Pendragxn wrote: » Focus fire reduction or disarray debuffs, like what Albion Online does, would really help. I hate it when a big group just gang up on one player and burn them down instantly. There should be diminishing damage if multiple players focus on one target, to make sure it’s more about skill and less about numbers. In fact, larger groups should be penalised for their size with a debuff that makes it harder for them to just steamroll smaller, well-coordinated teams. On top of that, dynamic scaling should be a thing. If you’re outnumbered, you should get some kind of stat boost or temporary buffs to keep the fight balanced. I’d even like to see the environment play a role, like certain areas of the map offering advantages to smaller teams to even the odds.
Pendragxn wrote: » Lastly, guilds and alliances should have ways to counter large group domination, like emergency summoning mechanics or group buffs that help during a skirmish when you’re at a disadvantage. It just makes the gameplay so much more strategic and fun, instead of being a numbers game all the time.
Pendraxn wrote: » like emergency summoning mechanics or group buffs that help during a skirmish when you’re at a disadvantage. It just makes the gameplay so much more strategic and fun
Pendraxn wrote: » On top of that, dynamic scaling should be a thing. If you’re outnumbered, you should get some kind of stat boost or temporary buffs to keep the fight balanced. I’d even like to see the environment play a role, like certain areas of the map offering advantages to smaller teams to even the odds.
Pendraxn wrote: » There should be diminishing damage if multiple players focus on one target, to make sure it’s more about skill and less about numbers. In fact, larger groups should be penalised for their size with a debuff that makes it harder for them to just steamroll smaller, well-coordinated teams.
Pendragxn wrote: » Individual player skill really boils down to the gameplay mechanics and skills available to that person. This includes having defensives, skill rotations, and dynamic play to counter multiple attackers when outnumbered.
"Pendragxn wrote: » Also, in my view, there's a noticeable difference between individual player skill and large group coordination. Sure, anyone can pull together a specific class composition or meta roster for certain content or scenarios. However what's stopping groups from just overwhelming others purely because they have more cooldowns available to them?
Pendragxn wrote: » From my perspective, while skill and coordination are essential in combat, they can only go so far when facing overwhelming numbers. A larger group’s advantage isn't just about better tactics, but about the sheer amount of abilities and resources they can deploy. Each additional player adds more opportunities for focus fire, crowd control, and cooldown usage, making it nearly impossible for a smaller, more skilled group to effectively compete. At a certain point, no matter how strategically sound or mechanically proficient the smaller group is, they simply can't overcome the sheer volume of attacks and abilities the larger group can unleash. It's not about improving recruitment or positioning—there’s a natural ceiling to what skill alone can accomplish against superior numbers. This is why anti-zerg mechanics or systems to mitigate the dominance of larger groups are crucial. Such systems could ensure that the strength of a group doesn't scale exponentially with its size, allowing skill, strategy, and coordination to remain the deciding factors in battles rather than sheer numerical advantage. Without such measures, larger groups can easily overpower smaller, more skilled teams purely by virtue of their numbers, undermining the importance of player ability.
Laetitian wrote: » Pendraxn wrote: » On top of that, dynamic scaling should be a thing. If you’re outnumbered, you should get some kind of stat boost or temporary buffs to keep the fight balanced. I’d even like to see the environment play a role, like certain areas of the map offering advantages to smaller teams to even the odds. I think that's fair to consider. However, you'd have to come up with a pretty convincing method, because Steven's stance so far has been very clear about the main countermeasures against zergs being very organic methods: - Different guild buffs depending on size. Large guilds get boons benefitting management of large communities. Small guilds get battle buffs and bonuses for specific roles/captains. - AoEs and reasonably low time-to-kill enabling decisive strikes for skilled small coordinated groups. - Large map with spread out objectives, making it more difficult for zergs to take away objectives from smaller groups before the smaller group is already done. - Limited rewards at any given location, punishing zergs by making their time spent inefficient for them. You might say that the zergs don't have to care about the last 2 points, because as long as a few of these zergs control major parts of the realm as their zerg, others won't have many objectives to left to fight over, but at that point, so many players are wasting their time in zergs that other players are going to be more efficient than them by just farming regularly, and ostensibly at some point the zerg players will get bored. And either way, the first 2 points apply: If you're a well-coordinated 35-to-50 unit group against 75 sheeples who can't really do anything more complex than spam their strongest abilities against any group they see, and focus-fire the same target that their group leader spams in Discord... then your skilled 35-to-50 unit group should be able to handle that situation without needing any buffs. If you're a 10 unit group against those 75 sheeples... you should either get better at recruiting people or allying with other guilds, or you should find a more efficient place on the map to use your manpower.
Pendragxn wrote: » No one has really answered my question about guerrilla warfare tactics and what happens when you split a larger group into smaller units. I’m curious about the impact of that strategy and how it plays out in practice.
Pendragxn wrote: » I think it’s essential to have some kind of anti-Zerg strategies, redundancies, and player protection systems. The game should naturally push players toward forming guilds or alliances, but I always wonder—what happens when you’re stuck in an uneven fight? A 3 vs 6 or 2 vs 4 situation? Even when both sides are equal in gear and abilities, the larger group always seems to have the upper hand, mostly because they can rotate more cooldowns and abilities. That’s frustrating. Focus fire reduction or disarray debuffs, like what Albion Online does, would really help. I hate it when a big group just gang up on one player and burn them down instantly. There should be diminishing damage if multiple players focus on one target, to make sure it’s more about skill and less about numbers. In fact, larger groups should be penalised for their size with a debuff that makes it harder for them to just steamroll smaller, well-coordinated teams. On top of that, dynamic scaling should be a thing. If you’re outnumbered, you should get some kind of stat boost or temporary buffs to keep the fight balanced. I’d even like to see the environment play a role, like certain areas of the map offering advantages to smaller teams to even the odds. Lastly, guilds and alliances should have ways to counter large group domination, like emergency summoning mechanics or group buffs that help during a skirmish when you’re at a disadvantage. It just makes the gameplay so much more strategic and fun, instead of being a numbers game all the time. I also think we need to factor in the fact that not everyone is going to have a healer or off-heal class available at all times. Honestly, treat your healers right—they’re crucial, and not every fight is going to have that luxury.
Syblitrh wrote: » Creating too many punishing systems would destroy the point of owpvp, when it comes to zerging no matter how many options they add against them, you will still get killed . Instead, they should find ways to give player a chance to escape or face such encounters.
Azherae wrote: » The idea is that generally, if you're in your coordinated group of 8, you should be able to stand up to some relative number of enemies by that coordination, but since fast travel is specifically not available, if you lose due to being outnumbered, 'being outnumbered' in the first place is considered to be the skill issue.
Pendragxn wrote: » I think it’s essential to have some kind of anti-Zerg strategies, redundancies, and player protection systems.
Pendragxn wrote: » The game should naturally push players toward forming guilds or alliances, but I always wonder—what happens when you’re stuck in an uneven fight? A 3 vs 6 or 2 vs 4 situation? Even when both sides are equal in gear and abilities, the larger group always seems to have the upper hand, mostly because they can rotate more cooldowns and abilities. That’s frustrating.
Pendragxn wrote: » Focus fire reduction or disarray debuffs, like what Albion Online does, would really help. I hate it when a big group just gang up on one player and burn them down instantly. There should be diminishing damage if multiple players focus on one target, to make sure it’s more about skill and less about numbers.
Pendragxn wrote: » In fact, larger groups should be penalised for their size with a debuff that makes it harder for them to just steamroll smaller, well-coordinated teams.
Pendragxn wrote: » On top of that, dynamic scaling should be a thing. If you’re outnumbered, you should get some kind of stat boost or temporary buffs to keep the fight balanced. I’d even like to see the environment play a role, like certain areas of the map offering advantages to smaller teams to even the odds.
Pendragxn wrote: » Lastly, guilds and alliances should have ways to counter large group domination, like emergency summoning mechanics or group buffs that help during a skirmish when you’re at a disadvantage.
