New PvP Mode suggestion: The Slaughterhouse

Introducing a suggestion for a brand-new mode of PvP, the first persistent PvP mode! Meet other players for carnage and a lot of fun, meet the Slaughterhouse. Reach 0 points or less and you're out. The ultimate FFA challenge (the only one so far, in fact)! Will you be the Hero that lasts the longest in this chaotic area?

Note: This is merely a suggestion to be discussed, /signed or /unsigned. Obviously the values or anything here are final, and subjected to be changed for balancing reasons or whatever. Due to my inability to use any graphical program properly, I am limited to text only.

Slaughterhouse Suggestion Manual Version 1.2

Table of Contents:

1. The Slaughterhouse (outpost info in the Battle Isles while on Map Travel window)


2. Outpost brief explanation


3. Outpost and battle area appearance


4. Point system


5. Related title point track

5.1. The award of points towards the title

5.2. Abnormality title track (yeah, nice name for the title track)

5.3. The inherent title effect


6. The gods statues


7. The center circle

7.1. Capturing the center circle

7.2. Neutralizing the center circle


8. Notifications


9. Possible issues and their solutions

9.1. Teaming in a FFA match

9.2. Balancing issues
9.2.1. Environmental effects
9.2.2. Neutral NPCs
9.2.3. Environmental dangers
9.2.4. Holder curses


10. Updates



1. The Slaughterhouse (outpost info in the Battle Isles while on Map Travel window)

Balthazar used to amuse himself on the endless battles raging in this area. Grenth used to profit these battles as a huge income of souls to the Underworld. The area was sealed long ago by the Zaishen Order, before the Guild Wars were rampaging Tyria, Shiro the Betrayer was born in Cantha or even Palawa Joko had any powers in Elona. Now it has once again been opened to the public and the gods.




2. Outpost brief explanation

Upon entering the outpost, the player would click on Enter Mission and wait for the cycle time (could be universally every 30 seconds like RA/TA). There would be a limited number of Slaughterhouse instances, but they would be persistant in the way players defeated are leaving and being replaced by new contestants. It could be around 5 of them, all avaiable at the Observer Mode with a 5 minute delay. There could be a player limit of around 4~12 in them (personally, I see this area chaotic enough with 8 players). The respawn time when a player dies could be 10 seconds, plus a 5 second skill blackout and invulnerability upon respawn.




3. Outpost and battle area appearance

Obviously, a scary place with similar place to the Heroes Ascent volcanic area, as it could be located on the same island but it was inacessible due to the seal made by the Zaishen and forbidden to be revealed until now. It would have statues of the five gods on each of the corners of this pentagram-shaped arena. These statues would summon an avatar upon "kneeling" of players. The center of this pentagram area would have a circle that players inside would gain points for standing within (later explained). The fighting area cannot be too big, to prevent "afk leechers" from getting points unharmed.




4. Point system

Starting amount of points - 50 points
Every 10 seconds - -1 point
Every finishing blow - 10 points
Every assistance (to be awarded an assistance it would be similar to the requirement for being able to receive XP reward from a monster in PvE) - 5 points
Every death - -25 points
Every 15 seconds holding the center circle - 25 points + Morale Boost




5. Related title point track

5.1. The award of points towards the title

Every 5 minutes inside The Slaughterhouse = 100 * 0.10 * x
x is the number of times you've received the points before on the same streak of play time.

5 minute survival mark = 100 carnage points awarded
10 minute survival mark = 110 carnage points awarded
15 minute survival mark = 120 carnage points awarded
and so on... going out of the slaughterhouse and re-entering would imply in a reset of the x variable making you re-start the progression.

5.2. Abnormality title track (yeah, nice name for the title track)

Abnormal (1) = 10000 points
Fierce Abnormal (2) = 15000 points
Mighty Abnormal (3) = 25000 points
Deadly Abnormal (4) = 40000 points
Terrifying Abnormal (5) = 60000 points
and so on... the increase for each title is 10000 + (5000 * tier number)

5.3. Inherent title effect

It could be like the other Battle Isles located titles, an increase in the cap of Balthazar faction.



6. The gods statues

In exchange for points, players would be able to acquire blessings from the avatar of the gods, helping the survivability. The blessings could be the same as the ones avaiable in Factions' resurrection shrines with gods statues.




7. The center circle

7.1. Capturing the center circle

Players would be given a skill similar to Claim Resource to be used in this area only. It would be the 8th skill slot. 5 seconds cast-time to capture, no recharge time.

7.2. Neutralizing the center circle

After capturing the center circle, the only way to neutralize it would be killing its holder. The holder leaving this circle would also cause an immediate loss of control.




8. Notifications

These would be the kind of stuff to appear on the notification interface part.

*Player Name* has joined the slaughterhouse!
*Player Name* has been defeated!
*Player Name* has captured the central circle!
*Player Name* has lost control of the central circle!
etc.




9. Possible issues and their solutions

Obviously there is a need for mechanics to avoid some unintended things from happening. Even The Slaughterhouse has to be based on player skill, and situations in which even player skill would not be enough to prevail are not intended. The mechanisms suggested in this section are meant for balance issues mainly, and perhaps some more fun too.

9.1. Teaming in a FFA match

To avoid such things which can completely spoil the gameplay from happening, there will need to have something to avoid guildmates or friends from meeting, or just from recognizing themselves. I've seen games where in FFA matches you cannot see the names or your foes, or they're changed so you can't recognize them. That's viable. Or it could be limited to X players from a same alliance at the same instance, like 1 or 2.

9.2. Balance issues

Obviously, if there are no mechanics to handle certain situations in which certain builds would simply be "better" (the word better should not exist in this game for competitive reasons and for the 1000+ skills that exist and would be ignored as there is a better combination), certainly some annoying builds would quickly dominate The Slaughterhouse. Here are some suggestions on possible mechanisms to avoid these unbalanced situations to happen.

9.2.1. Environmental effects

To avoid nasty unbalanced situations in which a certain skill combo would be too good at holding the center circle, or a certain skill combo would be too good for surviving, there could be environmental effects to make balance prevail even in this area. Environmental effects such as an enchantment duration reducement to avoid 99% uptime Shadow Form assassins from getting an assured morale boost and points. Stance reducement environmental effects to avoid stance Rangers from being safe from any foe that doesn't use anything to harm besides attack skills, etc.

9.2.2. Neutral NPCs

To avoid more nasty unbalanced situations, there could be NPCs, killable for more points or invulnerable outside the playing field throwing projectiles, such as the suggested trappers, giants throwing boulders knocking down random players, spiders random crippling and poisoning players, yet another limitless resource. Remember that they are meant only for balance, and perhaps even more fun

9.2.3. Environmental dangers

To avoid even more nasty unbalanced situations, there could be dangers within the environment that actually harms players, such as those found in Faction (Tahnakai Temple mission is a good example), Nightfall (the madness darts, the fire traps, etc) and even Prophecies (remember getting the Cold Ones on Sorrow's Furnace and accidentally being turned into a squashed one? )

Environmental effects can handle balance issues that might be found, plus the chapter's new skills. Obviously this PvP mode will be introduced along with a new chapter, so the skills from that chapter can help the classes which would be took weak in self-defense skills, if there are any.

9.2.4. Holder curses

To avoid especifically unbalanced issues with the person holding the center circle, there could be effects harming the person currently holding the center circle, such as Health Degeneration, even more reduced Enchantment/Stance duration, increased cooldowns, etc. All for balance's sake.

9.2.5. Assist concept change

The current assist concept in Guild Wars could be a bit exploitable within this area. It could be changed to include a certain damage dealt, a certain number of hits or a time limit for the death to occur after the assistance was made.




10. Updates

If you are not interested in knowing the history of this "manual", don't bother reading this section, which is only here for possible references.

1.2
- Improved section 9.2 (Thanks to Tuoba Hturt Eht and Lord Mendes).

1.1
- Changed section 1 (Thanks to FelixCarter).
- Changed section 9 to include suggestions of issues that might happen (Thanks to Antheus).
- Changed points awarded every 10 seconds to -1 from 10 (Thanks to Antheus and gwjunkie).

Dwayna's tears would overflow in your "Slaughterhouse".

But seriously, other than then historical background, I like it. Reminds me of the Colosseum of ancient Rome. Watching 32 people pound each other to death until there is only one standing would be VERY amusing. I'd even pay good money to see that. >.>

Priest of Balthazr: "Next in the Zaishen Colosseum, watch lions eat Monks!"
Crowd: "YAY!!! HORRAY!!! YAY!!!"

I've been pining for an FFA melee for quite a while. This would be awesome.

/signed

/signed /yes /agree /support

I would like to play in a FFA arena as described by ericdanie in his post.

Only problems I can see are builds that aren't, by their nature, particularly offensive. For instance, Mesmer interrupt/shutdown, Monks in general (save Smiting), etc. Of course, your "Assistance" points seem a remedy to this.

Overall, a very hearty /signed, this would be more entertaining than RA at least for when people are bored ^^

You'll need to rename this to Wammo playground. Or dervish. Possibly assassin.

But what about monks, mesmers, elementalists, ritualists, rangers (not thumpers), etc. They have no viable survivability without support, or lack the damage dealing if they do. But in no way do they have even remote chance of going against two or more, nor any chance to escape or defend.

Reach 0 points goal defines the builds, along with survival farming. You don't need to kill anything, you just need to survive (your rules). Running and escape builds, survivors, etc. It's easy to defeat the carnage, since killing others and risking getting killed doesn't contribute to the goal. (see hero battles, RA runners). The goal system gives no incentive to fight, just survive.

In addition, since it's free for all, sides would quickly emerge. Consider this. Guildies keep reentering the area until they get their desired members in the same zone. Then they dominate the area till forever. (see Sync-entering RA).

Where's the teamplay? GW is about team play. Solo doesn't work.

Another detail. If a player doesn't get killed on average every 25 seconds, they will never lose. (10 points gain every 10 seconds, 25 loss on death). A player dying in this setting every 25 seconds is essentially impossible.

Who do you assist? Heal someone. Then they turn around, and kill you.

It's free-for-all, remember?

I do not see Warriors/Monks as the only ones with viability for survival classes. Farming at the beginning was all around Monk/Warriors and Warrior/Monks. But nowadays you can see any class farming, new chapters introduced completely new builds with new skills and classes. This PvP would be the alliance battles of Factions, or the Heroes of Nightfall, you get the point, the feature that defines that Chapter as unique.

Builds you see around develop acording to the environment they are played within. If you are sure there will always be someone healing you, then you can make a build especificaly for damage dealing but with no self-healing, because you know there's a monk healing you. You can see builds without self-healing with any primary profession, except Monk for an obvious reason, it keeps the others alive and people wanted it to continue as so.

Farming goes around another environment, the one where you will face multiple enemies alone and must deal damage while healing yourself. You can see farming builds with every primary profession.

Alliance Battles and Fort Aspenwood/Jade Quarry were the first kinds of PvP where you don't need to bring any kind of ressurection skill.

The Slaughterhouse is meant to make builds be developed in a new way, similar to farming but this time you can't really expect what you're going against. Every class has self-heals, and not only one. There is also the secondary profession which doubles the amount of skills avaiable to make a build from. Obviously there will be Wammos at first, but then the "Slaughterhouse metagame" will eventually crush Wammos. It's the same as FOTM builds. You've seen IWAY, but you've seen their counter. You've seen Blood Spike, but you've seen their counter. You may have seen everything, but you'll also have seen everything's counter.

This game has no ultimate build and in the long run you'll see people playing with what they feel like playing because there is no ultimate build that makes you feel like playing because it "is better than what you would like to play with".

Regarding the points value, you are right. Thanks to your observation I could see my mistake. I was tweaking numbers a bit and I see now that I really ended up making it worse than before. I am changing the values here, and adding the Updates part of the manual to know what has been changed.

The issue of players siding or guildmates ending up in the same slaughterhouse instance is really bad. It will require mechanics to be created in order to avoid such things from happening. I'm going to write suggestions for these mechanics, because these are really needed.

GW is not ONLY about team play. Solo doesn't work? Look at these examples:

- One steps into Random Arenas worried about oneself "mainly" (and that's almost "only"). Simply because you don't know who's your going to be paired with, so you can't risk a slot on a specific support skill that may not affect your group if they don't have a X requirement. In RA you're meant to play with a build to rely mainly on yourself, the Monks are only a bonus in your party, otherwise the party formation system on RA would always include a Monk in every party.

- One goes solo farming obviously only worried about himself. If those are not meant to happen, Devs would have killed solo farming ages ago before it could become popular, looking at it as a bug, not intended to happen. Now they know they have a considerable amount of players that enjoys it.

- ANet has done nothing to prevent people challenging others for 1v1 scrimmages, even though such a thing was not possible until they had added the scrimmages feature. It may have not been the original idea of the feature (it obviously isn't), but they have not removed it. That obviously makes us think it's not exactly wrong, even though it's obviously not perfectly balanced as the other game modes are.



By the way, you're not meant to heal anyone. They're your foes, not your allies. Assists are the reward for "helping" to kill a foe in any way. This game recognizes assists as any player that has negatively effected a foe (damage, hexes, interrupts, well, anything else to harm it directly or indirectly), or has positively effected an ally that has done the former. That's why everyone is rewarded XP for killing a foe in PvE, except for people AFK, etc, that have not participated in a battle. That's why you won't see only direct damaging skills only in The Slaughterhouse.

I'd say this is a neat idea. I'd probably participate if it came out. The only problem I can see is the builds that would work to simply defend to keep themselves alive, particularly tanking builds. You said it would be carnage, right? So no rewards for surviving, only rewards for kills. Makes sense, right?
If this sort of thing is fixed up in the idea, and if the idea is accepted, I'd definitely participate at some point or another.

I've changed it. Now every 10 seconds you lose 1 point. Giving points for surviving would promote running and full self-healing builds. Not giving points would be bad too, because you get title points for staying within The Slaughterhouse (not reaching 0 points), and giving points would make just self-maintenance the key to profit here. By making people lose points every 10 seconds you make them fight in order to win points to maintain their seat inside The Slaughterhouse.

concept great execution sloppy.

I think more of a 1v1 maze would be better. like 48 people enter 1 person exits. consistantl chain of 1v1's when you win door opens wait for next opponet. first person to the middle gets a moral boost and waited for the other people. if you kill the person with the boost you get the boost and so on untill only 1 person servives.

ofcorse there would be some builds made to just tank damage and stay alive forever and some way of taking care of them should be made

/signed

YEAH MAN "WWF ROYAL RUMBLE" GW style!

/^&(% yeah

And anthem, the one vs one thing sounds cool, but wont work. 55 vs 55 just no lol

Also, I would say that once I person has 5 minutes they would have something like Victory or death on them to speed things up and would start glowing red to show that this is the big guy.

It's like a super version of thunderdome.
Mwa ha haaaaa.

I like it. I wonder if people would be able to watch. Then they can all chant '2 men enter, 1 man leaves'. Only it'd be more than 2 entering, but you know the mad max thunderdome thing.

Did I say I liked it?

Some Proposed Suggestions to fuel this topic of discussion:
1. Throw in "Slaughterhouse Wardens" to "spice up the house".
- R/Me Trappers with Mantra of Concentration
- N/Me with "Blood is Power" to juice up the Trappers
- etc

2. Ice / Flame deathtraps at certain choke points
(Refering to those in the 2 Nightfall mission)

3. Angry spectators throwing random stuffs into the Slaughterhouse
- Giants throwing big boulders, knockdown random target upon successful hit
- Spiders with Cripple Shot + Apply Poison
- etc

4. etc

About the so called "immortal survival builds" : No one is keeping the intire playground from massing on those characters when one is spotted. In FFA, aliances are formed and broken in fractions of seconds. Me like!

This sounds cool but would fail miserably in practice.
Can you imagine how many people will make rangers with all running and exasive stances and a longbow in order to hit everything once and get assist points.

In order to solve this potential issue, perhaps some rules could be implemented about how "assist points" are acquired.

i.e:
In order to qualify for "assist points", player must:
- have dealt at least 20%(subject to change) of damage (direct, hexes, degen, conditions etc) to a target
- target must be killed within 10 (subject to change) seconds
- etc

Hmmmm, I love this idea. Also love the idea of wardens. Make it like those robot fights with Sir Crushalot in the corner.

Also, be sure to make some wardens with a speedboost and Wild blow.

/signed

UT Deathmatch arenas ftw

/signed

fantastic idea ;D

rather than like 8 people make it 32! pure carnage!

/signed
can't wait. well worked out, good suggestion. more people should do it like this

I would like to sign this but this seems like an Xbox Live thing not an MMO thing but it seems fun so /signed

well since i play a warrior mostly

/signed ..sounds fun

..but what about monks?? they would get pasted the minute they spawn...smiters would not work very well either...it is such a team oriented game

What does the search button do?

Updated OP to include some nice ideas people had in this topic.

I don't understand. Is there another Slaughterhouse suggestion exactly like mine around or something? I understand the FFA PvP mode concept probably has a lot of suggestions in here, but exactly like mine?

Well monks would prolly make good cappers, they're much better survivors than anyone else.

There are a LOT of possible PvP modes, I can't understand why ArenaNet don't just add more and more things to Battle Isles!

I myself have some ideas:

1 vs 1 arena, 2 vs 2 arena, 3 vs 3 arena; Carnage PvP (a ALL vs ALL arena with 4, 6 or 8 people inside) ; PvP with monsters inside, Main story mission when you must FIGHT an opposition real people team inside; etc, etc, etc.

I like the idea, but I could see a lot of things going wrong with the execution. Still...

/signed

/signed

Sure why not. Shouldn't be as bad as "Leech" Aspenwood anyway .

The FFA should allow many more than 8 people at a time. 24 or 32 if possible to hopefully reduce the effects of teaming.

I'm not sure how Anet are going to implement dynamic adding and removal of players in an instance, but should be doable with some work and lots of debugging .

But for making players anonymous and muting people, I'm not sure if it's such a great idea. Some people will team anyway - they could use vent or secret signs.

So you might as well let others see the names so they know who is teaming with who (hard if anonymous), and they could form their own temporary teams. Which is why having more players is better - makes it harder for a small colluding team to dominate.

If you win too often people might just vote you out with their daggers . Rangers who think they can keep running away to survive and keep winning that way may suddenly find that they are really All Alone! .

It'll be messy, dirty, people will lie about who is teaming who is etc. But it might still be fun for enough people to keep playing it.

Maybe a monk or two will go in with heal area+karei's healing circle, lev 0 crystal wave, grasping earth or lev 0 shatter delusions, just for fun and play "cleaner wrasse" - and maybe the other players may decide to hog and protect the monk against everyone else first, and only kill the monk later.

If you have a bunch of dolyak tanks constantly striking each other with lev 0 cyclone axe and using balthazar+essence+protective bond to generate energy and not trigger protective bond on each other, they could survive for quite a while by spamming heal area, vigorous spirit etc, with Healing Hands once in a while. Broadhead arrow + epidemic would be "funny" of course, but there may be ways for the tanks to survive that. Spiteful spirit might be fun to watch too.

Depending on the actual rules you could end up with lots of strange builds. Or it could just be a "normal" FFA.

How about an _additional_ similar FFA arena but where if someone dies, survivors get an energy regen of +4 for 1 minute (maybe we can call it Balthazar's Sacrifice ). Think coral reef or tropical jungle: when you have plentiful energy and resources you get lots of strange and wondrous creatures that would otherwise be unfit in other regions. Such builds would die quickly in other places but could be fun to watch in their "natural environment". Not sure if +4 and 1 minute are good figures, would need a fair bit of play testing. But it's not about team balance now and more about massive entertaining carnage.

Wonder what would happen if someone laid down a high lev EoE...

Whatever it is I think a massive FFA is worth a try.

Yep. The Monk profession has an obvious high potential of Center Circle capturing.

I'm worried though, that if there are over 10 people in this Slaughterhouse, even the Monk might not stand alive for more than 2 seconds taking focused damage from 9 guys. Maybe there could be some beneficial effects when you capture the Center Circle, to make others try to capture it aswell. Something like a +500 Health +20 armor bonus, because they will obviously focus on you and you can't even leave the Circle. Few skills can resist to a lot of people focusing fire on you as the game is, and those are mostly farming builds where you know exactly what type of foe to expect.

What will determine if this is bad or not upon execution (if implemented), is the way the balance issues of a FFA mode are taken in this mode. There are a lot of suggestions for solving these balance issues and making this a viable mode in Guild Wars.

/signed ugh, friggin 12 characters, lol

its almost like Halo online in Blood Gulch death match, muahahahahaah!!!!

Wammo for the win!!! Mesmers, elementalist and necroes beware, the renowned wammo is here!!! This is a place for survival builds, something squishies are good at. Sorry, any self sufficient thing is a no in my book. Guild wars is a team game, and as a team game everything should be done in teams.

A) there are many solo battles, from snowball quests to the dopple

B)All top battles include an amount of self sufficiency to some degree for several of there characters for simple spike prevention.

C)Wammos suck for self survival. Mending ftw lawl.

D)Ever heard of heard of splits? thats even *gasp* players soloing NPCs in pvp.

bump ever since Anet started the HA testing weekend I think they seem to be more open to new pvp ideas.

Edit: oh yeha and I bumped this one cause all the other 1 vs all threads are liek this: ZOMG 1 vs all whaddya think... 1 vs all forever!!! while this actually gives an in-depth explanation.

/signed for FFA, titles, everything
/signed for throwing in some foes (wardens, lions, ...)

I think FFA has not been implemented because it's too difficult to have one character balanced. I think 1 char + 1 hero teams would be more fun and somewhat easier to bring in different builds that would work well in many cases.

/signed with blood