Guild Wars 2

Maybe Anet could add more damage from archers to guards/npc and less damage from players to guards/npc

I agree Lord shound’t attack if he receives stealth. Reveal is too fast on him.

Shade Madrigal.1729:

DaG.5103:

1. I believe guards are at the appropriate strength level. If guards were harder to kill, it would further discourage PvP on defense. Guards should be soloable, which forces players to devote some time to defending to ensure they don’t get an easy path cleared for heros and DBs. This also encourages summoning Archers, because when players are defending their guards, it’s more advantageous to spend supply pushing NPCs that can help overwhelm them rather than just doing DB spam.

I definitely agree that guards should always remain soloable, but I think that term could be made a little more demanding.

The reason I’d like to see that is 2 fold:
1) I’d really like the Archers to feel as threatening as the doorbreakers – something that needs to be kept away, cc’d, dps’d, treb’d away from your guards, just like the doorbreakers are for doors.

In a lot of cases, it felt like they were only ever a threat to your guards if you left your side completely undefended or they had a squadron of ’em and your team completely failed with the treb. Upping the armor of defensive NPCs relative to the player -a little (emphasis: not a lot) – and upping the damage the archers do to the NPCs might make them feel a little more threatening and something that needs to be controlled/summoned.

Perhaps having the archers strongly prefer to attack the NPCs over doing negligible damage to players would have the same effect (I may just be underestimating their damage potential because they always seemed to be plinking away uselessly at a player). Make them more mission-focused like those good ol’ kamikaze doorbreakers.

2) In a lot of our matches the enemy guards between the inner and outer gates were just collateral damage of us pushing a wave of doorbreakers (ignoring any mention of the rock-paper-scissor archers) to the next gate. They weren’t necessarily an obstacle in themselves. They either fall during the push or could be bursted down by a zerk while we prepared for another push with doorbreakers.

Sure, that sounds reasonable. I have heard some people say that zerging with archers can really build up pressure on defending players, but I didn’t have enough time to test it myself. But upping defense and archer damage seems like it might help find a sweeter spot for encouraging both spawns while still keeping the defending team on their toes.

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.

IMO killing NPCs tend to be bit a bit boring, guards should get a bit more flavor in terms of abilities.

Archers seems to be a bit useless – I know they can clear out the guards without players aiding but guards can be easily aggroed anyway thus they dont even have to be killed to smuggle your bombers through. Archers also attack players but why? they barely do any damage to them.

The lord tends to stop attacking while in downed, which should be fixed. I dont know if its whether because he was stealthed or some other reason, but once he gets out of stealth he refuses to attack again, therefore the lord doesn’t rally from killing invading players.

Also the lord should get a downed autoattack that doesn’t break stealth so easily on him. (it’s a channel ability ATM)

As an alternative the hero channels could be switched out for capture points but this is just an idea. Maybe it is better as it is.

Some of the people in this thread scare me. They want buffs to NPCs or new guard abilities? You have PvE for that.

The issue with the game mode is that it is TOO much about the NPCs. The player aspect is almost secondary. I want to see player kills/death count for a lot more than they do today.

style.6173:

Some of the people in this thread scare me. They want buffs to NPCs or new guard abilities? You have PvE for that.

The issue with the game mode is that it is TOO much about the NPCs. The player aspect is almost secondary. I want to see player kills/death count for a lot more than they do today.

While I agree with this, generally speaking, I still think archers are too useless. I’d be fine with them not being super tanky (killable by enemies with minimal effort) if they did enough damage to players just to break up and discourage excessive turtling. Turtling isn’t my idea for great PVP either. NPC/ Objective based PVP > playing wall.

style.6173:

Some of the people in this thread scare me. They want buffs to NPCs or new guard abilities? You have PvE for that.

The issue with the game mode is that it is TOO much about the NPCs. The player aspect is almost secondary. I want to see player kills/death count for a lot more than they do today.

NPCS should be a resource players fight over.

I swear some people have never played multiplayer games before..

Stronghold has a lot of problems in its current state and if it goes live without some significant changes, it will be skyhammer 2.0 (best thing ever for the first few days then pushed aside to the point of people not wanting it).

I played for about 7 hours almost entirely with a 5man team, so these views are based on coordinated strategies.

PvE Tactics Decide the Match
A group with some support can keep doorbreakers (DBs) alive through player damage until both gates are down. The biggest effect on the DB push is how many are one-shot by the guards. The melee guards are especially potent since they can cleave down three at once.

However, the guards can be pulled off the path of the DBs long enough for the DBs to pass through. But if you slip up even a little, a single attack can take out half your DBs. As a result, the single biggest deciding factor in whether your DBs break the inner gate is execution of PvE tactics.

No Need for More Supply
If you corral the guard NPCs properly, your initial wave of DBs (between 5 and 10) can break through your opponents’ inner gate. Unless you completely fail at PvE, you’ll never need more offensive NPCs. That means no reason to ever visit the supply depot after the first 15 seconds of the game. This negates what was intended to be a crucial feature of the map intended to promote PvP combat.

Race Instead of Competition
With re-supply being unimportant and manipulation of NPC guards being the deciding factor, the game mode turns into a PvE race. Execute poorly and you lose unless your opponents also fail. Defending with players only serve to slightly delay breaking through a gate or putting damage onto the lord.

The most effective thing that a defending player can do is prevent opponents from corralling the NPC guards. The second most effective thing is to instant-res the lord in order to buy time for their team’s offense.

Little Chance for a Comeback
If you happen to have poor execution, there’s no way to recover from it on your own. If you defend your lord, it still eventually dies. Even wiping the opposing team in your lord room doesn’t buy enough time for your team to run across the map and kill their lord. Your opponents will resurrect and just rush your lord again, which is likely at low HP already.

Even in a match where both sides fail the initial DB push, the mist heroes are inconsequential. They can be killed before doing any significant damage to a gate or lord and don’t do anything else along the way.

PvE races that depend on out-smarting a few NPCs won’t go over well in a PvP mode. Once PUG groups settle on some variant of rushing with DBs at the start and have some minimal coordination, games will have become who can PvE best, not who can PvP best. What can be done to change it? Here are some of my ideas:

Lower Doorbreaker HP
Players should be able to kill DBs faster. As a result, there is less need for NPC guards to kill them and gives defending groups an actual chance to stop DB trains.

Guard NPCs Don’t Doorbreakers
It’s already been shown that the current NPCs between the two gates can be easily out-smarted. A small goof in NPC management that should not be the difference between success and failure. The purpose of the guards should be to prevent attacking NPCs from getting through gates quickly without enough help, and they can do that without instantly killing DBs. This change combined with the previous one would put far less emphasis on defending NPCs.

Doorbreakers Attack Once and Die
Suicide Skritt bombers (or to be animal-friendly, they toss their bomb and run away). Their damage would have to be increased (20-25% of gate HP probably compared to current 12.5% or 1/8). The aim here is three-fold. first, You don’t have to stop all the DBs in order to ruin your enemies’ plan or simply slow them down. Second, the push with 5 initial supply of DBs could actually be stopped from getting through the first gate and would be incapable of getting through the second. A slightly delayed 10 supply DB push could be easily stopped from breaching the second gate. This slows down the PvE race and makes the supply depot actually important. Third, it creates a more distinct trade-off with archers. Archers will do more damage if left alone and can hit the next gate or lord, whereas DBs would be to break a heavy defense or to take a quick risk.

Mist Hero’s “Elite” Death-Touches a Gate
The elite would have its current effect on the lord, but also a cooldown to prevent the hero from going through both gates or a gate and hurting the lord before it reasonably would be killed. This would make the mist hero more important and a bigger priority. It could be used to break a turtle team or as a way to leap-frog ahead in the PvE race.

@ Exedore I am +1ing your post, because of the insights on the current doorbreaker and guard flaws, but I’m going to disagree with you about the importance of heroes. I’ll get to that later. Many other comments in this thread I’ve agreed with as well.

First, to Arenanet, I want to explain my experience. It was much different than conquest. Overall it was excellent, so thank you!

I played a handful of matches with guildies on different professions (PvE focus guild, so low-mid tier and no abnormally high or low skill levels) where we split 3-2 or 2-1-2 in favor of offense. The two defending players were usually staff or d/f elementalists, and they could quite easily fend off the attacking players long enough for us to push the lane with doorbreakers or heroes. Later on I played a lot of solo-queue games with pugs when I switched to staff ele, and I also had a good time in the defending lane, able to CC and melt doorbreakers before the outer gate was down, or at least before inner fell. True, coordinated teams worked much more effectively, but that’s not really the heart of the issue right now, it’s just the nature of the beast until people become more aware of the format. With around 6-8 hours of play on the map, none of us were extremely well versed in the various strategies that you could use, but I’ll explain the three I saw being used so far, for the benefit of those that had either very high level or very few matches.

Strategies:

1. Rush the lane mostly with attackers (3-5) pouring all the beginning supply in to make 5 doorbreakers and running forward to not resupply at all. I like to call this the battering ram method, and it’s especially effective for the first gate. You sacrifice control of the supply area and basically let them have a free run or two in which to build up their lane with lots of NPCs that might become too much for your very meager defense to hold off. Usually your superior numbers can power through guards and player alike, and usually defenders are too focused on surviving to burn down the doorbreakers.
2. Control the supply depots. This seems like the catapult method. Instead of running with the initial rush of doorbreakers, your team might send one player (or none) to take out guards but focus on fighting off their supply runners right away, forcefully gaining control of the depots for a brief time (until you are able to supply yourselves), then running back to spend it, rinse, and repeat. This becomes an exercise in futility without a good group in the attack lane to actually cause some havoc once your forces are moving. One mild advantage I saw was that using this method, going to supply as a group, you have almost guaranteed movement in your attack lane. Useful if you have a support character who wants to buff them all with swiftness and other long-duration boons, or useful if your supply runners would like to roam to other things at times.
3. Focus on defense. This is the artillery method, trying to stay well out of harm’s way until you get the chance to focus your group on the mists essence hero spawn points. Players in the supply depot try to CC enemies to stall them from making NPCs, and take advantage of down time to run some supply over to make archers just to keep the attack lane occupied. When the mists essence pops up the team forces it’s way in there with as many people as possible and goes for a powerplay, reversing the momentum and pushing forward with as much as they can. It can be a viable method if you have the presence of mind to save up some supply to spend right at that crucial moment (acts like an artillery shot, winding up for one big spike). Unfortunately it requires timing and is susceptible to counter-snowballing if you let them have too much free reign of supply. Very effective if you expect the attackers to be glass cannons that 3-4 defenders can wipe quickly.

(tbc)

(continued)
Now on to criticisms:

• Heroes spawn too often for anything else to be meaningful. It seems it takes about 2 1/2 minutes to push your NPCs forward, then another 2 1/2 minutes to run supply and have new NPCs run down the lane, resulting in no more than one wave in between hero spawns. Then when he’s yours you simply burn any leftover supply and do a rush, usually, forgetting the rest of the map objectives.
• Strategy #2, controlling the center, was the worst. Trying to endlessly supply your attack lane with NPCs was ineffective, and I’m pretty sure the center of the map will be the least populated of all. This is probably counter intuitive for most players, and newbies will have it the worst.
• Wiping the enemy push is useless. I agree with most of the posters that the respawn timer near the end of the match makes for a huge disappointment. Snowballing is much easier in this format, you can’t turn things around if your entire team focuses on defending and then suddenly the enemy has a free shot at two heroes and it starts all over again.
• Too many special objectives means that it goes to a timer-ending more often than it should, and it’s more PvE focused. Other maps have one, maybe two special things going on, tops, but this one has a whopping 3+ minigames, between treb, mists essence, and barracks. Channeling control, lane pushing, lane defense, trebbing, using heroes vs using normal NPCs… all these are strategic decisions that have to be made and things that take time to do, whereas on other maps you have one, maybe two things, to keep in mind, and the rest of the game is a PvP skill matchup. It’s honestly like two maps shoved together, almost like you had too many cooks in the kitchen all trying to shove their ingredients in.
• Heroes’ defiance is a little too strong, for the other buffs they give, making it possible for a team to easily push with just a few players all the way to a lord with their damage reduction and force defending players to call in reinforcements, snowballing the game with almost no hope of relief by successfully defending. Ticking down his defiance bar only stuns him for a few seconds, and for all the effort it cost, the PvP suffers dramatically. Again it’s too much PvE focus at that point, becoming a DPS race.

Suggestions: Some of these are mutually exclusive suggestions for improving the map’s flow, some is strictly for the Stronghold format including all future maps.

• Split the map in two. Launch the format with 2+ versions, one which includes the heroes and one with something entirely different, like static turret emplacements or moving the treb, or a third type of NPC.
• Increase the timer to 20 minutes. This is something that I would agree with in it’s current state, as well as spacing out the hero spawns accordingly to make the lane phase seem like the “normal” flow instead of just filler in between the more important hero pushes.
• Skritt bombs should be one-and-done explosions, chunking out like 1/4 of the door’s health and having them burrow away safely, causing more conflict and control in the supply area, more use for Archers, more effect from CC, and fewer noob-rush team compositions. Archers’ stats should be buffed enough that a 5-tengu team could take out a door in 3-5 minutes unhindered so that’s a viable strategy as well, or a player in one or two volleys, though countered by skillful bunker defense (skritt countered by DPS). Supply running for skritt would then be meaningfully helping the team.
• Increase the respawn timer later in the match, so that attacks have more risk/reward built in. 40-60 seconds to respawn is not abnormally frustrating for players, but getting rushed by the same player every 30 seconds who dies and runs back is extremely frustrating for defenders.
• Eliminate one of the hero spawn times, like the first one, completely. This causes fewer distractions and more opportunity for strategic thinking as your team plans to take down both gates.
• Increase the effectiveness of guards for taking down attacking NPCs. Whatever it is, be it tweaking their aggro priority, changing the doorbreaker’s pathing, making their shots piercing, having them deal more damage to players, whatever. Let them defend meaningfully or eliminate them completely, please. MOBA’s do it with equally matched minions or with high-powered turrets, not these weak easily manipulated “guards”. I’d prefer aggro priority paired with piercing shots, so that while they don’t do much damage to players, they can wipe doorbreakers fast.

TL;DR : I had a blast trying it out in it’s beta form. If I had to pick one suggestion it really ought to launch with more than one map. Break up the kitchen, separate the cooks into batches, decide on one special objective per map like you used to do. NPCs in the lane need to become “the norm” before you introduce heroes, trebs, and all that jazz.