Some Conquest QoL ideas?

GW2 Conquest's Inherent Flaws:

• Capture nodes are typically equivalent to or smaller than the average size of persistent AoEs.
• The pace and outcome of any given match often rides extremely heavily on the outcome of the first midfight. Moreover, the odds of turning around a 100+ point deficit before a game's halfway point is reached are statistically, heavily stacked against even the “best” players if the advantage team simply digs in and stands around objectives while watching an opposing team's spawn waves. Effectively, this game mode snowballs like nobody's business.
• Due to spawn waves and average player movement speed, there is often a lot of useless downtime in which players find themselves unable to do anything meaningful (particularly if a player spawns up when many teammates are still dead). This often just adds to more snowballing.
• Going into downed state can sometimes be more like just tripping for a second followed by a bit of free invulnerability when we factor in revive speed boosters and teleporting bodies.

Suggested Conquest Improvements

• Normalize capture node size across all maps to mirror the size of those featured on Foefire (perhaps not as large but at least relatively similar).
• Add a /defeat command which only works if a player is in downed state; /defeat instantly brings a player from downed state into defeated state.
• Reduce all spawn times by 5s baseline. For each node owned by an opposing team, a team's respective spawn timers further reduce by 3s.
• Normalize the respective cast-times of all “Revive an ally” skills to 2¾s. Upon using a “Revive an ally” skill, users lose any active instances of stability and quickness.
• If a player successfully revives a downed ally, that player gains a debuff which prevents him/her from manually reviving (via “Press F” interaction; skills would still function) other allies for 60s. If a player with this debuff is defeated, the debuff is removed.
• All Conquest matches now end at 250 points (for Tourneys, each match-up within a bracket will be played out in a “Best of 3” format on the same map).
• Unranked games now grant pips for chest rewards equivalent to ranked games. Lost games now grant 7 reward pips.

Improvement Objectives:

• Bigger nodes effectively just means more emphasis on positioning and decent movement when contesting objectives. Granted that such a change also passively buffs all turtle/bunker builds, but overall it is an improvement, and ultimately bunkers can be nerfed.
• The /defeat command prevents off-point bleed-out purgatory and keeps games moving by keeping player participation high.
• Faster spawns for teams with less capture nodes to their name help curb snowball victories. The team with the bad position can better gain a footing and continue to apply pressure rather than allowing both teams to simply full-reset after every one-sided team fight. This sort of spawn paradigm also makes for a generally more hectic and exciting game with more bodies on the field constantly vying for positioning rather than long periods of waiting for teammates to spawn or waiting for enemies to wander out to their doom. Advantage teams would have to rotate or cede territory in order to prevent being caught out between optimal cooldown cycles; bodies and objective control would flow a lot more on every map.
• A lower win condition score cycles players through matches faster. Shorter, more focused matches make it easier to compact events and self-analyze mistakes in decision-making rather than frustrating, drag-on games which are often mired in defeatist in-fighting as one team quickly realizes that the match is over despite there still being 5 more minutes of “losing” to be done (it's not that there aren't close nail-biters, but considering how swing matches can rely on map-by-map gimmick mechanics rather than true point control and how statistically the first team to 250 wins the match anyway, trying to laud the 1 out of 10 “good” games just to suffer the other 9 is basically a moot point when it comes to argument for the current scoreline system).
• Limiting revives discourages excessive turtle-style team compositions. Instead of multiple players per team building to revive downed allies nearly instantly, revives would become a somewhat more rare, unique element of a PvP encounter (taking certain traits or skills to supplement revival speed might end up being wasteful if a player cannot manually revive). Restricting revive spam also allows disadvantaged teams to compete with turtle compositions by denying the turtle team the ability to repeatedly chain revives in the presence of reduced spawn wave times.

I think this is probably the first thread I've seen that actually hits the problem on the head. Everyone else so very easily jumps to blaming a particular class or classes as being overpowered or broken in sPvP but honestly in my opinion Conquest as a game mode has been the heart of the problem. Since the launch of the game it has not changed. There have been new maps added, sure, some with different mechanics but ultimately the size of capture points and needing to fight on point to contest captures has not changed. However the classes have changed significantly over the years, especially the amount of AoE that has been made available.

Scourge, just as an example, was so strong in sPvP because the size of their AoE just engulfs the capture points which made contesting them so much more difficult especially considering the lack of premade groups and being able to build a team appropriate to play well within the current meta. This problem was really only excessive in sPvP, even at its smaller scale. Sure they were strong in zergs for WvW, but ultimately in smaller scale fights in WvW Scourges were much less of an issue because of the availability of area you were allowed to cover so as to not be forced to essentially sit in their AoE.

Point being, Conquest is the core of the problem. They need to rework that and not the classes.

I agree with having a bigger mid node on all maps.But i think that getting into downstate and dieing should still be as punishing as it is now. It will result in pvp beeing more of a spamfest than it is now .

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Point being, Conquest is the core of the problem. They need to rework that and not the classes.

I'd still thoroughly argue that the classes themselves are riddled with terrible design practices which promote very passive and often brainless gameplay, but yes, conquest as it stands in GW2 is basically just a lead ball and chain on its ankle.

@Swagg.9236 said:

• All Conquest matches now end at 250 points (for Tourneys, each match-up within a bracket will be played out in a “Best of 3” format on the same map).

Very strongly disagree with this one.

Normalize capture node size across all maps to mirror the size of those featured on Foefire (perhaps not as large but at least relatively similar).

I was thinking exactly about it these days.Agreed.

As mentioned, capture point size is intimately bound to the ability to hold the point under pressure. Larger points decreases aoe pressure, decreases decap potential, and favors bunker behavior. Small capture points force players to engage actively and kite off point. Losing the point but winning the skirmish is the goal behavior to create interesting fights for players and interesting game dynamics. Capture point size is a common complaint among players, but I vehemently disagree with the premise. I'm all for a new or alternative game mode, but capture point size is intended for very good reasons.

@Cevlakohn.2165 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:

• All Conquest matches now end at 250 points (for Tourneys, each match-up within a bracket will be played out in a “Best of 3” format on the same map).

Point of a best of three is to expand come back opportunities by resetting the field after a result which can be determined by only a few mistakes. The shorter overall match time would prevent this sort of system from being too cumbersome or dragged out for participants and more like what happens after one team scores a goal in hockey or soccer. Keeping all of the action to the same map allows team's to try new strategies or swap some skills with a powerful constant element at play instead of constantly shuffling variables.

Basically, the second match in a series like this is a chance to see if a losing team has learned a lesson, come up with a unique solution, or if the winning team is just that much better at the end of the day. In a series, there are things to prove; the current paradigm is much more RNG-based given how one wild card build might just hard counter a lot of an opposing team by right of its pre-game composition.

@Allarius.5670 said:As mentioned, capture point size is intimately bound to the ability to hold the point under pressure. Larger points decreases aoe pressure, decreases decap potential, and favors bunker behavior. Small capture points force players to engage actively and kite off point. Losing the point but winning the skirmish is the goal behavior to create interesting fights for players and interesting game dynamics. Capture point size is a common complaint among players, but I vehemently disagree with the premise. I'm all for a new or alternative game mode, but capture point size is intended for very good reasons.

All of this game's meta AoEs are braindead due to their size and cast speeds. Either shrink them or increase node size. Since anet won't fix passive bunker trash, a hotfix would be to just give players a 3s duration debuff if they block: something like

• Backfoot (3s): Prevents Capture-Point Contribution

At least this way, the typical bunker style opener and sustained passive playstyles of most meta builds would end up just surrendering a point via their standard rotations. Players would need a lot of bodies or work together with bunkers just to keep or take points rather than relying on some guy standing still and rolling through a PvE rotation.

@breno.5423 said:

Normalize capture node size across all maps to mirror the size of those featured on Foefire (perhaps not as large but at least relatively similar).

Maps are designed to favor some classes over others though and depending on the class you play can dictate the map choices you vote for such as being a Reaper you would vote for nhifel or temple or being ranged you would vote for Capricorn or if your port heavy like a thief you pick khylo or if you're a point holder you pick legacy for extra large kiting room potential...

Normalised point nodes would favor a certain playstle over others.... if you made them all small then reaper would dominate across all maps and vice versa for ranged and larger nodes.

Sorry OP, but you're totally off the mark on the analysis.

@Swagg.9236 said:

GW2 Conquest's Inherent Flaws:

• Capture nodes are typically equivalent to or smaller than the average size of persistent AoEs.This is a power creep problem, not a capture node problem. It was always intended that certain skills or traits were powerful at forcing de-caps. When you make nodes bigger, you run into the problem of them being too easy to bunker - anyone remember Foefire center being contested for 5+ minutes prior to HoT? It's better to just nerf the offending specs which always do heavy area damage while having no downside to their spec.
• The pace and outcome of any given match often rides extremely heavily on the outcome of the first midfight. Moreover, the odds of turning around a 100+ point deficit before a game's halfway point is reached are statistically, heavily stacked against even the “best” players if the advantage team simply digs in and stands around objectives while watching an opposing team's spawn waves. Effectively, this game mode snowballs like nobody's business.
  Completely and utterly false.
  
  
  First, losing a teamfight and a subsequent re-group puts you down by only 100 at most. Typically the mid node wasn't capture during that initial mid-fight so each time was even until then. In the 30-45sec to re-spawn, re-group, and attack again, you've got a pretty good chance to hold a side node, which means the other team only went up by 50-70 points (30-50 from tick differential and ~20 from kills).Second, in most games with a 100point differential, that differential is closed by the end or even reversed by 100 in the opposite direction. It's very rare for any team to understand map control and be able to lock the loser of the mid-fight in spawn all game.
• Due to spawn waves and average player movement speed, there is often a lot of useless downtime in which players find themselves unable to do anything meaningful (particularly if a player spawns up when many teammates are still dead). This often just adds to more snowballing.This is a player problem. Players need to learn to disengage from losing fights and re-group with re-spawns. Don't run out single file.
  
  
  You can also use mobile builds to pull the enemy apart, allowing for a stronger re-group.And if your team comp isn't strong with large fights, then adjust and avoid them. Give up fights where their team fight core is well establish and focus on other nodes.
• Going into downed state can sometimes be more like just tripping for a second followed by a bit of free invulnerability when we factor in revive speed boosters and teleporting bodies.A couple abilities need adjusted, and a bug needs fixed. It doesn't warrant changing the entire game mode.

Overall this sounds like a player problem, not a game mode problem.

@Allarius.5670 said:As mentioned, capture point size is intimately bound to the ability to hold the point under pressure. Larger points decreases aoe pressure, decreases decap potential, and favors bunker behavior. Small capture points force players to engage actively and kite off point. Losing the point but winning the skirmish is the goal behavior to create interesting fights for players and interesting game dynamics. Capture point size is a common complaint among players, but I vehemently disagree with the premise. I'm all for a new or alternative game mode, but capture point size is intended for very good reasons.

If premade groups were a thing in GW2 ranked sPvP I would agree with that, but that isn't a thing and as such we have to either solo or duo que and the ranking system is so botched right now due to a lack of sPvP population that your chances of being paired with people who don't do that is much more likely. What also complicates it is if the other team gets 2 Scourges and yours doesn't, or 2 Support oriented build players, or 2 condi mesmers, etc. The premise I understand, but right now it is not functional in the climate they've created with how the classes have changed so much and especially not with the current state of sPvP at least within Ranked.