Guild Wars 2

I’ve had this idea for a while, probably might have been mentioned before but I figured I’d post it anyway.

So we know that the AoE cap of 5 really empowers large blobs of players, and we also know that this 5 cap is a technical limitation and probably isn’t going anywhere. So I thought to myself, how can we make people not want to blob up? What sort of disincentive can we give them. So I came up with this:

Crowded Debuff:
When a certain number of players (lets say 30 for now) are grouped within a certain radius of one another they will receive a debuff known as Crowded. I haven’t exactly thought of the definitive punishment that comes along with crowded but I thought of a few possibilities:

I am by no means suggesting ALL of these happen. these are just some ideas for the debuff

Movement speed reduction (lots of people around you, it’s hard to move!): This would leave blobs in player AoE longer – thereby increasing the amount of damage they take.

Flat increase in damage from AoE: Not my favourite choice, but it would make the AoE dmg of a smaller group more effective against the larger group and would help smaller groups that kite larger groups through chokes have a better chance at winning.

Endurance degeneration (so many people around you, you’re pushing past them which makes you tired!): Basically I thought it’d maybe be a neat idea to have your endurance decrease when so many people are around you. This would decrease the defensive capability of the zerg by removing their ability to dodge, making player AoE more effective by attacking the massive damage mitigation of the blob that comes from dodging.

Stability Immunity or decreased stability duration (lots of people around you, you are being jostled and can’t remain stable): Strategically placed CC can definitely turn the tide in a battle but with the abundance of AoE stability and personal stability that come with the main WvW classes (cough warriors, guardians cough) I felt that CC sometimes loses its umph. This one is a bit dangerous because of the chance that full on CC zergs would become the norm, but I think with some playing around it could be worked in to not be completely abusable.

So that’s my idea basically! I tried to work in a physical reason why the debuff is being applied (mostly cause there are tons of effing people around you) Thoughts? If you can think of other cool debuffs I would really like to hear them!

I just wanted to add too, I realize that calculations and server data bursts would be a bit of a problem here as the debuff gets applied/removed so I also thought that a way around that would be to have the debuff be timed. Nothing too long so you aren’t standing around waiting for it to wear off all the time instead of fighting, but something decent enough so the server wouldn’t be constantly recalculating your damage or stats – depending on what kind of debuff it ended up being.

I personally think its a great idea. It would be awesome if WvW was more about the strategic use of teams instead of who who has more numbers.

Though i do think 3 is a scary one to play with. Mostly because of hammer touting monsters that are always on the front line. But actually seeing a small group of people win fights would be a sight for sore eyes.

Debuffs for greater number =‘s shoo kid you’re debuffing us =‘s they don’t want to do this.

Aberrant.6749:

Debuffs for greater number =‘s shoo kid you’re debuffing us =‘s they don’t want to do this.

also, “hey, lets take our group of 15 people and debuff the groups and guilds everywhere they go, ignore their complaints! we just wanna have fun! hurr durr” griefing will be a massive massive issue with something like this, especially in the “timed” form ur suggesting

The idea of a crowded penalty is a great one because it would make large battles far more interesting.

The impact on enjoyment in larger fights may well be so great that even if it required cutting the AoE cap down to 4 to do this it would probably still be worth it.

Anet having trouble with their server and programming which cause massive lag on blob fight, adding more of this will only be worst. As much as some of the ideas are good, I don’t see it being implemented. And FYI, they won’t upgrade WvW server as it won’t generate them income

When will people realize that ANET wants zergs? This large scale combat is the vision of these development studios. We witness this release after release. There is nothing anyone can say that will change anything; I’ve seen this same cycle for over a decade in “RvR/World v World/<insert catchy name here>.”

This is the way the game was designed, and unless I missed some miraculous post by a dev during my absence I would bet this zerg problem hasn’t popped up as a topic in meetings in months.

Take the game for what it is, the core mechanics (flow) won’t change and try to make your own fun away from the annoying zerg blob

How about any group with more than 25 will appear as large X in their teams colour so that everyone van avoid them.

This would cause servers to run all 15-20 man havoc squads.

Collision detection. Never gonna happen, but cant stop me from dreaming.

I’d like to see a trap that deals damage that scales up with the more enemies are around, or run through it, or something like that. Could at least make defending more interesting if you’re outnumbered.

Relentliss.2170:

How about any group with more than 25 will appear as large X in their teams colour so that everyone van avoid them.

This would cause servers to run all 15-20 man havoc squads.

A large X isn’t going to stop anyone

Sharpoon.8197:

Relentliss.2170:

How about any group with more than 25 will appear as large X in their teams colour so that everyone van avoid them.

This would cause servers to run all 15-20 man havoc squads.

A large X isn’t going to stop anyone

Maybe maybe not.

Said it before, saying it again.

Triple the size of the maps, remove all waypoints, move all personal rewards into PPT (or delete them altogether).

Zergs vanishing overnight.

Or they could add in friendly fire. Still have a trolling issue, but it would sure stop the zerg ball.

I’m having really hard time accepting the idea of punishing players with debuffs or stats penalties for ganging up. It is like putting invisible wall so players cannot get where developers don’t want them to get although landscape suggests area should be perfectly accessible. I..e. ILLOGICAL hack.

Numbers, when exceeding certain threshold, should prevail in open field battles, period.

What can and should be done is environment itself and incentives. Like orbs – that’s a step in correct direction in regards of giving smallscale more breathing space. Otoh orbs introduce a number of problems, but I’ll not get into that.

I have same problem with ideas of making it more “fair” by punishing stronger side or buffing weaker side. How the kitten it is fair just escapes me. Best one should win competition, whatever “best” means in particular environment. The problem is not with the one who has excelled in these circumstances, the problem if any is with environment. And that’s what should be addressed.

In case of zergs it may be giving smallscale more weight in ppt, making more diverse landscape that would make big blobs sub-optimal etc, changes to AoE cap and retal mechanics.

In case of blowouts etc it is population balance that should be addressed.

Debuffing players based on the number of allies around is just total bullkiten.

Have you guys not read Anets reason for not putting a stat bonus on the outnumbered buff? They said if they do that it will encourage player griefing when that one player enters and makes the buff go away. Now apply that same logic to any type of debuff you give a group that is over X amount of player. Now let that marinate and realize how silly this suggestion sounds to Anet.

I love the “crowded” idea and I LOVE the speed reduction. I think the crowded debuff should cause stacks of “weakness”. The idea being that you would miss more often because everyone is swinging weapons around you. I love the idea of encouraging spreading out of players. Large scale battles could still happen, just more spread out.

As i said. Collision detection.

Problem is that pugs tend to follow guild groups: not cool when you get debuffed.

IDEA

I think it might actually be a better idea using something like fractalised zones, for example, we split the whole map in fragments. Each fragment allows up to 33 players of one server at one given time. No zerging

Oh right, I’m willing to document on this and try to reason out any possible weak points.