Here’s a few things I noticed when playing GvG in GW1, that I hope ANet will do better this time in Stronghold.
- Team of 8 is too big, and restricts playerbase too much. Many people are busy, so it’s tricky to coordinate times to play. The more players in a team, the more difficult it gets.
I frequently witnessed many attempts to GvG in GW1 fail due to missing a couple of members. With larger team sizes, more people will be excluded from playing, and fewer teams will exist on the ladder. (This is one reason GW2 style 20v20 deathmatch “GvG” isn’t a viable competitive mode. It’s more suitable for organised events.)
I recommend a smaller team size in Stronghold – probably 5 to match with sPvP.
- In GW1, each guild can only have 1 team playing at a time. In the reverse of the above problem, this means guilds that have a large roster (to improve the chances of 8 members being available to play at any one time) often end up with members who are left out and can’t play, even if there are enough members to field another team.
Recommend that guilds be allowed to enter multiple teams at once. Perhaps they can be prevented from matchmaking each other.
A workaround using the current system is for a guild to form some sub-guilds, which all the members also join. So you can have “Bob’s Guild Team A”, “Bob’s Guild Team B”, etc. But this isn’t as good.
- Ladder must be Glicko (or some equivalent). If we allow guilds to field multiple teams at once, then the ladder MUST be purely skill based. If the ladder allowed grinding for points, then larger guilds with more teams would be able to gain points more quickly.
Recommend: Guild ladder must be glicko based, with no advantage to guilds that can play more often.
- The problem with Glicko/ELO ladders (as seen in GW1) is that top ranking teams are disincentivised from playing. Their queue times are long because they have fewer teams to match against, and if they lose against a lower ranked or smurf team, they will lose a lot of points.
Recommend: Put in another mechanism to reward/incentivise playing often. Some ideas are: Achievements, PVE Gold/Items, a seperate “Season Ladder” that rewards grind but is reset every season, auto-tournaments with rewards for winners.
- GvG matches in GW1 had no time limit. This made it impractical for esports, because it’s hard to schedule a tournament/stream/event if the matches can go on indefinitely. (Even with Victory or Death.)
However, adding a simple time limit didn’t work either, because GW1 didn’t have a good way of scoring during the game.
Recommend: have a score during the game (base it on kills? on map-objectives? control points? damage to enemy Guild Lord?) and a time out. Team with the highest score wins instantly if time runs out.
Recommend: have the score, and Guild Lords’ health, be clearly visible to spectators, so they always know “who’s winning?”
- For spectators: GW1 was good for spectators because of the flag running mechanic. Like a ball in football, it provides a central point to focus spectator’s attention, and made spectating more understandable and exciting.
Recommend: Have one mechanic (“the ball”)in the map that focuses attention, such as a flag. It should be mobile rather than fixed on the map. There should be other mechanics that encourage splits as well, for more depth, but there should always be a “centre” for spectators to easily understand.
(edited by Rieselle.5079)