Guild Wars 2

There must be some modifications to the WvW mechanic that can be done to prevent massive blobs. It just makes it impossible for anyone to defend anything when you get 100 people blobbling and rolling over everything.

What can be done to change this phenomenon?

The ONLY way it will ever change is to give significant exp. and karma for defense. They don’t call it a karma train for nothing. Anet created this problem the way they structured wvw. You get nothing for building siege, refreshing siege, running supplies, etc.

Why would we want to redesign the game mode to promote my guild “not” to play together in WvW?

I know I enjoy playing in large fights. I see no reason it should be changed to satisfy those who don’t. They have sPvP conquest if they want small fights. As well they have stronghold coming in for that.

Well if you want to get real harsh – karma can go both plus and minus. < 20 players, usually plus. >20 players, everyone loose karma for a keep capture.

Of course, it would destroy WvW and probably make half the people leave on the spot but hey you wanted to prevent blobbing.

You can’t really get rid of blobs.
Having more defensible objectives actually promotes larger groups though because you need more people carrying supply and dpsing gates. If things were easier to take you might end up with smaller groups trying to take them and smaller groups being able to defend them. Everyone loves hitting a gate for hours while one guy keeps trebbing a door or ac-ing you..

I also happen to enjoy the “blob”. Huge fights are why I transferred to T1. What can change to stop the blob? Meet it head on with a more organized blob and let the chaos ensue.

Why would they " prevent the blob"? That is why they created wvw in the first place. This is a Massively multiplayer online role playing game(MMORPG) . Massively mutliplayer means massive battles, as were requested by the players who filled out the surveys used to create GW2.

The best fights are when you have 60 of one team and 40 of another not attacking each other , instead there to kill you in your gari all walls and gates down terribly grim and outnumbered and you kill them all and win against all odds. THAT is what makes wvw great. We do not play massively multiplayer games to play with " just a few people", we play them to have massive multiplayer fights, that means massive numbers, not " preventing blobs".

I don’t think we should remove the blob, it is a viable tactic in WvW and all that. (Coming from someone that hates zerging)

But if you read the OP’s post as “How to make other playstyles viable compared to blobing. Or how to give other players tools to deal with a blob.” then there is nothing wrong in that. Blobbing often have the habbit of turning into the “Deathstar”, and unless you have Luke Skywalker, R2D2 AND an X-Wing available, well though to be you.

Some of the most common responses I see: Send out your fight guild to kill them. Just go do something else. Proper defense with AC’s etc at a fully upgraded keep.

If you can do some of those then great. I’ve seen fighting guilds take down huge zergs (and it was awesome), I’ve seen some server split up into lots of 5 man groups and back capped everything faster than the zerg can take things (Also very awesome), and I’ve seen a single player hold of 10-15 people at Bay with only a cannon and a few AC’s for hours. (totally awesome). But these are not always possible for various reasons.

The game mechanics/combat system greatly favours numbers, so it is safer for players in a big group, lets them focus more firepower, takes objectives faster, and thus gives more rewards. So it is only natural that a lot of players gravitate towards blobs.

Now if we where to just add some “knee-jerk” responses to get rid of blob’s, I have a couple of funny ones:

• Slightly reduce the damage on AC’s (-10% for ex), but instead give them a +1% damage per enemy player caught in the aoe. And watch zergs melt. But be completely useless against 1-5 targets.
• Enable friendly fire (Guardian loot stick #1 go!)
• Enable Collision Detection between players (for even nastier effect, let this include dodge rolls)
• Change the Outnumbered bonus to give you *X stats based on how much you’re outnumbered, so 8 vs 80 gets all base stats *10. Then go around like superman and smash doors, insta kill players, and trash keep lords in 5 seconds. Not to mention Guardian Staff #1 lawn-mow entire enemy zerg.

But none of those would ever work in the game, without completely ruining any sort of balance, and completely remove a play style that a lot of players enjoy (blobs).

If you want to actually make combat against a blob somewhat feasible, that is harder. ANet will never drastically change stats or anything else that could affect a 1on1 situation. So they won’t buff you upp with +100, 200, 500 toughness or power etc. So any changes would have to work in a different way. The prime suspect here is Outnumbered buff, and make it do something that actually help you in a combat vs outnumbered.

Since one of the main advantages for many players to group together is for defence through target saturation, since near all aoe skills can affect max 5 targets, if you have 20 players only 1/4th is hit, and moving about another 1/4th can be hit on the next attack. How about a system that lets outnumbered players affect more enemies ? Say a +2 when outnumbered, so your AE suddenly affects 7 targets instead of 5. Let’s say the same with buffs, so if you use “Stand Your Ground!” 7 of your allies can get the stability bonus, making it easier for you to cope with the enemy numbers ?

Similarly another great advantage for huge group vs small group is more attacks, more skills that can target 5 of enemy players. What if we reduce this by -2 ? So all their aoe damages affects only 3 players instead of 5 ? Same with their buffs like “Stand Your Ground!” will only work on 3 players instead of 5, which might make it easier for small group to get past the crazy amount of stability and other buffs that the large group can spew out ?

What with supply ? How about the outnumbered bonus lets yo pick up +5 supply limit, so even out numbered you might have enough supply to build siege either in defence against their blob at a keep, or to build rams faster to back cap after them ?

I have no idea how this would play out, just trying to throw out some food for thought.

Heres the issue, people will naturally try to get as many as possible in one group because its the most effective strategy, and to counter an enemy blob you create your own, its kind of a vicious cycle. WvW has always been about numbers, you can have 20 very skilled players, but an 80man blob will wreck anything. Many players also do not like fighting and turtle up in towers/keeps and bunker up with siege which simply promotes more blobbing because ppt needs to be worked on at times and its easier to capture something with a blob when the objective is sieged up, or when you know the enemy might respond with their own blob.

Blobbing can be extremely frustrating when your facing one, and give you a feeling of confidence and safety when your in one. Its normal for players to act like this, like in pve when you have a massive zerg against one target, much of the game is based on this concept.

There is a lot of issues that can arise if trying to deal with blobbing. WvW is based around PPT and capturing objectives, therefore having a large moving force is necessary at times when the enemy also has a large force. And no matter what people will always try to find the most effective strategy.

The upcoming HoT wvw changes might change this, who knows. Im not hopeful but we will see.

as other have suggested there are ways to thwart the blob. and that has its own fun involved.
but yes i agree with you that it would be nice if they designed things to incorporate multiple playstyles in WvW besides the numbers game. but it think that comes down more to map design than anything.
generic maps result in generic gameplay.
my biggest compliant where is the choke point that could allow a small group to crush a large one? maybe it will be in the HoT expansion but im not holding my breath.

oneply.9586:

as other have suggested there are ways to thwart the blob. and that has its own fun involved.
but yes i agree with you that it would be nice if they designed things to incorporate multiple playstyles in WvW besides the numbers game. but it think that comes down more to map design than anything.
generic maps result in generic gameplay.
my biggest compliant where is the choke point that could allow a small group to crush a large one? maybe it will be in the HoT expansion but im not holding my breath.

choke points work for the group that uses it more intelligently

I honestly don’t think there is any game change mechanics that can ever be implemented that will change the blob/zerg way of playing. It more of a player “problem” than anything. (same with gear/build preferences. Anet doesn’t require anyone to have a certain gear stat in order to be able to do anything in the game, with the exception of high level fractals)

So it’s up to the players to come up with a different strategy in dealing with/creating blobs.

However I do like that they are addressing the defense problem. No one defends much because it’s easier and more rewarding to flip it back than it is to defend.

Short of a complete redesign WvW is #$%^ed.

The new map in HOT will see some people come back for a little while but they will leave soon enough.

What they need is

1: A map that encourages people to hit larger objectives from different angles at the same time (IE choke points, secondary objectives etc…)

2: A way to keep numbers somewhat balanced between groups

3: An actual reward system with comparable rewards to PvP & PvE.

X T D.6458:

Heres the issue, people will naturally try to get as many as possible in one group because its the most effective strategy, and to counter an enemy blob you create your own, its kind of a vicious cycle. WvW has always been about numbers,

Not sure what you mean by “about numbers” in this particular instance. I do know though, that 3-4 nights a week, my guild had 40-60 on at one time. Often we have to split 30 and 30 on two separate maps. Sometimes we can get all on one map.

Are we a “blob”, a “zerg”, or an “organized guild group”? Why does the fact that we take the opportunity to play together as one unit create a “viscous cycle” ? As I see it it doesn’t. It creates an opportunity for use to play together, in close proximity as a unit. It allows us to regale our cool gear or mock one anothers character in jest, as we can all see one anothers character.

X T D.6458:

WvW has always been about numbers, you can have 20 very skilled players, but an 80man blob will wreck anything. Many players also do not like fighting and turtle up in towers/keeps and bunker up with siege which simply promotes more blobbing because ppt needs to be worked on at times and its easier to capture something with a blob when the objective is sieged up, or when you know the enemy might respond with their own blob.

An 80 player “blob” cannot wreck everything in absolutes though, a 20 “very skilled” players with a sieged up location can absolutely see to that.

X T D.6458:

Blobbing can be extremely frustrating when your facing one, and give you a feeling of confidence and safety when your in one. Its normal for players to act like this, like in pve when you have a massive zerg against one target, much of the game is based on this concept.

That does not justify trying to discourage players from having fun together in force though.

X T D.6458:

There is a lot of issues that can arise if trying to deal with blobbing. WvW is based around PPT and capturing objectives, therefore having a large moving force is necessary at times when the enemy also has a large force. And no matter what people will always try to find the most effective strategy.

The upcoming HoT wvw changes might change this, who knows. Im not hopeful but we will see.

I hope not. I rather enjoy large battles over a keep. Had some really great 3 way battles in a garrison last night as well as both in hills and bay. It was nearly 6 hours of constant large battles. Good times indeed.

X T D.6458:

oneply.9586:

as other have suggested there are ways to thwart the blob. and that has its own fun involved.
but yes i agree with you that it would be nice if they designed things to incorporate multiple playstyles in WvW besides the numbers game. but it think that comes down more to map design than anything.
generic maps result in generic gameplay.
my biggest compliant where is the choke point that could allow a small group to crush a large one? maybe it will be in the HoT expansion but im not holding my breath.

choke points work for the group that uses it more intelligently

yup, but there are no real choke points in WvW, so…….

@coglin, WvW being about numbers meaning its about coverage and how many a server can get on a map, the more it can get, the more effective the server can be. Especially during certain timezones.

Vicious cycle means countering blob with a blob, essentially blob begats blob. If you expect an enemy server to bring large numbers you will always try to bring large numbers. I dont know how long you been playing wvw, but it wasnt always like this.
Zergs werent always this size, it typically ranged in 20-30 size, at some point t1 especially just exploded with blobbing and it just became standard practice.

An 80man blob can wreck anything, and quickly. I didnt say it cant be countered.

Never said anything about discouraging players from blobbing, Im not taking one side or another. Merely giving both sides of what its like to be against a blob and in one. Did not say blobs are bad or good. Stop making assumptions and lacking objective thought.

And indeed, lots of fun fights last night, idk what server your on but we had lots of good fights last night, nothing like a good slaughtering of blobs to get the blood pumping.

oneply.9586:

X T D.6458:

oneply.9586:

as other have suggested there are ways to thwart the blob. and that has its own fun involved.
but yes i agree with you that it would be nice if they designed things to incorporate multiple playstyles in WvW besides the numbers game. but it think that comes down more to map design than anything.
generic maps result in generic gameplay.
my biggest compliant where is the choke point that could allow a small group to crush a large one? maybe it will be in the HoT expansion but im not holding my breath.

choke points work for the group that uses it more intelligently

yup, but there are no real choke points in WvW, so…….

:o whoa what? no offense but are you playing with your eyes closed lol

How does this sound… This is for an EB replacement.

There are 3 lanes with 5 points in each lane. These lanes meet together like a Y shape.

Point 1: Your spawn.
Point 2: Tower A.
Point 3: Keep.
Point 4: Tower B.
Point 5: SMC.

The map uses a linear model. Take take a point, you must have all preceeding points. You can still siege and kill the lord in any structure you want, but the control point doesn’t activate unless you have a lord alive in every point leading back to your spawn.

This does 2 things. 1, it forces zergs to split up to defend and scout properly to ensure your structures aren’t attacked in your lane to stop you from claiming a new structure. 2, it makes it harder for 1 server to dominate both other servers at the same time because there are too many structures to keep the link back to your spawn.

You can then introduce a MOBA element to this with siegerazer.

When activated, 50 guards will spawn and march to tower a. Once they reach tower 1, they will stay there for 30 seconds and repair it, and build some basic siege to defend it.

After 30 seconds, 25 guards will move to the keep and stay there for 30 seconds. Once there, they will repair the keep and build some basic siege.

After 30 seconds, 15 guards will move to tower B. Repair its walls, and build some light siege. And that’s it. No NPCs will help push an advantage on SMC.

Siegerazer will also march from spawn to the keep giving the guards a survivability buff, but will stop at the keep so his advantage won’t push to tower B or SMC.

Does something like this force zergs to split up sufficiently? At least once they try to move beyond SMC? Does the NPC element seem like enough to push an overwhelming force out of your lane in the event you’re trying to fight against coverage?

X T D.6458:

oneply.9586:

X T D.6458:

oneply.9586:

as other have suggested there are ways to thwart the blob. and that has its own fun involved.
but yes i agree with you that it would be nice if they designed things to incorporate multiple playstyles in WvW besides the numbers game. but it think that comes down more to map design than anything.
generic maps result in generic gameplay.
my biggest compliant where is the choke point that could allow a small group to crush a large one? maybe it will be in the HoT expansion but im not holding my breath.

choke points work for the group that uses it more intelligently

yup, but there are no real choke points in WvW, so…….

:o whoa what? no offense but are you playing with your eyes closed lol

yes there are “choke points” but theyre not good ones that are designed well. thats what i mean by “real choke points.”
mind point out where these amazing choke points are?

any bridge, tunnel, narrow area, open gates, ramp, tower/keep portals, they are everywhere. I dont know what you mean by not good ones designed well. The key is to utilize the area, a good commander will know how to get around the massive aoe that will be dropped in the choke point, finding a way around if possible, using portal bombs, etc.

Choke point are useful to you because it forces a large enemy group to be condensed in a small section rather then spread out in the open field, and thus more easily hit by aoe fire.

Dusty Moon.4382:

There must be some modifications to the WvW mechanic that can be done to prevent massive blobs. It just makes it impossible for anyone to defend anything when you get 100 people blobbling and rolling over everything.

What can be done to change this phenomenon?

Remove aoe limits for 1 thing. ESO is doing this for exactly this reason.

morrolan.9608:

Dusty Moon.4382:

There must be some modifications to the WvW mechanic that can be done to prevent massive blobs. It just makes it impossible for anyone to defend anything when you get 100 people blobbling and rolling over everything.

What can be done to change this phenomenon?

Remove aoe limits for 1 thing. ESO is doing this for exactly this reason.

The problem with removing or increasing the aoe limit is its a double edged sword, it will simply encourage more blobbing, because smaller groups will get hit more. If you can hit more targets so can the blob, how long do you think a smaller group will last then. And I cant see anet ever allowing players weapon/utility skills being able to hit 50 players at once.

Disable combat rezzing. They can still blob and zerg, but small parts of them can be murdered to trim the zerg.
Right now it’s insane, a guild group can rez through several high hitting attacks + multiple siege.

aspirine.6852:

Disable combat rezzing. They can still blob and zerg, but small parts of them can be murdered to trim the zerg.
Right now it’s insane, a guild group can rez through several high hitting attacks + multiple siege.

Well again remember it can work both ways, if they cant rez, neither can your side. Have to remember its a delicate balancing act.

Also when you say rezzing do you mean down or dead players.

Other games you die if you run in blob. Some mages come, hit big fire spells and whole blob is dead. One good idea would be give classes nuke skills that do more damage when there is lot’s of players in small area. +20 players in small area and skills would hit 30k heavy classes.

Get rid of the aoe cap. Make it so that small skilled and organized groups can take down a “zerg” without having to blob up themselves.

X T D.6458:

morrolan.9608:

Remove aoe limits for 1 thing. ESO is doing this for exactly this reason.

The problem with removing or increasing the aoe limit is its a double edged sword, it will simply encourage more blobbing, because smaller groups will get hit more. If you can hit more targets so can the blob, how long do you think a smaller group will last then. And I cant see anet ever allowing players weapon/utility skills being able to hit 50 players at once.

Listen to X T D, he understand the consequences of knee-jerk solutions.

Introduce a new Utility Skill. Blob Bomb. The damage scales to the number of players in a certain radius of ground zero of the impact.

Scaling would be from 0 damage for 5 players to massive damage for 50 (or whatever) players.

This would encourage different tactics and strategy, splits etc.

I like the linear map too. Kinda hope thats what the new HoT map will be like.

Typhus.3502:

Get rid of the aoe cap. Make it so that small skilled and organized groups can take down a “zerg” without having to blob up themselves.

Get rid of aoe cap -> goodbye cpu.
get rid of aoe cap -> hello retaliation.

Not gonna happen. Ever.

A small skilled group can already take out zergs with the current system. Why do you think guilds run with their melee all stacked up? Just for boon sharing and condi clears? No. They also do it so that all their melee hit the same 5 targets.

oneply.9586:

X T D.6458:

oneply.9586:

X T D.6458:

oneply.9586:

as other have suggested there are ways to thwart the blob. and that has its own fun involved.
but yes i agree with you that it would be nice if they designed things to incorporate multiple playstyles in WvW besides the numbers game. but it think that comes down more to map design than anything.
generic maps result in generic gameplay.
my biggest compliant where is the choke point that could allow a small group to crush a large one? maybe it will be in the HoT expansion but im not holding my breath.

choke points work for the group that uses it more intelligently

yup, but there are no real choke points in WvW, so…….

:o whoa what? no offense but are you playing with your eyes closed lol

yes there are “choke points” but theyre not good ones that are designed well. thats what i mean by “real choke points.”
mind point out where these amazing choke points are?

You mean you do not feel they are good? Because there is a difference between you not liking them or feeling they are good in your opinion, and your disingenuous statement in which you definitively declare none exist at all.

Typhus.3502:

Get rid of the aoe cap. Make it so that small skilled and organized groups can take down a “zerg” without having to blob up themselves.

At one point WvW didn’t have damage AoE caps. It was overwhelmingly demanded by the player base. They added a cap of 20. It was overwhelmingly demanded to be lowered further. hence we have it now at 5.

Experience has already proven your suggestion would be a detriment to the game. Why would anyone want to revert back to the way in which the feed back against it was overwhelming?

Here are 2 possible ideas to counter blobbing in its current form:

1) Lower the population cap per map- This could lead to more queues on certain servers thus more spreading out of forces on other maps and might help keep maps from being dead for long stretches. This way players wont need to join a map hopping group constantly and will be able to stick to one map. Will make it easier for Guild drivers to lead smaller guild raids against larger enemy groups.

2) Increase scaling of Keep Lords- Increasing the scaling of the Keep Lords would essentially stop them from being melted in seconds by enemy blobs and leaving little time for defense or response teams, essentially promoting blobbing karma trains. If they were scaled say like a world boss is based on the number of enemies in the area to last longer it would make for a lot more interesting fights and make defense a little easier. Basically the more enemy players the more time it takes. The problem with this is that it might make ppt harder and take longer to cap so the scaling would have to be adjusted very carefully.

There’s a reason it’s called “massive multiplayer online role playing game” and not “just a few multiplayer online role playing game”.

Big scale chaos everywhere is the reason this game mode exists.

X T D.6458:

Here are 2 possible ideas to counter blobbing in its current form:

1) Lower the population cap per map- This could lead to more queues on certain servers thus more spreading out of forces on other maps and might help keep maps from being dead for long stretches. This way players wont need to join a map hopping group constantly and will be able to stick to one map. Will make it easier for Guild drivers to lead smaller guild raids against larger enemy groups.

That is an all around bad idea. I already see 3-4 maps with queues on any given day. There is no justification for making it 4 maps queued extremely often, or up to always queued. If you want to see less WvW players in general, artificially forcing them out by extended artificial queues is the fastest way to do that.

X T D.6458:

2) Increase scaling of Keep Lords- Increasing the scaling of the Keep Lords would essentially stop them from being melted in seconds by enemy blobs and leaving little time for defense or response teams, essentially promoting blobbing karma trains. If they were scaled say like a world boss is based on the number of enemies in the area to last longer it would make for a lot more interesting fights and make defense a little easier. Basically the more enemy players the more time it takes. The problem with this is that it might make ppt harder and take longer to cap so the scaling would have to be adjusted very carefully.

The other problem I see occurring, is if server A controls a keep. Server B and server C are assaulting it at the same time. B and C are fighting it out. they will each scale up the lord for the other. In this instance it unreasonably gives a large advantage to a very very late arriving defense force from server A.

Personally, on the latter issue, I prefer all around keep defense and use of siege to hold off larger forces, as a better option then artificially buffing the lord. I am not in favor of artificial means to tip the scales toward those who rally less players.

Add in friendly player collision. When you touch a friendly player you both get knocked down.

I’d like to see blobs play with that.

I am guessing the op does not want to remove organized large group combat but rather the “blob” mentality where you just throw X number of players at an objective.

First There really does need to be positive reinforcement for the maintenance and defense of controlled objectives. Any system however needs to be leech proof. (ie taking much needed supplies to repair a wall at 90% to get defense reward)

Additionally, There needs to be something that punishes uncooperative zergs, that can be safely ignored with organization. For instance something that can hurt everyone if players don’t communicate.

zerorogue.9410:

I am guessing the op does not want to remove organized large group combat but rather the “blob” mentality where you just throw X number of players at an objective.

First There really does need to be positive reinforcement for the maintenance and defense of controlled objectives. Any system however needs to be leech proof. (ie taking much needed supplies to repair a wall at 90% to get defense reward)

Additionally, There needs to be something that punishes uncooperative zergs, that can be safely ignored with organization. For instance something that can hurt everyone if players don’t communicate.

There is. An unorganized blob will get doodied on by an organized guild. Simple as that. Its always happened.

No need to get rid of the blobs. That would make things boring and farming for my legendary would be much more difficult.

Deli.1302:

Typhus.3502:

Get rid of the aoe cap. Make it so that small skilled and organized groups can take down a “zerg” without having to blob up themselves.

Get rid of aoe cap -> goodbye cpu.
get rid of aoe cap -> hello retaliation.

Not gonna happen. Ever.

A small skilled group can already take out zergs with the current system. Why do you think guilds run with their melee all stacked up? Just for boon sharing and condi clears? No. They also do it so that all their melee hit the same 5 targets.

In games like Warhammer online, we only needed 5-10 to kill a hundred people because there was no aoe cap. To fight the t1 blobs we need 25-30 and sometimes a zerg to support if we’re fighting full queues. Melee trains stack because of the aoe cap, blobbing up disperses the damage. And yes, obviously, to kill the same targets.

His original question was what could be done to change the problem, so whether you think it will happen or not is irrelevant.

the way to do this is remove AOE cap. but servers cant handle it and you will have massive lag where you cant cast skills (you still get it now in big 3 way fights) like on start of game. game is badly designed for mass pvp, lots of skills do lots of very small numbrs (5-20) damage but you cant remove them because they also apply effects. (think of necro pets, mesmer clones.. if you look at damage logs you will see what i mean).

1. Make it so that events scale in WvW. If you come to a keep with 10 people, it’ll take 10 minutes to get through the wall, 15 mins to get through the second wall, and a good 15 min of fighting to kill the boss.

If you come to a keep with 20+ people, it might take 5 mins to get through the first wall, 10 to get through the second, but 30 mins to kill the boss. etc.

2. Remove shared loot and EXP. Only a certain number of players are able to receive loot and exp from completing things in WvW based on how “difficult” completing the event was. Sentries, up to one player will receive rewards. Camps, up to 5 players will receive rewards. Towers up to 10. Keeps up to 15.

Implementing either of the above would easily kill zerging in WvW, and implementing the second in PvE would easily kill it in PvE.

As long as both sides have an equally big blob, it’s fun. It’s as close to an actual battlefield as it will ever get in this game and like others have said, if you want small scale combat you have pvp or you can flip camps to help the main blob achieve its goals.

There is one problem with the blob, if the other two worlds have nowhere near as big a blob as one. Then it’s incredibly one-sided, but it’s not exactly the game mode’s fault.

So yeah, to stop the blob, get a bigger or more organised blob and may the better one win.

serenke.4806:

As long as both sides have an equally big blob, it’s fun. It’s as close to an actual battlefield as it will ever get in this game and like others have said, if you want small scale combat you have pvp or you can flip camps to help the main blob achieve its goals.

There is one problem with the blob, if the other two worlds have nowhere near as big a blob as one. Then it’s incredibly one-sided, but it’s not exactly the game mode’s fault.

So yeah, to stop the blob, get a bigger or more organised blob and may the better one win.

I beg to differ. It totally is the game’s fault through either poor or intentional design that one side has a huge blob that can roll through an entire border land unimpeded. As I have said before and will continue to say until I’m blue in the face: normalize the base power levels of the servers dynamically and virtually all of the problems plaguing WvW will go away. I don’t see a functional difference between a 40 man Zerg moving in unison melting everything in sight vs the only guy on the opposing server doing the same (extreme example, but you get the point).

The game has to be fun for both sides playing. Last time I checked, it’s not fun to be a loot bag because your outnumbered 3:1 no matter what time of day your on. My server has attempted every conceivable strategy to overcome such odds, but it’s always a numbers game. And we’re tired. And we understand why people jump ship to the safety of the friendly blob. But in the end, we’re on course for the active WvW population to condense down to a handful of servers who aren’t bored of blobbing and a whole lot of empty ones.

Did someone say collision detection? Now we’re talking.

Personally I dont really mind blobbing if my side has good or equal number to meet them it makes for a great fight that I very much look forward to. Now when I am outnumbered and the enemy has a blob on the map ktraining yes there is’nt much I can do and unfortunately many people are having this issue and therein lies the problem. Its the population imbalances that frustrate people not so much the numbers and blobbing. If every server had equal coverage at the same time, I doubt many would complain much about blobbing because would it be much of a difference if it were 80 people or 60 or 40 if your side had equal numbers.

The real frustration lies in population imbalances. Of course equal coverage at all times can never really be a practical possibilty, this is a reality of wvw it is a gamemode that lives and dies by population. I think one of the mistakes anet made was they didnt market it enough, they didnt promote wvw enough through advertising to get people who are interested in competitive play to try it from other games.

I honestly don’t think there’s a way to get rid off blobbing without overcoming technical limitations first. AFAIK ANet has stated current map size is about the max for WvW, and I don’t ever see blobbing end without a significant increase in mapsize. As it is now, there’s no reason to not just blob up since you can reach any objective on the map in like 2 minutes max, with porters even accross different borderlands including load times. Travel time between objectives needs a major increase (really only soveable with a increase in map size and/or some massive vertical shenanigans), map-hopping might have to be restricted so you cannot instantly transfer your 80 men blob of death to an empty map (though this doesn’t really help with highest tier WvW anyways as these servers have no problems filling multiple maps up to cap), and ‘small-scale objectives’ like camps and sentries actually need an incentive to be capped by small groups/solo roamers and not just be waltzed over by an entire army (but this is again mostly linked to map size and the current map design placing those small objectives between big ones, so it doesn’t hurt a blob to just cap them on their way to the next objective).

X T D.6458:

aspirine.6852:

Disable combat rezzing. They can still blob and zerg, but small parts of them can be murdered to trim the zerg.
Right now it’s insane, a guild group can rez through several high hitting attacks + multiple siege.

Well again remember it can work both ways, if they cant rez, neither can your side. Have to remember its a delicate balancing act.

Also when you say rezzing do you mean down or dead players.

Both down and dead players, because getting downed up is too easy for a large group.
And yes it can work both ways, but if you think about it. Against a large group you are not getting rezzed anyway, you are outnumbered and your teammates are too busy surviving and killing. No time to rez when you are in a small group so I do not think it will change much in that perspective.
perhaps it will not work at all, but from current weeks matchup for my server I see there is something very wrong about combat rezzing.

coglin.1867:

At one point WvW didn’t have damage AoE caps. It was overwhelmingly demanded by the player base. They added a cap of 20. It was overwhelmingly demanded to be lowered further. hence we have it now at 5.

I’m pretty sure thats not correct and it has always been 5 from beta onwards.

X T D.6458:

The problem with removing or increasing the aoe limit is its a double edged sword, it will simply encourage more blobbing, because smaller groups will get hit more. If you can hit more targets so can the blob, how long do you think a smaller group will last then. And I cant see anet ever allowing players weapon/utility skills being able to hit 50 players at once.

Well yeah if the smaller group is facing the bigger group directly. Without aoe limits they have more chances to wreck a zerg though.

Alteros.3019:

serenke.4806:

As long as both sides have an equally big blob, it’s fun. It’s as close to an actual battlefield as it will ever get in this game and like others have said, if you want small scale combat you have pvp or you can flip camps to help the main blob achieve its goals.

There is one problem with the blob, if the other two worlds have nowhere near as big a blob as one. Then it’s incredibly one-sided, but it’s not exactly the game mode’s fault.

So yeah, to stop the blob, get a bigger or more organised blob and may the better one win.

I beg to differ. It totally is the game’s fault through either poor or intentional design that one side has a huge blob that can roll through an entire border land unimpeded. As I have said before and will continue to say until I’m blue in the face: normalize the base power levels of the servers dynamically and virtually all of the problems plaguing WvW will go away. I don’t see a functional difference between a 40 man Zerg moving in unison melting everything in sight vs the only guy on the opposing server doing the same (extreme example, but you get the point).

The game has to be fun for both sides playing. Last time I checked, it’s not fun to be a loot bag because your outnumbered 3:1 no matter what time of day your on. My server has attempted every conceivable strategy to overcome such odds, but it’s always a numbers game. And we’re tired. And we understand why people jump ship to the safety of the friendly blob. But in the end, we’re on course for the active WvW population to condense down to a handful of servers who aren’t bored of blobbing and a whole lot of empty ones.

It sucks to be outnumbered of course, but WvW cannot be completely normalized since it’s basically a big sandbox. It is what the players make of it.

And if you see the enemy blob rampage somewhere, then go elsewhere, capture other things. If they have scouts and move to intercept, split up and capture things like that.

Even an 80-person blob cannot be in three places at once and you can take care of a lot with three 15-person groups.

serenke.4806:

It sucks to be outnumbered of course, but WvW cannot be completely normalized since it’s basically a big sandbox. It is what the players make of it.

And if you see the enemy blob rampage somewhere, then go elsewhere, capture other things. If they have scouts and move to intercept, split up and capture things like that.

Even an 80-person blob cannot be in three places at once and you can take care of a lot with three 15-person groups.

Tried splitting up without much success. Not withstanding the fact our server can only manage to field about 30 reliably coordinated players per map consistently (not counting PUGs who just aimlessly wander around), the opposing force literally has enough people to hold all of our homeland objectives (and for all practical purposes everything else on all the other maps) and make them T3. Good luck trying to take that with 15 people when you have 5 superior ACs raining down on you at every gate. And assuming you break through, it’s always too late because they know you’re there and their death blob will be upon you before you’re in the lord room.

After this week’s utter massacre of my server, I’m pretty much going to take a very long break from WvW. Seems the only way to avoid the blob and not be relentlessly farmed for loot is to not be in WvW.

I think the real problem is not the blob in itself. It is when one world outnumbers the other so greatly that they can field a large blob and the other 2 worlds can’t field enough players to counter it.

So in my opinion, this conversation should really be focusing on wvw population balance. Blobbing in itself can be quite fun, especially when you run into other similar blobs. But an unbalanced server population takes that fun away, for both sides.

Get off your bloated server.