Guild Wars 2

So after playing the Stronghold mode in the beta I’ve picked up on something that might need some discussion around it. Currently if you go into Stronghold and your team starts badly and gives the other team a lead right from the bat, it is nearly impossible to gain the lead back. Once you lead it just snowballs.

This problem I really think stems from the mode itself since it is a mode where teamwork and communcation is required more so than the other modes I believe. But what are one supposed to do when you cannot communicate with your teammates? We should just accept the innevitable loss once you let the other team gain the lead?

Maybe I’ve had a different experience than others, but I’d like to hear what others have to say about this. Maybe there should be some kind of comeback mechanic in place for situations like this. Not any specific comeback mechanic, just something. One could say that the mist heroes is a such mechaninc, but once you lose map control and are pushed back to your walls to defend them, the other team are allowed to snowball even more with the mist heroes since they are now under their full control.

That’s just the way Stronghold works: One team starts snowballing, the other team has no chance to recover whatsoever, and it’s always decided early on in the match.

Velimere.7685:

That’s just the way Stronghold works: One team starts snowballing, the other team has no chance to recover whatsoever, and it’s always decided early on in the match.

Well that sucks. Whats the fun or interest in playing a match you know you’ve lost? Why not just stand afk once you’ve lost the lead? That’s really kittened up

Krunske.7124:

Well that sucks. Whats the fun or interest in playing a match you know you’ve lost? Why not just stand afk once you’ve lost the lead? That’s really kittened up

Some points I want to add:

• You still can come back, it is just harder to do so.
• It rewards you for playing good right from the start.
• It is basically the same with the capture points, once you have map control you can snowball (and outnumber) through the whole match.

Problem i find with Stronghold is that all the mode has turned out to is Rush gate Rush lord – no strategies – no skill – just mass aoe.

Really liked the concept when they announced this, but now its just boring – and there is NO point even defending since attackers applying pressure you’re just prolonging the inevitable.

This concept was kinda moba like – they should may be use 2 lanes of mobs – for both teams. Or something
otherwise i can see stronghold just being a place to grind out pvp points.

zorokai.1486:

Problem i find with Stronghold is that all the mode has turned out to is Rush gate Rush lord – no strategies – no skill – just mass aoe.

It used to be this way. They finally fixed that for this BWE. Doorbreakers are noticeably easier for players to kill, especially with condition damage. As a result, there’s a good back-and-forth and supply has meaning (though fighting over the depot still doesn’t happen much).

Ive had many games where I was defending the inner gate multiple times as our team slowly pushed in and won later. how ever that tactic is easily countered by a mesmer mass invis the door breakers or you know… stealth bursting anyone who tries to defend.

Velimere.7685:

That’s just the way Stronghold works: One team starts snowballing, the other team has no chance to recover whatsoever, and it’s always decided early on in the match.

Disagree – just played a match where we had a player disconnect and were 4v5 at the start. My team defended and by the time he reconnected they had attacked our lord and we had yet to breach their outer gate. Suffice to say once back to 5v5 we won the match so recovery is not impossible.

Maybe it is because this map has only been available in unranked and ranked and I don’t usually play there – but I’ve always found it to a fun map. However this could be due to the fact that and barring dissconects, both teams have equal number of players throughout the match, unlike hotjoin which is a joke.

Feedback on Changes

• Doorbreaker Time-to-Kill DB health seems to have been lowered. Players can kill them much faster now. This is a great change, since it makes DB rush all-ins a lot harder to execute. However, their low HP / high armor state allows condition damage to kill them in seconds. Suggest lowering armor and boosting HP to give direct damage and condition damage more equal weight.
• Lord Break-Bar Nice improvement; you can longer chain CC the lord. However, during the daggerstorm, the lord gives itself stability in addition to the break-bar which seems a bit excessive.
• Hero Info Polish is really nice. I like the icons and the alerts help with which team summoned which hero. However, would it be possible to move the boxed alert closer to the top of the screen or make it more transparent (or both)? It sometimes blocks my view.

Issues

• Scoring In too many games which go to 15min, a heavily defensive team wins, despite losing both gates. Meanwhile, they’ve barely dented the attacker’s gates or lord because they’ve spent all game defending. This runs counter to the idea of the game mode (kill the lord) and makes stalemating the most effective way to win. Suggest increasing the team score points for breaking a gate, especially the inner gate, to at least 100 (currently 50). That way, defenders have to be better than the attackers, not just hold out for 15 minutes.
• Archers Archers move faster than DBs, but that’s not enough to differentiate them. They die just as fast a DB to players, do pitiful damage to gates, and get distracted by everything. They can’t even kill multiple guards without dying. Give them more HP and allow them to fire while moving until they reach a gate.
• Heroes as a Come-Back Mechanic Heroes need better damage against gates. Right now, summoning a hero is a waste of time unless you have both gates down. If a gate is up, you can leave one defender to just whittle away at the hero’s health because it’s not a major threat. Worse yet, the game calls it out and inexperienced players flock to the hero summon, even if it won’t do them any good.
• Guard One-Shot of Doorbreakers Now that DBs can be reasonably killed by players, this mechanic seems excessive. It also seems like the guards got a small HP or armor buff. Having to prioritize the guards makes this game mode feel too much like PvE. If they kept bonus damage to DBs, it would be fine, but it should still require more than one guard hit to kill a DB.
• Stability on Supply/Hero Channel There needs to be a way to break the channels other than CC. Defensive professions or those with pulsing stability on an elite can channel the whole time and it’s hard for most professions to interrupt it. Making the trebuchet remove stability isn’t good enough. You have to turn the treb and have perfect aim, since you only get one, maybe two chances. Meanwhile, stability removable does too much to hurt normal players assaulting a base.
• Trebuchet Auto-Rebuild Couldn’t tell if this was still in, but if it is, it should be removed. With the supply drop from killing enemies while defending the inner gate, you have an alternate source of supply to easily rebuild the trebuchet.

Additional
A lot of players were still spamming DBs at the start and running off. I don’t think many realized the changes to DB health and haven’t adjusted their gameplay yet (escort is far more important). I suggest another SH beta in the near future, with the change list posted ahead of time.

Edit Played around with archers a bit and updated the bullet.

My feedback is very simple.

Give me an opt out of this mode entirely.

Even when selecting conquest and not stronghold for my PvP preferences it throws you into stronghold matches.

I do not want to play stronghold so stop making me play stronghold

I’ve decided I can’t stand the mode, it diminishes actual PvP far far too much. I won’t be playing it when it launches. And to apharma above you get the option to opt out of it.

Where because it wasn’t very obvious.

There’s a preference setting but that is a preference, still put me in stronghold.

I just hate it because we don’t have build templates so I can’t really switch my builds fast enough to be efficient in SH, since the slow moving bruiser tank setup isn’t as strong there.

apharma.3741:

Where because it wasn’t very obvious.

There’s a preference setting but that is a preference, still put me in stronghold.

If you’re in a group with someone else who has it ticked you can still get it. After a couple of tries at it everyone I was grouping with unticked it and we never got it for the rest of the weekend.

I was solo doing unranked for the daily. Still put me in stronghold…

i’ve played a lot solo queue and few times as team, usually as mesmer.

Treb
its realy strong at defending the first gate, but when the enemy got trough its almost useless, which should be other way round. The deeper enemy get, the harder it should be to continue. Also it become a bit messy when you stand close to it your movement is restricted due to the star form of the “feet”.

DoorBreaker
For some classes kind of onehit, for direct damage bit harder, for me as mesmer i mostly found myself running to treb to kill them, mb this can be balanced to be able to 3sec kill them with all max dmg burst classes.
On Gates rly strong, maybe a bit to strong.

Archer
yeah, ok, erm,no.
I’d say its useless, they dont die that fast but still fast, they deal like no dmg to doors, to kill guards your faster doing yourself, so never rly tried…
Maybe they could get some kind of buff to nearby npc to be harder to kill (protection+regeneration), so they would be usefull to sent with doorbreakers to be able to defend them. Or they give a boost to npc that (from player) applied protection and heal is increased.

Guards
veni vidi vici.
To easy to kill for some classes and only usefull if noone from enemy team cares bout killing them.
Maybe they should get a buff when a player from their team is close so they are harder to kill.

heros
some seem useless (nika) but over all i’m ok with them

npc at all
to easy to kill. maybe a buff like mentioned above would make it more interesting. But then db’s sould deal less dmg to doors due to you can bring them to doors more often.

supply
i dont like it like it is. it forces teamfigths at mid when a wave failed but this game isnt up for teamfights. also the channeling is a joke for some classes.
Id would be more interesting if npc spawn frequently and you get some kind of buff/debuff to them with supply for a minute, so it may get more like flag running at gvg. Then of yause the run direction also should be turned around (get supply from your keep and give it to a dealer or sth at mid of map/somewhere random on map?!?)

channeling
should be like at conquest. the new system just let some classed braindead faceroll channel dont borther any (war/guard/…)

defend
with right classes to easy. 2 ppl lockdown a whole attack by killing npc. Then they wit for their cd’s to come back and next npc to finally arrive and repeat. Lordroom defence with defensive classes and heal can be very easy. Only heros can be hard, but if u get you whole team back they still “onehit”

attack
if enemy wants to defend and is up with right classes to nuke npc you got no chance.

this makes up a lot of matches to go over the full distance. and one lucky punch wins the game (can happen 2nd min when u break first gate and then just focus defending).

So all in all i still like the idea behind, but now it feels to static, to easy to destroy dynamics, which makes it boring, due to you end up with most “first activation on most hero-channelings win”

PvE: the PvP experience!

Several points I read alot about stronghold but did not have any trouble with this weekend were the snowballing effect and the rushing strategy being to effective.

Snowballing:

Won several games where we fell behind with them at our lord and their outer/inner gate still up. Also lost a few where we definitely did feel the snowballing effect.

If the enemy breaks through your inner, and you get a 5 vs 5 and manage to wipe them ( which is quite possible) the split your team uses after that and how quickly you send people away during the fight is crucial. In the defending lane you want 3/4 members to fight enemy players and capture the mist hero while 1/2 others switch between summoning some doorbreakers/archers/mist hero and rejoing the defending lane if needed.

In my experience the deciding factor whether you can turn it around depends on your teams ability to fight a outnumbered fight in the defending lane and the mobility of the players summoning npcs / switching lanes.

Rushing:

Defending is worth it even if they rush, condis eat doorbreakers and if you manage to kill them ( quite possible with condis) they are stuck without supplies and are at a deficit. Haven’t been in one single game where rushing flat out won the match this weekend and rush attempts also happened less frequently.

Fun factors: I really like it when you turn the game around or have a really close match and get that important mist hero, lord stomp or deciding save.

Improvements: I think the mode could use some more incentive to really fight other players and scenarios where commiting to a fight is rewarding. At the end of the day heart of the mists is about pvp and not pve/pvd.

I agree with most of the feedback from SuinegTsol. The biggest problem I see is that there’s no reason to summon Archers because Guards die too quickly to players. For similar reasons, the 4/1 or 5-man rush is too effective.

I kind of think that having separate attack and defend lanes was a mistake. Archers would be more useful if the minion waves were actually meeting in the middle. Then they could help you counter the enemy’s push. There would also be more reason for players to fight around minion waves.

As it stands, I think it would be a good idea to let players spend Supply to revive Guards or summon more of them. While I don’t necessarily want to see turtling become a viable strategy, Stronghold currently needs both more stuff to spend Supply on (so there’s a point in fighting over mid) and a way to counter rush tactics.

That said, I still enjoy Stronghold more than Conquest. It just needs more turning around the game pace and more reason for players to fight one another.

We all know popularity of Moba games,Stronghoald is Anet try to swim in that sea,this is bay far Worst moba game i ever played,they need to do a lot better if they want it to be around popular as LOL Dota2 or HOS !!!

I think there is too much PvE involved here altogether. Its also pretty kittentated above, some of my matches lasted as short as around 30-40 seconds quite literally, this is pretty bad, especially that in those tehre was actually relatively little PvP. It was doorbreakers + race for enemy lord. if both sides do this and both have 1-2 stealthers picking up supplies this is what happens. Even having non stealth regular objective focused players still makes it too short, albeit, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Still too short and too little actual PvP.

the concept itself and map may be OK if it had some limitations on it as follows:

1. Cut the number of doorbreakers down and put a timer so that no more then 2 can be summoned by a team as a whole per certain timeframe (20 or 30 seconds).

2. Do same as above with archers.

3. Up the HP on inner doors.

Another words give teams more time to react and PvP on this PvP map. Having PvP oriented players on a team vs objective focused players should not be the cause of a loss. It is a PvP map right ?