Guild Wars 2

Zergs are fun, they are what set wvw apart from spvp and should be encouraged not destroyed. In the times of olde armies fought each other, not small groups of elite forces.
BUT… blobs are not fun. They cause lag and because of other dynamics of the game, create a numbers only game – for example, in real life, you can’t run up a hill in full armour without losing a lot of speed. You can’t easily run through woods, and bushes or jump streams and trenches – or swim in full armor. All things that were employed in the past by inferior numbers to beat a superior strength.

SO how do we keep the zerg but eliminate the blob? One suggestion is to make it so that you have to join a commander to see their tag on the map. Then limit the number of people who can run with the commander and still see their tag. Obviously there is a clear way around this (employed by guilds) but it should have an effect on the size of zergs.

Another suggestion is to create more choke points on the map. Reduce the strength of armor underwater but introduce the ability to create boats as moveable siege. Make the streams more difficult to cross by making them deeper forcing the use of bridges. Slow people down as they climb up a hill and speed them up as the climb down… make it slower to move in heavy armour and easier to move in light armour but change it so that all classes can choose which kind of armour they wish to use.

Personally I think the latter suggestion would cause too many people to quit the game and cause a lot of grief on the forums. But, the first suggestion would work quite well. Make the cap 30 people and then it can be moved up or down after a trial period.

Do you have a solid definition for what is a zerg, and what is a blob?

Personal experience of many forum threads shows that these are quite loose terms… often a zerg is just “a group that I lost to” and a blob is just “a group that RiOT lost to” ;p

I do applaud the idea of finding a way to split people up and encourage more smaller fights all over the map, but if you’re going to go down a zerg v blob route we’re going to need strict definitions.

I like most of your ideas… though agree that choice of armour types will never happen! Good luck finding some answers

a zerg is less than 40 ppl give or take a few… a blob is 50+

or more specifically, a blob tends to be when you have to que to get on the map and once on the map almost everyone (give a take a few) is following the same commander.

But if you can cap the number of people able to see the commander tag then you would have distinct definition on what is a blob and what is a zerg.

There is an alternative… if Anet forcibly divided the population of the game into servers that were more equally balanced by moving entire guilds to different servers… So that each server had more or less the same number of people… and then solved the skill lag issues… then the dreaded blob would not be an issue anymore.

I may be wrong, but I think that there is already a definition for Zerg and Blob… While both have lots of people, Zergs are not fully organized, and can be just a group of people following a commander; Blob’s on the other side are groups of people that move at the same time in very little space, taking advantage of the game mechanics for limitations like the one for 5 targets for AoE attacks.

So if you see 50 people running to your gates, and some of them are using catapults, others attacking the walls, and others building rams… that’s a Zerg.

If you see 50 people all together in the same spot, running back and forth always like a small ball… that’s a Blob.

Or that’s what I thought…

The trouble is that it’s subjective. 30 people would be considered a large zerg on the lower tiers, while in the higher tiers that might only be a small guild group.

It’s pretty easy by looking at the map to figure out where all the action is even without that blue square.

Why do you think the ANET is concerned about large groups of people massing together to interact? Perhaps this (as I believe is the case) is exactly what they had envisioned when designing WvWvW.

I’d suggest that instead of ANET spending time and resources to stop people from grouping up in a MMORPG that they fix any performance issues that occur when 200 players collide.