Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

- Rampage / Rampage as One / Plague Form – extremely hard to deal with when they’re channeling heroes. So far only managed to reliably deny them free channel on Necro with Well of Corruption.

You know, this likely won’t be an issue once the Stability changes go in. It really is a bit pointless to be testing balance when major gameplay changes haven’t made it in yet.

Stability changes have been in the game for quite a while now.

Seriously? Then what’s the problem? Just break their stability and move them.

Ohoni.6057:

Seriously? Then what’s the problem? Just break their stability and move them.

See, many clueless people posting their “accurate solution” without actually playing the game. That’s why many QQ threads are really hard to take it seriously.

Plague Form and similar other Elites pulses 3 stacks of stability per 3 seconds in 20 seconds. You have to remove the stability in 3 seconds, meaning 4 interrupts in 3 seconds or 1 remove and 1 interrupt to do so. (1 remove and 1 interrupt is a luck base because you can be unlucky enough to remove it at the last second of interval, wasting your boon removal at the process)

The changes I would recommend would be:

1)CHANGE CHANNELING. Mabey so that dmg will break it, or after taking like 50% ur max life, the channel would break. or just change it so you cannot cast skills AT ALL while channeling and no shape shifted entities can channel.

2) ADD SCALING FACTOR TO LORD . Such as a 10% reduced dmg for each allied defender so that teams cant 5 man the lord and ignore your team for the win.
2a) perhaps even add a time scaling to heroes to make them stronger the longer teh game goes and increase the time fore each match.

3) GENERAL BUFF TO NPCS. buff guards and archers to make them impactful. perhaps even add a way to re spawn guards with supply.

4) MAKE SKRITT SUICIDE. This way teams have to get more supply and cant do the 1 push win. Currently if your team doesn’t out rush, you have to defend. IF you lose one fight while defend you are now FORCED to fight again because the team will just win by killing lord. This would prevent 1 giant push wins. Also you could potentially add a 3rd gate under the bridge so that teams could chose to just give up a gate if they had a bad fight and try and gain ground elsewhere.

5) REPLACE THE TREB. that goes entirely unused and replace with either oil barrels or cannons. The treb is a bit unreliable when fights are so mobile. The faster cannon would be more useful dealing with mobile fights.

6) INCREASE PLAYER CAP The map is large enough to support more characters, and would just be fun and help slower clases feel more useful.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

3. No reason to PvP. After you know the map you just ignore the enemies all together and rush lord.

Exactly:

Expanding what you put in an example:

• Spam doorbreakers.

• Thief go kill defenders and if its atacked just stealth, hit defender, etc.

• One extra go to atack defenders but go first to catapult finishing the last line of defense of the enemy team (if theres someoen there, other case proceed).

• Mes, guard and one more go for the suplies necesaries for some extra skrits, mes put portal plus use time warp to make the suply gating faster, guard use stability and aegis. If its necesary you wipe or make retreat the other team, other case if they cant presure and have a comp with less dps or arent organized, you just go portal and summon.

• Then all rush lord, if theres a healer player they down him (dependign of the other team comp only down). Before they are wiped they would have finished Lord and stomped him.

Why mid for more suplies: How its now its the win of the first team to hit the Lord.
It suceed in reality (have done it today several times).

Can have some variations, the point its the team that can go all in first wins and trivializate the entire map.

Suggestion: Make the Lord have more HP so that either you need to clear all and have less players atacking you (preview killing them) or spawn a hero or two.

That will adress the speed rush, after that however it will not fix the fact that the first door its futile as it is (no defense point, can argue the second one), so either buff the defenders also or make the first ones vets.

Posible problems: Needing to make the match longer, but will require further test, and scale the rewards.

Personal issue with the map: It favor so much the strategy and coordination that player skills arent very important, at difference of conquest.

Still i would play it since its a fresh air, but posibly more conquest than stronghold.

Aomine.5012:

Ohoni.6057:

Seriously? Then what’s the problem? Just break their stability and move them.

See, many clueless people posting their “accurate solution” without actually playing the game. That’s why many QQ threads are really hard to take it seriously.

Plague Form and similar other Elites pulses 3 stacks of stability per 3 seconds in 20 seconds. You have to remove the stability in 3 seconds, meaning 4 interrupts in 3 seconds or 1 remove and 1 interrupt to do so. (1 remove and 1 interrupt is a luck base because you can be unlucky enough to remove it at the last second of interval, wasting your boon removal at the process)

Main problem is even after interrupting them, they can just start the channel again with brand new stability, as long as elite is active. That’s why I see Well of Corruption as the only counter right now – you can turn their stab into fear 2-3 times, possibly buying yourself enough time for elite to end.

My problem isn’t really with the elites – they always needed this reapplying stability and it was definitely a change for the better. There just needs to be more than 1 skill which can counter them.

I agree with op.

Gamemode has great potential but you need to balance better players damage on guards, archers effectiveness and channeling.

One of the more frustrating aspects of this game mode is the lack of NPC variety. If you are going to copy the standard MOBA gameplay change things up with the units. GW2 has dozens of enemies, why are we stuck with an archer and a bomb dropper? Let us summon a powerful Risen Knight or a small army of charging boars.

And a smaller complaint is the map. Anet has made one of Heart of Thorns big changes is the verticality in the new maps. I was hoping to see a more complex map for Stronghold, or more than just a single map. Again, the lack of variety is what’s holding Stronghold back in my opinion.

Stronghold could be an awesome game mode that is truly unique to Guild Wars 2 but right now it seems like a lackluster attempt to jump onto the MOBA bandwagon.

It’s different. Nice change of pace from conquest. However it’s so different than conquest, that it needs its own queue.

My only suggestion is the win condition. Win condition shouldn’t be by points, but rather the furthest a team gets to downing the lord.

See, many clueless people posting their “accurate solution” without actually playing the game. That’s why many QQ threads are really hard to take it seriously.

Plague Form and similar other Elites pulses 3 stacks of stability per 3 seconds in 20 seconds. You have to remove the stability in 3 seconds, meaning 4 interrupts in 3 seconds or 1 remove and 1 interrupt to do so. (1 remove and 1 interrupt is a luck base because you can be unlucky enough to remove it at the last second of interval, wasting your boon removal at the process)

hmm. That does sound like a problem. Well what if they just designed the mist balls so that they pulse an AoE stability cleanse, so that there’s no imbalance around them?

I have to say I like stronghold a lot, I’m having a ton of fun with it. I’m primarily a WvW player, and though I’ve played a decent amount of conquest it just hasn’t grabbed me the way WvW has. Stronghold just might be the game type to finally get me playing a decent amount of sPvP.

I agree with others saying it should really have its own queue.

For the love of god, don’t force me to play this sheeet…
I don’t want to learn a new “2 lane dota clone” if i want to play something like that i would play Smite…

I hate that is a team death-match map in the normal map rotation, i hate even more that i forced to play this new fancy mode.

If you really want me to play at least put in a tutorial for it. I played twice now (had to for dailies) still no idea what to do.
I don’t intend to play this mode (i hope it will separated from normal pvp).

What the hell? People are seriously QQing about Stronghold when there was such a positive reaction to the first beta? Jesus Christ lol… smh.

I’d rather always have something to do in a match than sit on a stupid point and watch a circle fill up. Stronghold is the type of game mode this kind of game needs to make pvp more interesting. And if you’re really going to cry your eyes out about “pve” in a pvp game mode, take 5 minutes to think about the most popular game in the world. That’s right, in every single League of Legends match you are PvE’ing against enemy creeps, jungle creeps, towers, dragon, baron, you get the idea. Thing is, that’s nowhere NEAR as engaging as PvE in an mmo where enemies actually have more mechanics than spamming the same attack until they die. But everyone puts up with it for the big “team fights” in the end. Stronghold is not much different, except it happens in the span of at most 15 minutes. And if you’re still going to throw a fit about everyone “rushing lord” before the game mode is actually released, you’re just out of your mind. Good luck winning every game doing that. I played a match tonight where the enemy broke down our inner five minutes before we got theirs and we turned around and won. Jesus Christ, complaining about a game before it’s even released and an actual meta develops… I don’t freaking even.

Sigh, I can’t believe I actually have to explain this. Every time I go on the forums to post something I see some stupid thread with a bunch of crying going on. It makes you wonder why the hell people who complain so much are still playing the game. Doesn’t make sense lol.

Hello, I played in the recent tournament on stronghold as the powernecro/one of the medi guards for team Radioactive.

addressing previous posts:
I think the gamemode is overall very fun, defending is certainly an option (to all of you who do not think it is) the treb gets used A LOT (we used it a TON and so did our opponents). I like the guards health where it currently is because if you double the health then the entire game will be pve just your team trying like hell to get them down. As it stands right now it’s not bad at all.

Things I feel should change:

1. Delete the rangers altogether, make it so they are gone and not an option to summon. Giving them more health and making them really powerful will make this more pve and much less pvp which I don’t like at all. The bombers are enough (possible more than enough) things that are not players that we have to kill, there is no reason to add arches too.

1. give 1 point per scritt bomber kill, this will make playing more defensive more of an option and make the offensive team have to think harder about when to send the bombers. Also, there can be a point cap so timing out the game isn’t the only option for defensive play.

1. make the two heroes look different, they often take the same path and it can be quite confusing if they look exactly the same.

Overall, VERY fun game mode, and was an incredible tournament.

I had fun i guess. But its casual to the extreme and i think only fun cos it was new, like i also enjoyed skyhammer briefly too.

The guards are so bad in each lane. It is pointless having them.

I just think when i play this game mode:“I wish i was playing dota or hots”. Like, the game mode is a mess. There is no strategic element at all. There is no pushing a lane unfortunetly. All the things which make mobas work are absent.

Mal.1670:

What the hell? People are seriously QQing about Stronghold when there was such a positive reaction to the first beta? Jesus Christ lol… smh.
.

Welcome to the Guild Wars 2 Forums.

People will complain about anything, really…anything.

E.g.
Precursor event? Spam the forums with complaints (Legendary Karka from SS1)

The more I play, and watch close matches, the more I realize that longer respawn timers are necessary to allow teams to comeback.

When a team is down but wins a teamfight in lord’s room, it doesn’t feel like they are rewarded enough with greater map control or the ability to apply serious offensive pressure.

A few notes from my 4-6 matches that I got to play (kitten ed Tuesday beta tests!)

a) Archers need to be more relevant. Once the Lord is vulnerable, using supply for any reason is wasted time. The guards are too vulnerable to regular damage from Players. If we had a way to improve the guards, either with further damage reduction (which Archers could pierce), or strengthening their damage (substantially, but not too much) Archers might see more use. However, currently, burn down the NPCs once and they’re done. Maybe an NPC respawn (Path Guards, room guards)pulse every 3 minutes (12, 9, 6, 3) to keep the Guards relevant. Have them path from the spawn like players would, invulnerable until they’re in position. Only the dead NPCs would come back, so we wouldn’t want to see duplicate NPCs come in, for instances. This would leave a bit of room for strategy too, timing attacks on the lord room for when respawns won’t impede progress.

b) more NPC types for us to summon, a “Berserker” NPC that patrols toward/in to your lord room when it is vulnerable, costs two supply and can only be activated if that second door has been broken; basically an NPC in a psuedo-Rampager stance. I realize expanding these options would risk making it convoluted. This is a quick example, though. I imagine the dev cycle is effectively over and you guys are just tweaking numbers.

c) Power creep/Elite spec concerns; or, as they say, the meta is changing at an alarming rate. Many of the issues we’re seeing with NPCs dying too quickly now will, based on the numbers we’ve been shown so far, likely get worse as the new stuff is brought to the table.

This game mode has some potential, but I think it is suffering a bit of an identity crisis. It wants to be sPvP, but it has a bit too much PvE going on. It might be better, to make the NPCs completely invulnerable to player damage (but not player CC) and encourage players to use the archers for their intended purpose. My concern, and I mentioned it above as well. I think the design aspect is where you want it, but you need tweak numbers. I’d say…. NPCs (all types) take 5% player damage (seems like it is in the 33-50% range atm.) Archers beat Doorbreakers, Guards beat Doorbreakers, Doorbreakers beat gates. Archers and Guards would, ideally, stalemate. I’ve more or less been performing a stream of consciousness here in this lass paragraph, sorry!

I’d love to see this game mode do well, though. Definitely (please, please do this) consider adding an entirely separate queue for “alternative” maps (Skyhammer/Courtyard/Stronghold.) While I enjoy all of those maps, the general populace will resent being forced to play Stronghold; we already have rage quiters when we see Skyhammer/Courtyard in Unranked.

Wolfey.3407:

Point 1:
-Boost all common NPCS to Elite Status (silver ring around picture)
-Give all current Elite NPCS champion Status with a unique attack/ function
-Give the Lord the ability to shout revive allies within 600 Range twice.
(after two times the lord can no longer use that ability)
Point 2:
I personally think communing with a Barrack while under attack is fine; however, I do not think you should be able to commune with a champion summon while under attack.
Point 3:
-Removing the walls around the supply area and adding another shortcut from Red to Blue lanes should help introduce more player interactions and combat.
Thoughts? Ideas? remedies?

None of it will really matter if you can easily win by getting your entire team to only make skritt and rush their base.
Point 1: My bomber elementalist can currently kill the lord in seconds. Improving the NPCs hitpoints and/or defense will only make this type of build even more important and unbalanced towards to bombing them down quickly.
Point 2: The Champs don’t really matter. It’s a waste of time to even go after them, when you could be spending that time rushing instead.
Point 3: This might help, but you really only need enough supply to make enough skritt to break through their doors, afterwhich supply becomes a waste of time to even think about.
I think the main solution isn’t to improve the NPCs, because players will always be able to take advantage of NPC stupidity no matter how strong they are. The real way to buff the lord’s defense is to simply make it REALLY easy to get to your own lord…hence my previous suggestion for an allied-only teleporter between your supply doors and your lord.
Putting in a teleporter like this would mean you can easily divert to defense, and more importantly keep defending the lord pretty reliably with players rather than NPCs/environmental stuff. It would be a lot tougher and require more strategy to take out the lord this way, because of the big time penalty for offending players to return after death, vs. minimal time penalty for defending player return.
As it is now, I can run into the lord with my bomber elementalist and nuke the crap out of everything, and even if I die it doesn’t really matter, because I’ll be back in about as much time as it takes the players that I killed to come back.

After playing both betas, I really think this needs a lot of work to be fun. At the moment you can get through entire matches without ever worrying/engaging another player, it’s a moba-hybrid that removes all complexity and progression from the genre. It needs a separate queue simply because it isn’t PvP.

Any changes made to the game need to consider how to encourage players to fight one another, over spawning a mass of DBs and pushing aggressively.

- I would consider moving the treb behind the first gate and in its place put another minion/buff/champion though probably something which isn’t directly related to a lord rush. Perhaps a champion that provides a passive damage reduction/stability at supply?
- Add more utility to Archers. I would suggest adding two towers that can only be damaged by archers or players, with them doing greater damage to players than NPCs. Place one in the middle of each lane at the intersection near the hero channel and the other at the bend inside the first gate.

Idk at the moment it feels like sacrifices have been made due to keeping the game time shorter than you would expect and because of that it feels like a PvE lord rush.

Jarrix.8234:

Aomine.5012:

Jarrix.8234:

We won a match earlier in 1 minute and 53 seconds.

Both teams spawned all door breakers, pushed the guards then the lord. We beat them by about 2-3 seconds roughly.

My big fear with this map is that people will just double push like we did during that game. 500 rank points is 2 minutes beats 1500 in a full 10+ minute game so losing even has its advantage.

And why does anyone care about rank point when leveling to r80 is a cake walk?
Champion titles are all that matters.

Fair enough but the implication is the same. Winning 50% of your matches every 2 minutes is better than winning 100% of your matches every 10+ minutes.

This is exactly what I said, too. Even though this map has a potential, the way it’s designed atm just makes the best strategy to rush lord. The problem also is that you can easily solo it and the only thing that stops you are gates which can be taken down by one doorbreaker. It’s really not a good idea to make a pvp element that wins you the game soloable.

Lots people in pvp care about rank points and rewards and due to this it’s just best to win as fast as possible and queue for another.

Allow to recruit enhanced archers and door breakers for 2 supply cost [add second interaction button on the door for 2 supply spend].
Enhanced Archer – have fly – leap 600 – cd 60s. – have random ranger trap.
Enhanced Door Breaker – have jump and ride on the back – he stick to enemy (like karka thing) and whenever receive dmg that enemy receive equal dmg.

Keeps have enemy go-out port system – every 90s one enemy from keep is ported instantly outside of the keep. In castle they fell into pit that open under their feets and reapear outside. In pirates side there appear chef who Rolls (like beetle) them out or cannon that launch outside but w/o falling dmg.

In lord room there is new environmental weapon – sonar stick – when ally hold it can’t use weapon skills, but shows enemies in 120 radious around – it doesn’t apply Reveal. These environmental weapons dissapear if bring outside.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I played ~6 matches this afternoon, and after getting used to the map I have the following feedback:

1. NPC’s are sad. Buff their HP by 10,000%, reduce damage done by players by 90% and increase damage done by archers by 1000%. We are supposed to be running and defending the lanes, currently you can just melt the “guards” and have no need for archers. Increase damage done to players by 1000% but make them focus on any archers in range first.

2. attacking someone while they are channeling doesn’t stop the channel. Guards, warriors and rangers can pop invuln, get the supply, walk back to the point and summon a door breaker without you being able to do a single thing about it. This makes classes with invuln overly important. Invuln should not prevent channeling from being interrupted.

3. No reason to PvP. After you know the map you just ignore the enemies all together and rush lord.

1. I agree that NPCs are bad… What I would like is that the NPC-guards should be invuln to player attacks. The only thing to harm them is archers. Doorbreakers should have about 20% less health.

2. I play a guardian mostly in PvP and I agree with this. Summoning a Hero should not interupt you when hit but if it’s not impossible to do it would be nice that invincible, Blocks, Invicible, evade and Stability would not work during channeling for a hero. But as for Supplies I like it how it is now.

3. I think this statement is so wrong. Won 8 out of 9 matches yesterday where I planned out my strategy to leave me to defend. A good use of the treb is doing alot of defending and you can even halt enemy team from getting supplies with it. I think that there are alot of strategies you can go for in this mode.

I have played this game mode alot during the first beta and I am going to try it out even more. I am not going to go all out and say everything I want fixed yet as we have to try it out more. At the moment alot of people hasnt played it enough to be able to figure out a good streategy so I will give it time and give my full feedback when Stronghold beta 2 has ended.

Edit:

BlackBeard.2873:

The more I play, and watch close matches, the more I realize that longer respawn timers are necessary to allow teams to comeback.

When a team is down but wins a teamfight in lord’s room, it doesn’t feel like they are rewarded enough with greater map control or the ability to apply serious offensive pressure.

I need to make a list of good quotes. This one I can feel too.

I dind’t play the map in both betas, but as I read in all the threads, esp. in this one now, it seems there are 3 major problems:
1. Rushing lord is the best way to win the match and it is too easy to do so with doorbreakers.
2. NPC (Archer, Guards) are to useless
3. not enough PvP-Fights^^

So, after thinking about this, here are my suggestions:
1. Make the doorbreakers to do less dmg on doors. I dont know exactly, how much breakers do u can summon at once, but I think, the max. should be 3. Also u should need Supply to summon them. And you can always summon 1 breaker per action (means you need enough supply and then u can do the interaction 3 times afterwards and summon 1 breaker for each).
Then the breakers move to the doors AND (and this is the main suggestion here^^) they are playing a bombt that will exploode and doing 1/5 of doors HP of dmg. For the 2nd door it shoult be 1/8 or something. After the breaker placed his bomb, he will move back to the base to pick up a new one. For this there is also supply needed. Then the breaker will run once more. In this case u will need 5 breakers to destroy the 1st door, 8 for the 2nd. Or in other words: 1st door 2/3 breaker needs to run twice and 2nd door 3/3 needs to run twice and another 2 a third time.
When a breaker dies, there will be a CD before u can summone a new one.

I think this will animate for an more defensive gameplay as u have to save and to cover ur breakers and dont let them die.

2. Buff Archers and Guards as suggested here from many players (HP/Dmg). Let them focus on NPC’s so that players have to cover them (reflects by archers, protection, stealth for Guards). There could also be a buff obtainable for supply that grants the door breakers buffs if players are near to them (240-360 range). Something like -50% Cond-Dmg or 33%-Dmg-Reduction. On the other side, there should be buffs, that archers are able so “see” incoming breakers if they are stealthed by thieves, when they entering an radius in front of the doors. So, archers are not longer useless as stated above.

There were also nice ideas to buff lord, when players are around, liked that idea^^

3. I think, the interrupt from channels (see Silent Storm map) should also be baseline. And with this suggestions above I also think, that the pvp aspect would be greater.

Thoughts?

P.S.: Sry for my bad english XD

WvW in a mini map.

Kill NPC.
Run Supply.
Avoid players.
Hide behind gates.

This is what you do in WvW when your trying to defend a Tower which is very much like the current Stronghold game mode.

Needs to be less focus on NPC and Supply.

Also feels like there is way to much going on, doesn’t feel like 5 man map.

I echo what others have said on this being a casual, unfun PvE cake with WvW cream ontop.

If I wanted to PvE or WvW, I would PvE or WvW.

[My standard caveat: I play all professions in PvP. I am not biased for or against your favorite profession. You are not your favorite profession; you are a player in a game. Nothing said about your favorite profession should be taken personally.]

Couple of items I’ve noticed that I didn’t see in threads so far:

The map heavily favors ranged builds over melee builds. The addition of terrain and objects to block line of sight isn’t terribly relevant, because NPC’s don’t LOS. The NPC’s can be easily killed from range. A melee character trying to kill the NPC’s must stand in the line of fire to do so.

I don’t really have a solution for this and suppose it’s just the nature of the game mode. This wouldn’t be an issue if ranged attacks were weaker than melee, as is the case for certain professions, but Longbow Ranger, with its very strong, longest-range, very fast attacks, sort of throws this out of whack. We were able to park a Ranger on solo defense for a number of matches, augmenting it with a Shoutbow Warrior at need. The one match where they were finally pushed back? It was by three Rangers. Naturally, there are counters, but the NPC’s don’t have them. Other ranged builds also appeared to be more successful than their up-close counterparts.

The addition of the Lord’s pull/spin was a nice touch, but it puts melee in even more of a tight spot. If ranged builds can perform equally well at the PvP aspects (without capture points to contest, they have greater freedom of positioning than in Conquest), but are superior at the PvE aspects, then they are superior at the game mode. This may be intentional or accepted design, but it’s another reason that this has to be a separate queue from Conquest.

Weird thing: I only played for a few hours of testing today — mostly during NA Prime and some later in the evening — so my sample size is not tremendous, but it was still a curious item. I won every single match but one while on the Blue team. As Red team, I lost every single match. I remember during the first Stronghold Beta, we joked that it was better to be Blue, but I didn’t pay attention to the exact win/loss count.

I expect that it was just bizarre coincidence. However, I must note that when my guildies and I were queueing as a group of 4 or 5, we were Blue almost every single time; almost all my matches today were on Blue team. When the group dropped to 2, we ended up Red a slight majority of the time. Was matchmaking populating Blue with premades? Or was it just an odd coincidence?

Maybe it’s just that nobody’s motivated to fight for jerk pirate boss when he doesn’t even give you free beer like the nice knight lady.

I managed to try out Stronghold this time round, didn’t work for me last open beta. We had a full premade and played about 7-8 matches. My feedback is as follows:

The Good:

The overall flow and feel of the game was good and I like that there are distinctly different roles to play and a number of tactics that can be used.

Map design feels good and I like the layout.

The Bad:

Currently the Archer NPC’s do not feel like they are very useful, and after a few matches we stopped summoning them. We did use them after getting to the lord, but I did not notice much impact from having them. I think for them to be more useful they should have the following buffs: Higher movement speed to get to the guards well before the doorbreakers, slightly harder to kill by players, and more damage vs the lord and elite lord defenders.

Conclusion:

I really like the Stronghold game mode and can see myself playing it more than conquest. I think it only needs some minor tweaks to the archers and it will be an excellent game type.

Suggestions:

Because it is a very different game type to conquest, I really think it needs its own seperate queue. Some will want to play stronghold/conquest exclusively, and I do not think many will be happy with only having a random chance to play the game mode they want. We should have more control over our choice of game to play. I would say the same is needed for map selection, but that is for a different topic altogether.

Overall, I am very happy with Stronghold and I am really looking forward to playing it more and hopefully seeing more maps for it.

I agree with all of that ^

I really enjoy the game mode but it feels like once you fall behind there is no way to come back. If you wipe the other team in your Lord room, they are all up and ready to defend your push by the time you get anything going.

If there we’re more points given or longer respawns, or both, for dying after you have 1 and 2 gates down, it might make it better. But I played games yesterday where 2 people push lord, die, 2 more come in and die, and by the time they are finished, the first 2 are back.

I also wish the Lord regenerated health and you could replace defensive npcs. Once your gates are down you can’t really leave your Lord alone, and the other team can just turtle and kill your door breakers and win by points.

Maybe have respawn time increased after dying past the 1st enemy gate? Like +5s between 1st and 2nd gate, +10s in lord room.

game mod has the potential what kills it is that the player professions arent balanced to begin with if a team has 2 shoutbow warriors they ll most likely win as they are near unkillable so they can solo lords while the rest of the team does whatever

so who knows maybe it wont suck after spec rework

It would be cool if you could spawn npcs from yyr own lord room. So like if you wipe players and they had supply, you can take it and use it immediately instead of running back to the doors and then up to the enemy gate.

Has anyone tried defending instead of simply rushing to their Lord? I played a few matches last night that all ended due to time running out. We all had like 20+ kills. There was very little PvE when I played.

So maybe instead of just giving up defense and deciding it is a race to Lord, maybe work as a team to defend, then counter?

I really liked this game mode. My only complaint is that the NPCs are way too easy to kill. I know PvP “purists” are against having any kind of NPC encounters because it’s just too much PvE for them, which is why stronghold definitely needs to be a separate queue. I really like the concept of a MOBA type map, but this feels like a weak attempt at it. Either go full blown or not at all, in my opinion.

As it stands the NPC “minions” are essentially worthless with even one person defending that has an ounce of skill. Defending and attacking the minions needs to be central to the game mode.

Worst map ever, awful design and why the hell am I being forced to sacrifice my play time because this is the only pvp map available to 24 hours, absolutely ridiculous.

tolantra.1864:

Worst map ever, awful design and why the hell am I being forced to sacrifice my play time because this is the only pvp map available to 24 hours, absolutely ridiculous.

I loled. Nothing is preventing you to play ranked.

I like the new map, fun and refreshing, no capping thank god, only strategy and coordination (yeah, you actually have to TALK to your team, oh meh lawrd) i love how they made it, it has tons of space, clever use of the supply and NPCs, inovative and i like it

I’m quite pleased with the mode, however it could use some tweaking. Currently I feel the skrit bombers are just way to effective at taking doors down. After those doors have been destroyed nobody even bothers with supplies and it becomes a boring battle who rushes the enemy lord down first.

Draknar.5748:

Has anyone tried defending instead of simply rushing to their Lord?

And why would you care about killing other players in defense ?

I have played 90% defense during the 2 betas. Defense is NOT about killing players, just about killing bombers. You have nothing to protect against ennemy players, unless they are in your lord room. You just have to protect your doors, which are only vulnerable to NPCs.

My defense pattern ? Kill the first rush of bombers (read : pew pew them to death), hide in base, repeat. That’s not PvP, imo.

To me it is too early to judge everything and tell this is crap etc, cause most ppl doesn’t know how to play at it, does not have good build for it. Rushing down the lord wont work when you kill bombers, also killing bombers/defending won’t be so easy against competent players who can spike you down. One thing for me should be changed – interrupting channel – once a warrior/whatever starts to channel you won’t be able to stop him cause of stability/endure pain.

I find this map refreshing, with new kind of builds and many strategies to do.

way to get PvP rid of PvP yet its still called PvP?

If you really hate new mode just don’t post. If you have something that you wish to be different just say it.

1. Remove the kitten timer. Ruins matches, simple as that.
2. Make bombers die after their attack. That will make rushes less efficient and people will have to spread to the map again for more supplies.
3. Change channeling like every other pvp map. If simple attacks interrupt it, more fights will take place for them.
4. Since dying on enemy Lord seems a bit no punishing enough maybe you could make it so the further you die from base the longer you need to respawn? I’m really not sure if this is a really good idea and how it will played out.
EDIT: And it’s pretty obvious that everybody wants a different queue for that. This mode need a ton of different things than conquest. People need to be able to actually choose what mode to play.

Channeling needs to change trust me on this one anet, if you guys don’t change it, expect a lot of threads on this matter once the expansion hits.

Got about 8 hours in on the beta last night. Did a mix of groups and solo queues to get a wide spectrum of the game play.

Feedback:

• Scoring discourages teams from defending. Team and individual scoring did not reflect the play required to defend, especially when the doors were down and it was defend or lose. I understand the purpose is to attack and kill the enemy lord but if you were to just look at a team score or individual score it did not reflect the level of play that was occurring. Consider rewarding defenses on the outer and inner areas. I can concur that more points should be rewarded for attacking but the defender should be able to redeem some of those points on successful defenses.
• Hero Power Up – I could be mis-remembering this one but I thought you could interrupt the heroes to block their power attack, was not seeing that work.
• Skritt Bombers – seemed to be in good shape, would leave them alone.
• Tengu archers – Mixed feelings here which means to me they are close. They could still use some increases in power or given a on third shot condition of cripple or poison. Players were typically saying not to summon but I still saw them adding to some player versus player fights and dropping some players that were already low on health.
• Game Timer – felt good. Without recording it, walked away with the feeling that about 40% of the games ended via timer, about 50% finished around the 4 minute mark and only about 10% finished with the first 3 minutes.
• Game Pace – Pace was still really fast which is not a bad thing. You needed to keep in motion and there was enough going on that it was easy to lose track of everything. I actually liked that because it didn’t have that feeling conquest does at time which is run from point A to point B, point C, back to A. There was a strategy on when and when not to fight.
• Fights – Plenty to be had, wasn’t a case of not being able to find people. If you just want to fight this map has it for you.
• Elite Guard Agrro range – mixed feelings here, feels like the ranged guards should start their aggro a bit sooner then they were or have they ranged attacks extend a bit further even if they don’t start to move. Melee guards should have been reacting a bit more when people were up on top of the ranged guards. Once the entire group was in motion the game play felt good. (Even if they were beating on you)
• Healing the Lord versus Auto-Heals – really like this. It actually makes you want to be able to share healing and creates a large job role for players that traditionally like to play a support role.
• Class dominance – Didn’t see any. Made sure to play some as each class and there were jobs for all of them to do and didn’t get the feeling that one dominated all the rest so that seems in line.
• Organized teams vs Pug – Even more than conquest, an organized team will be greatly advantaged in this game mode due to all the moving pieces. I am not opposed to this but that will lead to some future shout outs about match making. On the positive side this might be a type of game play that people might be more interested in forming groups to go play in.
• NPC Voice and ping indicators – were more than sufficient to make sure that players knew certain events were going, even to the point of being annoying, but I would keep them as is considering all the other things that were going on.
• Treb – Seemed in line, rotation speed and power seemed reasonable. Wasn’t able to spend any free time just figuring out where all it can hit but it was useful on gate defense, supply control, hero summoning and hitting some free ranging fights. easily stopped inbound Skritt and Tengu. Hit Heroes about as much as I would expect and was reasonable on enemy players.

Side note, even after getting a full night in on this game mode I will be sad that I can not queue for it tonight. That should be an indicator on its own. Good hunting!

TheGrimm.5624:

• Fights – Plenty to be had, wasn’t a case of not being able to find people. If you just want to fight this map has it for you.

Actually, I disagree about the fighting. People just run away since there are no nodes to fight on and there’s no incentive to continue the fight when you’re losing.

Very unsatisfying.

As a side note, this is a thief’s dream come true. The only disadvantage to stealth in conquest is the inability to cap points. Now nothing. That’s pretty lame.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. NPC’s are sad. Buff their HP by 10,000%,

Countless

The extra obstructions added around and in the Lord’s room takes away from the game. If you are using a ranged weapon, or a class that depends heavily on targeting players and LoS (such as Mesmer), an unnecessarily large number of your skills are obstructed when fighting in and near the claustrophobic Lord’s room.

There was already enough obstructed messages popping up around that area of the map before the new additions.

bhagwad.4281:

As a side note, this is a thief’s dream come true. The only disadvantage to stealth in conquest is the inability to cap points. Now nothing. That’s pretty lame.

A stealth obsessed Thief appears just as useless in Stronghold as other PvP modes to my experience.

Los Re.4607:

1. Remove the kitten timer. Ruins matches, simple as that.
2. Make bombers die after their attack. That will make rushes less efficient and people will have to spread to the map again for more supplies.
3. Change channeling like every other pvp map. If simple attacks interrupt it, more fights will take place for them.
4. Since dying on enemy Lord seems a bit no punishing enough maybe you could make it so the further you die from base the longer you need to respawn? I’m really not sure if this is a really good idea and how it will played out.
EDIT: And it’s pretty obvious that everybody wants a different queue for that. This mode need a ton of different things than conquest. People need to be able to actually choose what mode to play.

1. The timer is there to counter stalemates, so I doubt this will change.
2. Nice idea, I can get behind that idea. I’m also happy with the way it is, so either way is good to me.
3. This would need to be tested, and I can understand your logic on this. However, I think the Anet mindset behind this is to encourage a higher skill requirement. You need to use interrupt skills to prevent them. Maybe they can have a timeout debuff if interrupted so they cannot simply start channeling again? Make the use of interrupts more rewarding.
4. Personally, I think the current time delay is punishment enough. Its all about balancing your attack and defense with their attack and defense. If you are left unhindered to keep attacking their lord, then you should not be punished any more than you already are imo. I have seen 2 enemies defend a lord room full of elites really well. If you add extended timers, you will be fighting a skilled team AND an additional punishment mechanic, and I do not think that would be fair.

Some people dislike it due to the PvE side of things, but that’s just the nature of this game type. If you play matches and hardly fight any players, that is down to the players not the game mode. When we was playing, we tried a rush a few times, one time it worked, while a couple other times the enemy reacted and stopped us.

A skilled team will know when to react to rush plays. Much like conquest, the tactics used will eventually settle down, and a meta will form. And each style of play will depend on the team composition. Once the meta forms I am sure there will be more pvp to stronghold. I have already seen plenty in the few matches I have played, with very few matches played without pvp. The only time our rush worked was when fighting a team that didn’t seem to understand that games mechanics that well.

Luthic.7290:

.

6) INCREASE PLAYER CAP The map is large enough to support more characters, and would just be fun and help slower clases feel more useful.

No, matchmaking is already a joke, increasing the cap will make it even worse, the population simply isn’t enough, that’s why 2v2 or even 3v3 arenas for me was a better solution during this dark time of spvp.

Im just gonna leave this here, since I really like the strategys this game mode offers in itself.
Since this is the PvP-Mode we are talking about its already clear, that this map should be designed more around actually fighting other Players, so:

What if the format of Stronghold would be changed to something like 7v7 or 8v8?

Moreover Doorguard-NPCs should get removed completly. This would offer the opportunity to send out actual players to defend doors. That way, it would be more important sending out a few attackers to face those defenders. Now, if Arenanet would increase the damage Archers do to players, you can create actual threads by mixing up attacker teams with Doorbreakers, Archers and a few players. You also get way more PvP and a use for Archers with this solution

The problems I see with this though is the increased amount of supplys on each team, which could offer the opportunity for a deadly 7 or 8 man push from the beginning. This could maybe addressed by removing the 2 supplys every players gets when the game starts.

At least this seems a better choice then just buffing the Guard NPCs in terms of damage and defense, since this would increase the PvE-Aspect of this gamemode way too much.

Imo, there are more results by taking this step. You would actually create roles and make a diversity of builds neccessary, like tanky/high mobility builds for supply runs, damage focused builds for attacking/defending or even healing/cc focused builds to defend your attack squad.

Draknar.5748:

Has anyone tried defending instead of simply rushing to their Lord? I played a few matches last night that all ended due to time running out. We all had like 20+ kills. There was very little PvE when I played.

Half the games I played went on defense to see how it worked out. The matches where at least one person was on defense resulted in much longer games that went the time else went at least to the last 3 minutes. Only during the matches where no one defended did they end in the first 3 minutes. Wasn’t uncommon to see one person with the support of the elites and lord to be able to take out three attackers if they went start in for a fight. Scoring, if you were just defending made it look like you weren’t pulling your weight though even though you were blocking the other team from out right winning. Saw a number of times when players thought someone defending was just AFKing since they were in defending the lord area.

Surbrus.6942:

The extra obstructions added around and in the Lord’s room takes away from the game. If you are using a ranged weapon, or a class that depends heavily on targeting players and LoS (such as Mesmer), an unnecessarily large number of your skills are obstructed when fighting in and near the claustrophobic Lord’s room.

There was already enough obstructed messages popping up around that area of the map before the new additions.

bhagwad.4281:

As a side note, this is a thief’s dream come true. The only disadvantage to stealth in conquest is the inability to cap points. Now nothing. That’s pretty lame.

A stealth obsessed Thief appears just as useless in Stronghold as other PvP modes to my experience.

Have to disagree on a number of points here. I played on all the classes last night and the items that blocked the line of sight were balanced. I would vote for them to remain. Also I did see a stealth thief sneak through defenders and steal a win that was close to going to time so I wouldn’t say useless.