How To Prevent Zerg Style Tactics

ArchivedUser

 One of the main reasons I'm so interested in this game is the fact that pvp will be open world and meaningful. The ability to undo the hard work of another guild or node for your own advancement sounds phenomenal and brings meaning to pvp, something that I find rare in games today. My only issue with this is the notorious zerg tactics. You engage in combat and lose simply because they had more people present no battlefield tactics, just manpower... no one wants that.

The Dev team has already stated that they will be working to prevent zergs from being the end all be all in large scale pvp, but how do they plan on doing so? Personally, when so much is at stake in these decisive battles, I don't want to come out of conflict saying we won or lost because we had more people. Steven has said that it will be of importance to have people in the right spot at the right time so in a sense positioning on a large scale will be key to winning large battles, fair enough. But what will be of use in terms of tactics on the battlefield itself that will be more effective than simply making sure more guildies or node citizens log in at a certain time and on a certain day. 

I'm not try to discredit an organized guild and their ability to field troops at the right time, I know that can be a difficult task, but I hope with all my heart that battles will be won by outsmarting your opponent, not out-manning them. Any ideas?

ArchivedUser

One idea would be to spawn like a "crate" in a certain spot, after a certain trigger (e.g. killing some secondary mob, collecting some specific quest items, solving some kind of puzzle, etc) that gives a big bonus to your side. What that bonus can be... it's only speculation... a huge area spell (like a god spell), some bonus to PVP defense/power, some regeneration buff on all allies, some helping monster appearing that attacks the enemies, etc.

Reminds me a bit of Red Alert 2 and the invulnerability crates

I'm not saying I like my idea, but can't think of something else at the moment. Basically just an "effect" that will affect huge portions of the battlefield/combatants somehow. With any of the examples I've given, the number of people you are fighting might not matter too much, unless the difference is extremely large.

Also, like any triggered system, there will be limitations.... meaning that the "intrinsic" mechanics will overcome any singular event/trigger.

In other words, with enough people, there will always be (at least) a point before or after which out-manning the enemies becomes a thing...

ArchivedUser

In fairly disorganized, mob style hand-to-hand fighting, does zerging work in real life?

Not talking about Romans or Spartans here; talking maybe the Germanic tribes (dare we say, barbarians?).

How did those guys get it done?

ArchivedUser

How did those guys get it done?

1. Better technology;

2. Funnel tactics;

3. Formations and combined arms (i.e. organization and leadership);

4. Numbers;

In reverse order...

ArchivedUser

Having more players will always give you an advantage but based off the pax demo, there are a few things i can see hurting mindless zerging.

Collision: It's hard for me to tell how much of a role this will play but during pax, everyone has collision. You can't just ignore your friends position, stand on one person, and zerg ball forward. It encourage people to spread out and will cause uncoordinated allies to run into each other. If a group is clustered and the front runs into some kind of aoe cc, the people behind them will be stopped too when they run into their cc'ed friends. 

Class/ability design. During pax, most abilities have some kind of activation time, especially aoe abilities. You pretty much needed to cc your target to land a good hit. If this trend continues, comboing abilities with your party will be really strong and will reward players with good coordination. I also want to mention there was a little bit more to clerics then clicking on party frames and spamming healing. Cleric will probably be encouraged to run to their allies and help peel. 

Just a few thoughts i have currently. It's still early and hard to tell how everything is going to play together. 

ArchivedUser

No fast travel or teleportation.

ArchivedUser

I really wanna see more info on this. I love rts type games and one where i only control one character in a large scale fight seems amazing to me

ArchivedUser

Proper planning and preparation is a particularly difficult strategy to perform properly.

ArchivedUser

It's bound to happen, numbers are a clear advantage and they should be. Nut up or shut up, counter the zerg yourself.

ArchivedUser

If you want to stop the bugs then you bring out the 1812s 

ArchivedUser

As some have stated:
1. Collision effect on AoE radius/targets and such.
2. Lack of fast travel means the instantaneous mobilisation of large forces to battle will be difficult.
3. AoE target could be capped by build quality which is in turn capped by rarity. No healing the 5000...and only a handful of people ever could.
4. AoE power could be inversely proportional to AoE targets so you still only have the energy to power 1 persons worth of damage....fragmented by targets.
5. Combat environments could be quasi instanced by group size.... or the effect of one groups size on a different group size in openworld ....reduced. That way group size literally has no effect on XvX combat but only on XvY.
6. Scale down 10V6 group output to the same output 10v10/8v8/6v6. If a balanced fight is more important than guaranteed win by group size.

ArchivedUser

ZvZ can be limited for example with features:

• AoEs hits up to 8 players. Chosen by Ashes group size. Can also be just 5.
• Zergs are shown on map or you can hear they are coming which is more realistic. Sound can scale up with number of group size or you can see larger group from longer distance (on map). Zergs are at minimum 9+ players, that is above group size.  
• Outnumbering causes more corruption if attacking green players than equal numbered fight. Scales up with difference. Also underdog situation gives less corruption if attacking green group.

ArchivedUser

I imagine full player collision in pvp events. Well placed bottle necks and multiple avenues of attack and defense should work well to counter the Zerg mentality. Saying that however.. numbers should hold an advantage. If you can attack all available paths and the defense can't cover all paths equally you'll push in at a weak area. 

ArchivedUser

Argentdawn said:

I imagine full player collision in pvp events. Well placed bottle necks and multiple avenues of attack and defense should work well to counter the Zerg mentality. Saying that however.. numbers should hold an advantage. If you can attack all available paths and the defense can't cover all paths equally you'll push in at a weak area. 

Every war in the history of man kind was eventually won with numbers, even if technology/tactics prevailed at first. People adapt, then multiply

ArchivedUser

honestly, coming from a zerg guild, one of the biggest annoyances was a simple red blob system.

If you are over 10+ players or what ever the number for this game should be, that group shows up on a map as red dots, thus showing everyone on that area that there is a zerg in that area, this really prevented a lot of open world fights, im telling you, it was a very annoying system.

Now if i asked myself if i wanted that kind of system, i would say no, because to me it was way too effective, it prevented tons of open world fights, but if your objective is to do that or to limit it in non castle siege types of area's, trust me, that system will do the trick.

ArchivedUser

Well, for sieges there will be objectives and fortifications that you can't necessarily just zerg.
Also, there will be respawn timers affected by which fortifications are destroyed.
Part of the winning strategy will be preventing successful caravan runs so that fortifications can't be built.

ArchivedUser

Burn down the zerg!