I’ve been having a lot of fun in courtyard so far, and wanted to give some feedback on what’s working and what’s not for team deathmatch.
Foremost, finally, the satisfaction of deathmatch. Deathmatch is a true test of a player’s skill, and by that i mean it reflects his/her knowledge of game mechanics. The objective is simple and clear: defeat your opponent, not cheese your way to victory by abusing meta objectives. With that being said, matches feel much more satisfying than conquest. Also, players can actually stick together, rather than being split up to capture different points. Deathmatch is much more conducive for comraderie.
As of now, i feel like 8v8+ is too much for deathmatch. The appeal of spvp deathmatch, is to have a venue where pvpers can use a wide variety of builds, and show off their skill in doing so. WvW, as we know too well, pigeonholes people into certain builds, and zerging. Indeed most large scale battles, are simply roll with your group, and mash 1. I can tell you why it became that way, largely due to lack of collision detection, and the unique feature of melee attacks cleaving., but that’s another topic.
Thus we want deathmatch to be at a robust scale, and i can tell you 8v8 and 10v10 is not. I love to melee, i’ve played thief and warrior since release, but so far in deathmatch, i’ve mostly been engineer, lobbing grenades afar for massive aoe damage. It feels alot like WvW most of the time. Of course having the scale too small, is not optimized either. We want a team build that is robust as well. I’m thinking 5v5 is a good place to start, in seeking the perfect medium.
The actual map seems to be well made. Aesthetically it’s gorgeous, (as always from Anet’s artists), and the size seems decent enough as well. The changes of elevation and barriers were also well done. An ideal map should provide enough cover for guerilla tactics, but not so much that it constantly interferes with the fight. Skyhammer is a perfect example of a poorly done map for competitive play, where combat is frequently interrupted by all too easily abused map mechanics. Players should know, or learn, how to use terrain and positioning to their advantage, but not so much that this trumps core mechanics of the game.
Also regarding map, i haven’t been on my thief much, but there seems to be some spots that are abuseable with teleport effects. I know of the imbalance problems of such, all too well, when i used to abuse infiltrator’s strike in obsidium sanctum back in the day. All i can say is be on the lookout for unintended spots to teleport in and out of. Usually they are on raised platforms, like bridges or scaffolding. The bridge in the south portion of the map is one of them.
