Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

I’ve been reading Sablin’s post (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Easy-fix-to-reduce-WvW-zerginess/first#post1652422) amongst others about the use of zergs in WvW. In Tier 1, the evolution of warfare has made 60+ man blitzballs or murderballs a common place in the last 1 month. This is due to lack of collision, AOE limits, boons, etc and other game engine design.

This unfortunately is a natural evolution in warfare and it’s unavoidable. Please note I am not stating that it’s a good thing, I am stating that this was inevitable.

I have a suggestion to change this. Please bear with me.

I was on another medieval/fantasy game where they tried for years to reduce zerging in RvR or WvW. The end game was a city raid where 4 big zones were required to be captured to get to the raid.

In the end, there was a method they used that thinned out the zerg with regards to zone capping. The developers decided that ALL objectives (4 camps and 2 keeps) in the zone had to be captured and held for 10-15 minutes for the zone to capped.

This type of gameplay also gave the weaker faction a chance to stop the zone cap by focusing their forces to take a camp, etc. It gave the weaker faction hope that a smaller force could hold/delay the stronger faction for some time.

This worked so well that one faction’s zerg leader left the game for good because it fundamentally changed the game play. They couldn’t use one big zerg to cap the zone anymore. The faction with better coordination between 6+ medium sized groups helped.

What do you guys think? Was there another WvW/RvR based game that solved this issue? Perhaps there could be some way that PPT could be earned or adjusted using this type of model.

FW

Disclaimer: I speak for myself as a GW2 player, not for my guild.

As to how other games solved it, both Planetside and Battleground Europe (WW2O) had the same “zergball” problem at first and solved it by adding a lattice network.

Given bases A, B, C and D, you can only attack B if you own A and you can only attack C if you own B, etc. You need a link. If you are attacking B and the enemy flips A, tough luck. Your attack on B immediately fails because you can’t capture B without owning A.

This forced players to play defense at least enough to allow their offense time to work.

Another thing Planetside did was rewards people based on how many kills occurred during the event. No kills = tiny reward. Few kills = small reward. Huge kills = huge reward. It rewards zerg vs zerg, but really zerg vs zerg is fine (and maybe even ideal for an MMORPG wargame). It punished zerg vs door, though. Zergballs that intentionally avoided conflict got small rewards.

no.

The glicko system already is in place to balance teams. It doesn’t work super well but that just means the rating system needs tweaking, nothing to do with needing to fundamentally adjust gameplay.

I am fine with this, and so are most of the people I know who do wvw. It’s really a very outspoken minority who want nerfs to zergs just for running with large numbers.

Which is silly. Everyone knows higher numbers = bigger advantage. perhaps the one advantage that supersedes it is uplevel vs lv 80 in exotics.

Teamkiller.4315:

I am fine with this, and so are most of the people I know who do wvw. It’s really a very outspoken minority who want nerfs to zergs just for running with large numbers.

It’s probably just a outspoken minority because as far as I know in the NA bracket, tier one is the only tier that experiences the 70+ man zergs from all servers, on all maps, at least during american primetime. Of course there are a few exceptions among the servers, but none face the problem to the extent of tier 1.

Regardless, while I do feel it is a serious issue, OP’s suggested solution doesn’t seem like a very good idea. If I understand this correctly, what you suggest, while most likely succeeding in breaking up the mega zerg it would also slow down gameplay and inadvertently hurt small groups.

By their nature, small groups cannot sit in the same place holding onto a position, so forcing them to do so for 15 minutes, in addition to the PPT countdown, would effectively negate their ability to affect the scoreboard via captures.

Please explain further if I misunderstood your point.

I think the OPs model works well in a 2 faction game but not in GW2 where the ‘smallest’ server can just act as spoiler.

We need to wait for the march patch and see how that affects the meta.

WvW was meant to be about large battles, and currently it seems that the 10 man group complain about the 20, the 20 about the 40 and now the 40 about the 60+.

A 60+ group is a legit tactic and if it’s a viable winning tactic then we either need to come up with a counter or lose gracefully.

Excellent idea

Remember the battles from old? The two armies faced each other across the mist filled valley – NOT the whole army was on the norn commanders shoulders.
If they did something as simple as only allowing one other person inside your circle it would make it better. the zerg could still roll – just it would be spread out (so when you go down there’s only a few few people able to rez Not “too many rezzing” as the case is now.)
If this was implemented it would make for far better zerg battles instead of two balls colliding.
I’m not against the zerg i understand that numbers should win – its just the way its implemented – “stay on that blue icon” is the mentality of most (not all) why? cos you survive (normally).

As a side note wouldn’t it be good if 30 or more people in one spot caught the interest of Jormag – and he ‘popped’ down to see what was going on
(ok so maybe that was a bit extreme- but a champion event at zerg location would be interesting)

Un-capping AOE would fix a lot of zerging.

In my opinion, the key is the strategic goal, other than power-through everything by numbers.
In gw1, the necro spike build is really powerful in a head to head battle
However, you need not to do so since you can spread your team and strike the enemy base and kill their guild lord. Thus, even you are a master of combat, you may still lose if you only know how to kill ppl.
We need such things in GW2. I can accept the strong power of zerg ball, but at least give it a weakness.
But in wvw, you can achieve most of the goal by simply killing all of your enemies, why should players spread into different small team?
Also, under a good system, three 10man teams should have chance to beat one 30man team with good execution, but thats also not likely to happen in gw2
Sorry for my bad written english

Larger maps are the way to go in my opinion. It makes it more difficult for a single group to cover the whole map while still requiring large groups for most keeps

Valik Shin.9027:

Larger maps are the way to go in my opinion. It makes it more difficult for a single group to cover the whole map while still requiring large groups for most keeps

Pretty much, until they are able to enlarge maps, it will always be zerg mindlessly running from point to point in less then 30 sec.

I don’t see this happening though, at least not in the near future.

The key, as you mentioned, is that you need to give players incentive to spread out.

Right now these zergballs are better called “karma trains”.

They don’t care about defense. In fact, they would prefer you didn’t defend. They don’t care about upgrades. They don’t care about the scoreboard.

They are there to farm karma, XP and loot bags. The best way to do that is to roll around in a ball and crush everything in front of you.

.

Most of the WvW design breaks down when nobody cares about winning and therefore doesn’t care about defense or upgrades. The real question, I think, is how to make players care more about winning — about taking towers and holding them and upgrading them and defending them long term. Right now I think it’s fun, which is good enough for me when I’m not trying to level an alt, but I’m in the minority on this (I like defense and do it even though it’s not rewarding) and even I join the zergball when I want to level an alt.

Like maybe there should be a WvW daily of “must get bronze or higher in 5 defensive events”.

Or maybe there should just be more substantial incentive for tower ownership over the long term. Right now there’s more incentive to let a tower fall than there is to save it.

heres a solution, transfer out

…then i read the op instead of skimming the mostly stale cookie cutter uninformed responses. the op is actually worth reading.

however, i am starting to believe we will receive no help from the wvw devs. we need to focus on changes we can make as players, because the devs dont acknowledge that they have the power to do anything about zerging or population imbalances — this really is only a t1 issue. they are focusing on making the game playable for zergs (instead of masses of invisible people). they are focusing on drawing more of the general population into wvw (instead of smoothing out populations). and most importantly, they hardly talk to us.

What do you guys think? Was there another WvW/RvR based game that solved this issue?

GW2 objectives can already be simultaneously assaulted and simultaneously defended. The largest constraint in GW2 atm is that the maps are too small for 3 servers’ of zergs to spread out and become discombobulated. E.g. currently 1 server’s zerg can ping pong between nearby objectives and stonewall.

In other news, uncapped AOE damage kills zergs good. <insert 8 v 9000 example from DAOC>

Also, the #1 anti-zerg change to the game would be to remove the downed state. Yeah really.

Given bases A, B, C and D, you can only attack B if you own A and you can only attack C if you own B, etc. You need a link. If you are attacking B and the enemy flips A, tough luck. Your attack on B immediately fails because you can’t capture B without owning A.
This forced players to play defense at least enough to allow their offense time to work.

This already exists with the siege defense construct with Trebuchet offense. E.g. points become defensible with fewer numbers via siege, and objectives are vulnerable from other objectives via Trebs.

Most of the WvW design breaks down when nobody cares about winning and therefore doesn’t care about defense or upgrades. The real question, I think, is how to make players care more about winning — about taking towers and holding them and upgrading them and defending them long term.

What’s wrong with killing players?

Defense/sieging around static points is boring — this is why players have started to step away from it.

Edit: Don’t take it personally, but you’re thinking like an MMO Dev out of touch with players. You are asking “why won’t the players play the game the way we designed for them to play?” Why not let the players play the game in a way they find fun? E.g. random roaming and killing shouldn’t be incentivized against, which is what you ask for.

Killing other players is fun. Hence the entire objective / siege / defense mechanic is basically bait and context for players to fight other players. This is perfect.

Personally, I think more basic rewards (influence, more gold/xp) should come from killing players, rather than completing objective events. More incentive for player-on-player kill action.

There needs to be an anti-zerg mechanic added to the game, as WvW has essentially become Zerg Wars.

Want to cap a tower guaranteed and before the enemy has time to react? Zerg it with 4+ rams / golems with Time Warp. Gate is down in a couple minutes.

Even if you have a handful of players inside, the sheer amount of attackers makes wall defense neigh impossible due to all the spam. Rams have too much health for a few AC’s to take out before your gate is down. Forget about repairing the gate, you can’t get closer enough because of AoE. Most decent players place rams far enough back to be manned and not get catapult knockback.

Unless you have a zerg nearby, chances are your T3 will fall with most of the supply in it still.

Transferring servers is not an option, zergs are everywhere.

My solution? At least 50% reduction in loot and rewards and higher damage tag requirement, while in a group larger than 20. Rolling a 20+ group with your 40+ will suddenly becomes far less rewarding. This is an indirect solution to tower blitz’s as it reduces the cohesion of zerg balls because people will want smaller groups for loot and WvW XP.

I think that if a zerg is on map and there is another enemy zerg it sorta cancels each other out. Its when you have a zerg swapping maps and snowballing the camps/structures then swapping maps. there is no intention of take and keep (but if there is no other sizeable force to retake the structures then they often stay kept).
The outmanned buff is laughable. i would like to see temporary upgrades whilst this buff is active – increased guards/level tougher walls etc – that way at least the few(or one) defenders have a Chance of defending said structure

This is also a good idea by esprit to make a zerg less rewarding:
My solution? At least 50% reduction in loot and rewards and higher damage tag requirement, while in a group larger than 20. Rolling a 20+ group with your 40+ will suddenly becomes far less rewarding. This is an indirect solution to tower blitz’s as it reduces the cohesion of zerg balls because people will want smaller groups for loot and WvW XP

Esprit Dumort.3109:

My solution? At least 50% reduction in loot and rewards and higher damage tag requirement, while in a group larger than 20. Rolling a 20+ group with your 40+ will suddenly becomes far less rewarding. This is an indirect solution to tower blitz’s as it reduces the cohesion of zerg balls because people will want smaller groups for loot and WvW XP.

Arbitrary “You must be this tall to ride.” rules are bad, poorly thought out band-aids. There is no justification for such rules aside from because you/someone decided that X was the right number to play with before X+1 becomes a zerg? Even if you make it an exponential curve, e^t, the rules still amount to an arbitrary distinction based on someones judgement call.

Changing the rules of the game isn’t how you fix the problem, changing the tools available is how you fix the problem. Give arrow carts an ability that scales based on targets or simply can stack splash damage on multiple target hits within its radius; its meant to be the anti-infantry, anti-zerg tool, make it do its job better. You don’t need to set arbitrary # rules, you don’t need to change the AoE mechanic of already too powerful AoE, you simply provide players with tools to punish disorganized globs of players.

Increased size of battlefields will also create a balancing of sorts. If all forces are concentrated in one area, its hard protect all your keeps, camps and towers.

Hi guys,

Thanks so much for your thoughts.

In short, I am rooting for a system that splits up the zerg and gives incentive for the players not only to zerg but also to defend and fight in small groups. I really enjoy GW2 and hope that the developers will really take into consideration on how WvW can be made fun for small groups, solos and blitzballers alike.

Have a great week everyone.

FW

Not sure how this would be recieved but what about a speed buff / speed penalty given to the size of the group?

If a servers population is an area (not sure how this would be defined, but area equivalent to a camp) was less than 10(?) then all members in that area would recieve 10% boost to speed. if the population is very high say 50 members then a 10% penalty. Large armys are hard to move, skirmishers however have traditionally been quick.

Maybe they should make a squad system like BF3, when you join the game you are forced to join a squad of 4-5. Then when you die you can respawn on your squad members. That system actually worked and was pretty fun

Well first they actually NEED a system for more than 5 people to group/coordinate that’s not a zerg magnet. If they had a way for 2-4 groups to group for medium size roaming/havoc…. perhaps we’d have less people zerging?

A way to hide the commander pin AND still retain all the functions of a squad for whatever guild or player size forces people want to make. The grouping system in GW2 needs a lot of attention… worst grouping system in the last 5 MMO’s I’ve played.