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You view on "The zerg" and smaller scale groups taking it on. (Mark?)
SanguisAevum
Member Posts: 2
I would be interested to find out the community's views on "The Zerg" and how it affects the meta-game of RvR strategy and tactics, as well as influencing the RvR play styles available to people.
I would be even more interested in hearing Mark's views on this subject.
First, let me compare one older game, and one newer game to illustrate the various facets of the issue I am trying to highlight.
DAOC
GW2
In both games "The Zerg" was/is an ever present threat. It could be said that the very nature of "RvR" games encourages the formation of zergs. After all, it is far easier to take a keep with a vast force of players than just a few.
The issue is... what if you don't want to zerg? what if zerg surfing is a totally unappealing way to play the game for you? If you are one of those players, what other options for contribution to RvR are there in those games?
DAOC offered a vast range of play styles, and multiple ways to combat "The Zerg" if you so desired it.
- You could form your own zerg, and duke it out in an epic, Thane lag-hammer filled battle. 
- You could form a well build group, and use speed, crowd control, superior tactics, focused damage, and voice comms to take on the zergs, and win! (if you were good enough).
- You could form smaller, mobile "gank" groups, and avoid the zergs (they tend to move slowly compared to small groups) and just pick on smaller groups, and smaller objectives (towers etc)
- Many classes were capable of solo scouting, picking off stragglers, guarding choke points, and avoiding the zerg, whilst contributing alone.
- A smaller defending force had a huge advantage vs attackers in a defensive structure (mile gate, keep, tower) and could usually successfully hold a structure long enough for backup to arrive... these kinds of situations led to some of the most epic sieges I have ever seen in an MMO. With the cavalry arriving just in time, and brutal courtyard battles (often 3-way) taking places on a regular basis.
GW2, In contrast, offers almost no way to combat "The Zerg" my guild and I have tried and tried to come up with ways to beat the blobs, we have some success, but its a loosing battle. Almost every mechanic in GW2 either directly or indirectly helps the zerg. You cant defend a keep vs larger numbers, as attrition doesn't work, people just get straight back up, you cant fight them in open field due to AOE caps, and no CC. You cant outrun them due to fixed speed for everyone... I think it is fair to say, that if "Zerg surfing" is not your thing, GW2 is not going to be that enjoyable for you in RvR. The only real way to beat 50 people in GW2 is to get 50 of your own people together.
Now...
I honestly hope that CU has many available play styles for RvR. I am by far and away a "small scale, guild group" kind of player... and If I go to the trouble of putting together a strong, balanced group of skilled players who are talking to each other, I want to be able to take on larger forces and win... or at least make a difference to the war effort.
In DAOC (and WAR to a lesser extent), A zerg commander knew he better be careful when death spam from feared/famed guild groups started hitting the channels, I want that back.
How do you guys feel about this, and perhaps more importantly, Mark... what are your thoughts on smaller organised groups "Taking on the zerg" ?
Comments
Thanks.
I understand where your comming from, but, if we can avoid it, i would rather not turn this into a discussion about GW2's rvr failings, it was just an example to contrast with DAOC's multitude of options for dealing with (or avoiding) the zerg.
If we could focus the discusion on peoples view on "the zerg" itself, and whether smaller organsided groups should have a chance at beating them if they are good enough.
One tidbit Mark's shared about combating the zerg was his reply to the thread titled:
Are we going to see "Healer low on mana, STOP pulls" messages?
Mark wrote:
"I view quick regen in much the same way I do instant rez in terms of its impact on battles. If it is too easy for players to recover health/mana/etc., it takes some of the strategy out of combat and leads to guys simply running somewhere and then jumping back in. My preference is give the players larger pools but let the recovery time be longer.
Now, as always it has to be fun but I think that I'd rather have players fight a little longer, play a little smarter and then be a little bit more beat up with a longer recovery time. I also *think* it is one of the things that could help fight the zerg but in a fair manner (keep chipping away, slow them down, etc.). In my perfect world, the zerg gets beat up but still wins and then it has a choice, hang out and heal or move to a different location and heal there.
Anyway, just some thoughts, nothing definite on this subject."
Granted now, that isn't much to go on, but it does sound like the zerg will still have a strong advantage, but perhaps there will be mechanics in place like in early DAOC where a strong 8 man or two could prevail against the zerg.
Although, without the strong crowd control that existed there (and Mark doesn't seem to favor that) I'm not sure it will be really possible to pull this off, but we'll see what they come up with.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
In DAoC, I always wished for a mechanic that discouraged zerging, such as lowering the RP/XP/whatever whenever you kill someone with tons of other people around. I've no problems with larger groups, even though I found group vs group most fun myself, but when it gets too big, it just gets messy.
I appriciate the need for numbers in sieges and such, of course, but that could be rewarded differently. Splitting a pool of points at the end of the siege, based on enemies killed and the difficulty of the keep might be a decent idea. That will still encourage siege and fighting for your realm, without encouraging running around the frontiers in a huge zerg, just mowing over everything to get points, not really contributing to the realm in itself.
The big issue for me is for playstyles other than zerging to be rewarding. DAOC did that brilliantly through realm points, realm ranks, and especially realm abilities.
I don't mind if a big numbers advantage usually leads to victory although it is important that a skilled smaller force have a chance to defend a keep otherwise players won't ever bother trying to defend. What I mind is if the game only rewards zerging. There must be rewards for killing other players regardless of how many of their realm mates are around. That creates the right incentives for players to attempt a seemingly hopeless defense because there is at least the possibility of advancing their characters in the process even if they ultimately lose the fight. It also makes it possible for players to solo, small man, 8v8, etc. Which is perfectly fine. Having more than one rewarding ways to play is a good thing.
The good news is this seems to be how CSE plans to make the game if I am understanding Mark's posts about progression from February correctly.
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
Damn That's the thing that i loved about daoc.
You were good - you could kill tons of more players.
We used to go inside crauchon with open teleport and fight hibs until they got about 60 of them then we couldn't handle them anymore.
We wiped on the swamp 40 hibs with 2 groups of albs who jumped from eras. They couldn't move in swamp, we had healers on the island and we aoed them to death.
And lots of more stories like that. That moments felt legendary. I haven't felt anything like this in todays games ;(
And you know why is that like that? Because all those games have bad system interruption. Healers casts even tho they are being hit. They can tank 3-4 enemies and still heal entire grps. WTF?
We need hard interrupt system like in daoc to make people think in combat.
Also agree, but would like to point out thtat not only do we need a hard interupt system to be able to counter zergs, there's no way you will be able to have a chance against a zerg with Collision Detection, no possible way, pbaoe was the main offense against zergs and that would be made useless if you can't bomb large stacks of people.
I miss defending against zergs with our group in OF keeps, so fun
Ozek - DAOC
Niix - Other games that sucked
One thing I'd like to add,
If there is any type of pull ability, that will make it extremely difficult for any small group to beat a zerg. In War if you get pulled into a zerg your are tab-target dead. There is no counter.
Oh one more thing that I find annoying. In Rift every single aoe/pbae/gtae ability has a limit to the amount of players it can affect. Lets say 10 is the max. Well if my group of 5 is fighting a group of 20, guess what? Half that group isn't going to be touched and will still be able to zerg me down. For players to be able to realistically attack a zerg there can't be any limits to the amount of players CC can affect. If I'm a bard and I land the perfect mez on a clumped up group of 50 albs, all 50 of those albs should get mezzed.
Finally the one kind of zerg that you can't beat with inferior numbers is the stealth zerg. Of all the zergs I've ever fought stealth zergs were the most annoying. It's rage quit time when you walk 10 steps away from a safe zone and get popped by 10 stealthers and you and your buddy instantly die. I know this can happen against a regular zerg but if your buddy has speed and you pan good you can somewhat avoid it. Stealth zergs you can't as easily avoid since you don't even know it's there.
I healed Mistwraith and all I got was this stupid tee-shirt!
Exactly if there are 50 people running next to each other and they got hit from behind that's their fault they all got mezzed in one place.
There shouldn't be cap saying how many people you can mezz etc. Let people pay and be doomed for their mistakes.
I do not agree with stealhers. If you had good grp stealhers would never win with visible groups. They have no heals at all.
What's more as a paladin + armsman we could take down 8 stealhers at once without heals. So imho stealhers were never oped.
In my experience having only zerging as playstyle gets boring quickly (see GW2). So does having only group vs group (see Uthgard / Lamorak). The optimal is to have both and even more playstyles.
This is what made DAoC great:
In a casual or "realm pride" mood? Or are you a newbie who can't kill anything in even fights? Join the zerg, maybe take some keeps or relics.
In a competitive mood? 8v8
You and few friends on? Make a small group and overcome the odds.
Don't wanna deal with people right now? Go solo.
Newbie stealther who can't kill anyone solo? Join the stealthzerg.
I literally never got bored in this game (until the ToA+NF disasters)
It really is true so +1
Lamorak and Uthgard are great examples of removing part of these systems. I also feel if organized groups can't pick away at zergs through defending a keep / tower and its always a wash that will cause problems too as they will isolate themselves completely. Biggest reason i'm against CD is this, as it will guarentee the zerg dominates groups.
Ozek - DAOC
Niix - Other games that sucked
I played DAoC as a stealther primarily, but also as a part-time member of a 8-man group. The 8-man was not a super-tuned outfit where every member had specific skills and roles. Our tactics were to camp a bridge and take on whoever came along. After a while the enemy turned out enough players to dislodge us and we were killed. It was fun, but the zergs hold a special place with me since I believe the huge epic 100vs100 fights are DAoCs biggest legacy. The fights most people remember, win or lose, were the epic fights at AMG with Albs at the front and hibs/mids charging from the rear.
The zerg offers groups/people who are not completely fine-tuned to have some fun. Groups who did not have two primary healers and a CCer, were easy pickings for 8-mans and quick wipes. In a zerg they could have some fun without standing locked down waiting for the assist train.
Many skilled people ran with zergs for various reasons, but the main was that their chosen class was not needed in a 8-man. How many 8-mans included thanes, friars, wardens?
Realm vs realm does not mean 8vs8, the picture is largers. Smaller groups, as someone mentioned, can move faster and avoid the zerg, but I don't like the notion that they should be able to beat it without a zerg of their own.
actually no you can't. there is no CC, there is no speed class, there is no perma stealth in gw2.
gw2 = zerg vs zerg. you can split off and run small gank grps but nothing on the scale of what we all are talking about.
This thread reminded me of a story.
I played alb Percival and one night the mids were systematically taking over our keeps and making major headway toward a relic raid. Well as we are all setting up at the relic keep, our scouts report that a very large group of mids had massed in front of one of our keeps they had taken a bit earlier. It was one of those deals where you are waiting for everyone to get there and for everyone to get buffed up.
So as I said, our scouts report this and are sure the mids are about to advance toward our relic keep.Then out of nowhere, my chat tab fills with green deathspam. An 8-man hib pbaoe bomb group had snuck up on the zerg and went all suicidal in the middle of them. I went back and counted something like 28 deathspam messages from the pbaoe. After ROFLing for a few minutes we moved out to meet the mids head on. We did not lose either of our relics that night.
So yeah, sorta off topic but I think it reinforces the point that you need all playstyles(zerg, group, and small group/solo) to make a truely memorable experience. That had to be like 2002 or 2003 and I still crack a smile when I think about it.
+1
I loved the zergs in DAoC; I loved the 8mans that wrecked the zergs; I loved dying to the stealth zergs; I loved the small knit groups that took towers and overcame the odds. Vote Dark Age of Camelot, 2016.
Our mid 8man did something similiar to albs. They were taking the last keep before moving on to the relic, and our 8man started picking off their backline and reinforcements repeatedly. At one point, we ran in the keep, killed only the zerg leader, sat on his corpse a few times, and ran out. The hibs pushed the albs out of the keep, and we killed what they missed. Not a single hib attacked us, just a few happy /wave or /hug.
if you are a skilled group you can easily take out a crappy zerg in WvW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzDx6v_yWdA
this holds true for most games though a skilled few can dominate a bunch of poorly played characters. What i like to see is more incentives for running in small groups.. in GW2 a small group of skilled players can steamroll bigger groups but it's always easier to have a much larger group and just steamroll even faster(this is true for most large scale PVP games).. the incentives need to be there to encourage more small group play.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
no AOE limit, zergs will die, with or without CC. provided there is good aoe dmg available.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
This is pretty true (to a point), and there are countless videos illustrating this in action. Zergs becoming a problem when they get large enough to be over 4x your number (in GW2), since the shear amount of numbers make it easy for dead players to get revived quickly. In fact, on our server Aerowyn, I can think of a number of guilds that specialize in dominating large zergs. However:
1) Zerging is not a bi-product of RvR per-se, but rather a biproduct of having large amounts of players in one space. It's herd mentallity, and people will ALWAYS zerg when around a large group of players, unless they specifically organize against it (ie. make the concious effort to avoid zerging with intent). You see this in literally EVERY mmo ever made, that isn't heavily instanced.
2) There are a number of tactics that you can literally do in ALL MMOs to combat zerging, regardless of game mechanics, provided the game has maps that don't shoe-horn players into one enclosed space (i.e. the game gives you enough room to be mobile & maneuver). Quite simply, to beat a zerg, it comes down to a combination of:
a) out-maneuvering them. Big zergs may be scary, but they are rarely organized, and it is EXTREMELY difficult to make such large groups of players change tactics quickly. Basically, once a zerg gets rolling, they tend to roam the map and it is very difficult to organize a change (they are victims to their own momentum). With an organized group you can easily decimate most zergs by use of flanking tactics, surprise attacks, guerilla tactics, etc. etc. etc. Even constantly engaging & then disengaging fights will wear down zergs, and they'll start to lose players.
b) splitting them up. This kinda falls into out-maneuvering, but basically if you attack a zerg from multiple angles, or use tactics that force the zerg to divide their attentions, they are usually going to be destoryed.
c) stalling / outcapping them.
d) attacking their morale. Zergs are often like mobs. It's a large group of players all riding the same high. They are deadly if allowed to have their momentum continue, and as long as they are constantly owning things, stomping, and gaining (objectives, points, exp, kills, etc. etc. etc.) players will continue to want to stay in the zerg. If you stall them (by example, giving them an objective they literally cannot take), they will eventually lose interest, people will log off or go elsewhere, because they aren't having any fun anymore. Some examples of this are harassment groups (ie a group of rogues / thieves / assassins), turtling a fortified tower or keep, and trolling them with a difficult, meaningless target that they'll want to kill.
Aside from the above, ways the game can combat zerging are basically as follows:
- player caps (which I don't think DAoC fans really want)
- strong siege equipment
- proper amounts of AoE
- good map design, allowing for players to move around the map.
GW2 is a bad example because the overall game is just badly designed. Mark pointed out some of its flaws and it was nice to see. TESO also plans to fix some of GW2's major flaws when it comes to RvR. People just rezzing after dying and teleporting to the fight means the fight and death has no value or meaning. Mark also mentioned that if people spot a small group, they can't just call everyone and teleport to their location and wipe them out like you can currently do in GW2.
Hopefully CU doesn't become like Warhammer Online or GW2 where people run around in circles with their zerg and play musical chairs or musical doors. I hate when a keep is attacked people just leave because there is no point in staying and defending. I do think depth that GW2 lacks that hopefully is in CU and TESO will help. There needs to be healers and CC that can literally change the fight by a couple good CCs or heals.
That would be awesome if implemented correctly.
Anti Zerg mechanic (just one possibility)
Assumptions:
Double xp for 1 on 1 fight (individual or same size group)
1.5% xp for fight ratio up to 1.5 to 1 (3 on 2)
Normal xp for up to 2 on 1
.5% xp for up to 3 on 1
No xp for over 3 on 1
So in effect you want to fight same size groups for maximum xp and if the zerg is too big it would be difficult to get groups to fight against where you can get decent or any xp.
Nanulak
not giving any XP for a 3:1 engagement would be silly, its going to be pretty common occurrence. The XP from zerging essentially diminishes itself though. say 100xp for a kill /50 people...you get 2 xp per kill, a slow way to level if you're not constantly battling and killing people...and zerg generally dont. they move at a much slower and than a typical small hunting party.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
Anyone who played on Percival will remember the night of the "Malavela spam."
As has been stated, I think all options for playstyle should be available. I wouldn't do anything to "discourage" the zerg, although I'm no fan of it. Large objectives will require large groups, hence, the zerg. Just make sure there are objectives for smaller groups, 3 or 4 man groups, solos, etc.
Emeryc Eightdrakes - Ranger of DragonMyst Keep - Percival
RED IS DEAD!