Have you ever played StrongHold? if so how long has it been or how often do you play it?

[Shadow Dragon.1469]

Personally i like it always have and think it lacks at least another 2 maps the only thing that brings it down are matchmaking (premades in general or premades vs non premades or one team who obviously knows how to play the mode and how things work vs one that only has 1 or 2 people that do) way too many people still don't know how to play the mode mainly because they refuse to ask questions at the start and either say nothing or wait till mid match or the end to complain or say "i dont know whats going on" they all refuse to look at the pop up at the start that tells them how to play and no one knows how to press "N" to bring that screen up...

[Tharan.9085]

for ze memes

[Falan.1839]

Did the achievements there I think when I was going for 30k AP, and then never touched it again.

[saerni.2584]

It’s not bad to queue into it for randomness in off season.

 

Change of pace is fun even if almost no one knows how to play the mode to win.

[Ovark.2514]

Stronghold was fun when it was the new hotness. Then, when people learned that all you had to do to win is play aura share tempest, I (and a lot of other people I think) tuned out. These days, since so much balance has happened and people have stopped playing, they don't realize that people largely don't use those builds anymore. I find the game mode more engaging than conquest and at least as much fun.

[Shadow Dragon.1469]

yeah people keep asking for new modes but they gave us one and its unused.

[hellsqueen.3045]

> @"Shadow Dragon.1469" said:

> Personally i like it always have and think it lacks at least another 2 maps the only thing that brings it down are matchmaking (premades in general or premades vs non premades or one team who obviously knows how to play the mode and how things work vs one that only has 1 or 2 people that do) way too many people still don't know how to play the mode mainly because they refuse to ask questions at the start and either say nothing or wait till mid match or the end to complain or say "i dont know whats going on" they all refuse to look at the pop up at the start that tells them how to play and no one knows how to press "N" to bring that screen up...

 

Alright, I haven't played PVP in a long time. Maybe I should try again.

 

However, back when I started PVP I was learning on Stronghold and when I started doing ranked, I would always do Stronghold and when they took it out, I was so disappointed.

There was something fun and exciting about pushing and defending lanes and lords, summoning minions to work your way forward and fighting for the Mist Champions. It meant there was so much to do. There was more to your match then just fighting on point and maybe fighting for a map activity.

 

I also felt it made for more unique team work and allowed for more builds to be relevant.

Why?

Well, because when so much of Conquest is about fighting on point, being able to have people built for range fighting, group fighting, fighting away from objects and having to defend other things.

 

I always played a healer and I felt I have an even greater purpose. The amount of times I clutched matches by solo defending a lord via healing because I healed them long enough to secure kills as the enemy trickled in while my team pushed up. It was exciting and tense.

 

Conquest is boring. No matter how many maps you make and their single map mechanic.

 

Stronghold even with its single map is just more fun, engaging and it is also far more welcoming to newer players imo because there is so many ways for them to be useful while they learn.

[Dawdler.8521]

Stronghold was great in theory but the shoddy implementation failed it. It should never have been a 5v5 mode - which pretty much makes impossible to play as it splits up a low and uneven amount of players too much, it should have at least been 8v8.

[mortrialus.3062]

I got the meta achievement and never looked back.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

I play it pretty frequently but I really prefer conquest in every way.

 

Sometimes there's some real frustrating stuff that goes on in casual conquest and it's more worth it to switch over to stronghold for dailies as the games are quicker usually. The players there are usually ez pickings, but that's part of the reason I avoid it personally. There's nothing to really gain stomping newbies.

 

Played some today anyway, and it's about as perfect of an example as I could give: There was a stack of 3 top players queuing unranked conquest, and while that's all good and fun every game was a total blowout loss with people quitting and spawn-camping starting after the first midfight each match. After getting matched against them 3 times, I switched to my unrated rank 20 alt account and still got matched against them; so I stopped playing for ~2 hours and when I came back they were still at it.

 

That's about the point where I switch to stronghold, and that happens at least once a month doing dailies.

[Shadow Dragon.1469]

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> Stronghold was great in theory but the shoddy implementation failed it. It should never have been a 5v5 mode - which pretty much makes impossible to play as it splits up a low and uneven amount of players too much, it should have at least been 8v8.

 

i think its fine 5v5 so i disagree but 8v8 could be better

[Luthan.5236]

Played this when I did dailies and just playing (not winning) in either unranked or ranked was enough. This was when I mostly did 3/3 dailies from PvE but sometimes there were 2 annoying ones as selection and I decided to do one daily from the PvP.

 

Atm I got a bit more interested in PvP again (doing the 3/3 dailies there) and playing ranked where it does not seem to be in the queue/map selection. I don't really like it. The few times I played those NPC guys reminded me of DotA-like games (Moba/ which don't like) and that's the main problem. Other than that a map where lord kill means win (instead of 150 points like in Foefire) would be nice. Though as it is atm I prefer foefire which is a bit simlar but without the NPCs you need to recruit with supplies. (Better for such a game mode I like the halloween Reaper's Rumble activity.)

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

They need to make Stronghold & Courtyard attached map selections ALWAYS in unranked/ranked, or remove them from the game entirely. As of now those modes are just dividing player base through the check mark selection function.

 

Honestly I think more people would enjoy Stronghold if it was something more regular, where actual players were showing up to compete. The mode isn't bad at all now with higher DPS. I think the biggest reason why it sees so little play is because when you go to queue in it, it takes 10+ minutes to get into a match, and then the match is stacked with for real new players, which kind of makes it not so fun.

[Avatar.3568]

I play it in off-season 1 or 2 times or when a friend is asking me (he loves it), I like the idea of it but I am not getting used to it

[Serenity.6304]

Last time I played it was with a friend, he forgot to turn off this mode. I didn't enjoy it at all. Still have a lot of achievements to acquire but I refuse playing when it's not fun.

[TheGrimm.5624]

> @"Shadow Dragon.1469" said:

> yeah people keep asking for new modes but they gave us one and its unused.

 

It's also unranked. Doesn't help its case that you can't play it while a season is up.

[ZDragon.3046]

I have not touched it in a long time. imo it was an ok game mode its a nice mix up to the standard conquest because different objectives for once which was the one thing i liked about it.

 

Conquest gets a bit dull with the capture 3 points and hold them with a minor secondary objective on which half the maps the secondary objectives are totally ignored.

 

Overall its a cool gamemode just lacks population and reasoning for me to really want to play it again. Remember when we had out right team deathmatch..... that was kinda fun too but people stopped playing i guess people really like holding capture points.

[Shadow Dragon.1469]

> @"TheGrimm.5624" said:

> > @"Shadow Dragon.1469" said:

> > yeah people keep asking for new modes but they gave us one and its unused.

>

> It's also unranked. Doesn't help its case that you can't play it while a season is up.

 

i mean you can it just wont be ranked, i remember when it was in ranked it still wasn't played much and the people that did just farmed it with 5man premades (usually against non 5mans) i guess anet took it out because they saw it as being exploited.

[BadMed.3846]

Horribly boring and poorly done up game move. I avoid it like plague.

[TheGrimm.5624]

> @"Shadow Dragon.1469" said:

> > @"TheGrimm.5624" said:

> > > @"Shadow Dragon.1469" said:

> > > yeah people keep asking for new modes but they gave us one and its unused.

> >

> > It's also unranked. Doesn't help its case that you can't play it while a season is up.

>

> i mean you can it just wont be ranked, i remember when it was in ranked it still wasn't played much and the people that did just farmed it with 5man premades (usually against non 5mans) i guess anet took it out because they saw it as being exploited.

 

Can be played in unranked, but if you have limited game time for playing then would prefer that time put against ranked matches personally.

[Buran.3796]

3, maybe 5 times in all those years. I expected Stronghold to be a sort of Leage of Legends game mode, not the bag of crap they provide us; so after a very few matches (not even a half dozen) I abandoned it entirely.

[Taygus.4571]

I play it is its a guild mission

[Akari Storm.6809]

Before this past year I probably played it a few times a week and even more so during season breaks. Now I never even que because it seems like it takes forever to get in.

Huge question I've always had about the mode..........WHY A GIMPED WANNABE MOBA MAP? It has a likeness to gvg maps in GW1, but ends there.

If they were going to make a mode in the vain of MOBA's, why not go all out...3 lanes, towers+their own spin. Then they never return to upgrade the mode to something better, no new maps. No new heroes. New reward tracks. Actual lures to get folks in. Just another "we tried that once and it didn't work immediately, so now moving on" motto that Anet seems to have been using since launch. Sad really.

Some of these ideas they throw in game could turn into something if nurtured correctly instead abandoned shortly after implementation. Ever grow a plant of any kind?

[Stand The Wall.6987]

running back and forth for supply is the number one thing holding this mode back. who the hell wants to do that? also the bombers die too easily.

[Luthan.5236]

I played this a bit more since the last few weeks ... when doing unranked "for fun" (since ranked does only have the unfun 2 vs 2 atm) and having both options ticked - so it gave me stronghold sometimes.

 

I now can elaborate a bit more in addition to my above post. Noticed the gates can only be damagesd by NPC helpers. This is a major flaw. Making it to much dependant on NPCs. And the team size is too small do defend and attack (and you'd need to do both otherwise game would drag on for too much if you attacked ... then went back to defend and they killed your attacking NPCs then).

 

Such a map could work with bigger teams 10-15 players each team. (No NPCS besides the lord and his guards then and maybe an option to respawn guards.) Players actually using siege like in WvW. And maybe a bigger map and a few respawn bases (capture points that act as forward respawn when captured so the defending team could not just easily attack your base to get you to pull back).

 

Edit: And make the heroes the player can choose (to not make them unnecdessary - since people did achievements to earn the oter ones ... Tybalt, Nika, etc.) into guards or stuff like that.