Guild Wars 2

I will try to be brief: Removing the AoE cap will do little to deter zerging. Why? Because of the reasons why zergs are formed.

First, I’m a long time wargamer/former games designer who plays a lot of WvW. Most of the time I roam alone/in pugs, the rest of the time I play organized guild events. So I’ve seen a lot of different aspects of the game, at least the mid tier one where Far Shiverpeaks usually hovers. And yes, I have run with the zerg many times, but for very different reasons.

What it seems everybody is talking about when they slag zergs is the karmatrain, a massive ball of people circling the map, only interested in Wxp. While I am sure that exists, most of the zergs I have been in have formed for two other reasons:

1: Confusion. This was where I started. No guild, no experience. A nice and shiny commander icon on the map. After having been killed a number of times I learned that if I stuck to the commander there was strength in numbers, I learned how things worked, and it simply felt safer. I don’t think I’m alone there, WvW is a scary place at the start, and we are pack animals.

2: Tactics. This is the zerg I run with on guild nights. It is organized, has a purpose, different teams, different parts, is commanded over teamspeak and in general awesome to be a part of. To bring down a heavily defended T3 keep takes a night, and is a many step process, especially if you need to drain its supplies. Often we break off to run and capture camps, get more supplies, feint-attack other keeps/towers and so on. It might not be the whole zerg that runs off (only those without supply for example) but with enough people, even those amount to a zerg.

If I as a roamer encounters and is killed by a zerg, I have no idea why it was formed and what it is about to do. Karmatrain? Scared noobs? Siergers out to resupply? No idea. At least on guild nights we let roamers and small groups just go since they are uninteresting to us, but since every zerg by its nature attracts followers, others might break off and hack them down.

Increasing the AoE cap would do nothing to stop these things.

I used to play a lot of WAR, where AoE was king both in healing and attack. The only thing a high AoE cap does is give people who play AoE heavy classes a lot of kills, thus making more people roll those classes, thus making more AoE until everything is just a matter off stacking enough fire wizards against each other. A lot of the WvW game is built around choke points, sieges, bridges, doors and so on. Rams melt as it is against a defended keep, can you imagine what would happen if you didn’t even need to build siege?

Siege already has a higher cap than any person, and can be built out in the field as well.

So, what should be done about zergs?

Let’s face it, a zerg (by which I mean a large mass of people) is needed a lot of the times in WvW. And zerg vs zerg can be awesome when it works right. BUT these things needs fixing to make it easier to play:

1: Skill lag (especially with 3 server clashes)

2: Grey out the names of defeated players. A lot of the time I find it hard to AoE in the fury of combat, because it is hard to spot if people are dead or alive, because the mass of red names covers everything. This makes my AoE often hit nothing in moving combat, especially with casting time and skill lag.

3: Shorten server names/no titles. I don’t need a novel for each enemy.

Also, there needs to be incentives to break up the massive zergs that forms for no good reason. I would suggest:

4: Commander colors. Make it possible to choose your commander symbol’s color. That way you can easily say things like ‘follow the red commander to get supply’ in mapchat. Yes, they have names, but especially at the start, it is hard to keep track off, and even now I sometimes end up following the wrong commander if I am focused on other things.

5: More leaders. Either make it possible for commanders to deputize people so they get an icon as well (maybe a slightly bigger dot in the same colors as the commander), or make it possible to buy lower level of commander for cheaper sums. If there is only one or two icons on a map, of course everybody is going to get drawn to them. But if there were lieutenants as well, there are more spots to focus on for people who are not organized, thus they will get spread out more evenly.

6: Make it worth defending: Right now we defend for pride, and to keep the upgrades we have. But, a lot of people are not interested in defense, because that is boring and gives them nothing. It is awesome fighting to take a defended keep and I wish everybody to have that experience of true carnage and war, so make it worth it for the brave ones in there.

7: Make the smaller tasks count. Killing dolyaks gives a lot. Protecting dolyaks gives nothing. We need to have more things smaller teams/roamers can do on the maps.

8: Anti zerg siege: It would be interesting with more varied choices of what to build for your supply, especially for use in the open field and to encourage tactics. Arrowcarts are nice, but why stop there? For example, spiked pits could be dug so people could lure zergs to run after them only to be crippled. Maybe setting a herd of cows on fire to drive them into the zerg, or other weird things used in ancient warfare.

Well, I failed in my mission to be brief, but I got some of my ideas down. Feel free to weigh in, I know this has been discussed before in many threads.

I agree with everything you said other than #8. I’m not a fan of NPC stuff in WvW. Also for #5, I think there should be an icon for GUILD teams. That would allow your guild members to see their commander without cluttering up the map for everyone else.

The #1 reason why regular wvw players (not pve) run in a zerg is to take advantage of the aoe cap limit. When an opposing player puts down an aoe, the best counter is not to spread to avoid the aoe but to have everyone zerg up and clump together so only 5 people are taking damage. It makes no sense but it is what it is. Unless this changes, people will continue to run in zergballs since it’s the most effective way to fight.

Pve (or casual players) running with a zerg to get karma, exp, etc is a different story. As long as the regular wvw players are running in zergballs to abuse the aoe siege cap, the pve players will follow.

A lot of your fixes are on the mark, I believe.

I don’t agree with more leaders, however; I’m vehemently against how easy it is to become a commander (essentially, people can enter WvW for the first time and have it), and adding to the number is just going to confuse and distract, making poor sieges/defenses.

Actually, re-reading, that’s the only one I disagree with at all. Smaller tasks need to be more rewarding, I like the color change for commander emblems, siege needs to be more effective against infantry (not INSTA-kill, but it should definitely be punishing), and – for the love of all that isn’t an eyesore – names need to be shortened.

style.6173:

I agree with everything you said other than #8. I’m not a fan of NPC stuff in WvW. Also for #5, I think there should be an icon for GUILD teams. That would allow your guild members to see their commander without cluttering up the map for everyone else.

I can respect that. And an icon for Guild teams would be an awesome idea! That would be especially great for the smaller guilds and striketeams! If I get killed and lose track of where they are, it’s sometimes hard to find my way back if I am not on the TS at the moment.

jojojoon.8607:

The #1 reason why regular wvw players (not pve) run in a zerg is to take advantage of the aoe cap limit. When an opposing player puts down an aoe, the best counter is not to spread to avoid the aoe but to have everyone zerg up and clump together so only 5 people are taking damage. It makes no sense but it is what it is. Unless this changes, people will continue to run in zergballs since it’s the most effective way to fight.

Pve (or casual players) running with a zerg to get karma, exp, etc is a different story. As long as the regular wvw players are running in zergballs to exploit the aoe siege cap, the pve players will follow.

I was actually going to put this, but I thought about it: if we increased the AoE limit, that gives defenders additional leverage. So, to combat that, what’ll be the answer?

Either:
1.) Logic: People will attempt to siege towers and keeps that seem undefended.
But this is the internet and we’re dealing with mob mentality – there is hardly any logic.
So…
2.) People will create LARGER, but more spread out, zergs to take a single capture point.

Honestly, I used to argue for AoE limit removal, but I sincerely believe now that it’ll just bring larger zergs to ensure a victory against increased defense.

jojojoon.8607:

The #1 reason why regular wvw players (not pve) run in a zerg is to take advantage of the aoe cap limit. When an opposing player puts down an aoe, the best counter is not to spread to avoid the aoe but to have everyone zerg up and clump together so only 5 people are taking damage. It makes no sense but it is what it is. Unless this changes, people will continue to run in zergballs since it’s the most effective way to fight.

That is a very good point. I did not think about the zergballs here, just the maneuvering zerg. We do ball up in keep attacks, and unless siege has a LoS it is a good defense. I agree that this is not how it should be, logically.

However, how to resolve it I’m not sure. For me, raising the AoE cap has too many other negative effects, and I really, REALLY don’t want this to turn into WAR. It is a tough nut to crack.

Malin you make many good points, particularly 2, 4, 6, and 7.

To this I would add

1. Increase map size- right now the maps are small enough where one can go from any point to any other in 5min. This means a zerg can form and respond to anything. This is not very rich or interesting in terms of WvW complexity. What you really want is if you commit your main force to tower A, they will not be able to respond to tower B. You get this by making the map larger so that single zerg must subdivide into multiple forces employing zonal defense. When you subdivide a force, that requires organization and coordination, so a larger map would favor coordinated organized play over mindless zerging.

2. Refreshing siege- you take a keep, spend time and effort to siege it up, and unless you refresh siege, it disappears. This means you have people dedicated to this thankless task at no WvW gain. Anet needs to find a good way with getting rid of the siege refreshing task. I know several people who will happily fortify and place siege in clever spaces, only to be dismayed when they log off for the night and all of it vanishes. This drives placement of siege from positions of strategic value to positions where anyone will be likely to see it and refresh it later.

Lepew.7890:

1. Increase map size- right now the maps are small enough where one can go from any point to any other in 5min. This means a zerg can form and respond to anything. This is not very rich or interesting in terms of WvW complexity. What you really want is if you commit your main force to tower A, they will not be able to respond to tower B. You get this by making the map larger so that single zerg must subdivide into multiple forces employing zonal defense. When you subdivide a force, that requires organization and coordination, so a larger map would favor coordinated organized play over mindless zerging.

I agree. Especially on the home map, redeployment is scary fast with organized teams with the garrison waypoint. One risk though is that it will be harder for small teams/roamers to get to the distant places. Already most are slower than a zerg (few have constant swiftness), and the risk of getting killed is very big if you don’t have stealth/good flee mechanics. So the map and spawnpoints needs to be carefully placed to allow a good spread while limiting zerg response.

Lepew.7890:

2. Refreshing siege- you take a keep, spend time and effort to siege it up, and unless you refresh siege, it disappears. This means you have people dedicated to this thankless task at no WvW gain. Anet needs to find a good way with getting rid of the siege refreshing task. I know several people who will happily fortify and place siege in clever spaces, only to be dismayed when they log off for the night and all of it vanishes. This drives placement of siege from positions of strategic value to positions where anyone will be likely to see it and refresh it later.

Again, agreed. There is no simple solution here though, since people already troll by placing tons of useless siege and interrupting proper weapons, and they are a drain on the server.

Maybe some sort of supply box? You can build one for a fixed number of supplies (maybe half the weapon cost?), and if placed next to a siege it refreshes it automatically for a set number of times, like 5 hours or something. That way you can make sure that the siege you REALLY need will stick around.

Removing the AoE cap or simply increasing it would give the 5 people defending a tower/keep against 60 a fighting chance. Some servers actually have this problem, often. As I have said before(to others) Zerglings belong in Starcraft and PvE, period. Some of us don’t need 50 people to accomplish some fairly simple tasks.

Why would someone not get burned if they walked into a lava font? The aoe cap helps no one, but removing it helps everyone. No longer would the mind-numbingly stupid Zergs just walk through your group mashing 11111111 and actually kill you, instead there would actually be a demand for skill and tactics. Gasp! something PvPers actually enjoy! :O your right that’s a terrible idea lets keep making it easy for the PvEers who are in the wrong zone…..

Malin.2490:

5: More leaders. Either make it possible for commanders to deputize people so they get an icon as well (maybe a slightly bigger dot in the same colors as the commander), or make it possible to buy lower level of commander for cheaper sums. If there is only one or two icons on a map, of course everybody is going to get drawn to them. But if there were lieutenants as well, there are more spots to focus on for people who are not organized, thus they will get spread out more evenly.

An excellent idea.

Right now, I am forced to buy a 100g “zerg mark” even if I just want to gather a smaller force. Groups only work with 5 people. What if you want 10? Zerg mark is your only option. Which probably mean that within minutes you’re surrounded by another 30 unwanted people.

At least lieutentants would state intent, a smaller group following the larger group.

I agree with OP, everything he says about the aoe limit is true. That is why it is needed and should stay. Good luck getting through a shoke point without.

Remember the necro wells that hit 20 people? And that you had a trait so you could place those? I have seen multiple times a 30 man zergs just died, without downed state because of those.

We don’t run in as soon as the gate goes down. But a good enemy doesn’t waste his aoe either before they see us. And as soon we ran through we insta melted. That is why the cap should stay.

And if the cap is gone, I want my shouts to heal+buff the entire zerg too.

Absolutely agree that changing AoE limit won’t change zerging. It will only change how fast a battle is decided. I try and avoid zergs most of the time, but sometimes I tag along, and when I do it’s because I’m feeling tired and lazy and don’t want to have to think. I certainly don’t consciously think “man, I really want to abuse AoE cap today”.

Real reasons for zerg:

1. Bad party/commander system. There is nothing in-between 5 man party and 50 man zerg in terms of organisation UI. You either roam in a small party of 5 or less, or you follow the zerg. There is no system in place for groups of between 5 and 30 to organise themselves.

2. The ease with which gates can be melted down by 50 people auto-attacking, and dropping 10 rams on it. If you want to capture 4 towers, it is currenty far more effective to keep your group of 50 together and take 1 tower at a time, rather than splitting in to several groups. If there was a cap on the amount of damage a gate can take per-second, or gates/walls were significantly buffed so that it requires a good half-hour of attrition and blocking supply to break them rather than 30 seconds of bursting, then it might be more effective to split up.

MiLkZz.4789:

I agree with OP, everything he says about the aoe limit is true. That is why it is needed and should stay. Good luck getting through a shoke point without.

Remember the necro wells that hit 20 people? And that you had a trait so you could place those? I have seen multiple times a 30 man zergs just died, without downed state because of those.

We don’t run in as soon as the gate goes down. But a good enemy doesn’t waste his aoe either before they see us. And as soon we ran through we insta melted. That is why the cap should stay.

And if the cap is gone, I want my shouts to heal+buff the entire zerg too.

Problem with elemental AOE is if cap is gone you wont even have time to protec the group, same goes already with the massive turret SPIKE “damage” , now imagine a full zerg of elementals w/o AOE cap.

Also spread damage by “hited” target is not good nor right, people would turtle heal back again.

EDIT: about siege, funny how it has wheels and you cant move it! ^^, or change tactics.

Good observations from the OP.

Simple solution is to only reward PPT for actually defending the objectives you have captured, you get the initial points for the capture but will receive no additional points unless you have “x” amount of defenders in that objective. Why should you get PPT for something you abandon? This would help spread the crowd around more and add a little risk vs reward for zerging, feel free to zerg around in a blob but you may have to sacrifice a portion of your blob to stay on the scoreboard.

As far as AoE cap for players, keep it the way it is, zergs already have a massive advantage in that area removing the cap would make them even more of a wrecking ball. This is a problem that could be solved using siege, lift the AoE cap on siege, double the damage to players and add more siege type elements into the game like sink holes, tripwires, etc that could be built to help slow opponents down when placed appropriately.

Also get rid of all swords, orange and white, you should have eyes on your captured objectives at all times.

And get rid of WP’s, ma kitten mall enough to group/regroup up to get to that area of the map that might be in trouble.

Ragnar.4257:

2. The ease with which gates can be melted down by 50 people auto-attacking, and dropping 10 rams on it. If you want to capture 4 towers, it is currenty far more effective to keep your group of 50 together and take 1 tower at a time, rather than splitting in to several groups. If there was a cap on the amount of damage a gate can take per-second, or gates/walls were significantly buffed so that it requires a good half-hour of attrition and blocking supply to break them rather than 30 seconds of bursting, then it might be more effective to split up.

I do love the idea of a damage cap per second for gates and walls. Buffing them would only increase zergs, since small man teams suddenly could not take anything. But to cap the max damage they can take would make everything above that number useless.

Honestly, that is a brilliant idea! Can’t see any drawbacks.

I think UI/UX improvements are kind of a no-brainer. The sea of red from downed/dead players and pets makes it difficult to even know how many opponents you are facing. There’s way too many pets in this game, but that ship has sailed I suppose…. so how about being able to turn off the names for non-mesmer clone pets. and change the tone of downed players and remove the name of non-friendly dead players?

People talk about the AE thing, but what they don’t realize is this game is (sadly) balanced around 5v5 and a large percentage of abilities are some sort of AE…so to make a change would require almost EVERY ability in the game to be looked at for rebalance? This is really not a simple change although raising it to something more reasonable for WvW would be nice….

There is a distinction between “zerging” and “stacking”. A true definition of a zerg in an MMO really doesn’t exist. Basically it means a large group of players of some random number.

The Op is correct in his analysis of why people roam in large groups a.k.a a zerg. Changing the AoE cap will not change human nature.

Stacking is a tactic used by a large group of players to maintain concentrated firepower/buffs/defense while achieving some level of protection against AoE attacks given the 5 target cap.

Removing the AoE cap would impact the stacking tactic but the cost would be strengthening all AoE attacks which are already extremely effective and unbalance the game.

The better solution would be to lift AoE cap on mechanics/skills that blow up or blow out the stacks while leaving the AoE cap for damage unchanged.

Sureshot.6725:

The better solution would be to lift AoE cap on mechanics/skills that blow up or blow out the stacks while leaving the AoE cap for damage unchanged.

That is actually a good idea. Not sure what the cap is already on skills such as tornado (my ele has just reached lvl 40). But zergbusting skills would be a nice addition.

I agree with the suggestions you’ve made to combat zerging. There needs to be elements that address both combat mechanics and the underlying psychology of zergs. For #3, a 3-letter acronym like the ones we use implicitly would do just fine (such as “KNG Soldier [TAG]”).

7) is something I think is crucial, I’ve suggested it a few times. The reason you see fewer small groups is there are few objectives for small groups to pursue. There aren’t enough dolyaks and camps to go around if you broke a 50-man into 10 groups of 5 or even 5 groups of 10. A couple suggestions for small group objectives:

1) Distributed Area Control. Think sentry points but more of them spaced all around the map, temporarily on every tick.

• The zones reset ownership every tick, and capturing a zone provides WXP/karma and PPT (say 1-3 depending on how remote the zone is).
• The zones don’t cap any faster with more players.
• They all spawn with each tick and then are owned once taken, so players will need to distribute personnel to the zones they want to control.
• No zones will be within range of ACs/ballistas from keeps.
• Each zone is attached to a nearby fortification and ownership of the zone provides minor buffs/penalties to people operating near that fortification for the tick based on ownership (not whole server buffs like orbs below).

2) Relics and Orbs of Power. Orbs weren’t a bad concept, they just had a bad implementation. Replace them with a multitude of different orbs/relics which spawn around the map every X ticks (2-4 seems good).

• Every 2-4 ticks, 10 Orbs of Power spawn around the map, 3 in each sector and 1 on the center island for BLs as an example.
• They need to be carried to a nearby keep or tower and provide buffs to the server.
• Each of the 3 side orbs provides a different buff, maybe one defensive, one offensive, one XP focused.
• The center orb provides a combination, but not enough to outstrip the others.
• Every 2-4 ticks the Orbs reset and have to be recaptured, providing a 20-50 minute window where you benefit from them, but removing the incumbent advantage Orbs gave previously.
• Orbs can’t be moved once placed, they disappear and the buff goes active, so hackers can’t snatch them, and attackers will need to capture them when they reset.
• Similarly, you cannot capture your “home” orbs near your natural keep, you can only capture the orbs in enemy natural territory. This prevents each side from just grabbing the nearest orbs and negating the conflict (unless you happen to own an enemy’s natural, in which case you have the benefit of easier orb access for said conquest).

Waypoints could be given a timer such that only one person can use them in a given amount of time, be that 10 or 5 seconds or so.

I wonder if Arenenet could release some of the option here as a source code to let solo developer have their own take and submit their work to them and let them review it.

I guess what i am saying an add-on review forum Such a state would improve WvW creativity and personaly creativity. If any of you Guys played WoW They have add-on to create flavor for each individual player and they had a small team in it to look over which one was ok and such. They still drop ban hammer on the add-on that broke, cheated their system.

In defense add-on improve games without the devo having to stress them out And also it can evolve their game to the next level.

Here is two add-on id like to see. Remove dead player name and id like to see guild base Commander icon or player created icon

The orange swords are one of the worst offending factors. If I get into a small skirmish I just count in my head till when the guildies call in the zerg cavalry, and it rarely takes more than half a minute or so. For a map this small where groups can keep 100% Swiftness uptime, there’s no need for the map/minimap to be so painstakingly detailed.

I love how ppl take the time to write a 2000 word suggestion list without noticing that Anet employees only have time to skim through suggestions.

Some very good ideas. Agree 100% with

1. Grey out names for dead players
2. Leader icon colors….especially add guild leader color.
3. Even though WvW “rewards” are anything but, at least reward other game play styles as much as zerging.

MiLkZz.4789:

And if the cap is gone, I want my shouts to heal+buff the entire zerg too.

Apperently, ANet thinks that a good WWWer does not uses heals or buff, none of them give WXP.

For ANet…
- buff people so that they run faster
- buff people so that they do more DPS
- buff people so that they are invisible
- buff people so that they stay alive longer
- heal people so that they stay alive longer
…is not the right way to play in WWW because none of these are rewarded with WXP, only DPS, DPS and more DPS is rewarded.

Sad, but true.

Well I hate to say it but WAR was a mediocre replica of DAoC. In DAoC the sieges were a lot more interesting for a few reasons.
1) Defense points couldn’t attack other defense points with siege. The distance between defense points as well as spawn was high enough that players had to use terrain to gain an advantage.
2) Zergs had to be mindful of flanking attacks from ‘bomber’ groups. Since there was no aoe cap a group of very skilled players could hit the flanks with large aoe attacks harassing or destroying a zerg with help from the defenders.
3) AOE caps were non-existent. This turned mindless bump and grind sessions into actual engagements.
4) Players attacking a defense point had to defend their siege from defenders since they had to be placed in the open and not in another defense point.

Since I run in small man groups here is the problem that I see with the aoe cap. 5 man vs 20 man. The 5 man can only apply damage against 25% of the 20 man, while the 20 man can apply damage to 100% of the 5 man. Not only does the 20 man zerg have numbers, zerg revives, more of everything basically, they also have a significant damage increase. As a pvper since UO and an MA on an 8 man melee assist train (Super high single target damage) in DAoC I have to say this massive difference in damage output does not make sense.

Increasing the aoe limit will also help prevent siege stacking, where you have a huge zergball stack on the flame rams and golems to take the damage while it breaks the door down. It should lead teams to launch a 2-3 pronged attack on a keep instead of the usual “hit the door guys” style.

Have to agree with those for removing or increasing AoE cap limit. I can understand why Anet made their initial decisions, but its having adverse consequences. Like clockwork, at coverage times where my server has had about a 4:1 maybe 5:1 disadvantage in numbers, we’ll have the top server roll in with numbers, barely there siege (maybe a golem, maybe a couple rams) and barely there effort, come in and capture an inferiorly manned, but otherwise well equipped keep. They literally just run up to the gate and attack, hardly even bothering with destroying or even attacking siege on the fringes of the walls unless its one or two guys doing their own thing. I seriously wonder what incentive the prime time players have in upgrading anything knowing they will lose it overnight. What’s ridiculously ironic is that our AoE (siege/player) has less effect on them, than their AoE splash hitting the gates. You try and repair and its instant death.

I firmly believe a relaxation of the AoE caps would go a long way in removing the need to match a horde with a horde. A 10-15 man group should be able to defend a keep against a group of 50 ragtag invaders, and if not it should be challenge to the invaders, not a walk in the park, 10-15 minute affair.

I am a bit troubled by large zergs that don’t even bother with rams and burn the door down with weapons. I play in the T6 bracket (DH, IoJ), and DH has enormous zergs that do this with regularity. I was in my first zerg large enough to do this last week on DR, and it made me mad. So many people on the door means you do not have to cap camps, nor are you restricted by supply in how quickly you can drop doors…all the strategy goes to the mindless zerg pounding the door.

I would like to see World XP be scaled by the zerg reduction factor, call it Z.

WXP = Z * (Old WXP)

Use a radius, say 3000. Count up all the enemy players, and count up all of your players.

Z = (Number of Enemy Players)/(Number of Your Players)

So lets say you get rolled by 10 players as you solo. If you kill one of them, you get 10x the WXP. Those 10 that kill you get 1/10th the xp.

Determine keep effective player counts. A camp has what, 5 guards? How many for a Keep? Use that for WXP, so soloing a camp is worth more than arriving via zerg to do it.

This means that 50 man zerg of uplevels running through WvW popping camps will not get as much WXP as before. All of those guys who are out there farming WXP will go in smaller groups, and if you get mowed down by the zerg, well you know they get little xp by doing it.