Guild Wars 2

chemiclord.3978:

Devata.6589:

That’s not completely true. People want hard fun content and get rewarded for it. But if there is an easy way out to get the reward people will likely pick he easy way out. In general I don’t get a special mini from a special boss, I just buy it for gold (that’s the case for most mini’s) so I am not rewarded for the skills of killing that boss.

No… they really don’t. They want easy and rewarding. You can go through any MMO, and find the same phenomenon; the more challenging the content is, the fewer people will play it. Endgame raids will on average host about 5% of your player base.

Challenge is a terrible motivator for the MMO market as a whole. They will always seek the path of least resistance, and nothing you do outside of forcing them to take on tougher challenge to get what they want will change that.

But nowadays, trying to force them down a challenging path, with the number of MMOs out there nowadays… they’ll just quit and go somewhere else that gives them an easy road. Arena.net has to cater to this crowd; they have no other choice.

Yeah .. also those folks that always cry for more challenge mean mostly that the want better exclusive loot. If they get that some can be forced to play what they maybe don’t even like. If they don’t get it mostly they suddenly say : why the hell should i then play this instead of taking the easy way.

A challenge is mostly fine once, but if you’ve beaten it, and it comes down to farming its mostly just annoying.

Beldin.5498:

chemiclord.3978:

Devata.6589:

That’s not completely true. People want hard fun content and get rewarded for it. But if there is an easy way out to get the reward people will likely pick he easy way out. In general I don’t get a special mini from a special boss, I just buy it for gold (that’s the case for most mini’s) so I am not rewarded for the skills of killing that boss.

No… they really don’t. They want easy and rewarding. You can go through any MMO, and find the same phenomenon; the more challenging the content is, the fewer people will play it. Endgame raids will on average host about 5% of your player base.

Challenge is a terrible motivator for the MMO market as a whole. They will always seek the path of least resistance, and nothing you do outside of forcing them to take on tougher challenge to get what they want will change that.

But nowadays, trying to force them down a challenging path, with the number of MMOs out there nowadays… they’ll just quit and go somewhere else that gives them an easy road. Arena.net has to cater to this crowd; they have no other choice.

Yeah .. also those folks that always cry for more challenge mean mostly that the want better exclusive loot. If they get that some can be forced to play what they maybe don’t even like. If they don’t get it mostly they suddenly say : why the hell should i then play this instead of taking the easy way.

A challenge is mostly fine once, but if you’ve beaten it, and it comes down to farming its mostly just annoying.

The reward can also make the content funner because every time there is that change that it will drop, it’s like a rush you get every kill. While items not dropping in specific places (Not so much talking about exclusive in a way that is has to be account0bound but exclusive in a way that it drops in once place) does devalue the item.

I will use an example to explain. We take a type of content that is obvious very boring. Killing one type of mob over and over and over again. But now lets say that mob in one area has the rare change to drop a specific mini. In a way the killing stays boring but on the other hand, every kill there is the rush of ‘will it drop’ making it boring content fun or exiting.
Because it only drops in that specific place it also means that it’s not likely people who are not looking for it get it to drop.. it can happen but it’s much less likely. So it’s a really special reward

Now imagine it’s a general drop (like many stuff in GW2). That mean many people will do dull content to get generally good drops but mainly stuff they don’t want. They sell that to make gold and buy the item they want (likely something that dropped for somebody else he did not want). It completely devalues the item and getting new items is pretty much seeing your gold slowly go up. No rush at all.

So I do think rewards and the reward-system are important. And like I said, obvious if people then want an item they will go for the ‘easy’ way. Why go for a hard way to make gold if it buys you the same item you want. At that moment the game has become nothing else then work.. working for currency to buy the item so yes then you go for the easy way. Problem is that the game has become work like this, not that people want the easy way out. Thats a result of it.

Beldin.5498:

A challenge is mostly fine once, but if you’ve beaten it, and it comes down to farming its mostly just annoying.

There needs to be a middle-ground.

I agree that events like Triple Trouble are over the top, but I personally prefer a challenge to the mindless 1111111 spam that we currently have.

BobbyT.7192:

Question I want to ask is there any way a large group players 50+ doing any thing, open world PvE, WvW and not be considered a Zerg? Or will they always be considered a Zerg?
Remember those movies with large scale battles, looks kinda cool sometimes, isn’t that just a big Zerg fight?

Not everyone means the same thing by using the term. Originally, the term came from Starcraft, where it meant throwing large numbers of “weaker” units at the enemy, thereby wearing them down. Lately, however, the term seems to be evolving to mean “doing content in a large group.” Large groups in WvW are called zergs whether they are using tactics or not and regardless of the individual skill or lack thereof of the players in the large group.

In GW2, many large events — which seem to be designed to be most challenging at medium levels of participation — get trivialized by huge herds of players. The problem is that unless you read the entirety of what people post, you can no longer automatically infer whether people using the term zerg are talking about large numbers and lack of skill or just large numbers. The OP seems to be mostly about large groups, with minor references to lack of skill in the form of “using the #1 skill.”

Take the claims that “better mechanics” can counter zerg play. This is only true if the encounter’s “sweet” spot is sufficiently high that it cannot be trivialized by greater numbers. When Teq came out, it was supposed to be for ~80 people. As time went on, groups bypassed phases of the fight by “outnumbering it,” either with summons, by just having 120+ players or both. And yet, Teq had what was hailed as interesting mechanics when the revised event launched.

There is a major disconnect in GW2 on this issue. Some players complain about lack of challenge. ANet wants to push large-scale content in the persistent world. The problem comes in when ANet caters to the desire for challenge by making harder, persistent world content. Two things happen. Either:

• Those who care less about challenge avoid the event. This was a problem with Teq and Wurm prior to mega-servers.
• People who don’t know the event or lack skill show up and make the event harder. At this point, players who consider themselves “better” complain that the “unskilled” are ruining the event.

Tl:dr? When seeing the term zerg, you now have to read the context to see if the poster is talking about large groups or large groups lacking skill — and this is not always evident in all posts.

Flytrap.8075:

Beldin.5498:

A challenge is mostly fine once, but if you’ve beaten it, and it comes down to farming its mostly just annoying.

There needs to be a middle-ground.

I agree that events like Triple Trouble are over the top, but I personally prefer a challenge to the mindless 1111111 spam that we currently have.

I always use 10,1,7,2,3,5,4 …. wait till 2 or 3 is up again ..

Btw.. there is no need for 11111 .. i find it always funny that people want to insult other people with that and instead insult themself since it looks as they themself don’t even know that we have autoattack

Also if you really want challenges, you can create them. Solo or duo dungeons without skipping or stacking in walls. Heck play it even naked.

But .. nearly nobody does that because .. and there it is again .. it doesn’t give better rewards. The whole challenge is just wasted time because people don’t enjoy the challenge itself but only the greater reward-

Beldin.5498:

I always use 10,1,7,2,3,5,4 …. wait till 2 or 3 is up again ..

Btw.. there is no need for 11111 .. i find it always funny that people want to insult other people with that and instead insult themself since it looks as they themself don’t even know that we have autoattack

Also if you really want challenges, you can create them. Solo or duo dungeons without skipping or stacking in walls. Heck play it even naked.

But .. nearly nobody does that because .. and there it is again .. it doesn’t give better rewards. The whole challenge is just wasted time because people don’t enjoy the challenge itself but only the greater reward-

I stick to sPvP and WvW for a reason: the PvE in this game is mind-numbingly dull.

Flytrap.8075:

Beldin.5498:

A challenge is mostly fine once, but if you’ve beaten it, and it comes down to farming its mostly just annoying.

There needs to be a middle-ground.

I agree that events like Triple Trouble are over the top, but I personally prefer a challenge to the mindless 1111111 spam that we currently have.

You know what boss served nicely in that middleground?

The Marionette. I miss that boss.

Also Zergs are the negative byproduct of Anet’s philosophy that “every player you see should be helpful”. Sounds harmless and helpful right? Well “every” player being helpful means that a player no matter his skill level shouldn’t have an event harder meaning it can only scale like a dumb player just joined you. So over time as more and more idiots get added the content gets easier so that you don’t get annoyed at the presence of said idiots. It’s a really hard problem to work around.

I don’t feel like I ever have to be part of a zerg. Majority of the time I play GW2 is solo or with a small group of friends.

When we play as a group in open world we just explore and whatever we stumble across becomes an epic adventure.

I personally think it is really awesome when I am off doing my own thing, then all of a sudden I see a massive battle going on. Sometimes I will watch it from a distance or sometimes I will join in.

I really think it adds to immersion quite a bit.

I took part in a “zerg train” once, going from champ to champ, which I thought was really stupid and found no fun in that, so stay away from that.

eleshazar.6902:

All I see is more and more content that encourages zerging in this game. With the addition of the megaservers, we literally cannot escape zergs.

I personally enjoy the challenge of doing things by myself, or in a small group, and relying on my skill. To me standing in a massive amount of particle affects pressing 1 is not heroic at all. I play video games to feel like I matter, feeling like you make a difference in this virtual world is exciting (which is what I imagine is the reason many people play, even if they don’t want to admit it.) Zergs/Zerg content takes that epicness out of the game, and forces you back into the reality that you are just one tiny being amongst many, and it really doesn’t matter if you press one or not, things will just continue as they were anyway.

What happened to the epicness of this game? The feeling of being a hero? If you look at the personal story, the reason so many people hated it was because it was all about Traherene. People want to feel like the hero, like what they did is awesome and made some difference. Maybe I’m just too much of a fantasy lover, but Guild Wars 2 has lost that appeal to me now. The megaserver took what semblance there was of that left and destroyed it. Now you just take a number and stand in line to receive your loot. It feels like a chore. Working for rewards that aren’t pleasing because in actuality all you did was run as fast as you can to press 1 as fast as you can so that you get loot before something melts.

I doubt anyone from Anet will read this, but honestly the zerg content and zerg centric changes are killing the game. There is no feeling of greatness, no epicness. Community destruction aside, even if you were guildless and didn’t belong to a tight community before, these zerg centric updates just take the fun out of the game. It makes me sad to see this game deviate so far from its manifesto. When did the players become mere numbers to be corralled, and ceased to be your loyal customers that you cared about?

Because open world zerg content is cheaper to design.

Astralporing.1957:

Turgut.4397:

Games used to really test people back in the day, now it’s moved onto catering for the ultra-casual and lazy.

Ah, you see, maybe it’s because games are not a sport, but an entertainment. As such, i don’t want them to test me. I want them to entertain me for long enough that i can consider what i paid for them a money well spent. A hard, but short game is way less interesting for me than an easy one with a good and long story, or one where i can disengage my mind and just have some fun for an hour or two after work. Especially after work, when i am already tired and would really hate for the game to tire me even more.

Quoted for truth!

It’s amazing to me how many people on this forum simply do not get that.
(Well, not that amazing, when I start thinking about what the average age probably is of forum posters)

[quote=3953016;Zepidel.5349:]

I get where you are going with this. But I think they should let zergs happen and take the current reward system, but raise the requirements for Gold and Silver. Pretty much it should be being there at the end will give you Bronze, About half you get Silver, and if you were there from the beginning to about 3/4 left you get Gold.
I dont see an issue with the world boss system or zerging (Im pretty sure that was Anet’s intentions) but to spread the reward system better would make it seem more beneficial to get there sooner. Of course there would be complaints on the other end as you say of not being able to get there soon enough which I agree.

Soooo…. There really is no way to make a MMO of anykind that truly pleases all. And no matter what you do, that will always be a fact.

Open world events really should be just zerging. As sad as that may sound its really the only way you can make a fight that everyone can do without having people screwed out of a reward because of harder mechanics being failed by a few people.

Fights requiring strategy and skill to complete SHOULD be instanced since it would be a lot easier to design an encounter for a set number of people that would present a fun challenge then a free for all on a timer. I wouldn’t mind things like instanced guild raids being introduced to provide fights that you and a number of guild mates could work on.

Instanced content is really the only way you could make fair and challenging content that won’t become ignored like Teq or 3 worms are most of the time.

Reikou.7068:

Zergs are a direct result of “everyone gets rewarded/loot.”

Remove unlimited shared loot, and zergs will disappear really quickly when 95% of the zerglings don’t get anything for zerging.

Limited shared loot is fine. For example, a total of up to 5 players being rewarded for an event/mob that was designed for 1 player. Total of up to 10 players being rewarded for event/mob that was designed for 5 players to tackle, etc. A reasonable spread of of players being rewarded. However, it should not be unlimited players being rewarded for an event/mob that was designed for 1 player.

Zergs are a direct result of the game being a mmorpg. You could get rid of all the huge and shared rewards and replace it with some simple little shinies/glowies and you would still have zergs taking on the bosses/champions, because it’s a massively multiplayer online game.

LoreChief.8391:

Zerging is human nature. It is how wars are won, how battle are won, how fights are won. The more people you have the better. The game emulates life in that regard.

This. If people don’t want to zerg, don’t.

Nick.6972:

Phy.2913:

Nage.1520:

Lankybrit.4598:

Zergs are simply a by-product of:

No Holy Trinity.

Simple as that.

Rift has a holy trinity. Rift has zergs.

Rift also has real raid content and endgame.

Why can’t Arena Net balance out open world zerging with “elite hardcore” instances?

Why would they want to? The majority of players aren’t after something like that. Sure, they could make a few of them to please the elitist min maxers out there, but then those few players would start complaining about how there wasn’t enough of them as they’re getting bored with the few they have. It’s just not worth the dev’s energy and time, imo. It’s all about pleasing the largest number of people that Anet can, as that means more $$$ for their business.

Sure, they could make a game that had all sorts of graduating, tougher than nails instances and encounters, which would have high appeal to a small niche of players, and that game probably wouldn’t even make enough money to pay for development costs.

For me it is a matter of courtesy only to use basic damage (the famous 1 skill) when I am in a big PvE zerg. Other players should have the time and opportunity to deal enough damage for the system to register them as playing, too.

I do not want to play a game in which my participation in an event does mean other players miss out on their reward. Even in PvP the losing side gets points, in PvE the “Nonparticipants” get nothing.

Currently it is a problem that the unified boss schedule makes Zergs to the upper limit of the map capacity at a single event. Perhaps lowering the map capacity 5 minutes prior to the World events, thereby getting less jump-in, jump-out players per event, is possible.
At the moment, I have difficulty seeing my own damage codes per boss. Really, it would be very nice to do the Frozen Maw with 7 players again – but that will have to wait till the current incarnation of the all-15-minutes-a-boss – train gets boring for most particpants.

I can’t give enough +1 to OP.
Massive Zergs of Lag and Auto-Attackers, events are ruined to a point the biggest challenge is deal with FPS Drops, specially at Karka Queen.

I wish so much World Bosses to go back what they were before this patch.

Imo, give it some more time. I really think that the megaservers and boss encounters/schedules will be adjusted/tweaked some more, and people will begin to get bored with the massive boss encounters and you’ll see the crowds start to thin out, as well.

LoreChief.8391:

Zerging is human nature. It is how wars are won, how battle are won, how fights are won. The more people you have the better. The game emulates life in that regard.

This.

People do it because it works really well.

Zerging on its own is not as much of an issue as the targets that get zerged. Most of the times it is just one boss, a single target with billions of HP. Against up to a hundred fully geared, intelligent human players. And what is its tactic? The best it can do, spam supposedly overpowered skills to thin the zerg. In the end though, its not a matter of IF we can beat the boss, its the matter of WHEN. Thats why Anet gave timers to these bosses, there is no chance for failure otherwise.

What a zerg needs is something that is tailored to deal with a zerg. Something that is not just a single pool of HP with linear one-shot skills. Divide and conquer should be the first piece of tactical wisdom any boss should have. Marionette had that, and it was good. It also had many layers. Not just the platform bosses, but the marionette as well, and the mobs rushing to the portals through that time. Many layers going on all at once. Multiple targets. Multiple stages.

So yeah, Anet is getting the hang of zerg battles i hope.

As for champions and their scaling… yeah, scaling needs some tweaks to be able to deal with a zerg. Standalone event champs that is, like the troll or the oak, not the additional champs in other mega-boss events.

Larger cleaves come to mind, not just on size, but on number of effected targets as well. Even if they hit 5 players, there are 95 more right next to them, 10 are already reviving the kitten. Some kind of disengage or damage mitigation, but not something that relies solely on the positioning of the boss (with defiant up to 20+ all the time). CROWD control skills and heavy condition builds can also make the fight more interesting and get us build more for support.

Dont lengthen the encounters by just adding another million health points. Lengthen it by making us actively counter the boss’ assaults.

Teon.5168:

Astralporing.1957:

Turgut.4397:

Games used to really test people back in the day, now it’s moved onto catering for the ultra-casual and lazy.

Ah, you see, maybe it’s because games are not a sport, but an entertainment. As such, i don’t want them to test me. I want them to entertain me for long enough that i can consider what i paid for them a money well spent. A hard, but short game is way less interesting for me than an easy one with a good and long story, or one where i can disengage my mind and just have some fun for an hour or two after work. Especially after work, when i am already tired and would really hate for the game to tire me even more.

Quoted for truth!

It’s amazing to me how many people on this forum simply do not get that.
(Well, not that amazing, when I start thinking about what the average age probably is of forum posters)

I think the growth in market penetration for gaming and the aging of the playerbase is starting to expose a culture clash between people who game for a challenge and people who game for an escape.

I, personally, game for the escape. God knows, I have plenty of work I could do if I wanted a challenge that was hard and requires me to learn and improve my skills, and has a real chance of failure, and a reward at the end. I play games to escape from that.

I could invest hours a day every day going to the gym, repeatedly lifting weights, and grinding out muscles. I could take martial arts lessons, fine tune my reflexes, learn to react to telegraphed attacks, and learn an kitten nal of counter actions to negate the un-choreographed attacks of my opponents. If I was willing to do that, I’d actually BE a kitten in real life. I’m not, so I game for a break from that world, to pretend for a little while that I am in a world where the rules are different.

DavidH.7380:

Teon.5168:

Astralporing.1957:

Turgut.4397:

Games used to really test people back in the day, now it’s moved onto catering for the ultra-casual and lazy.

Ah, you see, maybe it’s because games are not a sport, but an entertainment. As such, i don’t want them to test me. I want them to entertain me for long enough that i can consider what i paid for them a money well spent. A hard, but short game is way less interesting for me than an easy one with a good and long story, or one where i can disengage my mind and just have some fun for an hour or two after work. Especially after work, when i am already tired and would really hate for the game to tire me even more.

Quoted for truth!

It’s amazing to me how many people on this forum simply do not get that.
(Well, not that amazing, when I start thinking about what the average age probably is of forum posters)

I think the growth in market penetration for gaming and the aging of the playerbase is starting to expose a culture clash between people who game for a challenge and people who game for an escape.

I, personally, game for the escape. God knows, I have plenty of work I could do if I wanted a challenge that was hard and requires me to learn and improve my skills, and has a real chance of failure, and a reward at the end. I play games to escape from that.

I could invest hours a day every day going to the gym, repeatedly lifting weights, and grinding out muscles. I could take martial arts lessons, fine tune my reflexes, learn to react to telegraphed attacks, and learn an kitten nal of counter actions to negate the un-choreographed attacks of my opponents. If I was willing to do that, I’d actually BE a kitten in real life. I’m not, so I game for a break from that world, to pretend for a little while that I am in a world where the rules are different.

Well I think you are making some rather sweeping generalizations and playing to age stereotypes. I personally work a full time salaried job at a large legal financial/tech corporation. I have responsibilities in life a plenty. I still seek a challenge in my video game, because to me, without a challenge the game is boring. If I can just walk around with 100 people pressing “1” and get rewarded I ask myself the question of why the heck am I wasting my time doing this? If it presents a challenge then at least I feel engaged, like I have to react and actually do something. But I suppose that is why I can never sit through more than one movie in a row….

So no I don’t think age or level of responsibility has anything to do with it. I think that it is personality based. And neither should think that the other personality’s way of having fun in a video game is invalid. I’m fine with them having some zerg content. But they’ve turned this game into all zerg content with the megaserver change. There is no way to escape it besides dungeons/fractal/pvp/wvw roaming, and those get quite boring after a time. Only thing that keeps me interested in this game at this point is wvw and pvp, but both are very stale formats with no real additions made since launch (EoTM doesn’t count as WvW since that is zerg fest/karma rain and impossible to roam in).

eleshazar.6902:

Well I think you are making some rather sweeping generalizations and playing to age stereotypes.

Well, yes, personal anecdotes and wild speculation does tend to run along those lines. :-)

eleshazar.6902:

So no I don’t think age or level of responsibility has anything to do with it. I think that it is personality based.

Sure, but I was more speculating about why that personality type seems to be flocking to games in increasingly large numbers and driving a trend toward “casualization” of gaming, or to reverse the cause and effect, why games seem to be targeting those personality types more. I don’t know which is which. I just know that the player base is diversifying and keeps moving farther away from targeting young people looking for a challenge.

eleshazar.6902:

Well I think you are making some rather sweeping generalizations and playing to age stereotypes. I personally work a full time salaried job at a large legal financial/tech corporation. I have responsibilities in life a plenty. I still seek a challenge in my video game, because to me, without a challenge the game is boring. If I can just walk around with 100 people pressing “1” and get rewarded I ask myself the question of why the heck am I wasting my time doing this? If it presents a challenge then at least I feel engaged, like I have to react and actually do something. But I suppose that is why I can never sit through more than one movie in a row….

Was just stating my opinion. If I was still in my 20s-30s, when I had a much faster paced and competitive lifestyle, along with job/responsibilities/etc I would be approaching this game in a completely different way….so I can completely understand what you’re saying above. I still have a job/responsibilities/etc….I just am not near as competitive about my video games anymore. And yea, it’s not necessarily age based, as I do know some other game player friends in my age range who play for the high end challenges/drops/hard core stuff/etc much more than I bother to do.

We never really had zerging in PvE until Scarlet brought in her Twisted Watchwork minions. Bang! Overnight everyone is “getting zergy wit’ it”. WvW comes to PvE (sigh). Blame Scarlet. And thanks to the Megaserver I can barely take on a yellow-text Moa now without someone jumping in to “help” me defeat the terrible foe.

Heroics are gone. The days of ganging up like bullies in a schoolyard are here. I wish I could replay old Personal Story episodes (not that many of them were really tough) so I could at least feel occasionally like my presence contributes something in a meaningful way.

Dorian Ordenda.1398:

Do you not know what MMO stands for? That’s your answer. So much complaint
about such little issues. Relax and enjoy the game! If there are things you don’t care for, don’t play.

I don’t play GW2. I check in from time to time. Playing ESO now but guess what? Same issues. Aion? Same issues. WoW? same issues. Rift? Same issues. Need I go on? So I should give up playing MMOs completely simply because I choose to actually play the game properly but can’t enjoy it because it’s an MMO and what others do has an influence. Oh and yes, I said ‘play it properly’ in contrast to standing in place to kill the exact same content over and over or running laps. In other words, I don’t consider playing just the same 5 min worth of content (out of dozens of hours) repeatedly playing the game properly.

“Play the game properly”

Whoa boy, can that phrase ever have umpteen different meanings to so many different players…….lol.

Teon.5168:

“Play the game properly”

Whoa boy, can that phrase ever have umpteen different meanings to so many different players…….lol.

Yup, that’s why I defined what I meant by it with “in contrast to…..”

Deamhan.9538:

Teon.5168:

“Play the game properly”

Whoa boy, can that phrase ever have umpteen different meanings to so many different players…….lol.

Yup, that’s why I defined what I meant by it with “in contrast to…..”

Oh yea, I read that…….but just had to chuckle because I have seen that phrase in so many different mmo forums…..and it is truly amazing how many different meanings can follow that phrase, depending on the player/game/situation/etc.

I just don’t like how it’s called “zerg” in the first place. Leave that term in StarCraft please! It has no place in this game. Instead, I will CONTINUE to refer to large groups of people, as groups or crowds. Please, don’t ever use that word outside of StarCraft.

Thank you!

Murlaine.4795:

I just don’t like how it’s called “zerg” in the first place. Leave that term in StarCraft please! It has no place in this game. Instead, I will CONTINUE to refer to large groups of people, as groups or crowds. Please, don’t ever use that word outside of StarCraft.

Thank you!

I’m pretty sure that’s the point of using the term. It references StarCraft in that, the mass group of players moving around represents a group of zerglings.