Guild Wars 2

zastari.1730:

Shiren.9532:

The further away you get from the top tiers, the less existent this problem is. I spent all weekend in WvW and I was frequently on maps where I was taking towers and siegeing keeps with 20 or less people and the defense was similair. People think they need to be in higher tiers to experience the best WvW has to offer. In my experience, WvW is the most fun in the mid to lower tiers where you can get a small to medium sized guild together and take on an entire map with the aid of the handful of allies who come and go.

You had your chance to solve this problem when they had free transfers to medium population servers.

So your idea of fun is PvDoor? That’s exciting please tell me more.

I didn’t realise a door was made up of 20 warm bodies waiting to be looted for their badges? You think skill lag and being one in a crowd of 200 spamming particle effects and mindlessly swinging a sword is the best WvW has to offer? I suspect the limit to players on a map was just a technical number which had to exist, but the optimum number of people on a map for an enjoyable experience is much lower. Just because you can fill the map doesn’t mean it’s going to be fun to do so.

There are zergs in lower tiers – you can even find queues (albeit short ones) for EB, so the numbers are always going to be there. But the borderlands will usually have a handful of randoms and two or three medium guilds (with the occasional float team dropping in when something big is in danger) butting heads across the map. In a 15 vs 20 fight your individual actions and skill are going to matter a whole lot more than they will in a 100 vs 100 fight.

It’s weird to come into a thread talking about dissuading the zerg mentality and dismissing servers which don’t have that issue as PvDoor. Maybe it’s the PvDoor myth which needs to be worked on, because certainly in the middle tiers it’s not an issue. For the most part, zerg vs zerg isn’t either (barring EB, and even then it’s not the case most of the time).

I kind of wanted to make my own thread for this.. but I’ll post it here: I think zergs in WvW would lose MASSIVE effectiveness if so many auto-attack skills and skills in general didn’t hit multiple targets.

I play a thief, and using trick shot I can sit there and bounce arrows of multiple people and hit 2500 crits and people just drop. There’s also the dagger auto attack, which is multi-target. As is dancing dagger.. and I think that one that bleeds people is too. A lot.. well.. probably 99.99999% of the time anyone dies in WvW is because of ridiculous amounts of AoE attacks. If you are not equipped with a bunch of defensive stuff (shadow refuge/other stealth kitten), or high armor/vit(sometimes even if), you drop instantly, even if you aren’t running straight into a zerg. If a single person’s AoE is limited to five people, how come, defensively, we can take damage from more than 5 aoe attacks? What bothers me most is that often times the people who are killing you aren’t even trying to kill you. Your death is just an effect of every class having so many attacks that are multi-target. I think if a lot of these abilities were toned down/multi-target removed, zergs would be much less effective, and skirmishes would be more about who has better coordination in calling out targets (see: squads) than who can auto attack the most.

I want to clarify that by aoe attacks i dont mean actual aoe like flame burst or cluster bomb.. i mean auto attacks being multi-target.

This problem occurs when my server (Yaks) takes on higher ranking ones like Dragonbrand, etc, they have huge zergs running around and this just ruins it, skill lag and frame rate lag, basically not very fun beyond a certain zerg size.
In all reality it is a hard problem to fix I think.

cyyrix.6105:

whiran.1473:

While I appreciate the OP’s enthusiasm I have doubts as to the results of the proposed changes.

I would think, instead, that the larger a group becomes the slower it becomes. This would encourage very large groups to split up to move more quickly.

The thing is, you’ll never eliminate zerging. Numbers matter in battles. The more troops one side has the better for them.

The way to counter the zerg would be to increase the AoE limit to groups. Allow AoEs to impact 40 people – that’ll spread people out.

You could provide incentives to smaller groups and more penalties for being in a big group but… why?

What exactly are you looking to do with this? Are zergs really an issue as such or is it just something that you are bored with?

The reality of people is that they group up. The larger the group the more people join in. We do this in our every day life all the time – if a shop is empty no one wants to be the first to go in but if a shop is full there is a human desire to check it out as well.

Street performers do everything they can to get a ‘seed’ audience so they can grow it knowing that the larger the gathered audience the more likely more people will join it without even knowing what’s going on.

Zerging (crowding together) is a human thing. I don’t think you’ll ever ‘code’ it out of a game. Instead, I think the focus should be on being able to provide more organization for a zerg and some sort of mechanism to make being in a zerg more interesting.

Zergs/blobbing are an issue because of the skill lag they introduce. Even if skill lag was resolved, however, zergs trivialize the game. Right now, the way to win is to run around in the largest group possible, knowing that you can surf around the map without fear of ever being caught out of position (except for a massive golem rush, perhaps).

I’m fine with people playing together. I’m fine with larger map populations beating smaller map populations…

Here’s my complaint. Imagine two scenarios:

A) Group of 60 rolling around in one big zerg
B) Three groups of 20, operating independently geographically most of the time, but working together as a coordinated force

In the current state of wvwvw, option A dominates. I think that’s a major shortcoming of the game.

wrong 20 people working as a coordinated force is always better than 60 people

These people may be the exception, properly place arrow cart, reflect, and aoe
will make those 20 people a formidable force.

Perhaps it isn’t ANETS fault for the zerg mentaliity. Perhaps its ours. As shown above a well coordinated group can effectively hold a zerg at bay. Yes maybe all the players in the zerg were bad or they were scared or they suck but it is still possible.

The fact is maybe the players are playing WVW wrong because all they have known is Zerging. This is why I vote people should start making guilds or even small based groups that can effectively assist a larger zerg on a map. A force like that could effectively ninja things, or divert the zerg which with the case of the new culling can be easily retreated from. The greatest strategy for defeating a zerg that you can’t kill head on is to divert and separate their forces until you can kill it. Although I still see commanders charging head first trying to bang their heads against a bigger zerg and fail multiple times and then they get angry. Start commanding better and perhaps your men won’t die.

Yes there are incentives to running with a zerg but when people start realizing that it is a lot more fun to be outmanned and win, then mindlessly pressing 1 and having a false sense of accomplishment, then people will start running in smaller groups. Of course bigger groups will always exist.

The Player is playing WVW wrong.

fenim.2395:

Perhaps it isn’t ANETS fault for the zerg mentaliity. Perhaps its ours. As shown above a well coordinated group can effectively hold a zerg at bay. Yes maybe all the players in the zerg were bad or they were scared or they suck but it is still possible.

Agree, we zerg. We are all to blame ( them who zerg)

95% of gw2 players prever zerg.

Last night i rage quited again. Theese maps are allreaddy far and i mean by far to small.

The duo party i was in, was not to able to move 30 seconds of not running into anny blob of 30+ players or more:(

I think there are good and bad ways to utilize a zerg. Zergs will ofc be ever useful in wvw, but a good commander with 30-40 can win over a zerg of 60 by correctly engaging, going as a group, utilizing choke points, etc. In fact, for some commanders (and zerging) in tc, i’ve seen that “mindlessly zerging” just wouldn’t cut it. We listen to our commanders more, learning how to engage and disengage, where to hold ground, how to fight as a group, etc. For the first time, I’ve seen our zerg beat a bigger zerg by properly fighting as a group.

How to beat a bigger zerg. Have better trained people.

Anet will not do anything about the zergs [so looking forward to Elder Scrolls Online when released]

Grove.2835:

Remove the 5 cap AOE limit. Force people to spread out, play and try new tactics and not have 40+ all standing on one commander, moving and using all their skills at the same time.
Also only limit map switching to every hour or so.

Yes, a thousand times, yes!

brunohstein.9038:

1 (and only). Disable the ability of reviving dead allies.

I like this too. Zergs can be slowed down and dismantled in this fashion. Right now, they feed themselves all to well.

cyyrix.6105:

loseridoit.2756:

cyyrix.6105:

whiran.1473:

While I appreciate the OP’s enthusiasm I have doubts as to the results of the proposed changes.

I would think, instead, that the larger a group becomes the slower it becomes. This would encourage very large groups to split up to move more quickly.

The thing is, you’ll never eliminate zerging. Numbers matter in battles. The more troops one side has the better for them.

The way to counter the zerg would be to increase the AoE limit to groups. Allow AoEs to impact 40 people – that’ll spread people out.

You could provide incentives to smaller groups and more penalties for being in a big group but… why?

What exactly are you looking to do with this? Are zergs really an issue as such or is it just something that you are bored with?

The reality of people is that they group up. The larger the group the more people join in. We do this in our every day life all the time – if a shop is empty no one wants to be the first to go in but if a shop is full there is a human desire to check it out as well.

Street performers do everything they can to get a ‘seed’ audience so they can grow it knowing that the larger the gathered audience the more likely more people will join it without even knowing what’s going on.

Zerging (crowding together) is a human thing. I don’t think you’ll ever ‘code’ it out of a game. Instead, I think the focus should be on being able to provide more organization for a zerg and some sort of mechanism to make being in a zerg more interesting.

Zergs/blobbing are an issue because of the skill lag they introduce. Even if skill lag was resolved, however, zergs trivialize the game. Right now, the way to win is to run around in the largest group possible, knowing that you can surf around the map without fear of ever being caught out of position (except for a massive golem rush, perhaps).

I’m fine with people playing together. I’m fine with larger map populations beating smaller map populations…

Here’s my complaint. Imagine two scenarios:

A) Group of 60 rolling around in one big zerg
B) Three groups of 20, operating independently geographically most of the time, but working together as a coordinated force

In the current state of wvwvw, option A dominates. I think that’s a major shortcoming of the game.

wrong 20 people working as a coordinated force is always better than 60 people

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvkKHR8zz34

These people may be the exception, properly place arrow cart, reflect, and aoe
will make those 20 people a formidable force.

You can’t write off the problem with a “L2P” argument. Imagine the scenario I outlined, but with every single person on both sides of the exact same skill level. Do you still believe option B prevails? No chance.

With the exact same skill level, Option B will prevail. Why is that you may ask?

Offensively

Can hit three targets hypothetically at the same time while the enemy blob can only defend one target at a time. This means the enemy zerg either has to be incredibly fast wiping up the offensive strike or split their zerg to defend three points.

This means the Zerg will lose either 1 or 2 points depending on scouts and intel.

Defensively
The three 20 man groups only have to defend one point because their is a massive blob. We can assume defending is easier than attacking and that the three 20 man groups would all be called to defend that point thus making a 60 vs 60 with the exact same skill level making it 50/50 and even.

The reason why most see A win is because I have never seen B ever occur in WvW and also B is more centered on PPT where A is more centered on Incentives. Running in one big blob doesn’t guarantee Server PPT but it does guarantee Incentives for individuals. Another factor is that it is a lot easier to form one big blob then have smaller coordinated groups.

Now imagine your scenario but with 4, 5man groups and and 4, 10man groups which still equals 60 men. When you attack you can effectively take 4 supply camps and siege 4 towers at the same time. Lets see one blob zerg defend against that.

turn on friendly fire
it’ll discourage zergling
thats all i can think about

miruza.9351:

turn on friendly fire
it’ll discourage zergling
thats all i can think about

That would not work at ALL. You would have to run solo or with a maximum of 2 players. Or only use single target attacks. =/
Will NOT happen. Thank god.
There might be another way to dissolve blobs. (By making changes to Squads)
Change Squadsize to a maximum of 30
Give players in a Squad a buff (e.g. 2% Magic find / player in the squad)
Change the commander Icon you are following to another color and let the other commander icons show on the map.

No single thing about punishing zergs will be implemented. Never. Because your proposals will negatively affect largest part of the players, in order to cater to the smallest part. Not a single developer in his right mind would agree to that.

Remove NPC “bosses” pull Gift of battle out of WvW and for the love of everything I don’t believe in, GET THESE kitten PvEERS OUT OF MY WVWVW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That will remove this stupid zerging nonsense in the majority of cases, which is only for people who have no idea how to fight other classes and are only good at mindless PvE. I watched 20-30 imbeciles kill that stupid overgrown grub, while completely ignoring the commander last night…….GTFO OF MY WvW PvEERS!!!!! Zerglings need to stay in Starcraft dagnabit….

Parktou.4263:

Remove NPC “bosses” pull Gift of battle out of WvW and for the love of everything I don’t believe in, GET THESE kitten PvEERS OUT OF MY WVWVW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That will remove this stupid zerging nonsense in the majority of cases, which is only for people who have no idea how to fight other classes and are only good at mindless PvE. I watched 20-30 imbeciles kill that stupid overgrown grub, while completely ignoring the commander last night…….GTFO OF MY WvW PvEERS!!!!! Zerglings need to stay in Starcraft dagnabit….

haha /halfagreed

problem arent only pvers but new wvwers.

i agree with you that sometimes you can have the best commander and people wont follow. but quite often the problem is also the commander, but giving any commands

have seen it often enough… didnt issue enough commands once in a while myself. or did bad movement decisions that people couldnt follow as easily as i would have liked.

fenim.2395:

Perhaps it isn’t ANETS fault for the zerg mentaliity. Perhaps its ours. As shown above a well coordinated group can effectively hold a zerg at bay. Yes maybe all the players in the zerg were bad or they were scared or they suck but it is still possible.

The fact is maybe the players are playing WVW wrong because all they have known is Zerging. This is why I vote people should start making guilds or even small based groups that can effectively assist a larger zerg on a map. A force like that could effectively ninja things, or divert the zerg which with the case of the new culling can be easily retreated from. The greatest strategy for defeating a zerg that you can’t kill head on is to divert and separate their forces until you can kill it. Although I still see commanders charging head first trying to bang their heads against a bigger zerg and fail multiple times and then they get angry. Start commanding better and perhaps your men won’t die.

Yes there are incentives to running with a zerg but when people start realizing that it is a lot more fun to be outmanned and win, then mindlessly pressing 1 and having a false sense of accomplishment, then people will start running in smaller groups. Of course bigger groups will always exist.

The Player is playing WVW wrong.

this problem is utterly true. Everytime we ask for rewards for defending and etc. We ignore the utter problem with zerg. Its us. Subutai (genghis khan general) didnt win war base on his troops alone. Subutai recognize the importance of seige weapons and technology to bring extra tactical gameplay.

As it stands seige weapons are too expensive for small group. Anet should change that.

Jscull.2514:

Like I said “85% of the population doesn’t have real player vs player experience” because the 15% of us that do would never (like Acel said) spend the effort or time sitting in place spamming 2 buttons. Dude….we are from the gaming world where you utilize your character to its MAX against other characters. Clearly over your head. We want to FIGHT OTHER SKILLED PLAYERS interested in the same thing, not interested in sitting on arrow carts/catapults/trebs/ or on keep walls.

Case study 1: This person doesnt realize that he is promoting a zerg mentality. Classes are balanced in this game. With enough players, anything will become a zerg fest. Seige weapons are powerful and destroy zergs. Organized arrow carts can be reward by mowing down the enemy into a trap.

Unfornately, this advance gameplay will make WvWvW a noob unfriendly game. GW2 should not be noob friendly when it comes to competition. L2p or die

He should play Age of Empire against skill players to see how effective are seige weapons.

Rednik.3809:

No single thing about punishing zergs will be implemented. Never. Because your proposals will negatively affect largest part of the players, in order to cater to the smallest part. Not a single developer in his right mind would agree to that.

Punishing zerg based on wp fee and etc is a wrong way.

The real way to punish zerg is by promoting advance tatics. WvWvW have the potential to be a cooperative tactic mmo which is rare in gaming.

The current state of the game is perfect, stop trying to make this game into something it’s not. Next.

There is room for both zerg and small group tactics. That said, it is much easier to be bad in a big group and still succeed. This is a complex game with a steep learning curve and most of us are still learning. As the skill of the player base improves, tactics will evolve past stacking and blasting fields.

Aun apreñdo.

MrKnieves.4162:

The current state of the game is perfect, stop trying to make this game into something it’s not. Next.

I am trying to promote the war mentality on world vs world vs world.

Tactic will always be better than mindless zerging

cyyrix.6105:

A lot of people (including myself) are tired of the mega-zerg mentality that is currently dominating WvW.

I understand that it takes skill to coordinate the movement of a large group of people. Still, when a mega-zerg is so huge that enemies can do nothing but auto-attack (something only seen in epic 3 server battles until recently), the game loses a massive amount of its skill factor. Even with hardware/software upgrades to completely remove skill lag, I think many believe that these massive zergs trivialize the strategy of WvW.

With all of this in mind, here are some ideas Anet could consider that might dissuade the zerg mentality:

A lot of people complain that the maps feel too small. While it would be difficult to change the map completely, nerfing zerg movement would help to create the illusion of a larger map, and might encourage massive groups to split up forces. This could be done by:

A) Nerf swiftness in WvW. CDs, duration, AoE. Who knows? But zergs shouldn’t be able to run around with 100% swiftness uptime.

B) Increase the contested duration for waypoints. Zergs CONSTANTLY run to defend one keep, port, run to attack another, port run back to defend the first, etc. Decreased access to waypoints would mitigate this.

C) Charge for waypoint abuse. Another way to slow down zergs’ abuse of WP’s. Give players x free waypoints per hour, then start charging more and more for additional uses.

D) Slow down map hopping. I’m undecided on this one. It might adversely affect small, coordinated groups, too. With disconnects and whatnot, it’d probably be technical nightmare to implement anyways.

E) Turn on the melee attack assist feature with friendly targets. Drastic, but it sure would be fun to see! Can you imagine a 60-man zerg trying to rush out of a keep portal at the same time?

Other ideas not related to zerg movement:

F) Divide tower rewards based on the number of cappers.

G) Prevent large guilds from manipulating the “full” server status with blackout hours.

H) Continuously provide free transfers to players on the top two or three tiers.

I) Remove AoE limits on offensive skills.

I know a lot of the WvW forum warriors are members of these massive zergs, but I would appreciate any constructive discussion about these or other ideas.

None of these things will work and especially not I) Remove AoE limits.

Lol I will go out and get a full zerg of glamor mesmers and kitten an entire map. Or possibly a full zerg of well necros. Either of these would be unstoppable, this would not break up a zerg it would make it worse, you would have numerous zergs with nothing but mesmers and necros..

People need to think before they suggest things like remove AoE limit.

I’ve fought under two or three commanders that could slice through zergs twice our size like a slap chop, as long as players grouped up with them closely and paid attention. A smaller and smarter group will win, as long as there isn’t a massive size disparity. This is as it should be.

I think making squad mechanics more obvious could help a lot. I didn’t realize until a few weeks ago that joining squads meant you only saw one commander on the map (the one whose squad you’ve joined, of course) even if there are several using their tag, and I’ve been playing WvW on and off since launch. If most players knew to choose a commander and track them through the clutter, it would allow for more commanders to be fielded and make smaller groups more viable. You could also make different commanders have differently colored icons so you could tell at a glance who was where rather than spending a lot of time trying to interpret the minimap. It wouldn’t completely resolve the “who do I follow” problem with small groups—there will always be people who just spawned into the map and don’t know the battle situation, and new players who have no idea how WvW works at all—but it would help.

F) Divide tower rewards based on the number of cappers.

This could potentially lead to people being hostile to allies, “Go away, we want to maximise the reward for our group”, for example.

H) Continuously provide free transfers to players on the top two or three tiers.

Only allow them to move away from high population servers, though. This could still be problematic when (admittedly rare) guilds with huge populations (such as Xaoc in EU) move around.

I) Remove AoE limits on offensive skills.

This would probably increase the use of the already prevalent bomb-group tactic.

Zergs don’t start out as Zerg for most situations.
A guild or group gets together with objectives in mind. Other guilds start putting the call out in their chat with things like “such n such is in so n so’s BL” People trickle in or flock in depending on the mood.
A Zerg is actually praise to some commanders (as well as a curse) because players recognize certain commanders for their tactics or remember that they had a great time last time they ran with said commander and search them out when they join WvW.
It’s not the commander running around saying Join My Zerg Muahahaha. BUT, sometimes when hit with opposition, a commander will put the call out for help. Often times the help doesn’t move off back to where they were prior, resulting in a larger mass moving across the continent.
In the end the commander is going to make use of the Zerg Ball because, lets face it, you have the firepower, do some good with it.
WvW is war. War isn’t fair. You do what you have to to win and use the resources you have available.
There’s always sPvP…

Wouldn’t it be easier to adjust how the PPT calculates for defending? Say your megazerg blob attacks a tower, in a minute or so you easily capture it and everyone in your blob abandons and moves on to the next objective, your server would get “x” amount of points initially for the capture. Now being the tower was abandoned you will not earn any additional PPT unless it is defended by "x"amount of players.

Now on to defending, get rid of the cost associated with upgrading and have it be determined by defensive presence, if you have “x” of players defending the upgrades can be completed in the same amount of time as they are now as long as supply continues to come to objectives.

Also get rid of any and all swords, you should eyes on everything you capture.

Would allow the big zergs to zerg around zerging and the smaller groups/ guilds to take care of defending, upgrading and all those little things and helps a server win, and most importantly it spreads the crowd around and those massive player blobs need to be used in a more strategic manner.

^^ Agreed
Also the points should be reworked and Awarded EVERY MINUTE (maybe update the scores every 15 min still). The Reason why is that so many objectives get taken in the LAST 5 mins of a tick because they know it can be abandoned and still be safe for the point tick.

Three changes (any one alone, some combination of two, or all three) would de-incentivize zergs.

1) Uncap AoE.

2) Defeated players can not be rezzed while they or the person(s) rezzing them are still in combat.

3) World experience points and monetary rewards (not loot bags for player kills, but coins from events) are divided by the number of players who participated in the action that granted the reward.

These wouldn’t end zergs; nothing will end zergs. What it will do is bring a more balanced risk : reward system to WvWvW. Zergs already have a built in “reward”; safety in numbers. This is further bolstered by the artificial crutches of AoE limits, no real consequence of the defeated state, and equal rewards for less risk.

The result is there exists no alternate but equally effective means for gaining the rewards of WvWvW than to ball up into a zerg and run circles capping around the map. Zerging is the path of least resistance. It gains the most in-game rewards, with the least effort and risk, in the shortest amount of time.

I have no problems with zergs themselves. They are but another tool in a commander’s arsenal and are an easy entry point for players new to WvWvW who want safety in numbers. But when zergs become the single most effective means to obtain rewards in WvWvW, then the meta will gravitate towards that to the exclusion of all else. This leads to a lack of variety, repetition, and boredom; the game becomes stale with poor prospects for remaining viable in the long-term.

I’m not looking to eliminate zergs; both because it can’t be done nor should it be done because they have their place. I’m simply looking to add additional layers of complexity and depth of strategy and tactics to WvWvW. But that can’t happen while the current meta rewards zergs with all the incentives and no disincentives.

Make playing WvWvW a choice along a continuum between greater risk/greater reward on one end and lesser risk/lesser reward on the other, and you’ll see the meta balance itself out pretty quickly. As it stands now, zerging = lesser risk/greater rewards. Until that changes, we’re stuck with the current meta.

In this interview Izzy Cartwright talks vaguely about possible WvW changes that might dissuade the zergh.

Svarty.8019:

In this interview Izzy Cartwright talks vaguely about possible WvW changes that might dissuade the zergh.

Fast forward to the 14:00 mark where the interviewer asks Izzy about the WXP system. The conversation regarding WvWvW and possible changes then evolves from there.

I think reduce the dmg out put of a zerg within a said radi of say 1200

0-20 ppl = 100% dmg
20-40ppl = 80%dmg
40-60ppl = 60%dmg
60-80ppl = 40%dmg

and so forth, this would give smaller groups the advantage of the mega zergs.
also I agree that siege should have a larger aoe area depending on weather is a superior or normal. Sup Ac’s should have a massive aoe and dmg factor compared to normal ones.

I think the cannons really need an upgrade to their dmg as well ,these siege are the latest in battlements yet don’t really do much when you think of it,if they were buffed to the point where if one hits you your taken down then the defence tactics for these would have to change. Also they should be deployable in the field which would be really fun.

Something I’d like to throw out there
You should only be allowed to use a wp if you’re dead, and you have to use a wp within one minute of dieing or your sent to the original wp (citadel or border wp ect) you can only res dead people when your out of combat. (if it takes longer than a min, tough)
Would just lessen the amount of jumping, but maybe not enough, maybe too much idk, idea just popped into my head.

Two things need to be done

A) Remove the AoE cap
B) Add a debuff for CCs

As it stand, a small group of 10 doesn’t stand a chance a zerg of 35 people because

A) AoE cap removes most damage they do
B) They get permanently stunned by all the CC spam and end up dying before they can react. Pop a stunbreaker? 1 second later, you get CC locked again.

The biggest problem is the CC, imo, since you can’t even activate a skill while you get bursted down instantly. There should be a debuff for that. If you get CC’d, you become immune to CC for 5 seconds. Or take an idea from ESO and let players use endurance to become immune to CC for a few seconds. That’s great idea.