Guild Wars 2

I kinda feel like the majority of players arent even caring about wvw, a typical player such as myself will enter an area, if no one who’s leading or if there’s just no population from your server representing and trying to claim land, there’s just no way to enjoy it. So you leave and continue your adventure elsewhere. and it’s basically who has the bigger group running aimlessly claiming territories until 2hrs later the next biggest zerg reclaims it.
I’m just wondering what it’d be like if you threw AI pushes into the mix, much like supply runs, a constant flow, so a small group can force that push into claiming something for their land, and maybe help snowball, and it’d be more defense against “my server doesn’t have ppl on or interested.” and im not sayin this is the answer…i’d hate to be the guy attempting to balance this. But if 50 man zergs are the best strategy, there’s something wrong. this idea is much inspired by a game such as league of legends, and was just curious as to how well it would offset manpower vs. smart pushing by a divided group

in before “We need less NPCs in WvW not more”

There are ways to enjoy WvW when your server has limited population, but it really depends on your mindset and preferred playstyle. If you don’t like running between smaller objectives, being a pest and having some small fights, yes, there isn’t much you can do. Capping with no opposition is boring to a lot of people, including me, but some might find that enjoyable too.

Currently we have the NPC camps, which are similar to what you are suggesting ( i think ) – they allow you to push an objective (supply camps) with smaller numbers than you would usually use, and take the camp much faster (yes I know supply camps are soloable, but a lot of people don’t/can’t do this atm and like NPC help). The breakout events are also a form of NPC push, against a tower, but these do require you have 10 people on. Really, I can’t see how we can push it past this point using NPCs.

50 man zergs are the best strategy in terms of capping things fast and responding with force – not necessarily the most fun, but definitely atm they are the best option. Honestly, it’s realistic in terms of real war – honestly if we were fighting with a real life death penalty, we’d all be volunteering for treb duty – but large, mobile forces that can look after their wounded well are going to be able to capture more heavily fortified things faster than a small team. Similarly, a small team will have its uses, as will scouts, sentries, etc. But if you are looking for map-wide capture and recapture speed and strength, zergs are the way to go.

A smart team can beat a bigger, mindless team, but 5 world class shooters aren’t taking down a regiment – adding in more things to help them do this isn’t, I think, the answer – making their role more valid overall is.

Just your last point about a divided team – depending on numbers, a divided team of 25 and 25 will arguably be better in some situations than one 50 man team already.

nah the npcs at those camps and little control points do almost nothing haha. usually when i hop in a wvw where my server isn’t doing much, i’ll roam capturing those, nothing comes out of it. now if a group of 50 ppl are roaming zerging, 25 are defending and 25 are trying to capture, the 25 will get steamrolled, and they jus move on, whatever the 25 were working on, the 50 caught on and are otw to steamroll them and reclaim. if war tactics were simply throw bodies at it, we’re fighting a losing battle.

Yeah you’re right there, but I wasn’t talking about 25 attacking and 25 defending. I was (sadly) talking about abandoning defense (even numbers defense can be hard, especially on lower tiers where a lot of people aren’t willing to contribute to a push) and having two groups of 25 attack. Zergs usually aren’t going to use more than say 120-150 supply to cap a tower, and outside of a golem rush around twice that for a keep. This means that a group of 25 will cap something at close to the same speed – except now you have two groups doing this. The enemy zerg can come to react, but maybe you can hold them for just long enough for the other group to cap their target.

But yes, I agree that there is little you can do with 1-5 against 50, but this is probably as it should be.

Honestly, I don’t mind that zergs can do objectives faster. What I do care about is Yaks and Sentries giving more points to players based on how many people partake in killing them.

Objectives should give a non-changing (based on player amount) of points to the world. These objectives are objectives that directly give you points, not objectives that require you to wait (keeps/towers/camps).

Not going to go too much into WXP, but I think it should be a pool that distributes based on players giving with a ceiling and floor on how much given (so that you don’t get 1 point for assisting in a camp, nor do you get 1500 for soloing a keep).

Yeah it’s got some decent balances, I would just like to see more involvement from people and I think that may come from smaller groups or making a single player feel like he/she is contributing to the overall result. As of right now, the only time i see progress is when a really big wvw guild will have a ton of members on, and only seeing that progress in those spikes, no consistency, but i do agree with you on some of the tactics that are already in place. after all, Arenanet is educated on mmo’s and aren’t going to completely bomb it haha.

with certain objectives esplen more people will always be better, and wvw will never be ruled by small groups, but right now it’s the only working tactic, and it’s chaotic more than tactful and rewarding haha.