Guild Wars 2

bhagwad.4281:

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.

Downside to 1 day beta, more time would allow some more stats to be player gathered. Granted half my games were spent in defense, hence saw a lot of fighting as people came for the lord. On offense was encountering a lot of fighting over supply and hero summoning points. I am hoping that ANet has heat maps, would be even better if they did and could share.

Luthic.7290:

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.

I agree that it’s too hard to interrupt Rampage/Plague Form/etc channelling right now. I think making it break on damage like the Temple buffs would make these far too difficult though: the heroes are the only way a team that’s behind can come back right now, spending too long fighting over a cap, or having to devote too many team members to it, would mean the other team can finish you off while you’re still trying to get the channel off!
Ultimately, having stability prevent channel interruption would work, IF:
a. boon removal/corruption prioritised stability, or
b. the map was 6v6 or 8v8, so you could bring enough people with enough interrupts to bear on someone channeling under pulsing stability stacks!

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.

Scaling based on defender proximity is dangerous: it could actually encourage people to NOT defend their lord to give him more damage reduction, making this game even more of a gank rush with no actual pvp component than it already is!

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

Agreed, the outer gate guards especially should be veterans, like the inner ones. More importantly, they should prioritise NPCs, especially doorbreakers, not players! It’s too easy to aggro them and let the skritt do their job. Respawning them with supply would also be interesting, but I think repairing the gate with supply would be more so.

4) MAKE SKRITT SUICIDE. This way teams have to get more supply and cant do the 1 push win.

ABSOLUTELY AGREE WITH THIS. It would also create a greater incentive to fight at mid over the supply depot. I’m fine with an initial wave of 5 skritt being able to take down outer if the enemy doesn’t bother them, but then you should have to go back for more supply. It would increase interaction with enemy players and force teams to think about coordination and map control.
A related feature I would like to see introduced is for the skritt and archers to be spawned in 30" waves: instead of spawning one immediately when you spend your supply, the depot remembers how much supply you spent and spawns that many at the next 30" period. This structures the pushes, and helps players know when to go where to best help the team. It would be especially helpful for pugs without voice comms, who can’t organise a coordinated push otherwise.

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.

Yeah, I’m also finding it pretty ineffectual. You could argue that’s because we haven’t played enough games to learn the ranges yet, but here’s the thing: this isn’t Kyhlo, where you just have to learn the range to 3 fixed points where the fighting is gonna be. This is a map where you need to hit mobile targets, like heroes constantly moving closer and closer to the enemy base and the players escorting them. Your trebbing needs constant adjustment, and they’re VERY slow to turn and you have to correct for range constantly. Moreover, some of the bridges and other terrain features prevent you from hitting some spots at all, especially inside Red base. They’re just underwhelming, and if you’re a staff ele or well necro in zerker gear it’s actually faster to take out doorbreakers yourself than to use the treb to do it! This shouldn’t be the case: if you have siege it should be more powerful than players, otherwise it’s meaningless.

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.

Agreed with this too, I think they should at least let us TRY 6v6!

Pacing is a major issue in this game. I feel like the time is just too short, and winning major fights isn’t really rewarded enough. Wiping the enemy in your lord’s room doesn’t really punish them enough to allow you to mount a strong offensive. While I understand the reasoning for map size and making distance between objectives long, it means that counter-attacks just take too long to develop.

Respawn timers should gradually increase during the game to create more drama over team-fights.

The actual match needs to be extended by ~5 mins, and having the lords run to mid for a final battle is WAY better than just ending it on timer. Having games end due to timer is kinda lame.

BlackBeard.2873:

… winning major fights isn’t really rewarded enough. Wiping the enemy in your lord’s room doesn’t really punish them enough to allow you to mount a strong offensive. While I understand the reasoning for map size and making distance between objectives long, it means that counter-attacks just take too long to develop.
…..

the only part of what u said that is agreeable. u don’t have enough time to counter after wiping them in your lords room.

matches are long enough, i want more fights, not fewer longer ones.

why should my lord run to mid to fight the other one if say, i still had a wall up but had broken down all the enemy walls? they never even got to my lord, but now it doesn’t matter

Jaxom.7310:

BlackBeard.2873:

… winning major fights isn’t really rewarded enough. Wiping the enemy in your lord’s room doesn’t really punish them enough to allow you to mount a strong offensive. While I understand the reasoning for map size and making distance between objectives long, it means that counter-attacks just take too long to develop.
…..

the only part of what u said that is agreeable. u don’t have enough time to counter after wiping them in your lords room.

matches are long enough, i want more fights, not fewer longer ones.

why should my lord run to mid to fight the other one if say, i still had a wall up but had broken down all the enemy walls? they never even got to my lord, but now it doesn’t matter

True, I was thinking of the case where both gates are broken already. If you have further concrete progress than your opponents, you should win at the timer.

It feels lame when both teams have access to lord and time is running out that the game doesn’t end with a lord kill on either side, but just a timer…

1. Make npc defenders inmune to players atacks, and increase the damage they do. So they can only be killed using archers.
2. Decrease the damage that door breakers do, but increase their heal.
3. Remove the timmer for god sake!!
4. Players chanelling for resources should be interrupt if we atack then.
5. Increase the damage and defense of the lord and his guards.
6. Add more guards.
7. Remove, remplace or revamp treb. Maybe a weapon that you need capture or hired using some amount of suplies that you can only get killing other players. And went your get it, then will autoatack for a short time the enemy base with some strongs aoes.

Los Re.4607:

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.

I thought of this idea too, I think it could be really great. You’d probably have to buff the bomber’s toughness/hp a bit, and make them do a little more damage to gates, but I think this could be a great change.

First question would be: why don’t we get HoT PvE part thrown down our throats in the same way, instead of putting those portals?
I’m not saying the regular pvp maps are very pvp-ish or well designed, but getting “forced” to play a beta is kinda bad. Having Stronghold on map selection at all times would mean for me “having to choose between it and other 2 options”, not what happens now.
Also, about the design of that map… we have Silverwastes and WvW that resemble the map.
We also have Battle of Khylo and Legacy of Foefire with them extra toys to play with, if you don’t want to pvp, which are pretty annoying. So what could be worse?! having both in one map. Along with some skritts for the added “swing a sword again” style Anet trolling.

No reason to comment on map bugs, like uninterrutable communing, when the map itself is a bug in the pvp area.

I love stronghold. A lot more player builds work, where they would be total ineffective in Conquest. Conquest is build discriminating (be tanky, but optimal damage or bye bye, mostly with a few exceptions, and be superior teamsupport, or useless, if you heals are self only and not aoe, no thanks in conquest.) Stronghold? Almost anything can work. That’s the beauty of it. And that alone (much more build variety in pvp) is what makes stronghold less boring then Conquest for me.

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.

As a 99.9% PvE player, I don’t like this either. It’s not PvE, it’s just PvNothing.

Supply should only be able to be obtained by killing an enemy player. This would encourage more actual pvp

Going to echo ‘Bomber Suicide’, that’s a critical incentive for middle supply to be all the more enticing and for more fights to break out.

Elite Skills and channeling is fairly broken at the moment. I would recommend elite skills preventing channeling rather than damage breaking it, CC would still be a thing.

I feel like the door guards are still a bit low on the health pool despite not doing anything to anyone but the bombers, maybe extend their health a touch more…

I would provide more feedback, but ultimately the meta isn’t quite set in stone yet. Rushing through gates though is really killing the ‘PvP’ aspect at this time.

I’m really surprised to see so many people saying they didn’t fight other players. I was constantly fighting in every match.

Roe.3679:

I’m really surprised to see so many people saying they didn’t fight other players. I was constantly fighting in every match.

Yea, same here. Sounds like a lot of people either avoided PvP because they didn’t understand how the game worked that well or (judging by the tone of many comments here) because they convinced themselves that this game mode was PvE carebear mode and played it that way to reinforce their own cynical narrative.

I’m looking forward to seeing this game mode being available for more than 48 hours so that we can get past all these radical conclusions people are making about a game mode no one is really comfortable playing yet.

Seems to me there are several themes throughout all these threads/posts.

• NPC’s are too weak
• No use for defense/everyone just rushes the lord
• You don’t actually have to fight other players, you can just attack the NPC’s

Here’s my solution:

The Lord’s Room should consist of just 3 NPC’s. The Lord and 2 others.

The Lord is a Heavy/Warrior/Guardian. The two others are Monks/Healers. They heal the Lord.

This would help with all three of the issues stated earlier.

• The Lord and Monks are not weak. And the Monks have actual healing spells. This would not interfere with the “no trinity” philosophy of GW2 since it would just be NPC spells.
• Defense could be successfull because the Lord and Monks are not just going to die easily.
• It would encourage actual PvP, players fighting players. The attacking players would need to kill the Monks first. The defending players would need to stop, i.e. kill, the attacking players. The attacking players, not wanting to be killed, would need to fight back against the actual players but wouldn’t have to worry about being killed by the NPC’s – because they’re Monks.

I really enjoyed the game mode, I do think there should be some extra incentive to kill players (longer respawn timer maybe?). Lots of fun and I think there is scope for depth.

The timer finishing the game on points alone isn’t particularly satisfying at times though – some way to count Lord damage as more important or forcing VoD? (Just lost a game where if the game had gone on for 10secs more it would have been won and our team still had the Lord room sealed)

Making the heroes have more predictable behaviour would be nice too – once got a hero to a door and he suddenly went after a player and ran in circles insead of attacking the door (not sure if a bug).

Will be interesting to see how it goes once efforts are made to game it properly.

I played some Stronhold yesterday and I couldn’t put my finger on what I felt needed to change until I thought about it for a bit. And what it boils down to is I just don’t believe this game mode works with 5 players in the current format.

What I mean is that there is simply to much to do right now for just 5 players, and if everyone is doing one of the things that needs to be done it devolves into a series of 1v1s over objectives or 1 person getting crushed by more than 1, neither of which is fun. This is also a problem with the “ez zerg” strats now. The best way to balance this is to make the NPCs harder but if you need to dedicate more players to them to get through you have less players to do other things, there is not enough players to go around in that case.

My suggestion would be if you want to keep it 5 player to start removing aspects of the game mode. Remove the bomb carrying skrit and let players damage doors, remove summoning champions, basically look for ways to tighten the game mode down to its bare essence and focus on that.

However my preferred solution would be to make it a 10v10, or 8v8. This game mode just suits more players better. By increasing the player cap you can also slightly increase the size of the map, increase the difficulty of the NPCs and keep the complexity of the map. It also becomes (in my opinion) more fun when you have a big force organizing to complete objectives.

My thoughts.

Calexis.7348:

I played some Stronhold yesterday and I couldn’t put my finger on what I felt needed to change until I thought about it for a bit. And what it boils down to is I just don’t believe this game mode works with 5 players in the current format.

What I mean is that there is simply to much to do right now for just 5 players, and if everyone is doing one of the things that needs to be done it devolves into a series of 1v1s over objectives or 1 person getting crushed by more than 1, neither of which is fun. This is also a problem with the “ez zerg” strats now. The best way to balance this is to make the NPCs harder but if you need to dedicate more players to them to get through you have less players to do other things, there is not enough players to go around in that case.

My suggestion would be if you want to keep it 5 player to start removing aspects of the game mode. Remove the bomb carrying skrit and let players damage doors, remove summoning champions, basically look for ways to tighten the game mode down to its bare essence and focus on that.

However my preferred solution would be to make it a 10v10, or 8v8. This game mode just suits more players better. By increasing the player cap you can also slightly increase the size of the map, increase the difficulty of the NPCs and keep the complexity of the map. It also becomes (in my opinion) more fun when you have a big force organizing to complete objectives.

My thoughts.

I share the same view: too much stuff to do for 5 players. 8 players would give it a much better flow, if they rebalance the stuff in consequence.

Xillllix.3485:

I share the same view: too much stuff to do for 5 players. 8 players would give it a much better flow, if they rebalance the stuff in consequence.

Having “too much to do” is something they kind of wanted, so that you have to make strategic decision shifts. While I think 6v6 might work out slightly more than 5v5 (and would love if they opened it up to custom arenas during beta tests, so that such things could be experimented with), I think going for more players is a mistake. When large “teamfights” happen, 5v5 already created too much clutter.

While I can see some people really enjoying 8v8’s and the like, I think it would just become too much during key moments, and break down.

okai, so i had a bit of marathon on stroghold and played more then 50 games during beta with 2 premade with 5 premade, with 3 premade, solo etc. So there is my feedback.

Good:
- informative top screen indicators;
- focus on different objectives, can’t slack, need cooperation;
- doorbreakers are fine;
- hero essence – fun activity that u need to decide to go for it or give it to enemie etc;
- cool map that u can move arround alot with place to hide from pew pew, haven’t seen much abusage of good spots yet;
- treb is a good placed siege there;
- some unexpected turns can be done, with lord ambushes etc;
- timer win is a good thing, alot of people complain about it, but i definetly like it, so u need to decide what to focus on – defence+points or enemie lord ambush.
- lord fights are good;

Bad:
- scoring, some things could be rewarded more like killing other players;
- gamemode overall more pve focused, you ussually forced to interract with some “environemnt” then u don’t need to kill people u can just run away and go for next pve event. That sets a certain gamy playstyle that is really i would say more “pve and run away from pvp”. Some changes into that could be done, for example – mist essence – i start channeling it with elixir X, rampage, dolyak signet+endure pain+berserker stance then if 3 guys kill me it’s ok, or i can even run away cause i don’t need to stay there. On start i was rushing to kill enemie doobreakers and beeing at sometimes tanky enough i was just putting condis on them and then running away from players to do next obects because I’M NOT FORCED TO PVP, I"M FORCED TO PVE. currently it’s the worst part of it;

- archers are too weak;
- hero from mist essence sometiems can be easily spammed on his way – adding retaliation to him (spiked armor from warrior) would be great for ex-le;

Overall i really enjoyed the fights and gamemode itselfe even at this fresh point where people didn’t know what to do and sometimes organization was worst then in my country’s parlament, but i’m looking forward in playing it after release or on next betas because it opens up some different gameplay style pvp wise.

Thanks arenanet for good work i wish u will take in account constructive critisism about this mode and improve it to level of very enjoyable game mode.

Now I have time to write my full Feedback.

The goods:
- Map is big enough.
- 2 is max carred supplies.
- Death = Drop Supplies.
- Guards one shot Doorbreakers.
- Placement for objects to hide behind, ranged can’t hit everywhere but they still have good chances for nice strategical placements.
- Channeling timer for Supplies are A ok.
- Un-interuptable by damage while picking supplies.
- Map and Terrain is realy nice and I realy like to play the game mode.

The Bads:
- Un-interuptable by damage and the ability to have and activate protective skills while channeling Mist essence for Hero.
- Guards die to easy.

My ideas:
Summoning heroes: Instead of channeling the mistessence why not have a capture point that starts neutral (White) and you have to change it to your team coulor by just standing in it. If there is a player from oposite colour standing in it, it does not move. Just like capture points work in the other game modes. It may take longer time to fight for it so it gives you another strategical decision.

Summoning Heroes 2: While channeling mistessence your protective skills are uneffective and you can not use skills while channeling. You are still not interupted by attacks though.

Guards: They are Invulnable to player and trebuchet attacks, the only ones who can kill them are Heroes and Archers. This is to keep players from Zerging the enemies Guards from the start and only spam Doorbreakers. Sure now they can spam archers instead but they are easier to interupt than doorbreakers that stops for no one. And still you will need doorbreakers to get through. Also make Guards always attack incoming Doorbreakers before anything else.

Archers: reduce their damage on gates.

Timer: As it will be harder to just storm the enemy timer should be increased by atleast 5min.

Edit:
Found this in another thread.

Sunshine.5014:

Stronghold is already better than Conquest. It just needs a few tweak here and there:

• taking damage stop channeling
• after 15 minutes, both Lords lose impatience and go to mid to attack each other, with all their guards.
• no more timer.

Suggestion number two is neat and I would like that.

PvE is going #esphatz

and they still wonder why ppl are quitting

Personally, I think the gamemode as it is now is virtually ready. It only really needs a minor tweak to make archers a little more useful, then I think it is done. The uninterruptable supply is good, because it encourages the use of interrupts, instead of simply attacking them. The non healing lord is good because it gives a sense of progression and makes healing builds more useful. Personally, I say no to having healer NPC’s, because that could remove the progression and I think it should be down to the players to keep the lord alive not the AI.

I did not play a single game with no PvP in it. Maybe we were playing skilled teams most of the time, because when we tried to rush we encountered enemies reacting and coming to the lords defense. Only one match had very little pvp in it, and I think that was only due to the opposing team being inexperienced.

If you hate the pve aspect of this game, then this mode is obvioulsy not for you. But that doesn’t automatically make the mode bad or mean no-one will play it. It just means you won’t play it, but I sure will. It seems supremely pointless to me to come on to a feedback thread saying the game is bad simply because you dislike pve. PvE is part of the game mode, that is just something you will have to get used to or don’t play it.

I for one really enjoyed this mode and can easily see myself playing it far more than conquest to start with, assuming of course I will have a choice. It offers more variety of roles and tactics than conquest, and it seems more builds will be viable. That is not to say I will never play conquest again, I will. I like the way you fight over points in conquest, its a great dynamic. But sometimes you need more variety, and stronghold offers that. I just hope they seperate the queues, because they are too different a game type to be lumped together.

Perhaps if the lord gave 150 points like in the Conquest maps, but didn’t stop the game when it was killed, it could give an incentive to do more PvP.

Right now the objective is purely killing an PvE enemy, and I can see this becoming a problem with time, as people will just zerg rush the lord on both sides and ignore pvping

stronghold is much more fun than having to fight on a circle, where noob builds like shoutbow just spam aoe on the ground cant be effective.
Me as a warrior was asking to remove bow in hotm from warrior, cuz is so broken and unskilled that doesnt help the right warrior balance, in fact if there was no bow would be much more easy to balance this class. But no problem! cuz stronghold is gonna make the bow almost useless! i feel dps and fast movements are much more key in this gameplay, so i really prefer stronghold to conquest, i have also fun on just running on the map and burst people down without care too much to points^^, something that was not that easy to do in conquest cuz too small maps and too much rely on the circle fights.

Still, i’d say if they would have done a decent TDM mode with no respawn player elimination would have been better, if no like zerging just make a big map where players spawns are in a circle and alternate with one opponent, so that you can chose to go 1v1 or add 2v1 but letting maybe another man beeing 1v2 and so on, that would be fun and nice.

But i think it’s better stronghold than conquest.

After testing, I would do some changes:

· Needs a different queue
· Needs an spectator mode (“in live” and recorded – like Gw1)
· Need some kind of ranking (by guild)
· Increase time to 25min-30min
· ¡Victory or Dead!: After this time, all Lords and elite NPc’s go to middle (Supply place) to face to face.
· ¿Maybe allowing the hero to follow the caller? (can choose hero “on his way” or “follow the caller”)
· Increase damage and defense of Elite NPc’s and Lord
· External Guards:
· – Only can take damage by Archers
· – Should have some ranged attack
· – Should prioritize attack NPc’s (DoorBreakers>Archers>NPC’s)
· Archers:
· – Should have some stun skill
· – Needs some IA, when AoE or something they stay close one each other. Die easily.
· Doorbreakers:
– Decrease the HP
– Maybe autodestroy after break a door. (involves invoking more doorbreakers)

· .. And for sure, a lot of little diferent changes…

¡This could be a great mode to play!

… and some very important:
· Do something with progression/reward, like HA (Hero’s Ascend –Gw1). One of the big disappointers of the Gw2 PvP is that after a match (Coquest or Stronghold), the competition ends. This PvP needs a way with diferents levels to motivate continue playing. I would like to feel the same like in AH when you have won 3-4 consecutive matches and if you fail, you should re-start by “first stage”, but, if you continue wining, your reward increase as well as the enemy team level.
A basic example:
Three Kinds of Stronghold maps (Lvl 1, Lvl 2, Lvl 3 and, for example, each lvl map should be diferent, with diferent location supplies, diferent location treb, diferent kinds of heroes and location spam and diferent amount of supplies needed… ).
All teams starts in Lvl 1 map. If you win, you pass to lvl 2 map against other team that have won lvl 1 map. And the same till reach lvl 3 map. This “stupid” and “basic” thing could increase the motivation for people to play PvP. Just like HA

It’s so bored back to lobby and do the same (restart) each time you finish a match. Single matches are bored. No progression.

I hope explained well… I’m no native _^

So much non sense in 1 thread. If people truely think attacking is the right way to win this you’re absolutely fighting horrible people. There should be no way that a 5 or even 4 man team can’t kill you if you are just attacking. All they have to do is kill the doorbreakers. They could do that without even paying attention to the enemies. Not only that but the attackers are forced to watch and protect their doorbreakers from enemy guards. If anyone has been playing the rush the lord tactic from the getgo, he’s not playing the game mode correctly.

Any team that currently plays the full 15 minutes and only goes for objectives and groups up to kill solo people running around is heavily in favor. You sometimes can easily score 2x the points the enemy has by winning the fights of the buffs and killing players. Crushing the first gate is about the only offesive part you have to do and has a much higher rate of succes than the 50/50 lord rush from the getgo.

The problem is that this tactic only favors you to attack at around 3-2 left on the game, which makes it pretty much useless to even waste your time or by potentially throwing the game.

Archers need to be improved to have more use to the game mode.

There should be more obstructions to jump around and many invisible walls should be deleted. Crushed houses should also create obstructions to jump on or around. This gives the treb also much more use to the game mode for certain comps that rely on ’’parcour’’ like mesmers, thieves, etc.

Either the timer should be increased or it should be easier to attack.

The respawn time on players need to be increased or the doors /npc stronger as once they are through on all out attack the defenders have no time or space to do anything but defend because the influx of enemies is too much too quick.
My 2 cents anyway

I don’t play Stronghold this time because of my pc, but after watch some videos i need to ask: Why 2 guards have been removed?

These 2 guards are the only ones that are trick at times. Lots of players only aggro the 2 guards behind the first gate to let the doorbreakers pass, they forget these 2 guards you removed, these guards kill lots of doorbreakers because of that. After i notice that, i started to try to aggro 4 guards and it was a risk move, which sometimes I got killed. So i really like this part because of that risk.

I think these guards have been removed because of time. If its the case, the time should be increased or you can make the Lords fight each other in the supply camp when the times runs out like in GW1, it will make the end less anti-climatic.

Dungeon speed runners are most excited about Stronghold!They get competitive game mode!!!

1. Guards should have more HP and stronger HP recovery skills, so that they can resist easily while being attacked by 1-2 enemy players.

• Guards should also prioritize doorbreakers and then archers, instead of being easily taunted by players.

2. Archers should have a skill fact to cause the Guard’s recovery to be weakened or stopped. In this way, you will need these Archers, if you want to break Guards.

• Archers should also deal decent damage to Guards, but much less damage to gates.

These are my thoughts on the NPCs.

Haven’t played against good enemies, to see what could be improved at that point.

Suggestions:
-npcs recieve a higher ratio of healing from players who have high healing powe
—-makes guards tougher, encurages defensive play, rewards the use of the weakest stat

-players start with no supply instead 10 dropped supply is scattered in the center
—-stops the lame lord rush, encourages a fun team fight to start the match

-doorbreakers cost 2 supply
—-makes archers more useful, players will want to escort npcs more

-add the ranger longbow skill point blank shot to archers
—-gives archers a powerful way to assist vs players

-let us revive dead npcs with supply
—- once a team’s npcs are dead they are forced to dedicate more and more resources to keeping enemies out which makes it easier for the other team to stay on the offense

-Victory or Death!
—-PLEASE end the game with this. At 10 minutes the lords start their march and all living npcs joim them. Matches that ended like this in GW1 were super intense! It also rewards teams who managed to keep npcs alive.

sendaf.8375:

let us revive dead npcs with supply
—- once a team’s npcs are dead they are forced to dedicate more and more resources to keeping enemies out which makes it easier for the other team to stay on the offense

-Victory or Death!
—-PLEASE end the game with this. At 10 minutes the lords start their march and all living npcs joim them. Matches that ended like this in GW1 were super intense! It also rewards teams who managed to keep npcs alive.

Soo… where exactly is the reward for keeping npcs alive if you can revive them with supply?

Going to re-post some thoughts I had in another thread since this is the centralized thread for feedback.

Stronghold was a pretty painful experience for me because there were so many people playing and the game apparently thinks I’m so good that I should be able to carry teams who lose 4v3 teamfights. I got in about a dozen games, of those I won about 5.

That said, I would like to clarify my thoughts on the game mode.

• The game lasts long enough, it should not last longer. The game mode already lasts long enough and no ‘victory or death’ mechanic needs be implemented. What should happen, however, is that points gain should be balanced so that once you have a higher score you can’t just turtle until timeout. Winning really should be about progress to killing the lord, so offense.
• There should be increased incentives to kill players. This is a big issue right now. If you wipe the enemy team in your lord room, there is literally nothing gained except a delay to the inevitable. By the time you collect your team or anything after such a win, the enemy has respawned and can charge again. This results in too hard of a snowball effect. There should be increased penalties to death as the game goes on such as longer respawn times or even having a hero spawn for your team after every few kills your team gets.
• Archers are terrible. This whole mechanic is essentially ignored because archers are worthless. They need to do substantially more damage to guards, and guards in general need to be substantially harder to kill by single players.
• Channeling absolutely needs to be interrupted by damage, not just CC. This is important for the health of the game mode. Certain stability-stacking builds can just cap a hero and ignore players and then run off afterwards. The entire purpose of these capture mechanics is to make them a place where a fight takes place because both teams want control of the mechanic.

These, I feel, are the biggest issues in Stronghold right now.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Going to re-post some thoughts I had in another thread since this is the centralized thread for feedback.

Stronghold was a pretty painful experience for me because there were so many people playing and the game apparently thinks I’m so good that I should be able to carry teams who lose 4v3 teamfights. I got in about a dozen games, of those I won about 5.

That said, I would like to clarify my thoughts on the game mode.

• The game lasts long enough, it should not last longer. The game mode already lasts long enough and no ‘victory or death’ mechanic needs be implemented. What should happen, however, is that points gain should be balanced so that once you have a higher score you can’t just turtle until timeout. Winning really should be about progress to killing the lord, so offense.
• There should be increased incentives to kill players. This is a big issue right now. If you wipe the enemy team in your lord room, there is literally nothing gained except a delay to the inevitable. By the time you collect your team or anything after such a win, the enemy has respawned and can charge again. This results in too hard of a snowball effect. There should be increased penalties to death as the game goes on such as longer respawn times or even having a hero spawn for your team after every few kills your team gets.
• Archers are terrible. This whole mechanic is essentially ignored because archers are worthless. They need to do substantially more damage to guards, and guards in general need to be substantially harder to kill by single players.
• Channeling absolutely needs to be interrupted by damage, not just CC. This is important for the health of the game mode. Certain stability-stacking builds can just cap a hero and ignore players and then run off afterwards. The entire purpose of these capture mechanics is to make them a place where a fight takes place because both teams want control of the mechanic.

These, I feel, are the biggest issues in Stronghold right now.

Your points:

1) You don’t want VoD then go on to describe a problem VoD would solve.

2) I agree with you, but a stacking debuff might discourage people from getting into fights – maybe just up the base respawn timer.

3) Archers need to be more relevant – I would prefer they gave players a damage aura (+5% damage per Archer maybe) than became OP themselves.

4) Channeling only being rupted by CC is ESSENTIAL. This game mode isn’t like Temple where the game can be won with zero channels – the resources and heroes are REQUIRED to end the game (imagine a game where you needed to cap the Temple bottom buff to get any points – we’ve all seen groups of players sit down there for 3-5mins with no team capping it). It also encourages taking boon removal.

I’ll echo some of my previous feedback from the first stronghold beta (without so much side-talk), because hardly anything seems to have changed in a significant direction, and because I’m seeing a lot of my concerns now being echoed by others here.

• First of all, there’s too much going on in one map.

This format deserves more than one map, and I think it would be way more appropriate to separate it into 3- maps, (so that you can also vote for them in a separate queue) so that it’s much more newbie friendly. Currently there’s no basic idea for the format, it’s all stuffed into just one map.

1. One map could include a cannon/treb/ram/oilpot or something useable that you can use to assist the NPC’s, or use to defend against them, at close range.
2. Another map should include the heroes and on-demand NPC’s, (like the supply running mechanic or simply channeling a door) to develop strategies of creating a wave of attackers that fight together (push-pull strategy).
3. One map you could try a single lane with doors that players could damage, but automatic sentry guns that deal massive long-range damage to players. NPC’s would spawn at intervals automatically and fight each other in lane, then deal big damage to the sentry guns.
4. Last map could use door guards like in the Fort Aspenwood mission of GW1 that let the door drop once NPC’s are killed, but they and the door can be respawned by running supply. Healing/protecting/buffing the NPC’s should be significant. Like putting stacks of Might on them should increase their damage by a larger percent than putting might on a fellow player, and healing you do to them should be about 100% higher than to other players.

Essentially all of these secondary mechanics I’m suggesting are to force points of conflict between players for interesting PvP, but not making so many on one map that it gets diluted. Fighting at the doors, or at supply depots, or at mists essences, should be significant, but all these things currently actually diminish the PvP.

Mists essences are a perfect example of how the current mechanics discourage fighting. You can use some mild protection and stability and get the channel done, then run off, and if someone is already channeling it when you get there, you’re screwed unless you have boon stripping and CC together, so might as well leave the fight before you even begin. Unless it’s a teamfight at the essence, which would only happen if that’s the only secondary thing going on in the map, it encourages timer-watching then running away.

• Skritt bombers should attack once, for 25% of the door’s health, then disappear (burrow away like a dredge). They also despawn if the last door is broken.

Simplest solution to the DPS-race, forcing conflict to happen by the supply depot. Currently there’s no significant advantage to fighting by the supply, since all you have to do is buy 5 doorbreakers and rush the gates. If you do happen to lose all 5, then rush the whole team to take supply, fuel up, and re-rush the gates with 10 doorbreakers. Instead of having to kill each and every doorbreaker on the first push, which defenders are finding impossible unless more than half the team goes to defense, you’d only need to kill 2 doorbreakers to keep the outer gate alive that much longer.

• Defending guards should focus 100% on attacking doorbreakers, and be given piercing shots.

This is a newbie-friendly suggestion to help people that are unfamiliar with the game’s major objectives. Once the door guards are taken down of course they’re not a threat, but if defending players focus on attacking players it shouldn’t be the cause for the door to be broken. Forcing attackers to fight the NPC’s briefly gives the otherwise always outnumbered defenders an edge for that moment, but currently you can just go attacking and ignore the guards since they’ll start attacking players and have no chance to take out the doorbreakers, quickly wiping the few defending players first.

Here are my observations

Main problem is that there is very little reason to PvP

Example 1: channeling with pulsing stab makes interrupting them almost impossible

Solution: keep the CC requirement, but make you unable to receive self-stab while channeling.

Example 2: for people running supply there’s no motive to kill enemy supply runner…

Solution: make the supply depot area a capture point!
– neutral point: both teams can channel for supply, damage to interrupt
– captured point: only the point owning team can channel for supply, CC to interrupt channel
– 3-4 second to neutralize, 8 seconds to fully capture
– make treb shots able to neutralize the supply point if it hits all enemies, this grant more plays for this mechanic and gives potential for some clutch moments for spectators in high-end games
– This change will make sure there are alot of intense team fights in the middle since supply is the lifeblood for success in this game mode.

Example 3: hero buff is counter-intuitive to the PvP nature of the game mode.
The hero grants -50% dmg and -50% condi to the players and not the other way around. Why? It means the enemy team will focus the hero and not the enemy players escorting him since the players are the ones taking reduced damage, not the hero.

Solution: make the hero take reduced damage based on nearby allies (-15% dmg and condi duration/ player). This means that undefended heros will get rekt hard and in fights with players around the hero killing the players first will be a priority.

Example 4: killing players does almost nothing. In conquest killing a player is very good since you can instantly capitalize on it to outnumber in fights. But in SH with no capture points (although my suggestion above adds one) and the NPC heaviness, players respawn too fast to make a death matter.

Solution: increase respawn time to 30 seconds and 1 minute after the 10 minute mark at which point “Victory or Death!” kicks in. VoD means that both lords run out to the mid point with all the living NPCs. This is another solution to create more scenarios for PvP battles.

And finally… archers need a desperate buff in some way, a damage increase and possibly some super speed so they can get ahead of doorbreakers and thus actually able to defend them. Guards need to be alot tougher against players too to warrant an archer spawn, especially since after the aforementioned changes supply will be alot harder to gather.

I played in both Stronghold open betas (total ~12 hours). I played on partial or full teams and participated in the NA tournament. The game mode needs significant work if it’s going to last more than a few weeks.

Bugs

• Sometimes you cannot see supply icons on allies. Seems to happen to the same players across games.
• Above the blue NPC doors, there’s kitten in the corner of the roof which you can fall into.
• Despite the patch notes, I saw a lord who was stomped be revived after the match ended. I think it was by a banner.

Annoyances

• NPCs are too chatty sometimes e.g. “Our gate is under attack” looping constantly.
• NPC ping on the minimap when Mist Essence spawns looks the same as a player ping. Pulse the Mist Essence icon instead.
• Offensive NPCs can be inside each other and it’s hard to tell how many are there.

Strategy
The optimal strategies for Stronghold have been figured out. There’s still refinement in the details, but the general idea won’t change much. If you weren’t with an organized team, you may not have seen it; the information hasn’t had time to disseminate and PUG teams always seem indifferent toward coordinating. Both strategies are shallow and not is very fun.

1. PvE Rush Use initial supply for a large wave of Doorbreakers (Dbs) and escort them down the lane with 4 or 5 players (optional one defender to delay). A couple players go ahead to disable the treb user and distract/kill the guards. You’ll need some players who can counter CC and heal DBs. Once the outer gate is down, pull the guard groups off the path and kill them while the DBs pass. The DBs will quickly finish off the inner gate and you can graveyard rush the lord until it dies.
   The key to its success is that it’s simple to execute but defending against it requires a much higher level of skill and coordination. If your enemies kill your NPCs, there’s a good chance you’ve killed many enemy players in the process. Your team just needs to re-supply and repeat. The defending team is already behind and if they don’t immediately return to stop you, they’ll end up even more behind. This strategy only loses to better executed PvE rushes and against a well-organized, skilled team doing the Full Defense strategy.
   This will be the predominant strategy; it works most of the time, is easy to do, and it’s quick. Even when it fails, you’re rarely behind. And because it’s quick, you get more games in over time.
2. Full Defense Everyone defends at the start. Focus on killing DBs over players so that the gate will take minimal damage. Retreat inside the gate if you’re in danger. Once the NPCs are dead, if you killed enough players, summon some DBs yourself and have one person kill the enemy guards. Everyone else goes back to defend and repeat. If you have some breathing room, push down the lane and kill enemy NPCs sooner. The goal is not lose until the 15min elapses while racking up team score from NPC kills.
   The shortcoming for this strategy is that it requires players who can focus fire the NPCs and not die too easily. If you can’t stalemate or win a teamfight, this strategy won’t work. It tends to work better with sturdier builds and movement impairing effects.

Areas to Improve

• Doorbreakers are always best DBs put out far more damage before they die compared to anything else, even the Mist Hero, and the defending guards aren’t a factor. In order to stop DBs, defender players have to kill all of them. The pace is so fast that it doesn’t allow a team to react.
• Defending guards promote too much PvE. The DB one-shot mechanic of guards and the ease with which they can be distracted puts too much emphasis on PvE, while providing no benefit. Defending NPCs from players is one thing; defending NPCs from NPCs is too far. Making the guards more powerful would only increase the PvE feeling.
• Full Defense is too rewarding Planning for timer victory from the start should not be a valid strategy. Score should predominately reflect offensive progress.
• Offensive NPCs chase players pointlessly Applies to Archers and Mist Hero. The purpose of the offensive NPCs is to break the gate and kill the lord. They should prioritize that.
• NPC Stacking A staggered offensive lane is much easier to stop than a large clump of NPCs. At a PUG level, there’s no easy way to coordinate spawning multiple NPCs at once outside of the initial push. However, stacking NPCs is often necessary to break heavy defense.
• Mist Hero is ineffective for come-backs In all the games I played, my team summoning a Mist Hero was either inconsequential or detrimental compared to other choices. The Mist Hero is too easy to kill as it lumbers down the lane and if there’s still a gate present, doesn’t do meaningful damage before dying. The time spent to go out of your way, channel it, and come back, puts the team in a 4v5 for too long with too little of a future benefit to realize.
• Trebuchet is too easy to disable It takes one person to just CC the operator off the trebuchet and render it useless. And the offensive player can just hop down and help his offensive lane, so there’s nothing lost for attackers. It also puts more things on the map for casual players to worry about.
• No reason to split up Both of the strategies I described put 4 or 5 players together. There’s not enough reason to split up and perform different tasks at any given time. If you’re losing in one area, you can’t abandon it and recover in another like in Conquest.
• Snowball effect If you’re behind, the best you can do is lose slower. Succeeding on defense doesn’t give enough time or map advantage to swing momentum. By the time you grab supply and summon new NPCs, there are already enemy NPCs bearing down your gate or players at your lord.

Suggestions

• Suicide Doorbreakers DBs do more damage per attack, but only last for one attack (die or run away). The initial supply wave won’t be enough to break both gates, which puts the supply depot into play. Killing a single DB is more meaningful; failing to kill them all isn’t an automatic loss. Focus fire becomes important, and so does coordinating supply use. DBs will have a more clear trade-off with Archers.
• Offensive NPCs should not target players Applies to Archers and Mist Heroes. Offensive NPCs are the only way to break gates; they should do that first and let players handle players.
• Change the defending guards Remove the DB one-shot mechanic from guards; make guards similar to lord room guards (more damage and HP). Their purpose should be to help players defend, not defend for players or be defended by players. While a defending player is attacking an offensive NPC, the guard can hurt or hamper an attacking player from killing the defending player. This makes the PvE aspect feel less imperative.
• Mist Hero elite skill death-touches gates Provides a real comeback mechanic for a team that’s behind. Since the elite has a cooldown, the Mist Hero isn’t a walking “I win” button. And the cast-time on the elite skill provides a counter besides killing the hero outright.

Here are some of the things I read on this thread and others and I see a problem from players feedback and why some stuff wouldn’t or can’t work:

Players able to do damage to doors

Whatever small damage players would be able to do on doors,it would be too big. You already get 1 supply at start,so what would stop players,to spawn those 5 doorbreakers and really just zerg to enemy gates,stack 25might and nuke doors. It would literally be a race to,who kills enemy Lord first. Maybe you would even see only 5 Warriors (Or 5 Necro Liches) with greatsswords and axes,berserker amulet,etc.
Suggestion : Leave it as it is. Only NPCs can do damage to doors

Players actually want more NPCs

People are you serious? You want even more NPCs(defensive,builders,etc.)? I wouldn’t mind 2-4 more between Outer and Inner gate,but I am against creating another NPC,that players would spawn.
As it is now,there is plenty of NPCs,if not already too much. Personally I’d make Archers defensive NPCs,where they’d rush to defend gate and Lord.

Able to interupt channel by damage

No,no,no. If player interupts channel by dmg,not cc,then team will just put someone with 1.2k range around channel area and it’ll never get “capped”
I agree,that is BS that people can use elites and get stability from that. That NEEDS TO GO NOW ! Other than that bs (which is huge), I like that you have to use cc for interupt. You actually have to commit to fight in a sense.

Making a conquest area within new mode

Why would you want conquest? So all the time people kittened about conquest…guess what they want now…CONQUEST! !! Really ?!?!?!?! MAN UP and get into fights kitten . You see someone in middle channeling…fight him/her. Don’t just give them free channels.

Upping dmg on NPCs

Not everyone plays bunker builds,where you take 50k dmgs and able to heal all that up. If NPCs get 5-10% dmg, might not be worst thing,but if they gain double dmg they do now,it’ll be too big. If NPCs do too much dmg,player will kitten,how they die from NPCs,that players don’t even matter.

I also found some interesting feedback,which I think it would imrpove Stronghold:

- NPCs get healing increased given from their players
- doorbreakers costing 2 supplies
- removing trebs
- possibly removing NPCs all together and having players get supply and run with bomb or some destructive weapon for short time,where that bomb/weapon could only dmg NPCs and gates
- Guards getting more HP and toughness
- Doorbreakers explode,when killed or after they destroy gate
-Removing intial supply players get at start. That means players would start with ZERO supply at start
- Supply area not so spamable. Only one channel at a time or something

I wish Anet would really take some time and respond to us,which changes are they really gonna make from feedback,so we could get an idea.

Harrier.9380:

sendaf.8375:

let us revive dead npcs with supply
—- once a team’s npcs are dead they are forced to dedicate more and more resources to keeping enemies out which makes it easier for the other team to stay on the offense

-Victory or Death!
—-PLEASE end the game with this. At 10 minutes the lords start their march and all living npcs joim them. Matches that ended like this in GW1 were super intense! It also rewards teams who managed to keep npcs alive.

Soo… where exactly is the reward for keeping npcs alive if you can revive them with supply?

The reward for keeping your npcs alive would be not having to waste supply on rezing them… Instead the defender could spend that spare supply on sending archers/doorbreakers

I’m just going to post the contents of my Topic because it’ll rot in exile and my ideas will end up in waste:

Over the duration of playing and thinking about Stronghold, I’ve gathered some ideas that I thought conflict with the gamemode:

AI

• In a gamemode that revolves around NPCs and their role in the game, their AIs have to be superior.
• It’s great that the Doorbreakers ignore players and proceed to their main duty, but what about the guards? Gaining the aggro of guards to ensure the safety of Doorbreakers is too easy. Guards should prioritize Door Breakers whenever they are within ‘aggro range’.
• If the AI isn’t improved, at least give Guards both dedicated ranged and melee attacks so luring away the guards wouldn’t be as effective. If the guards are attacking the players from ranged, they could possibly hit the Doorbreakers in crossfire.
• Archers get distracted with summons (turrets, minions, illusions). Is there a way to create a chain of priorities? Like Players>Guards>Summons.

SUPPLY

• Once all doors are broken, running supply seems counterproductive.
• Archers don’t nearly have enough impact on the game. They seems fairly useless, don’t deal enough damage, and don’t provide any support for the allied players.
• Support could be achieved by giving the Archers a skill that immobilizes, blinds, or combo fields (fire fields).
• Allow players to invade the opposing team’s Archer/Doorbreaker barracks and destroy them. Destroyed barracks would require supply to repair. This allows for multiple strategies and potentially more PvP interaction.
• Perhaps have players always spawn without any supply so they can duke it out in the middle, promoting PvP. Once the first wave of Doorbreakers are spawned, one just needs to escort them and kill guards. With supreme CC abilities, one can use the same initial wave of Doorbreakers to destroy both gates.

OBJECTIVES

• SH pits players in a challenge to keep an NPC alive within a game that has poor support for allied healing capabilities.
• Consider that skills can rally the Lord. When I test things, I like to use whatever is most effective (and possibly cheesey by default) to see what needs fixing/class balancing. I ran Warrior with Battle Standard and Mercy Runes. This combination rallies the Lord with 75% health. Once the lord has been rallied, the enemy team is usually at a really poor state, health-wise, and wipes.
• Make use of the NPC oriented gamemode by creating more uses for supply. Spawn more Guards at the outer gates, inner gates, or in the Lord’s room for a cost that is scaled positively depending on their proximity to the Lord (Lord’s Room guards supply costs a lot more than outer gate guards).
• Channeling Mist Essences is way too easy when using Stability/Invulnerability. Temple of the Silent Storm had a good mechanic when channeling communes. If you replicated that system into SH and increased the amount of health a Hero has, more players would be drawn to this NPC-free objective (thus promoting PvP).
• It seems relatively unfair that the first Mist Essence spawns in favor of one team. Even though there is a 30 second buffer between announcement and communing, the team in favor would have an advantage when players respawn or when Archers are summoned.
• Consider that allied downed players rally when an enemy Hero dies.
• Lord’s Room guards should have more of an impact. The Cleric should have more noticeable healing capabilities. The Mage should place fields around each guard:
  1. Cleric-Shield of Absorbtion
  2. Archer-Smoke
  3. Lord-Water
  4. Soldier-Retaliation

Fine Tuning / Minor Complaints:

• Blue Team’s bridge leading up to the inner gate is significantly more longitudinal compared to Red Team’s. This means that it takes a shorter amount of time to reach Blue Inner Gate from Blue Outer Gate, and a shorter amount of time to reach Red Treb from Red Base (without teleports, gap closers ofc).
• Blue Team Doorbreakers seem to take a longer path (less diagonals) when leaving their spawn
• Turai Ossa’s voice seems whiney.
• Blue Lord’s voice acting makes me feel like I’m a child being talked to by an elementary school teacher.

Here is the Warrior build I made for SH
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-sg-s;1NKkN0_4NLVQ0;9;6551;419A16B2;0TNW6L;1ZF18ZF186o

Shouts for NPC healing
GS for braindead anti-NPC damage
Hammer for CC
Dolyak Signet for passive toughness and Stability (basically guarantees successful Mist Essence commune)
Traits/Ammy for Durability and Utility
Mercy runes for Bannering Lord (Mercy Runes + 6pnts in Tactics = superior rezzing)

Thanks all, I look forward to comments.

Some general comments on suggestions:

Starting Supply
Players starting with supply is better than if they did not. If players didn’t have supply, the only option for teams would be to rush the supply depot. You’d have a teamfight and whoever loses would likely lose the game. The other team could spawn a large wave of NPCs and then deny supply.

Defending Guards vs. Doorbreakers
A big reason for the PvE feel in Stronghold is that your first goal when attacking is to stop enemy NPCs – not players – from killing your Doorbreakers. As long as the “NPCs to counter NPCs” design remains, the game will have a PvE feel. Defending NPCs should contribute to overall damage by supplementing players. Ultimately, players should be responsible for focusing key offensive NPCs.

Interrupting a Channel with Damage
I can see arguments for both CC-only interrupts and any damage interrupting. I think any damage interrupting channels, but using shorter channels, would be best. It means players can’t ignore other players; they must fight or give up the objective. This applies to both supply and mist essence. Supply is essential to the game, but with a quick channel, you would have to be focusing on a player to stop them. Mist essence isn’t essential to winning; it’s intended to be a momentum shifter which has a risk in going for it.

Timer End Condition
Instead of focusing on ways to resolve a game which lasts for 15 minutes, focus on things that make the game stalemate or run for that amount of time and ways to address them. When most games must be resolved by some end-game condition, it seems like the time spent getting there is a waste. For reference, conquest matches usually last around 10 minutes once they start.

My complaint is that it’s too zergy and heavily PvE oriented atm. I gave some radical suggestions in other topics, but I think there might be a lot easier way.

Make damage interrupt supply channeling but not hero channeling. I liked the way it currently works at first, but it is actually a huge problem. Running supply 24/7, spawning NPCs like there is no tomorrow is one of the greatest issues – if Anet makes it so that any form of damage can interrupt channels just like on Temple then people will actually have duels/teamfights for supply not to mention there will be less NPCs running around thus it’ll be less heavy on PvE.

What’s the purpose of the two feeble Guards at each team’s respawns? Since gates are the biggest items needing defending, I don’t quite understand these Guard placements.

I feel they should be replaced with an immobile arrow cart, used as an anti team camp mechanism. Adjust its range so it can’t reach any other objective on the map.

I think a hit from Archers need a Knockback or knockdown effect. That makes for some interesting strategies when trying to counter a team who is on the heavy defence.

I say, it’s a beta, treat it as a beta, not like Preview.

Next time, give it 5 days. During those 5 days, test couple versions. On Monday, let’s say that it’s regular what we’ve got. On Tuesday, make some significant change to Archers for example and see how people react. Maybe on Thursday, bump the player cap to 6 or 8 per team and see how people like it.

Run similar rating/opinion system like in GW2 betas. After the match, give an option to leave feedback in-game.

As I said previously, I get that you want to time your previews and limit them, so people stay excited. It’s okay for majority of PvE, features etc.

But when you want to get feedback on competitive game modes, treat it like a beta and give it a proper shot.

As of my concerns – I would slightly reduce the amount of HP on Doorbreakers and bump their armor instead. They’re too easy to kill as Zerk and take too much time as Condition.

Also, make that Supply Depot more important. After first 5 minutes it was usually that people were not even spending or getting any supply anymore, just waiting for Hero channels. Once the inner gates are down, getting supply is straight useless (because of archers, mostly). Add some variety. After Doorbreakers break inner gate, replace them with another type of mob/buff. Maybe defensive one? Maybe upgraded version of Archers?

Third concern – Guards. Reduce their leash range, make them always prioritize Doorbreakers, make them ranged with cleaving, piercing projectiles.
I bring this up because I was easily able to grab the aggro from all guard packs while escorting Doorbreakers, keep them away from any skritts (just being aware of their bolas killing skritt if they’re in crossfire range), kite to safe spot and finish off by myself while all 5 Skritt easily take down all gates without any focus.

I like idea of having Arrow Carts instead of Guards. I imagine those would be tougher to kill,you wouldn’t be able to cc them and they can have piercing arrows,meaning it won’t hit just 1st person,but all the rest in arrows path.

Again we have no idea,what they will actually change,but let’s say Stronghold won’t change all that much….but let’s hope,they have more maps in future plans ready to create and let’s pretend we are building those maps with our feedback.
Things I’d like to see :

-player gets some bomb/weapon for short amount of time from Supply area and that bomb/weapon is only able to damage NPCs and Gates (I am really liking this idea more and more I think about it. That was great feedback )
- if it’s a tie at end,Lords don’t clash,but each side chooses their Champion player and whoever wins that 1v1,that team wins
- Arrow Carts protect Gates and have piercing effect. You can’t cc AC (duh)
- You can’t use elites,when channeling
- No trebs
- Doorbreakers may stay,but they cost 2-4 supplies. Archers either become defensive NPC or delete them. If they become defensive NPCs,they cost 2 supplies
- Timer stays as it is. Trust me,no one will want to stay in 20+min match and not being able to get out. You already read about 4v5s,how people afk and so on in forums,so why would you want up the timer…please no

Fixing this game-mode is simple.
-Remove From Spvp
-Add to a Queue from WvW
-Wins Reward points to your world.
-The pvp/pve hybrid WvW players get new things to do
-It stays the hell out of Spvp (I’d rather have nothing then yet another crap map in Spvp)

Then get rid of Skyhammer and Spirit Watch

Then change Courtyard to a 3v3 arena with a Ranked and Unranked leaderboard

Oh yeah, and instead of giving us new maps just give us an acctually VISABLE mmr/elo/gecko2 w/e idc leaderboard separated for solo and team.

Create an in-game tournament system (separate for group and solo) That is 2-3 times a weak at set times requiring a minimum signup. Teams are auto generated (assuming solo) at the start time based on queue position filling up games (people in the end of the queue or not online get cut and games start. Repeat for all winners (assuming solo to account for leavers so remix teams basically) Prizes for 1-4th place

Oh and while we are on the topic off grinding make us a armor set and weapons that are not grind-able (TITLES TOO), but only obtainable from seasons (make them last 2-3 months and based on your ranking you get a number of tickets that season) Above tournaments could reward same model weapons but different skins (ex zenith achievement weaps and their alternative)

Do the following THEN worry about making new maps for Spvp. New maps wont keep players, a VISIBLY competitive reward system and leaderboards will.

Idk, on ranger, it’s really fun to defend. Same with nade engi. Just pull archer agro, tag the doors, and then nuke the archers. I rather liked the map, but I played it more for getting fights using the mechanics rather than utilizing the mechanics to win as fast as possible.