Guild Wars 2

Gabriell.4856:

Also, what are Anet’s balancing philosophies?

Wait 5 months to patch.

Incendiary Powder wasn’t touched. That’s why you still see cele rifle engi around so much. Shaving even 1 second off the base would be a step toward better balance.

Turret engi could be easily fixed by making Accelerant-Packed Turrets a master level trait again.

I actually see a big difference with d/d ele’s power. Though still a little too good, it’s not nearly as overwhelming of a difference.

There are (or at least were) issues with the Glicko2 rating implementation. This was made obvious when someone with 11 games and a losing ratio was at the top of the old MMR-based leaderboard.

The scoring algorithm to grab rosters (parties of players) for a match is flawed. Most notably, the difference in the rosters’ rating is used as an absolute value in scoring, as well as having less than 5 people. This means that rosters well above the matching target or well below the matching target end up having the same potential score for matching.

Yes, low population is a factor. But the algorithms chosen should account for that.

If you’re going to match teams/players at equal levels of skill across the spectrum, then an MMR-based leaderboard is the only one which makes sense.

Koviko.3248:

Exedore.6320:

Not that any of this matters. Stronghold will devolve into a couple 5v5’s and whoever wins them snowballs the game.

You could say the same about Conquest, but rarely does that happen. Someone leaves the 5v5 to accomplish other things and further the interests of their team.

Conquest requires splitting up a team because there are three equally important nodes. Stronghold looks like it should as well, but I’m willing to bet that once people figure out how to play it efficiently, it will be nothing but one or two 5v5 deathmatches.

There’s one supply depot (two channel points, but both are in the same area). You win that at the start then use a mesmer portal to dump 10 supply into NPCs (on top of the initial 5) and then back to mid to push the enemy gate. Your enemy has spawned at most 5 NPCs and it should be easy to clean that up by exploiting the AI. So now the team which won the initial supply fight pushes straight to the enemy gate with their whole team and a bunch of NPCs. Unless the defenders can quickly nuke down 10 supply of sappers, both gates will be destroyed in seconds. If the defending team breaks off to try and run supply for their NPCs, they just lose the defensive fight faster or just turn it into a PvE race where they’re already behind. If the offensive team’s NPCs die, they fall back to the depot and repeat the process while still denying the defending team supply.

Unlike conquest, the offensive team can’t lose anything because the defending team needs supply in order to inflict losses and the offensive team denied them any additional supply by holding a single area of the map.

Granted it’s just theorycraft without knowing all the details of the map. But I’m hard pressed to come up with an alternative game flow.

Defending team will slowly lose. The trebuchet is outside the gates, so it’s easily destroyed. The hero grants 50% damage reduction and in combination with defensive boons from players, NPCs can survive long enough to take down a gate. Defensive NPCs don’t respawn, so attackers will quickly get an advantage there.

Not that any of this matters. Stronghold will devolve into a couple 5v5’s and whoever wins them snowballs the game.

Pixels.6532:

I cannot fathom a legitimate reason for dumping Stronghold into the conquest queue… then again, I couldn’t for Courtyard (TDM), and you did that… my expectations are pretty low at this point.

Most likely it’s a concern over one of the two queues becoming a wasteland. Throw it together and everyone is miserable – but at least they’re not standing around in Heart of the Mists!

Speculation, but the NPCs are intended to allow players to do more things around the map besides attacking a door and to stop it from becoming a PvE race.

mbh.8301:

That’s because flexibility on stats makes a lot of really broken stuff viable. WvW also uses bonus broken things like condi duration food.

Not talking doing Dire or Nomad. WvW also has a lot more stats due to WvW buffs and ascended. Just want to be able to get something between Berserker and everything else.

Allowing more stat customization in PvP? It limits build options and is a major reason why people, especially WvW’ers don’t like PvP.

Reducing the power of sigils and runes to put more emphasis on profession skills and traits?

Saiyan.1704:

Your drawn-out, pessimistic, opinionated essay doesn’t mean anything because you haven’t played the gamemode. You’re saying the game will fail; with no supportive evidence from anything. Not even an example of past implementations that Anet did to strengthen your argument.

No, using examples drawn from GW2 as well as from other MMORPGs which implemented similar mechanics doesn’t count I guess.

You’re saying the game will succeed without any supporting evidence (even though there has been quite a bit published or data-mined). Sorry, but I never liked kool-aid.

GhOst.4019:

A lot of the questions on here have been answered in the past already. So let me answer a couple for you so they don’t waste time during the cast; double stating what they have already told us.

1: Yes, you can solo Q into the game mode.
2: Yes it will have its own Q’s
3: Yes it will have its own leader board
4: When time runs out, if both lords are up, the team with the most points wins. This is how it already works in the event of a tie and how it will continue to work.
5: No, this is not GvG so stop saying that. It is sPvP.

Source? Particularly for #2.

My Additional Points
Observers: Stronghold will be no better than conquest for viewers and will likely be worse. Like conquest, Stronghold divides players between many locations at once. You can’t focus on any one fight without missing another. The fights are still laden with particle effects ending in “Oh, someone died”. And if you focus on a fight, you quickly lose the big picture. But unlike conquest, which has a relatively simple to grasp indication of lead and momentum, stronghold’s indicators are more plentiful and less concrete. Further, watching players fight NPCs is kinda boring.

In my opinion, conquest wasn’t well received by viewers because the focus was misplaced in early shout-casting. The part of conquest which has more appeal to the less knowledgeable observer is the map-level: the score, who is losing or gaining nodes, and player positions. Instead, focus was on fights, which was a mess of particle effects where even knowledgeable observers couldn’t see most of what was happening. This was exacerbated by early bunker-heavy strategies which lead to less dynamic map play.

The snowball argument for conquest is mostly born out of disparate skill levels between the teams. When teams who are closely matched in skill play each other, the match is often back and forth with close scores. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stronghold snowballed too.

Complexity: Conquest is simple – get to 500 points first by holding combinations of three nodes. If you have less nodes than an opponent, you have more free people with which to assault a point to turn it back in your favor. Yet it’s deep at the same time. There’s depth in which builds you put on a team, how you play that team composition, which nodes you push or guard and when, how you deal with players dying, etc. Secondary mechanics spice it up.

Stronghold is overly complex, which will likely cause it to lack the depth it’s trying to provide through its complexity. To make all the options worthwhile, the cost and benefit from each needs to be tightly tuned. Otherwise, a single choice will always be the best, eliminating any chance at depth. For example, if skirt sappers die too easily to players, why even pick them? If they’re very hardy against players, offensive archers are pointless and you just use a Wall of Reflection on the NPC gate guards and laugh.

NPCs: Unless the AI is better by leaps and bounds than any other game, it will be too easily to take advantage of their weaknesses. In that case, they just feel like giant HP punching bags.

Audience: In PvP, you have a lot of “factions”. Some people want pure team deathmatch/annihilation (some small like 2v2 or 3v3; others large like GW1 GvG and GW2 GvG). Others like conquest and enjoy its depth, which fuels its competitive nature. Still others just want something different. Stronghold caters only to the last group. Unfortunately, that last group is the most fickle and likely to find the next “new toy” once they tire of the current one.

It’s worth noting that conquest has a shortcoming here as well. Because the depth is implicit, it’s hard for new players to learn. The initial frustration drives people away, leaving you with a small PvP base compared to WvW and PvE.

My Conclusion
I’m saying that stronghold will be the downfall of GW2 PvP for the following reasons. First, it doesn’t appeal to competitive PvPers, yet so far there has heavy emphasis on stronghold and nothing on conquest for the future. If this comes to fruition, it will alienate the top and drive them away. Second, stronghold’s more rigid roles and hodgepodge of mechanics has all the foundations very toxic PvP environment (described previously). If that does happen, it turns away the casual players it’s aiming to recruit.

The best thing that can happen is that Stronghold serves a way to get new players into PvP and prepare them to advance into conquest.

Supreme.3164:

If you don’t agree then please do contest my points and let me know what you think, I may be missing something, Cheers!

Stronghold will be the downfall of GW2 PvP. The hype train just hasn’t slammed into the station at full speed yet.

Response to OP’s points
Capture Points: Thinking capture points makes for a bad game is extremely short-sighted. If it’s solely because of bunkers, then you haven’t PvP’ed in a while. Bunker builds have been pretty much dead since TCG lost WTS China, and even before then, they were a dying breed. Players at the top tiers learned to play the map better and in doing so, could out-perform a team with dedicated bunkers.

If you dislike capture points, you should hate Stronghold too. Stronghold has fixed objectives (gates, supply depot) that can be easily denied by a very defensive build. The profession and build may change, but the concept is the same. For example, a turret engi could just set up at the supply depot. In fact, the heavy importance of the single supply depot makes the defensive player position more influential to gameplay.

Roles: The roles described in the article are dreams – not reality. Players will always ignore designer intent and go straight to the most efficient strategy, especially when combat vs. players can be minimized. For example, in Alterac Valley from WoW, a 40v40 PvP area with NPC-backed objectives, the two opposing zergs just run past each other in the middle and turn it into a PvE race. In early GW2 PvE, players constantly farmed quick and easy dungeons, even with diminishing returns, instead of doing different paths to prevent diminishing returns.

Out of whatever remains of worthwhile objectives, there will be a handful of builds which are so much better at a specific role that any other build for that role won’t be worth playing. For example, GS/Sword warrior for supply running. It has the survival, mobility, and access to stability to just constantly channel and run supply and won’t be stopped before reaching the supply return point. GS/sword warrior already does this with the orb on Spirit Watch, which is a big reason why Spirit Watch is the worst conquest map.

Casual Appeal: This is a double-edged sword. Yes, the point of each objective is more clear and it seems like there’s a lot to do at first glance. First, when there are many objectives with different functions, there is a large opportunity for bad choices. Luckily most of these choices will be known to be bad with some experience and the community will quickly arrive at a simple meta which ignores many map mechanics. There go the choices.

However, you’ll always have new people who don’t know or don’t care to learn which choices are bad. For example, I still see people in conquest double-capping uncontested nodes. You also have the optimized builds for each role described previously. Put all that together and Stronghold chat will quickly turn into a toxic quagmire like you see in MOBAs. When a player goes for an objective that isn’t worthwhile, they’ll be chastised. If they do something useful but with a poor build for that, they’ll be called out. When that team loses, people will get mad and take it out on that player. At a casual level, simplistic optimized builds will carry players and teams, just like turret engineers do in conquest.

Key problems with conditions:

1. Certain abilities which apply high-damage conditions and are unavoidable, such as Incendiary Powder from Engineer.
2. Access to a wide variety of conditions, usually from sigils (Doom, Geomancy) and runes (Krait, Perplexity) which dramatically increase the rate of damage applied while making it harder to stop all the damage with condition removal.
3. Most condition removal isn’t predictable or reliable when you are affected by many different condition types. Immobilize tends to be one of the last conditions removed. This make the previous problem worse.
4. Condition duration increases (and decreases if you count WvW too) affect damaging conditions as well as CC conditions. When CC can last longer without use of specialized traits, it makes it hard to balance.

The condition damage stat isn’t a big problem currently; power damage scales better. Where condition damage as a sole damage stat becomes problematic is when you start stacking many different types of damaging conditions at once. When you can do that, condition damage obtains burst potential like power damage from less stats. It’s why players vehemently opposed the addition of Perplexity runes to PvP.

Anomaly.7612:

I really just want my individual score during a game to count for something. As a player, I can be doing my job really well. Decapping, recapping, +1’ing where I’m needed (I’m a Thief, afterall), but depending on the pugs I’m matched with, it could still be a horrible loss.

Make personal score mean something.

Except the personal score on the scoreboard means next to nothing. You get points for double-capping, tagging players in a fight which is already won while letting a node be de-capped, etc. If the scoreboard was a better refection of team contribution and skillful play, I could agree with it counting toward ladder points or rating adjustment.

Martin.6381:

You misunderstood the point of my thread. Although matchmaking is a big issue I’m more concerned about the leaderboards in terms of not being an accurate representation of the actual leaders of PvP. Wether the ladder/tier system would improve matchmaking or not is debatable sure, but the accuracy of the current leaderboards is not.

Leaderboards need to be based on rating. Simple as that. If they choose to mask it with a league/tier system, that’s fine. The way you presented your idea, you went into matchmaking and rating determination and not a leaderboard overhaul.

There are a few unknown problems, and I can point out at least one known problem with the current rating and matchmaking system. Addressing that would make rating more meaningful and fix some of the issues with the old leaderboard, which did a pretty good job of putting the best players at the top.

A tier or league system does nothing to improve matchmaking. In any computer game, tiers/leagues are only a means for players to be better identify themselves when compared with a rating number. Behind the scenes, matching is done based on the players’ match-making rating (MMR). A league/tier is just a block of players in a rating range; that block has moveable end-points to account for shifts in population. If MMRs are calculated well and you’re properly matched with someone of similar MMR, you’re both likely in the MMR range of your league/tier unless you’re at the extremes of its MMR range.

It would be good to have a tier system as a way to express MMR compared with the pure MMR number since MMR distributions are usually not even. It also allows decay or inactivity calculations to be done in the background. And it could dissuade top players from sitting on rating because they don’t know how far apart they are from others.

The problems you’re seeing in matchmaking are due to bugs in the calculation (Justin fixed one a week or so ago), parameter weights being in flux, the struggle of balancing wait time with rating difference in a relatively small pool, and accurately determining the contribution of an individual in a team game.

Your tiers proposal doesn’t address any of that.

Keksmuffin.1450:

and no rallying on npcs.

Removing that would make rushing lord less effective if defenders show up to help.

Dirame.8521:

I love your comparisons and I think you’re onto something but the significant thing I can see from your post is lack of information on what Stronghold is actually like, leading to you having little to say about it.

Hopefully we’ll get more later this month.

But I have thought about those possibilities, specifically NPCs being required to destroy gates and the use of a partial “payload” archetype. The problem with both of those is the over-reliance on NPCs which de-emphasizes the actual player-vs-player combat. Do you really want to see a “PvE specialist” role develop in a PvP format?

For Stronghold team size, they said in an interview they were testing primarily 5v5, but still open to sizes up to 10v10.

My thoughts on the pros and cons

Team Deathmatch/Annihilation
In the description you’ve already invalidated 2v2 and 3v3 deathmatch as a viable format: too many special rules to prevent it from stalemating. While it may be fun once in a while, it’s not good competition for the long term. In deathmatch, minor imbalances become pronounced and lead to constant complaints (worse than what we see now), and the matches will revolve around use of long, powerful cooldown skills. And deathmatch is definitely not good for “esports”. It turns into a mess of particle effects and watching life bars. Matches drag out or the pivotal moment is over before you knew it was going to happen.

However, deathmatch is popular for players because the format is smaller and has a narrower focus for people who don’t like to think as much. Finding one or two good teammates isn’t as hard as finding four. The focus is smaller because you’re not watching a larger map area, don’t have to think about who goes where constantly, there are no secondary objectives, don’t have to consider stomping vs. bleeding out, etc.

Conquest
This is the ideal competitive format. Map mechanics (trebuchet, etc) and NPCs are kept to a minimum – just enough to shake things up – which keeps focus on the PvP combat. The three-node mechanic forces teams to go on the offensive instead of sitting around and stalemating. At the same time, the nodes serve as a way to break up the teams into smaller groups usually avoiding a large spell-effect laden team deathmatch. Compared to a pure deathmatch format, balance doesn’t have to be as tight; different numbers of players and available cooldowns tend to offset finer imbalances. Build variety is also higher because there are many more roles and strategies when you consider the full map. With regards to “esports” conquest is a friendly format because it offers something that a person who is less knowledgeable about GW2 can follow. The node status, score, and player positions give a high-level view of game state and momentum.

However, conquest has struggled to achieve high popularity. The deathmatch crowd – those who only want to fight other players and have nothing else involved – will be critics of any format with objectives. For the general playerbase, PvP had a poor start with a lack of rewards and infrastructure while seeming disjoint from the rest of the game. The format can be frustrating for new players as it does a poor job of teaching map-level play while masking individual weaknesses in group fights. On the “esports” front, the initial bunker-heavy team compositions led to uninteresting gameplay and at the same time, shoutcasting tended to focus on the details of fights rather than the overall map-level. All those have improved, but the initial damage may have been too much.

Stronghold
Going off the limited descriptions and the data-mined map, stronghold seems to have significant involvement of NPC and map mechanics compared to conquest. It may even go so far as to overshadow actual player vs. player combat. If the map mechanics are toned down, then it becomes a race to kill the opposing lord as fast as possible, with defense mostly ignored. Both alternatives make for a bad competitive PvP scene. However, it does have enough of a high-level strategy for the less informed player to follow.

The format has a lot of hype because it’s new and because of GW1 nostalgia. However, I doubt it will play out like GW1 GvG. ANet has added a lot of secondary mechanics to try and split up players from that big deathmatch fight in the middle. Also, the comparisons to MOBAs are stretching. Although there is a lane mechanic with an NPC, the overall playstyle has a significant difference. While it may be good for casual play, I don’t see it being competitive.

Reaven.3958:

Why? I guess it just doesn’t make sense to me why any game mode with players fighting each other would be ok being imbalanced.

It’s not that they try to make WvW imbalanced; WvW has many more variables so there’s less focus on fine-tuning the balance compared to PvP.

The leaderboard is ordered by total points awarded based on the outcome of the game relative to its expected outcome. The amount of points you win or lose depends on your chances of winning and the final score. If you were expected to lose but won the match, you get more points than if you were expect to win the match and won. If you were expected to lose and lost, you lose less points. For more details, check the wiki. So basically you can still have a high number of points with less than 50% win rate because you lost matches you should have lost but won matches you should have won – you just played more matches you were expected to lose.

The problem with this leaderboard system is that you have the same point potential regardless of whether you’re one of the best players or one of the worst. As a result, it boils down to who plays the most, not who plays the best.

• More stats customization. Split the amulets into an amulet, ring, ring at 50%, 25%, and 25% of the current amulet stats. Lack of stat customization is keeping players out of PvP and limiting build variety. Both are needed for a prosperous PvP game.
• Reduce the damage of sigils, especially ones which add instant damage.
• Reduce the base duration of Incendiary Powder. It’s way too much for unavoidable damage which is difficult to remove due to cover conditions.
• Push Accelerant-Packed Turrets back to master level so that turret engis can’t take it and Boons on Turrets and Turret Damage & range increase.
• Reduce the damage of instant-cast traits like Halting Strike and Chill of Death.

Mawdrey food omnomnom.

Probably more than you wanted to know:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Matchmaking

You can’t only consider balance for the very top players. What the average player experiences should be taken into consideration as well. For the average player, longbow ranger is extremely frustrating to play against, mostly because of Rapid Fire and their long range. Though condi rangers with entangle can also be frustrating. So yes, I agree that ranger needs to change, but in doing so it needs to be made more viable at the top and less of a one-trick-pony for the general player.

The article linked by the OP and his addendum seem to frame their argument poorly or have it backwards. Yes, we need balance updates more often, but balance updates should not be done solely to shake up the meta. Balance updates should aim to create more dynamic metagame than the previous iteration by providing a larger amount of choices – not preserving the quantity but changing what the choices are.

The “Extra Credits” video on “Perfect Imbalance” which was linked in the article does a much better job of explaining healthy balance, and touches on some of the issues that GW2 has. In a healthy system, there may be some imbalances, but they’re kept close to a “perfect balance”. The minor imbalances should also have pros and cons to keep player habits changing. Where GW2 is struggling is that there are a few things which have drifted too far above the margin and many things which are too far below it.

Prior to the latest patch, d/d ele was strong, but it also has almost no viable weaknesses or counters. To paraphrase “Extra Credits” Tip #1: you can’t have a build that does everything well. Reigning in the power of d/d ele by reducing its damage output allows for some weaknesses or alternatives to possibly emerge. Sure, d/d ele may still survive forever in most 1v1s on a point, but after the patch (in theory) it can’t win those 1v1’s either – only stalemate. That allows for possible alternatives that may not have the survivability, but, can win given certain conditions. For example, maybe a build can win the 1v1s, but can’t survive on-point; it has to give up control in order to win.

The logic for more frequent updates is that when outliers, who have no viable counter or alternative, dominate for too long, the game becomes repetitive and boring. Games which are repetitive and boring lose players’ interest.

Conspiracy theory: Intentional in order to test Elementalist changes and alternate profession scoring.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/I-m-being-punished/first#post4746413

From what I gather in the LoL wiki, the league system is basically a block of players within a certain [match-making] rating range.

According to the GW2 wiki, GW2 does this implicitly during matching, but likely due to a lower playerbase at any given time, it doesn’t create such rigid tiers.

Lopez.7369:

You misunderstood. It adds a new weapon, healing skill, utility skills, and elite skills to old options. Some of the old options might be restricted, but not all.

I saw you post that somewhere else. Can I get a source?

Either way, my point is that the presentation was very vague and it made it seem that way. Looks like they clarified afterwards.

Roe.3679:

kodesh.2851:

If they start taking away build tinkering and customization, I’m gone.

What inspired this post?

The way Colin presented specializations at PAX made it seem like you’re locked into a weapon, a heal, an elite, and a small selection of utilities. When you have such a wide selection now, it feels dumb to limit yourself unless it’s incredibly powerful (which leads to balance issues).

xDudisx.5914:

I want looking forward for stronghold. Now that we will have 2 official pvp modes they will have to take in account stronghold for balance purposes not just conquest.

Stronghold will be casual PvP. If you read into what the developers have already said about it, it’s intended to appeal to a wider base with significant NPC invovlement. I’d really hate to see them balance around it.

The new leaderboard system rewards quantity and ignores quality. That’s the exact opposite of what a leaderboard should be.

From the Massively HoT Article

Stronghold, a new PvP game mode, was a particular focus during our conversation. According to Johanson, Stronghold was developed as a way to offer a more dynamic PvP experience that’s as fun to watch as it is to play — even for non-PvP players. “You might be somebody who’s not as good at killing enemy players,” he says, “but the thing that you love is gathering supplies, hiring troops, and trying to get them to the stronghold.” Stronghold will give players more roles to play in PvP and ensure those roles are fluid throughout the progression of a match. Match times and team sizes aren’t nailed down, but it sounds as though they’ll be quicker rather than longer and will fall somewhere within the current PvP skirmish size.

Meglobob.8620:

Here is EXACTLY what specialization means (from limited info so far):-

The important part is whether you’re locked into that skill set or if it’s just a set of new stuff. If you’re locked into that weapon and set of skills, then there’s a big balance problem: how do you make it appealing without making it better than what currently exists, since it’s hard to make it somewhat unique with what’s already there.

Kharr.5746:

What’s funny is that this happened after losing several matches in a row with similar blowouts, so my MMR should have taken a dive.

If you were facing people significantly higher than your rating, then your rating won’t drop much from a loss.

As for the matchmaking, it needs fixed.

Hard to say without knowing the details of the specialization system.

The only thing I can say for certain is that some of the new stuff is bound to be way too good at release and will get toned down within the first month or two. Other stuff will be weak and take longer to bring up to par.

Solstice.1097:

what if the NPCs only attack the gate, and its the only way to destroy the gate?

Then the NPCs become too important to gameplay and makes it feel less like PvP. In addition, that turns it into a payload archetype (carry or escort resources across the map). Professions with good mobility would dominate.

In response to the “wait and see” comments: there are many different game types used in multiplayer games and most have been applied to MMORPGs, which have unique characteristics. Flaws in the core mechanics of each game when applied to the MMORPGs genre are present in any MMORPG which implements it. Each game tries to mask those flaws, but you can never get rid of them.

Lopez.7369:

It’s 5v5.

PvP modes will never be bigger because of e-sports.

There’s no confirmation on it. The only thing we got was that it won’t be something huge like 15v15 and would be closer to 5v5. link

One key to having good competitive PvP in an MMORPG is to keep the number of players in an individual battle down to about 2-3 on each side. That’s why you have nodes on conquest and supply, trebuchets, and two lanes in Stronghold. If you have more people than that in a single battle, it begins to limit viable build options and leads to stalemates. So as long as you have enough objectives to divide players, larger than 5v5 is viable.

Stronghold isn’t necessarily a bad format; it’s very similar to MOBAs, which are very popular. The main reason for the discord is that it’s not a good competitive format compared to conquest, yet it’s being presented as a format for competition. While stronghold may be great for getting more casual players into PvP, it doesn’t address current PvP issues.

Zoso.8279:

LOL ppl get mad at courtyard/skyhammer/spirit watch and now the new mode? Dude come on wtf do u want? 2v2 3v3? LMAO its called hotjoin make a game and have fun with 3 of your ppl.

People didn’t like those maps because they’re bad.

Skyhammer has very interesting and fun mechanics. Lots of people loved it when it first came out. However, those map mechanics are too prevalent and overshadow PvP combat. It could be a great competitive map if its issues were addressed properly.

Spirit Watch has poor map flow in regards to the capture nodes coupled with a bad secondary mechanic. The raven node is a pain to defend, but if you have map control, it’s very hard to break it. The stairs also screw up a lot of movement abilities. However, the orb is what makes this the worst conquest map. You can’t teleport with it, but you can use leaps, super-speed, etc. It can be dominated by a handful or builds, most notably warriors.

Courtyard is hated because it’s in the conquest queue and 5v5 is too much for team deathmatch. 5v5 leads to AoE and CC spam within small corridors or instant damage on a called target from 5 people in order to down a single person and then snowball. At the same time, it’s not good for 2v2 and 3v3 because it’s size size makes delay tactics too easy to execute.

Solstice.1097:

i agree there is not yet enough information for us to judge how the new game mode will be.

You can infer quite a lot based on the info given and the data-mined maps from a few months ago.

NPCs
First, NPCs will be an important part of the map. NPCs in PvP tend to drag down the competitive aspect. If the NPCs can put out equivalent damage to players, then it’s not fun; NPCs will come along and +1 a fight and win it. If you want to make NPCs deal reasonable damage, they also have to have lower HP pools like players. But because of AI, they’re susceptible to kiting and exploitation of their pathing. So they’re useless without players around to babysit them. And what about CC? In PvE we either have NPCs that can be CC’ed for days or unshakeable ones which can’t be CC’ed at all. Neither fits well in PvP.

The only NPC archetype which minimizes those issues is the low-damage “HP punching bag” like the tower and keep lords in WvW. It has enough HP/armor to weather repeated CC, can’t be burst down quickly, but doesn’t interfere heavily a fight between players. It does enough damage over time to make it difficult to 1v1, but at the same time, it feels useless in a larger fight.

Map Design
Second, based on the data-mined map, each team has a lane for its NPCs to go to the enemy base, and each team has a trebuchet that can hit their enemy’s NPC lane. The goal of that design is to split up players so that it’s not blob vs. blob. Players need to defend/attack trebuchets, defend their NPCs, hinder enemy NPCs, and run supply to get more NPCs. Sounds great, right?

Well, it works for casual players. When you try to make this format competitive, you’ll run into a few problems:

1. The lord rush. What’s to stop each team from just ignoring all those mechanics and zerging to the lord and whoever kills it faster wins? The gates need to last long enough to delay that and allow for defenders to respawn or come back and defend. Which causes:
2. PvDoor. This gets boring quickly, and it makes the NPCs feel more integral to the game compared to the actual player vs. player combat. And if NPCs are integral, you need:
3. Supply Mules. Someone gets stuck doing the boring job or running supply to keep the NPC army flowing. If there are no restrictions on it, then you’ll have high-mobility builds like sword + greatsword warriors running it non-stop. If they put heavy restrictions on supply runners to prevent that, then you end up with the orb from spirit watch minus any abilities, which makes you a sitting duck and makes the task even more boring. Both alternatives suck.

If you watch any streams of videos of the top competitive teams, people rarely stay in down state for long in a team fight. Usually it’s the last guy who goes down off-point far from his spawn that gets left there to bleed out.

Also, other games have shorter respawn timers because they have larger maps. You’re still away from the action for just as long.

I would’ve preferred no new game mode to what Stronghold seems to be. NPCs and babysitting them, no thanks. Keep the casual PvP in WvW.

ChoChoBo.6503:

Am I the only one who feels this way?

You’re definitely in the minority.

Downed state is very good for the game. It prevents glass cannons with a survival cooldown from dominating the game. If you’re stuck in down state for a while, then people are intentionally bleeding you out to prevent you from getting back in the game. That’s only viable when there’s no chance of you being rallied. And if that’s happening, then you’re probably the last one at a node (learn when you need to abandon it) or you’re being overly aggressive with your map position (know what fights you can win quickly before you get +1’ed).

Elia.7193:

I play solo, and I would like to be against other solo teams every time. I don’t want to make organized teams because I can not be bound to other peoples schedule or make them be bound to mine.

That doesn’t stop you from working as a team with random people each game. After all, it’s a team format.

Abazigal.3679:

Although it’s clearly better than the previous leaderboard, i kinda fail to understand how this works. It might be helpful having team statistics when the match starts in game ..

You really think this leaderboard is better? By what metric? The old leaderboard at least did a decent job of ranking the skill of those who played more than a few games. The new leaderboard doesn’t reflect skill at all; just time played along with some clever cheesing of the system.

Which heal skill? Skills which provide full damage reduction like Shelter or Renewed Focus go on cooldown as soon as you activate them, regardless of whether they finished.

@Teutos.8620
1. Rosters (the group you queue with) expand their rating match range over time. When a roster reaches 4 minutes in queue, they’re being considered at ±500 of the roster rating. So you have a much larger range of possible ratings. In addition, you have to consider a pre-made group which can have extremes.
2. If you have a pre-made with a single player of significantly lower rating, you ask them to just stay back from the fight or put them in a role where they’re less likely to be a rally bot. Since it’s a pre-made, they’ll likely listen.

Lordrosicky.5813:

A group of two makes a huge difference. queueing solo is miserable but as a 2 man party you can do alot. The reason is because there is so much sustain around that you cant really kill anything on your own quick enough in a team fight. But with 1 other person you can gank it and get the stomp. So it is much easier.

Call target in a team fight. Smart people who solo queue will assist you and you get the same effect. And you’re also assuming the duo queue are both DPS players. That’s a poor assumption. Even if they are, they still have to deal with being focused in a team fight. If one goes down, that duo is broken.

Question on the score calculation. If I’m reading this right from the wiki, it adjust the score of a roster based on the absolute value of the difference in the lower bound of the roster and team ratings (not sure why it doesn’t use average, but whatever). Then it adjusts the score based on the team size, with larger teams scoring higher and a special bonus for full teams.

So here’s two scenarios using just rating and team size (assuming all else equal):

1. Lower rated partial team and average rated solo player. They end up having roughly equal scores and roughly equal chance of being picked for addition to the team.
2. higher rated partial team and lower rated solo player. They have the same absolute difference in rating, but the partial team has less penalty for size, making them a much better choice.

Scenario #2 seems counter-intuitive. A partial team of better players should somewhat easily defeat a team of solo players of equal rating. I would expect that roster size would be used as a modifier to roster rating (organization improves performance) and then that combined factor weighted.

I hope I didn’t mis-read the pseudo code.