I’m curious what you all think about choke points as strategic ideas. I don’t think we’d ever want a map that was just a bunch of canyons, this isn’t Sparta or Thermopylae, but having areas that make it harder for large groups to get through if they are well-defended creates gameplay. Think of a tower that guards the only pass through a canyon, rather than bridges everywhere. Is that something that, in moderation, could provide for more varied and strategic gameplay?
For the purposes of the question, think in terms of building a new map from scratch, rather than retrofitting the current maps.
It’s hard to say, honestly. Unfortunately, in this game, choke points don’t really do too much to hurt a group. The soft CC is too easily cleansed, and the hard CC like lines, walls, knockbacks, etc, are all stopped by one boon that most everyone has access to; stability.
I’ve never really seen a chokepoint held for any long period of time against a larger group, or against almost any organized groups. The only examples of real chokes I can think of in the normal WvW maps would be East Keep’s lord room (or “Hills” to some), or Mendon’s bridge. In East Keep, we see large groups building 5-10 superior ACs, bunkering down, and waiting until someone pushes in. When we decide to make an organized push through the tunnel with heal books, stability, water fields, etc, it’s not hard for us to out-tank those ACs for a few seconds and destroy them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, imo. Arrow carts currently promote some pretty boring gameplay in my opinion, and it’s good that we can counter them with movement. However, in respect to the idea of a chokepoint, it would probably be have to be held by a minimum of 5 superior ACs over a HUGE tract of land, and, honestly, that just doesn’t sound entirely fun to me.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I feel like if the mechanics were varied and interesting, a long choke could be really exciting. You mentioned making it where only some siege could be placed at strategic positions, and I really like that idea, especially if the siege has unique mechanics. Imagine, for a second, a tower similar to Mendon’s, or a keep similar to East Keep, with one long tract of land between the gate and the lord room. Instead of AC spam bogging people down, how about player controlled traps, similar to the Obsidian Sanctum traps. The catch, however, is that all of these traps would be destructible, and within 900 range or so of the attackers, with there being “safe zones” outside of the range of traps between each trap that the attackers could recover for a moment and continue pushing.
This, in my opinion, would give rise to some very interesting gameplay. The traps themselves would have to be powerful, such as stripping stability on the first trap from everyone inside, but also easily telegraphed, so that the attackers know when it is possible to move up and try to take the tower/keep. Say that the first trap strips stability, the second trap pulls attackers backwards, the third trap chills attackers (possible uncleansable movement chill only, similar to the EotM one), and a final large boulder trap strips stability and knocks players down.
If the cooldowns were appropriate on these traps (say at least a minute each), and were telegraphed well (maybe make each zone have a color and when the trap is active, turn the color off or on), it would lead to a very fun fight. It punishes mindless zergs who would just try to push through all 3 traps immediately, because they would lose stability, get pulled backwards, get knocked down by the boulder, and still not have made any progress at all. It rewards strategic play, too, because these traps have great utility, but don’t necessarily do a large amount of damage. This requires the players to have to fight the other players themselves, but still offers a very sizeable defenders advantage. Sure, a group of 5 wouldn’t be able to wipe a group of 30+, but I don’t really think they should be able to, in most cases. However, an organized group of 10-15 could easily take out a mindless group of 40+ with advantages like this.
This is obviously just an example, but I would love for utility advantages rather than stat or damage bonuses to be explored as a means to buff defenders. Fighting with our characters is one of the most fun things in this game, because the combat in this game is so good. I’m admittedly more of an open field guy, but before the AC buff, I had a ton of fun inside of keeps and towers fighting on some really interesting terrain. If we could come up with some new zones that balance positioning of siege or simply give a utility advantage (such as the traps I mentioned), I would probably find myself inside keeps or towers more often. It’s fun for me to fight players, but it’s not fun for me to run inside of 30 red circles that I can’t do anything about.
I still remember a thrill of them when they were on JQ.