Guild Wars 2

Warning: My English may look weird. Please bear with it!

This is an idea for a DM mode that would fit the current state of sPvP.

I believe most of us must agree that Courtyard is a lackluster solution and I don’t think that this game mode should follow up that path.

In a quick note, the plan is to create a game mode that follow the same principles as the current Conquest mode, at the same time that focuses on fighting players instead of capping points.

Yet at the same time, rounds will still be decided by points.

The Map Design

The map follows the same map design as SMITE’s Arena mode. Arena net could always be creative with the vertical design but the idea must remain like this:

• Both bases must be on ground level.
• Players can leave and enter the base freely. Including enemys.
• The base must have some kind of system to punish enemys that enters the base, enough to keep then away from the starting point, to prevent camping, but still giving the option of someone diving in the base to finish that guy that decided to run away.
• Players won’t heal on base, but they can wait to reset. “Safely”.
• Instead of a jungle (or maybe it could be the jungle, who knows) every map must have some kind of “system” that affects the battle. Like Anet does on every map already. This will probably sound strange to some DM lovers, but I will explain below why its necessary.
• Possibly, every map may need a instant death method. Read here Lava, instant death falls, freeze to death…. anything.

The Game Mode

Here comes the fun part, this game mode would still maintain most of the core components on the conquest modes:

• It would be decided by points, not entirely on kills.
• It would still maintain the current builds divided on Bunkers, Hybrids and Roamers.
• Keeps the quick pace of conquest where people can’t simply sit on base. Nor has the needs of separating the fight on different rounds.

The score would work as follows:

1º Every Player outside the base would score 1 point per tick to the Team.
Regardless of what he is actually doing.
This comes the charm of this game mode, Survival is worth as much as mindless killing. Plus people builded to survive will have a role to keep a stream of points rolling. As well as keeping the team alive trough boons and etc or CCing the opponents.

2º Kills will score points. More points as the rounds advance
The kills are the main part of the game mode, and here I try to fix some problens with the current conquest mode as well.
Currently, if a team is losing from more than 100~150 points it become near impossible to change the results from the fight. Some maps do give some options but in a general way the results are boring and predicable. Which sucks for E-sports.

Killing on this game mode would give a small amount of points in the beggining of the round. (like 5 points). As the game advances tough, the amount of points per kill steadly raises, reaching a point where killing players greatly outshine the amount of points gained by staying alive. (like 30 to 40 points per finisher)

This adds a certain level of strategy to the game mode: Will you bring a bunker team to farm point slowly or will you risk some offensive attackers to farm points faster at the end?
This adds a bit more drama to the fight since even if the team reaches the end with less points, they could always go all-or-nothing and flip the results. Making the result more unpredictable and more reliable on the team strategy and skills.

3º players on base won’t grant points
Alas, dead players and people waiting on base to heal won’t grant any point to the team.
This means you can use the base to regroup, but the enemy team will farm points meanwhile you are doing it.
Nonetheless, at any given point of the game, killing players not only grants a bonus to the team, but also deny points as well.

4º The killing method awards different points:
Whats more exciting to the crowd? Someone dying in the middle of AoEs or someone Finishing a downed player in the middle of swords and fireballs?

Finishing people will always grant more points.
Other methods of killing is CCing someone to their deaths (like fall damage) and killing someone “naturally”. Each will give a different amount of points, where taking the risk will always grant more points. Or you can play safely and slowly and kill downed players from distance.

Dealing with balance and zerging issues

The main issue of the game mode can already be observed in the current Courtyard. Players will simply zerg to victory.
Stuff can get even worse if a team of 5 bunkers and hybrids show up, since no one will die.

To fix those problems, comes 2 characteristics of the game mode:

1º Every map must have some kind of instant death mechanic.
The idea here is to evade the boring scenario of 5 bunkers fighting 5 bunkers and no one dies. When it comes down to it, you can always push that guardian to a lava field.
It also gives some options to bunkers to score some kills as well, since a Full bunker Warrior could hammer some people to their deaths besides the low damage.

2º Every map must have some kind of extra objectives to divide the team
Well, ANET would work on something like that anyway. The point here is the objective:
If the map has absolutely nothing people will just keep fighting at middle. The idea is to have some REALLY IMPORTANT mechanics that forces the team to divide.
Yet at the same time, having control of the middle must be important for strategic and mobility reasons.
I can’t give examples here, since it would depend on ANET’s part. But it could be something like 2x more points per tick/kill, or summoning a giant blizzard or anything that could greatly affect the result of the middle fight.

Last notes

I don’t think my idea is free of flaws, but I still believe it would be a good way to bring a exciting DM mode to this game without running away from the current conquest mode.

It is, though, extremely frustrating that GW2 doesn’t have at least one single PvP game mode more focused on killing players instead of capturing something.

Agree that vanilla deathmatch courtyard is okay ish but needs some sort of map mechanic for Deathmatch to really work.

Don’t like points per finishers because downed states are not equal. Necromancer has pathetic downed state defenses against finishers but does ok because of high downed state HP. Ramgers basically can out heal damage and have to be finished if they get their #3 off. Engineers have great defenses against stomps but are easily burst down.

nekretaal.6485:

Agree that vanilla deathmatch courtyard is okay ish but needs some sort of map mechanic for Deathmatch to really work.

Don’t like points per finishers because downed states are not equal. Necromancer has pathetic downed state defenses against finishers but does ok because of high downed state HP. Ramgers basically can out heal damage and have to be finished if they get their #3 off. Engineers have great defenses against stomps but are easily burst down.

Though I agree on the downed state differences, we can’t even think about a DM mode without getting past it right?

Besides, people have already figured out ways to counter downed states for quite some time now. Can’t say thats really an issue.

(In the end a Thief or a Mesmer with mass Invis is the solution for everything. Team composition Yo!)

nekretaal.6485:

Engineers have great defenses against stomps .

Lol.

The very idea of deathmatch without secondary objectives frightens me. It would be just dumb zerg with no objective to divide the teams. Also there is reason why you can not return to spawn points. It would be abused by thieves with shadowstep/infiltrator signet, mesmers with blink, eles with flash teleport. It would be terrible. But if secondary objectives would be implemented it could work well. Also new maps.

At first i thought that it sounds interesting, but then

Possibly, every map may need a instant death method. Read here Lava, instant death falls, freeze to death…. anything.

If you do not understand why “instant death methods” is a good example of terrible game design, then you should not suggest anything at all.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

At first i thought that it sounds interesting, but then

Possibly, every map may need a instant death method. Read here Lava, instant death falls, freeze to death…. anything.

If you do not understand why “instant death methods” is a good example of terrible game design, then you should not suggest anything at all.

Hence, may need.

The instant death was suggested to deal with bunkers/hybrid builds fights, since people take to long to die.

My worries in that regard may not be necessary.
A well done secondary objective may also solve that as well.

Thanks for the input

I think for TDM type of game mode, it’s very important to note that getting kills is the key objective. With that in mind, points should be awarded for each target downed, and additional point for stomping, or remove the down/stomp/rally feature all together, if you health drops to zero, you just die and respawn.

Also, spawn should not be fixed in TDM, as that leads to zerging and spawn camping, reason why you see 500-0 courtyard matches.

There should be multiple spawn points on the map and multiple lanes, the spawn should not be random and should taken into account of your teammates and enemy position.

Bad system is bad.
People already gave the example of how to exploit courtyard.
All you need is 5 thieves. Use SR to stack up permanent stealth. When the foes can’t find you, they’ll start roaming around. And then theives just pick up the left-alone person with 5 pistoals and get that extra point, and then go back to permanent stealth.

Only way for this to work is, when in stealth, it doesn’t contribute points.
Also the map has to be really small too.