My ideas that could help reduce the benefits of zerging is to redesign the keeps to implement a PvP-type conquest system. Simply put, there are 3 rings in each keep that are in key positions inside the keep that must stay your servers color in order for your server to control the keep. You maintain control of the ring similar to PvP, except the more players in the AoE of the ring means the more influence you have to change the rings color for your server, meaning it would not stay contested like it does in PvP. This could reduce zerging by essentially forcing a split in order to either capture or defend a keep. It would basically be a tug o’ war match inside the keep to maintain the rings where holding 2 out of 3 rings can gradually take the keep for your server. There would also be no more Champion Boss inside of the keeps. Would servers still zerg and try to powerhouse the enemy? Most likely since this is how people in WvW have been playing for a while and it’s just human nature to form up. But, this is why a redesign would be needed to introduce more chokepoints, more flanking paths, more high walls, more positions for siege, all for the sake of actual strategy.
This idea is not exactly a zerg fix idea, but towers would remain generally the same as they are now with the Champion boss and one ring to capture. Except the Champion boss would have a better placement inside the ring to where it can actually knock players out of the ring instead of just knocking them into the wall surrounding the ring. The amount of KB’s and damage he does should be based on how many players are around him. The towers would still maintain their key placements around the map but they would be relatively easier to siege compared to keeps with maybe something like a 10% static HP reduction on all walls and gates.
Walls and gates for keeps on the otherhand can remain the same HP but if the enemy gets inside a keep and they figure they need to open up another entrance for their server the siege they place and player damage against gates inside an enemy keep does double damage going from the inside to outside. Or simply new siege could be introduced called something like “Sabotage Bomb” that does massive damage to walls and gates when you’re attacking walls and gates from inside an enemy keep. I believe this could help create mayhem inside keeps which would then cause players to scatter or become distracted as more enemies start pouring in, or this could help players pull clutch on-the-fly strategies to outplay their opponent.
Some more ideas that I had to negate the benefits of zergs is for example; if there is a server with 100 players and a server with 50 players on the map. The server with 50 players could maybe get a 50% stat boost when in range of the 100 player server to help maintain their power if the 2 servers end up clashing together. Once they are out of range of each other the servers get their stats reduced or boosted depending on how many enemy players are around them. There might have to be a hard cap, maybe just a 30% stat boost no matter how outnumbered you are, otherwise we would just see 1 guy fight against a 100 man server and put up a hell of a fight with his 1000% stat boost, which I think would be ridiculously entertaining to watch, but that’s besides the point. (btw I’m terrible with numbers) Another scaling idea could be to allow outnumbered servers to carry more supply based on the number of enemy players they’re fighting.
Sentries can be upgraded to provide some skills such as a line of sight that provides a ring that reveals an area (similar to something like Fog of War in RTS games) around the sentry to show the number of enemies (red dots on the map) within that sentry point for anybody from the server that bought the upgrade who is currently looking at the world map. Once the sentry dies the LoS upgrade is gone too. Another upgrade could be a “Horn Call” that would ping the map whenever the sentry starts getting attacked by the enemy servers, this would synergize well with the LoS upgrade.
That’s about all I got for suggestions and ideas. This was sort of a quick little spark I had since I’m simply bored of WvW at the moment.
One more thing, let us reset our WXP skills please.
TL;DR: There isn’t one