Guild Wars 2

In the spirit of balancing WvW…

The main problem with WvW is that at the moment there is no incentive to split off the zerg and work in smaller groups. These karma trains are fully working in the evenings and on reset nights. There is nothing easier then tagging along an enormous group and just stomp everything in your path while getting tons of events, WXP and karma along the way.

Being faced with these groups that outnumber your group 3 or 4 to 1 is demoralizing and not fun to play. Now I am a big fan of being the underdog and beating the bigger zerg despite all odds being against us. But that doesn’t always work in this game. Numbers just prove to be a very big advantage and it’s causing problems for less wvw populated servers. [Example: Spartacus and his men are better skilled fighters but lose because of the sheer amounts of enemies they face]

Now I was wondering if there could be a way to slow these groups down, by “debuffing” them. Slowing them down because a real army that becomes bigger and bigger also has to slow down to move as one single pack and let the rearguard catch up. (e.g. moving siege)
Consider it the opposite of the outnumbered buff and call it “The weight of an army”. Let’s say 40-50 is rather big enough group, as soon as there are 51 people in a certain radius, the allies in this radius would get the debuff. I haven’t quite worked out what this would debuff exactly but it has to be something that is a big enough incentive to not run in 50+ groups but also not so big as to give the other servers an unfair advantage.

Is something like this possible to implement? Or is the developer team behind WvW already working on a solution to split up the groups into smaller ones?

Disclaimer: I don’t want to insult/assault/harass any servers, just pointing out a problem and possible(?) solution to this issue. Please do not post how this is a non-issues and you just want your loot$$. Feedback is welcomed by all means but please keep it civil.

I see what you’re going for here, and it’s not a bad idea. However, I’m not sure debuffs are the way to go. People get a little touchy when are debuffed for things that aren’t entirely within their control. Also, there may be ramifications to situations where we’re supposed to stack up. (Defending a tower/keep, for example.) If I can’t run to the supply hut fast enough to help build some siege, then I’m going to be annoyed.

It seems that the speed problem mostly comes from the wide availability of group swiftness. Electric field + blast finishers can give a whole team 60 seconds of swiftness easy. Once that’s in place, the moving group maintains the group swiftness through abilities (such as Guardian’s staff skill, or Runes of the Centaurs + Healing skill). Maintaining perma-swift on a large group is very accessible.

Instead of a debuff, perhaps find a way to reduce easy access to long swiftness durations.

Just saying, it do is better to run less sized groups when facing a blob.

Attack 3 locations at same time, they won’t be able to defend all decently.

The issue is that working this way instead of zoneblobbing following a blue tag requires much more effort from all the players on the field involved.

I don’t like anything that discourages group play. I can see some WvW communities getting toxic because “This blasted militia noob is tagging onto our group and now we have a speed debuff, someone yell at him to leave.” I agree with you that I would like this problem to be solved, but I’d like it solved by encouraging players to split off, rather than discouraging them from grouping up.

I do not agree with any kind of penalty to players just because there is x number in a area.

If you want to encourage small teams, that is fine but penalties to encourage such activity is bad.

I see your points about about encouraging small groups and I agree with that. Tkittenence of splitting up groups boils down to that idea.

But how would you go about encouraging small groups? In EB it’s near impossible to run smaller groups in higher tiers without facing AC fire or a bigger group.

JonSnow.5610:

In the spirit of balancing WvW…

The main problem with WvW is that at the moment there is no incentive to split off the zerg and work in smaller groups.

Why is this “the main problem” again?
Oh, I see, you are saying that your playstyle doesn’t go well with that. That’s not “the main [game] problem”, that’s particular playstyle’s problem.

Being faced with these groups that outnumber your group 3 or 4 to 1 is demoralizing and not fun to play

I can see that. Why it should be a game issue is what escapes me. Generally numbers in fights, when exceeding certain ratio, prevail by any rational/historical standard. That’s a given. Bringing some artificial restrictions to that would be strange at the least.

Now, on a broader scale I don’t see a problem either since one of the objectives of a smaller group is not to collide with larger enemy forces. As a small tactical ops/ninja/commando group your objective is to make as much damage as quickly as possible while evading main enemy forces. Man, even describing it makes me want to join some of those okittend of groups. If you get yourself in a position of facing off larger group in the open, you’ve failed your objective already.

If small tactical groups are not needed/are not optimal on particular border at particular time, well, that’s not a game problem, that’s normal game dynamics.

JonSnow.5610:

I see your points about about encouraging small groups and I agree with that. Tkittenence of splitting up groups boils down to that idea.

But how would you go about encouraging small groups? In EB it’s near impossible to run smaller groups in higher tiers without facing AC fire or a bigger group.

I cannot answer how to encourage it.

I see too many problems, intentional and unintentional with causing a debuff on a group just because of x number of people in a group.

For example, say a server is attacking garrison, people know that is happening, not everyone however knows that there is a commander with enough people to not be given a debuff. Along come some people to help defend, they like garrison fights(I really like the 3 ways, even with skill lag) don’t know the commander has just enough people and cause a debuff causing the server to loose it’s upgraded garrison.

Then there is the single note bell spammer that is intentionally trolling. They can see an opportunity to cause the server to loose a important structure as well as spam their note.

Debuffs will also cause guilds that like to roll together to not be able to roll together. My guild can field a little over the number of a commander group. If any debuff were to be applied, it would most likely be the size of the commander group. So we won’t be able to have all of our guildies rolling together because it will cause a debuff, even though we are rolling with just over the number available in a commander group.

I think maps need to be redone, not so uniform, and have more objectives that encourage smaller groups without penalizing those that roll with a large zerg.

I have no problems with a boost to gold, xp, wxp, even give smaller groups faster speed is fine, that isn’t penalizing large groups.

Slowing down groups would be simple if they just started making the commander tag actually have a function other than being a map icon.

A commander would passivly support his zerg but instead apply a speed debuff when reaching the limit. As an example, for each player in reach (just taking random stuff):

Commander + 5 – No speed reduction, gain 5000 extra HP and have 8 might stacks.

Commander + 10 – Still no speed reduction, gain 2500 extra HP and have 5 might stacks.

Commander + 20 – Swiftness capped at 28%, gain 1000 extra HP and have 3 might stacks.

Commander + 30 – Swiftness capped at 22% and have 1 might stack.

Commander + 40 or more – Swiftness capped at 15%

*note that the cap would also apply to passive skills

Just one of many ideas to change the zergballing that Anet clearly want in the game.

Yaro.3251:

The main problem with WvW is that at the moment there is no incentive to split off the zerg and work in smaller groups. Why is this “the main problem” again?
Oh, I see, you are saying that your playstyle doesn’t go well with that. That’s not “the main [game] problem”, that’s particular playstyle’s problem.

You’re somewhat missing the point. It’s not a personal playstyle, it’s a generalisation of whats going on across all matchups. The higher the tier the more large groups you will encounter. It’s also an issue of the match up being “wrong”; less populated servers being matched with bigger and more organized servers. I played on low end servers and now on higher tiers. The numbers always win.
You have a point that historically numbers win the fights. But I am aiming more for the speed where a large group can traverse across a map. Large armies (this applies to any real word army) gets slowed down by the more numbers they have to carry along. This is somewhat counterintuitive to what actually happens in the game. People travel faster with more numbers. They can cap everything on the map and still be in time to defend it (most of the times anyway).

This mechanic is somewhat created unintentionally by Anet and they stated themselves this is not the way they see WvW. Yes the outnumbered server should use strategic groups by on a map like EB this is near impossible as mentioned above. And the zerg cannot be avoided at times.

At this moment zerging is the way to go in WvW: karma/gold/WXP. While this is fun for the people who run in it, the people who face don’t stand a chance when outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1. There is zero encouragement to split off from the karma train at this point so everyone jumps on it. (Even though Anet has said they will try to get people to split off from zergs)

I am simply trying to think of a mechanic that helps this process along. Wether it’s a debuff or something that encourages people to split off. Because it’s unbalancing at the moment. It might not be game – breaking, just unfair considering the match ups (although thats a different discussion)

AndrewSX.3794:

Just saying, it do is better to run less sized groups when facing a blob.

Attack 3 locations at same time, they won’t be able to defend all decently.

The issue is that working this way instead of zoneblobbing following a blue tag requires much more effort from all the players on the field involved.

I don’t find this works. The problem is when your attack two towers and a supply camp, that blob you didn’t fight is blobbing on a keep. I roam solo and Ive regularly been chased for over 10 minutes by a 40+ man blob. Ive wasted 10+ minutes of my time and they have wasted 400+minutes of their time. But I don’t see any results despite everything pointing to a major tactical win I feel I have achieved. There is something wrong with the way the game is designed that players cannot address with their actions.

Just do this:

Add few legendary mobs that remain burrowed underground (like worms), that if too many people run over the area (say 25+), they pop out and start leveling the zerg ball.

Like that movie Tremors lol. Too many players run over a ground where they are hiding, it “disturbs” them, they pop out, and beat the kitten out of everybody lol.

Realistically though, the solution has to be to take the reason away for people to want to zerg ball around. Whether it be to increasing the loot/rewards for doing things in small groups, or just out right denying large zergs any loot/rewards/xp at all.

If something is done, it needs to be in such a way that when a group of players looks at the big picture, they’ll think to themselves “zerging just isn’t worth it”.

The way simpler method would be to make the In-Combat Speed the standard speed and get rid of the out-of-combat speed, so the only way to move faster is through swiftness and movement skills.

This will make the maps feel bigger.

This will make it so a small man has better chance of taking towers, a zerg can’t just ignore a small group and be on the other side of the map then run all the way back when the wall is at 5% because the 5 people in the tower reporting are just waiting instead of going out to fight.

This will make it so the second half of the zerg that is Out-of-Combat can’t catch up to a small roaming group just because they are stuck In-Combat, which will easily encourage more small group play.

This will keep people from respawning immediately and being able to get back into a nearby camp before you cap it, just to run in circles once again.

This will make positioning of all the players in the map much more important since everyone will be moving across the map much slower.
IE, multiple smaller groups can hit different towers and the one enemy zerg wouldn’t have time to swing through and stop them all.
IE, it will be much riskier to take your full zerg on an offensive push, especially if a small group decides to tag your waypoint.

A bunch of staff eles can create havoc for a zerg ball with e3 to e5 and a5.

Learn how to play.

You think FIFTY is an acceptable size for a zerg? What server are you on where larger groups are a frequent problem??
Anyway, I agree that there’s way too much incentive to group up; running with a zerg is easily the fastest way to get kills and events. That’s not a tactical problem though – 50 people moving as one group will achieve less than 5 groups of 10 (assuming each group has a slightly intelligent leader). If you can’t match their numbers on the map, it’s time for you to start yelling in guild chat for more people to come to WvW.
So yeah, reduce rewards for groups of more than 5; remember that in PvE, when more players show up, the event difficulty scales up and makes it harder.

Nikked.7365:

Electric field + blast finishers can give a whole team 60 seconds of swiftness easy. Once that’s in place, the moving group maintains the group swiftness through abilities (such as Guardian’s staff skill, or Runes of the Centaurs + Healing skill). Maintaining perma-swift on a large group is very accessible.

Sounds like there are a couple of things you didn’t realise:
1. applying boons is affected by the AoE limit of 5, so no, the whole group doesn’t get that swiftness
2. Symbol of Swiftness only applies swiftness to you if you don’t already have swiftness, so it does nothing if you just stacked 60s of it
3. Rune of the Centaur has an internal cooldown

Mist Y.5214:

Sounds like there are a couple of things you didn’t realise:
1. applying boons is affected by the AoE limit of 5, so no, the whole group doesn’t get that swiftness
2. Symbol of Swiftness only applies swiftness to you if you don’t already have swiftness, so it does nothing if you just stacked 60s of it
3. Rune of the Centaur has an internal cooldown

1. true, but with every player that blast in the field can apply the boon to 5 different allies (first of all to himself). It’s random, sure, but 20-30 man zergs can easily get all 1m+ swiftness, as long as enough different players blast the field. Same goes for water and fire combos.
2.wrong, that’s Temporal Curtain. Symbol of Swiftness it’s a bit wonky (happens to do not receive boon while running over because it apply swiftness pulsing) but it DO stack.
3.again, it’s matter of numbers. 1 single player can’t apply swiftness to whole zerg. but if you have 5-10 ppl with that runeset, then things gets more interesting.
(btw, centaur set is used manly by mesmers who have very little OOC swiftness, and usually you shouldn’t need more that 3-5 mes in a 20-30 zerg…so it’s a bit unrealistic scenario)

Fuzzion.2504:

A bunch of staff eles can create havoc for a zerg ball with e3 to e5 and a5.

Learn how to play.

Really not what I was looking for Being skilled won’t stop them from roflstomping you either. Definitely not on a staff ele. I know what ele’s can do to a zerg but even then when there are 50+ running towards you. It’s impossible to stop them. Although Static field always makes for good fun.

To be honest the numbers I am regurarly faced with are much bigger then what I call "a fair large group’. Maybe 30-40 is more accurate.

JonSnow.5610:

Fuzzion.2504:

A bunch of staff eles can create havoc for a zerg ball with e3 to e5 and a5.

Learn how to play.

Really not what I was looking for Being skilled won’t stop them from roflstomping you either. Definitely not on a staff ele. I know what ele’s can do to a zerg but even then when there are 50+ running towards you. It’s impossible to stop them. Although Static field always makes for good fun.

To be honest the numbers I am regurarly faced with are much bigger then what I call "a fair large group’. Maybe 30-40 is more accurate.

Anet wants by design, large and small scale warfare. But i understand what u mean

numbers are a real advantage in real war, but they require more planning and are less mobile, requiring supply trains to keep them going. the reason for this is that people in the real world take up space and consume limited resources, neither of which happen in gw2.

The problem for a game like this is if friendlies can body block friendlies, this leads to an obvious trolling scenario. likewise, if there is some disadvantage to a large group, there becomes an incentive to make sure that everyone pulls their weight (so, no trolling by accompanying a group, but not helping). This would also encourage experienced players to yell at inexperienced players, who are making the game harder for them, but not pulling their weight. The bottom line is there are many ways to maake the game not fun.

I would like to see disadvantages to larger groups, but I’m not sure what the answer is…maybe bigger maps? So the massive group can’t make it to every battle?

troll em with supply traps. thatll teach them a lesson. Did you see that one video by a VOTF guild i believe where he trolled a zerg for around 15+mins, til they just gave up.