Team Legacy interviews "Boon Control" regarding Structured PvP

Over these last few weeks of hectic Gamescom and PAX coverage, we spent the time compiling data, going over videos, setting up our databases for our upcoming tournament, changing the website over to a new server, and performing interviews. It has been quite a ride. All of that said though, I don't believe we have come close to the amount of work and stress that recently went into the outstanding "Boon Control vs. ArenaNet" showmatch that recently happened during Gamescom. If you have not had the chance to view the matches, we recommend visiting this videos thread at GW2Guru to watch them, as well as many other exciting videos.

Boon Control, having been with nearly 20 hours experience on the latest build of Guild Wars 2, had the oppurtunity to face off at Gamescom against the developers themselves in a new mode labeled by ArenaNet as "Structured PvP". Two teams of 5 players each faced off on a map called the "Battle of Khylo", which featured a city-like atmosphere with a couple of key strategic features to set it apart - - two trebuchets that could wreak havoc on the majority of the map at any time, and a centralized "clocktower" that quickly becomes the most valuable point to focus on. The resulting matches were tense, exciting, and just plain fun.

After it was all said and done, we sent out to ask Boon Control the questions we really felt the community wanted to know. Aside from our own dedicated PvP community members at Team Legacy, we went to GW2Guruand GW2PvP as well, in search for the questions we may have otherwise missed. The questions were great, and we let the Boon Control team rip them apart to give us their thoughts and opinions on the most popular subjects you wanted to know. We want to give a thanks to them, and a cheer for their great performance against such great odds. Let's see what they had to say about the entire event, and how they feel on the current state of the game.

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Interview:



How much time did you guys have to prepare for the match? What did you find was the hardest part of preparing?

Katiechops:
"All the team had a varying amount of practice from slacker Katiechops's 20 hours total and maybe 6 hours in 5v5 matches to maybe double those numbers for the unemployed student bums! However the hardest part for preparing was the fact you were dealing with a totally new game, no guides, no experienced players to learn form, no skill databases or data etc. The ArenaNet devs gave us some pointers which was really nice of them but a huge chunk of our practice time was just theorycrafting and trying to figure out what good tactics and strategies were. So it was very much stand there and let me hit you, swap weapons do it again and trial and error type of stuff then quickly deciding what to go with as time was not on our side and we really needed to get in the arena and get fighting to get used to the feel of the game. The map itself took a chunk of time to learn. The designers have made it so all the terrain and structures are spaced so that you can maximise your characters full body movement skills. Learning the maps inside out and learning how to navigate them the quickest possible way using your characters abilities is going to be a big factor in 5v5 battles as speed is key."


Before the match began, how did you choose which abilities you would use? Did you all talk with each other and as a team decide for each person? Or did you just individually select your own abilities based on what you thought would work for you?

Katiechops:
"After a bit of testing, we choose what we felt would be a good class mix for the map. The feedback we got from ArenaNet was that the particular classes we chose for our team was one of the best "all-rounder" type builds we could have gone with. Each player chose their abilities based on the tactics we were running. The weapon types give different abilities so if we know two people would be running together, then they would pick weapons which granted abilities that complemented each other."


Before the match began, how did you choose which abilities you would use? Did you all talk with each other and as a team decide for each person? Or did you just individually select your own abilities based on what you thought would work for you?

Akemi:
"I picked the Necromancer skills that I needed with the groups skills for when we would be defending or capturing a point. A 1v1 build just doesn’t cut it in the map we played. That said, there was times when we had players 1v1ing, our Engineer was holding points solo using a 1v1 harrasment build, although my 1v1 with ArenaNets Ranger at the trebuchet required a different build. The combat is very dynamic and you can change your weapon sets from time to time - just not when in combat- if you need to at present."


How exactly was your team split up? Were there "roles" that your team developed over time, as in who roams, who stays in a group, etc? Were the roles based on class?

Akemi:
"We had a little knowledge about what classes go well together and what tend to not do so well together so we tried to make life a little easier for ourselves in this respect."

Aspira:
"There were some classes which naturally play well as defense, such as the Guardian and the Engineer, but for roaming/harassment, it is a role most classes can adapt to if the player is good enough. There were a couple of nice synergies we found between classes such as Elementalist and Necromancer running as a two man group was very powerful as their skills compliments each other well."



Was it a common strategy to neutralize a defended point by knocking the defenders off the point using knockback skills or the trebuchet, or did you generally have to kill the defenders before being able to neutralize the point?

Akemi:
"Against ArenaNet – the makers of the pvp and the classes, whom knew every part of the map, every weapon set, and had over 7 tactics (or so they told us!). We tried not to have to pvp them fairly, only in unfair fights in our advantage. Unfortunately, this is the exact same tactic they use, and they were a little bit better at it because their mobility was better because of their map knowledge. They were brilliant at using the trebuchet and so we had to take this into account. It is something we didn’t really focus on but of course the most important part at a point is to clear the enemy from the point OR contest it until you kill them using whatever means necessary."

Aspira:
"A very nice tactic for a roaming player if he finds a point that is being defended by one player, is to get it to a contested state and harass the enemy player keeping the point contested, then when his buddies show up to help him, leave the scene and go make a fight elsewhere in the map turn into an advantage in your favour."



In keeping up with all of the matches, and watching your team fight especially well in the very last set of matches, you seemed to have changed the strategy for the better. What did your team change to give ArenaNet a run for its money those last rounds?

Katiechops:
"The first day there wasn't any change on tactics, as the first match to come up on screen half way through wasn't actually a "competative" match as such. There was a few technical problems at the start of the game so we kinda just wrote it off as a match. We started the next match which we lost 500 - ~350 pretty much as we had practiced using a very safe two to mansion and three to centre tactic using hit and run and flanking to hold objectives and ninja undefended points.

We saw how much the ArenaNet team used the Trebuchet to thier advantage making it impossible to defensively hold postions which we had not really came against in our practice matches, well certainly not as effectively. Initially we had written the trebuchet off, but it brought so much to the game with its high damage output and CC with the knockback, that we decided to feed it into our tactics for the next day.

The first match of the second day we opened with a new tactic to try and neutralize the Trebuchet with one going to Mansion, one to their Trebuchet (to kill it) and 3 to Tower, they saw it coming and countered it well defending their Trebuchet and taking mansion meaning it was almost a minute before we managed to even cap a single point which effectively killed that match there and then. They read our attack very well and played a perfect counter and put us on the back foot all game.

We then went back to what we had practiced most and started with a 1 to mansion 4 to tower which worked very well and got us off to a nice start. After that we just tried to use their hit and run, flanking tactics back on the ArenaNet team, however this time we had some of our players intermittently jumping onto our Trebuchet and firing shots into ArenaNet players. What this did was force them to have a player roaming around our trebuchet area and in the end, I think they sent someone to kill it as they were worried about the Trebuchet damage and even more so, the knockback. We even had out players doing intermittent harassment on their Trebuchet player so they always had to be on guard which made them have much weaker Trebuchet play in the final game. We thought we had the match won, but the movement of the ArenaNet team was just far superior to ours. Knowledge of the maps in GW2 is huge because their team know which terrain they could skip between with skills which made their guys out-manoeuvre ours and eventually take the win at the end."



How do you feel about the decision to drop GvG and replace it with the various modes they've implemented now?

Aspira:
"Again, those of us playing spoke about this for a while. We came to the conclusion that having the GvG system but to use it in combination with the new map ideas and game modes that ArenaNet are bring with GW2. However, we all agreed that given the choice, GvG in Guild Wars or the 5v5 system with all the new game modes introduced in GW2, we would all pick the new GW2 system. It just has much more variety and I think once people give it a chance and get to play it, they will see that it is really fun to play and still has loads of room for highly competitive play."


Coming from the rise and fall of GvG popularity, how do you feel this new style of Guild Wars competitive play feels compared to the previous generation?

Aspira:
"We had a good chat about this between all of us who have played the GW2 PvP and the general consensus was that the new style that GW2 has brought in is better than the old GvG in the sense than smaller numbers (5v5 instead of 8v8) is better for competitive and tournament play. Not only this but 5v5 will make forming teams easier, it will make practice easier as only 5 people need to be online, not 8, so in general we think that it is an improvement. GvG players may see the reduction in numbers as making the game more simplistic, but honestly, it is a lot of fun and the skill requirement is still there, so don't worry." -


We know the game is still in it's early stages, but do you feel the PvP in Guild Wars 2 is as fast-paced as the original? How about the theoretical skill cap? Will it be easy for players to master this game?

Aspira:
"This is a tricky question to answer as it is faster and slower due to the same reason. The PvP in the original guild wars was slow in the sense that you had dedicated healers, but at the same time, when your team was going for a spike, the PvP felt really fast and you got that rush of adrenaline while playing. In Guild Wars 2 you don't have the dedicated healer, so the fights are faster all the time, but at the same time, you don't get the same rush when your going for a spike. I would say all in all, the combat is faster, but it maintains a fast pace throughout, where as back in Guild Wars you could change the pace of the fight a lot more."


In regards to nuking, applying mass amounts of damage in a very short time-span, was this prevalent in your run with GW2? Were there certain classed that perhaps defined a "nuke" type class, or a "dot" class?

Aspira:
"You can still nuke/spike damage opponents like in the original Guild Wars, but it is difficult to co-ordinate spiking in the demo as there is currently no /assist feature. Due to this spiking was a little slower than we would have liked as it is never ideal to be spam tabbing to find a target. There are certain classes that spike better than others, the Thief and Ranger have quite a lot of burst potential, but you can spec most characters to be bursty, it just means you have reduce other stats to maximise your burst."

Akemi:
"Elementalists and Necromancers have a fair few AOE’s and DoTs between them, as it seems in the demo at the moment they do stack but whether this changes in the future is another matter."


How do you feel ArenaNet did with the implementation of dyed armor? Did you find this made it easier to distinguish enemies from friendlies, or would you prefer enemy nameplates or capes like GW1 instead?

Katiechops:
"The colour blind member of the team loved it and yes it made it very easy for everyone to distinguish enemies from friendlies. I would like to see enemy nameplates on as well as the dyed armor."


In regards to the trebuchet and other certain variables on pvp maps, do you feel that these additions will be taken seriously in the competitive scene, or do they seem a bit "random"?

Akemi:
"The trebuchet fits very well with the map we played and it is a vital part of the map gameplay – especially since it is objective. The damage whilst healable becomes almost as annoying as the knockback that it gives and therefore it is vitally important that timings are learnt. I love it because it brings something different to the gameplay and ensures for a varied game strategy."

Aspira:
"The knockback and the damage can be dodged with action rolls, but when there is a large fight happening, people sometimes forget or mistime the roll, which makes the trebuchet so devastating. I would expect to see many trebuchet strategies in the competitive scene for this map."


How do you feel the CC (crowd control) is in this game, in comparison to say, WoW? Do you feel the CC's tend to stack very well, or have you found times where you were incapacitated too much? Are certain classes better at this?

Akemi:
"The Necromancer/ Elementalist are great for CC but that is not to say that the other classes can’t too, every class has its own tricks that it brings to the game. Knockdowns and blinds are frequent and just as annoying, it just boils down to timing and cool downs, if you find you are incapacitated for too long, its generally your own fault. Every class has a way to avoid such instances IF you save cd’s."

Aspira:
"Currently, I would say CC has been handled very well by the developers. The CC makes a difference and when used well, wins battles, but at the same time, it isn't so intrusive to the gameplay that it becomes an annoyance. It has been done really well."


We hear a lot about the idea of not having a trinity, but yet while watching the matches still felt certain classes were better suited for particular positions than others. Do you feel that certain classes in your experience have currently certain skillsets that let's say, make them more suited for holding a point? Or perhaps a class that is better as soloing than another?

Akemi:
"Many classes can hold a point solo vs 2 enemies. The problem happens when there are 2 enemies and a trebuchet OR 3 or more enemies. It’s also not just about killing the enemy, it was also about contesting the point and preventing the other team from capping it. ArenaNet have really thought it through and so far I am surprised at how good the game feels. All the classes can solo pvp nicely but the kill speed is different depending on the build set that the player is using."


There's been a great discussion going about the power of elite skills and their long cooldown. You've experienced and used them yourselves, what new do they bring to the game, are they the game-changers we've been told about?

Akemi:
"I like them. They give you new skills to use for a brief time that enhance your group for a short time, some feel better than others but they are pretty awesome, my favourite – as ArenaNet found - was the Lich which I'm actually going to update the blog at http://www.gamers1up.com when I get chance with a little more info from the demo."


Having experience this structured PvP, how excited for WvW are you guys? Do you see it being very different?

Aspira:
"I see it being very similar in terms of how competitive it is going to get. Both types are going to reward skill in their own way, and both are going to be fun and also competitive in their own way. The two scenes (5v5 and WvWvW) are completely different and you will probably see completely different names rise to the top in each format. The 5v5 is going to be the tournament play format for sure and if GW2 follows any other MMO, then the 5v5 will require more player skill than the open world PvP. However, I personally am very excited about WvWvW as having played GW2 PvP in small scale 5v5, I can see how it will scale to WvWvW level. Guilds who go into this game with the sole intention of building a massive zerg of players with no tactics and low skill and just relying on numbers to win the fight, are going to get destroyed. The WvWvW is going to be as tactical as the 5v5 but on a much larger scale, and I think medium sized, highly organized guilds are going to love what GW2 are offering in WvWvW and I think that there will indeed be a "competitive scene" of sorts between the big open world PvP guilds and indeed server rivalry!"



If there were up and coming guilds looking to compete on the level you all did, and they asked for your experience, what would be the biggest advice you'd give them to be ready for the competitive scene?

Aspira:
"Learn EVERYTHING about the game. It sounds stupid but if you want to be the best, you need to know every map inside out, you need to know what every skill each class can do and with what weapons. Compare it to trying to become good at Starcraft and only learning your own race and having no idea what the other two are capable of. Well in GW2 PvP you NEED to know all the classes and know what they are capable of. The ArenaNet devs we were playing against all contributed to designing the classes and the map and it showed. They could tell you what weapons gave what skills on what characters and it is that level of knowledge that will allow top level players to have fantastic situational decision making skill in GW2 PvP."

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We want to thank Boon Control and ArenaNet for making this great interview become a reality. They fought hard and even after all of that work, took the time to pass on what they've learned to the masses. Be sure to visit www.booncontrol.com and give them a friendly shout if you get the chance

Stay updated on our site weekly as every Monday we try to release something big in the realm of news and interviews. Next week, we're aiming to post an interview with djWHEAT, and/or possibly release some details of our upcoming prize-pool tournament for beta/release. Should be real fun to discuss.

See ya!