Guild Wars 2

I’m an avid PvP player (main game mode for 1 year now, but I’ve played everything), I was so hyped for Stronghold, but after 2 betas I’m already bored of Stronghold. Why :

There are not enough PvP interactions in this game mode.

Ignoring other players is just the best strategy overall.

• In defense, as long as you kill bombers other players can’t do anything to your base, so why would you even care about them ?
• Supplies, just run two of those unkillable mobile specs like DD eles and run them in loops ignoring attackers.
• Offense is the only place where you fight players, as it’s part of protecting your NPCs. But it’s still only useful in this context, when you have no NPC you should just ignore them and go back tu running supplies again. This leads to situations where attackers attack defenders, but the defenders try to kill the NPCs and never fight back. Once the NPCs are down, defenders reset in their base and attackers leave.

This needs to change ASAP. I have multiple suggestions to make fighting players the center of the game mode.

1. Make killing players MANDATORY, by changing channels on supply, by making killing attackers mandatory (for whatever reason).
2. Make killing players REWARDING, by enhancing the killer’s stats for a time for example. Or give a player the possibility to summon a hero after 5 kills.
3. Make dying PENALIZING, like GW1’s death penalty, and steadily increase rez time each time you die.

There are multiple references to MOBA when talking about this mode, but those 3 points above are incredibly important design aspects in MOBAs. There, you CANNOT push a lane if you do not kill ennemy players, and killing them is an immense swing in a game. This is what makes the game exciting, those PvP interactions in the lane. There is nothing like this in Stronghold at the moment.

As long as it this isn’t fixed, I fear the worst for this game mode when PvP players will realize this is just a NPC farmfest.

4.Killing a enemy player gives you a buff to deal dmg to the gates for “x” time…. Or killing enemys lower the Hp of the gates…
#formorepvpinstronghold

5. Make a proper deathmatch mode.

6. I’d rather play CTF

phokus.8934:

6. I’d rather play CTF

CTF is what i was hoping to get in HoTs. but yeah thats Anet we are talking about

I know we’re not supposed to post just saying that we agree . . . but I kinda just agree. If it’s a PvP mode, there needs to be more reason to PvP. More specifically: Make us want to kill our enemies. Just about the only time I stomped an enemy was to rally a teammate in one of those rare, late-game scrambles at a hero spawn. Otherwise, once I downed someone, I was gone. I didn’t care if he bled out or if he self-rezzed; those were 3 seconds I could better spend getting back to the objectives. It’s a change from the norm, but not necessarily a good one.

How about this: When a player dies, it doesn’t drop its supply, but instead some sort of bomb bundle, which an opposing player can pick up and use (once) on the gate. Or something like that — something to make killing other players work toward the objectives.

phokus.8934:

6. I’d rather play CTF

Got bored of it after 1 match…Not enough PVP, NPC’s too slow to be exciting like any other moba…gg
I pvp to fight players not NPC’s.

It is just not innovative or creative in any way. They literally just said “mobas are esports!” and copied about 40% of a moba. But they left out most of the aspects which make mobas work. They gave us nothing innovative and most of the fun aspects of a moba such as leveling up and making different builds are completely absent. The pacing of a moba is what makes it fun. The games have stages and you increase in power as the game continues. As a result the dynamic of the game changes. It is many games in one game.

There is no creativity in stronghold. And it is just bad. Frankly bad. It has no wow/uber fun moments.

Compare this to the game modes that they have in games like swtor with huttball and it is really depressing for guild wars 2. Honestly its terrible lol.

Lastly, if I wanted to play a moba I would play a moba. How bad is their marketting department? What is the USP of making a terrible version of a moba. Those who like mobas wont play it anyway because they are gasp playing proper mobas which do it better. Secondly, they allienate all those who want to play a pvp mmorpg. Because they arent really moba fans

Argos Helios.4965:

Got bored of it after 1 match…Not enough PVP, NPC’s too slow to be exciting like any other moba…gg
I pvp to fight players not NPC’s.

Map is huge too. You spend most your time running between fights.

7. Make a proper GvG mode, a la GW1.

Yeah i mention it on the other post. & no matter what you change on this map, it’s still gonna be boring & none addictive. ps: why dont they copy WoW battle grounds & tweak it to there own?

thk God for ArenaNet this is a beta & they can cahnge the hole thang..

Ouroboros.5076:

There are multiple references to MOBA when talking about this mode, but those 3 points above are incredibly important design aspects in MOBAs. There, you CANNOT push a lane if you do not kill ennemy players, and killing them is an immense swing in a game. This is what makes the game exciting, those PvP interactions in the lane. There is nothing like this in Stronghold at the moment.

Since when can you not push a lane without killing enemy players in a MOBA? That’s completely false. If there are no enemy players defending the lane, you can certainly still push it. In fact, you can push it far easier. Very curious what MOBAs you’ve played where you cannot push a lane without killing the enemy.

Dying needs to be a major penalty in terms of respawn time. There’s no money/items to worry about so you can’t look at that for a penalty, but as the game progresses, dying needs to be something that will really screw your team. I’m talking upwards of 45-60secs to respawn on death. That would make killing the enemy a viable strategy. If they all try to rush lord, defend. Killing even a couple of them will put them at a severe disadvantage. Then mount a counter attack.

Game time would need to be increased, because honestly 15min is simply not enough.

Argos Helios.4965:

Got bored of it after 1 match…Not enough PVP, NPC’s too slow to be exciting like any other moba…gg
I pvp to fight players not NPC’s.

Lol, if Strhonghold was anything like a moba, it would have much better success.

runeblade.7514:

5. Make a proper deathmatch mode.

That x100..been hoping for proper deathmatch maps forever,pvpvers wanna pvp..Conquest is old,holding points is a bore,and Sh is something i will never be interested in.

Honestly, Stronghold seems to me like anet is injecting wvw elements into an pvp game mode so it distracts players from the extremely poor balancing efforts, some extremely poor profession and combat mechanics and some extremely poor weapon designs that they can’t bother using resources to improve.

That’s the main reason why I didn’t play this second stronghold beta. I played the first beta and one of the things that bothered me was how little interaction between players, this is not a zergfest but a speedfest. The channelling is such a poor design.

Swagger.1459:

Honestly, Stronghold seems to me like anet is injecting wvw elements into an pvp game mode so it distracts players from the extremely poor balancing efforts, some extremely poor profession and combat mechanics and some extremely poor weapon designs that they can’t bother using resources to improve.

There will never be a 1v1 well balanced element into the game. Mathematically impossible. Not in WoW, not Archage, not in any mmo that uses a stat system. So stop hoping. Only group balance exist. I think Arena Net is in the right direction to implement more pvp maps into the game. But the choices of it is what needs to be adressed.

Vieux P.1238:

Swagger.1459:

Honestly, Stronghold seems to me like anet is injecting wvw elements into an pvp game mode so it distracts players from the extremely poor balancing efforts, some extremely poor profession and combat mechanics and some extremely poor weapon designs that they can’t bother using resources to improve.

There will never be a 1v1 well balanced element into the game. Mathematically impossible. Not in WoW, not Archage, not in any mmo that uses a stat system. So stop hoping. Only group balance exist. I think Arena Net is in the right direction to implement more pvp maps into the game. But the choices of it is what needs to be adressed.

I never mentioned or implied “1v1”…

Swagger.1459 [/quote]

I never mentioned or implied “1v1”…
[/quote]

I know.

But you mentioned balance. & when we talk about balance, we start with the 1v1’s.
Obvious no?

Vieux P.1238:

Swagger.1459

I never mentioned or implied “1v1”…

I know.

But you mentioned balance. & when we talk about balance, we start with the 1v1’s.
Obvious no?

was looking for this threads troll… and there u are!

stronghold is fun but could be so much better

i think killing players still makes a lot of difference in the outcome… most of the time the team dominating the other will win

it should have been more like a moba though… with more lanes and gold progression which u can spend on utilities and traits…

for example a character starts out with nothing but weapon skills and progresses throughout the match… would have been much better imo

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

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

Vieux P.1238:

Swagger.1459

I never mentioned or implied “1v1”…
[/quote]

I know.

But you mentioned balance. & when we talk about balance, we start with the 1v1’s.
Obvious no?

[/quote]

the only obvious thing it that you are making assumptions. “balancing” starts with many other factors before you even get into 1v1 or 100v100. also, I said “poor balancing efforts” which implies many things related to “balance”.

They should indeed focus on real 8v8 or 10v10 GvG (on liightly larger maps) instead of stronghold. Not that I do not appreciate the effort that went into the design of stronghold, but it seems to me that they can’t find a way to make it as good as it should be.

Why the supply depot in the first place? Why not give supplies on kills?
But why need supplies in the first place? Why not have the npcs spawn automatically on both sides simultaneously so people don’t have to run back and forth all the time?

We’re so far away from the GvG gameplay of GW1.

Sunshine.5014:

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

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

I kittenin love that 2nd idea. That would be so fun haha.

Ouroboros.5076:

Ignoring other players is just the best strategy overall.

Ignoring useless players is a legit strategy in most PvP. You want to go after the ones who know what they’re doing.

Ouroboros.5076:

• In defense, as long as you kill bombers other players can’t do anything to your base, so why would you even care about them ?

The bombers ignore players and guards. They won’t attack or defend themselves. They will only bomb the door down and nothing else.

If the teams do not defend them, they’re helpless on their own and will get wasted by the guards and players.

Killing the players allowing your bombers to advance is imperative.

You admit this in your third point, but erroneously exclude the defensive side of it, saying the offensive team is the only one who has to worry about it.

If the enemy defender does not kill the players allowing the bombers to advance, they will lose their gates and fail.

Killing NPC’s takes away focus from players. Who can then kill you, and allow their bombers to advance.

This is where skill kicks in, where the better players will take victory.

Ouroboros.5076:

• Supplies, just run two of those unkillable mobile specs like DD eles and run them in loops ignoring attackers.

That’s what the treb is for. Utilize it.

Ouroboros.5076:

Offense is the only place where you fight players, as it’s part of protecting your NPCs. But it’s still only useful in this context, when you have no NPC you should just ignore them and go back tu running supplies again.

And if they just let you do that, they’re going to have a bad time.

Ouroboros.5076:

This leads to situations where attackers attack defenders, but the defenders try to kill the NPCs and never fight back. Once the NPCs are down, defenders reset in their base and attackers leave.

Those are some dead defenders against a team worth anything.
_

Since people are complaining about a lack of player fights, I have a pretty simple solution to make mid a more vested interest:

Take away the one supply every player starts with at the beginning of the match. Make everyone go mid to get supply at the beginning.

Each team starts with a small team of door breakers and an archer. Two breakers and an archer.

Or maybe some other random make up. No more than three on each side to begin. But it must be the same for both sides.

Bam, supply is more important.

You now must fight players over mid to bring out more door breakers and archers. Hey and there’s a treb pointed at mid, so even very defensive specs can’t lock it down.

But then, I rarely see people utilize the treb. So. Who’s fault is that? It’s a new game mode and a new map. People are still figuring it out.

Sweet, sweet beta impressions.
_

ETA: I like the idea of the Lord’s coming out of the base after 15 mins with their crew (whatevers left of it) to fight at mid!

Only when that happens, they should have an invulnerability buff until they reach mid and their health locked down to wherever it was at when time was up.

When they’re actually there (they should get there pretty quick), there should be a game wide buff that boosts everyone’s stats that’ll allow the game to be over pretty quick after the fact.

A sudden death kind of buff. That would be awesome.

It’s a good game mode, they need only to balance stuff (basically players damage on guards, archers effectiveness and channeling) to focus more on PvP instead of pve.

runeblade.7514:

5. Make a proper deathmatch mode.

Or at least act like you care about it.

@OP Is it hard to believe this is intended??

I like the MOBA aspect of this mode, but after playing it all night, its PvE with a little vP in it.

I feel like this should be a new activity in PvP along with keg brawl and sanctum sprint. Since you prioritize the PvE objectives over PvP, this mode as it is, shouldn’t be considered PvP.

I think a good solution would be to remove the supply aspect. Or change it. You can make it so that instead of channeling/fighting for the supply center. Kills give you supply, this is incentive for players to fight one another.

I also think that there’s too much supply at the start. The game should be about fighting players for those supply depots so you can start your push against the enemy lord for that late/end game battle in lords room. But you can skip the fighting right at the get go because you have enough supplies to push the enemy’s lord.

Beast Sos.1457:

Sunshine.5014:

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

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

I kittenin love that 2nd idea. That would be so fun haha.

gotta love the good things from GW1 they threw away huh? :P

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/%22Victory_or_Death!%22

Beast Sos.1457:

Sunshine.5014:

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

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

I kittenin love that 2nd idea. That would be so fun haha.

CETheLucid.3964:

ETA: I like the idea of the Lord’s coming out of the base after 15 mins with their crew (whatevers left of it) to fight at mid!

Only when that happens, they should have an invulnerability buff until they reach mid and their health locked down to wherever it was at when time was up.

When they’re actually there (they should get there pretty quick), there should be a game wide buff that boosts everyone’s stats that’ll allow the game to be over pretty quick after the fact.

A sudden death kind of buff. That would be awesome.

Eh…

As fun as it was when I first heard about it, after thinking it over I can see why that wouldn’t be a good idea.

If a team turtles the entire game and is losing horribly otherwise, they might win in the sudden death match. It wouldn’t be fair.

A lot of players would abuse this mechanic and basically force games to go the whole 15 mins just to go into sudden death.

I mean maybe it could work as a stipulation if both teams were very close or tied, but just having it as standard at the end of 15 mins is a bad idea… even if it sounds really cool in theory.

People are people.

CETheLucid.3964:

Ouroboros.5076:

• In defense, as long as you kill bombers other players can’t do anything to your base, so why would you even care about them ?

The bombers ignore players and guards. They won’t attack or defend themselves. They will only bomb the door down and nothing else.

If the teams do not defend them, they’re helpless on their own and will get wasted by the guards and players.

Killing the players allowing your bombers to advance is imperative.

You admit this in your third point, but erroneously exclude the defensive side of it, saying the offensive team is the only one who has to worry about it.

If the enemy defender does not kill the players allowing the bombers to advance, they will lose their gates and fail.

Killing NPC’s takes away focus from players. Who can then kill you, and allow their bombers to advance.

This is where skill kicks in, where the better players will take victory.

I think the OP was saying that Defenders only need to prioritize NPC/doorbreakers and can pretty much ignore enemy players. And later he mentions that only Attacking/Escorters have any real incentive to attack enemy players, like you said. The problem is that defenders don’t have any incentive to fight enemy players. And you’re underestimating defenders a bit too much here, its pretty easy to take out an NPC while dodging oncoming attacks from players. Once the NPC is down, defenders don’t need to defend from real players anymore and can just disengage relatively easy. Again, this is because there is no incentive to defend against attackers if your gate is still up.

CETheLucid.3964:

Ouroboros.5076:

• Supplies, just run two of those unkillable mobile specs like DD eles and run them in loops ignoring attackers.

That’s what the treb is for. Utilize it.

This is only incentive for players to fight at trebs, once trebs are down, roaming players like the DD eles only need to harass/los because there is a lack of incentive to actually fight to the death.

CETheLucid.3964:

Ouroboros.5076:

Offense is the only place where you fight players, as it’s part of protecting your NPCs. But it’s still only useful in this context, when you have no NPC you should just ignore them and go back tu running supplies again.

And if they just let you do that, they’re going to have a bad time.

I think OP is referring to the fact that an attacker isn’t worth engaging if he isn’t escorting an NPC and that defenders should look for other objectives, the problem is that in PvP the objective should revolve around PvP, not some PvE objective like gathering supply. Ideally, this situation would result in both parties fighting for supply, but there are so many PvE objectives, this is rarely the case.

CETheLucid.3964:

Ouroboros.5076:

This leads to situations where attackers attack defenders, but the defenders try to kill the NPCs and never fight back. Once the NPCs are down, defenders reset in their base and attackers leave.

Those are some dead defenders against a team worth anything.

Defense is too easy, if you defend around the gate portal, you can easily disengage and heal up and reengage since attackers can’t get through without NPCs. Again the problem the OP is trying to bring up is that Defenders have little or no incentive to actually engage in combat with real players. No PvP in PvP?

CETheLucid.3964:

Since people are complaining about a lack of player fights

Spot on. Stronghold, at its present state, is filled with PvE objectives (prioritizing killing NPCs, over Players). The OP was stating his observations and making a complaint about having too many PvE objectives in PvP mode, which I think is valid. Its still in beta, and he’s hoping that by posting this, he could somewhat influence it’s development, that’s why developers have betas, for his, yours, mine and all players’ feedback. And complaining is a form of feedback.

I think your solution is valid too, removing some of the PvE objectives (spawning NPCs with starting supply) in the beginning would help early game out a lot.

Valid points. And I totally agree, killing players is not valued at all.
The reason that is, is because of the respawn-time. It’s 15 throughout the whole game.
This makes killing another player useless.
It brings with it another very negative thing, which is comebacks. Wiping the enemy team in a lord fight, just to find out that when you’ve travelled half the mad, the whole team has respawn and pushes for your lord once again.
Happened too often. This was said A LOT with the last feedback, but Anet does not listen to anything.
The game-mode is already set in stone at this point.

I don’t see how people can play Stronghold without fighting other players. So long as both sides don’t attempt an early game Lord rush at the same time you’re going to run into other players and have to fight them.

I actually had more intense PVP in the defensive lane than offensive. Yes, my main goal was to kill the NPCs, but doing that doesn’t make the enemy players magically disappear. You’ve just had to blow your defensive skills to keep yourself alive while you burn down the NPCs where as your opponent was allowed to freecast on you for a while. You’re at a steep disadvantage, and if the attacker kills you there will be a window where his NPCs won’t have opposition. Likewise if you manage to kill the NPCs and have the opportunity you absolutely want to kill the enemy attacker so that they aren’t around to keep attacking you when the next wave of NPCs show up.

If anything the PVP is more intense because both sides have to use their resources to fight around the NPCs. The attacker has to lay down healing skills and defensive utilities to protect them while the defender has to switch target between the NPCs and the enemy player periodically as the fight progresses, switching between throwing out control skills on the attacker and damage on the NPCs while trying to stay alive. This gets more complicated if the guards haven’t been killed yet. It also leads to the possibility of pyrrhic victories where you managed to kill the enemy but lost a ton of supply worth of NPCs because you let the fight draw out too long and several waves of NPCs got slaughtered.

ChoChoBo.6503:

I think the OP was saying…
I think OP is referring to the fact…
The OP was stating his observations…

You seem to know the OP better than they know themselves. You and OP good friends? I wish I had someone to expound on my opinions and stuff. Must be nice.

ChoChoBo.6503:

The OP was stating his observations and making a complaint about having too many PvE objectives in PvP mode, which I think is valid. Its still in beta, and he’s hoping that by posting this, he could somewhat influence it’s development, that’s why developers have betas, for his, yours, mine and all players’ feedback. And complaining is a form of feedback.

Okay? I’m fine with that. There’s OP’s thoughts, there are your thoughts there, and mine too all happily sharing the same forum space. Happy times.

This reads as though you think I have an issue with the OP. I don’t. We do however have a difference of opinion.

And I can live with that.

ChoChoBo.6503:

I think your solution is valid too, removing some of the PvE objectives (spawning NPCs with starting supply) in the beginning would help early game out a lot.

Good to hear it. Stronghold is supposed to have some WvW/PvE elements in there. We’ll see what happens.

Played a game last night where we got farmed in our lane for most of the match. The other team got wiped 1 time and we all rushed the lord and won because we were mostly zerker build. This map favors dps build, promotes pve and ignore players.

CETheLucid.3964:

You seem to know the OP better than they know themselves. You and OP good friends? I wish I had someone to expound on my opinions and stuff. Must be nice.

It is. On a more serious note, we have no relation of any kind.

Ehecatl.9172:

Likewise if you manage to kill the NPCs and have the opportunity you absolutely want to kill the enemy attacker so that they aren’t around to keep attacking you when the next wave of NPCs show up.

No. If you kill the attacking NPCs, you just reset in base your health and cooldowns, and wait for the next wave. There is no advantage to push in defense, it’s a stalemate game. Once the NPCs are down, the attacking players are powerless.

Defending is thus mostly PvE while dodging attacks. Until they get to the lord room, of course.

Ouroboros.5076:

Make dying PENALIZING, like GW1’s death penalty, and steadily increase rez time each time you die.

I completely agree with this statement.

Yesterday, I played a game on my thief. The hero channel spawned on the enemy’s side, so I decided to go over and try to capture the point or prevent the enemy team from getting it. When I got there, I had to do a 1v2 while consistently interrupting the person who was trying to channel while I was distracted from his teammate.

After about a minute, a third person from the enemy team showed up, and I had to back off until finally someone from my team showed up to help me. We ended up slowly killing each person and won the 2v3, but before we could finish capturing the channel the first person we killed already re spawned and cc’d us. A few seconds later everyone we had killed showed up at the spawn again, and we fought over it for a second time.

This lasted for over 5 minutes and turned into a 2v4 at that point. We had killed each person at least 3-4 times during this but it didn’t matter because of how fast and how close they re spawned. They just kept spawn-rushing us and we eventually lost because of it, and they got the channel in the end.

We still won the match because we distracted most of their team for 5 minutes, but that situation should never have happened in the first place. It’s one thing to give both hero channels an advantage to each team, it’s another to make dieing completely inconsequential or advantageous at points.

+1 to OP

PKing should be swing factor, and a stat bonus on whoever delivers the stomp would be interesting…

Like i said before, after playing it both betas, the mode is just not cutting it. It’s boring! After a few hours you feel like not wanting to play it no more. Tweaking wont change that. But changing the Moba mode to something else like (Isle of Conquest) in WoW.
I played it, & it’s fun as hell. But i got to admit, the map is a bit larger plus it’s a 40vs40. But hell is it fun. We have not anoth players for that. Make PVP FREE to play! & get more players involved.

The OP is completely correct and I feel the same way.

Beta 1:
I was excited to play the new map. It was fun to play and was great to see something new

Beta 2:
I got tired really quickly of fighting NPCs. It became boring quickly and I went to ranked queue instead.

Summary:
It is fun when someone first starts playing given that it is new but becomes boring very quickly. I come to PvP to fight players. Currently this is a NPC killing mode and not overly exciting.

Stronghold was a pretty painful experience for me because there were so many people playing and the game apparently thinks I’m so good that I should be able to carry teams who lose 4v3 teamfights.

That said, I agree generally with the OP, but would like to clarify my thoughts as well.

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

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

Everything revolves around balancing archers, player damage on guards and channeling. Balancing these aspects, pvp side of this game mode will be really more relevant than now.

bump

similar system to svanir/chief for pks pls, except only for person who stomps and stackable!