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Anti-Zerg/Deathball PvP aoe-mechanic
Dimitraeos
Member
Edit: I've edited this idea to only apply to something like siege equipement players can carry, like bombs, mines, (Arcane Engineering?) etc that would work like this: The more targets they hit, the bigger boom they make. Smaller groups can take more advantage of this mechanic better than larger groups would.
Zergs and Deathballs where players are just clumped up in one big ball, steamrolling enemies/objectives is a common gripe people have with a lot of pvp in many games. Obviously numerical superiority is a factor in the success of a fight (in addition to tactics, coordination, organization, etc). But just as it works in "real" battle, overly concentrating your forces in a small area can risk those forces being "nuked" all at once.
In the case of an MMO that wants to feature large player driven battles however, for the purpose of balance and gameplay, ideally we would want to find a way that breaks up these zergs and potentially discourages or "punishes" mingless zerging tactics but at the same time, not lending those zergs the same tools to just turn around and use against smaller, possibly more organized groups and just bringing you back to square one.
So what about this (ignore the percentages, theyre just a rough example): AoE's (whether ranged or melee) scale UP in damage when exceeding a certain amount of players hit. Example: 1-8 targets = 100% normal ability damage /// 8-16 targets = 125% ability damage /// 16-32 targets = 150% damage, so on and so forth.
What this would do ultimately is allow for better organized. smaller groups to concentrate their attacks and punish mindless zergs despite being a smaller force. On the flip side, the only way for large raids to AVOID getting their groups nuked like this would be to actively coordinate them and split them up into better organized groups, hence literally acting as a way to "break up" the usual "deathball" we often see in pvp.
And if they cant? Great! They die
Zergs and Deathballs where players are just clumped up in one big ball, steamrolling enemies/objectives is a common gripe people have with a lot of pvp in many games. Obviously numerical superiority is a factor in the success of a fight (in addition to tactics, coordination, organization, etc). But just as it works in "real" battle, overly concentrating your forces in a small area can risk those forces being "nuked" all at once.
In the case of an MMO that wants to feature large player driven battles however, for the purpose of balance and gameplay, ideally we would want to find a way that breaks up these zergs and potentially discourages or "punishes" mingless zerging tactics but at the same time, not lending those zergs the same tools to just turn around and use against smaller, possibly more organized groups and just bringing you back to square one.
So what about this (ignore the percentages, theyre just a rough example): AoE's (whether ranged or melee) scale UP in damage when exceeding a certain amount of players hit. Example: 1-8 targets = 100% normal ability damage /// 8-16 targets = 125% ability damage /// 16-32 targets = 150% damage, so on and so forth.
What this would do ultimately is allow for better organized. smaller groups to concentrate their attacks and punish mindless zergs despite being a smaller force. On the flip side, the only way for large raids to AVOID getting their groups nuked like this would be to actively coordinate them and split them up into better organized groups, hence literally acting as a way to "break up" the usual "deathball" we often see in pvp.
And if they cant? Great! They die
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Any chokepoint in the game would immediately turn this around onto the small groups as well. We already have body collision, so people won't be clumped up as much as in other games. So your suggestion would only work if the aoe radius is huge, but if that's the case then the big guilds can just occupy an open space and aoe down anyone who's going through a chokepoint with their huge aoes, at which point no matter how small your group is - you're not going through.
All of that while the big groups going through chokepoints are already disadvantaged against aoes even w/o your suggestion.
In other words, I'd rather have territorial countermeasures than skill-based ones.
No because the in that scenario, only the smaller group of say 5 players will be able to hit the group of 10 and get the benefit of the upscaling on damage and not the other way around. The large group of 10+ will at best only have 5 players which in theory would be below the threshold for aoe abilities scaling up based on players hit (refer to my rough example above as a guide)
The idea is that you want smaller groups to have the ability to break up and punish zergs who simply try and steamroll in a deathball.
And if you're talking about bigger radii, then we come back to my chokepoint example. The aoe would reach deeper into the group of people, so even if your group of 3 parties tries to go through that point - a half of them would get hit by the aoes from the big group outside the point.
And on fields and stuff big groups will simply take up more space. Yes, they'll receive marginally higher dmg due to your suggested buff, but considering their scale - they won't really care about that.
what if the zerg is organized then and players know how to pvp ?
why? so ur telling me that after i spend months socializing, convincing people to join my guild, building a community, playing together, etc, you must be rewarded because you didnt put the same effort and u can do more damage than me for no reason other than being antisocial? plsss
Certainly some abilities could have greater or lesser AoE potential, like with anything.
"And if you're talking about bigger radii, then we come back to my chokepoint example. The aoe would reach deeper into the group of people, so even if your group of 3 parties tries to go through that point - a half of them would get hit by the aoes from the big group outside the point."
The smaller group would be at no risk of getting hammered but this upscaled AoE mechanic, only the risk of being swarmed by a numerically superior group.
"And on fields and stuff big groups will simply take up more space."
Not necessarily! Plenty of times uncoordinated zergs throw themselves headlong into an area, even with bodyblocking, clumsily clumping up in a perfect grouping for maximum kill potential by the aforementioned aoe mechanic.
Another idea could be having crafted bombs/explosives or devices players can employ that specifically work with this aoe damage scaling for better prepared players to take advantage of and help level the playing field in large scale fights.
Great, then they wont be relying on lazy zerg tactics where poor positioning and coordination on the field can be punished by well coordinated and prepared smaller groups.
Have you never heard of mindless zerg guilds lol? You shouldn't take this post too personally, this is about a boring meta that develops in a lot of large scale pvp games. Youll still be able to have a large guild of peons guildmates to throw into the meatgrinder
Also, im literally talking about how smaller groups of well coordinated and prepared players, utilizing better tactics can fight against poorly led or mindless zergs and stand a chance in battle. Literally the opposite of anti-social.
And if aoes are not big enough to hit more than one party, then your suggestion simply won't work even in the field.
Yes, headless-chicken-zergs may do that, but in my experience there's a much smaller amount of such zergs in party-based games. This is usually the case in soloable mmos because there everyone's a cool solo player that doesn't need to be a part of a party-unit, so guilds jusdt recruit whoeverthefuck and then simply say "go there, do that".
In a party-based system guilds will be built around party-units, where PL will tell his 7 people what to do and how to do it, while the GL tells the PLs the overall plan. And all the players listen to this hierarchy, because they've been playing the game that way for the past several months already.
I know this for sure because I was a GL of a 200-member casual guild that recruited literally anyone who wanted to join. And during a siege I'd simply appoint people with good leadership skills to be the PLs. And even with my own shitty skills as a leader, my guild did not move like a headless-chicken-zerg.
What I'm trying to say is that your suggestion would do more harm to the small groups that you want to help out.
My brother in christ, if the damage scale UP the more targets youre hitting...the smaller group of 40 would literally not be getting hit harder because they have less people for this mechanic to scale off of.
I think youre misunderstanding the concept.
The REVERSE would be true for the smaller group managing to land blows on the LARGER group though. Sure, the larger group could maybe get 125% damage increase if theyre hitting the smaller group, but theoretically the smaller group would get a LOT more hitting the larger group. Do you see the difference?
ok lets look at it the other way. why not give an advantage to uncoordinated small groups over a coordinated group. groups of 5 random players who arent even in voice coms should receive some type of advantage so that they have a chance against 8 people who are in voice coms and have been playing for years.
if you are as good and coordinated as you think, just find more coordinated people. you could probably beat a zerg with less people if oyu are better and better geared. but you shouldnt be given an advantage just because. the advantage is in being coordinated, or having good startegy or reflexes or gear, etc.
Because this entire post is about why lazy zergs and deathballs in pvp are boring. Its...literally in the title, brother.
https://wiki.albiononline.com/wiki/AoE_Escalation
It promotes formation and line fighting instead of the low BIQ mageball.
Are you suggesting that somehow the game will track how many people are "on one side" of the conflict against how many are 'on the other side"? Cause I'd be really interested in how exactly do you propose Intrepid track that in a non-faction game.
If a group of 5 is facing a group of 10...and the first aoe scaling threshold is 8+...the group of 10 attacking the smaller group will not recieve the benefit of aoe damage scaling that the group of 5 would.
I dont think youre understanding the concept here and are getting too caught up in specific numbers when theyre entirely hypothetical to help illustrate the idea.
Only the smaller group benefits more from this AoE anti zerg/deathball mechanic.
I'm interested in guilds of 40-50 members being able to stand up against guilds of 300 members w/o getting completely demolished. And as I've already pointed out, territorial design can accomplish that and have shown to be able to accomplish that in other games (namely L2, as that is my main point of reference).
If an aoe can only hit 10 people then your stages of benefits have 0 consequences on that aoe, because only the first stage is relevant. And if you want to have aoes that can hit 20+ people at once - I've already explained my issues with that kind of design.
My first post I alluded to this scaling higher. I dont think you're even reading what I'm saying.
That isn't to say it prevents all zerg strats, just *ball ones.
In a game like Archeage, you had player collision, but it was minimal. As a result, mageball was the best strat for large scale fights for PvP for most of the time I played.
If you make the hitbox a little bigger, it reduces the number of people you can get in to any given space. It doesn't take long at all before your *ball is too large to be effective, as a part of the success if it is in a concerntration of force having everyone able to attack the same target (or few targets) together, and everyone being able to be healed and buffed by the same few players. If the *ball is spread out so far that those healers and buffers can't get everyone in range, and so that people on one side of the ball can't target the opponents that those on the other side of the ball want to kill, you kind of lose the point of the *ball in the first place.
Yeah, thats true too. But you also wouldn't want bodyblocking to be so overbearing that just being around other allys just became completely annoying to simply move around, so the hitboxes would have to be balanced well enough somehow.
The idea I believe is that there is a means to gently push someone out of the way, if you need to do so.
I'm not sure if you've thought your own suggestion through completely. Or at least you're bad at trying to get your point across.
If you want aoes to hit more people - just say so.
Dimitraeos' idea is interesting and well worth actual food for thought. Stop nitpicking, by the gods. Ya'll are comepletely missing the idea that smaller groups should have a fighting chance if well coordinated to fight an unorganized, lazy zerg. Numbers shouldnt be the be all, end all.
He's even been so thoughtful to clarify and wish for only slight percentage upscaling. Numbers will still give you an advantage - just not be an insta-win.
I'm sure there are balancing issues or other problems this would entice. But as it stands it sounds like a problem-solver.
This is a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" argument. Why should individuals have to do the near impossible just to compete with lazy zergs? That would just cement large zergs being near indestructible.
Too bad there is raid groups. A lazy zerg would just organize on the level of 40 man raids.
I'm not sure I understand what you were trying to say here.
AoEs doing more damage is the first that comes to mind when wanting to combat the zergs, and indeed Im thinking there ought to be some downside to it. Cant see it yet though.
The whole argument was to combat lazy, unorganized zergs instantly winning because they are numerous. You lift organized, large guilds as an example. There is a difference.
What Im trying to say is if a game has a raid group system, zergs will organize in raids when PvPing not groups; is all.
Ashes of Creation will be as raid based as it is party based.
Aoes doing more dmg works both ways, because, again, I'm not talking about 5 dudes fighting against 10 dudes. Even organized groups will have to group up from time to time, at which point they'll get hit by those strong aoes and will suffer more for it, because they simply don't have enough HP to tank it all (as compared to groups of people x3-5 the size).
This is where party synergies should come into play and why Intrepid should concentrate on raid being a gathering of parties rather than random people.
L2 also had raid UI/encounters, but the raid was just comprised of party-units and not just "40 dudes in one fucking party".
ok so you have 40 people stacked in one place vs 300. those 40 cant kill the 300, lets say they can only hit 40...those 40 die, then the next 40 behind them hit your 40 and your 40 people die while ur aoe was on cd. thats what nikr is trying to say. you still still get extra damage done to you because you have more than one party on one side.
if you want the game to track how many people are on each side somehow, then thats still easy ot abuse. i wont bring 300, ill bring 292. when you kill the first 40 ill trhow my 8 at you that are on a separate guild and kill your 40 cuz the game would be tracking my 8 vs your 40, using ur own suggestion against u.
yeah sure but that sets a precedent. what you are doing is you are classifying (arbitrarily) players then giving one side an advantage. there are multiple ways you can classify players. how about players who are 40-50 years old get a damage and defense bonus vs players who are 15-20 years old to make up for lack of reflexes.
or low level players geta bonus vs players 20 levels than them, etc, etc...
Zerg reminds to Starcraft.
In that game, during campaign the AI was just sitting on the entire map ignoring my small organized group, and attacking it only when it got close.
Through siege equipment or Gods punishment or whatever game mechanics, you can force players to spread apart as much as needed to shift the meta from a large zerg to multiple small groups and force them to behave like the AI during starcraft campaign, unable to rush to the combat area because otherwise game mechanics would punish them.
Such a balance would reduce the open world into an instance style game, where the instance walls would be these invisible nerfs which keep the groups apart.
Then a small veteran group could decimate a big number of unskilled players, one after another.
If AoE spells allow "lazy" zerg to win, would it be acceptable if they would all switch to action based directional shooting toward a choke point? (this game has action combat too)
What kind of individual player actions would make a large (zerg) group to be NOT lazy and acceptable?
I've seen months ago a T&L trailer where players behind a destroyed castle wall were fighting one vs one, spread apart. Very unrealistic.