Guild Wars 2

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.

Number 3 is exactly why I made another post on here just a little while ago. I agree, defending is useless, just rush lord and hope your team does more damage then theirs.

Capitol City.4856:

Number 3 is exactly why I made another post on here just a little while ago. I agree, defending is useless, just rush lord and hope your team does more damage then theirs.

I heard that players can’t break down doors. So what does “rush lord” mean exactly?

bhagwad.4281:

Capitol City.4856:

Number 3 is exactly why I made another post on here just a little while ago. I agree, defending is useless, just rush lord and hope your team does more damage then theirs.

I heard that players can’t break down doors. So what does “rush lord” mean exactly?

It means to spawn a thousand doorbreakers and run at the door after the players have easily dispatched of the guards, which they easily do. Doorbreakers knock down doors in half a second, so rushing takes no time at all.

This isn’t a PvP map. You may as well be completing a heart for your world completion with the amount of PvE you do in this map. The worst part is this is the only map/game type we are getting for the expansion.

You dont need to spawn tonnes of doorbreakers. 1 doorbreaker can get through a gate in seconds. If your guards are dead theres very little you can do to stop it. What seems to happen now is bombing the guards, spawn 1 doorbreaker and go offensive before the other team can. Stopping this is very hard because 1v1 against a guy with a doorbreaker you have to choose. Target the doorbreaker and get owned or target the player and let the gate go down.

This is by far the worst PvP mode I have ever played EVER. New players have no idea what they are suppose to do. I’ve played 4-5 games and in everyone not one person on my team knew what they where suppose to be doing. Not one. Where as the other team seemed to comprise of nearly the same players every game that knew what they where doing and just rolled us for fun.

There should be an in game explanation of how the map works during a Beta. So everyone knows what they are suppose to do, and how the map is suppose to work. That way people can give feed back about what they liked, disliked, what they would change. As it stands I personally saw a lot of people saying, well that’s me done for PvP for 24 hours. Which I think is a bad thing. And with other people activity attacking you you’re not going to be able to “stumble” on to what you are supposed to be doing. And before anyone has the bright idea of “there’s a vid posted about how to play, you/they should watch it, or say kitten L2P” , this is all about testing the map, not us getting a “free taste” of what the game mode is like. If we have fun, bonus for us, but ANet wants feed back. Bug reports. As it stands I feel they wont be getting a lot of that.

From what I saw while playing, I agree with OP. NPC’s just melt. The go down quicker than WvW NPC’s and they can go down fast. I think there health should be brought in line with WvW NPC’s. Lords health should regen when OOC.

Sadly that’s all I have. I’ve not go time tomorrow to play anymore, or do I really want to, as my experience with the map has been a bad one. 5 games and 5 losses on the bounce kinda puts a dampener on your enjoyment. That might have been different if the other players on my team knew what they had to do. But maybe I’m asking too much of something as simple as an in game explanation(even though the standard maps tell you what to do at the start of each and every game)

Pretty much point 3 is spot on.

Spawn doorbreakers, rush lord, bypass players, kill lord.

Yawn… next map please.

i liked it i can play healing guardian and be viable well done to Arena Net

You can ignore players only because the opponents are incompetent.
More competent ones will kill all door breakers with one treb thrown. More competent players are able to stall out door-breakers while staying alive, and guard all the incoming attack with 2 people, while other people can help breaking doors/ running supplies/ killing guards. More competent players will kill people with supply and steal their supply, directly stopping people from summoning doorbreaker.

Currently I win 10 matches consecutively because there’re just too many incompetent newbies trying out atm. No reason to use them as an example to justify it’s a bad mode.

I have a different perspective than most of the other posts. Prior to GW2, I basically never played anything pvp. In GW2, I’ve been doing WvW roaming for about a 1.5 years and putting in a ton of time at that. I feel comfortable roaming and accumulated over 1000 ranks with most of it being by myself or with one or two others.

But I didn’t really like pvp much before today. I’ve had a bit of trouble adapting the builds I like for WvW to something that actually works, and I was originally lost on the maps. So many of the practice fights were really unbalanced that it was hard to separate times I played poorly from times where I just didn’t understand the map or had an unbalanced team.

Today, I got to play four games of stronghold so far. I may be biased because my team happened to win all four. Certainly there are a lot of people playing today who don’t spend a ton of time doing pvp. But in my games, I tried everything except trebbing. I ran some supply and had fights at mid. I escorted attackers and fought to take down the lord. I helped defend my lord. I interrupted channeling a hero. I tried to channel a hero for my team.

In any case, I had fun. I look forward to this being in game. And I’m hopeful there’s a way to play this and not accidentally get put into a conquest map.

Played 2 rounds for the first time. Luckily, my teammates knew what they were doing and were helpful giving directions. The first game had a fair amount of pvp combat. Second game I just followed the team to rush lord. I don’t think I’ve encountered any of the opposition.

I know this is the only expansion for pvp but I was wondering if you guys can include Capricorn again, minus the water combat. Or turn it to a TDM.

You guys used to introduce new pvp maps more often i.e. temple, spirit watch, skyhammer, courtyard. It would be awesome if we got more than this map.

Why is there pve in my pvp?

On topic: Yes there is no point in fighting each other, and because of point number two you don’t even need to fight mid, which is weird you can’t interrupt considering spirit watch with orb you can interrupt the channeling. I personally think they need to stop making these games types/maps with bunch of other objectives. If its conquest focus on points not a dumb orb or an op gun. Hope they get rid of this game mode.

Overall I just do not want ANY pve in my pvp. I am ok with different maps, but in the end if I have to fight npc’s I have zero interest.

There are 300+ hearts and a whole other game mode for that. Give me players to fight.. Heck add more siege or whatever but make it about PvP, and throw ALL the pve out the window.

Siobhan.3582:

Overall I just do not want ANY pve in my pvp. I am ok with different maps, but in the end if I have to fight npc’s I have zero interest.

There are 300+ hearts and a whole other game mode for that. Give me players to fight.. Heck add more siege or whatever but make it about PvP, and throw ALL the pve out the window.

If you don’t like PVE part, focus on defending. You’d fight alot of foes because many people will be focus on the offense part.

Hmm I guess to maximize pvp interaction, have all 5 teammates defend and deny them from killing lord. You win thru player kills till time run out. IDK just thinking of ways to make this more interesting.

I got on my trap condi ranger and had fun defending. I didn’t enjoy rushing their lord that much tho.

Yup this is so number 3, supply spam ncps reapeat untill doors are down rush lord you win/ignore enemies.

Only played 3 games

/zzz boring

Doorbreakers are a little overpowered, because a single one can solo a gate in seconds. Guards can one shot them but they are so easily killed by players. When a gate has no guards, you might think 1 doorbreaker will force a player to move to defensive lane and treb or manually kill the doorbreaker. You might think this is the dynamic where you create outnumbered fights on opposite sides of the map and force enemy players to move out of position, but this doesn’t happen and heres why:

1 attacker + doorbreaker vs 1 defender + guard is problematic because the priority for the attacker is always to kill the guard. He can die in the process and it does not matter because you can always spawn more doorbreakers but you can’t spawn more guards. This is a huge problem that results in suicide offensive.

1 attacker + doorbreaker vs 1 defender (no guards) almost always works in favour of the attacker because the defender has to kill the doorbreaker, even if it means losing the 1v1. Its better to kill the doorbreaker and thus kill an offensive than kill the player and allow the doorbreaker to knock down a gate.

What ends up happening is a variant of the following:

1 player spawns a doorbreaker and moves to defensive lane. The other 4 zerg the guards in offensive lane and any defender or treb operator. You can still start another 4 doorbreaker offensives without ever having to run supply. If the other team overcommits to defence it still works in your favour. Even if your players die they respawn and can start more doorbreaker offensives and pin the other team in their own base.

There is no real counter to this so what the other team does is exactly the same thing in their offensive lane and it becomes a hero lord gank race. The likely winner is the team that can get both gates down first and not be terrible at fighting on the lord.

I recorded one of my games starting from right after coming back from mid with supply and deciding to go defend our doors. http://youtu.be/MIjnt-tx1Ro

I’m sure the biggest thing that stands out is that most players are pretty new to pvp (including me). But I spend most of this game fighting other players. I waste some time checking defenses unnecessarily, and I didn’t understand how hero channeling worked at first.

But this wasn’t a boring game for me. Hopefully people don’t judge this too quickly

This mode is actually the most fun I had with PvP for a while. Much better than Conquest.

its the most unpredictable map also the time of stomp is really dramatic once again well done Anet

players needs to learn use the treb properly.
the treb one shot archers and gate breakers.

the problem is that most players do not use the treb.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

players needs to learn use the treb properly.
the treb one shot archers and gate breakers.

the problem is that most players do not use the treb.

Exactly!

Even with the added timer now, it’s pretty much a guaranteed win as long as your team does two things and only two things:
1. make skritt
2. rush their base/lord.
The only way to counter this tactic is for the other team to do the same thing but even faster. Defense is completely pointless. 90% of the stuff in the map is pointless distraction, including the hero spawns. All that matters is dumping all your initial supply into skritt door bombers at the start, and then following them to victory.

One of the main reasons defense is pointless is because it takes almost as much effort to get to your own lord as it does theirs. A possible solution I can think of that might help is to make it a lot easier to get between your own base and your own lord. If the developers don’t want to redesign the whole geography of the map, then maybe an allied-only teleporter that can take you back and forth between a spot near your initial spawn area (maybe where the supply doors are) and your lord’s room would work out well.

after killing my most played gamemode wvw with the stabi change plz do not the same with pvp and give stronghold a seperate qeue at least for ranked. So no player who really want to play PLAYER VS PLAYER is forced to play this kitten boring pve kitten .

and for next pvp patch no new gamemode. Only 2-3 new conquest maps + 3-4 other tdm maps with seperate qeue.

So…

In point number 1, you’re telling us to spend more time fighting NPCs (buffing their HP).

In point number 2, you’re pointing out that you haven’t really researched this game mode much since this was announced as intentional long ago.

And in point number 3, you’re saying that we spend too much time fighting NPCs…

Well…thanks for your input, lol.

Archers needs to ignore players until all the Guards are down.

I’ve completed about 10 matches already and the last one took less than 3 minutes to finish.

I never thought I’d ever say this but:

I actually have more fun in this mode if my teammates are newb/inexperienced.

This is a game that I think requires some real explanation in game. Every match I’ve played, no one has known what’s going on or what to do. A lot of people don’t read blog posts about it, it could really benefit from explanation in the game itself. I also agree that it’s pretty much just a lord rush, no reason to defend or anything, it ends way too quickly. If it was harder to knock down the doors or you had to get points to make the keep available for you to knock down or something, I’d enjoy that more. But right now, it’s nothing more than a rush and kill lord game and that’s not very fun.

Saiyan.1704:

Archers needs to ignore players until all the Guards are down.

Why would that even matter? Players can, should and already do kill the guards before archers even reach the outer gate. When you are on inner gate the priority is once again to kill the guards asap. Its worth doing this even if your whole team dies in the process because players respawn and make new doorbreakers but guards never come back.

Dahkeus.8243:

So…

In point number 1, you’re telling us to spend more time fighting NPCs (buffing their HP).

In point number 2, you’re pointing out that you haven’t really researched this game mode much since this was announced as intentional long ago.

And in point number 3, you’re saying that we spend too much time fighting NPCs…

Well…thanks for your input, lol.

1. no i’m saying you should need to use strategy and keep your NPC’s alive by fighting off other players, not just one shotting the guards and watching the doorbreakers win the game.

2. This is stupid and needs to change.

3. NPC’s should be fighting each other while we assist them, see DotA.

All 3 points are valid, I would like to see some suggestions on ways to remedy them. If anything, I think Point 2 really should be evaluated a bit more with ideas.

Some ideas from me:

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?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. no i’m saying you should need to use strategy and keep your NPC’s alive by fighting off other players, not just one shotting the guards and watching the doorbreakers win the game.

That means spending more time fighting NPCs. And I’d love to see what ability you’re using to “1-shot” the guards unless you’re getting buffed with might from your teammates first. =P

ZudetGambeous.9573:

2. This is stupid and needs to change.

Well, then thank you for gracing us with your eloquent and detailed explanation that is so thoroughly expresses why this needs to change that no counter-argument could stand a chance.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

3. NPC’s should be fighting each other while we assist them, see DotA.

…they do.

Now if you want to argue that archers should focus NPCs over players, then I agree, but NPCs are specifically designed to counter each other and to only really be an annoyance at most to players. That’s why archers 1-shot doorbreakers, but hardly put a dent against players.

phokus.8934:

Pretty much point 3 is spot on.

Spawn doorbreakers, rush lord, bypass players, kill lord.

Yawn… next map please.

I hate to admit it but after tonite & doing stronghold last time, you get kinda …Bored of it. :/

& it’s not becuz i did it in about 3 min 45 seconds. I mean despite i’m happy for a new map, in the end, it’s just not that exiting of a game mode to play. After a few hours, your kinda done & meh… Seriously, i hope this is not the extent of HoT has to offer. Or else they will be in real trouble.

Bitoku Kishi.8346:

Even with the added timer now, it’s pretty much a guaranteed win as long as your team does two things and only two things:
1. make skritt
2. rush their base/lord.
The only way to counter this tactic is for the other team to do the same thing but even faster. Defense is completely pointless. 90% of the stuff in the map is pointless distraction, including the hero spawns. All that matters is dumping all your initial supply into skritt door bombers at the start, and then following them to victory.

One of the main reasons defense is pointless is because it takes almost as much effort to get to your own lord as it does theirs. A possible solution I can think of that might help is to make it a lot easier to get between your own base and your own lord. If the developers don’t want to redesign the whole geography of the map, then maybe an allied-only teleporter that can take you back and forth between a spot near your initial spawn area (maybe where the supply doors are) and your lord’s room would work out well.

You haven’t seen a syncronized team on the defense.

Push is countered
Zerk/Dps class will lose to a cele/sustain classes. No npcs will get through because all of them are dead with AoE.

To top it off you’ll never get a soul channel. They’re so bunky that you’ll need to 1v2 or 1v3 + hard focus to down 1 player (with perma stability) in 10s

Saiyan.1704:

Bitoku Kishi.8346:

Even with the added timer now, it’s pretty much a guaranteed win as long as your team does two things and only two things:
1. make skritt
2. rush their base/lord.
The only way to counter this tactic is for the other team to do the same thing but even faster. Defense is completely pointless. 90% of the stuff in the map is pointless distraction, including the hero spawns. All that matters is dumping all your initial supply into skritt door bombers at the start, and then following them to victory.

One of the main reasons defense is pointless is because it takes almost as much effort to get to your own lord as it does theirs. A possible solution I can think of that might help is to make it a lot easier to get between your own base and your own lord. If the developers don’t want to redesign the whole geography of the map, then maybe an allied-only teleporter that can take you back and forth between a spot near your initial spawn area (maybe where the supply doors are) and your lord’s room would work out well.

You haven’t seen a syncronized team on the defense.

Push is countered
Zerk/Dps class will lose to a cele/sustain classes. No npcs will get through because all of them are dead with AoE.

To top it off you’ll never get a soul channel. They’re so bunky that you’ll need to 1v2 or 1v3 + hard focus to down 1 player (with perma stability) in 10s

If we’re talking synchronized team, then mesmers/thieves will counter any stability. Either that or coordinated CC since stab is stack limited.

I don’t want to say it in every thread but if the npc’s defense has to be raised it should be in toughness not HP for the rest meh.

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.

This is the most contradictory post ever. Not even PvP, but you also want to buff the PvE elements.

The problem with this map is that it is all about fighting NPCs. That makes it boring.

It’s more or less, same situation and observations like first open Stronghold beta.

I wonder why haven’t they played more with options. It’s beta and we could test different variations, like on different days and then compare&break down what was good and what was bad. Today’s beta is the same strat as beta from April.

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.

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.

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 THE map that i will never choose for my spvp

If we had more diverse maps then we would judge the game mode mechanics, but since it’s only one map we may end up also judging the map, and things will get old quickly.

The map is like a 2-way lane where you always have to switch between offense and defense, it feels taking supplies is too long for how fast the lord is killed once the gates are down.

Personally I feel it would better with only the Heroes (but stronger heroes). No archers, no bombers.

After 1 year of boycotting this gamemode I gave it another try. Let’s give them another chance I thought, it is bound to be better with a new map I thought, they can not mess it up more anyway I thought.

I was wrong, I am so out of spvp again, this absolutely no selling point for an xpac.

I decided to play 20 games on the new map, to say that I am disappointed is putting it politely.

The map is to open, especially the lord’s room. There is absolutely no meaningful interaction with the terrain, no cover, no y-axis etc.

The lord’s room and the supply depot are to small it is next to impossible to avoid aoe with positioning and movement when inside, proffessions with invunerabilities and heavy armor are baltantly at an advantage (but I will not start on proffession balance that is a dead horse since forever).

Getting shot through closed gates, pathing errors aplenty, players being obstructed in open areas, invalid pathing errors everywhere….

I would really like to see a delay on channeling a hero and having them start running down the lane, so that your team can run back and spawn door-breakers or archers for a stronger push.

I don’t like it. I think we should be focused on having more simplified modes (arena, ctf, etc) instead of introducing more complicated modes like this. I think this mode is harder to understand and watch than conquest, and is even less intuitive. Sure it is fun to play and watch the tournament today because it is new (and I enjoy watching people I know playing in a different setting). But will it last? I highly doubt it and I don’t think this will bring us anywhere closer to “e-sports”.

So, I’ve played 20 or so games on the new map… At first I thought “So that’s the new ‘challenging PvE content’, huh?”, but eventually changed my mind. I haven’t had this much fun in pvp in ages. Contrary to what many people complain about, I’ve had much more timeout games than 3min ones. Once people start noticing there’s a treb on the map, those should become a rarity.

Bunch of random thoughts:
- Players deal too much damage to guards. At the start you can easily spend your supply, rush the gate and kill off guards, even with someone defending, way before your npcs get there.
- Guards should focus npcs rather than players. You can just tickle them and they’ll completely forget about doorbreakers bombing the gate.
- Due to the above two, archers hardly see any use. Having to use archers to kill guards reasonably quick would probably be more interesting, as you’ld have to alternate between them and doorbreakers, rather than simply summoning a skritt army.
- 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.
- Some proper ingame tutorial (in the form of cutscene in HotM or something) would be useful. It seems no one actually reads the popup one.

I still have some reservations about this mode, but after couple thousand conquest games it’s really fun to play something new. It will probably be a bit easier to watch as well, once shoutcasters start understanding just what the hell is going on.

I forgot that today was Stronghold test day and just signed up for a match. I have to say, if they end up putting Stronghold into the general rotation, and somebody actually clicks on it, I’m skipping the match. Not at all fun and very visually confusing layout. They need to do a better job of making every inch of the blue lane “feel blue” and vice versa, with more visual indicators of where goals are, so that you don’t have to ever look at the map to know where you are and where to go.

They are better than this, some of their other maps do a much better job of making visually clear which terrain belongs to which team and where goals are, it’s map design 101. They can fix this, it’s mostly based on props, lighting, and texture at this point, but they NEED to fix it.

- 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.