Guild Wars 2

There seems to be an overwhelming demand for some kind of arena/ death match mode and I wonder if I’m alone in thinking this would be bad for the game and potentially destroy conquest mode. I’ll split this into two arguments firstly why I think conquest ode is good and secondly how death match could harm conquest.

1. Why I think conquest mode is good
1.1 Zerging is not the most effective strategy.
People complain about zerging a lot in his game but I can’t see how spliting up would ever be an effective strategy in death match.
1.2 Conquest creates fights where players have different objectives.
Even though this usually boils down to a bunker trying to stay alive vs someone trying to kill a bunker or people trying to kill each other it still creates more variety and forces you to get inside your opponents head to understand what his motivation is and what he might do next.
1.3 Conquest increases the significance and tactical usage of CC.
One of my favorite things in this game is being close to capping or neutralizing a point on my guardian and knocking back and AoDing an approaching enemy to cap the point.
1.4 Conquest allows for two levels of fighting
This is probably the biggest one for me. A well co ordinated team with terrible twitch skills has a very solid chance against a team with amazing reaction speed and situational awareness but no team coordination. For people like me who love having to make decisions about whether a point is worth bunkering or whether I’d be more useful in a nearby teamfight or love trying to guess where the enemy team is conquest has a lot to offer.
2. How death match could kill conquest.
2.1 People love to kill things.
About 30% (from my experience) of any multi player games audience simply want to kill other people and call them a noob. Not to think particularly deeply or to work in a team. Conquest is frustrating for these people since they can spend the whole match killing people and still be told at the end they have lost the game.
2.2 Peer pressure
The same people who love to kill things tend to be pretty vocal. I’m imagining the forums and the chat in the heart of the mists filling up with “conquest is for noobs” posts. My guess is another 20-30% of the games audience will be influenced by this and stop playing conquest in favor of death match. we now have 50-60% of people playing exclusively conquest
2.3 People follow each other.
At this point death match would be slightly more populated then conquest.There is probably a large chunk of the games audience( I estimate 20-30%) who don’t care what the mode is as long as they get to run around and have fun. These people will find the queues are shorter and the hot join servers are more populated for death match and start to play this mode almost exclusively.
2.4 Conquest is dead
We now have 70-90% of people playing death match. The game is small enough as it is and the remaining conquest population will likely either quit or migrate to death match due to the difficulty of finding games. We have now lost all the good things about conquest I listed earlier.

I used to play football a lot at school and I enjoyed it so much more when we had adults organizing then when the loudest kid in the class was in control and the game degenerated into 40 boys chasing a ball around all trying to score the goals.

Let me know what your thoughts are am I completely wrong? Are there solutions which would keep everybody happy? Maybe the tpvp map rotation could still only offer one map at a time but alternate between conquest and death match maps?

P.S I know there are currently no plans to introduce death match I’m just playing devil’s advocate against the forum consensus really.

People hate conquest bc it is a game mode that encourages skill-less spamming of AOE abilities on a small circle that you, as the opposition, are forced to stand in if you want to maintain control. Every node should be as large as the middle node on Foefire and you’d see a bit less whining I bet.

DeathMatch simply wouldn’t work on GW2 thanks to class balance

Currently Mesmer is the only class with reliable Ress, strong burst, boon hate, insane amounts of invulnerability and are 1 of the 2 classes that it’s impossible to stomp on the first try.

Death matches would be based around 1 guard and 4 Mesmer and maybe theif, unless Anet finds a way to give other classes without invils/stealth a way to defend against focus fire and complete boom clear. And also a reliable ress

Velron.3729:

People hate conquest bc it is a game mode that encourages skill-less spamming of AOE abilities on a small circle that you, as the opposition, are forced to stand in if you want to maintain control.

True but tbh is not a conquest mode problem, they shouldn’t have added so kittening many aoe skills in the first place.

People dont hate conquest – conquest is fine
People hate to have ONLY conquest

1. Why I think conquest mode is good
1.1 Zerging is not the most effective strategy.

Actually, it is, outside of tPVP. Yes, you may lose the match but really, who wants to win at the cost of missing out on a ton of glory? (which u get from zerging)
1.2 Conquest creates fights where players have different objectives.
the objective is the same, every map. take a point and hold it.
1.3 Conquest increases the significance and tactical usage of CC.
Yes, bunkering is fun, we know. Tactical usage of CC would be just as present in arena as sPVP, since you need to cc chain someone to kill them.
1.4 Conquest allows for two levels of fighting
Coordinated teams, almost by definition, react well to situations and know their roles rather than ‘uncoordinated’ teams that have ‘fast reaction.’
2. How death match could kill conquest.
2.1 People love to kill things.
Yes. That’s exactly why Arena would work. Killing wins you the match. That’s what a death match means.
2.2 Peer pressure
By saying that, you’re essentially agreeing that conquest lacks depth. If ANet balanced both aspects of PVP well (which, I admit, would be harshly difficult) this would be avoided.
2.3 People follow each other.
I don’t see why the queue time for DM would be shorter than conquest unless you’re saying no one would play conquest if DM came out.
2.4 Conquest is dead
You’re saying we shouldn’t get a better version of something just because people wouldn’t play the old one? What a silly way of justifying it. That’s like saying no games should come out with expansions since no one would stay still for old content. That’s like GW2 never releasing more game content in case people don’t get 100% exploration.

“I used to play football a lot at school and I enjoyed it so much more when we had adults organizing then when the loudest kid in the class was in control and the game degenerated into 40 boys chasing a ball around all trying to score the goals. "

That’s essentially why DM would be better than a zerg conquest games

There’s much more depth availalbe in DM. There could be free for all matches. Team matches.

Romek.4201:

People dont hate conquest – conquest is fine
People hate to have ONLY conquest

Agreed. Although after 1800 games of nothing but conquest, I am starting to hate it.

Your argument is that the people of differing opinion will lead everyone else away from what you think is the ‘better’ game mode. There are other legitimate reasons why DM shouldn’t be implemented, but the argument you’re making is silly.

there already is a deathmatch mode in this game… it’s called hotjoin

google.3709:

DeathMatch simply wouldn’t work on GW2 thanks to class balance

Currently Mesmer is the only class with reliable Ress, strong burst, boon hate, insane amounts of invulnerability and are 1 of the 2 classes that it’s impossible to stomp on the first try.

Death matches would be based around 1 guard and 4 Mesmer and maybe theif, unless Anet finds a way to give other classes without invils/stealth a way to defend against focus fire and complete boom clear. And also a reliable ress

it would be based around 5 necros who never played before smashing their heads to the keyboard somehow they applied 48949848949848948948948948948945689418589419818948949848941521968894189489498894198598conditions and 104 fears

They need to make more features around conquest. Give us the monthlies/weeklies/dailies (Automated tournaments), give us better rewards, give us the solo/team split, an observer mode, build templates and it would get more enjoyable.

After all that, a fun game mode alongside it can be released.

Kuruptz.4782:

google.3709:

DeathMatch simply wouldn’t work on GW2 thanks to class balance

Currently Mesmer is the only class with reliable Ress, strong burst, boon hate, insane amounts of invulnerability and are 1 of the 2 classes that it’s impossible to stomp on the first try.

Death matches would be based around 1 guard and 4 Mesmer and maybe theif, unless Anet finds a way to give other classes without invils/stealth a way to defend against focus fire and complete boom clear. And also a reliable ress

it would be based around 5 necros who never played before smashing their heads to the keyboard somehow they applied 48949848949848948948948948948945689418589419818948949848941521968894189489498894198598conditions and 104 fears

lool not at all, nercros are the easiest class to focus fire and they have the second easiest down state to get stomped on

*Cough*Capture the Flag*Cough Cough*

aoe and condis will rule deathmatch the same way it does with with conquest, unless it’s something like 2 vs 2. Deathmatch cant make up for a poorly design aoe and condition, sorry.

But you can make conquest mode based on more small scale fight.

For instance… adding a conquest map with 5 points: you have to split more → less fights → people get into smaller fights → becomes more important who wins those fights.

Then you should also balance the game around 1v1, though.

google.3709:

DeathMatch simply wouldn’t work on GW2 thanks to class balance

Currently Mesmer is the only class with reliable Ress, strong burst, boon hate, insane amounts of invulnerability and are 1 of the 2 classes that it’s impossible to stomp on the first try.

Death matches would be based around 1 guard and 4 Mesmer and maybe theif, unless Anet finds a way to give other classes without invils/stealth a way to defend against focus fire and complete boom clear. And also a reliable ress

Just wanted to pop in and point out that mesmers can stealth-stomped on first try if there are no targets for their downstate 2 around (cannot use the ability without a target). Stutter-stomp with or without blink is also effective.

Overall, though, mesmer downstate is quite similar to thief and both are typically berserker amulet builds that you can just cleave down. Every downstate has weaknesses.

Oh, you are worried!, my god this is serious!

The people asking for deathmatch are a small but vocal minority. If it really was that popular, you’d see a lot more custom arenas dedicated to it. Just like there are only a handful of dueling arenas that have people in them.

A big reason conquest feels boring is lack of incentive to play it properly in hot join. You get more rank points and glory by constantly flipping nodes than by actually holding them and trying to win. The scoring needs to change to promote proper conquest play. Once you do that and improve balance, conquest will have much better replay value by creating more varied matches.

Tenebrous.2451:

*Cough*Capture the Flag*Cough Cough*

They talked about this on state of the game.

Its been done in house. Does not work with the mechanics of professions like evade thieves and such.

What they are considering instead is a “Push” the flag into the enemy base style. To prevent thieves from basically grabbing the flag and running back with perma evade or mesmer portalling it, etc.

Kavia.8249:

google.3709:

DeathMatch simply wouldn’t work on GW2 thanks to class balance

Currently Mesmer is the only class with reliable Ress, strong burst, boon hate, insane amounts of invulnerability and are 1 of the 2 classes that it’s impossible to stomp on the first try.

Death matches would be based around 1 guard and 4 Mesmer and maybe theif, unless Anet finds a way to give other classes without invils/stealth a way to defend against focus fire and complete boom clear. And also a reliable ress

Just wanted to pop in and point out that mesmers can stealth-stomped on first try if there are no targets for their downstate 2 around (cannot use the ability without a target). Stutter-stomp with or without blink is also effective.

Overall, though, mesmer downstate is quite similar to thief and both are typically berserker amulet builds that you can just cleave down. Every downstate has weaknesses.

Oh hey Kavia and yah, stealth stop is the only way but on a death match, which is mostly fights, it would be impossible to stomp and lol we both know ifs a Mesmer like you.. u can down 2 people faster than they could DPS Mesmer down xP

Thanks for the thoughtful reply Jae.5138 looks like I didn’t explain some of my thoughts very clearly xD so I’ll have another go

1. Why I think conquest mode is good
1.1 Zerging is not the most effective strategy.

Actually, it is, outside of tPVP. Yes, you may lose the match but really, who wants to win at the cost of missing out on a ton of glory? (which u get from zerging)

I wasn’t really considering hot join when I wrote this. As someone said hot join is kind of death match all ready!

1.2 Conquest creates fights where players have different objectives.
the objective is the same, every map. take a point and hold it.

I was talking about individual players involved in the fight so in scenario 1 player A wants to stay alive as long as possible whilst player B wants to kill him in scenario 2 player A wants to smash a treb without getting killes and player B wants to stop him smashing the treb. I guess I’m saying conquest generates a variety of fights in any given game.
1.3 Conquest increases the significance and tactical usage of CC.
Yes, bunkering is fun, we know. Tactical usage of CC would be just as present in arena as sPVP, since you need to cc chain someone to kill them.

I guess so but I still would not have as much fun pushing people off points :P
1.4 Conquest allows for two levels of fighting
Coordinated teams, almost by definition, react well to situations and know their roles rather than ‘uncoordinated’ teams that have ‘fast reaction.’

I was talking about larger scale decisions vs smaller scale decisions. So by fast reactions/ situational awareness I meant noticing you are stunned and using a stun-breaker or interrupting a stomp. You could know your role is to interrupt or to pop stability or whatever but just not be able to work out what is going on in the fight quickly enough to perform your role in that moment. The other level of decision making I was talking about (which I think conquest enables to a greater extent than deathmatch) includes decisions like “do I leave this point to help the fight a mid?”, “should we abbandon mid point for far?” would you not agree that these decisions use a different area of your brain to the part you use once you are in a fight?

2. How death match could kill conquest.
2.1 People love to kill things.
Yes. That’s exactly why Arena would work. Killing wins you the match. That’s what a death match means.
Exactly and the loudest kids playing football love to score goals if you created a form of football which only had strikers and a goalkeeper kids would play nothing else and many of the elements of team play and strategy would dissappear from the game. Sometimes what people NEED isn’t the same as what they WANT.

2.2 Peer pressure
By saying that, you’re essentially agreeing that conquest lacks depth. If ANet balanced both aspects of PVP well (which, I admit, would be harshly difficult) this would be avoided.
I’m saying people who lack depth could flock to DM and create a culture where conquest was seen as inferior.

2.3 People follow each other.
I don’t see why the queue time for DM would be shorter than conquest unless you’re saying no one would play conquest if DM came out.

This is what I’m saying sorry I didn’t make it clear. My argument is basically that around a 30% vocal minority actually want DM but that they would generate enough noise and pressure to kill other game modes.
2.4 Conquest is dead
You’re saying we shouldn’t get a better version of something just because people wouldn’t play the old one? What a silly way of justifying it. That’s like saying no games should come out with expansions since no one would stay still for old content. That’s like GW2 never releasing more game content in case people don’t get 100% exploration.

No I’m saying we shouldn’t get a WORSE version of something because people would not play the old one which is actually pretty good.

“I used to play football a lot at school and I enjoyed it so much more when we had adults organizing then when the loudest kid in the class was in control and the game degenerated into 40 boys chasing a ball around all trying to score the goals. "

That’s essentially why DM would be better than a zerg conquest games

There’s much more depth availalbe in DM. There could be free for all matches. Team matches.

hmm I think you have missed my point here slightly. I feel conquest imposes stricter success criteria than DM just as the adults who organised our football games back at school imposed stricter success criteria on us. This led to a more complex and enjoyable matches. As you have already pointed out in hot join where people care less about capturing points (the imposed success criteria) the game degenerates into mindless zerging.

Anyway hope that has made some of what I was thinking clearer! =D

NornBearPig.9814:

Your argument is that the people of differing opinion will lead everyone else away from what you think is the ‘better’ game mode. There are other legitimate reasons why DM shouldn’t be implemented, but the argument you’re making is silly.

Hi thanks for the reply. Yes this is basically my argument I have seen this happen in other games. For example moddable FPS games where “headshot arenas”, flat almost empty maps where every player has the same sniper rifle that kills in one headshot, become the most popular mode. Also this is why I made the analogy to schoolboy football I’m sure everyone in the UK has seen what happens when children try to play football without someone imposing rules, it degenerates into a mindless blob. If you speak to these children afterwards the large majority of them would prefer a ordered game but the vocal minority rule the day.

I struggle to see why this argument is silly when I have seen it happen before but perhaps you could lay my fears to rest more effectively

I dont think deathmatch has to be an empty arena with 2 teams.

There are dozens of ways deathmatch or non-conquest modes may work.

Assasinate rotating targets. Ffa game mode. Target gets on a guy, everyone has to kill this target. No respawn, game restarts when target dies or everyone dies. Has to allow for hiding, and stealth must be rebalanced in this mode.

2v2v2 with some form of secondary objective.

I would just like to see more variety and a deathmatch or no respawn mechanic mightmake some fun games

I do like the “push the flag” idea as one option. Another good one is “protect the lord” with a way to defend 2 gates each by “standing in the circle” to open/close a gate. It makes a lot of give-take dynamics and skill play with 5 players split between 4 points, and then trying to rush enough into a base to kill the lord, return to defend or go offensive, close your door vs. eliminate enemy, support lord’s health, etc. It really could be fun as its own game-mode.

What people don’t realize is that the same meta you see in conquest, it will be somewhat the same meta in death match, except depending on how deathmatch is designed bunkering and mobility may be of less importance.

A good example is WvW, what happens? Tons of AoE circle crap gets thrown on the ground, people still run necro trains, except it is on a larger scale.

Those who think that class viability will change and the meta will change is wrong unless they make some significant changes either to the PvP format, gearing, etc, class balance and AoE spam/conditions. It is just the truth.

killahmayne.9518:

Those who think that class viability will change and the meta will change is wrong unless they make some significant changes either to the PvP format, gearing, etc, class balance and AoE spam/conditions. It is just the truth.

Condition spam does need fixed. But increasing the number of viable builds does alter the sPvP meta. If there are a lot of options, then each team composition has strengths and weaknesses. One will become popular, then a new one that capitalizes on the current one’s weaknesses gains favor. The meta shifts over the course of a month or two, and this cycle keeps going. It only stalls when you have certain builds that are undeniably better than any other such as bunker guardian or condi necro/engi.

It won’t affect WvW because of how things stack. But WvW has a whole host of issues, which is why it’s more a casual PvP.

This game is too far away to create an interesting deathmatch. No dedicated support (heal,prott) and way too much spammable AoE.

I was always interested in playing a style of deathmatch closer to Quake with first team to a certain kill point or the highest kills by a certain time would win and they could even have buffs around the map similar to Quake if they wanted (Skyhammer made me think of quake lately with the jump pads so more like that would be awesome too). I was never really a fan of deathmatch where the player would die once and be out of the game completely as it felt like the fun ended too quickly or it dragged out and was boring. I have no idea how balanced it would be but i could see it being a fun thing to play in hot join at least.

Kando.9046:

I have no idea how balanced it would be but i could see it being a fun thing to play in hot join at least.

It’s “fun” in hotjoin because it is not organized and totally random.

Deathmatch would be good if you just want to chill out. Rest a bit but still do PvP. i mean ,no need to watch when you need to port bac, monitor enemy movements and so on. Just go and do you job.

A 3v3 or 4v4 would be just balanced i think..

JonG.7206:

NornBearPig.9814:

Your argument is that the people of differing opinion will lead everyone else away from what you think is the ‘better’ game mode. There are other legitimate reasons why DM shouldn’t be implemented, but the argument you’re making is silly.

Hi thanks for the reply. Yes this is basically my argument I have seen this happen in other games. For example moddable FPS games where “headshot arenas”, flat almost empty maps where every player has the same sniper rifle that kills in one headshot, become the most popular mode. Also this is why I made the analogy to schoolboy football I’m sure everyone in the UK has seen what happens when children try to play football without someone imposing rules, it degenerates into a mindless blob. If you speak to these children afterwards the large majority of them would prefer a ordered game but the vocal minority rule the day.

I struggle to see why this argument is silly when I have seen it happen before but perhaps you could lay my fears to rest more effectively

You comparing us to very very young children. Too young to have any idea how to take initiative themselves and make the game fun with rules. Most of us playing guild wars are not children, but I can see how your concern may affect the youngest members of our community. Also your analogy never presents the alternative as a clear choice. If the children are too young to understand why rules work they cannot be expected to make the rules – they become a mindless blob because of the absence of a rulemaker, not because they deliberately choose the blob over rules.

In this FPS of yours, it sounds like sniper headshot battles were more fun than whatever was intended to be the core game mode. This could be because snipe mechanics were really well designed in that game, or because the regular mode sucked and/or was not accessible enough.

I have played a 2×2 and 3×3 arena mode in gw2 and it was the most fun I had at pvping. The rules were simple: first team to score 30 points win. But it still was with a lot of strategy , for example do you rush from spawn or wait till your teammate gets stomped and push together, CC had to be saved not spammed on a circle, because allowing to rez opponent would further the victory, etc. Unpopular classes and builds became more viable in this scenario Too bad this mode was made in custom arenas, that are not really customisable currently, so we had to work around that mechanic. But it was fun for not only players, but also for spectators.

I have no idea why are most of the people immediately think DM is 5×5? It is clearly too much, especially thinking about all the flashy effects in this game. 2×2 or 3×3 at most is perfect in my opinion. Also finding one or two friends that you can play with is a lot easier in comparison to 4.

The balance and OP issue. Well if balancing was not split into two modes and totally ignored on this new mode (and that is probably the case, because this game is still being balanced at pve, wvw, PvP together which is mind boggling), some rules may be implemented, like you cannot use class stacking. And by implementing ratings the teams with OP builds would rise towards the top and start fighting identical OP builds, while other teams with more variety would be at the average rating fighting other various builds. That solution may look bad, but lets not forget Anet’s statement about premades vs solo queue and it is quite similar.

And the OP argument that if arenas were implemented the conquest mode will die is quite interesting. So in short you think that conquest would become inferior just by releasing something new and everybody would go to play it. What does that say about conquest mode? But lets take another PvP game from different genre that was also marketed as an esport cs go. It has only 1 mode used in competitive scene, so why did they make a bunch of different ones and not just leave players with classic competitive? In my opinion it is because variety in game is important – it draws more players, thus creating more income for company and player base is increased overall, which increases the chance of trying the mode that the games was made to.

So to conclude variety is a must especially in PvP that is really unpopular now.

P.S. CTF can be also simply implemented – make a flag carrier have the same stats and the same skills when picking up the flag, no constant evades and dodges, cannot use teleports, etc. Or you could go different route and copy from quake expansion and make the flag carrier go to enemy base instead of your own.

i dont think DeathMatch should be separated queue… just another map with different objectives, thats all… they cant divide the community by adding more modes (we all saw what happened with paid tournaments), thats why GvG or heroes ascend and i dont know what else from GW1 wont get implemented…

PS: we need random map, not the same map for few days and then another one…

PPS: if you cant implement random map, how is map selected in hot join when new round begins? it could be used in tournaments too… even stupid singleton with given map order would result in pseudorandom map for different team joining at the same time