Guild Wars 2

In my opinion, the greatest issue in the current state of WvW is the lack of motivation to separate from the “zerg”. I have a proposed solution that actually comes from the venerable Dark Age of Camelot. In DAoC, players were worth an amount of points that was based on the players realm rank. The higher the rank of the player, the more points that player was worth. A players points were given evenly to all the players of a group that killed them. If more than one group was involved then the points were split between the groups based on the percentage of life taken by each group.
This is what motivated people to separate from the zerg … capitalism. There was more “profit” for your group to kill another group than you were likely to see in a zerg vs group or even a zerg vs zerg fight. Sure, zergs were useful still for getting relics and such … but roaming groups was what people serious about realm rank did.

So my suggested solutions would be to:

1. Create a WvW rank system
2. Apply a WvW specific Karma amount and Rank XP to each rank
3. Grant points evenly in a group
4. Grant points proportionally across groups
5. Create WvW gear sets, siege equipment, ect that would use the new WvW karma points

Some lessons from Warhammer Online:

1. Do NOT grant WvW Karma for objectives such as keep takes, defenses, sentry kills, ect, ect. This would just promote keep defenses over zerging which is just as bad for the “fun factor” of the game.
2. Make your zones larger. The ability of the enemy to walk right out of their spawn onto an objective destroys all strategy and fun involved.

Whilst always liked ranks from DAOC one persons ‘zerg’ is anothers ‘large scale pvp’. And those were the best times I had in DOAC – when realms collided over massive prolonged keep sieges with hundreds on each side.

Zergs are great fun. I like them, not always, but there is something to be said for the feeling of crazy eyed superiority you get when 50 of you charge over a hill and mow down some poor, unsuspecting chap just out to farm a bit of ore.

Nothing beat the 5 man assassination squad though.

Or they might remove those orange swords on the map.

Interesting idea, thank you OP for dedicating a thread to it.

We’re still waiting for Anet to finally announce the details they promised us on addressing part of this issue (servers that are pushed all the way back to their spawn), but I’m sure whatever they come up with, could also have this added on top to supplement a few desperately needed cultural shifts in this Meta

I’m not sure about your suggestions. I understand that DAoC RvR played a lot different, a lot more epic than current WvW. But both are different games.

The map size itself really limits how much roaming you can do. I mean you can traverse a WvW map in about 2 minutes. There’s only so much roaming you can do in such a densely populated area.

That said, I too would like to see some kind of WvW score-board, just for bragging rights.

Something like:
-Kills,
-Kill/Death Rate,
-Karma earned
-Keep Lords killed
-Keeps defended
-Dolyaks killed
-Guards killed
-Supplies collected
-Siege weapons built
-Repair efforts
-etc.

Just generate such a list for every current match-up going on. No rewards, no nothing, just prestige.

Addressing the resurrection mechanics would go a long way towards buffing defenders and limiting the attraction of zerging. The fact that a 20 vs 20 zerg can go at each other for an hour and achieve absolutely nothing is really quite game-breaking for me.

Add friendly fire and friendly body-blocking and zerging will stop reaaaal fast.

Make AoEs affect a lot mokittengets. Force heals and boons to have target limits. Reverse the current system where stack bombing is promoted instead.

Discourage people from staying together enough in such large groups.

So you want the game mechanics to discourage one playstyle that you don’t like in favor of the playstyle that you do like?

Or am I reading this wrong.

Actualy I think this is abreast idea. Your low ranks would be easy to obtain and you would most likely stay with the Zerg till you ranked up enough that you had experiance and it was now becoming slow to rank up in such a big group.

But the maps would need to be much larger for this to work.

Also to the guy that said this discouraged one type of play for a different one. Yes and no. There will always be a Zerg since there is always safety in numbers. A change like this would hopefully turn that Zerg from 80 people down to 40 with a set of smaller groups roaming. There will always be a time and place for the full force to attack and it will still happen but hopefully a change like this would make it so we stop seeing the Zerg just roll from objective to objective. You don’t need 80 people to take a supply point but as of right now it is an all to common thing.

And since they are adding ascended gear and plan on making it that you can earn it in wvw that would be the perfect time to add a new wvw currency or modify badges in a meaningful way.

lol zerging shouldn’t be stopped, casuals need to play too.

Saying that though, GvG needs to become something of importance in this game as does some form of ranking for people and guilds.

Needs more competition outside of which commander can lead the zerg the best. Don’t take that as mocking as I have mad respect for the ammount of patience it would take to achieve this.

Nothing wrong with zergs. Stop trying to ’better’ the casual players, they’d just quit.

I would love to see a rank system implemented, its just one more thing to work toward (achievements/titles are pretty meh in my opinion). A visible rank to enemy faction would be awesome though. Instead of “Crystal Desert Invader” maybe “Crystal Desert Warmaster” or “Crystal Desert Grunt” etc.

Wait a minute OP. You haven’t said WHY the zerg is a problem, you just assumed that we thought it was too.

Why not just drastically raise the rewards and significantly lower the timers, and increase the number of npcs for defense of enclosed structures forcing a split of force between offense and defense. this should be at least a short term solution as well as address other matters, like the badge farming issues.

the issue isn’t the zerg itself, its that people aren’t willing to do what it takes to counter a raid. (ie attacking from that back,luring, excessive siege at bases)

DAoC was also filled with zergs.

Without zergs I wouldn’t WvW. My latency is terrible and if I get singled out by another player I will die before I can get 2-3 hits in. Zergs are the only way for me to WvW without worrying about dying at every turn. And they’re a ridiculous amount of fun – I don’t care about winning but the mass scale group vs group combat is really appealing to me.

Pug Zerg, go ahead and keep it. It’s harmless.

The organised stack bomb Zerg, nerf it’s kittens please.

Xandax.1753:

DAoC was also filled with zergs.

Yeah, it had other options though.

This game doesn’t.

Why can’t MMO’s just improve upon the PvP MMO’s of 10 years ago.

Peetee.9406:

Nothing wrong with zergs. Stop trying to ‘better’ the casual players, they’d just quit.

Ah, Darwin must be rolling in their grave at that statement.

The current meta-game is zerg for the win that excludes everything else. That is what must end. Thus the zerg meta-game must die in order for a more balanced meta-game where other forms of WvW can co-exist.