PvP Discussion: Game Modes

[breno.5423]

Another suggestion would be a deathmatch mode with rounds system, best of 3 or 5.This current system with scoreboard and chronometer doesn't make sense to a deathmatch mode.

[OriOri.8724]

I understand the queue issues with having a new game mode. But PvP in GW2 NEEDS a new game mode that isn't pseudo PvE like stronghold is. Even if you can't give it its own queue, we need a new game mode, and the sooner the better.

Conquest is, to me at any rate, quite boring. But even for those who enjoy it, its repetitive since its the only type of PvP in GW2. Plus, its inherently unfair to some classes/builds that rely on stealth or kiting, due to contesting nodes and how that works. I really do think that if you want long term health for this game mode, you will have to develop and support new game modes for PvP that don't revolve around holding nodes. Maybe holding nodes can be a side objective, but the new game mode should not revolve around it.

[OriOri.8724]

In a similar vein to my above comment, I also really think that what conquest itself needs is a map without any side objectives period. A map where all you are focused on is holding nodes and killing other players. No lords, no creatures, no unique buffs, none of that crap. Just plain conquest.

[Allarius.5670]

I enjoy/have enjoyed conquest, but here are some of my thoughts.

1) Skills, Balance, and Gamemode Interaction

A. Consider that adjusting gamemode mechanics to better fit the trend in skills and balance, rather than waiting for the other way around to take place, may be the easier fight to win and works within the confines of the agency the PvP devs possess. "Go with the current rather than fight it."

B. The inherent design of conquest may be exacerbating skill and balance issues instead of downplaying them, and/or creating issues where there may not otherwise be any.

C. A gamemode that works better with the rest of the game makes better use of skill and balance developer time, increases PvP accessibility for new players, highlights the assets of GW2 gameplay, and likely numerous other benefits, not the least of which is player perception of their needs being addressed.

2) Conquest, Accessibility, and Player Population

A. Conquest allows additional layers of strategy and emergent play, theoretically increasing re-playability and window of skill. However, its complexity and non-intuitive mechanics may be hurting the longevity and accessibility of sPvP, doing more damage to player population and enjoyment in the long run, particularly in light of Item 1.

B. Players don't say "I'm going to play sPvP" because it is conquest, they play conquest because it is the designated sPvP gamemode that is queue supported using manageable player numbers and a lack of gear requirement.

C. Moving away from conquest would be initially painful while learned behaviours are upset among the dedicated, but would not be a "failure" so much as an adjustment to the changing conditions of the game and the need to meet player expectations for accessibility, enjoyment, and balance.

3) Alternative Gamemodes and Support

A. The average sPvP player will not play gamemodes that are not supported by a queue because of the time requirements to find other interested players of similar skill versus the immediacy of playing.

B. Specialized tournaments are likely to be a poor example of popularity due to restrictive requirements of finding interested players available at the associated times that are not deterred by the competitive mindframe of the "tournament" designation. Alternative seasons are likely to be a better gage of interest due to greater accessibility.

4) Accessibility and Overarching Game Synergy

A. Minimize requirements for players to stand within specific locations such that aoe counterplay using movement is accessible to the average player without additional punishment on top of positional control. Allows strong aoe skills to be developed for the game alongside strong abilities that allow players to maintain position, including emergent use for such skills, without overemphasizing their requirement, functionality, or extreme need for intense balance.

B. Heavily emphasize team fighting as the core of the gamemode. This would de-emphasize hard counters via profession, build, and player skill while still allowing for higher skill levels to shine. This would better provide players with immediate, direct, and approachable feedback on their impact on the flow of the game and better allow inter-player support for increased accessibility.

[Kraitan.8476]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Sinid.7460 said:2v2 or even 3v3 can be fun with some combinations, but you do realize that it will end up being necro + support vs necro + support if you want to win these? It will be very easy to have stale matchups or annoying matchups that are decided before you even get to play because of the "rock, paper, scissors" factor. These will never work without straight up banning sustained builds from entering these.

We do have some balance concerns with 2v2's. I think when we have our first special 2v2 tournament, it will teach us a lot.

Why not implement an unranked queue rightnow and use these months to see what the balance & meta in 2v2 will be so when your tournament comes you're already a step ahead? Will definitely up the quality of that 2v2 tournament if you've had feedback to work with before then.

[breno.5423]

Why don't you guys just make obsidian sanctum into a instance?It would be the perfect scenery for the GvG without no one disturbing (its already used for that anyway).

I think it would not be difficult to put a doorway at the end of the hallway like the portals of the dungeons. The match would start when all thirty-15x15 (or twenty-10x10) players confirm they are ready. It might even have a system to choose the equipment, similar to spvp. Finally, it would use the rounds system, best of 5.

Sry for my poor english.

[Jinks.2057]

Increase server size to 25 and create a map to support 10v10 death match ala GvG WvW. The extra 5 slots are for shout casters and steamers

[TexZero.7910]

Per stronghold

Have you guys thought about having it be a 2 round affair of Attack and Defense as opposed to the two lane affair ?

Just have it be a single keep, one team on attack, the other on defense play till time or lord kill ? Fastest kill wins ?

[Swordfish.8512]

Just want to add my 2cents about the 15v15+ arena-

In the current PvP format, this would be impossible. I will list the reasons below- but essentially too much of the current GvG play style is centered upon stats, food, sigils, runes and game-split skills that do not exist in PvP. I know that this is the PvP discussion area- but please, do not go through with any 15v15 style idea in the current PvP setting. You will not gain any players from the current WvW/GvG community that are asking for this because of the impracticality of trying to run in a PvP setting- and I am skeptical that there is ENOUGH of a PvP playerbase interested in this game mode, but am happy to be told otherwise.

1 - PvP amulets do not support Melee gameplay. To move into an enemy group of that size, even full Minstrel players can be 1shot in the current GvG setting. This means that attempting to do so in the non defense focused amulets of PvP would be next to impossible. Added to this, players will not be able to min max, one of the best parts about GvG and WvW builds. Compound this with a lack of stats from food, players will be forced either into a 'pirate ship' or to seperating and playing around the map in small teams, either way not supporting current GvG players.

2- Skill splits between game modes are not conducive for most GvG builds. It is almost impossible to play some of the current meta builds effectively in a PvP setting simply because of the skill splits. This is because some skills which are strong in 1v1 settings, such as defensive skills from warriors, necromancers and even some mesmer abilities, are 100% needed to survive in a large scale fight.

3- Limited rune and sigil options. Without the availability of every rune and sigil, the game mode loses a great deal of its current builds. The sigils even more so as the PvP only sigils are not designed well for large scale battles. Instead of promoting players to think of 'new ways to play' and 'new builds' it will result in the continued use of outside sources like Guild Halls (not a great option but better than PvP), Obsidian Sanctum (still not great but again) and EotM.

GvG and WvW Scrimming is FUN currently because of the great variation in playstyle and builds available, as well as the ability to min max with food, runes and sigils. Limiting something players have had available for years will drive many of the people interested in the game mode away from it. Please consider this before continuing to go forward with a 15v15 style game.My suggestion would be to have an instanced area that uses WvW builds and inherits buffs and skill splits from that game mode, with a capacity of 50 players at a time, that requires at least 20 to be able to create as to not have numerous small groups creating lots of maps and a strain on the server, instead only being used when that kind of large scale combat is going to take place. This will satisfy the current WvW community IMMENSELY, you will see nothing but praise. I do have concerns that it would not appeal to PvP players- since it requires gear instead of Amulets. Hopefully this gives them a reason to spend their PvP rewards and obtain the armour available to them- but even so I have no suggestion unfortunately on how to make this appeal more to a PvP side.

[Dethh.4620]

First off this is a pretty cool discussion, thank you to the devs for doing this :). In my opinion, I think you guys are really missing out by not adding a 2v2 or 3v3 arena style battles. I think it would also bring in a lot of new players in to PvP which right now is just conquest, and not everyone enjoys that play style. 2v2/3v3 arena matches are quick and fun. You fight till one team is eliminated, no capture objectives to worry about. We know this game mode works from other games like Overwatch ( arcade ) , WoW, Battlerite, etc. Just to name a few. I think its at least worth testing with a queue in an unranked scenario.

[Jariel.9274]

I'm not particularly bothered about Conquest, because if you're not a good class player but you're smart you can still manage to help the team (by rotating right on the map, or being an objective follower and be there as soon the countdown hits the 0, while the other players are still comparing their measures outside of points).

So, I'd rather IMPROVE the modes we already have, for example, Stronghold needs some serious love, because "It's an awesome idea, but kind of a mess in practice".

2vs2 can Be awesome but I would put either an elite lock or a profession lock.

(Just picture 2 druids vs 2 druids in a 2vs2... Brrr...)

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I would love to see the return of the Factions competitive missions Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry to PvP. I loved the accessible and versatile nature of these missions and the hybrid PvP/PvE aspects. Everyone can contribute on its own way and the games were forgiving enough for mistakes with a quick respawn to put you right back in the action.

A rebuild of Fort Aspenwood or FA inspired map could fit nicely into the Stronghold game type, which currently only has one map.

[pinkglow.3429]

Personally I would not return for 2v2, 3v3 arena, me and my 3 friends still can't play it together :P And also, I'm not a huge fan of arena in wow either, because it fails to be balanced all the time (it never was balanced). Also, first it would be silly to balance if its only in tournament mode, since not m any players will play that, and the balance might get negative effects in other modes of the game, and I think the effort to balance if it was a queue would be waste of resources that could be better spent in other areas. In battleground kind of play, because it don't even have to be ranked to be fun, the balancing is much easier and it doesn't really have to be very balanced unless tweaking something that would be extremely OP (however, one shot combos should never happen in any pvp mode anyway). The charm with battlegrounds for the mmos I have played (wow, rift, wildstar) is that you can play what spec you like because it is fun. The smaller the battles the more difficult it is (or the larger, zerg is only strongest aoe wins).

[witcher.3197]

@Sinid.7460 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

Conquest

I love this gamemode, always have. BUT this is the single worse gamemode I can think of for a solo/duo experience, it's absolutely soulcrushing without an organized team, and no PvP game ever became successful with it.

There are 2 things holding back PvP in this game: balance and Conquest.

I'd suggest making 3v3 the default solo/duo gamemode and keeping conquest for ATs. At least give it a test run by replacing conquest with 3v3 in off-season, even if just for a week. Those who don't like it can play Conquest in unranked for the time being.

What? The game is literally designed around conquest, where classes are only viable by having different roles. And by not having conquest in solo queue, this would only lead to a bigger skill disparity because the lower tier players would never have a chance of practising conquest to catch up to more experencied players. This is such a bad idea in so many ways. It would be the same as going to Counter Strike and ask them to forget the main mode and turn it into something else.

Oh please are you implying that the general population in 2017 plays conquest any better than in 2012? There are those with 2k games who still push into 1v3 just to die.

And those who actually want to learn the gamemode don't need thousands of games, but won't learn much in the chaos of playing a teambased gamemode as solo. Or just watch streams while pugging ATs if you want to improve, which are open several times a day and will let you play more matches after the swiss changes.

[morrolan.9608]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:What other game modes would you like to see show up in tournaments? Keep in mind that any game modes requiring new maps would involve quite a long development time.

Simply add a deathmatch mode or other new modes like capture the flag to current maps, I really do not see why it is so hard to do that.

As for queues in multiple possible game modes add the ability to join multiple queues, I know this can be done for WvW maps.

[Ziggityzog.7389]

In reality the automated tournaments should be the place for 5v5 action due to it being a tournament. As for ranked play, that is where the different game modes should come into play.

That way the 5v5 automated is something for teams to prep for but the unranked and ranked are the place for leaderboard play and multiple game mode options.

All I know is that conquest is the reason I stopped playing ranked and never had much interest in automated tournaments. After years of conquest j can't dance around and in little circles anymore. It's just tooooo boring now.

I'll stick to unranked stronghold since I cant play it in ranked anymore.

One question is why was stronghold taken away from ranked? The community never asked for that and it made many of my friends leave because stronghold is just more fun then dancing in circles.

[observer z.6725]

Ben,

Will custom arena infrastructure be updated so we can design our own game modes, maps, etc? Combination of the GH arena options for creating obstacles but on bigger map scale. Allow custom rules, flexibility, event handling, to create our own game modes like CTF, moba, etc.

[Saiyan.1704]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Placentlad.9742 said:

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

We still have no current plans to support additional game modes with a queue. The long and short of it is that we feel that splitting the population right now is really risky and could have a major negative impact on the game.

That being said, as mentioned in the Tournaments thread, we do plan to support additional game modes, to some degree, with event tournaments. The frequency of these tournaments will be determined, in part, by how popular these tournaments become. Our first special tournament will likely be a 2v2 tournament. I also foresee the possibility of Stronghold and even Courtyard tournaments.

In addition, we’re currently discussing the feasibility of adding custom arena support/special tournament support for large team (15 v 15?) elimination style matches. This does get a bit more complicated as the current UI breaks with anything more than 10 v 10.

What other game modes would you like to see show up in tournaments? Keep in mind that any game modes requiring new maps would involve quite a long development time.

Im gona be a bit blunt here but what risk if there in adding more game modes? giving players a choice to play competitive or unranked 2v2, 3v3 outside of just conquest mode would only

INCREASE player participation

because you are giving them more options rather than just one game mode which right now is only conquest, and this is in addition to the current ranked queue restrictions (

which has been detrimental to pvp particpation and population

)

Speaking from working on multiple PvP games, this isn't always necessarily true. It's always a risk. I'm not saying that it wouldn't work for us, but it's very difficult to predict.

To be honest this game has no test server and population to run said server, that's ultimately how/why Stronghold was initially perceived well in the beta, but ended up failing in the long run.

My question is, are there going to be in-game rules for that 2v2 Tournament mode when that releases? I feel it's imperative there are in-map rules much like how [other games] has their 2v2 game modes setup?

[serenity.4712]

We also really need a 1v1 map, or a duel option in the future. The Free-For-All thingy in the mists is extremely toxic. As well as trying to join a custom map and getting ganked/interrupted by a random person during a duel.

A capture the flag mode would also be cool, something to encourge other builds to step in in stead of just forcing the 'stay-on-cap' builds.

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

@observer z.6725 said:Ben,

Will custom arena infrastructure be updated so we can design our own game modes, maps, etc? Combination of the GH arena options for creating obstacles but on bigger map scale. Allow custom rules, flexibility, event handling, to create our own game modes like CTF, moba, etc.

While I think this would be really cool, the amount of resources this would take to accomplish probably puts this out of reach.

[Crinn.7864]

@cyberwolf.5830 said:How do you train for 2v2 fights if there's only tournament?Play once per day in the tournament, lose and go out, wait another day. Where's the fun in that?

The same way people train for 5s, in hotjoin scrimmages.

I really hope you didn't think that tournament teams trained by queuing 5-mans in unranked.

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

@Saiyan.1704 said:

My question is, are there going to be in-game rules for a 2v2 game mode when that tournament releases? I feel it's imperative there are in-map rules much like how [other games] has their 2v2 game modes setup.

Could you clarify what you mean by in-map rules?

[Baltzenger.2467]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Placentlad.9742 said:

The main issue currently IMO is the decreasing PVP population due to the recent ranked queue changes

. Probably the easiest and least difficult solution to this will be using the old ranked queue system during vanilla GW2 which was ranked team queue: 1-5 players & Solo and/or duo ranked queue.i think this will cover most of the pvp players concerns with not wanting to play into a premade when soloing, and also not been able to playing with friends in a competitive environment as the ranked queue is currently solo/duo ONLY (

this is probably the main reason of the recent pvp population decrease

).

The problem with splitting the queue is that our data doesn't show that 2 separate queues for ranked would work. To put things in perspective, 92% someone queues it's queuing solo. The team queue would have horrendous wait times. And when a match finally popped, difference in team skill would likely be rage inducing.

Hello Ben,Do you know how self-fulfilling that data might be? In my vision, the queues have always been very convenient when looking for some pvp fun, so I have to say that I've always just pressed the button and joined, either unranked or ranked. But I've never truly found an incentive to form a team of friends and constantly queue as a group.

What catches my attention is that on other competitive games (mostly MOBAs) I tend to do the exact opposite, I much rather get together with my friends and queue as a group rather than just queue alone and have to deal with the limitations in communication and the effort to make an strategy on the brief time given for preparation.

Don't you think that guilds could make a good platform to implement a group based competition?

I know that we already have "teams" that can be formed within a guild, but I would love a more dynamic system that just recognizes when you play alongside with guildies, without the need to previously form a team. Imagine if whenever at least 3 guild members get together and queue, that counts as a guild effort, and you get to progress in some regard, in the name of your guild.

Maybe I'm getting too far ahead with this, but just imagine if we had achievements, and tracks associated to your guild, making it not just possible, but profitable, to play as groups and develop team play on the long term for the vast majority of players, the possibility to progress together on a gamemode that is teambased, even if you, right now, can only play solo or as a duo.

I think we need more of that on this game. I've played almost since release, and for some years, it has been the guild system what has kept the content fresh and the objectives relevant to me, and maybe I'm not alone on this. Being unable to play with your friends is discouraging to me, when we get together with guildies, having to duo queue, always leaving people behind is too. I think that preventing that kind of situation should be a priority over the alleged "balance" of having to play alone.

On another note, I've noticed that you are testing the waters with 2v2 encounters, in my guild we've been doing 3v3 tournaments in our custom arena, and I think they are pretty fun, they allow us to practice strategies that we implement in our GvGs and WvW skirmishes, and unlike 2v2, it allows us to distribute roles better, so that not every team is almost the same in terms of roles, we let our members pick where to lean more in terms of support, offensive or defensive strategies. I suggest that you give a look into that setup.

I hope this feedback is useful to you, and I offer my best wishes for your team, have a nice end of the year.

edit: here's an example of one of our tournaments based on 3v3 (it's in spanish, since we're a mostly hispanic guild)

[Saiyan.1704]

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Saiyan.1704 said:

My question is, are there going to be in-game rules for a 2v2 game mode when that tournament releases? I feel it's imperative there are in-map rules much like how [other games] has their 2v2 game modes setup.

Could you clarify what you mean by in-map rules?

Unsure how the soon-to-be 2v2 Tournament will be incorporated but will you have these specific in-map items.

• 15 minute time limit or Rounds incorporating a best out of 3, with each round having a 5 minute limit. (latter is preferred)
• Lowest reached health as well as "Downs" on either team will be tallied and notarized by the map so that the game can settle Stalemated rounds when nobody dies.

[LehmD.4938]

Could we get a 2v2/courtyard/whatever queue during off season which replaces the ranked queue during that time?