One recurring theme on the WvW forums is the “problem” of zerging – the fact that large groups of players are often able to dominate maps in ways that smaller groups have no obvious way to counter. Periodically posters come up with ways to fix the problem, some of which are creative, some of which are shortsighted, but all of which are (in my opinion) misguided.
I definitely understand the frustration. I’ve been on Fort Aspenwood since beta, and Fort Aspenwood is a server that for months on end was sitting squarely in the middle of tier 2 – week in and week out we were matched up against either TC (a server that outnumbered us) or whichever tier 1 server was slumming in tier 2 that week (who outnumbered us by even more). What’s more, my favorite style of play is the havoc squad of 5 or so people. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been WvWing and some 40 man murder train suddenly rounds a corner and rolls over me without even breaking stride. In fact my main has died over 1900 times, and probably the vast majority of them have been in WvW. I agree, it’s frustrating – but it’s not evidence that the game is broken.
A server’s WvW population consists of hundreds or even thousands of players. The likelihood that there’s going to be a significant difference in average individual skill between two groups that large is pretty low. So of course twenty people will tend to beat ten, and forty people will tend to beat twenty, and so forth. That’s not evidence of a broken game, quite the opposite. When two sides have access to the same gear, classes, skills, and builds, then numbers will be the deciding factor – but not the only factor. Anyone who’s run with a skill group knows that it’s possible for twenty people to beat forty. If the group of twenty takes initiative and ambushes, if they stack tightly, if they bomb decisively, if they use stability and water fields with good timing, then they can beat larger groups – not just occasionally but consistently. I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve been on the wrong side of such defeats more than once.
It’s true that the server with better coverage nearly always wins. But success in WvW is something we can define for ourselves. All those weeks where FA was matched up against tier one servers and losing PPT badly, my goal was to lose PPT by slightly less. When I’m outnumbered my goal is to use the strategy that can mitigate my numbers disadvantage by as much as possible. If you expect the developers to mitigate the fundamental advantage that superior numbers gives a server, you’re assigning them an impossible task. It’s never going to happen. Nearly every change that gives an advantage to the smaller side gives an even larger advantage to the bigger one.
But don’t think of WvW as something that has to be designed for you to win at least 50% of the time. Think of it as a puzzle to be solved. Beating a force that outnumbers me is the single most satisfying thing I’ve done in this game. The fact that it doesn’t happen that often just makes it sweeter when you pull it off. Before I played GW2 I played EVE. There’s an alliance in EVE called Rooks and Kings which has used creative tactics to beat larger (sometimes much larger) forces time and again. One of them was interviewed here: http://themittani.com/features/blaze-western-sky-0?page=0%2C0. In the interview he said something that I think is applicable to GW2 WvW:
“…a little of the politically correct safety culture has also encroached onto the mechanics themselves. In egalitarian fashion, everything must be equal to everything else, or people will complain, and so the game panders a bit to the masses, rather than standing aloof and mysterious as an imposing, cruel mountain, daring us to scale it. Everything has a clearly-labelled counter, and counters have obvious counters. Anything that doesn’t instantly find a place within this circle of betterment must be buffed or there will be angry threadnaughts.”
The reason that WvW is my favorite thing in GW2 is BECAUSE it’s often unfair. It’s a challenge to be overcome. If you want something designed to be fair then PvE is the place for you, not WvW. The zerging “problem” is not a problem at all – it’s what makes WvW uniquely interesting.
(edited by Yougottawanna.7420)