Guild Wars 2

Just to correct a couple of your mistakes.

1) Bigger numbers do not guarantee a win in top tier WvW. /skill

2) Without the AOE cap, the game would be laggier than it already is with large groups. Anet’s server CPU needs to calculate damage numbers for each target. Imagine 10 Eles casting Meteor Shower on a 50 man blob. That’s 500 individual calculations alone (for only the first hit). Now multiple that by how many AOE skills can be used by the Eles, and how many skills are being used by the blob. Imagine a queued 3-way fight in SM. Take that feeling, and multiply it by 10. What do you get? A burned out motherboard, and WvW down for 24 hours.

a t s e.9614:

WvW, this is where zergs shine, AoE cap limit cannot kill zergs, only a zerg can take a keep and the bigger numbers always win , not much to say there.

Not true, I’ve been in a “zerg” outnumbered 3 to 1 on open field and we won, I’d paste screenshots of the action if I was on my computer right now.

a t s e.9614:

scale the door’s HP with the players around. Taking a tower solo should be possible without any ram or whatever its called.

This is, and I cannot stress this enough, a TERRIBLE idea, 1 guy solo face rub a tower door? No.

a t s e.9614:

If you are downed , you shouldnt prevent players from stomping you, you are defeated , you lost, there shouldnt be any second chance unless your teammates helps you at his own risk. Maybe take 50% more damage while ressing or something that prevents this perma-res non-sense.

If you’re down you’re not out, you haven’t lost yet, it’s a core game mechanic. Should it be better balanced so some professions wouldn’t be OP compared to others? Sure, removed? No.

Now about lag, skill lag has been improved IMMENSELY from the early days of the game, as it is now it’s actually much better than I ever hoped for, I honestly didn’t think they could do it.
You probably suffer from frame rate drop, thats 100% client side, i.e. your computer, try to lower character detail and especially character limit.

Atse strikes again.

Eh. I like zergs. But you can hate them, that’s okay.

I like feeling like I’m fighting a war with server. I like the feeling of banding together and slaughtering our enemies. I’m not a roamer. I would feel lonesome as a solo rogue and I would feel similarly in a small group. Meh.

a t s e.9614:

Exceptions dont really matter though 99,9% of the time the zerg wins, I knew somebody was gonna say that they won outnumbered etc. If you watch an equal match up in tpvp , 4v5 is almost impossible to win .

Its like saying that the rewards are good because you got a precursor drop , its so rare that it dosent really matter.

I’m on Desolation and we (very) often win fights in open field outnumbered, its not that rare.
I don’t play on PvP, but in WvW a 4v5 doesn’t have a guaranteed outcome, not even 3v5 and if we’re talking about a Thief just look up on YouTube “Thief vs Zerg” and see who wins.

It’s too late for this game. The game would have to be rebuilt from the ground up to fix all the problems with the combat.

Your best bet is to find a game with proper combat if it bothers you that much. Otherwise suck it up and deal with it.

a t s e.9614:

Exceptions dont really matter though 99,9% of the time the zerg wins, I knew somebody was gonna say that they won outnumbered etc. If you watch an equal match up in tpvp , 4v5 is almost impossible to win .

Its like saying that the rewards are good because you got a precursor drop , its so rare that it dosent really matter.

I think it was last nite or the previous nite, where we won an SPvP match 4-5 because we killed the Lord. And I’m only Rank 16.

/skill

Five players is a group. Maybe six can be the start of zergdom.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It’s too late for this game. The game would have to be rebuilt from the ground up to fix all the problems with the combat.

Your best bet is to find a game with proper combat if it bothers you that much. Otherwise suck it up and deal with it.

No , ill stick with this game and hope they’ll do something better. U dont have to rebuild anything just fix the zerg drivin thing. Im honestly getting tiered of the zerg. Maybe I just need a break from this game I dont know.

PSionic storms hard counter zerg when they are clumped together and don’t even get me started on colossi.

In PvE rarely do I see a human zerg moving around. I only see these rarely when a guild group is there. In other times, nearly everyone do the roamer/headless chicken style of gameplay.

Zerg is ok if it is organized. But right now in PvE the players are far from organized.

I talked about this topic on my other thread. I think a lot of these issues are interconnected.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/escape/DPS-Tests-need-to-Stop

I do have to add something about “removing the AoE cap”. I used to support this idea. But I do not anymore. My reason is:

The Greek phalanx stands together to help each other defend. The Roman Legions stands together to help each other defend.

So in a way, the AoE cap is a simulation of the above. A group of soldiers standing together should offer stronger defence.

I do support another idea: Bring back body blocking. Only then can the tanky players effectively defend the glass cannons. Now there will be field tactics possible.

CHIPS.6018:

I do have to add something about “removing the AoE cap”. I used to support this idea. But I do not anymore. My reason is:

The Greek phalanx stands together to help each other defend. The Roman Legions stands together to help each other defend.

So in a way, the AoE cap is a simulation of the above. A group of soldiers standing together should offer stronger defense.

The phalanx and the Roman testudo only worked in a milieu in which artillery was very limited. Heck, those formations would not even have worked versus English longbows. Not only does GW2 have massive artillery all over the place, they have tanks and magic — although the longbows are weak as all get out.

a t s e.9614:

First lets establish what’s a zerg, it dosent necessary mean a blob of 50 players, a zerg is a group of players that can stick together to make the things easier or faster. It can be 5 players or 10 or 1000 dosent matter, moving as a blob should never be considered a strategy and should never be rewarding.

So you define the word zerg and we should accept it? And what are you talking about? blobs or zergs? And why should playing together never be rewarding? I do understand that the scaling, especially the champion scaling just doesn’t work and that’s why people abuse it zerging but still.. playing together should always be more rewarding than playing alone in an mmorpg, that’s what this genre is all about.. playing together, socialize, ..

In September of 2012 people were claiming that zergs were killing this game. It’s an old tale.

I agree with the OP. It is part of the main reason I stopped playing GW2. Living Story’s main contribution to the game, in my opinion, has been the encouragement and fostering of zergs in open world. All people do is blob around the flavor of the week zone for achievements. Boring, mindless, non engaging. Not the combat and gameplay I bought the game for.

Zerging is not really a mechanic.

The word Zerg comes from Blizzard’s StarCraft game. There is a race there which is very insect like who are called Zerg.

The Zerg, basically, invade planets, and they are millions, if not even billions. They just rush as a huge group consuming and destroying everything in their path.

Farzo.8410:

Zerging is not really a mechanic.

The word Zerg comes from Blizzard’s StarCraft game. There is a race there which is very insect like who are called Zerg.

The Zerg, basically, invade planets, and they are millions, if not even billions. They just rush as a huge group consuming and destroying everything in their path.

What you described is what open world gameplay / Living Story is like in GW2.

The zerg, basically, invades a zone, and they are dozens, if not hundreds. They just rush as a huge group consuming all NPCs and destroying everything in their path.

zerging will prevail in any content and can only be fought by two additions that will never make it into GW2:

a) body blocking – the engine is huffing und puffing already, the additional load would bring it to its knees.
b) friendly fire, but that would effectively turn GW2 into a free for all open world pvp, only a few niche developers dare to go this way, our little fluffy paradise here certainly never would in a million years (and personally I wouldn´t want it to do, I´d rather play one real pvp sandbox MMO on the side for that kind of thrill).

I agree with you about zergs in pve, especially open world Dynamic events where zerging just gets old. But not in wvw. The bigger zerg doesn’t always win in wvw, its usually coverage.

If you are fighting open field. A group of 30 ranged classes that fights a guild who has a balanced make up of 30(so like 18 melee? 23 if you wanna go very heavy melee). The ranged group will almost always win if you dodge when you need to and kite when you need to. This is because from a zergs perspective, there are multiple targets, and they can only hit one. From the ranged perspective, there is only one target that all of them need to hit.

For ppt, a giant blob definitely doesn’t win for pretty much the same reason you don’t in spvp. You can only go to one point(or tower) at a time when the other players(smaller groups) can split up and go to each point(tower).

I don’t like your proposals, but blobs are the reason I can’t take WvW seriously. I know some guilds blob better than others, so there’s skill to it, but meh. ANet might as well make the blob a AI group controlled by the commander who initiate Stability, Might stacks, Stealth and whatnot at his command, and mash all the attacks inbetween.

I hate people who are all like “Oh lawdy GW1 was such amaze bcuz this” but I really miss the Alliance Battles. Being able to drop into matches of 12v12, made up of 3 groups of 4, was fun. Thanks to the capping and player count, blobbing throughout a battle was the silliest thing a group could do. It managed large and intimate fights without the ever present spectre of 30+ players rolling over everyone.

Like s/tPvP individual and team skill could shine more obviously than in 50v50 clusterkittens, but without the absolute every-skill-to-the-milli-second skill rotation builds you might get in PvP/arena.

kokiman.2364:

a t s e.9614:

First lets establish what’s a zerg, it dosent necessary mean a blob of 50 players, a zerg is a group of players that can stick together to make the things easier or faster. It can be 5 players or 10 or 1000 dosent matter, moving as a blob should never be considered a strategy and should never be rewarding.

So you define the word zerg and we should accept it? And what are you talking about? blobs or zergs? And why should playing together never be rewarding? I do understand that the scaling, especially the champion scaling just doesn’t work and that’s why people abuse it zerging but still.. playing together should always be more rewarding than playing alone in an mmorpg, that’s what this genre is all about.. playing together, socialize, ..

I agree with this; the OPs definition of a zerg isn’t the same as mine.

Others mentioned that team play and social play are important elements of a MMO game, and I agree. There isn’t anything wrong with large groups of players teaming up, even in WvW.

The true zerg is the one with little to no coordination or cooperation. It’s a blob for blobs sake, to upscale events in hopes of tagging more mobs, or being carried by the skill of others, and getting a revive each time you are downed because one of the dozens of people around you will be kind enough to pick you up.

Group play is different and is quite rewarding. If anyone has ever played in a skilled WvW group you know what I’m talking about. And that group might appear to just be a blob to others but its FAR from that zerg I mentioned above. Everything about that group is designed to work together as a functional unit.

The shame is that those same types of skilled groups – usually guilds – aren’t given their own instances in PvE events to take their skills and use them there. Instead you get random people together, so you get little to no coordination, and you end up with zerg mentality.

I respect your opinion but I don’t really agree. Zerging is a concep created and made popular by the community, likewise to the Warrior class and most other ’’popular’’ statements. Yes there are flaws in this game like many others but it is the player-base who decides to stick with them denying blindly the existence of any other alternatives.

For the Swarrrrm groblgeglege

Nothing about the term zerg can even be remotely applied to pve dungeons. Stacking in one spot is a strategy, it is not a zerg.

Secondly, your definition of zerg is ludicrous: “a group of players that can stick together to make the things easier”. That definition fits basically every party ever created in every MMO ever. How do you intend to have a discussion with such loose definitions?

There are a lot of people these days slinging the word zerg around. If there are a lot of people doing something, to them it’s a zerg. They completely ignore any number of anti-zerg mechanics that have made it into PvE at the very least.

The Marionette has a zerg aspect, but because of the lanes and platforms, it mitigated the zerg and required skill and people to learn fights. The wurm needs not only people to divide into groups, but people to have strategy. There’s a condition team needed, a reflection team. This is not a zerg.

The LA fights aren’t zergs either, though some aspects are. Things are broken up in a number of ways. Even in the escape from LA patch, while you could zerg, if you wanted to rescue the max amount of citizens for the max reward, the only way to do it was to break up into small groups.

People ignore the challenges in the game and repeat the word zerg over and over. If you zerg a lot of this new content, you’ll fail it.

I really don’t understand why everyone is so anti-zerg. I enjoy the game play, but to each their own I guess.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It’s too late for this game. The game would have to be rebuilt from the ground up to fix all the problems with the combat.

Your best bet is to find a game with proper combat if it bothers you that much. Otherwise suck it up and deal with it.

a t s e.9614:

Zerging is a broken mechanic that dosent work , never worked and will never work. First lets establish what’s a zerg, it dosent necessary mean a blob of 50 players, a zerg is a group of players that can stick together to make the things easier or faster. It can be 5 players or 10 or 1000 dosent matter, moving as a blob should never be considered a strategy and should never be rewarding.

PvE, Open World: Let’s talk about open world, the zergs in there are a laggy mess, you cant see whats going on, your contribution is pointless , no strategy involved, most of the time its too easy and sometimes its too hard or boring becauses the scaling gets crazy when the mob has like 20 billion hp.

PvE: dungeons , zergs exist there too , stacking together in one spot is very effective once again, there’s more risk than open world and its harder but its still the same core mechanic , move as a blob and kill stuff with less risk to get more rewards

WvW, this is where zergs shine, AoE cap limit cannot kill zergs, only a zerg can take a keep and the bigger numbers always win , not much to say there.

SPvP Hotjoin Vs Tourny : This is the only reason why zergs dont work in spvp because of the capture the point system , if it was death match only, moving as a blob would be very rewarding, if a player dies just wait for him to respawn and strike the ennemy team again. But in hotjoin of course the zergs dominate.

Solution PvE: Rework mob AI, punish players for moving together like a blob like it was done in gw1, if anybody remembers FoW the fastest speed clears were done with a group that is not moving together and instead does different parts of the dungeon to finish it quicker than a blob.

Solution WvW: Remove the AOE cap limit seriously ….. when a blob of 50 gets one shotted by 2 staff eles they will understand that they need another strategy. Also scale the door’s HP with the players around. Taking a tower solo should be possible without any ram or whatever its called.

Solution spvp: limit/nerf the downed state, when you down somebody in a 2v1 or 3v1, the res goes FASTER than the stomp, why?. If you are downed , you shouldnt prevent players from stomping you, you are defeated , you lost, there shouldnt be any second chance unless your teammates helps you at his own risk. Maybe take 50% more damage while ressing or something that prevents this perma-res non-sense.

So yea pls nerf zergs, too OP.

OP : Nerf people gathering and playing together because i don’t like it.

Also your provided solutions aren’t going to work.
“rework mob ai " like that’s just going to miraculously happen because you just asked for it.
The other two have been addressed by others.

Also your second post proves you don’t know the first thing about high-tier WvW.

Lol try zerging a WoW boss with 25 people, ignoring mechanics and not using your mitigation abilities and see what happens. Zerg content is shallow content. I don’t see the fun in overcoming game challenges by just brute forcing everything.

Zergs are the by-product of content design.

Nothing more nothing less.

Azreell.1568:

Zergs are the by-product of content design.

Nothing more nothing less.

Not really. Zergs are a by-product of many design decisions in this game. The game would need to fundamentally change to resolve this.

1. AOE cap. as long as this is present zergs will win
2. Lack of roles. As long as everyone is doing the same thing then there will be no strategy needed. 10 people doing dps will always be better than 2 people doing dps.
3. Shared loot and xp. As long as everyone in the zerg gets equal loot and xp the fastest solution is always to stay together. 2 people will always kill things faster than 1 person
4. Content design. As long as bosses are designed to just be HP bags with a timer, the more the better.
5. Stacking buffs in only a small AOE. since all buffs and heals are given only in a small radius stacking in a giant blob will always be more effective than not stacking.
6. Combo fields have unlimited use in a small radius. Same problem as with buffs.

These things will always encourage zerging over other methods, especially in the open world.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Azreell.1568:

Zergs are the by-product of content design.

Nothing more nothing less.

Not really. Zergs are a by-product of many design decisions in this game. The game would need to fundamentally change to resolve this.

1. AOE cap. as long as this is present zergs will win
2. Lack of roles. As long as everyone is doing the same thing then there will be no strategy needed. 10 people doing dps will always be better than 2 people doing dps.
3. Shared loot and xp. As long as everyone in the zerg gets equal loot and xp the fastest solution is always to stay together. 2 people will always kill things faster than 1 person
4. Content design. As long as bosses are designed to just be HP bags with a timer, the more the better.
5. Stacking buffs in only a small AOE. since all buffs and heals are given only in a small radius stacking in a giant blob will always be more effective than not stacking.
6. Combo fields have unlimited use in a small radius. Same problem as with buffs.

These things will always encourage zerging over other methods, especially in the open world.

You obviously didn’t understand my reply lol.

P.S. I agree with you :P

I have three words for you………………..FOR THE OVERMIND.

…………..If you don’t get it, move on.

I liked gw1 better, I think the biggest reason is because zergs take away any sense of self-accomplishment. How much damage did I do to that champ 80 of us just killed, anyway?