Guild Wars 2

it’s a start and i hope it will improve until its release. to help with it i will give my personal feedback here:

pvp
overall i felt like PvP combat is less important than in conquest, often ignoring the players at the supply camp, picking up, spawning npcs and only really fighting at heroes or lords.
even though there is more to do it feels more casual than conquest.

map
the map looks cool and i like it even if it’s small. i think it’s a good map for what you try to achieve with this game mode.
the lord room and the supply camp could be bigger.
when inside the lord room while the door is getting attacked by players and their npcs it feels hard to defend or to even know what’s going on outside, you can defend by aoe through the gate but especially when you’re outmanned you dont want to go outside. it would be nice to have stairs that lead up to the walls so you can stand there and fire down, similar to WvW towers.

team size
sometimes i felt like 5 players weren’t enough. 6v6 could be better, 8v8 too much. if arenanet could increase the size of the lord room and the supply camp it could be better with 6v6 (even for 5v5 the lord room is already too small).

guards
the guard npcs are too weak and die too fast. as ele i can rush there on gamestart and take them down with frostbow in a matter of seconds, this makes archers useless.
the guards need to be almost immune to player attacks so that it’s worth getting archers to kill them. put the focus on protecting archers you spawn instead of just dpsing the guards down, especially because it’s also easy points.

lord
same goes for the lord, i feel like the lord fights are easy and even if the enemy has banners and stuff, eventually the lord will die. give the lord guards more hp and maybe add some lord guards that are dedicated lord healers. the lord and all guard npcs in the match should get their health back when out of combat, they don’t have enough hp to justify this, especially because gw2 doesn’t have dedicated healer mechanics.
overall the lord feels weak, he is not really a threat, nor a real boss. make him more dangerous for he is THE lord after all.

hero
heroes were kinda weak and usually die before they get to a gate (even when protecting) and are only strong when the enemy is defending their lord and you get some surprise heroes in.

npcs in general
many npcs have just an auto attack, why? give them a set of skills, this will make everything more interesting.

channeling
channeling was a bit annoying. i can understand it at the supply camp but you should change it at hero channels to the way stillness works. as it currently is you can send your tankiest stability class with a transform elite and you will get it most of the time. stillness has more of “an eye for an eye” mentality, you kill for that buff, but this here is just annoying and lame, especially because the heroes are not even that strong.

timer
the game timer is boring and kills the fun most of the time. increase it to 20mins and put in a victory or death mechanic. make the lords and guards come out to fight each other and give the team with more points a 20% damage increase. make them invulnerable until they reach each other.

hype
i kinda missed those “omg this was just really sick!” moments and while killing the lord feels rewarding that’s the only moment in the game.
even wiping a team doesn’t really feel rewarding because it’s so easy for them to just respawn, the penalty is way smaller than in conquest. you should increase the respawn time by 2s for every minute that passes to add some spice! or make people hardresable (by pressing f like in wvw) and make auto respawn every 2 mins (2:00, 4:00, 6:00 etc) to make it interesting and punishing.

future
if you manage to add more spice to stronghold i can see this game mode becoming more popular than conquest. for the future and after perfecting this map i hope you will add another 2-3 as soon as possible because after testing this for a long time it really got boring because it was the same map over and over again. also, it’s not a bad thing to recycle things from gw1 GvG maps, your company made those maps and people liked them, nobody will get angry if you take some inspiration from there^^

i appreciate your efforts and it looks promising so far but we’re not there yet! keep up the good work and take as much feedback as you can

Jekkt.6045:

pvp
overall i felt like PvP combat is less important than in conquest, often ignoring the players at the supply camp, picking up, spawning npcs and only really fighting at heroes or lords.

I kinda agree, but this could be because the mode isn’t really figured out yet or it could be mitigated by small changes like tankier guards, heroes (that are therefore more important to channel) etc.

Jekkt.6045:

guards
the guard npcs are too weak and die too fast. as ele i can rush there on gamestart and take them down with frostbow in a matter of seconds, this makes archers useless.
the guards need to be almost immune to player attacks so that it’s worth getting archers to kill them. put the focus on protecting archers you spawn instead of just dpsing the guards down, especially because it’s also easy points.

Heavily agree on this one – defensive NPC’s need to be much tankier. It does kinda throw off a big part of the concept if they aren’t, because they are (or would be) what makes archers important.

Jekkt.6045:

lord
same goes for the lord, i feel like the lord fights are easy and even if the enemy has banners and stuff, eventually the lord will die. give the lord guards more hp and maybe add some lord guards that are dedicated lord healers.

Yeah, why not. I still feel that with really well coordinated interrupts and boonstrip, it could be fine even without a tankier lord and more NPC’s there.

Jekkt.6045:

hero
heroes were kinda weak and usually die before they get to a gate (even when protecting) and are only strong when the enemy is defending their lord and you get some surprise heroes in.

A bit more tanky could be good.

Jekkt.6045:

channeling
channeling was a bit annoying. i can understand it at the supply camp but you should change it at hero channels to the way stillness works. as it currently is you can send your tankiest stability class with a transform elite and you will get it most of the time. stillness has more of “an eye for an eye” mentality, you kill for that buff, but this is just annoying and lame, especially because the heroes are not even that strong.

Okay, I have to really disagree on this one: i loved how the channeling that used hard interrupts reminded me of certain GW1 Heroes Ascent Maps. It could be really interesting once ppl figure out how important the channels for the heros are to coordinate interrupts/boonstrips, while also dealing dmg/healing to eventually also win the fight if it goes on for long enough.
It also helps certain classes to be more useful, that would maybe otherwise not have a clear role in this mode or one aspect that they are really needed for, like Necro’s, Mesmers and S/D-Thiefs for boon-removal and interrupts. Cuz for simple interrupts, those classes can all deal with reapplying stacks of Stability.
If you just have it interrupt on a simple atk, it get’s a XvX fight – with the hard interrupt, there is a whole other dimension to it.
That would also tie in to what you referred to as “hype” and making epic moments for spectators and players alike: If you can focus on one player per team channeling and the rest interrupting and/or spiking him down/trying to heal him, you get a situation with a very clear focus and goal that requires lots of skill —> perfect for epic last-second “Corrupt Boons”, AoE-Stability right before stability on the channeling Player runs out, clutch innterrupts on Corrupt boon etc.

I think the channeling on the heroes that require hard interrupts and take a long time to channel might be my favourite part of the whole game-mode. ^^’

Jekkt.6045:

timer
the game timer is boring and kills the fun most of the time. increase it to 20mins and put in a victory or death mechanic. make the lords and guards come out to fight each other and give the team with more points a 20% damage increase.

Yepp, 20 minutes sounds good.

Maybe they could also experiment with sth. like VoD (Victory or Death) from GW1 GvG, where all the NPC’s that are left walk towards the middle and fight until one team wins. This would make the end of the game less abrupt and if you want the Points gathered until then to matter (not only the points you get from killing enemy NPC’s), just add an (most likely purely offensive) Stat-Buff depending on your points gathered on top of the players.

Summary:

I liked the mode very much, but there are certain small changes needed to really make it amazing:

- Tankier NPC’s (basically all of them except the doorbreakers and archers. Maybe the archers could deal a bit more dmg though)
- Extend Timer
- Maybe experiment with 6v6 or at max. 8v8

Overall very good job ANet – if you take some of the feedback and implement it, you could have a very cool competetive mode on your hands.

i just think as it is now they should disable channeling with stability pulsing elites.

They should have literally just ported mechanic for mechanic GvGs from Guild Wars 1, this is a very dumbed down version of GvGs.

No no HP increase boost their toughness/defense stop with the HP sponges make it more resistance to focus dps HP increase doesn’t make them tankier it just guts conditions which are only used in the defensive lane, increase of only toughness is suited/needed.

then add a healer npc, poison would actually be useful then. and i dont see why a hp increase would favour direct damage over condi, it’s still around the same and with the expansion feature pack condi limit will be removed anyway.

Some great points made on this post.

I can’t find any of these suggestions as negative, though I might modify them or skip them if better options where available. All in all, the most important points that leapt out at me were that a single map gets real old real quick and that building on GW1 GvG is a good place to start.

I find it baffling and frustrating that GW2’s attempts to reinvent the wheel, in all aspects of the game, at all times, often fails to provide gameplay that is as rewarding as the 5-10 year old wheels they are reinventing. Evolution should be the goal, rather than invention, in most instances.

The only suggestions I would add to the original post would be to give players more ways to control the flavor of their teams so that they can better mount unique offense/defense.

I strongly disagree with the idea of extending the timer. 15 minute games are the longest they should be. Instead, they should focus on improving the pace of the game so that it ends naturally by a Lord kill before you reach the 15 minute timer.

One way to do that would be to make player revive timers longer the further into a match you are. This makes player kills more important, and rewards teams more for actually killing people by taking them out of the game for longer.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I strongly disagree with the idea of extending the timer. 15 minute games are the longest they should be. Instead, they should focus on improving the pace of the game so that it ends naturally by a Lord kill before you reach the 15 minute timer.

One way to do that would be to make player revive timers longer the further into a match you are. This makes player kills more important, and rewards teams more for actually killing people by taking them out of the game for longer.

No, timer should be longer, period. Making respawn times longer would only solve one issue and bring many others and one of that would be people running mostly tanky builds and I’m pretty sure no one wants to see that again.

usually the games end by a lord kill most of the time anyway, i only had 2 matches in the beta that didn’t and they were against tank teams.

i don’t mind when VoD happens, in GvG it started at 18mins if im not mistaken and until all the npcs walked out. it takes time for the npcs to walk to their showdown point anyway and if a VoD mechanic will be added the matches won’t have a set ending time anymore but will take as long as one lord is dead (which shouldnt take longer than 2 mins anyway..) so overall it will still come to the 20mins mark. imo games should not end by points at all in any scenario because it’s boring.

i personally just felt like 15mins were not enough. it takes longer than conquest and many matches when they end are around 13mins, that’s still longer than the average conquest match and indicates that 15mins are too short.

Laraley.7695:

No, timer should be longer, period. Making respawn times longer would only solve one issue and bring many others and one of that would be people running mostly tanky builds and I’m pretty sure no one wants to see that again.

No one would run tankier builds because against a team of DPS players no bunker can currently easily stay alive, and dying is punished by the revive timer. People would play whatever builds are most effective for team fights, mixing survivability with dps pressure… which is exactly the meta we have right now (modified only by the roles seen in Stronghold).

It’s important to respect people’s time. 20 minute games are too long and will be stale by the time they finish, even if they do end by lord kill in the last 5 minutes. It is far superior to keep the same timer and simply improve the pace of the game to minimize situations where it would go to timer.

some people like longer games, and the gates already break too fast for my taste. look at other popular esport games where matches take 30mins-1h and nobody complains about it. i guess this is just a matter of taste because for me 20mins seem ideal while for you it doesn’t.

Jekkt.6045:

some people like longer games, and the gates already break too fast for my taste. look at other popular esport games where matches take 30mins-1h and nobody complains about it. i guess this is just a matter of taste because for me 20mins seem ideal while for you it doesn’t.

The likely reason is the ones who complain probably don’t play those type of games. Unlike in those other games, the players in this game can influence how long the game should be at release. With that said, 20 minutes seems good enough to cover all the possibilities.

Pretty decent suggestions. I disagree about the hero channeling. I like that you need an interrupt to stop it, but I don’t think transformation elites should be able to channel at all. I also don’t want the game to last more than it does. The queues/wait-time are long enough. I have an actual job irl.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Laraley.7695:

No, timer should be longer, period. Making respawn times longer would only solve one issue and bring many others and one of that would be people running mostly tanky builds and I’m pretty sure no one wants to see that again.

No one would run tankier builds because against a team of DPS players no bunker can currently easily stay alive, and dying is punished by the revive timer. People would play whatever builds are most effective for team fights, mixing survivability with dps pressure… which is exactly the meta we have right now (modified only by the roles seen in Stronghold).

It’s important to respect people’s time. 20 minute games are too long and will be stale by the time they finish, even if they do end by lord kill in the last 5 minutes. It is far superior to keep the same timer and simply improve the pace of the game to minimize situations where it would go to timer.

Yes, exactly the same stale thing. No, thank you. And if dying is going to get punished a lot, way less people will want to take the risk of playing dps specs.

I’m sorry but if you do not have time, then don’t play a game. Game mode shouldn’t be adjusted just because some people only have 20 minutes to play.

I’m sorry but if you do not have time, then don’t play a game. Game mode shouldn’t be adjusted just because some people only have 20 minutes to play.

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in a very long time (2 days). The forums never disappoint me.

please keep the discussions on topic, we want to stay constructive even if opinions differ.

I like the idea of extending the respawn based on duration through the game. Would make it more meaningful for the kills in late game to actually tip the tides. At the same time if organizing a defensive last stand, a successful defense can rally a counter attack and allow them to push to the opposition side.

Most of the matches I played also ended with a Lord kill. In fact, I only had 2 matches time out. I think a general length of 20-30 minutes is fine, with a 45 minute maximum cap. I think that’s analogous to a typical football game (soccer for Americans) if you just count play time.

Having a “sudden death” mechanic kick in after 15-30 minutes would add excitement to matches and keep play interesting; but, I would probably teleport the lords to center rather than make them invulnerable as they meander into the fight.

If all the lord room NPCs were moved to the center for a game ending battle, I’d prefer if players got to choose what kind of lord represented their team, in anticipation of the potential fight, as outlined in my other post Here.

As most of the games I played were unevenly scored, with the majority of points going to the team that took the outer gate first and eventually killed the lord, I wouldn’t want that already dominating team to get a buff to their damage. Instead, I’d want all players and NPCs to spawn simultaneously in the Victory or Death round, in preset positions, at full health, with reset skills. This would make player skill the determining factor in the final battle.

VoD should have the lord moving – vulnerable … to the mid position. This would allow a tactical shot at any would want to aggro him en route. The match shouldn’t reset at VoD. Unless i’m reading you wrong (then my bad).

Players should be rewarded for taking out guards during the match. So if one side takes out all guards and the other side still has 4 guards from good defense… then they should be rewarded for there play through out the match by having an advantage at the VoD moment (this would be the 4 extra guards).

the match won’t restart at VoD, that’s not how it was meant, dead npcs are dead.

i just think it’s if stupid players are able to camp infront of the lord gate at 15 or 20 mins waiting for him to come out because they couldn’t get it. it has more of an impact if they meet in the middle of the map and then bam, showdown!

Hexin.5603:

i’m reading you wrong (then my bad).

I’m not saying that anything gets reset to where it was at the beginning of the match.

I’m saying that all of your team’s surviving NPCs get teleported with your team to center for a final battle, balanced by not having reduced health or skills in cool-down when you spawn from the teleportation.

The teleportation saves time and gets everyone on the same page immediately.

I’d guess that a vulnerable lord party of NPCs walking to a central fighting position would be easily taken by a dominating team while the opposition team was elsewhere on the map doing what put them in the losing position to begin with.

while a teleport speeds stuff up i’m actually against it. it makes things more interesting and intense, the calm before the storm.

you can already wait at the middle with your team, risking to get into a fight with the enemy team resulting in deaths even before the lords are actually there or you stay out and wait for the right moment to dive in. you would lose these moments if you just teleported everybody.

Jekkt.6045:

you would lose these moments if you just teleported everybody.

Fair enough. I can see the value in it, as long as it didn’t take more than 90-120 seconds for the NPCs to get into fighting positions.

I don’t think it would be fair if a team were able to kill 2-4 players just before the NPCs engaged each other unless the NPCs were made invulnerable to all player attacks until all players were present. An unfair advantage would automatically go to any team with the ability to gank stragglers before the VoD event began otherwise, I think.

Jekkt.6045:

it’s a start and i hope it will improve until its release. to help with it i will give my personal feedback here:

pvp
overall i felt like PvP combat is less important than in conquest, often ignoring the players at the supply camp, picking up, spawning npcs and only really fighting at heroes or lords.
even though there is more to do it feels more casual than conquest.

Thats true, i felt the same way, at least sometimes. Me and my mates had teamfights but just not as often as in Conquest. I’d need to test Stronghold longer, to see if the amount of teamfights would raise when people figured out more about the gamemode and proper tactics.

But anyway, my suggestion for that problem, if it is one, would be that something more than only supplies is needed in the middle (or somewhere else). For example if you would have some kind of debuff if you die, then you could fight for a buff that would nullify the debuff (Like in GW1 GvG with the flag mechanic). This would draw more people in a teamfight during the match and not only in the lord rooms at the end.

An other possibility would be that there is only one hero, who is super strong, and the teams could actually battle in a teamfight to get him and gain a huge advantage. He would only spawn at a specific time.

Jekkt.6045:

map
the map looks cool and i like it even if it’s small. i think it’s a good map for what you try to achieve with this game mode.
the lord room and the supply camp could be bigger.

I like the map too, but i want more than one I thought the lord room and was big enough actually. With proper positioning on the higher ground, it was no problem to kite.

Jekkt.6045:

team size
sometimes i feel like 5 players weren’t enough. 6v6 could be better, 8v8 too much. if arenanet could increase the size of the lord room and the supply camp it could be better with 6v6 (even for 5v5 the lord room is already too small).

For sure not more than 6v6 But I’d stay with a 5v5, the number 5 adds a more exciting rotation game, cause you won’t have on both lanes a 3v3 with always one guy splitting to the depot or something. It’s much more interesting if you have something like a 3v2 and 2v3. Or 3v3 and 2v2 (then one team would have 2 guys on their def lane, and the other team 3 guys on the def lane, which would require other builds etc.) I hope you understand what i mean. I just think 5 is a better suited number than 6

Jekkt.6045:

guards
the guard npcs are too weak and die too fast. as ele i can rush there on gamestart and take them down with frostbow in a matter of seconds, this makes archers useless.
the guards need to be almost immune to player attacks so that it’s worth getting archers to kill them. put the focus on protecting archers you spawn instead of just dpsing the guards down, especially because it’s also easy points.

Hmm…they are kinda weak. But that makes it more drilling/important to defend them. When I played def lane, I could actually almost always defend the first push of a player so that the guards didn’t die. Just use CC in the right way and boon remove for stability. So, I think it’s possible to defend them right now, even though they seem weak. Your point of view is understandable but I think this is a matter that will be cleared when we can play some more stronghold.

Jekkt.6045:

lord
same goes for the lord, i feel like the lord fights are easy and even if the enemy has banners and stuff, eventually the lord will die. give the lord guards more hp and maybe add some lord guards that are dedicated lord healers. the lord and all guard npcs in the match should get their health back when out of combat, they don’t have enough hp to justify this, especially because gw2 doesn’t have dedicated healer mechanics.
overall the lord feels weak, he is not really a threat, nor a real boss. make him more dangerous for he is THE lord after all.

Same here, time will tell in my opinion.
But we could defend the lord multiple times as a team. You just have to rotate properly, so that you make it in time. (very difficult in soloQ, but as a team it is possible)

Jekkt.6045:

hero
heroes were kinda weak and usually die before they get to a gate (even when protecting) and are only strong when the enemy is defending their lord and you get some surprise heroes in.

Hmm..I thought they spawned pretty often and i thought they gave the team pretty good support. I think if you want to make them stronger, you’d have to increase the spawn timer for the “buff appearance”.

So for me, with the 3 minute timer, they seemed fine. But then again, time will tell more. 24 hours is just not enough time to test this new gamemode.

Jekkt.6045:

npcs in general
many npcs have just an auto attack, why? give them a set of skills, this will make everything more interesting.

Could be interesting

Jekkt.6045:

channeling
channeling was a bit annoying. i can understand it at the supply camp but you should change it at hero channels to the way stillness works. as it currently is you can send your tankiest stability class with a transform elite and you will get it most of the time. stillness has more of “an eye for an eye” mentality, you kill for that buff, but this here is just annoying and lame, especially because the heroes are not even that strong.

That is a good point. But probably it would be better to remove the ability, that you can channel with an elite skill. I like the fact that you need to interrupt someone with a skill and not only with an auto attack.

Jekkt.6045:

timer
the game timer is boring and kills the fun most of the time. increase it to 20mins and put in a victory or death mechanic. make the lords and guards come out to fight each other and give the team with more points a 20% damage increase. make them invulnerable until they reach each other.

Yep, remove the timer or make it longer. A VoD mechanic could be cool. Another mechanic could be, that you win if you made the most damage on the lord. (During the whole match, it counts every single damage value that you made on him, can’t be nullified with healing). The lord could still be healed up, but the damage counter remains at the same value.

Jekkt.6045:

hype
i kinda missed those “omg this was just really sick!” moments and while killing the lord feels rewarding that’s the only moment in the game.
even wiping a team doesn’t really feel rewarding because it’s so easy for them to just respawn, the penalty is way smaller than in conquest. you should increase the respawn time by 2s for every minute that passes to add some spice! or make people hardresable (by pressing f like in wvw) and make auto respawn every 2 mins (2:00, 4:00, 6:00 etc) to make it interesting and punishing.

We actually had such moments that felt epic. For example, once all doors were open in both strongholds, and they pushed through to us. We rotated with the whole team to defend our lord, the lord goes down, we rezz him, and stomp all the enemy players. Then we push immediately to their lord, and are able to kill him. So there are such moments
But yeah, I agree with you that a mechanic that increases the respawn timer to add more of epic moments could be good.
This also something that will time tell tho. If people use proper tactics and know more about this gamemode, it could be quite possible that more epic moments appear even with 15 sec respawn time. (BUT the 15 sec timer allows to come back and defend the lord even if two guys died or something like that, so I’m actually not sure about this point.)

Jekkt.6045:

future
if you manage to add more spice to stronghold i can see this game mode becoming more popular than conquest. for the future and after perfecting this map i hope you will add another 2-3 as soon as possible because after testing this for a long time it really got boring because it was the same map over and over again. also, it’s not a bad thing to recycle things from gw1 GvG maps, your company made those maps and people liked them, nobody will get angry if you take some inspiration from there^^

i appreciate your efforts and it looks promising so far but we’re not there yet! keep up the good work and take as much feedback as you can

Yeah, I actually think this gamemode could be the future for the competitive scene, with some things added/changed. And I had fun playing it.

The most important point would be to increase the amount of teamfights in my opinion.

(english isn’t my native language, don’t hate :P)

EDIT: holy moly, how long are my posts xD

I was pretty underwhelmed by the mode. The devs said they still wanted the mode to be pvp based but I found players ignoring each ohter a lot simply so they could rush the enemies lord. This turned everything into a dungeon speedrun. If I wanted to do PVE id go to do Ac p1. In its current state I dont see this mode really going anywhere. PVE people will really enjoy it since its so heavily focused around PVE.

SkylightMoon.1980:

I was pretty underwhelmed by the mode. The devs said they still wanted the mode to be pvp based but I found players ignoring each ohter a lot simply so they could rush the enemies lord. This turned everything into a dungeon speedrun. If I wanted to do PVE id go to do Ac p1. In its current state I dont see this mode really going anywhere. PVE people will really enjoy it since its so heavily focused around PVE.

It was a beta and the first time many players experienced the mode. A great number of people were simply running around exploring, and weren’t familiar with the mechanics. Anyone who was around when GW2 was first released will remember similar strange behavior back then with Conquest where no one would cap points or guard them or everyone would rush beast back-to-back, etc. I remember a game when Temple first came out where nearly everyone fought over the channels and for more than half the game a node went entirely uncapped.

The game as it stands now is perfect for pugging, but I don’t see it being competitive enough for teams.
They should just make 2 modes of the map:

• One that exists now for pugging with a few adjustments.
• Another one for competitive.

Overall Pugging + Team

• The pugging game mode shouldn’t allow more than 2 people to queue up at once and the competitive game mode should only allow teams of 5 people.
• Both game modes need lot more spots to kite around. It feels pretty poor kiting overall. These can easily be achieved by giving the treb a purpose:
  Make it so houses and obstructions that get destroyed actually form kiting spots.
• Along with that also make it so once you killed the house next to the supply you can jump in and out the supply depot from the sides. (Though the jumps shouldn’t be too easy so you can bail out too easy.)
• Maybe a slight hp boost or a slight increase of the buff’s area of the Hero’s.
• Spawning the hero should be able to steal and maybe should even be an objective to kill. Maybe something like a svanir/chieftain. Like that you gotta be much more aware and not just ‘’rush in and spam F, stability and heals’’.

Competitive/Team Mode only

• Competitive game mode shouldn’t have a timer and extended death-timers the longer the game lasts.
• I also think the supply cap is a fun mechanic to play with to have a max of 3 supply, but having a cap of 1 supply first 5 minutes, 2 supply 5-10 minutes and 3 supply throughout the rest of the game.
• A game could last up to 30 minutes easily without timer so the extended death-timers could be 1 second per minute. Like this you could have great comebacks late into the game making it much more fun to play and watch.
• The lord needs a small regeneration of like 1% per 10 seconds when out of combat and the hp of the mobs should be slightly increased.

MailMail.6534:

I’m sorry but if you do not have time, then don’t play a game. Game mode shouldn’t be adjusted just because some people only have 20 minutes to play.

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in a very long time (2 days). The forums never disappoint me.

I’m sorry but why should other players adjust to you not having time? Should we just all work around your schedule and then decide how to proceed with a new game mode built on your life? I don’t think so.

another thing that came to my mind was, when inside the lord room defending the gate while the enemy is trying to get the gate down, it felt very useless inside, you can aoe through the gate but it would be nice to have some stairs leading up to the wall (like in wvw towers) so that you can stand on the ledge and fire down.

will also add this to my main post.

Laraley.7695:

I’m sorry but why should other players adjust to you not having time? Should we just all work around your schedule and then decide how to proceed with a new game mode built on your life? I don’t think so.

If the game mode takes too long, you won’t have sufficient people playing it because there are other formats that are more rewarding for the time, or they simply want to get the most bang for their time playing so they go with the mode that has more games/hour, etc. There are a lot of reasons why making matches take longer is not the answer. Regardless, since it’s ANet’s goal to get people to play Stronghold, simply increasing the duration of each game is not something they should pursue recklessly.

As to the weakness of the guards. I found that if I ignored players I could kill most guards, door breakers and archers without trouble, especially if the player opposition was solo. This might be because I play necro and necro makes everything easy; but, I think it’s because all the NPCs are too weak.

When I solo camps in WvW it takes me about 30-120 seconds to kill all NPCs if the camp is not upgraded. This is roughly the same amount of time it takes me to take the Lord party in the PvP lobby. In this same time on ChampDu, I could kill both outer guards, a player or two along the way to the inner gate, and at least 2 pairs of guards on the way to the inner gate, if not all 3 pairs and a couple more players.

That’s not much of a challenge.

The only thing that slowed me down was that I couldn’t take the gates myself, otherwise I’d be in the lord’s face in about 120 seconds.

All of the NPCs need to be tougher. The fight for a gate should be like trying to solo a fully upgraded camp in WvW, at least.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Laraley.7695:

I’m sorry but why should other players adjust to you not having time? Should we just all work around your schedule and then decide how to proceed with a new game mode built on your life? I don’t think so.

If the game mode takes too long, you won’t have sufficient people playing it because there are other formats that are more rewarding for the time, or they simply want to get the most bang for their time playing so they go with the mode that has more games/hour, etc. There are a lot of reasons why making matches take longer is not the answer. Regardless, since it’s ANet’s goal to get people to play Stronghold, simply increasing the duration of each game is not something they should pursue recklessly.

it’s always possible to give 50s per win if stronghold gets its own queue and takes longer than conquest. tbh this is not really a problem as long as it’s fun and the rewards are balanced.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Laraley.7695:

I’m sorry but why should other players adjust to you not having time? Should we just all work around your schedule and then decide how to proceed with a new game mode built on your life? I don’t think so.

If the game mode takes too long, you won’t have sufficient people playing it because there are other formats that are more rewarding for the time, or they simply want to get the most bang for their time playing so they go with the mode that has more games/hour, etc. There are a lot of reasons why making matches take longer is not the answer. Regardless, since it’s ANet’s goal to get people to play Stronghold, simply increasing the duration of each game is not something they should pursue recklessly.

That’s funny because if you look around the forums and saw the chat when they first showed gameplay on stronhold, almost everyone was asking for a longer timer. I guess those would be the people playing it, huh? The fact you think this way doesn’t mean everyone else does, you know. Some people just want to have fun, not farm games over and over. I also don’t see DotA or LoL having issues with player populations when their matches are WAY longer than gw2 ones, obviously you can’t really choose the duration in those games but hey, people still play it. On the other hand, gw2 is the game with problems regarding number of players.

I find it troubling that you want to adjust a game mode the way so it suits some players’ time needs. I would get all other suggestions that would improve gameplay but not this one. If ANet wants to create a community who will only play certain modes to be able to get as many games as possible, they might as well trying to stop being esports right this second.

Jekkt.6045:

it’s always possible to give 50s per win if stronghold gets its own queue and takes longer than conquest. tbh this is not really a problem as long as it’s fun and the rewards are balanced.

Sure! Rewards are an easy issue to handle, I agree, but a lot of people will still avoid Stronghold if the games take 20 minutes when they can get 2-3 games of Conquest in for the same time period.

Your note about fun is important; a lot of people will find something that drones on for 20 minutes boring. What happens when all gates are down and a team is 100 points ahead of the other team due to kills and heroes and such? There is little to encourage them to actually attack the lord and risk losing their own, so they bunker down for the timer and win by timeout. Maybe it’s because my unranked MMR is fairly high, but 11 of my 16 games ended on timeout. The only time it went to a lord kill was when the enemy team (or my team) was completely mechanically inferior to their opponents. We don’t want teams in the situation where they’ll win by timer to just sit around for an extra 5 minutes to win because it’s safe.

rEaPeX.8415:

mechanic could be, that you win if you made the most damage on the lord.

I actually think that since killing the lord is the primary winning strategy, the next win determiner should be amount of damage dealt to lord regardless of score. A win should only be based on score if time runs out and neither team has touch a lord.

That being said, I’d prefer Jekkt’s suggested Victory or Death mechanic, just for the sake of fun, though it might take longer to play.

My point about Lord’s being vulnerable is … let me try to paint a picture here.

You are on a team who is defending in the Lord’s room the battle is heavy you have been on the defense for a while and it looks like a definite loss. You manage to hold in the lord’s room and down the enemy players. The respawn and start heading back. Great time for your team to go on the offensive. You send a couple guys down the offensive path. Suddenly the VoD timer hits. You see the enemies coming back in range again, but they hold back watching at a distance. Gate’s all open. Your npc’s remaining and Lord start there trek to mid, your remaining players escort them keeping the enemy at range. Meanwhile your offense dual take on the enemy npc’s en route at the gates…. the enemy still hasn’t reacted as they are focusing messing around with you. If they manage to get the enemy lord down before reinforcments come your team wins based on outplaying the enemies who failed to escort there npc’s. You can pull off a comeback with some quick thinking.

Granted… most battles and teams will escort there npc’s to mid point. But having it available allows for some more strategy to help teams attempt a miraculous comeback from a dire situation.

Would it lead to people stacking on a gate? Maybe … but a team should be able to fend off the attackers having there more powerful npc’s with them. Of course if you have little to no NPC’s it’s a moot point and the writing was already on the wall to begin with.

Hope that makes sense.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Jekkt.6045:

it’s always possible to give 50s per win if stronghold gets its own queue and takes longer than conquest. tbh this is not really a problem as long as it’s fun and the rewards are balanced.

Sure! Rewards are an easy issue to handle, I agree, but a lot of people will still avoid Stronghold if the games take 20 minutes when they can get 2-3 games of Conquest in for the same time period.

Your note about fun is important; a lot of people will find something that drones on for 20 minutes boring. What happens when all gates are down and a team is 100 points ahead of the other team due to kills and heroes and such? There is little to encourage them to actually attack the lord and risk losing their own, so they bunker down for the timer and win by timeout. Maybe it’s because my unranked MMR is fairly high, but 11 of my 16 games ended on timeout. The only time it went to a lord kill was when the enemy team (or my team) was completely mechanically inferior to their opponents. We don’t want teams in the situation where they’ll win by timer to just sit around for an extra 5 minutes to win because it’s safe.

you missed the point of VoD, there will be no more timer end but every match will end with a lord kill. but it will need setup time for the npcs to walk to the middle of the map for the final showdown.

Jekkt.6045:

another thing that came to my mind was, when inside the lord room defending the gate while the enemy is trying to get the gate down, it felt very useless inside, you can aoe through the gate but it would be nice to have some stairs leading up to the wall (like in wvw towers) so that you can stand on the ledge and fire down.

will also add this to my main post.

It is kind of amazing that while promoting the fact that they improved the gate kill boxes in WvW Arenanet completely dropped the ball on the gate kill boxes in Stronghold.

Unfortunate, that.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Jekkt.6045:

it’s always possible to give 50s per win if stronghold gets its own queue and takes longer than conquest. tbh this is not really a problem as long as it’s fun and the rewards are balanced.

Sure! Rewards are an easy issue to handle, I agree, but a lot of people will still avoid Stronghold if the games take 20 minutes when they can get 2-3 games of Conquest in for the same time period.

Your note about fun is important; a lot of people will find something that drones on for 20 minutes boring. What happens when all gates are down and a team is 100 points ahead of the other team due to kills and heroes and such? There is little to encourage them to actually attack the lord and risk losing their own, so they bunker down for the timer and win by timeout. Maybe it’s because my unranked MMR is fairly high, but 11 of my 16 games ended on timeout. The only time it went to a lord kill was when the enemy team (or my team) was completely mechanically inferior to their opponents. We don’t want teams in the situation where they’ll win by timer to just sit around for an extra 5 minutes to win because it’s safe.

Oh ok. No, having high MMR doesn’t mean your games will result in going to timer. It actually means the teams are fairly balanced OR it means both teams are not good enough to end the game themselves. It’s pretty much the same in conquest, teams are fairly even if games goes to timer.

Well, maybe if you sit around, it’s why your games went to timer.

Also, if you think having a bunker at your lord just gives you a free win, you obviously never faced organized teams and what they can do in a short period of time.

Hexin.5603:

My point about Lord’s being vulnerable is … let me try to paint a picture here.

You are on a team who is defending in the Lord’s room the battle is heavy you have been on the defense for a while and it looks like a definite loss. You manage to hold in the lord’s room and down the enemy players. The respawn and start heading back. Great time for your team to go on the offensive. You send a couple guys down the offensive path. Suddenly the VoD timer hits. You see the enemies coming back in range again, but they hold back watching at a distance. Gate’s all open. Your npc’s remaining and Lord start there trek to mid, your remaining players escort them keeping the enemy at range. Meanwhile your offense dual take on the enemy npc’s en route at the gates…. the enemy still hasn’t reacted as they are focusing messing around with you. If they manage to get the enemy lord down before reinforcments come your team wins based on outplaying the enemies who failed to escort there npc’s. You can pull off a comeback with some quick thinking.

Granted… most battles and teams will escort there npc’s to mid point. But having it available allows for some more strategy to help teams attempt a miraculous comeback from a dire situation.

Would it lead to people stacking on a gate? Maybe … but a team should be able to fend off the attackers having there more powerful npc’s with them. Of course if you have little to no NPC’s it’s a moot point and the writing was already on the wall to begin with.

Hope that makes sense.

it’s also stupid to defend your lord just for VoD to kick in, him going out and dying. VoD in gw1 was the clash of the teams at the very end and not a ranged dps race. you also want the fight to start with the advantages that you managed to get during the match, having more npcs, having more points to get a damage multiplier for your team, setting up that strategy before the showdown starts, wiping the enemy team before the showdown starts.

what you suggest is a dps race when the lord comes out rather than a big teamfight. it is definitely also a possibility but in my opinion one with less “show” and impact compared to a full out fight between knights and pirates. As the pirate says, he want’s to settle this with the local lord.

Laraley.7695:

MailMail.6534:

I’m sorry but if you do not have time, then don’t play a game. Game mode shouldn’t be adjusted just because some people only have 20 minutes to play.

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in a very long time (2 days). The forums never disappoint me.

I’m sorry but why should other players adjust to you not having time? Should we just all work around your schedule and then decide how to proceed with a new game mode built on your life? I don’t think so.

I’m going to ignore your aggressive intolerance of a segment of gw2’s gaming population and just say there are several reasons why the time limit shouldn’t be increased:

• There’s already complaints of it being too long.
• Rewards. They’d need to be adjusted and compensated for the time increase. This requires balance. Ideally, I think Anet wants to keep the formats somewhat consistent when it comes to rewards.
• Based on my experience, all of the matches (90%) were pretty close. Increasing the time could widen the gap and lower the motivation of teams. You see this sometimes in conquest when one team is utterly annihilating the other.
• There’s complaints of this format constantly ending in time-outs. While I only experienced this about 10% of the time, apparently this has been an issue for many. If you fix this issue, there is no need to extend the time limit at all.
• Increasing the time raises the risk of it becoming quite stale. This is NOT like conquest where there is a constant and intense struggle for points. There’s a lot more PvE mixed in, meaning the intensity of the match isn’t as consistent.

Onto the last point, some hate this aspect, but I love the balance. It feels like it has the potential to be much more in tune with esports. There’s a “ramp up” phase where supply is being bought and guards are taken down. Then the intense phase starts when Heroes are being summoned and Lords attacked.

Jekkt.6045:

…snip…

I agree. And in 9/10 battles it will always be a mid point clash… but in times where you can take out the lord prior to mid point you should be allowed. Much like gw1.

i’m just not sure if that would work in gw2, the mechanics are different and you have no real healers so a full dps team would really have the advantage while a more tanky team is just doomed to defend but not really able to heal. similar to the heroes not attacking when they’re not at a gate the lord would be pretty much a free kill before he reached the mid point.

MailMail.6534:

Laraley.7695:

MailMail.6534:

I’m sorry but if you do not have time, then don’t play a game. Game mode shouldn’t be adjusted just because some people only have 20 minutes to play.

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in a very long time (2 days). The forums never disappoint me.

I’m sorry but why should other players adjust to you not having time? Should we just all work around your schedule and then decide how to proceed with a new game mode built on your life? I don’t think so.

I’m going to ignore your aggressive intolerance of a segment of gw2’s gaming population and just say there are several reasons why the time limit shouldn’t be increased:

• There’s already complaints of it being too long.
• Rewards. They’d need to be adjusted and compensated for the time increase. This requires balance. Ideally, I think Anet wants to keep the formats somewhat consistent when it comes to rewards.
• Based on my experience, all of the matches (90%) were pretty close. Increasing the time could widen the gap and lower the motivation of teams. You see this sometimes in conquest when one team is utterly annihilating the other.
• There’s complaints of this format constantly ending in time-outs. While I only experienced this about 10% of the time, apparently this has been an issue for many. If you fix this issue, there is no need to extend the time limit at all.
• Increasing the time raises the risk of it becoming quite stale. This is NOT like conquest where there is a constant and intense struggle for points. There’s a lot more PvE mixed in, meaning the intensity of the match isn’t as consistent.

Onto the last point, some hate this aspect, but I love the balance. It feels like it has the potential to be much more in tune with esports. There’s a “ramp up” phase where supply is being bought and guards are taken down. Then the intense phase starts when Heroes are being summoned and Lords attacked.

My agressive intolerance to other players’ lives comes from the fact I feel it’s wise to do what’s best for the gamemode itself and not build it on some people’ working schedules. It’s like you coming to a football match and asking players to end it quickly because you have to work. I don’t really see the logic there. Well, apart from being selfish and have things adjusted to that person’s life.

I don’t seen an issue with changing rewards.

I’ve seen people complaining about timer being short more rather than long.

Games goes to timer because the SH needs to be changed and matchmaking adjusted.

No, increasing timer means there will be more time for other aspects of the game mode if it’s modified properly and not just a pve speed clear.

Yeah, you’re only missing the point that at the current state, it’s best to just run and kill lord quickly and guess what. In soloq with no voice com people will be losing to one single person sneaking in their lord room and killing him. If they actually did listen to the majority of pvp community and adjusted the map, so it’s more efficient to play the map as a pvp map and not a new dungeon, the timer would need to be higher.

If they actually did listen to the majority of pvp community and adjusted the map, so it’s more efficient to play the map as a pvp map and not a new dungeon, the timer would need to be higher

You don’t have to increase the time limit to make this happen. One easy fix is making it harder for players to kill enemy guards and buffing Archers.

MailMail.6534:

If they actually did listen to the majority of pvp community and adjusted the map, so it’s more efficient to play the map as a pvp map and not a new dungeon, the timer would need to be higher

You don’t have to increase the time limit to make this happen. One easy fix is making it harder for players to kill enemy guards and buffing Archers.

You said it yourself. It would mean there would be less time to kill the lord and more games going to timer if it stayed 15 minutes.

Your argument ‘it has to stay 15 minutes because I have work irl’ just doesn’t go along with this game mode, I’m sorry.

What they should try on the next test without going overboard:

-Increases the game time to 20 minutes.
-Increases the respawn time by 1sec for every minute that passes.
-Makes the Guard a little harder to kill by players.
(don’t make it too hard, just hard enough for player to start thinking about getting some archers while fighting against enemy’s defenders and Guard at the same time.)
-Lets Guard use bow against everyone but sword against Door Breaker and priority DB over everything else.
-Lets NPC in Lord room has a job to protect the lord. One will cast Armour on the Lord. One will cast Healing on the Lord. One will remove Conditions on the Lord. All these skill will have a CD of 7-10sec CD. NPC will only casting the spell when they are in combat. This to prevent NPC healing the Lord back to full HP.
(this will prevent some Kamikaze playstyle and adding some tactic in killing the Lord)