Guild Wars 2

There’s plenty of complaints going around about “zergs”. So what could be done to encourage more smaller-scale encounters? For lack of a better description, you might think of it as “SPVP with Keeps”.

I think that certain mechanics of wvw encourage “zergs” to form. Players can rely on sword indicators to find the action rather than needing to look for it. Players can also “link up” by tracking down their commanders. The ease of porting via waypoint also makes it easy for the defenders to move around to any point within a few minutes of travel.

None of this is inherently bad. It makes wvw much more approachable for new players. For those that would like more group vs group play, whilst still in the wvw context, what could work is another type of map with elements of spvp and wvw thrown in. Bigger maps, fewer waypoints, no commander icons or crossed sword indicators. There would still need to be something else to discourage large groups, but I’m not sure what that could be yet.

Anyway, that’s just a brainstorm of mine. What do you think?

I think that the only thing you have to do is increase the size of the maps, like, *2.

It will encourage splitting your forces, you won’t be able to control everything with one big zerg, you will have to run a few smaller forces to hit at multiple targets at once.

And it will make small group roaming easier, you won’t face the zerg all the time. also more neutral structures where you can actually hide.

Well, it’s easy to know what most fan boys would say here: “Join tournaments in spvp and you can have all the group fights you want.”

However, I’m not one of those. Arenanet needs to realise that not all of us enjoy the spvp scenery that much, some of us prefer the world pvp aspect, and we still want to do group pvp. Gw2 has a really awesome potential for this and could overcome some of the really great world pvp games out there. There are quite a few ways to do this.

1) Arenanet creates a new world pvp zone, without mobs, no objectives, free for all to enter, with a lot of slopes / hills / buildings whatever to make it feel like an open intressting pvp environment. A group vs group environment that isn’t effected by towers / seige / keeps. Simple wvw roaming. Perhaps only one main objective in the middle, but the rest of the zone clean from npc’s for pvp purposes. Having perhaps chokepoints designed with bridges or similar.

2) Expand the maps in size to make movement through objectives easier.

3) Create more areas for intressting pvp that aren’t objectives but give an advantage in forms of alltitude over your opponent or the simple fact that you can los him.

4) Create an area where seige equipment doesn’t have protection and cannot reach. (They can still build it, but you don’t have to break down a door/wall to reach it.)

5) Create rewards that are based on wvw. (not gear based, but fame based.) ex. like points per kill / points per objective, you gain ranks etc. etc.

6) Let people know who they are fighting! Bloody hell it annoys me that if I have a really awesome pvp fight, I don’t know who it was I was facing except for the guild name and somewhat the looks. PLEASE let us know who the hell we are fighting, atleast if a group oriented pvp zone is created! It’s a part of pvp since the start of time to know who you are up against. Yes I know the system is designed to protect pugs from being targeted. But guess what, they are already being targeted really fast thanks to the guild tag!

7) Give us access to talk to eachother, part of group pvp is to be able to orient event fights, ofcourse we can use the forum, but being able to talk to eachother would really improve a lot in terms of group pvp.

But the main key to encourage group based world pvp is: Speed / Open Areas / Some way to fight people without having to fight npc’s on every turn / Objectives like ruins, chokepoints, bridges, buildings etc. that are empty and based for group oriented tactics.

There shouldn’t be any caps on how many people can enter a zone etc. The prospect of there is a chance of being zerged should be there. It’s a part of world pvp. But there are ways to discourage zergs and encourage group vs group fights.

Remove the battle markers. You’ll be forced to split your forces in order to effectively control more map space, or take a gamble that your zerg won’t be able to get there on time.

Remove the orange swords and the whole thing changes drastically. In a good way.

merge all maps and make them alittle bit bigger. Make Eternal as the center peice and to gain access into the borderlands you have to fight your way threw the eternal part. ^.^

Another idea I had was that you can’t use the portal unless you’ve died. It’ll slow down the defenders on the map – ie, when they port-rush to defend the north supply camp. Also, to intercept enemies, you actually have to chase them down, not port ahead of them.

Implement realm points as it was in DAoC.

If you zerged something down you hardly got any, if you wiped a group or superior numbers you got tons.

Make Thidranki

As sPvP map 30 vs 30 vs 30

Increase map size, remove battle markers, remove portals...

Guys, you’re going the wrong way. Let’s not head back to the early 21st century and make all the casual players disappear...

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with zerging, it’s a great introduction into Wv3 for less experienced players. It starts them down the path to being a more knowledgeable PvP player and once they understand the basics, you can take them into your small strike teams and teach them the other aspects of the game.

RP wouldn’t drive away the casuals.

It would give them a reason to aspire to be something other than zerglings and reward the people who can actually coordinate outside of PvD.

Sansarah.3076:

4) Create an area where seige equipment doesn’t have protection and cannot reach. (They can still build it, but you don’t have to break down a door/wall to reach it.)

7) Give us access to talk to eachother, part of group pvp is to be able to orient event fights, ofcourse we can use the forum, but being able to talk to eachother would really improve a lot in terms of group pvp.

4) you can so this anywhere on the map. supply camps especially come to mind.

7) possibly one of the worst ideas I’ve heared so far. This just encourages 2 worlds to gang up on 1. Or it will cause a lot of hating and a negative atmosphere towards enemies.

kweetni.1023:

4) you can so this anywhere on the map. supply camps especially come to mind.

7) possibly one of the worst ideas I’ve heared so far. This just encourages 2 worlds to gang up on 1. Or it will cause a lot of hating and a negative atmosphere towards enemies.

4) Sigh, you failed to understand the point totally. Don’t even know where to start..
What is one of the obstacles that can oppose people being intressted in doing a team vs team fight.
Here is one obstacle: A random pug sitting in a keep shooting with a treb towards two opposing teams fighting each other, wasting one party or hurting them a lot, giving the other team an edge.
What I was suggesting in number four, was that there was a zone/area where you could run freely without having to worry about trebs/katapults etc shooting at you from a far sitting safely behind walls. If trebs etc should be allowed, atleast as a group you should be able to take them out.

7) Exactly how would that be different from now, I’ve read multiple times around the boards about two servers ganging up on another? There is also quite a lot of negative attitude going on regardless. Have you ever played in a group versus group level of pvping where you are able to chat with eachother?
Ofcourse there will be griefing, but griefing is a part of any game and depends on the player, not the game. You don’t actually have to talk to your opponent to behave like an kitten you know.
Having the chance to talk to your opponents opens up the game a whole lot more than it destroys it. For instance, simply thanking your opponent for a great fight, arranging a group fight on equal basis later on. etc.

Just because there are people out there who would abuse it, doesn’t mean everyone would.

But ofcourse, it’s up to Arenanet, I’m just saying. Being able to chat to your opponent isn’t bad. It makes the game more enjoyable in the end than this point where you don’t know who you are fighting except for guild tags and looks on armor. Ofcourse the game is called Guild wars, but still. Even guilds have groups.

Thidrank was amazing. My favorite times in DaoC was in that BG. I spent so much time there…….

Eternal Borderlands is pretty cramped. Needs to be bigger.

Aoe cap limit on player abilities needs to be gotten rid of as soon as they fix culling issues.

Or they could get rid of the downed state in pvp, but I dont ever see that one happening.

There’s no incentive for a “smaller” size group. You get a smaller group together and then you just get run over by the zerg. You can occasionally do some 3v6 or something like that. But whenever you’re outnumbered if you’re opponents are even close to average skill it’s going to be really hard.

Sansarah.3076:

7) Exactly how would that be different from now, I’ve read multiple times around the boards about two servers ganging up on another? There is also quite a lot of negative attitude going on regardless. Have you ever played in a group versus group level of pvping where you are able to chat with eachother?
Ofcourse there will be griefing, but griefing is a part of any game and depends on the player, not the game. You don’t actually have to talk to your opponent to behave like an kitten you know.
Having the chance to talk to your opponents opens up the game a whole lot more than it destroys it. For instance, simply thanking your opponent for a great fight, arranging a group fight on equal basis later on. etc.

Just because there are people out there who would abuse it, doesn’t mean everyone would.

But ofcourse, it’s up to Arenanet, I’m just saying. Being able to chat to your opponent isn’t bad. It makes the game more enjoyable in the end than this point where you don’t know who you are fighting except for guild tags and looks on armor. Ofcourse the game is called Guild wars, but still. Even guilds have groups.

Maybe i did get number 4 wrong, but to me it’s not a problem when i’m being hit from behind a wall. It gives me a challenge to overtake those defenses. If it was just in open ground, all it would take is a mesmer to portal you to the siege and it’s bascially down.

and 7) Of course it would make a big difference. Not everyone uses these forums. Sure there is griefing in here, but on a small scale. If you implent a chat system to other servers there’s going to be a lot more ganging up. In an ideal world people might thank eachother for a great match but this is the internet…
I have played games where you could talk to opponents in pvp and it just makes people behave rudely and destructive towards eachother. A lot of emotion is tied to the gameplay. When you play for so many hours trying to win a weekly match up there will always be emotions.
I don’t disagree that it would open up some nice features. But I for one don’t have enough faith that everyone playing an mmo is mature enough.

Kuthos.9623:

Thidrank was amazing. My favorite times in DaoC was in that BG. I spent so much time there…….

Eternal Borderlands is pretty cramped. Needs to be bigger.

Aoe cap limit on player abilities needs to be gotten rid of as soon as they fix culling issues.

Or they could get rid of the downed state in pvp, but I dont ever see that one happening.

There’s no incentive for a “smaller” size group. You get a smaller group together and then you just get run over by the zerg. You can occasionally do some 3v6 or something like that. But whenever you’re outnumbered if you’re opponents are even close to average skill it’s going to be really hard.

I think bigger battlegrounds would help alot, more space between control points. It’s really dumb having siege that can fire from one fort into the next, for instance. Like firing trebuchets from the outlook garrisons, etc. and taking down walls with no risk.
More open space, in general, would be nice in EB though. It really does feel pretty cramped.

AoE limits are a terrible idea for PvP, let’s be honest. I have no idea why they did this. If people are dumb enough to stand in a clump when they see AoE firing, they deserve to be AoE’d to death. The way it is now, you are actually encouraged to clump up into it. I’m all for using my teammates as meat-shields, but that’s a bit much

I’m not sure if the removal of the orange battle swords would be good or bad. I think it would just break even either way. If you remove them, then maybe you won’t get rushed as fast, but at the same time, it’s near impossible to tell what’s going on without them. Especially with NPCs constantly attacking stuff and making it look as if half the map is under attack.

Sadly, I think this discussion will never go anywhere on the wvw forum. I’ve mentioned this issue before, and it’s always the same thing: ‘go kill some dolyaks and supply camps!’ The people here just don’t get it, and I doubt that’ll change until the shininess of being part of a “realm” wears off.

I have played games where you could talk to opponents in pvp and it just makes people behave rudely and destructive towards eachother. A lot of emotion is tied to the gameplay. When you play for so many hours trying to win a weekly match up there will always be emotions.
I don’t disagree that it would open up some nice features. But I for one don’t have enough faith that everyone playing an mmo is mature enough.

Being able to talk to opponents in PvP is something I really miss. I understand why alot of developers disable this, but I wish they’d bring it back. I know there are alot of immature idiots, but it’s not that hard to ignore/report them if they rage on you.

The good times I’ve had talking to an opponent after a fight, have outweighed the trash talking. It’s pretty great to have an intense fight with someone and then be able to pay your respects, or to give tips/advice, etc.

Even if they won’t give general speech to opponents. They really, badly need to at least let us see player names. Even if you can’t talk to your opponent, knowing who they are and recognizing them would add so much. This is the most important thing, in my opinion, they need to add.
I think most of us would prefer to see names, rather than faceless opponent #58710. This really needs to change to create recognition and rivalries, etc.

More objectives. More types of objectives. You have supply camps, and guards. Nothing in-between.

Make dredge/quagen objectives a lot more interesting.

Add more natural chokes, like south-center island that can be sieged up and held against zergs for some time.

The ability is in the players hands already. Unless you are in a server on the rise and is demolishing everyone in sight you should see a few borderlands in near complete control of one of the enemy servers. My guild have been picking on these borderlands to go camp flipping. Not only is this easy karma and exp for low levels but you can earn gold for sieges, we can also prod for weak points then take towers if the chance arise. We normall have a small group going (3-10). Usually we would run into defenders along the way, ether scouts or another group, the fights are always more enjoyable win or lose, not to mention you can get a good gauge of another guilds ability.

If you just want it on an overall level the only thing I would suggest is to remove the map feature completely, have the site update holdings hourly. This will encourage real scouting and cross-guild game play.

I do not really care who I killed or who killed me. Working on my 4th level 80 and I do not remember the name of any guild I have fought against. Leave it all as it is. We do not need to turn this into DAOC.

If you “don’t care” then let people who care talk.

The AE limit is actually a good and bad thing at the same time.
It prevents AE stacking from absolutely melting a zerg instantly, but promotes the use of turtling at a door.
I’d rather them find a way to get the burning oil implemented so that its actually useful, and has no limit to how many it hits. Problem solved.

Just play spvp.

SPvP is more PvE’ish than WvW since the focus in SPvP is on the objectives rather than actually fighting as a group. Splitting your group to cover cap points for 1-1 or 2-1 fights is not group play. It’s LoL style solo’ing.

It’s like the difference between a 5v5 roman pit fight, and an actual battlefield with numerous units and divisions across a battle line.

SPvP does nothing for players who like to fight as a guild in the 2-4 group range or more.

WvW could be a great outlet for guild on guild fights if the mechanic did not drive everyone into zerging, and made zerging so effective.

From aoe caps, to the downed state, siege mechanics, they favor zerging or zerg leading.

Changes to the AoE target cap, and the downed state would give organized guild groups more tools for zerg busting. Once the zergs are easily broken and driven away. You’ll get more guild on guild fights where the terrain allows.

Do not get me wrong, I loved group action back in DAOC, but encouraging such gameplay essentially closes WWW for the casuals. The part that I love about gw2 – you do not have to have 4 other people with you to do something useful in www.

1) Battle Markers should appear only when 10 + ppl per side are involved in a fight, merely cause there’s 0 incentive atm for playing the stealth/scouting wars that we had back in Daoc.
2) Remove mobs from Wv3 already, they don’t belong to that area and they just add confusion to a game where CC got so limited use, thanks.
3) Prolly a slightly larger map with more room between objectives would help also.

I would also love the idea of small encounters. Also I fond of the new map concept with sPvP and WvW features bond together. Some of the most memorable fights I had in MMOs where small encounters.

Also it is way easier to see what you did wrong in a small fight and improve your playing rather than going along with the Zerg and die just because there were more enemies!

Perhaps an spvp map with no objectives, just obsticles and such. You could score by how much damage you do multiplied by how long you stay alive. You would have a little ball above your head that fills the more damage you do between deaths, so the better you are at surviving , the more of a target you become. Someone with a full ball would be worth much more than someone with an empty ball.

15 minute time limit, no score cap.

Pure pvp madness.

xtorma.1283:

Perhaps an spvp map with no objectives, just obsticles and such. You could score by how much damage you do multiplied by how long you stay alive. You would have a little ball above your head that fills the more damage you do between deaths, so the better you are at surviving , the more of a target you become. Someone with a full ball would be worth much more than someone with an empty ball.

15 minute time limit, no score cap.

Pure pvp madness.

Not even that. The best thing would be to let you improvise not driven by buffs or scores. Satisfaction just for beating someone!

EDIT: And off course no time limits or any other limit!

I think the main reason why zergs are popular is because of the incentives. Taking keeps quickly is more fun, easy, and gives you more money/xp/karma than doing anything else.

In fact, if we talk about personal rewards, then the optimal way of playing WvW is for the 3 servers to coordinate their zergs, start at opposite sides of the map, and then run around in a circle constantly capturing points rapidly!

ANet needs to realign personal incentives in WvW to something closer to what actually helps the server.

eg. - Every points cycle, the game tracks whether a player has contributed to his server “in some risky way”. This could be running supplies during a siege, killing the enemy, repairing stuff that’s being attacked, etc.
(it has to to be “risky” or else you’ll get bots and other freeloaders.)

- If you’ve contributed during the points cycle, then you’ll get XP/money/karma proportional to how many points your server gained for that points cycle.

This means that, if you run around in a zerg capturing keeps that quickly get taken back, then you wont get much rewards at all. The optimal way to play is to keep busy contributing to your server whilst holding as many objectives as possible.

We also need more tools for informal communication. Players should be able to put informative marks on the map. (eg. a command that counts the number of enemies you can see onscreen, and automatically places a map marker with that information.)

Some people can’t type quickly, or are too lazy, or don’t speak english. The game should offer some simple tools to help everyone coordinate more easily.

Rieselle.5079:

I think the main reason why zergs are popular is because of the incentives. Taking keeps quickly is more fun, easy, and gives you more money/xp/karma than doing anything else.

In fact, if we talk about personal rewards, then the optimal way of playing WvW is for the 3 servers to coordinate their zergs, start at opposite sides of the map, and then run around in a circle constantly capturing points rapidly!

ANet needs to realign personal incentives in WvW to something closer to what actually helps the server.

eg. - Every points cycle, the game tracks whether a player has contributed to his server “in some risky way”. This could be running supplies during a siege, killing the enemy, repairing stuff that’s being attacked, etc.
(it has to to be “risky” or else you’ll get bots and other freeloaders.)

- If you’ve contributed during the points cycle, then you’ll get XP/money/karma proportional to how many points your server gained for that points cycle.

---

This means that, if you run around in a zerg capturing keeps that quickly get taken back, then you wont get much rewards at all. The optimal way to play is to keep busy contributing to your server whilst holding as many objectives as possible.

Diminishing returns in RvR aren’t a real solution i’m afraid.
I would go the other way around upping rewards from defending objectives.

That said it has little to spare with incentives for 5vs5 / small encounters

nechi.1753:

Do not get me wrong, I loved group action back in DAOC, but encouraging such gameplay essentially closes WWW for the casuals. The part that I love about gw2 – you do not have to have 4 other people with you to do something useful in www.

Not even close, there were plenty of casuals in DAoC. Did they form gank groups? Not often, they zerged a lot.

Casuals should be able to play this game and have fun, but punishing people for doing anything other than rolling around as a giant zerg is rather absurd.

Realm points are the answer, even if no abilities are implemented. Leaderboards for guilds and individuals along with titles would be enough to encourage people to seek lots of these points.

They could just increase item badge cost, give badges 100% drop rate, and the number depends on how much dmg your group did to target compared to others.

That’s a bandaid fix though, this game needs more.

I would also like to see more buffs affecting group and not just everyone around you. Encourages group play opposed to zerg play.

Also remove AoE cap, makes zerg stacking stupidly effective.

nofo.8469:

Not even close, there were plenty of casuals in DAoC. Did they form gank groups? Not often, they zerged a lot.

Casuals should be able to play this game and have fun, but punishing people for doing anything other than rolling around as a giant zerg is rather absurd.

You’ve got me a bit wrong.
Two points – at the moment i can go solo/duo and do something useful and meet other soloers/duoers. With gank groups out there it will be as smart as soloing in macha.
Second – I’ve run a good share of amg pbaoe groups power leveling animists and twf-animist groups and i’d say that fighting them with casual zerg is rather boring and pointless. Sure things its extremely fun for 8 guys, but rather annoying for everyone else..

nechi.1753:

nofo.8469:

Not even close, there were plenty of casuals in DAoC. Did they form gank groups? Not often, they zerged a lot.

Casuals should be able to play this game and have fun, but punishing people for doing anything other than rolling around as a giant zerg is rather absurd.

You’ve got me a bit wrong.
Two points – at the moment i can go solo/duo and do something useful and meet other soloers/duoers. With gank groups out there it will be as smart as soloing in macha.
Second – I’ve run a good share of amg pbaoe groups power leveling animists and twf-animist groups and i’d say that fighting them with casual zerg is rather boring and pointless. Sure things its extremely fun for 8 guys, but rather annoying for everyone else..

Yeah its true, I do this a lot too and its somewhat fun, spend more time running from zerg than anything but its all good. The idea with gank groups is you either form one yourself and have some epic fights or if you aren’t that type of player, just zerg it up.

Onto the animists haha, yeah they were fun and kinda brutal. This game doesn’t facilitate wiping zergs with 5-8 people though sadly. I know its because of accessibility and I’m not silly enough to think it would ever be implemented, and as such its not something to be concerned about.

Roaming gank groups will never destroy the zerg in this game, even if they removed the aoe cap I don’t see it happening often.

The issue is that zerging is too easy, easy to spread speed to everyone, turtling protects you from AoE, more people make it easier to Rez and harder for small groups to down people, and maps are so small it’s easy to just Zerg point to point.

AoE needs to be changed to hit more people and taper off the farther from the center you are forcing people to actualy dodge and spread out.

Leave speed alone but make maps bigger.

And this is more of a personal observation from years of RvR in DaoC. Add a rank system the gives you more speed and faster rezing and faster build times on siege. This way if your new to wvw your attracted to running with the Zerg but the longer you do it you become more able to run with smaller groups. This is what made roaming groups attractive in DaoC. At a certain point you advanced enough that running with the Zerg was no longer attractive.

One solution is so obvious, easily implemented, and cheap that I can’t believe it isn’t in the game yet.

Whenever a player kills another player (not downed, but killed) their client should broadcast the map with a message that says, “Player1 has just defeated Player2.” Suddenly players have access to something so much harder to get than badges or karma. Fame. Not just fame to their realm, but fame to the enemy realm as well, because they’ll be able to see those messages too.

I remember in DAoC there was no greater feeling than a time when I was RvRing and got a lot of kills one after another, and I had people I didn’t know /whisper me with “What the heck are you up to? You just killed like 10 people in a row!”

Sure, I had a group behind me. And, sure, I was DPS assist at the time so I was bound to get lots of kill shots. But still, it felt great and made me want to RvR even more without caring about points or keeps or anything. And that feature probably cost next to nothing to implement, was totally optional, and is already in this game’s sPVP.

Samhayn.2385:

Leave speed alone but make maps bigger.

And this is more of a personal observation from years of RvR in DaoC. Add a rank system the gives you more speed and faster rezing and faster build times on siege. This way if your new to wvw your attracted to running with the Zerg but the longer you do it you become more able to run with smaller groups. This is what made roaming groups attractive in DaoC. At a certain point you advanced enough that running with the Zerg was no longer attractive.

Maps are fine, they are not too big nor too small. Spending 15 minutes roaming empty map quickly incites boredom. Though some dedicated “roaming” map like agramon would be nice.

I totally agree that we need more WWW titles and they should be visible to other realms, some equivalent of realm points and associated cosmetic bonuses like armor skins/dyes/finishing moves is more than welcome. But the raw power of the characters should not be increased – i think arenanet removed orbs just for this reason – to avoid making powerful even more so.

Main problem with WWW at the moment – it lacks sense of progression/accomplishement. Say there was not much difference between rr10L1 and rr10L2, but it still felt like something when you dinged a level after rr10. Plus a ladder – was always nice to see your group in the top of the LWRP/IRS, WAR had statues in the city and unfortunately gw2 lacks all this.

I do hope that arenanet can tackle easier features first without 6 month dev cycle – e.g. an online ladder with exp earned in WWW will pretty much show most active WWWers.