Guild Wars 2

So the strategy for WvW has always been stack up and zerg, which I think isn’t as enjoyable as a system that allowed more punishment of such a strategy. If you think back to Guild Wars 1, Heroes Ascent and GvG only had 8 v 8 so AoE attacks typically did not have any sort of hard cap on them, and the result was that it promoted more interesting tactics, spreading out, having front lines and back lines, and lots and lots of kiting. In guild wars 2, the majority of AoE attacks can only hit 5 enemies at a time. Now, I understand that this may have been implemented to control lag and maintain server stability, but the result is that most big fights boil down to blob of 40 players one smashing into blob of 40 players two. I think Arenanet realized this, and their answer was to add the ruins, which I think was a fantastic step in the right direction, and I’d like more! I put this out to the community: What if the cap on AoE attacks was raised to 20, while all other caps on beneficial AoE remained the same? Imagine if, instead of 2 blobs of laggy, epileptic death smashing together, it forced people to spread out. Obviously, choke points would become more difficult to break, and there would be other potential effects I’m sure, but think of it…people having to spread out…wouldn’t that be so much better?

A big blob of text, oh the irony…

The AoE limitation wont change, period. Not going to happen, ever.

The only reasonable way to go about “solving” this without making a new game is the Commander system. Its needs a revamp and actual functions. Why? Because right now the players themselves are applying blob rule mentality with it. Not Anet. Its taboo to bring 2 Commanders to a border, let alone 3 or 4. Despite this players always yell here “ooh its Anets fault, they have to stop the blobbing!” and then they probably go to a border and yell “all stack on commander, wtf you over there tag off we already have a pug raid!”.

Whether Anet know this is another matter…

Honestly, I doubt you can fix zerging. It’s just what players do, in any game, whenever they can.

The best way to fix it, in my opinion, is to have siege damage scale up based on how many targets are hit.

For example; 5 or less targets hit, 100% damage.

6 targets hit: 120% damage to each target

7 targets hit: 140% damage to each target…

and so on. It would discourage zerging, while making it easier for defenders. Win-win, because no one defends anything at this stage of WvW. it’s just a circle-get-as-much-karma-as-possible.

Dawdler.8521:

A big blob of text, oh the irony…

LOL – This is the only thing I read.

Caine.8204:

Honestly, I doubt you can fix zerging. It’s just what players do, in any game, whenever they can.

The best way to fix it, in my opinion, is to have siege damage scale up based on how many targets are hit.

For example; 5 or less targets hit, 100% damage.

6 targets hit: 120% damage to each target

7 targets hit: 140% damage to each target…

and so on. It would discourage zerging, while making it easier for defenders. Win-win, because no one defends anything at this stage of WvW. it’s just a circle-get-as-much-karma-as-possible.

I like this idea! Now splitting forces up between multiple gates becomes attractive, and there is a limit on amount of siege so performance shouldn’t be impacted too much.

Fours ideas:-

(1) Vary the speed of character, depending on the number of characters around them. Example, 30+ and they move as per golems.

(2) Automatic Scout: Map icons of varying size based on size of group, i.e. 10, 20, 30, 40+ Zergs would be a lot easier to counter if you knew where they were.

(3) Zerg Mines: Mobile deployable item which triggered on 10, 20, 30, 40+ concentrations. These would only be available to the defending BG. Not useable inside a structure, would not show up on the map, and last 12 hours. Then would gain destruction the closer they were to a friendly structure.

(4) Robo-Mines: Similar to above, but sought out large concentrations of enemies, minimum 10. Picture lots of little golems, steadily homing in on a zerg.

Would leave EB BG as a zerg fest.

I still feel like regular AoE attacks need to be able to hit more ppl (lets say 10). AoE cap for beneficial abilities (boons/heals) would obviously stay the same (at 5). If you could streamline the way AoE attacks are processed, I bet you’d improve performance overall. If you targeted a group of 20 with an AoE, eliminate the processing that randomly selects 5. The first 10 enemies the engine finds in the AoE get hit, then the server moves on. Now dmg won’t get spread out among a stack, instead damage will favor proximity to a certain point. Which would be weird…but at the end of the day, it means AoE damage gets concentrated on certain players, who would then die, exposing the other players in the AoE. Now all of a sudden, AoE death drops ppl one by one instead of treating 20 players as a communal health pool.

I truly think eliminating that processing to distribute the damage randomly would offset the additional 5 attacks per AoE pulse. And as an added bonus, once stacking isn’t viable anymore, you increase performance even more. And think of all the other benefits. Now you have WvW, but with kiting, frontlines, backlines, all that PvP goodness that you had in GW1 GvG and HA.

Dawdler.8521:

and then they probably go to a border and yell “all stack on commander, wtf you over there tag off we already have a pug raid!”.
…

What Tier you play? Never happens in Tier1, multiple commanders frequent same maps daily.

That said, another way to spread teams is out is to make maps larger. Present footprints are far too small, particulary for 24/7 active T1 tiers.

Search function. You will find all the pros and cons of the same topic, in about 50 posts. Rinse and repeated.

If you have no AoE.

In short, you will not have AoE cap lifted of player damage, because … then a zerg would become a zerg of eles and necros, and the zerg ball, would then put out … whats your multiplier up there OP? 4 times the limit?

…well 4 times the amount of damage.

Ask yourself this, why would I ever want to play a melee class in a world designed around ranged AoE under your conditions? Its purposely selecting a handicapped architype.

I know there is more, and yes … there are times where I would absolutely love the above selection/rule in place (primarily when I’m on my ele or necro, looking down in a siege defence where i’m sorely outnumbered trying to hold a tower, agaisnt say … JQ or SoR or a BG zerg)

… but … if you want to AoE cap removed… use SIEGE.

EDIT: Sorry on the caps. But its the only option available at the moment. And atm the wvw will and always promote zerg play. Sadly, it is what it is. Even good suggestions like yours actually benefit the zerg style more.

SUGGESTION:
Only way to promote not playing zerg style play is to REWARD other playstyles further. Example… you know when ressing the dredge in EBG? more players spike ressing a dead dredge give more benefit. Same with yak slapping.

This needs to be reversed. This needs to reward solo players or up to party size say 5, then drastically reduce/drop off. So a yak hit by 20 … would reward next to nothing say 1 point, while a yak hit by 5, could reward 25 points.

Depending on objectives/conquest, this magic number increases (tower/keep/smc) or decreases (sentry/BLnode/yak/camp).

Hexin.5603:

SUGGESTION:
Only way to promote not playing zerg style play is to REWARD other playstyles further.

^This

Hexin.5603:

Search function. You will find all the pros and cons of the same topic, in about 50 posts. Rinse and repeated.

If you have no AoE.

In short, you will not have AoE cap lifted of player damage, because … then a zerg would become a zerg of eles and necros, and the zerg ball, would then put out … whats your multiplier up there OP? 4 times the limit?

…well 4 times the amount of damage.

Ask yourself this, why would I ever want to play a melee class in a world designed around ranged AoE under your conditions? Its purposely selecting a handicapped architype.

I know there is more, and yes … there are times where I would absolutely love the above selection/rule in place (primarily when I’m on my ele or necro, looking down in a siege defence where i’m sorely outnumbered trying to hold a tower, agaisnt say … JQ or SoR or a BG zerg)

This logic is completely flawed. Here is the scenario, 5 AoE characters spread out in an arc vs 10 enemies stacked on top of each other. the 5 characters use a combination of AoE cc and AoE damage to simultaneously wipe the squad of 10 because they all get hit by all of the attacks, whereas the squad of 10 can only hit 1 out of the 5 at a time.

Once you have people SPREAD OUT, the exact opposite of what you are claiming becomes true. Suddenly melee becomes useful, because ppl AVOID STANDING ON TOP OF EACH OTHER. It’s ever so simple, AoE is only “OP”, if you STAND ON TOP OF EACH OTHER. Once you SPREAD OUT, AoE isn’t as powerful. This is the way it was in GW1, and this is the way it should be.

This is why back in GW1 GvG teams and HA teams would SPREAD OUT, kite, have a frontline and a backline. The only exception was ele ball, and that was extremely gimmicky.

I think the reason ppl think raising an offensive AoE cap would break the game (balance wise, not server performance), is because they are used to WvW the way it is and they simply don’t know any better. All it would do is eliminate having 20-40 ppl stack up, within the radius of a necro mark, as a viable strategy. All of a sudden, ppl would pay attention to how close they are to their allies, and WvW would start looking like a real battlefield.