Guild Wars 2

After what feels like a million games played, I’d like to make a general suggestion as to how to make conquest more dynamic, exhilarating and perhaps solve some of the issues connected to it with very little effort.

Instead of stating my suggestion first, I will list a few of the issues we players see and state regularly and which you may have been perceiving as well in the past 10 months. I will try and address them point by point, but understand that they are intertwined:

- Conquest feels stale

That’s something that many, many players have brought up and has definitely caused some of the playerbase to either abandon structured pvp or the game altogether.

When we ask these players what makes it feel stale, the answers we receive are mostly that people are not interested in fighting over one of three nodes for prolonged times, as while they are being stalled on that node points are generated for the opposing team, because any nodes in their possession, contested or even undefended, keep ticking at a steady rate. The alternative of switching nodes once you have engaged has very little incentives, as all nodes are worth the same amount.

Furthermore, battles usually only take place on mostly one or two of the three nodes, while the third node is left open. Winning a long drawn out battle on a node and losing the one generating points for you in the process by a single player walking over to it and capturing it without any thrilling interaction, adds to that feeling.

- Bunkering and DPS

You have made it clear that bunkering a node is part of what you envisioned for SPvP. You have also come to realize that excessive bunkering is detrimental and thus has to be countered with a very strong emphasis on damage output in order to be able to debunker said node.

As a result in the past ten months we have seen and heard from pretty much everyone how this promotes extremes and limits builds to either bunkers or glass cannons and thus leaving very little room for balanced builds.

This leads to the realization that winning fights is obviously important, but it is not as significant as holding nodes (for which you need bunkers, as I will explain next) very quickly.

On the other hand this also means that, if you have to raise or keep damage so high to be able to overpower a full out bunker spec, everybody who plays such a dps build and who is obviously paying the opportunity cost for the appropriate damage output (in theory, but this post is not about class balance issues), will usually melt in the blink of an eye when targeted by a dps counterpart on the enemy team

- The matches snowball and it’s excessively hard to recover from a bad start

People like me who have been actively playing every single day and followed every discussion surrounding PvP or even those who have just watched the SotG and forums on a regular basis are aware that the designers are trying to come up with solutions to the above.

You guys want teams to be able to turn matches around, but you are attempting to do so by introducing more important secondary objectives (Temple of the Silent Storm is usually thought to have the best mechanic in that regard and if it isn’t ToSS it’s Legacy of the Foefire’s Lord for the last ditch effort sensation).

While I believe these elements can be expanded on, I do not feel that patching up a snowballing point system with a single huge table turner is the way to go. I can guarantee you that losing a match that you have dominated in terms of combat, because the opposing team kills the Lord with 4 people in down state, leaves a sour taste in every competitive pvp player’s mouth. Shout-casters may love it, spectators may enjoy it (because it’s easy to understand mostly and also very visual), but any team losing like that will tell you it feels cheap.

That said I will finally come to my simple suggestion and try to point out how it will affect the game and possibly solve or at least very much alleviate above issues (undoubtedly it will create new ones, just like any system would, as one can only project that far into the future).

My suggestion:

Introduce node point generation decay.

Nodes currently generate 1 point every 2 seconds, regardless of how long they have been in your possession. My idea would see you introduce an interval with 5 stages that gradually increases the time between the generation of points the longer a node is in one side’s possession (1/2s, 1/4s, 1/6s, 1/8s, 1/10s an 1/10s beyond that).

Flipping a node would obviously reset the counter for the other team.

By doing so we would achieve the following:

- More aggressive node attacks (conquering nodes; conquest)

Instead of seeing 1v1s on a side node, a team fight on another and absolutely no action whatsoever on the third node, players would be encouraged to fight over all 3 nodes, because holding two nodes for a long time generates less points than a “freshly” flipped node

- Less snowballing and the ability to turn matches around all the time rather than once

The dynamics suggested would allow a team to make comebacks when they decide to rather than watching a timer for a secondary objective. The team who just got wiped is encouraged and allowed to regroup without the feeling that the enemy team is generating a huge amount of points and thus an ever-growing lead for every second they are not actively engaged (not just engaged but in control of the node rather). The feeling of running against the clock would be greatly diminished.

Matches could go back and forth like this and a not be decided way too early, if you you happen to be 200 points behind. Currently this is almost impossible unless you somehow manage to turn it around 3-capping them and holding onto all of the nodes for a prolonged amount of time (in fact we very rarely see this happening).

- More emphasis on battles

By implementing my suggestion team members would finally not feel like they are wasting time on capturing a node against an equal amount of defenders. A fight over a neutral node would become worth fighting for, even if the side node’s have been captured by the opponent. Winning the node might take a while, but you are rewarded for the time spent with a fresh node that generates a greater amount of points with the possibility of capturing another fresh node after you have wiped the enemy team in a 4v4 for instance.

- Bunkering and DPS

Changing the dynamics would not make bunkering obsolete (somebody might be thinking that), instead it would encourage bunkers to be more active and defend different nodes during the match rather than sitting on a single one for the whole duration of it.

Not allowing your opponent to capture your old node may be important, but it may be more beneficial to move your bunker to a neutral node instead till your reinforcements arrive in order to get a fresh node and once again generate a sizeable amount of points rather than sitting on an old node while the enemy gets a fresh one (so instead of trading an old node for a fresh one, you gain the opportunity to trade a fresh one for a fresh one)

Also, since fights over a node that isn’t yours have become more important and you are not being severely punished for the inability to drop targets excessively fast by running against the clock, it’s possible that balanced builds could become more popular, as these are generally stronger in even numbered match ups that last an extended amount of time.

Erebos.6741:

Hammerheart.1426:

Love that downstate
/sarcasm.

Really adds depth and strategy.

Fixed?

Don’t fix it if it aint broken son.

I find it near impossible to win a 2 v 1 or 3 vs 2 because of downed state no matter how bad they are or how i outplay them.
Even if i down one, I’ve still got him attacking me and the other one rezzing him faster than i can finish him.
It turns most fights into fights of who has the most people, not skill.

It is certainly good in pve though.

I don’t think it is viable for anything that wants to be competitive. It forgives dieing way too much on top of a whole lot of issues in pvp.

While this whole downstate idea was a novel concept, not everybody likes it. I personally hate it and there are a lot of people like me. It would be wonderful if this became a server option sometime in the future. With that being said, I would also like to see new types of pvp such as team death match, capture the flag, and arena style 1on1 to 3on3 style matches.

Muramasma.1570:

Now, I don’t think these things would translate very well into GW2, as the pace is just much to different. But the shift from chess-like strategy to FPS-like strategy, as well as the causes for this shift, should be noted.

I don’t expect GW2 to change much at all in the game mechanic department. My post was just an outline of things I find wrong with the PvP gameplay. The list is actually about ten fold what I managed to type but you have to be careful about writing an essay on a gaming forum. I expect GW2 will always be a messy and frenetic PvP experience with fairly shallow team play, but that probably won’t serve it well in the long run.

Like I said earlier, however, you should just give up here. As you have probably gathered by now, what’s left of this game’s community is more likely to attack your ability to play rather than attempt to understand where you are coming from. And it’d be foolish to think that the developers would do absolutely anything with what you have to say.

Athletes always claim they don’t read or listen to sports media and that probably holds true during specific times(personal crisis, injury, important play-off series) but every once in a while they give out a little bit of information that implies they actually do pay attention from time to time. I figure video game developers are about the same. They probably don’t bother reading through many forum posts because well, you can’t please everyone.. but I bet they do read forum posts on occasion. Artists want people to like their work(developers are artists, imho), not gaff at it while they sit in blissful ignorance because they don’t want to be subjected to criticism. Whether this post has been read? hard to say, but that won’t deter me.

As for players who make knee-jerk responses, there’s an old addage about listening to criticism. Never take it too seriously because it’s probably a half-truth but then never take praise too seriously either because the same holds true. So I wager I’m a fairly decent player, sometimes above average, but then some of the players responding here are probably less than average at managing a problem I outlined. They probably think they’re better than they are or that it’s just some clever and challenging mechanic they need to grapple.. instead of just, a bad design choice.

^ “Casual” is not interchangeable with “unskilled”.

Give up OP. This game was not meant for us.

Your points are all good ones that I’ve mulled over myself more than once, particularly your comments on camera control and line of sight. This example also highlights the major divide in the community of this game, or at least on the forums.

It’s understandable that many players coming from different games would hear you talking about using your mouse hand to hit skills and instantly think “NOOB.” Hell, anyone doing that in this game is a freaking noob. Might as well just click your skills (lol). In the same sense, it’s understandable why the addition of the line of sight element and aimed skills and spells brings with it a perceived raise in skill cap. After all, there are certainly people that can aim their character more effectively and intelligently while still being able to dexterously hit all their proper hotkeys better than others.

However, while this adds the element of dexterity to the game, it takes away a lot more . Being able to rotate your camera and view the entire battlefield while still attacking / harassing your target was fundamental to any GW1 team fight; it allowed you to effectively be a part of the entire overall battle, allowing you to focus on playing your role in your team. I should add that freeing up your mouse hand a bit to hit skills was something I definitely took for granted. It’s not that it’s impossible to hotkey your skills so your left hand can do it all, but the fact that it was much easier to hit the proper skills allowed you to focus on more important things. Essentially, the main focus of the game wasn’t on the aforementioned hand / finger coordination, but rather on deeper mechanics I don’t want to get into.

Now, I don’t think these things would translate very well into GW2, as the pace is just much to different. But the shift from chess-like strategy to FPS-like strategy, as well as the causes for this shift, should be noted.

Like I said earlier, however, you should just give up here. As you have probably gathered by now, what’s left of this game’s community is more likely to attack your ability to play rather than attempt to understand where you are coming from. And it’d be foolish to think that the developers would do absolutely anything with what you have to say.