I’m a fairly casual GW2 player in terms of the time I can commit to the game. But even my limited time in WvW has made clear how many different the ways GW2 rewards giant clusters of players traveling together over a divided force.
Here is an incomplete list:
1. (Unintended) Culling.
2. Objective rewards. Capturing an objective provides a set reward to each player. So if 100 players capture a supply depot, then the rewards collectively are 20 times greater than if a group of 5 captures it. Yes they reward bronze, silver, gold badges for contribution but the overall effect remains the same. With regards to experience and Karma, it is a bad idea to capture an objective with a small group. You have cheated your allies of a scoring/reward opportunity but probably worse you have provided a much bigger scoring opportunity for the enemy’s larger force.
2. Rewards for player kills. Along the same lines, as long as a player makes enough contribution to qualify for a kill, the rewards are the same as killing a player solo. From a reward standpoint it is much more efficient and rewarding to run in a large group and score many kills at once when you overwhelm a smaller group.
Both of these are consistent with what is clearly a core design principle of the game: allied players never compete for rewards; rewards merely compound. You never have to race to get a resource node before another player does in GW2. You never have to argue about dividing loot. For a PvE game this makes complete sense. In a PvP game, this system translates to a reward system that balloons with the number of players. 100 players filling 20 enemies in 20 seconds will generate much more loot than the same 20 enemies being killed by a solo thief over the course of an hour.
3. Out of combat run speed. Makes hit and run tactics by smaller groups much harder. Once the smaller group is in combat the rest of the zerg is able to catch them by virtue of being out of combat. GW2 effectively has “mounts”: its just that there is no graphic to accompany the faster move-speed.
4. Downing Mechanics – both in terms of speed of revival and the fact that the zerg can always rez their dead. The smaller force is forced to respawn at a way point. The smaller group can’t really knock an enemy out of the fight for long.
5. Lack of collision detection- (again worthy of its own thread).
6. AoE cap. The zerg provides tremendous protection for its inhabitants. The AOE cap means the enemy AOE gets distributed and manageable. Whereas, against a smaller force all damage finds its intended target. Numbers normally win anyway, but this mechanic exacerbates it. It means that even when the smaller force gets the jump on the larger that their advantage is diminished.
7. The WvW scoring system. This one probably deserves its own thread, but the capture and hold mechanic really means that the zerg is free not to defend ever. The PvE presence in objectives provides all the defense necessary for the Zerg. They can roam and return. Lockouts only makes this worse. The PvE presence in objectives only provides a real deterrence to smaller groups. To the zerg the PvE presence provides no real challenge.
What’s worse is that the system really rewards a “flip and forget” play-style. A zerg need not stay in an objective past the point of capture. Just go flip more objectives. Even when the zerg loses an objective to the enemy, its only temporary. The zerg never has to “hold” anything. There are free PvE NPCs to do that for them. These same free NPCs provide a valuable time buffer to allow the Zerg to often return to an objective as smaller enemy is attempting to take it. That’s zerg defense.
I’m sure other people can and should add to this list without too much effort. My point is pretty simple. It is not players’ “faults” for zerging. Zerging is the playstyle the game rewards over and over again. The game becomes a contest of who has the biggest, best coordinated zerg with the best “coverage” of the day. That’s the game. It’s just not one I thought GW2 would be, or one that I particularly want to play, except that there aren’t really better current choices. At their peak, I have enjoyed Shadowbane, DaoC, and Warhammer more than GW2 but given the curent populations, those aren’t really options.
I would points out also that culling (#1) is the only one of these (I believe) that will be addressed by the big patch next week.
