How do we actually stop zerg strategies?
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Imagine working for 1 year to build a strong alliance with two other powerful guilds. Working day and night to create a stage 5 city. You are guilds consisting of 30-50 players, a strong community.
From nowhere, a twitch streamer apears, followed by 500+ of his 12 year old fans. He has one goal, destroy everything you have built, and he will never stop. If you manage to beat his 500 lackeys, they will come again, and again. And none of them, has a job or any other hobby in life. You have to sleep sometimes, but not twitch 12 year olds.
You set up your extremly complex strategies. You divide your groups and do your best. But you all get oneshotted by waves and waves of characters. Everything you have done, all those hours of grind, razed to the ground because you stole a herb from a twitch streamer.
But seriously, how would you stop zerg strategies? Should sieges have a limited amount of players allowed? Should we stop it at all? What do you think?
From nowhere, a twitch streamer apears, followed by 500+ of his 12 year old fans. He has one goal, destroy everything you have built, and he will never stop. If you manage to beat his 500 lackeys, they will come again, and again. And none of them, has a job or any other hobby in life. You have to sleep sometimes, but not twitch 12 year olds.
You set up your extremly complex strategies. You divide your groups and do your best. But you all get oneshotted by waves and waves of characters. Everything you have done, all those hours of grind, razed to the ground because you stole a herb from a twitch streamer.
But seriously, how would you stop zerg strategies? Should sieges have a limited amount of players allowed? Should we stop it at all? What do you think?
0
Comments
AoE effects should be far weaker in tooltips than single target abilities.
Healing/buffing should affect only group members, not 'raid members'
Also the planned collision must never go away from development.
100% IDENTICAL players, and no effort should be wasted in changing this natural situation.
The zerg problem is always the AoE problem.
The first is the lack of server transfers. This means those 500 players cant just come from no where. They had to level up on your server somewhere, and that takes time. In that time, someone should have seen them and realized what they are up to. It wouldn't be too much to think established nodes on a server wod come together to see off this kind of threat.
Even if there is no real aid like that, if you are a level 5 node,you are probably a part of a metropolis node cluster. As such, you could expect assistance from the node cluster is sieges - and the resources and manpower of a healthy node cluster will see off 500 players.
Then there is the sieging window mechanic. It doesn't matter what time of the day they are able to be on that you are not. If you are not there, they can't do anything to you. As long as you are there to defend your node in a siege, you're fine. As a level 5 node, you have 4 days lead time from when the siege is announced until it actually begins, and sieges have to take place during prime time for the server region they are on. This means it really doesn't matter what time they are all able to be online when you aren't, they will only be able to do real damage to you during prime time, with 4 days notice.
The thing that I think will be the biggest issue with a group like this is the disruption they can cause economically. That many players could make it very hard to get resources in to or out of your node. The thing with this is that achieving that requires more than a single point of leadership - it they are able to successfully blockade you in to your node, they have proven themself to be more than just a zerg.
I'm not super convinced we'll see a massive influx of new players to the game via twitch like this though. This kind of thing happens in free to play games, but as soon as you slap on a subscription fee, the twitch streamer loses half of his potential followers, which means half of his viewers are not participating.
you are correct sir that's why I plan to have nothing but summoners in my party
If someone really does work up a huge force of competent players and manages to zerg, then I don't think anything should be done to stop them. Organizing and maintaining such a huge group is it's own counter-balance. Out of all those members surely some are unhappy? Disloyal? Greedy? You could try bribes. You could try sewing dissent. You could try taking advantage of their number by having more organised, small, hit-and-run groups.
If the game develops as I hope it develops, zergs will be a possibility but will not be dominant. It really sounds (judging from interviews) that the developers are excited to create a world where PvP is not the only deciding factor, but rather politics, economy and all manner of things come into play .. where you can beat someone in more ways than just bashing them with a weapon or a fireball.
That's my optimistic view on the subject, at least .. Because as it stands, I have faith in these developers and their vision. They've won me over with their words and the content I've seen so far. I dare to hope again.