Guild Wars 2

Hello,

So one of the biggest issues I have in WvW is that I always feel like I can’t contribute much unless I’m in a zerg. Roaming is fun, but doesn’t really do much for the team overall. I figured I’d make a list of the mechanics of the game that I feel support zergging.

1. AoE Caps- This is something that is built into the game, I know. I know it is there for technical issues. I believe this is the next culling.
Solution: The next technology hurdle that anet needs to tackle. AoE hitting as many targets as possible could be great for conviencing people to not stack ontop of each other into a red blob.

2. Siege- This is a double sided sword. A few arrow carts can help a small group defend a place from a zerg. However, those same arrowcarts can decimate any small group that tries to attack it, usually forcing them to result in long range like catapults and what not. Even then, siege can still take them out with rather ease.
Solution: Make siege do more damage (the AoE ones at least) by how many targets are hit or within the AoE. Like an arrow cart does (this is just random numbers to show what I mean) 100 dps to one target, but does 500 dps per target if there’s 5 people in the AoE.

2. NPCs- NPC defenders can make it somewhat tedious for players of smaller groups to take things. It also promotes zerging by making default defenders at places so players don’t have to defend as much.
Solution: take the defenders out or reduce their numbers significantly. This could help improve the importance of having player defenders and spread out the population of WvW maps more.

3. Swords – Crossed swords appearing is a really forgiving mechanic. It lets people know when a place is being attacked, even when there are no players there. This means zergs have more map control/awareness without having to have people at their places.
Solution: Take them out. Help increase the importance of having player defenders or make it so you have to be within a certain radius to see the crossed swords. If a small group of players ninjas a tower, it is the defenders fault for not having anyone defending it or watching it.

4. Waypoints/Respawns/Teleporting. This combined with crossed swords heavily promotes zergging. You attack a place, crossed swords pop, a 60man zerg spawns in by the nearby waypoint, boom you’re dead. It makes underpopulated servers very hard to fight in maps that they are unpopulated in.
Solution- Take out waypoints or make it so that you can only teleport every so often (like 10min recharge rate or something). Maybe even put in a respawn time longer than what it currently is.

1. They would have to redesign everything so I don´t think that will ever happen.
2. Sounds interesting.
2. I wouldn´t say that the npcs are too strong or that there are too many.
3. That would also hurt smaller servers.
4. I remember reading a dev post that they are thinking about taking the waypoints out in the future.

@OP

Disagree with #3 and #4.

#3: They changed the orange sword mechanic recently. It had no effect. Quite frankly a big zerg won’t even care about lower level tower flipping because they will just retake it.

#4: WvW is already too much running. The WP is fine as it. Plus it is easy to contest a WP.

Points: Players get more bags, karma, WxP, etc running in a zerg since a zerg can take down a target much faster than a small group and the rewards are the same.

Direction: Much easier to follow a blue hat that has a clear goal. Most players initial introduction to WvW is follow the leader to learn. Many never break out of this.

Stronger: Boon stacking, condition cleansing, group healing, etc all add up to make a minion of the zerg more powerful in the zerg than out.

Security: Thanks to on the spot rezing running in a zerg is simply much safer. Players can make mistakes and get brought back with minimal down time.

AoE Cap: Nothing to do with zerging just stacking. It may be there for technical reasons but it is also serves as a balance to AoE heavy classes. If they didn’t have to put it in, they would still have to adjust it in some way for class balance.

Fun: Some people enjoy large scale combat and have no interest in solo/skirmish.

Map Caps: Often solo/skirmish is frowned upon when enemy zergs are on the map so that server can field a larger zerg. In a sense each skirmish group is sucking strength from the larger zerg on a capped map.

1. that is a dubbled edge sword to as removeing the cap could also get people to ball up even more and use boons like retaliation to insta kill anyone toching them and use huge amoung of healing in water fields and the like.
2. might work if made right.
2. no simply just dont agree with it.
3. depending on if its white swords or orange swords we are talking about.
4. i agree that the wps should be removed tho the map should be changed first then

For clarification on the swords, I’m purely talking about white swords. The ones that appear on structures when you attack them. Not the orange swords.

Zerging is caused by two mechanics:

1. Flat location rewards with negligible scaling (lord only) makes zerg capping both the fastest and the most reliable way to earn rewards in WvW.
   The bigger the group, the faster the cap, for the same personal reward – this makes zerging a no-brainer.
2. The AoE cap means zerging outperforms all other methods of reducing incoming damage.
   Over 70% damage reduction with 100% up time and no impact on other skills, simply by running with a group of 10+ others! – who wouldn’t want this buff?

The way location rewards and scaling works is, on its own, enough to cause the near mindless zerging we get in WvW. That the AoE cap also makes zergin the lowest risk way to WvW just cements zerg behaviour.
Why play smart in WvW, when the smartest way to play WvW is to zerg?

People will only shift away from zerging when something else provides a faster, more reliable way to earn rewards in WvW.

To achieve this we have to make zerging less profitable and bring the rewards for other styles of play up to the same or higher levels. Then it will become a matter of balancing rewards against the relative risk of different behaviour. Doing that will require a) increasing the risks associated with zerging to be comparable with other sorts of WvW play, and/or b) increasing the rewards for non-zerg play to offset their higher risk compared with zerging.

The AoE cap is why I and many other PvPers will never take the Score System in this game seriously, nor World vs World seriously because of that.

Throw in other silly crap that should of never made it into a PvP game (Looking at the Down System) and you get this cluster kitten of a game that’s been designed around a Shoddy SPvP system and a terrible PVE system with this World vs World tacted on.

Warhammer Online has a fairly good pvp system but 2 realms caused it to fail

Guild Wars 2 has 3 Realms but a shoddy PvP system.. causing it to Fail.

At least the PvEers enjoy it.

Xsorus.2507:

Warhammer Online has a fairly good pvp system but 2 realms caused it to fail

Guild Wars 2 has 3 Realms but a shoddy PvP system.. causing it to Fail.

At least the PvEers enjoy it.

Good point there about warhammer. Our guild played DAOC for almost 7 years, it simply got outdated and they stopped adding content and improvements.

Warhammer did have a fairly good system, and I agree the lack of the third server took the dynamics out of it we enjoyed in DAOC. I don’t think GW2 WvW has failed at this point, but there sure is a lot of frustration and what’s being addressed and what’s being sidelined.

Another thing Warhammer had was the BEST grouping system I’ve ever used for multiple group PvP. The “Warband” system still blows anything away in PvP MMO’s atm.

Xsorus.2507:

The AoE cap is why I and many other PvPers will never take the Score System in this game seriously, nor World vs World seriously because of that.

Throw in other silly crap that should of never made it into a PvP game (Looking at the Down System) and you get this cluster kitten of a game that’s been designed around a Shoddy SPvP system and a terrible PVE system with this World vs World tacted on.

Warhammer Online has a fairly good pvp system but 2 realms caused it to fail

Guild Wars 2 has 3 Realms but a shoddy PvP system.. causing it to Fail.

At least the PvEers enjoy it.

Yeah sadly most of my hardcore PvP friends (love MOBA and those arena type games, played the heck out of arena WoW (got glad before they quit) came to this game and quit within a week. They were long friends of Gw1 too. I think the fact that sPvP is so grossly unpopular (some say because of rewards, but that wouldn’t cause the unpopularity it has currently alone) that something is wrong with this games pvp. They couldn’t get into WvW much because of the whole zerg fest thing.

I think once a few new MMOs come out, and more casuals leave the game. The dedicated fans will be left over and it will be interesting too see what the voice they represent is.

I think the main ones have been covered here, same reward 7 ppl taking a twr to 70. Whereas something like DAoC had a set amount of points something was worth then divided by those that contributed. So zerging made things faster and easier, but it was a trade off in RP return.

The downed state is fine, it allows for any class to be a rezzer, no longer do you sit around going alright we dont have a rezzer, lets wait until 1 becomes available b4 we move out. But the rally system is so very bad in WvW, in PvE it works fine and thats where it should stay, in PvE. There needs to be a serious debuff applied to players just coming back from downed for like 20-30 seconds to take them out of the combat. Clearly it’s do-able, you get 1 using a revive orb. Not o im back up(in about 2 seconds with 3-4 rezzers) with all my cooldowns up, 100% DPS capacity, full energy ………

I wouldnt say the PvP system has failed, it’s just more directed towards casual play(well the WvW aspect). The competitive players were all meant to join sPvP was the idea i think, but heres the thing, i dont like taking/could give flying kitten about:-
capture points
towers
supply camps
yaks
keeps
relics/orbs

i dont care about:-
world rank
server rank
my own rank
any kind of rank

Lets face it the rank abilities are pretty much worthless(except for the guard defense and thats only because you get more HP’s from that line of traits). And if you see a Legend rank player not with a zerg running around with Twilight you can almost guarantee they are free badges.

I just want to roam around and kill stuff(in our small man), so does everyone in my guild.

You have a well thought out post but, in the spirit of discussion, I would like to present a couple of alternative points of view.

To your motivating point that roaming doesn’t help your team, I’d like to note that 1 or 2 people can have a huge impact on the enemy supply chains. I have personally (solo) shut down all supply from two camps for the enemy for upwards of 30 minutes at a go. Yes…they stupidly did not guard their stuff but the point is they were “zerging” and I took advantage of it and punished them for it.

As for your supporting points:

1) removing the AOE cap, as mentioned elsewhere would only make zergs stronger and result in insta-aoe death. The math has been done multiple times on this forum so I won’t repeat it here.

2) Maybe. Although siege wasn’t as huge a problem until they upped the power on ACs. They had made it a bit worse with the WXP specialties. However, the counter to siege is siege. You just have to be organized enough to set it up.

3) The NPCs are already too easy to take out. I’m on a high-pop server and I can solo camps on my ranger and warrior often before anybody reacts. For parties of 4-5 people the npcs are merely a speedbump. Also, standing around defending isn’t fun so you need to reward it. However, rewarding just standing around will lead to people abusing it. Tricky situation.

4) Swords are there to guide folks to the fight…i.e. the fun. However, I actually blame swords for encouraging the zerg actually in a different way. On a high-pop server you actually try to blow down the gates so fast no swords appear so you don’t give the enemy time to react. This usually involves getting lots of golems together which requires lots of supply and support to move effectively and safely e.g. a zerg.

5) Waypoints. They should definitely eliminate the ability to zone into a contested waypoint during the timer switch. That’s just kind of cheesy (but effective).

Anway, I appreciate your post but I simply don’t think zerging is as much of an issue as people make it out to be. There are a ton of rewards to be had for both kinds of play although I will admit that there are probably not enough small man objectives out there (if you don’t like slaughtering yaks). However, it is my understanding they may be remedying that a bit with their new orb replacement system.

1. AOE caps will help zergs more
2. Siege should get a bonus for defenders only
3. NPCs are easy to kill
4. A very usefull thing for solo players/small group, next to stopping supply routes is making all keeps and towers contested.
5 Agree.. No more waypoints means a more groups needed, 1 south east, 1 north east etc..

But i also dont think zerging is the problem. The problem is that zerging is the best, only and most rewarding tactic. And that it doesnt need any skill to do itand it is booring for the zergers as well as for the outnumbered defenders that have no chance to stop the zerg.
They start in a zone take everything and go to the next zone.. not for points but to farm wxp karma etc.. (karma trains). Done mostly in off hours.

So instead of the OP points:
Make it if a server want to zerg in one blob that it is impossible for them to hold/respond and defend all the other towers/keeps.
-No more waypoints
- All siege, even rams and golems, have an area around them so no other siege can be build or can get close to the other siege.
-Defenders on walls get some kinda bonus(more health and dps) when they are outnumbered near the tower/keep.
-Rewards for getting an objective/kill is devided by number of players (how less players the more you get)
- Give points and rewards accourding to how many enemies are in the zone. If both enemy servers have queues for the zone you get max rewards and server points for your objectives. But if there are no enemies in the zone, your objectives you own gives only like 5% of the max points. And if you take something the reward(wxp, karma, drops etc..) you get is also very small.

1 – I disagree, imho Aoe is the real zerg problem, right now a necro can get 15/25 lootbags and around 200/300 wxp ( in my personal experience ) from a 60+ enemy blob, if that necro had no Aoe cap that drop would be like 50 bags and many more wxp, I’m not sure you see the problem here, but that’s a nice farm, that would for sure drive more ppl into blobbing, and kill any chance to discourage it.
Well, to put it in a nutshell, no Aoe cap = more blobs

3 – I agree, Orange sword, but also White swords are blob friendly, removing those sword would help decrease the blob efficency, and increase roaming/milita/scout groups effectiveness.

I think a way to start to fix this could be to find a way to reward players fighting players in equal numbers or, since that would be hard to plan/develop, it could be easier to at least reward players better if they manage to kill someone without exterior aid. I’m not talking about gamebreaking rewards, just something like if you kill someone alone you get 2 bags instead of one. It’s not gonna change much but it would be cool, especially since it’s much harder and takes longer to get one down in a 1v1 than to get 5 down in a 20v5

Class balance comes into play a lot as well. The strongest classes in WvW currently are melee oriented. Ranged damage just isn’t good at this game and with the AE cap in place, they’ll never amount to much. This makes it more valuable to stay balled up in melee than to spread out and attack from range.

So you have a game that heavily favors melee for offensive damage over ranged. You then design your entire healing and buffing mechanic around standing in small circles on the ground. Worse still is healing from these small circles can easily outpace any/all AE damage thrown at a zerg other than arrow carts. Melee also have the luxury of getting quite a few blast finishers as part of their main DPS chain as opposed to range that often have to activate them at a DPS loss.

Improving the viability of ranged classes in this game would go a long way in countering zergs. Right now there just isn’t a threat for melee to close the 1500 yards to the enemy as they’ll never do any appreciable damage to matter before getting there. They also don’t have any real value when defending a tower/keep as the only thing that matters is arrow carts.

If they could improve ranged classes and simply increase the AE damage/cap in some fashion where it wasn’t so easily negated by blast healing things would turn around quick. Simply increasing the offensive AE cap to 10 and leaving the beneficial AE cap to 5 would probably be enough to push the game in the right direction.

I disagree with point 2. I can cap anything regardless of NPC upgrades whilst running solo so it should not be an issue in regards to group vs zerg play. Perhaps its a skill/build issue, but if a small havoc group is having difficulty flipping a camp in seconds there is a clear problem on their end.

I think that another thing which actually promotes zerging, is the long term reward difference for defending vs fast capping.

The effect is that it’s more rewarding when a single zerg caps everything and defends nothing, because simply they can farm more reward if they let the others recap the keep/tower. Why defend the keep for 1 hour, if you can cap it several times ?
Maybe diminishing rewards for a constantly capping same structure by same server , and increasing rewards for holding the same structure over time ?

One thing that I would not agree with is the NPC’s. In my opinion they are too weak.
How can they be to strong if you can solo a camp ? While fully upgraded camp is alot harder, it is still possible (maybe not for each class/build).
The upgrade that gives guards for caravan is a joke. You can easily kill the dolly and ignore them.

I can describe GW2 pvp like “buff stacks 3-4 skills use and ~0 player skills” for every 2+ players groups (or not 1vs1). There isn’t real CC like other game, because here can got stability for ~unlimited time.
If you hit 1 with aoe CC group with 50 people (20-30 of them with constant stability), you CC ca affected only 2-3 (if you luck).
CC in GW2 is not as CC in other pvp games (only works for small fights). So if we don’t have real CC why we talking for PvP?

sminkiottone.6972:

1 – I disagree, imho Aoe is the real zerg problem, right now a necro can get 15/25 lootbags and around 200/300 wxp ( in my personal experience ) from a 60+ enemy blob, if that necro had no Aoe cap that drop would be like 50 bags and many more wxp, I’m not sure you see the problem here, but that’s a nice farm, that would for sure drive more ppl into blobbing, and kill any chance to discourage it.
Well, to put it in a nutshell, no Aoe cap = more blobs

3 – I agree, Orange sword, but also White swords are blob friendly, removing those sword would help decrease the blob efficency, and increase roaming/milita/scout groups effectiveness.

The Reason Necro’s get that many bags right now is because everyone at the start of a zerg fights, stacks in a huge giant blob and runs at the other huge giant blob, Remove the AoE cap and yes… a Necro will wreck a huge giant blob….But so will a couple Rangers Barraging that Blob, or Ele’s…Thus you won’t see Huge Giant Blob tactic being used anymore because everyone will realize they’ll die.

It will also lead to possibly smaller sides actually having a chance against a bigger group of people.

I can run around right now, and before any engagement in a zerg, Tell if we’re going to Win or Lose just based on how many the opposing side has….2 to 1 and its an instant loss… Which is freakin sad for a PvP game… 2 to 1 Odds and its automatic loss in a zerg fight?

There’s way too much incentive for staying blobbed up in this game. With so much retaliation and stability being thrown around, why play ranged at all. It’s way too easy to stack perma retaliation. Every zerg is now running with so many guardians that it’s nearly impossible NOT to have retaliation on you. As much as I love my engineer, I can’t even play the class in any sort of zvz play due to fact that retaliation does more damage to me than the damage I actually put out. What is the point of aoe ranged attacks (grenades), if it’s impossible to use them where they should be used. I actually made a post on the engineer forums about this very issue.

As for aoe caps, I also think the engineer is a prime example of what happens when the cap is removed. Since, the engineer can hit more than the 5 person cap (ie, up to 15 per grenade throw), he can likewise be hit by up to 15 stacks of retal per throw. Don’t even think about using barrage (8 nades hitting up to 5 people each means theoretically 40×350=14k dmg back). If the caps were raised, many more people would see what it’s like. Everyone would bunch up even more around the guardians, or you’d end up with just zergs of guardians running full perma retal builds. Then one aoe attack would kill you before you had the chance to cast your next skill. There would have to be a total rework of many game mechanics for something like this, and I can’t see that happening. It’s a shame, DAoC never had aoe caps and it worked fine. Then again you couldn’t kill yourself using 1 ability.

Dasboba.1652:

There would have to be a total rework of many game mechanics for something like this, and I can’t see that happening.

Honestly, the Guardian mechanics such as “Stand your Ground” and Massive condi removal, 4 sec blast finisher, dodge healing, support skills like this need to be distributed to the other professions equally or buff mechanics that counter stability, field blasting and condition removal spamming.