Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing around with stronghold for a while and while I like it, I do believe it needs work.

Bugs
- AI dont move on spawn randomly leading to some heartbreaking moments.
- Ossa’s taunt can root you. IE I’ve had a taunt from him followed by me not being able to move, at all.
- You can get/deal more than 25 stacks on players.

Balance
Right now the games not totally balanced for this mode, but will be more so with Elite Specializations and Revenant.
Bunker guardians (shout meta) have a huge advantage right now, since they have stability to cap heroes, grant boons and heals to the pushing minions, allowing to push fast harder and for longer, and are essentially the only way to keep the lord alive. Sure druid will change that but the way it looks, you will need a support guard more than a druid due to stability and aoe quickness+swiftness. It’s good to have a place for support classes but right now guardian is a little to strong at it.
Form Classes (Rampage wars + Signet necros) are also insanely powerful since they can cap with their stability forms and the necros can boon rip stab and rampage wars can knock anything off a point, save for a plague.
Thieves have a huge disadvantage since stealth isn’t very strong in this mode. SR is really only for saving teammates and the lord (if you’re lucky, it’s still an AI and might attack). They also, while being strong, aren’t great at taking out the guards. Although not bad at it, but a powerbow could do the same thing but faster. I’m sure they’ll find a place but right now the system just doesn’t allow for theives. They seem to be best at picking of straggling players or preventing hero caps.

Game Mechanics
These are good but need some tuning to allow for better gameplay and tact.
Archers are still quite weak. They can kill guards quickly but a player can kill the guards at a similar rate and won’t die on rush against a player. They don’t have a lot, or any, use until late game when you’re at the lord.
Guards are also weak. It only takes one player to take a set of two out, even if there is one player there to defend them, even the veteran ones. They’re not exactly scary, they’re kind of like trash mobs from dungeons and go down easily. The only thing they really do is take out door breakers (which they do well).
The lord area is good conceptually but needs work. Mostly in the elite guard section. The mage/archer do little to no damage, the guard barely provides and support and the cleric does damage. For this I’d buff the archer, mage, add a taunt or block or stun to the guard and turn the cleric into a healer that can heal the lord.
Supply is really only for door breakers. Archers aren’t worth it and are for pushing and I feel it’s not exactly the most powerful resource.
Points don’t make sense how they’re built. It seems like its 5 points per minion kill and 10 per player kill and 10 for summon? I’m totally certain but I do know that it is possible to lose by pushing all the way to the enemy lord while the enemy team hasn’t broken your second gate. So this needs some hard rework.
Ending the game is lacking. The timer is too short, and games end too soon to me. The overtime mechanic also doesn’t really work since it should only go into effect if the game’s end result could change, like if the losing team is pushing lord or both are. I’ve had games where we go into overtime but we have a 400 point lead, which doesn’t make sense, since you’re putting yourself at risk to finish the game.

Tell me what you think and try to come up with ways to fix some of the issues listed.

My suggestions:

• Killing a player should drop supplies automatically.
• If the enemy is in your base when you stomp them, then instead of supplies, a skritt or archer would spawn to attack.
• Door guards can be ressed if the door is still up.

Why? To encourage more PvP.

By allowing players to drop supplies automatically when killed. There is more reason to fight players rather than do PvE stuff. If players are in the base, Skritts spawning would be a comeback mechanic.

The reason I suggest that door guards can be ressed is:

• So that archers can still be useful.
• Reduce the dependency of PvEing. I don’t want to kill skritts all the time. Let the door guards do it instead. Why bother rushing the door guards if the enemy can simply just res them up?

This SH beta, I can really feel the PvE. It needs less PvE and more PvP.

If you say Thieves have a huge disadvantage in Stronghold, you’re playing it wrong. Don’t play the Conquest Meta here. Sustain thieves/condi thieves are very strong, and unkillable. You don’t need to stand on any point, feel free to stealth and port when thing goes wrong. You don’t need to burst the NPCs either, you only need sustain dps on the NPCs.

Try to play it more creatively. So far I tried a lot of weird builds, and I haven’t seen any class that has a huge disadvantage. This mode is surprisingly a lot more balance than Conquest.

I agree with you that a Support guard can keep the NPCs health full most of the time, and is very hard to deal with. I can only imagine how bad it would be when Druid is released.

Couple things that could make a big difference in the game:

1) What exactly is the punishment for dying? So the enemy goes on a big push and you defend well killing all five….. well too bad! doesn’t matter… because before you kill the last player they’ve respawned and are heading back… that means you’ll never have an offense because if they can keep pressure just by throwing lives at you and keeping you in your keep you’ll never push your lane….. So no matter how bad you beat them back it comes down to whats the point? Maybe rewards for killing players should be higher or wayyyyyyy better the respawn timers should increase as the game progresses… It’s pretty common and very effective.

2) doorbreakers and archers could be summoned without going back to base. It’s not a ton of fun to just run in circles all game, and if you’re in a defensive position picking up supply as you put down the enemy you’ll never have a chance to use it and swap momentum.

3) summoning your champion should just be done in the center of the map It makes more sense then letting one side have it then the other which is a pretty blatantly bad set up. Also if the commune times were shorter and the summon was interrupted on hit that’d be much better. It’ll become a rock paper scissors of we need a perma stab tank for summoning unless they have a good boon stripper which isn’t that likely anyway. Or maybe that’s where you could use the break bar! Either way the way it’s set up now isn’t conductive to non-premade groups. Sure it wouldn’t be an issue if you had designated players for designated roles, but we don’t.

4) The pregame time should be significantly reduced. I just waited 2-10 minutes for a game and now I have to wait another couple after everyone entered to formulate a strategy I’ve never seen anyone do ever. Just QOL.

5) I think part of the reason MOBAs are so popular is that you can learn on AI, annnnd if one of your players leaves AI can take over. It’s infuriating entering a game just to see someone leave and think to yourself ‘well, this is going to take 10-15 minutes and there’s essentially a 0% chance of winning’. You don’t have to sub the same character but some sort of AI player even if they just pushed lane or defended would be amazing. If players have too many bad experiences they’ll quit..

6) remove the treb….. I don’t know why it’s there to begin with to be honest. If the goal of the game is to make an enjoyable game mode… well do people really enjoy trebbing or getting trebbed in pvp. It’s hokey and really more of a distraction that’s going to annoy most people. It would be a terrible for stronghold if people have to learn how many taps to aim/how long to charge in order to win. It would absolutely be one of those things people don’t want to learn and just quit, and honestly would you blame them? Want to play our new awesome fast paced action mmoba? learn to aim this treb and shoot stuff at a pretty slow pace! You can barely see what’s going on and by the time it lands you’re halfway through firing your next round! Plus when they come in there’s no indication whatsoever! Please don’t quit!

7)There needs to be a way to find defenders vs pushers vs suppliers…. Or even just split them up at the start of the match. For instance, there’s no one heading to the defend/supply/push exit.. guess i’ll go that way. There are a lot of roles in this game so playing on a team of aoe healing tanks is insanely annoying… sure the other team can’t push because you can heal everything, but then after 15 minutes of nothing happening everyone’s pretty annoyed. A team of all pushers can do well, but that’ll become a long term problem if everyone focuses on pushing.

8) The variations in movement speed have been hurting spvp for a long time… if thief/ or d/d ele can play both offense and defense bc of theif inherent speed but no other class can that’s going to be a huge issue. If we could port back to base to switch to defense when the lords in trouble that could make a pretty big difference.

This game mode could be amazing, but it certainly needs a little help. I think the most cost effective items would be increasing spawn timers as the game progresses and removing the trebs.

This weekend I tested out focusing on defense. I played as a healing staff Elementalist. I also played as a DPS guardian in a defense team with my friend who was also heal staff ele. The staff eles main goal was to heal the npc gate guards/lord/dps teammate, while providing CC on enemy players. DPS teammate was for killing players/gatebreakers. DPS would also spend time in the middle of the map capping heroes and getting supply if home was fine.

Overall I felt like it went well, and I feel that healing specs can be very useful. However, against a team with two enemy gate attackers, who were good and actually built around taking out those gate guards, it seemed like there wasn’t much you could do for the npc gate guards. I think they have either too little health, or they could use a downstate mechanic like the toxic alliance from PVE (But once dead they stay dead for rest of game). Also, this is only the gate guards. I think the Lord’s guards don’t need this, but as OP mentioned they have other issues.

Concerning the OP’s points, I agree with everything about the game mechanics especially that the timer is too short. Sometimes it felt like the game wasn’t resolved, or was just getting really good/interesting by the time the timer ran out. Maybe a three minute increase?

Do people like the PvE in Stronghold?

Yes. And we need more of that “PvE” in Stronghold.

Trying to keep the NPC guards alive is a losing proposition. Their only purpose is to break a poorly executed DB push. A DPS player will kill them easily no matter how much you heal them.

Exedore.6320:

Trying to keep the NPC guards alive is a losing proposition. Their only purpose is to break a poorly executed DB push. A DPS player will kill them easily no matter how much you heal them.

In my playtime I feel otherwise. Especially when it comes down to the lord. The lord’s health doesn’t regen between attacks, so it’s very useful to heal him up to full again. But that is the lord. The gate guards are very weak to a team of DPS players as you said (and I said in my post), this is why I suggested more health or a downed state.

Also, focusing on healing npcs works best when you have your DPS buddy to help with enemy players you CC.

I love this map and think it’s quite fun. One bug I noticed was that when I was at my home lord gate, the opposing teams hero ran up to the lords gate and then just vanished into thin air. Great for our team, but probably sucked for the other team. XD

I thinks it’s nice to have another sPvP map type besides conquest and deathmatch and it can be fun, but there’s too much left to chance for it to be a serious contender for a tournament play or ranked map. If you’re goal is to take GW2 e-sport what’s going to be looked at is consistency in play mechanic and skill vs chance. As it stands today only four maps provide that.
Battle of Kyhlo, Forest of Nifhel, Legacy of Foefire and Temple of the Silent Storm. Those continues to be my favorite maps to play on and loose on because I know the skill of the team determined the outcome. The others including the new Stronghold have too many flaws. For example in Skyhammer a knock down or wrong step can lead to player death. Because the other maps lack that dynamic it breaks consistency and takes GW2 further away from getting respect of an e-sport. The new map has similar quirks. It’s fun in some aspects but also should not be used for rankings.

Bugs

• Not sure if this is how defiance bars are supposed to work, but they fill up orange, don’t flip to blue, and you can’t CC or have CC count.
• Doorbreakers try to attack the trebuchet for some reason. I think they have to reach the gate, be hit by the treb, but still live. Not completely sure how this happens.

Issues

• DB Health/Armor Not sure, but it looks like DB armor is higher and HP is lower again. Condi damage is destroying them quickly, but power damage takes noticeably longer.

Also want to add that I like how in Stronghold beta we have a checkbox to opt in for Stronghold play. I believe you should have multiple checkboxes for when opting to queue up for unranked pvp. Something like: Stronghold, Deathmatch, Ranked Conquest Maps, All Conquest Maps. Players who are working to try and take it to the next competitive level are only going to be interested in playing maps that are used in rank/tournament play; everything else is stealing their time.

Exedore.6320:

Bugs

• Not sure if this is how defiance bars are supposed to work, but they fill up orange, don’t flip to blue, and you can’t CC or have CC count.

Issues

• DB Health/Armor Not sure, but it looks like DB armor is higher and HP is lower again. Condi damage is destroying them quickly, but power damage takes noticeably longer.

I always thought the defiance bar was supposed to be like that? I didn’t mind cause if it was smaller it would be so easy to break them :/ All the AI’s seem to be weak to conditions yeah, which is bad. They should be soldiers I suppose.

I would expect the defiant bar to fill up gradually as orange and then immediately flip to blue when full. It’s a UI thing, not necessarily a game mechanic thing.

About the “too much pve” thingy:

How about having the players giving signficant buffs to nearby allied NPC, which are so severe that killing the player is going to be a higher priority?

I’m not sure about the lord room, but a high amount of condi and dmgs resistance for guards (maybe a dmg boost?) and for skritt and tengu the same thing?

Also Archers really could use a movement speed boost.

Cyhann.2609:

How about having the players giving signficant buffs to nearby allied NPC, which are so severe that killing the player is going to be a higher priority?

Then you’ll just have bunkers walking them down and no one can stop them. The NPCs will be through the gates well before the player dies. Bad idea.

Also Archers really could use a movement speed boost.

They already got one. And it won’t help either. Their HP sucks and their chase stuff like crazy.

Exedore.6320:

Cyhann.2609:

How about having the players giving signficant buffs to nearby allied NPC, which are so severe that killing the player is going to be a higher priority?

Then you’ll just have bunkers walking them down and no one can stop them. The NPCs will be through the gates well before the player dies. Bad idea.

I’m not sure how the state of bunkers is atm, but their dmg should still be quite low, right?
In this case archers should still deal regular dmg, regardless of the player induced buff, the even things more out. Since both NPC’s have those massive buffs, the defender ought to kill the attacker, and archers might become usefull, if tuned correctly.

I feel like they gave us an old build of Stronghold this weekend

-DB health seemed to be the old again
-DB and Archer AI felt like the one in an old build
…..-DB attacked the treb again
…..-Archers chased players down
-I couldnt choose the mist hero I wanted

I might be wrong tho.

But if this is the case I expect big changes for BWE3.

Exedore.6320:

Cyhann.2609:

How about having the players giving signficant buffs to nearby allied NPC, which are so severe that killing the player is going to be a higher priority?

Then you’ll just have bunkers walking them down and no one can stop them. The NPCs will be through the gates well before the player dies. Bad idea.

Also Archers really could use a movement speed boost.

They already got one. And it won’t help either. Their HP sucks and their chase stuff like crazy.

Also they attack players. This absolutely removes their purpose.