Guild Wars 2

Courtyard is legit the one true PvP map. You know. Player versus player. No silly NPCs or trebs or PvE interference.

People state their hate for it without explaining why they don’t like it, too often.

The only reasonable explanation I can understand is the map design itself which yes, I will share my slight dislike for as it is very tiny, cluttered & a lot of skills get obstructed etc. That or the inevitable experience(s) of being matched up against ‘premades’ may trigger hate for this map but at the end of the day – it’s players vs’ing players and people are spilling their super ultra mega salty orphan tears over a map that’s mechanic/design/game-play intention is working as intended.. genuine PvP.

It is very bothersome to hear players requesting more/new ‘death-match’ maps regarding PvP when what seems like a fair portion of the playerbase dislikes this particular map; death-match PvP.

Perhaps if the map was designed better/differently would players still feel the same negativity?

Feel free to share your thoughts/discussion.

People don’t dislike the gametype, it’s the map everyone hates. But since it’s the only map for that gametype people don’t have a choice and thus prefer not to play it altogether. It’s just a really poorly designed map

they are just bad and love to run out of middle gate to get farmed instead of using the side gates

It’s just not a well designed map that favors who has the better blob composition and which side has better long range ability.

There really isn’t any smart plays about it, apart from kiting (not every class can do it) and beginning engagement. It needs a key element that takes the zerg away in some form or fashion.

I like the map, but I don’t want to change builds just to play it. The game needs build templates.

The reason people dislike it is because of the snowball effect it has. Whoever wins the first team fight will continue to have an advantage throughout the rest of the match.

If they broke it up into rounds, making each death permanent until the start of the next round it wouldn’t feel as punishing and “snowbally”.

People dislike it because they Q’ed for Conquest :]

If it had its own Q time, people would actually like the map since they can spec / strat for it.

Same thing is gonna happen with stronghold if it doesnt get its own Q time. another bugger thrown in our face when we’re tryign to have a “normal” game.

Somehow I don’t think it should be difficult to find a place where someone can answer this…

Zephyra.4709:

Courtyard is legit the one true PvP map. You know. Player versus player. No silly NPCs or trebs or PvE interference.

People state their hate for it without explaining why they don’t like it, too often.

The only reasonable explanation I can understand is the map design itself which yes, I will share my slight dislike for as it is very tiny, cluttered & a lot of skills get obstructed etc. That or the inevitable experience(s) of being matched up against ‘premades’ may trigger hate for this map but at the end of the day – it’s players vs’ing players and people are spilling their super ultra mega salty orphan tears over a map that’s mechanic/design/game-play intention is working as intended.. genuine PvP.

It is very bothersome to hear players requesting more/new ‘death-match’ maps regarding PvP when what seems like a fair portion of the playerbase dislikes this particular map; death-match PvP.

Perhaps if the map was designed better/differently would players still feel the same negativity?

Feel free to share your thoughts/discussion.

Your question at the end is the issue. The PvP deathmap concept is great. The map though is really bad. It forces fighting into very tight narrow passages. I’d much rather see an open space with some objects scattered around to hide behind for LOS attacks.

dislike the map because it’s practically completely counter-intuitive towards my build, but i also dislike the gamemode tbh. I prefer being an objective player.. I usually focus on rotating across points and grabbing stuff like buffs or trebs, rather than going to that big fight that generally happens at mid

not to say it’s a bad gamemode, it’s just not my preference. i would rather conquest and deathmatch just have seperate queues

Jasher.6580:

The reason people dislike it is because of the snowball effect it has. Whoever wins the first team fight will continue to have an advantage throughout the rest of the match.

If they broke it up into rounds, making each death permanent until the start of the next round it wouldn’t feel as punishing and “snowbally”.

this so much

Team Deathmatch doesn’t work well in most MMOs, and GW2 is no exception. The fewer players you have, the more balance comes under the microscope and certain compositions stand out. With more people, it turns into a cluster of particle effects, AoE, boon spam, and near unavoidable damage spikes.

Courtyard is a poor deathmatch map because 5v5 doesn’t work and it’s too large for smaller team sizes (you can kite all day).

All those problems with team deathmatch is why ANet went with conquest. It splits up players often, so you don’t have huge spam battles, but it filters out small imbalances by making map mobility and map strategy important.

Team death match is fun, I personally don’t like the map.

The map looks cool, but gameplay wise it’s kind okittenward. I would rather have a plain field with some places to take cover.

Because courtyard is not real arenas, is just a lazy design under a conquest point system with a fake arenas skin on top, this is coming from a retired wow player who enjoys 2v2 and 3v3 arenas.

The map design is just awful. It really does look like it was designed for a team deatmatch arena shooter, not gw2. The map is just way too cluttered and full of narrow passages. You could implement a flat circular map and it would be better than courtyard.

Jasher.6580:

The reason people dislike it is because of the snowball effect it has. Whoever wins the first team fight will continue to have an advantage throughout the rest of the match.

If they broke it up into rounds, making each death permanent until the start of the next round it wouldn’t feel as punishing and “snowbally”.

^^ This and I’m back in pvp organising a 5. I always enjoyed conquest, main mode for me, but I guess I just got bored. +it would be much better for esports and pvp scene in general.

In conquest there is too much learning to be done at the same time. Team composition, playing with it in terms of fight AND playing with it in terms of map rotation. People often oversimplify conquest when in fact it is quite complex. And because of that there are STAGGERING gaps in skill levels. This doesn’t help to form a team. Things can easily go sour, people get discouraged. It is often sight – enemies can fight pretty well in terms of actual skill clicking but they rotate so poorly that they are sadly 2vs1 all the time. The other way around can happen too. Deathmatch (or rather arena to be honest) as proposed would help with that – you would have to worry about one objective at the time – wipe enemy. After suceeding with this you can go conquest or stronghold having fight communication worked and in your subconsciousness. Suddenly you only need to worry about other objectives.

Something like this would be greatly beneficial for pvp in general. Easier to form up teams, another real gamemode – all makes population bigger and skillfloor higher.

The central area of Foefire’s Legacy is probably much closer to what one could expect for a TDM map. Courtyard is too narrow in some parts and is full of obstructing elements that obscures the gameplay. Any random 5 vs 5 match in Foefire or WvW is better.

The gameplay mechanic is also clunky: as was said, there’s a snowball effect. To prevent this the game mode should work in “waves”: every team starts in their ·home", run towards the center, and after 2-3 minutes everyone gets a restart (if all of the memeners of a team dies then a new wave starts from the initial waypoints).

Buran.3796:

The central area of Foefire’s Legacy is probably much closer to what one could expect for a TDM map. Courtyard is too narrow in some parts and is full of obstructing elements that obscures the gameplay. Any random 5 vs 5 match in Foefire or WvW is better.

The gameplay mechanic is also clunky: as was said, there’s a snowball effect. To prevent this the game mode should work in “waves”: every team starts in their ·home", run towards the center, and after 2-3 minutes everyone gets a restart (if all of the memeners of a team dies then a new wave starts from the initial waypoints).

Yup, I feel like I’m playing hide-and-seek in there.

It is simple. Everyone is built for Capture the Point. A sudden Deathmatch change and everybody loses their kitten.

Of course people are never wrong by themselves so they blame the next best thing e.g. their teammates OR the map itself ^^

However, I personally don’t like the zerginess of this map and prefer more tactical play, thus I play ranked, where this map is not added to rotation.

Too much AoE damage. It’s not really PvP.

Its a spam fields and aoe fest…. Its great for caster to stand on rocks and blindly smash buttons, but for any Melee class its an absolute nightmare!

Jasher.6580:

The reason people dislike it is because of the snowball effect it has. Whoever wins the first team fight will continue to have an advantage throughout the rest of the match.

If they broke it up into rounds, making each death permanent until the start of the next round it wouldn’t feel as punishing and “snowbally”.

Thats would be far better, I mean its either a zergfest to see who can kill the other team fast enough to camp their spawn. Or its a ring around the posey until one team dies than camp their spawn!

Last time I did courtyard both teams was hiding behind each sides curve almost through the whole match until one unpatient player in my team decided to go head on and died. That was our loss as they got score and we needed to take back score or loose so we started attacking… And they had the favor of behing defencive and totaly built for Courtyard (Guess what team chose it) and we lost big time. I realy hate that map.

People dislike maps that render their build less effective. Courtyard nerfs bunkers and decappers because there are no points to hold, Spirit Watch puts a premium on mobility, Skyhammer puts a premium on stability. Since the other 4 maps all favor basically the same builds, people understandably load out for those and loathe the outlier maps.

stop talking about Arena being “true” pvp….. Some of the best and/or most successful PvP-Games have NPC’s, larger maps and multiple objectives.

Besides, the map just sucks:

1) No real incentive of getting out on the map – if this would be played seriously, ppl would just w8 on their side because it’s a huge disadvantage to leave your respawn-point and there’s nothing that “forces” you out on the map.
2) Too many narrow pathways, especially for 5v5.
3) Too many spots to LoS (some are good, but it’s too much).
4) having it in the same rotation as Conquest is annoying.

The typical Conquest map creates a strong incentive to split up and move around the map, resulting in a mix of different fights (different sizes, different classes) in different terrain. The downside is that you can get “unbalanced” fights and there’s huge pressure to fight on point.

Courtyard, in contrast, rewards always sticking together as a group and turns the whole match into one protracted 5v5 fight — often just a bit of back-and-forth on one of the side passages.

Personally, I don’t mind the idea of a big group fight, but the map’s shape and the particular beat of respawns makes it much less fun than similar situations that occur in WvW (two havoc groups fighting over a camp, for example).

The problem with courtyard is that they balance the entire game on conquest mode and fighting inside small nodes. That makes the other game modes like deathmatch even more unbalanced.

The devs implemented and are treating it wrong, it took too long of them to add it, it’s anti casual unlike Stronghold…, TDM is great mode not sure where the opposite comes from, there are no builds savers not everyone feels like manually changing their builds,it’s not in ranked with it’s own queue, casuals,the game is balanced around conquest and finally casuals.

I would say the Map is one issue and the lack of templates is another. Building around conquest is totally different than building around TDM. There is no quick way to swap everything (at least not for me) to TDM mode from Conquest mode. Change those two, should be ok.

I love this map, we can point very fast

Zephyra.4709:

Courtyard is legit the one true PvP map. You know. Player versus player. No silly NPCs or trebs or PvE interference.

People state their hate for it without explaining why they don’t like it, too often.

The only reasonable explanation I can understand is the map design itself which yes, I will share my slight dislike for as it is very tiny, cluttered & a lot of skills get obstructed etc. That or the inevitable experience(s) of being matched up against ‘premades’ may trigger hate for this map but at the end of the day – it’s players vs’ing players and people are spilling their super ultra mega salty orphan tears over a map that’s mechanic/design/game-play intention is working as intended.. genuine PvP.

It is very bothersome to hear players requesting more/new ‘death-match’ maps regarding PvP when what seems like a fair portion of the playerbase dislikes this particular map; death-match PvP.

Perhaps if the map was designed better/differently would players still feel the same negativity?

Feel free to share your thoughts/discussion.

Hate it.

Hate it more than Skyhammer.

I do NOT comprehend why we do not have a true capture the flag pvp map yet.

atheria.2837:

Zephyra.4709:

Courtyard is legit the one true PvP map. You know. Player versus player. No silly NPCs or trebs or PvE interference.

People state their hate for it without explaining why they don’t like it, too often.

The only reasonable explanation I can understand is the map design itself which yes, I will share my slight dislike for as it is very tiny, cluttered & a lot of skills get obstructed etc. That or the inevitable experience(s) of being matched up against ‘premades’ may trigger hate for this map but at the end of the day – it’s players vs’ing players and people are spilling their super ultra mega salty orphan tears over a map that’s mechanic/design/game-play intention is working as intended.. genuine PvP.

It is very bothersome to hear players requesting more/new ‘death-match’ maps regarding PvP when what seems like a fair portion of the playerbase dislikes this particular map; death-match PvP.

Perhaps if the map was designed better/differently would players still feel the same negativity?

Feel free to share your thoughts/discussion.

Hate it.

Hate it more than Skyhammer.

I do NOT comprehend why we do not have a true capture the flag pvp map yet.

Capture the flag seems similar to SW… Balancing around TDM would profit PvE and WvW better and would have make a more skillful community,less gimmicks,less carrying,less AI reliance etc. While I agree they introduced it wrong it would help the game’s longevity more than Stronghold I dislike conquest but SH is a stretch too far.

Because it’s basically like Mob-ball. What is Mob-ball you ask? Ever watched a little kids Soccer/Futbol game? I mean like really young kids, like the 6 year olds. There is no real game being played, it’s just a mob of kids following a ball around. That’s pretty much what Courtyard is. Everyone clumps up to fight. The map being small is not what I see as an issue because even if the map was larger everyone would just clump up in the same AoE hell.

Game designers learned that having objectives makes PvP warzones better because it means you have to use tactics to spread out the players because if you even did use a map like Foefire or Kyhlo without points it would just be one clump of people fighting. Before you start to say that wouldn’t happen let me explain how that would be deluding yourself. If you came out of the gate would you split your team up or go all together? Well if you answered the former you would just be fodder for the team who did the latter. Your idea that you would be the lone guerrilla fighter is nonsense and WvW proves this. Are there small forces going out take objectives? No. There’s just the Zerg and if you and your small group of friends try to go out and commando it you just run into the enemy Zerg and get squished. If you tried to run around and sneak around on a conquest map without points to cap then you will just run into 5 guys and get focused to death. Having objectives forces your team to split up and use a strategy and tactics to win.

That is why I and likely so many others hate Courtyard, even if they don’t realize it.

Team Deathmatch would be cool if we had in-game voice chat to quickly coordinate builds, setup front and back lines, and call out for peels. But we don’t get that. At least Conquest is manageable as after the initial clash most fights are 3v3 at most. But having a 5v5 with people you’ve never met when there’s that much damage to deal with, just no.

Plus when I queued, I queued for Conquest. For the same reason people don’t want Stronghold to be in the same queue as Conquest, I don’t want Team Deathmatch to be in the same queue as Conquest.

And furthermore, sometimes I’m just popping in to do my daily, and one of those dailies often needs a capture point to be completed. If Courtyard was just designed as a King of the Hill, that would be one less thing I had against it.

DM is fine, map itself is bad designed for it though

It’s not that not having to babysit little circles means that there’s no strategy, it’s just that there’s a different kind of strategy (no better or worse) for TDM and people don’t like leaving their comfort zone and I think that’s why you see all the hate.

I think that hate would go away if you saw a separate queue for TDM. My thoughts were always to add a couple more TDM maps and make it a separate queue.

I don’t like the map because there are no comeback mechanics. Because of the layout of the map, one player makes one mistake and the game is over: that team gets farmed like NPCs in a “I swung a sword” quest.

A map like courtyard is not for team deathmatch; that map should be a free-for-all. Actually it’d be great for free-for-all with its tight spaces and narrow passageways.

I hate courtyard becuase: If I want to play zergfest PvP, I’ll go do WvW.

Gern.2978:

I hate courtyard becuase: If I want to play zergfest PvP, I’ll go do WvW.

lol at comparing 5 people fighting together in pvp with 50 people fighting together in WvW.

I dont like courtyard because its just boring and does not fit for the combat system of gw2. Its based on watching your enemy, but in a 5 man zergcluster, its extremly hard to see anything important. So most times you end up in spamming your skills, which feels pretty similar to pve.

Furthermore, the respawns massivly suck. Whoever gets the first kill usually dominates the fight in a 5on4, quickly in a 5on3 for the rest of the match.
Maybe the gamemode could be fun if it would be roundbased: respawn when 1 team whiped, best of 3 rounds win. But in the actual setting, its strictly boring and usually ends up in farm them or get farmed. I actually remember 1 cool match on courtyard(2 very defensive/supportive teams against each other), the rest was a braindead massacre of 1 team.

I dislike it because there are no points to cap or defend, which are usually needed for daily

5 v 5 is zerging now? so all teamfights in pvp, and small group fights in wvw are ‘blobbing’ and ‘take no skill’?

with that attitude it’s no wonder you lose in courtyard all the time. there is nothing about 5v5 that suddenly makes the game skill less. you can say its all blobbing and aoe spam, but all that does is betray the fact you have no clue what’s going on. you obviously don’t understand how important zoning is on this map. as a player you have to be on point for the whole match, courtyard is intense and non stop. losing your momentum in the fight often leads to a loss (yes close coutyard games happen, and yes there are tactics). my guild even has particular spots on the map we try and draw the fight to for tactical advantage.

it’s different from conquest in that it requires no rotation, but it still requires skill in combat, teamwork, map awareness, and zoning.

too rarely the middle area of the map is in use, most of the time both teams fight almost spawn-to-spawn ie. on one side of the map, because there is no point in going elsewhere. The map itself looks great in asthetics, small but cool for 1v1 or some teaching, but it is not picked up by 1v1 rooms. You could say it’s a map for friends wanting a short 1v1, nothing more. A 1v1 map covering up for the missing Duelling-System in PvE, like the Lich and Sigill of Spite on the necro are skills feeling they’re just their to cover up the lack of reliable utility of the rest of the necromancers weapons and skills. (Every build on him gets outperformed by another class, unless skill difference takes over.) So yeah, that map feels like a quick filler.

I dont hate the map as much as I hate going up for 2-3 warriors with battle standard. Some skills are absolutly insanely strong on this map. Even Time Warp for mesmers are a really good option alot of times. Tome Guardians aswell.

It shouldnt be a DM map but an anihilation map (also once you die you stay dead , no respawn etc.). Would make the map much more fun.

2 days ago me and my guild friends played 5v5 deathmatch mode against 5 other guild people, on forest of niphel , just adding 2 simple rules: people death stay DEATH untill the fight is over, no LOS interrupter so we chosed a flat spot. It was really fun.

Muchacho.2390:

It shouldnt be a DM map but an anihilation map (also once you die you stay dead , no respawn etc.). Would make the map much more fun.

Yeah i support this. Its more like team deathmatch. Split the game mode into rounds (say whoever reaches 5 first wins), whoever dies stays dead until next round. With a timelimit of 20 minutes, then you look at the score. This would be an amazing game mode.

DM is good, probably anihilation would be better, it’s important to avoid the snow ball effect, so splitting in round or avoid respawn would be nice.

Map is really bad, too small, too many LOS areas, basically a boring map. There is a reason because people like nifhelm or Foefire for DM, cuz there is a lot of open space area and some little LoS elements. This should be the general layout for a DM map.

It would be really interesting to see some secondary mechanic in DM like for example temporary buff, Q3 Arena style or DragonBall arena style (to stay in a GW2 environment).

In general I like the DM idea and i think it would be really usefull to use it in HoTM during the queue time for Conquest / Stronghold, in this way you don’t split community too much, people have something to do while in queue and can have practice to improve an important part of Conquest Stronghold.

its nowhere near as kittenuckhammer, but it always ends the same.
one team camping the other teams spawn and winning 500 V less than 100.

Refering to the team paring system, then yes this map, actually pvp is not fun at all. I mean really, getting a match of 5 solo players against 1-5 (if not 5 then 1 or 2 solos) thats in a party, you just get rek’ed at mid time of the match. They may not be the best party but they have the advantage of knowing how each of them plays till a certen exctent and a 50% that they use a VoIP so they can then make choices in the battles where the other team can’t. Like the other day I was litterly in a 5 solo vs full party were I personally knew the other team (full party) becuase they are well known competitive players on my server, which started winning us when we were around 200 points each because they could communicate and adjust to how we played.