Guild Wars 2

Stonemist makes me want to go play Planetside 2. It really highlights this game’s server-side performance issues. Even though MY machine is getting good FPS, culling issues mean I can’t see more than a quarter of the enemies in the room and my skills may take several seconds to fire off (sometimes they simply don’t fire off at all).

Arenanet is aware of the general issue but Stonemist makes the classic Warhammer-style mistake of “cramming tons of people into one room”. It’s a place where there’s usually a 3-way battle so the entire server is there and all the action is in the middle.

I suggest Stonemist have 3, perhaps 4 lords:

North Lord
Southwest Lord
Southeast Lord
(Middle Lord?)

There is a 1000 point pool. Whoever owns 2 positions is gaining points. When they hit 1000 points, they claim the castle. If you camp 1 position you’ll never win.

This might not solve the underlying issues but at least it will keep it from being so bad.

Did you just lose the castle really quickly?

moirweyn.9872:

Did you just lose the castle really quickly?

No. This is not a post about a specific event. It happens just about every time Stonemist gets seriously attacked. One team breaches, which usually distracts the defenders enough for the other team to breach. Now there’s a huge 3-way fight in Stonemist and it will tend to all come together in the Lord room, since that’s the only place that really matters.

It usually drags on for some time, probably because culling issues mean nobody can see anything and server lag issues mean nobody can reliably fire off abilities.

It just turns into a big, frustrating lagfest. I think they could fix the worst of it with a fairly simple design change. Even breaking Stonemist into 3 separate zones of control would probably be better.

but how would you force the zergs to split. All multiple objectives will do is force servers to cap 4 areas one at a time.

The NPCs only really stall enemies on points, the battle is won when the enemy players are defeated so the points can be captured.

Making more ‘points’ doesnt fix the issue at all.

Crafty idea…and would give epic battles for sure. Still wouldn’t fix the culling problem though unless each section was on its own server. FPS problems are related to peoples’ setups and not so much the game. It’s like a convo I had last night….you shouldn’t play GW2 on a 300 buck laptop or cheapy computer because you will get what you paid for.

Draygo.9473:

but how would you force the zergs to split. All multiple objectives will do is force servers to cap 4 areas one at a time.

It’s just like any “capture and hold” mechanic.

You capture #1 and then all zerg to #2. You capture #2 and then all zerg to #3. But while you were doing this, one of the other teams retook #1.

It would probably be best to make it point-based too, so defenders can’t just hold 1 location.

If your team owns 2 of the 3 locations, then you are gaining points and ownership of the castle is drifting in your direction. Defense can pile up on one location but they will lose the castle if they can’t hold at least 2 locations.

ktith.6197:

Crafty idea…and would give epic battles for sure. Still wouldn’t fix the culling problem though unless each section was on its own server.

From what I’ve seen, culling isn’t “server-wide” — it’s locational.

If there are 100 people in the Lord room, you’re probably seeing 20% of them and you might have 5 seconds of skill lag. If you’re over at Ogrewatch, though, same server, and 10 enemies show up, you’ll see 100% of them and there will be no skill lag.

I’ve never been standing in Ogrewatch and had skill lag or bad culling issues just because there was a fight in Stonemist. So I think spreading people out more, even from one side of Stonemist to the other, will prevent the worst of the problem.

Having 3 cap points wouldn’t really be different from having 1 cap point. If all three points need to be captured, the defenders would still be best off defending just one of them with everyone instead of splitting to try defend all 3. If you don’t have to hold all 3 to capture, attackers would attack just one (preferably the least defended one) and sweep to the next until they have enough points to hold.

If you want to change the way SM battles play out, I think you’d need a more radical change than that.

With the way that SM is laid out, 3 levels, that could alone be where some of the changes were made. Put the Lord up top with his NPC contingent. Setup a “barracks” downstairs that is an objective (2nd floor). 1st floor have a “captain” or other NPC. Give each floor a level of NPC the same as the Lord. Make each floor an obtainable objective but one that can’t be just taken with some siege on the floor above it. Same said for the inner courtyard being a 4th objective. Make taking SM a tiered event and give each tier the ability to have a waypoint or remove the waypoint upgrade totally from SM (for fairness to all sides). SM could be a super huge epic battle but split in such a way to make “culling” less of a side effect of epic battles there.

Granted it’d take some time I’m sure to code it, but man it’d be worth it.

So uh.. the defenders just sit on one cap point with a ton of siege like they always do and create choke points. So how would the other two capture points matter?

Remove siege from being placed in anything other than inner courtyard. Put a “trap” system in place for inside areas.

Stonemist is horrible to defend, and that’s the point. It gives the most coverage over Eternal Battlegrounds but takes pretty much all your resources to defend when a server is serious about taking it.

“With great power comes great responsibility” – some old dude.

In my experience (and I’m on a T5 server so maybe this isn’t the case at other levels) once SM outer walls are down, there’s not a meaningful fight at inner. You either hold in Lord room or the attacker captures SM. If we want to make SM battle different or more dynamic in a way, I think incentives have to be made to put up a true defense at inner instead of in the Lord room. Lord defense should be a desperate last stand, not a primary defense plan.

How can design change to better encourage fights at the inner gate?

Put the lord on the top floor. Making it a battle up the stairs lol. Idk about radical changes but I think the top areas of stone mist are reasonably unused unless you are using the Forge or getting the vista.

MornaVal.4508:

So uh.. the defenders just sit on one cap point with a ton of siege like they always do and create choke points. So how would the other two capture points matter?

Updating the original post for clarity.

Do like what Planetside 2 does, or every capture & hold game in the history of gaming: whoever owns the majority of capture positions is gaining points faster than everyone else. If that’s the defenders, great, they keep the castle. If an attacker wants the castle, they need to capture 2 of the 3 positions and hold it. If they can capture all 3, so much the better, it’ll flip quicker but it’s only really necessary to hold 2.

North Lord=Ballista
Southwest Lord=Ballista
Southeast Lord=Ballista

Slamz.5376:

MornaVal.4508:

So uh.. the defenders just sit on one cap point with a ton of siege like they always do and create choke points. So how would the other two capture points matter?

Updating the original post for clarity.

Do like what Planetside 2 does, or every capture & hold game in the history of gaming: whoever owns the majority of capture positions is gaining points faster than everyone else. If that’s the defenders, great, they keep the castle. If an attacker wants the castle, they need to capture 2 of the 3 positions and hold it. If they can capture all 3, so much the better, it’ll flip quicker but it’s only really necessary to hold 2.

It works in planetside, but not here. In planetside defenders can usually spawn close by without issue. All this system does is hand over the fort to the attackers if the defenders lack numbers. Attackers contest 2 points, leave a skeleton crew on each, and pressure the last point with thier zerg, rendering the defenders unable to cap back any points.

So no. Different games, different systems. Whats ok in another game isnt always ok in another.

might be interesting to have “Captains of the Gaurd” that have to be taken out at certain points before moving to the middle room. there is a ton of empty space in SM that could be used for it.