suggest turning this into a control point that takes X seconds to cap/decap and produces a hero after being fully capped without contest for Y seconds, similar to those used in PvE dynamic events like Nebo Terrace.

About the last part, the Hero Channeling.

In my opinion, this is a “good” thing, because when building a team composition for it people have to think things like: “Do we have a class that can get a lot of stability too?” “Do we have classes that can burst down the channel player?” “Do we have classes that can remove the stability stacks? (Thief/Mesmer/Necro)”.

These are kind of “strategic options” when building a teamcomp or even things you have to account for when facing another team. So it can seem kind of unfair, but in my opinion it’s not, ultimately, a bad thing for the gamemode. It’s a difficult matter.

PS: I played 6-7 hours of Stronghold too, I love it!

You do raise a good point.

Actually I’m not as concerned about the hero channeling as I am about the other stuff – it’s just that I saw some other people complaining about it so I’m suggesting a possible response, if Anet wants to respond of course.

I think if it remains as it currently is, the player base will adapt around it. And we know at least 1 more profession (necro) that will gain access to reliable stability so we will have more options in the future.

Beta’d the first stronghold and had some fun.. Tried the second beta and well its just a zerg race to kill lords now. Completed many matches within the first 5 mins and every time I engaged a person they ran off to grab supplies or run into the keep if they still had gates. This mode is more PVE if you ask me seeing as the whole point is to kill the lord and like I said not many players fought back.

Thing what is unsatisfactory to me is that when enemy shoots enemy treb projectile to me and the warning voice is too silent from thad “charr-like” voice and I couldn´t react fast enough for thad warning because it feels too “silent” to me. Id wish for louder warning when treb projectile comes to a player such as kyhlo map one seems good enough. Just my opinion

@briggah:
For future stronghold matches (if you ever plan to play another one), I suggest killing enemy players to prevent them from gaining objectives.

@devilion:
That is certainly interesting! I personally don’t remember the treb warning being that soft, but I’ll include it in my original post so maybe an Anet dev can look at it.

(Anet devs, if you are reading this: Please review voice acting for different alerts)

xoularius.7204:

@briggah:
For future stronghold matches (if you ever plan to play another one), I suggest killing enemy players to prevent them from gaining objectives.

Oh I tried to kill the players but like I said they would rather run back into the keep or just grab the supplies and run away. I hate to chase after people that won’t fight back. I’d rather them fight me LOL

The first beta was much different but seems like this one, most just wanted to rush lord asap and move on with the match. I guess that is the point of it but I just noticed not many fights were to be had. I don’t think any matches I had the 2nd beta lasted more than 10 mins.

It can really be a fun game mode if people defended more instead of the rush gate with bombs to see who is the fastest at killing the lord. May have just been my matches that were like this and I do plan to try it out when it does get released..