Guild Wars 2

Middzz.1490:

Real Physics and collision (as against the purely visual which is often mistaken )in any game causes many more performance problems than the advantages it is claimed to have.Especially as not all players have the most modern equipment .You design for the median or below .

Cryengine in Archeage did one thing good – full player collisions and vehicle physics (with full player on vehicle collisions, you could be 30 people on a warship)… and it did it on a single world map about twice the size of the entire GW2 PvE world.

Anet could do it in GW2 but it would need a whole new engine of course.

And yes, it’d be hilarious. Add friendly fire as icing on the cake please.

Dawdler.8521:

Middzz.1490:

Real Physics and collision (as against the purely visual which is often mistaken )in any game causes many more performance problems than the advantages it is claimed to have.Especially as not all players have the most modern equipment .You design for the median or below .

Cryengine in Archeage did one thing good – full player collisions and vehicle physics (with full player on vehicle collisions, you could be 30 people on a warship)… and it did it on a single world map about twice the size of the entire GW2 PvE world.

Anet could do it in GW2 but it would need a whole new engine of course.

And yes, it’d be hilarious. Add friendly fire as icing on the cake please.

AA you would not stop casting if some one ran into you though and often ppl would run ports making most collisions pointless there where a lot of super zergs in AA. Friendly fire would kill any game to have it is to doom any type of team play. In real life its easy not to attk some one who on your side or attk in a way not to hit some one but this is a game world there just a limitation to what you can do for attk. To ask for friendly fire is asking for solo play only.

As I recall, the devs said they were thinking of adding a debuff to zergs. If you have more than a given number of players in an area you get the debuff.

Hopefully this and other features will be included in the expansion.

I have been mulling one thing for the over for a while now.

I started by thinking what the main difference is between a Real Life large scale army and a Guild Wars 2 large scale army and then it hit me: SOUND.

As a rule of thumb, a gigantic “zerg” in real life would make a hell of a racket compared to the ultra stealthy mega zergs of GW2.

This would make it much easier for scouts to find and track, compared to smaller groups.

So, how do we implement this in game? I came up with 3 possibilities.

1. A “footfalls” buff that applies to players depending on how close they are to a large enemy group, allowing scouts to know when they are close to a zerg.

2. A sonar like overlay for the world map that pulses every few seconds and starts to show up enemy groups once they pass a certain threshold of players in a group, “swords on steroids” if you will.

3. Actual, physical SOUND. Make it so that, the bigger the group the louder you are and the more sound travels. I’ve always found it a little disconcerting that large scale zergs make no sound until you are right on top of them!

Now, don’t get me wrong, this will only work in concert with multiple other changes to make defending more worthwhile but this was my 2c on the subject.

The amount of people that do not want to blob is very small. WvWvW is niche to begin with. Any personal preferences group you into a subset of this already relatively tiny set. You are playing a game where majority of people (and a game company) prefer this style of play; large hectic battles with lots of siege. Blobs aint going anywhere. It’s preferred… remember that

ionix.9054:

The amount of people that do not want to blob is very small. WvWvW is niche to begin with. Any personal preferences group you into a subset of this already relatively tiny set. You are playing a game where majority of people (and a game company) prefer this style of play; large hectic battles with lots of siege. Blobs aint going anywhere. It’s preferred… remember that

Personally, I feel you are conflating “prefer blobbing” with “prefer using the most effective playstyle”. As a long time WvW player, consensus is that the majority of people find blobbing to be the only way to play, not their preferred way to play.

reduce blob is simple….
remove the aoe limit but anet has mentioned it several times that it is set to 5 targets because of technical limitation

Jski.6180:

Dawdler.8521:

Middzz.1490:

Real Physics and collision (as against the purely visual which is often mistaken )in any game causes many more performance problems than the advantages it is claimed to have.Especially as not all players have the most modern equipment .You design for the median or below .

Cryengine in Archeage did one thing good – full player collisions and vehicle physics (with full player on vehicle collisions, you could be 30 people on a warship)… and it did it on a single world map about twice the size of the entire GW2 PvE world.

Anet could do it in GW2 but it would need a whole new engine of course.

And yes, it’d be hilarious. Add friendly fire as icing on the cake please.

AA you would not stop casting if some one ran into you though and often ppl would run ports making most collisions pointless there where a lot of super zergs in AA. Friendly fire would kill any game to have it is to doom any type of team play. In real life its easy not to attk some one who on your side or attk in a way not to hit some one but this is a game world there just a limitation to what you can do for attk. To ask for friendly fire is asking for solo play only.

Not at all its simply asking for more use of “the little grey cells”.

how? just wait and see what they did with the WvW revamp. it sounds promising.

SkyShroud.2865:

reduce blob is simple….
remove the aoe limit but anet has mentioned it several times that it is set to 5 targets because of technical limitation

You know what would reduce blobbing and AoE bombing? Limit incoming AoE damage. Right now its not set to 5 people. Its unlimited. And thats why we blob. To kill people fast as heck. Removing the AoE limit would only result in one thing – blobs kill people even faster.

Bad players will always compensate for skill with numbers, it will never change.

Simple. Make more smaller maps with the max number of players allowed reduced. 20, 30, 40, or w/e number seems right. I think it would be fairly fun to have 2 keeps a few camps, and 20v20 in that map.

Flyphish.6398:

Bad players will always compensate for skill with numbers, it will never change.

You complain about population imbalance, yet you would call new players “bad”. Running with a group of more experienced players help newbies out greatly. No need to dispel that simply because you dislike large groups against you.

Stazee.6749:

Simple. Make more smaller maps with the max number of players allowed reduced. 20, 30, 40, or w/e number seems right. I think it would be fairly fun to have 2 keeps a few camps, and 20v20 in that map.

I would absolutely love this. More different maps for different play styles. And a map like that would be really fun for small-medium groups.

joneirikb.7506:

Stazee.6749:

Simple. Make more smaller maps with the max number of players allowed reduced. 20, 30, 40, or w/e number seems right. I think it would be fairly fun to have 2 keeps a few camps, and 20v20 in that map.

I would absolutely love this. More different maps for different play styles. And a map like that would be really fun for small-medium groups.

Would we keep the same total population cap? For instance, if each server gets 80 people per map (4 × 80 = 320), would we now have to have 16 smaller maps with 20 people each? This might lower the size of zergs, but it seems like it would exaggerate the population imbalances we currently have, as any server with a less active WvW population could end up with completely empty maps, or 5v20 situations on 10 or more maps at once. Imagine trying to reclaim 16 full-capped maps each day when playing a server with a very strong non-NA timezone! Or are you simply talking about adding several more, smaller maps to the 4 maps we currently have? This seems like it would also make population imbalances much harder to overcome.

Valentinus.3412:

3. Actual, physical SOUND. Make it so that, the bigger the group the louder you are and the more sound travels. I’ve always found it a little disconcerting that large scale zergs make no sound until you are right on top of them!

This would especially funny when you consider how many WvW players play with the game sound OFF every time they enter WvW! I actually kinda like the idea of adding a “Stampede”-type of sound, so that you can hear zergs coming before you even see them.

How about a weaker form of friendly fire (which has to many negative side-effects)

Every Friend in your AoE Area count against your AoE-Limit

So if you put AoE onto an area with 5 friends you do no damage. I guess this will take out all teeth of the Blob-Stacking Meta.

This will make single-target skills more valuable as single target skills will be the only way to hit enemies in your blob.

It will make small groups valuable that can “hide” in the enemy blob.

Both could need an upgrade for large-scale fights.

Generally I would propose the following priority in AoE target selection:
Invisible Friends > Invisible Enemies > Visible Friends > Visible Enemies
I.e. you only hit a visible enemy with AoE, if there there are less than 3/5 friends or invisible enemies in your target area, you only hit invisible enemies if there are less than 3/5 invisible friends in your target area. The higher priority for invisibles is needed as you cannot target them with directed skills.

Believe it or not, a lot of people play GW2 to blob. If they wanted smaller scale battles, they would’ve been playing other games with instanced & timed BG’s and arenas. You take the blobs away, there will be a lot less people playing GW2. As is, there are plenty of havoc groups and small fights in WvW outside of the blobs. If your server doesn’t have havoc groups working to take supply bases and towers, the your server isn’t doing it right.

Remember back during DAOC days, without AOE cc limit, you had plenty of roaming gank groups. But still majority of the time there was at least a blob or two (back then we call them zergs). It is what it is, majority of the gamers like to follow, that’s why they like to blob with the commanders. They want to be lead, and they love the massiveness of battles they see in GW2. They didn’t come to GW2’s WvW to play in small groups.

Games don’t dictate how players play the games, players do. You can see how when there isn’t a commander pin up on a particular map, less people stick around on it. When there’s a pin up, people show up. You can’t take blob away and expect WvWvW to do well in GW2.

On the flip side, rather than complaining about blobs, how satisfying is it to know your enemies outnumber you 2 to 1 or 3 to 1, but you still could pull out a victory in open field combat. It happens all the time in T1.

gavyne.6847:

Remember back during DAOC days, without AOE cc limit, you had plenty of roaming gank groups. But still majority of the time there was at least a blob or two (back then we call them zergs).

We still call them zergs. Most of the groups in GW2 are in fact zergs in various size, not blobs. Blobs are the kind of group that cover an entire field in front of a gate and you cant even make out where the commander is stacking. Two completely different things.

Dunno, but if you want to fight groups that small go play sPvP. Seriously; many people, myself included, enjoy running with 15-20 guild mates. WvW is where massive groups collide, at least that’s how the mode was explained. I don’t hate on havocs or roamers, any server needs goodly amounts of both, but the bottom line is that WvW was designed for larger groups as well.

Can a PuGzerg get outta hand? Oh yeah that is not in doubt, but unless you’re T1 you don’t tend to see many guild groups running 30+. Most guild groups in T2 run in the 15-20ish range, and that, imo, is not anywhere near blob numbers.

Otokomae.9356:

joneirikb.7506:

Stazee.6749:

Simple. Make more smaller maps with the max number of players allowed reduced. 20, 30, 40, or w/e number seems right. I think it would be fairly fun to have 2 keeps a few camps, and 20v20 in that map.

I would absolutely love this. More different maps for different play styles. And a map like that would be really fun for small-medium groups.

Would we keep the same total population cap? For instance, if each server gets 80 people per map (4 x 80 = 320), would we now have to have 16 smaller maps with 20 people each? This might lower the size of zergs, but it seems like it would exaggerate the population imbalances we currently have, as any server with a less active WvW population could end up with completely empty maps, or 5v20 situations on 10 or more maps at once. Imagine trying to reclaim 16 full-capped maps each day when playing a server with a very strong non-NA timezone! Or are you simply talking about adding several more, smaller maps to the 4 maps we currently have? This seems like it would also make population imbalances much harder to overcome.

Well, a small map would definitively mess up a bit with the current map-population. I don’t really know how to add it into the current system, because it is so rigidly locked up because of the Home-map system (That I ranted on and on about in another thread, and how to remove that system). As is right now, it would sort of have to be another optional overflow map, same sort as EotM. Which wouldn’t be very popular I guess.

If I where to say where this fit in with the removal of Home-Map’s, it could fill a 4th map (EBG+BL+Ziggurat/HOT+1 Random) or in a rotation (EBG+BL +2 random maps, for ex EotM, Ziggurat, or this "roaming map"). For lower tier servers you might replace multiple maps with these smaller maps but still keep at least EBG and either BL or Ziggurat.

I really think we need to move to a dynamic map system, that can adjust it after the player base, and that also means doing something about the Home-Map system. Oh well, this is getting topic-derailed. But yes, population cap is serious business in WvW, DO NOT TOUCH! etc. I just want to see more variation in maps.

Otokomae.9356:

Valentinus.3412:

3. Actual, physical SOUND. Make it so that, the bigger the group the louder you are and the more sound travels. I’ve always found it a little disconcerting that large scale zergs make no sound until you are right on top of them!

This would especially funny when you consider how many WvW players play with the game sound OFF every time they enter WvW! I actually kinda like the idea of adding a "Stampede"-type of sound, so that you can hear zergs coming before you even see them.

I like this idea to. But I’m one of those that play with very low sound (because I have a low tolerance for sounds, and get headaches etc), and also play with friends who are deaf. So it would be *very* nice with some visual cues for this as well. Liked some of the ones you mentioned in the full post.

If the maps can’t get any bigger and reducing the population cap isn’t going to fly, then PvD should at least be removed, along with some of the AoE on walls business. It wouldn’t be good to punish large groups, but if an 80 man group is no more effective than 20 man group, there will be more incentive to run in 20-mans.

As it stands, having a blob is useful because the enemies can’t respond to the Rams/Catas due to huge amounts of pressure on the walls of the Keep/Tower. The only way to defend is to have higher numbers so that you can push them off…meaning it’s less of a siege and more of a convoluted doorbell for your sparring partner. If there were some built in defensive structures on the walls that could help deal with AoE, defenders could actually stand a chance.

In addition, since structures do not appreciate in PPT value, there’s not much point in holding on to any particular keep/tower. Upgrades don’t mean much against blobs (except waypoints), so trading a T3 tower for a T1 only hurts during the times when small (20-30) groups are running. This also means that there’s no point flipping a T3 tower when there’s a T1 a hop and a skip away. What if upgrading it made it give more PPT and also increased the rewards for taking it? Perhaps even if upgraded towers gave a small, on-capture point boost?

Look I fix blobbing for you once and forever in 2 seconds:

1. Remove retaliation from the game
2. Remove aoe caps from all abilties
3. Remove downed state from the game

Tevesh.1265:

Look I fix blobbing for you once and forever in 2 seconds:

1. Remove retaliation from the game
2. Remove aoe caps from all abilties
3. Remove downed state from the game

..and you me and many others would probably pleased .
Yet the truth is many would not Anet did not make the zergs the champ trains ,stacked servers ..etc etc players did .On various servers in wvw and pve how often do you see the "where the zerg " in mapchat? I know i do often.

So the question is why should Anet do anything ?..they are a company there rationale rightly is too make money and satisfy the largest number of customers .At present it seems , no empirical evidence ,most like to play that way .

Tevesh.1265:

Look I fix blobbing for you once and forever in 2 seconds:

1. Remove retaliation from the game
2. Remove aoe caps from all abilties
3. Remove downed state from the game

You can shave off 0.5 seconds by skipping step 3. Downed state is one of the main combat mechanics that sets GW2 combat apart from your average boring MMO. While I can see the arguments for the two other points, removing downed state is like saying remove dodging or remove weapon swapping.

This is the same topic as, “Stability Changes”.

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?

In my server; i see some commander divide group/zerg for different goal but for same mission. One commander would take a group to a enemy keep, another one would take another group to another enemy keep, and same for other commander.

Why is good?

It is good to help server get more control of the map: that is the mission. To get more control of the enemy map and take supply from them in supply camp.

Why is good pt 2?

It is good so the enemy will not expect full attack in one time: surprise attack., also it is good to surprise the enemy.

Important!: it is good to help make each commander position less stress and less frustrate.

Also one thing i see a lot happening and make my server player happy and appreciate, is when 1 commander is in trouble or is have hard time struggle with the enemy, the other commander come and rescue.

Example: like a company, 1 President can not keep eye on everybody in the company, 1 President can not take all struggle and frustration on own. So President hire Supervisor for that-the Supervisor is each of the server commander.

It is good thing for other commander in server to help the 1 commander share frustration and struggle.

I think the change is here already.

I’m still struggling to see the problem. People play the way they want to play. Most players want to run in largish groups. Majority still rules does it not?

It’s not like it’s super hard to avoid the zerg, and if you prefer roaming or havoc then go do it away from the zerg. As to sieging with a zerg. Yeah if a large enough group wants a structure they will take it eventually. The key is to make them pay as long as you can.

Kaiser.9873:

I’m still struggling to see the problem. People play the way they want to play. Most players want to run in largish groups. Majority still rules does it not?

Maybe some player play in large zergs because they want to be in a large group, but I think most are driven by the meta-goal: play as effective as possible, I.e. they do not run in large groups because they like large groups, but because a large group can reach things and that even if neither commander nor player are very competent.

I heard commander crying for more people to often to believe that the people really want to be a large blob.
So I think people are only enforced to blob by commanders and game mechanics, otherwise we would not have these large blobs.

So the question of this (and many other) threads is: how to change the game mechanics in a way that allows us to be successful, even if we do not blob or the other way around how to prevent that blobing is the one and only winning strategy that can beat anything if only the blob is large enough.

Dayra.7405:

Kaiser.9873:

I’m still struggling to see the problem. People play the way they want to play. Most players want to run in largish groups. Majority still rules does it not?

Maybe some player play in large zergs because they want to be in a large group, but I think most are driven by the meta-goal: play as effective as possible, I.e. they do not run in large groups because they like large groups, but because a large group can reach things and that even if neither commander nor player are very competent.

I heard commander crying for more people to often to believe that the people really want to be a large blob.
So I think people are only enforced to blob by commanders and game mechanics, otherwise we would not have these large blobs.

So the question of this (and many other) threads is: how to change the game mechanics in a way that allows us to be successful, even if we do not blob or the other way around how to prevent that blobing is the one and only winning strategy that can beat anything if only the blob is large enough.

That’s all find and dandy. The problem is, most appear to be posting with the perspective of destroying large groups as an option, or severely punishing large groups is some cheap. cancerous, generic way. Your preaching “play how we want to”, yet only supporting one side of the argument, why trying to subtly condemn larger groups.

Your offering examples to support your argument, by making statements out of context. Just because summoned is asking for more on Pin doesn’t mean anyone is being forced, demanded, or expected to run in large groups. I can give you plenty of reasons for it.

If you do not like large groups, you are welcome to take small groups to sPvP or even the upcoming stronghold. I can never understand why so many players want to make WvW nothing more then spread out, sparse pockets of sPvP, that concept is beyond me.

The problem is that the larger the group the better.

Assume 20:10 where all people are equal and equally good.

1. The 20 do twice as much damage per second,
2. they are able to apply twice as many conditions,
3. they have twice as much total life to be taken down to defeat the total group,
4. they have double heal,
5. they take in mean half the damage (as AoE hits only 5, i.e. a quarter of the 20-group vs half of the 10-group).

As such with double people you have 2^5= 32 times as effective as the smaller group.

This is why people are forced to stack. And this has to be broken to allow people to not stack.

Nothing disallows anyone from not stacking.

Literally the only single thing you generally cannot do is have a head to head fight with the larger group. There is nothing artificial about that. Unlike suggestion in this thread to create game mechanics to artificially hobble the other group for being larger. Not a single solitary player in the larger group is at fault for the smaller groups, being smaller. Every bit of that is player choice to log on, to group up, or do something else. Nothing about that justifies artificially forcing hardship on the larger group.

I notice you specifically chose to use the words “broken” to describe what you want to do, and in that one thing, at least we agree. Apparently you do not know what the word “forced” means. Nothing forces you to stack. The only reason to do that is if you “want” to have a head to head battle. That, again, is player choice.

So long as the blob is both the “sword and the shield” and mechanics in the game remained forced on a 5v5 model I can’t see any improvement.

stability changes.
aoe cap, retal nerf.
more aoe boon strip.
server mergers.
cross guild cooperation.
arrow cart spam.
more traps, maybe one that slows a zerg down.
pvd nerf.
hard res nerf, rally nerf.
commander tag squad benefit/detriment.

Once again I still don’t see a problem. T2 has plenty of roaming groups/havoc groups. T1 even has some, and sure you have to dodge the zerg, but so what? I’m guessing alot of the people in here wanting to kill the zerg are from T3 and lower.

This thread is full of people that want to force people to play a certain way all the while trying to make it seem like it’s about some kind of freedom. It doesn’t matter what example you want to make WvW is not supposed to be about punishing groups larger than 10, 20, 30, or whatever arbitrary number you want to throw out there.

Maybe you should watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr187usTXEQ

“World Vs World in GW2 is PVP-Combat on and EPIC SCALE”
“It’s about GIGANTIC BATTLES on massive maps”

These are quotes from the game designers of the GW2

The game is fine, people just need to try to populate servers such that all the servers have similar populations. If this happened, blobs wouldn’t be as effective for ppt because the way blobs work is they have more than another blob which demoralizes the smaller blob into becoming a smaller blob.

If the populations between servers was similar, GVG guilds would be thrilled with variety of match ups and fights and if servers blobbed a lot, they wouldn’t dominate ppt which would encourage less blobbing.

They just should make smaller groups and single players capable of doing something useful and actually contribute to the war effort. If you need a large group to take down an upgraded basic structure then there is not a smallest reason to ever split from a blob (and btw, I have always wondered who came up with this brilliant notion that internet players love to group up, form parties and socialize (the dreaded “hi, from?”) just to blow their noses – and judging from the amount of dungeons parties’ kicks and whining there might some mistake in this assumption: many people group up only when they are forced to do so by game’s mechanics).

Reducing NPC strength (in PvP mode..), eliminating possibility of camps and towers upgrades, lowering supplies requirements for building siege weapons, and – maybe – creating opportunity to infiltrate structures and temporarily eliminating lords for some quick war points would be a good start for both reducing blobs and increasing wvw populations imo.

I once posted an idea where you can set up a magical “radar” that would detect enemies and highlight them on your server’s map.

- The radar detects large groups of enemies. The larger the group, the farther away the radar will see them. 5 man parties or below are always invisible to radar.

- Remove white and orange swords.

- Radars are built and destroyed just like siege. Should we require someone to operate it for it to work?

I think this would be an interesting way to make smaller groups more viable. A large, noisy zerg would be easily spotted and be seen by all enemies, which will either attract an enemies or help them avoid/set up an ambush etc.

Smaller groups can sneak around and avoid radar. A well coordinated server can split their zerg into small groups to avoid radar, and then everyone meets at the objective at the last minute, to give the least amount of warning to the enemy.

When you split your zerg up to avoid radar, it means small group fights can happen along the way, and then you get a massive battle when the zerg reforms. So everyone is happy?

I am mostly a solo roamer myself, but I do understand that many WvWvW players find big epic fights the best part of this game. Thus blobbing should not be punished too hard.

Here is my suggestion:

Enemy groups, which are larger than certain size (let’s say 20), always appear on map.
This would encourage servers to split up their forces to avoid telling their location to the enemy. This would not hamper the epic keep/SM fights, in fact make them more likely (instead of the quick golem rush tactic).

Capture camp/tower/keep/castle events are scaled to the amount of enemy players just like the pve events are. Extra archers will spawn to defend the objectives if a very large enemy force comes there (the very large could be 5+ for a camp, 10+ for a tower, 30+ for a keep and 50+ for Stonemist. All these can be soloed, except I have never soloed SM). The extra NPCs do not drop any loot and vanish if the location is still not captured after 3 minutes. The camp/tower/keep lord could be scaled in amount of hit points to make it harder to kill by a large enemy force. This would balance the population imbalance issues and make off-time (aka “night” capping) more time consuming and difficult.

collision detection….

azizul.8469:

collision detection….

Rofl. Did you ever watched how your client estimates positions in case of laags?
I do not want to collide with wrongly estimated people. And who should detect that? The server, such that you are noticed that you unfortunately collide with someone some secs ago and are ported back or the clients based on wrong positions and open to cheating?

Collision detection in MMO is far beyond playability.

What may work is a stat-reduction based on the number of people in your surroundings.

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?

A cycling 1-2HR event (once a day? every other day?, every 8 hours? Something at an appropriate interval) that awards a massive chunk of PPT if pulled off successfully, maybe siphoned directly from the enemy teams.

For example, part of the event might include capturing and holding the middle areas of the BL maps. I.E. While holding 2 or more Borderland Bloodlusts, first team that captures X camps and towers takes X% of the enemies points and adds it to their own. Swords are disabled for the event.

Something like that would force blob splits both to attack and defend.

Broken record here, but disadvantaging the way people play, because YOU don’t like it is ridiculous.

It is akin to me saying something like, “Those kitten havoc groups bug me, they should transfer down so they don’t gank me on the way back to my group.”, or, “Why are these roamers all over the map? They need to go sPvP.”

It’s a game-mode meant to be played as a clash of forces. Those forces can be bigger than some would like, and smaller than others would like. There are jobs for havoc groups, jobs for roamers, and, yes, jobs for zergs. That’s how it was sold, and that’s what most want. Call it skill-less if you will, but it’s pretty darn fun.