Guild Wars 2

Sorry to say this but from my experience this game suffers some serious issues that make it a snooze fest and nowhere near the fun that conquest maps provide. Here are my gripes:

1. lanes. Those two boring, dogfight lanes.

In conquest there are at least 2 paths to each point which leads to some successful sneaking around to decap a point, roaming to defend it, or some unexpected encounters between them. Things are bit tactical, fun and bit unpredictable, leading to varied action non-stop.

Not in conquest! All happens in a straight, pretty open dogfight lane. Either you take yours to defend base and make match last an eternity, or take their to race who kills lord first. Not enough tactics, no “more then one way to skin a cat” like in conquest.

2. Paper, Scissors &…wth? Rock, where did you go?

You can spawn doorbreakers and archers. But once you lose a door guard it’s over and done. No refunds. I know it’s for sake of the game having any chance at ending before timer is up, but still there’s something fundamentally wrong with rock paper scissors setup where one of them cannot be refreshed unlike the other two.

3. too much open space.

Lanes are too open! Result? Ranger galore. Why bother with melee character when you can snipe them down to half health before they even reach you. Ofc i’m exagerrating, but the bottom line here is there’s hardly any LoS or sharp curves to let a melee char get in close without looking like a hedgehog.

4. Lack of proper mobile guarding skills.

I’m talking stuff like revenant moving projectile block, and similar skill on dragon hunter spec. If we’re to protect npcs and ranged fire from enemy is 95% certain we need skills that can protect those NPC on the move, and not be useful for 1-2s that they need to walk out of immobile protection zone.

5. choke points. – that’s the flaw stemming from 2 lane design. You don’t need any strategy to know where to stand if you want to defend your base. There’s only one point, and that’s your gate and later inner gate. There is no guesswork, no strategy in determining how to sneak into enemy base and wreck havoc. Everyone knows where the enemy will come from before the game even starts.

6. NPC spam. These doorbreakers can breed like…skritt. Seriously i’d like to see some leash put on that to the point where you have to care to escort your doorbreakers, rarther then zerging your way through with npcs, with little consideration for the 80% that will die before they get there.

So in short – lotsa work ahead for stronghold in my honest opinion.

I disagree with you.

Ehecatl.9172:

I disagree with you.

(lol)

Ehecatl.9172:

I disagree with you.

This.

Even when we (Radioactive) played 5 defense it didn’t feel boring, I think it total it is as fun if not more fun than conquest. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion though :P .

ZeftheWicked.3076:

4. Lack of proper mobile guarding skills.
I’m talking stuff like revenant moving projectile block, and similar skill on dragon hunter spec. If we’re to protect npcs and ranged fire from enemy is 95% certain we need skills that can protect those NPC on the move, and not be useful for 1-2s that they need to walk out of immobile protection zone.

This I think is an issue with all of GW2. The game is heavily focused on mobility and positioning, but we have an absurd number of fixed location pulsing skills. The mobile nature of NPCs in stronghold just highlights the problem.

Here’s two more ideas I’ve been toying around with, curious what others would think.

-delete all NPC’s except for the ones in lord chamber and make the current door breaker spawn points instead spawn a bomb/bomb kit that the player has to carry to the door.

-make the supply center a capture point that you mus hold to get pick up supply from (you can still get it from dead players though).
Both make the game mode less PvE’ish and encourage more actual PvP as well, as streamlining a few of the confusing mechanics for newbs.

it reminds me of a mini Alterac Valley.. not the old fun version but more the new one where you just rush to the boss. it needs more incentives to pvp. making the supply center a capture point like Runewolf said sounds like a good idea.

This biggest issue by far, is lack of incentive to kill players. Your only focus is killing npcs or keeping npcs alive. After they die, everyone fans away to gather more supply. You cant snowball after winning a teamfight like you can in conquest, therefore nobody cares to pvp, and instead opt for escort wars. Game mode is fun, just needs more incentive to kill players.

Funny, I kinda miss stronghold. It was fun when teams began to apply defense against lord rushers. The 3 minute matches felt meaningless.

Also I think it will be more interesting with the new builds and profession

@OP: It really depends on what you enjoy. If you like PvP, this isn’t a great map for you. The intention is more to get those who enjoy PvE to participate. Maybe once they try stronghold, they will start trying the more PvP oriented maps.