Guild Wars 2

I don’t play much Stronghold in ranked and, like many, leave the box permanently un-ticked. With a few changes however I would definitely give it another shot.

When we were asked for game mode ideas last year I wrote this post, then sent it on to a few of the devs. Although I’ve no doubt it’s coincidence, there are some comparisons to be made with Warcraft 3’s Angel Arena (a sibling of DotA) and Stronghold. There are also differences, some of which I don’t think are to the game modes benefit. Below are a list of things I would want to see added.

1. Resource gathering is a boring roll. People don’t do it enough, because it’s boring.

- mobs could be generated automatically
- Killing players drops resources to generate more mobs as well as other things I’ll get to

2. Slaughtering lots of weaker mobs is more satisfying than a few mediocre ones. Increase the number of them by 5, reduce their HP/damage output.

3. Adding stat/trait/weapon progression to the game mode could introduce a lot of depth, and really set itself apart from conquest. Resources acquired from dead players could be used to purchase stats/traits/weapons. This act of going back and purchasing them, rather than a more automatic system, is in itself more satisfying.

4. Neutral Mobs? Svanir and Chief are one of the more entertaining things to watch in Conquest (when two players are vying for a kill nobody knows what will happen!) there’s a big ‘play’ factor that could be brought to stronghold with the introduction of neutral mobs.

5. With the above introduced, don’t be afraid to let a match take longer than 15 minutes if it’s close. If it’s worth playing, with developing mechanics such as stat/trait progression, people will value it more than lots of ‘short and shallow’ matches.

Anyway let me know thoughts etc; your comments make it more likely a Dev will read and acknowledge this!

I think you have a lot of good points there. Not sure about (1) and (2) because the resource collection adds a strategic layer and conflict point, while adding more mobs might be something of an issue given the 5 mob aoe cap – and it just seems kind of pointless anyway.

I think (4) actually happens in SH through the spawning mechanic. That is where many of the big plays occur on that map. Agreed that (3) would add a lot of depth, but the whole thing would probably need to be reworked to accommodate such a big change- it would make it much more like a moba, and like you hint at the game would have to go for longer.

Thanks Yasha

I guess in general no skrits are given when it comes to this game mode anymore..

Phaeton.9582:

Thanks Yasha

I guess in general no skrits are given when it comes to this game mode anymore..

The forum is not very active in general, except to complain about class balance. It was quite a bit more lively here when we had the community based game development discussions with the devs, I think you were around then right?

Yasha.5963:

Phaeton.9582:

Thanks Yasha

I guess in general no skrits are given when it comes to this game mode anymore..

The forum is not very active in general, except to complain about class balance. It was quite a bit more lively here when we had the community based game development discussions with the devs, I think you were around then right?

Yeah.. ~1500 posts on the sPvP forums (check my history), and yes its changed here a lot.

The balance complaints are mostly l2p; the majority of design issues in spvp have nothing to do with balance, and re-rolling elite specs is very easy indeed.

I get the impression now that whoever is making decisions, both on spvp player feedback and spvp objectively, is extremely tired and cynical towards the optimism and ambition we saw around this game mode at release.

Split skills? Or even spvp-specific balance and design? Gone.

Mechanical/CDM skill cap? Reduced because apparently we’re nowhere near as good as they thought we’d be at launch.

Rewards? All rewards from the first year and a half removed (we got a couple of unique skins but PvE players complained). Now I just have literally thousands of unopened PvE loot boxes.

Gamemodes? Essentially only Conquest as Stronghold has failed to be more than conquest with less PvP and more non-strategic , repetitive side roles.

I don’t know. Maybe spvp is just resigned to be a ‘feature’ now for PvE expansions. It’s a shame, because the design philosophy at launch, even four years on, is still ahead of its time. But it’s been eroded by a new direction, spearheaded by someone who clearly just doesn’t agree with what was originally intended.

I just wish it could work. But to answer your post, yes nobody posts anything of value here, including myself apparently.

Phaeton.9582:

Yasha.5963:

Phaeton.9582:

Thanks Yasha

I guess in general no skrits are given when it comes to this game mode anymore..

The forum is not very active in general, except to complain about class balance. It was quite a bit more lively here when we had the community based game development discussions with the devs, I think you were around then right?

Gamemodes? Essentially only Conquest as Stronghold has failed to be more than conquest with less PvP and more non-strategic , repetitive side roles.

I’m actually a big fan of SH: I often have more interesting pvp fights in SH than in conquest, perhaps because it has a more flowing sense of offense and defense than conquest.

I would also say the side objectives are extremely strategically important- they change the whole game. Control of the treb/hero spawns/resources is key to winning a match, and how your team focuses on these aspects will totally change how a game is played. You really don’t get that variety in conquest, at least not to the same extent.

Its not how I had envisioned a moba-like gamemode to be, but imo the devs did a great job making what is basically an entirely new mini-game that fits the GW2 skill system. Of course its totally worth discussing how we think it could be made even better, but I wonder if some of the lack of popularity is partly a symptom of the falloff in enthusiasm about spvp overall compared to when the game was new.

What that gamemode need is a balance between healer and dps. Stop playing during S2, when druids and ele kept bombers alive whilst being tanky negating any of my dmg. But the gamemode itself has potential, although I rarely play it ( last time I touched it when during S2).

I think adding burning oil on the inner and outer gate would help as well.

Fivedawgs.4267:

What that gamemode need is a balance between healer and dps. Stop playing during S2, when druids and ele kept bombers alive whilst being tanky negating any of my dmg. But the gamemode itself has potential, although I rarely play it ( last time I touched it when during S2).

I think adding burning oil on the inner and outer gate would help as well.

I agree, the healing of the minions can be really annoying.

@Yasha

I agree there are probably several factors, including spvp drop off (systemic of the overall skill design direction with regards to spvp – although apologies for the rant before none the less).

It would be nice to see more mechanics worked out for this game mode though, such as those raised above. It needs a pull factor beyond ‘spvp lite’ – if anything it could be made to be more complicated to appease higher level players dissatisfied with conquest in these post HoT metas…

to me it is people don’t want to learn a new game mode. If they already have 1000s of matches on conquest why go to a game mode where you are just as much a rookie as anyone else. This is similar to why there is so much QQ when a new build becomes viable that wasn’t before like Warriors S3 and Guardians S4.

They should do something similar to what they did with Capricorn between S4 and S5. That got everyone playing it and for the most part people liked the map. 10$ if they didn’t put the title towards Capricorn, people wouldn’t have liked it and QQ’d in the forums saying how dumb the mapmakers and balance team are.

You would’ve lost that $10. Capricorn is a fine map, that’s the reason why people like it. It’s PvP focused, finally a map that does not contain NPC’s or siege. Your objective is to kill players and that’s how PvP maps should be.

Stronghold’s problem is it’s too PvE-centric. You run supplies to spawn npc’s, you fight over mist to spawn npc’s, you run a treb, you wait for the doors to be broken down so you can fight more npc’s, and lastly…oh another room full of npc’s. Anet’s quite out of touch if they ever thought Stronghold’s design was ever going to get popular & competitive with their PvP playerbase. They should’ve built Stronghold for GvG like they initially said it was for.

And what someone said above is true, during the early seasons with terrible meta, people were able to keep bombers & lord healed permanently. Pre-mades & pro players abused this for fast wins for ranks, and they used this to carry players through ranks. They made impossible to win scenarios with soloq players, which consist of 95%+ of Anet’s PvP playerbase. They made such bad taste in people’s mouth that most people unchecked Stronghold and never looked at it again.

I highly doubt you’ll get people to accept it now. Just some of the many mistakes that Anet made along the way that got PvP to where it is today.

Faux Play.6104:

to me it is people don’t want to learn a new game mode. If they already have 1000s of matches on conquest why go to a game mode where you are just as much a rookie as anyone else. This is similar to why there is so much QQ when a new build becomes viable that wasn’t before like Warriors S3 and Guardians S4.

They should do something similar to what they did with Capricorn between S4 and S5. That got everyone playing it and for the most part people liked the map. 10$ if they didn’t put the title towards Capricorn, people wouldn’t have liked it and QQ’d in the forums saying how dumb the mapmakers and balance team are.

I think there is an element of that reaction to a new game mode like you say. There also seems to be broadly two camps of players- those that like moba and those that think moba is basically just pve.

Imo Anet came up with an innovative spin on the moba gametype that suits GW2 (although it could probably use some tweaks), but it seems that many don’t share that view: the moba crowd are upset that its not enough like a moba, while its too much like moba for the players who don’t like a moba game style.

Phaeton.9582:

I don’t play much Stronghold in ranked and, like many, leave the box permanently un-ticked. With a few changes however I would definitely give it another shot.

When we were asked for game mode ideas last year I wrote this post, then sent it on to a few of the devs. Although I’ve no doubt it’s coincidence, there are some comparisons to be made with Warcraft 3’s Angel Arena (a sibling of DotA) and Stronghold. There are also differences, some of which I don’t think are to the game modes benefit. Below are a list of things I would want to see added.

1. Resource gathering is a boring roll. People don’t do it enough, because it’s boring.

- mobs could be generated automatically
- Killing players drops resources to generate more mobs as well as other things I’ll get to

2. Slaughtering lots of weaker mobs is more satisfying than a few mediocre ones. Increase the number of them by 5, reduce their HP/damage output.

3. Adding stat/trait/weapon progression to the game mode could introduce a lot of depth, and really set itself apart from conquest. Resources acquired from dead players could be used to purchase stats/traits/weapons. This act of going back and purchasing them, rather than a more automatic system, is in itself more satisfying.

4. Neutral Mobs? Svanir and Chief are one of the more entertaining things to watch in Conquest (when two players are vying for a kill nobody knows what will happen!) there’s a big ‘play’ factor that could be brought to stronghold with the introduction of neutral mobs.

5. With the above introduced, don’t be afraid to let a match take longer than 15 minutes if it’s close. If it’s worth playing, with developing mechanics such as stat/trait progression, people will value it more than lots of ‘short and shallow’ matches.

Anyway let me know thoughts etc; your comments make it more likely a Dev will read and acknowledge this!

Resource gathering is a boring role for several reasons:
1. It takes entirely too long to channel (you’re seriously just picking up a box of stuff) and is easily interrupted
2. Summoned NPC’s die extremely easily so it can seem quite pointless, 1 of any class can completely stop basically an unlimited number of archers/breakers unless they’re escorted, and several classes (guard, necro, ele) can stop all or most of a wave of breakers even when escorted unless they’re going 1v4+
3. Door breakers and archers are so significantly inferior to summoned heroes it’s a completely valid strategy to completely abandon them in favor of trying to get 2 heroes at once. They can and often are completely irrelevant.
4. We already have a mechanic to where enemies killed past a certain point into friendly territory drop 2 resources, simply adding in a single resource drop to all other kills would fulfill that aspect of your recommendation.

Slaughtering lots of weaker mobs may be more satisfying, but the mobs are pretty much worthless now and making more and weaker mobs is going to make them even more worthless.

Summoned heroes pretty much cannot be CC’d, it’s literally a grindfest to blow through their ridiculous amount of HP considering how slowly they move. Significantly increase their movement speed and at the very least make them susceptible to immob/daze/cripple/knockback, even if you have to keep their break bar as a CC immunity until broken. Alternatively, halve their health. Grimm Svaard should not be able to solo the enemy lord and all the NPC guards with no player intervention and come out with >20% health, and a 10k crit on Tybalt should at least move the health bar visibly (right now it does <1% according to the in-game percentages), it should not take 3 enemy players 30+ seconds unopposed to down a summoned hero, and a hero should not be able to run the full length of the map with 2 guys beating on him.

Adding an incremental power upgrade is just going to encourage pointless team fights and intentional class stacking for high-sustain/high-CC (scrappers, guards) in the one game mode that frequently rewards a glassier team comp, and would basically be Foefire 2.0. On top of furthering the “whoever wins the initial team fight will have a humongous advantage the rest of the match if not making the match unwinnable” unless the incremental upgrades are so trivial as to not matter. While being on the winning side and making yourself more powerful would feel very good, being on the losing side and facing veritable nigh-unkillable gods halfway through the match would be horrible and drive even more players away.

There are already entirely too many NPC’s in this PvP map, don’t add more.

I think an across-the-board time limit increase would be good (20 minutes instead of 15), having a situational “overtime” isn’t gonna break the small percentage of stalemate’d matches that are happening (maybe 1 in 20 matches times out).

MY RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Increase the health and damage of breakers, archers, and guards. 2 breakers should be able to blow open wooden gates pretty quickly, they’re carrying humongous bombs anyway. Players should not be able to 2-shot the NPC guards. Archers should do more damage against players (currently hitting from 200-400), right now they’re pretty much worthless. Tweak the AI to make all NPC’s target and path better (having your breakers take a 10 second detour to run to the far wall before making a 90 degree turn right out of spawn sucks, especially since they’re not following the clearly marked path). Basically, 1 person should not be able to steamroll all NPC’s with zero threat to themselves from the NPC’s, which is what it currently is.
2. Increase the damage output of the Lords significantly, to bring them in line with their “legendary” title. They’re getting solo’d rather frequently right now, even by thieves. It should take a concerted team effort to kill the Lord, which will also add a facet of being able to successfully defend the lord without having to pile all 5 teammates in on top of it and still losing most of your lord’s health. Right now they hit more like a Veteran, not even an Elite, and a scant fraction of what a PvE Legendary creature hits for.
3. Knock 15-20% off the channeling time for resource crates, lengthen the channeling time for summoned heroes 10%. Right now the role of resource gathering is marginalized due to the comparative effectiveness of a wave of breakers/archers vs. a single hero.
4. Speed up the movement of summoned heroes 15% while shaving their health 20%, make them susceptible to immob/daze/stun/cripple once their break bar is broken (so they’re not permanently outrunning classes with no +movement). It’s just a boring and relatively straightforward grindfest to kill an enemy hero unless they have their whole team escorting it, yet still is a threat due to how long they take to kill and how unstoppable they are.
5. Increase the points contribution of killing summoned NPC’s from 3 to 5, killing them is as or more important than killing a player yet they reward a hair over half the points.