I believe there is currently a zerg mentality in WvW. There are many benefits to joining with the zerg and while there are some downsides almost all servers have some type of zerg roaming around. More successfully servers augment this with other teams or splitting the zerg into two or three, but numbers generally mean success.
Zergs are not good for WvW. They trivialize the accomplishments of smaller sized groups and players in the zerg are left feeling their individual contributions to the zerg do not have a lot of weight to the success or failure of the zerg.
I would like to offer up some suggestions on how to reduce the zerg mentality in WvW.
Supply Logistics Tax:
When the number of friendly players in close proximity reaches ‘zerg’ numbers, then start to remove supply from each member at an interval. The more people the more removed or at a higher frequency. For large zergs this would hopefully make it difficult to keep any supply more than a few minutes after looting a supply depot.
Siege Maintenance Tax:
When the number of friendly players in close proximity reaches ‘zerg’ numbers, then nearby siege equipment would either revert back to a ‘building’ state and would require supply to get them functional, or they would take damage and eventually be destroyed and have to be rebuilt from scratch.
WvW Dynamic event scaling:
When the number of friendly players in close proximity reaches ‘zerg’ numbers and they are doing an offensive dynamic event without a matching enemy force, then scale up the PvE difficulty. This could be accomplished either by reducing damage to walls/gates, or by spawning NPC defenders. The larger the zerg the more frequently they spawn and with more annoying abilities (snare, fear, AoE, etc). The balance I’m thinking of is 10 person team would be able to take an undefended tower much more dramatically faster than a 50 person zerg.
Decrease zerg rewards:
When the number of friendly players in close proximity reaches ‘zerg’ numbers, then reduce badge drops and dynamic event rewards (karma, experience, and coin) for completing events. This shouldn’t be binary on/off but a gradient reduction depending on the number of people in the zerg.
What are your thoughts on these suggestions? Are there other ways the zerg mentality can be deterred?