Are the developers anti zerg?

Ledrir

From what I have read the developers have talked about having random storms hit zergs and they have developers working on ways for one group to wipe out zergs.  I think that an anti zerg philosophy will be bad for the population of the game.   

I enjoy group vs group combat and I play Heroes of the Storm currently for that.  However HoTS has player rankings and tries to make sure the pvp battles are equal.  There are many games on the market that have great group vs group pvp.  I don't know of any games on the market that give epic battles over keeps and other resources between 3 realms.  However it seems that CSE sees the need to make another game that emphasizes group vs group battles.

In DAoC it was not easy for the fights to be equal.  The elite groups of hardcore players would have high realm ranks, better gear and had practiced together so much that they also had high skill and coordination.   Put all that together and pickup groups and even guild groups would have very little chance against them.

The developers say they want to have a good community in the game, but if fighting together as a realm is discouraged then how will this happen?

lindhsky

Random storms sounds lame if that is true.


In DAOC it was pretty easy to handle a zerg. A "gank Group" had long lasting crowd Control in combination with nasty AOE damage and/or melee trains.


And we all know what people feel about being CC:ed for long nowadays.

In Warhammer they didn't have that long CC but still good Groups could take out twice or even more their own numbers just by being organized.

I am more of a small Group player (gank Group or stealth Group) but still I don't want any game elements such as storms to nerf zergs. That is just lame.

Shinimas

In DAoC a couple of mages could wipe out huge groups of people if they were given an opportunity to free cast. It was possible because zergs are mindless and full of half-AFK people that just shoot stuff from the safety of the collective biomass.

Nobody is discouraged to fight together, it's just about giving tools to fight larget numbers. E.g., not putting caps on AoE effects.

nurso

The devs are neither pro- nor anti-zerg, but they do acknowledge that zergs can 'remove the fun' from a PvP-heavy MMORPG. Therefore they aim to lessen the advantage of zergs, e.g. by "collision detection, buff/de-buff caps and physics based projectiles [...] [and] even some ability features that can specifically cater to being outnumbered, such as damage reflection auras and ability effects that scale in power based on the difference between the number of enemies around compared to the number of allies" [source].

Besides the direct measures, they devs want to implement more indirect ways to make owning smaller groups harder, like "cross-class synergies and situational counterplay options that provide very strong advantages under the right circumstances" [source]. That also includes 'environmental circumstances', like travelling time, lighting conditions in forests, dangerous terrain like quicksand or lava pits, and those ominous aforementioned Veilstorms (which may or may not be triggered by large-scale magic usage).

But in the end, when the numbers differ vastly, a zerg will annihilate the smaller group. It's natural.

Thane

the "group" that is "killing the zerg" in that example, is a group of players knowing what they do, versus.... well.. a zerg
a zerg by definition does not have much skill, but numbers.


and what the devs (or at least marc) is against, is circle zerging :pleased:
that should never have happened in WAR. never. ever!
basically it destroyed every form of meaningfull "skilled pvp" there was, and yes, marc does not like THAT for sure :>

waynejr2

Thane said:

a zerg by definition does not have much skill, but numbers.

From what hole did you pull out that definition?

nurso

A big group, that defeats an enemy by outnumbering rather than strategy or skill, is called ZERG... else the group would be an ARMY.