Zerg abament?

Like most games, zergs tend to kill off a percentage of the player base. Will we see this happen or will some effort be installed to counter server domination. I know....but give it some thought...

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Jamation

Zergs will most likely be harder to establish compared to other games, still possible with enough effort. With things like collision it'll be harder to stack tight, with how re-spawning after death it'll be harder to rejoin, lack of fast travel and teleportation, Node and siege defensive weaponry, and I'm sure there are some other things as well. Not to mention if a group mows down people faster than they can react they also have the chance to all gain corruption.

Orlando2

Littlefeet wrote: »

Like most games, zergs tend to kill off a percentage of the player base. Will we see this happen or will some effort be installed to counter server domination. I know....but give it some thought...

Server domination is achieved by a group of players only when there's no opposition to compete for resources.
So, if there's a server where it has 1 organized group of 300+ players vs pve players or solo players, server domination is achieved.

Yuyukoyay

It's probably not dealt with enough at the start though. There currently is nothing stopping you from having a max guild at day 1 and just run down the entire server. They can't deal with your corruption if you are an army at the very beginning. It will be gone before they can kill you and by then you will have server dominance over about 35% of the map.

Would be nice if you couldn't even make a guild until about mid game in the server. So everyone has time to settle into their place in the world. They can progress from smaller player engagements to larger ones the older the server gets. Then it can naturally be more fair.

Right now a Zerg is literally just going to ravage the map.

RisingPhoenix

I may have missed seeing it but will castles be Siegable at launch or like a few other games...sieges will come a month or two down the road.

Zeint

With how large the world is and how slow travel is, even a large guild of several hundred concurrent players is going to struggle to hold a large part of a continent, let alone a server. If they manage to do that then they deserve it, it's what the game is all about after all.

Doing something like this is going to be organisationally demanding and it's exactly the kind of large scale player agency that the game is trying to promote.

Warth

Littlefeet wrote: »

I may have missed seeing it but will castles be Siegable at launch or like a few other games...sieges will come a month or two down the road.

first sieges will be against a horde of npcs. That will most lilely be max level

Warth

i still hope, that guild buffs will be significant.

Guild that want to have 150/200+ players in a guild should lose out on a lot of stuff. Not just skimpy EXP buffs nobody will care about 3 months into the server, but meaningful buffs that hurt.most during lategame

The higher the player capacity the bigger the drawbacks.

Grox

Yuyukoyay wrote: »

It's probably not dealt with enough at the start though. There currently is nothing stopping you from having a max guild at day 1 and just run down the entire server. They can't deal with your corruption if you are an army at the very beginning. It will be gone before they can kill you and by then you will have server dominance over about 35% of the map.

Would be nice if you couldn't even make a guild until about mid game in the server. So everyone has time to settle into their place in the world. They can progress from smaller player engagements to larger ones the older the server gets. Then it can naturally be more fair.

Right now a Zerg is literally just going to ravage the map.

Good point. I really like this idea not able to make a guild till later.

Grox

Warth wrote: »

Littlefeet wrote: »

I may have missed seeing it but will castles be Siegable at launch or like a few other games...sieges will come a month or two down the road.

first sieges will be against a horde of npcs. That will most lilely be max level

Wait for real? Okay that's good then. Sounds like the first sieges will be a really interesting challenge to solve.

Tyrantor

If the sieges are going to get capped at 250 players total that means a guild of 300+ could only contribute 125 players to the attack or defense inside the siege zone. Now from the material it sounds like guilds/alliances could try to impede players from making it to the siege zone before or during should respawn points be located outside of it.

However I think if people want to participate in sieges becoming the largest guild on the server would be a detriment if they keep a maximum player cap allowed inside of the siege zone, as you would likely miss out on certain events due to too many players in the guild wanting to participate.

Malc

If you can't beat em, join em! But no on a serious note Steven has addressed the issue with zerging. One of the issues you'll have is that if you're not a citizen of a node you'll be unable to defend it during a siege (At least to my understanding) and this will mean that zergs stick to particular areas. With 103 nodes it's going to be pretty hard for zergs to dominate and control any large percentage of a server.

Warth

Tyrantor wrote: »

If the sieges are going to get capped at 250 players total that means a guild of 300+ could only contribute 125 players to the attack or defense inside the siege zone. Now from the material it sounds like guilds/alliances could try to impede players from making it to the siege zone before or during should respawn points be located outside of it.

However I think if people want to participate in sieges becoming the largest guild on the server would be a detriment if they keep a maximum player cap allowed inside of the siege zone, as you would likely miss out on certain events due to too many players in the guild wanting to participate.

node sieges dont have a cap currently

castle is 250

Warth

Malc wrote: »

If you can't beat em, join em! But no on a serious note Steven has addressed the issue with zerging. One of the issues you'll have is that if you're not a citizen of a node you'll be unable to defend it during a siege (At least to my understanding) and this will mean that zergs stick to particular areas. With 103 nodes it's going to be pretty hard for zergs to dominate and control any large percentage of a server.

everybody can participate in node sieges

Yuyukoyay

For a zerg to control a map you just have to incentivize everyone else to leave. If they just mass genocide everyone they see over and over again then people will naturally leave the area. They can push people away doing this. They won't necessarily have to patrol the entire area. They just have to chase people away from key nodes in the areas they want to control.

Also anyone can participate in sieges but the limit is a hard limit. No one outside of those 250 on each side is going to be able to do anything. The one limitation is vassal nodes in the later stages of the game. They can't fight their controlling node at all.

Xyls

I think a big influence on this will be the ability to bust zergs from a combat standpoint. Things like character collision, AoE caps (or lack of one), small group mobility, etc. that give smaller groups some advantage. There will always be small to medium sized pvp guilds who hate zerg guilds that will band together to take on that zerg guild.

Tyrantor

They have addressed this and stated they've got mechanics in place that will be tested during the beta periods to try and flush out the ability to stop Node siege zerging. I just hope that the sword cuts both ways and it's not just an offensive zerg mechanic but also defensive. Every node should have risk that can't just be mitigated by numbers on either side.

HiddenDaggerInn

Warth wrote: »

i still hope, that guild buffs will be significant.

Guild that want to have 150/200+ players in a guild should lose out on a lot of stuff. Not just skimpy EXP buffs nobody will care about 3 months into the server, but meaningful buffs that hurt.most during lategame

The higher the player capacity the bigger the drawbacks.

A guild that LARGE should not only lose the group buffs it should incur negative buffs to keep the size down.

Zergs ruin games, even if group buffs are significant, the numbers alone would be hard to overcome. this can be easily solved with many mechanics like warband size and so on. Diminishing returns for exp and money and whatever honor there is.

I would really like to see this steer more towards tight 8 man groups. With Castle assaults no more than 300 or so for 1 side.

BaSkA_9x2

Warth wrote: »

i still hope, that guild buffs will be significant.

Guild that want to have 150/200+ players in a guild should lose out on a lot of stuff. Not just skimpy EXP buffs nobody will care about 3 months into the server, but meaningful buffs that hurt most during lategame.

The higher the player capacity the bigger the drawbacks.

I think guild buffs might be a big mistake, let me tell you why. Imagine Guild levels work in the following way (I tried to make a table using HTML and BBCode but it didn't work, so please bear with me):

Guild Level | Guild Level Reward
Level 1 | +10 members or +1% damage
Level 2 | +20 members or +2% damage
Level 3 | +30 members or +3% damage
Level 4 | +40 members or +4% damage
Level 5 | +50 members or +5% damage

When your guild levels up, you need to choose if you want to increase guild capacity or increase the guild buff for your members.

In theory, zergs will always choose to increase the guild size in order to accommodate all of their players. Smaller guilds don't need to make room for more people, so they'll always choose the buff rewards. However, as you probably know, zergs don't need an in-game guild system to operate, they use third party software to organize themselves, sometimes even in games that have no guild system at all (like Rust, only a party of up to 10 people, but thankfully there's friendly fire).

Therefore I would like to understand why would a zerg make one large guild for their 150 members without any buffs instead of making 10 guilds with 15 members each but with max buffs.

I can only see zergs that choose to do this being hurt in Castle Sieges and Guild Wars, but everywhere else will actually be more advantageous to make multiple guilds instead of a huge one. Open World PvP, Caravans and Node Sieges will actually benefit zergs that opt to divide themselves into smaller guilds. Instead of one huge "Zerg4Life" guild, there will be 10 "Zerg4Life 1~10" guilds.

I would like to say I do not know how to abate zergs, except for player collision (which exists in Ashes) and friendly fire (which is probably not a good idea in an MMORPG). I'm willing to bet zergs actually love this system Intrepid made to empower smaller guilds. Am I missing something which completely refutes my argument, @Jahlon?

Noaani

Yuyukoyay wrote: »

It's probably not dealt with enough at the start though. There currently is nothing stopping you from having a max guild at day 1

There are actually a few things stopping that from happening, actually.

Khronus

Last Oasis could have been one of the best games of the decade but they went from 20k people playing to now 700. There was a zerg named OWO that basically took over every single zone and prevented any solos or small guilds to do anything. They also took advantage of exploits daily. Zergs completely destroy games.

One way I am combating zergs personally is putting a cap on my guild size. This size will be determined based on how the game ends up being and whatever number I deem to allow us to have consistently organized events but also to not just consume everything to the point it becomes boring. I'd rather alliance with other guilds and truly build the community of whatever server we land on.

As for Intrepid, I have faith that they possess the brain power to prevent things like this from ruining the game. Everything I can see is showing me that they have a strong capability to deliver quality.

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