Lets take a very long trip down memory lane. Back when Jon Peters was still around as part of the development team.
https://youtu.be/iS74nfyKu3o?t=722
Conquest as a game type, and in theory is not bad. From the way Jon described it, it even sounds fun and exciting. But much earlier in the video, he described the differences of GW1’s GvG and RA, and how Arenanet catered for PvP players of different skill levels and motivations by creating both these modes.
RA was quick and simple, and GW1’s game systems allowed for a high degree of customization without affecting combat significantly. He goes on to describe GvG was a complex game mode for the hardcore PvP players, and it was never promoted to the softcore PvP crowd because of this complexity. This is fine, there is something for everyone.
The same cannot be said for GW2. We’ve been stuck with Conquest only for the longest time, and as Jon describes, is an extremely complex game mode. My opinion is, not only is it complex, there are several other issues that hold it back from being successful, and in turn, doesn’t help create a community. I’m going to approach these problems from the perspective of a ‘softcore’ player.
1: Infrastructure - In the video, Jon highlights the benefits of Conquest being that it is a game mode that requires strategic positioning and location based fights; it forces teams to split and choose their engagement. This sounds great.
The problem is, for the general solo queuer, the game’s PvP interface does little to help communicate between the player and their team mates what each person is capable of. Is your build good for roaming? Are you a support druid? Can you bunker down? Even something as simple as whether a mesmer is running portal or not isn’t information visually available to the player. The preparation time before a match is hardly a solution to all this; crucial strategic information should be available visually or be known by the community by method of experience.
i.e. DotA 2 has an interface for hero selection that will evaluate your team’s combined ability to team fight, to play for the long haul, to pressure, etc. Heroes are also generally known for their early to mid game ability to support, flank, etc.\
Build customization obviously makes an approach to the above very hard, but any semblance of infrastructure and UI like this could go a long way. Perhaps a chatwheel to display standard class messages like “I’m a support druid!”, or allow players to designate their role by assigning a color to their class icon. A green druid icon, visible only to your teammates will indicate you are geared for support, a red druid icon means you can DPS.
The minimap is also terribly uninformative. Often when there are 3 or more players fighting at a node, hovering over their minimap icons will only show one player name. The lack of visual information is detrimental to players are respawn, often they aren’t given the proper amount of information to decide where to concentrate their efforts, even if they wanted to.
The second infrastructure related problem is that there is a dreadful need for a tutorial mode. Conquest, for all its simplicity in explanation, is extremely complex and counter intuitive in practice. It’s too late to try and explain to people once the game has started. Emotions run high, people get angry and no one will want to listen, even when they are making big mistakes.
2: Counter-intuitive game mode - Survival is a PvPer’s most base instinct, and to kill players is a close second. Or vice versa. However, in conquest, these instincts tend to not be the best ones to have. I’ve explained to new players after a game many a times that decapping a point is almost always better than getting a kill. Killing a player earns 5 points, 5 points that they would accrue in 10 seconds. If a player holds out for 10 seconds and you chose to fight them instead of getting a decap, you’re fighting at a deficit. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to every situation, but it is generally true.
A lot of new players don’t even realize that fighting a bunker build on an enemy captured point is effectively doing nothing at all.
I’m not saying conquest is bad because it has complex gameplay, I’m criticizing it for the lack of information for such basic, yet counter-intuitive principles. Combine this with the lack of visual information available and you have a game type where teams of random players have absolutely no idea what each other are doing, nor can they steadily learn about their mistakes afterwards.
It doesn’t help to have hotjoin maps, because the problems stated above can’t actually be solved playing with randoms who have no commitment to the overall match, and it doesn’t help to have team deathmatch maps either, because survive and kill are not the most important concepts in Conquest.
I feel like Arenanet missed a crucial step when making conquest. They forgot that the game mode needs to promote the growth of a community, and somehow expected everyone to just play at an e-sports professional level. Conquest could be great, but not if just one player on your team can ruin the whole teams efforts by not understanding its nuances. A little bit of infrastructure and awareness goes a long way.