A lot of today's PvP games leave me feeling mostly frustrated when I play them.  Especially when it seems like the game is for the most part just a zerg fest.  I find myself a lot of times just standing there thinking, "WTF is going on".  How you use any kind of strategy in a situation like that, I don't know.  A lot of times when I start feeling that way I tend to just log off and play something else.

I'm wondering what kinds of solutions you guys would propose for a game that suffers from this problem.

AoE characters/abilities on your side.

If you're fighting a hundred guys in a zerg, using a bunch of AoE abilities, while less powerful, do deal a lot more damage.

Say you hit 10 people with your 200 damage spell, rather than using your 400 damage spell on one person, well, you'll have done 2000 damage.

In world of warcraft, the hunter had multi-shot, frost traps, immolation traps, and volley for AoE.
Mage had arcane explosion, and that ice one... blizzard?
Warrior has cleave, thunderclap....

Blah blah blah.

Anyway, effective use of AoE will usually stop a zerg pretty well, in theory.

Of course, there's the slightly-spread-out zerg, preventing effective use of spells and such... in which case I have no real solution.

Assuming you're in a controlled environment, with say, 20v20 players, you could probably get a pretty good "zerg" of about 15 players against maybe 5 - in which case I'd be hitting every AoE I could, and advising others to do the same - of course, after taking out their healer/disrupter.

Anyway, a true "zerg" in a game would be, in my definition, a bunch of crowded players all doing heaps of damage and shit. AoE would be good against that.

If you're just talking about a team with more players, well, shit - you're probably going to lose - they have more players. Deal with it - and try to hinder them as much as you can.

Originally posted by Blazz

AoE characters/abilities on your side.

If you're fighting a hundred guys in a zerg, using a bunch of AoE abilities, while less powerful, do deal a lot more damage.

Say you hit 10 people with your 200 damage spell, rather than using your 400 damage spell on one person, well, you'll have done 2000 damage.

In world of warcraft, the hunter had multi-shot, frost traps, immolation traps, and volley for AoE.
Mage had arcane explosion, and that ice one... blizzard?
Warrior has cleave, thunderclap....

Blah blah blah.

Anyway, effective use of AoE will usually stop a zerg pretty well, in theory.

Of course, there's the slightly-spread-out zerg, preventing effective use of spells and such... in which case I have no real solution.

Assuming you're in a controlled environment, with say, 20v20 players, you could probably get a pretty good "zerg" of about 15 players against maybe 5 - in which case I'd be hitting every AoE I could, and advising others to do the same - of course, after taking out their healer/disrupter.

Anyway, a true "zerg" in a game would be, in my definition, a bunch of crowded players all doing heaps of damage and shit. AoE would be good against that.

If you're just talking about a team with more players, well, shit - you're probably going to lose - they have more players. Deal with it - and try to hinder them as much as you can.

Hmmmm... I think maybe I wasn't too clear on what I was writing about.

What I meant was when you're playing and can't tell what the hell is going on.  It's like there's just too much going on at one time on the screen and it just seems like a big cluster f*ck.  At that point, I'm not having fun anymore.  I can't tell who's hitting me, who I am hitting, who's going where, or even where I'm going half the time.

Does that make more sense?

One thing that I've noticed that helps in PvP games is a good targeting scheme setup by the developers.

Other than that, I know what you mean.  I get that feeling at times playing Warhammer.  You try to survey the scene and find out that after a while the best thing to do is just start smashing buttons.  Not fun at all.  It's another reason I'm not too fond of PvP MMO games.

I think the best solution to that is a clear and useful UI. There is always going to be a level of confusion in huge fights, which I think can be cool, but I agree that it needs to be done so that players have an idea on what is happening. Some games have absolutely horrible systems for this which leads to poor results.

most massive pvp fights are like a trench war the line moves forward and back so best thing is to stay back look at the main line, if its going forward then pick a target if you only have single target attacks or a good place to lay down AoE attacks and go nuts, or try to get behind the main line and take out some healers that will move the line in your favor

World PVP will never escape the zerg.

Problem #1: Your decisions don't matter in the zerg (because only player count matters.)

Solution #1: Instanced PVP.  It keeps teams balanced, and implements a player cap appropriate to the map.  The player cap can be as high as 200 if the gameplay and game population can support it (Planetside.)

Problem #2: Gameplay isn't tactical enough.

Solution #2: Objective-based PVP with objectives spread across the map.  Objectives done in this way force teams to split up, because victory can't be obtained without controlling multiple objectives.  Teamwork is still important but now putting all your eggs in one basket is a terrible idea.

WOW's slowly-captured-nodes PVP maps are a good example, but certainly not the only way to do this style of gameplay.  Personally I always hoped they did a bit more with PVP objectives, by having Quake Wars/Enemy Territory-like objectives that tell a narrative as you progress through the map.

---

There are tricks games can use to make World PVP less zergy.  However they're usually very artificial tricks that seem completely arbitrary to players.

• Combat bonus for the outnumbered side in a zone.
• Only a certain number of combatants can engage each other at once (which is basically instancing in disguise), like a game where combat happens Atlantica style and is always 1v1 duels.

I think a game could employ enough of these baby-step solutions to make World PVP acceptable, but why settle for baby-steps when you could take massive strides towards tactical gameplay by having Instanced PVP with Objectives?

Originally posted by gnomexxx

A lot of today's PvP games leave me feeling mostly frustrated when I play them.  Especially when it seems like the game is for the most part just a zerg fest.  I find myself a lot of times just standing there thinking, "WTF is going on".  How you use any kind of strategy in a situation like that, I don't know.  A lot of times when I start feeling that way I tend to just log off and play something else.

I'm wondering what kinds of solutions you guys would propose for a game that suffers from this problem.

The two main things to counter the mindless zerg mentality are:

1. Rewards - reward success on a group/raid/faction etc. level. As long as you reward on a player level it promotes zerg.

2. Penalties - penalise those players who cock up or die. Make staying alive mean something. In order to gain something you must risk first. 

Change buffs from a cast with a duration to a state i.e the buffer picks which buffs they're running and they only effect players in their group and in range. You could so something similar with healing - make it group-specific and close range. Once people got used to the change this should have the effect of breaking the zerg down into squads which is one step closer to tactics.

edit: Not saying this is "the" solution btw, just something I think would help a bit.

It unfortuantly requires "organized" grouping.   But in guildwars what we did was assign each person two people to watch, which meant that there was over lap but it became managable listening to voice chat.   The "leader's" job was rarely to give orders since we already knew the plan but to reassign who watch targets were, and people were usually better at know how to prioritize their "specialty" at the moment than the leader would be.

As for making the zerg not possible in randoms.   The game developers HAVE to have mechanics that discourage spiking and similar mechanics(+2 regean for each person attacking you, and similar), and other mechanics that spread people out(NPC allies that are a threat if ignored, multiple control points, some AOE, and abilities that become less useful with many allies around*).

*split 500 defesnse amonst nearby allies, wild swing does 20% less damage for each close ally, caster suffers -1 mana regean for each ally hit, if arrow would be intercepted by ally -30% attack speed.

I think they should get the lower level players involved early in the game. Make it meaningful to protect newer players. Make it a point to kill the opposing sides' new players. Perhaps this could be a new frontier for the much talked about permadeath gameplay. They need to give players incentive to care about each other, because loot rewards are doing the opposite in my opinion. Yes, loot rewards are a fundamental building block of RPGs to a large extent, but when they become such a huge focus, it really detracts from the communities.

If they are going to do instanced PvP, the interfaces should be more like that of FPS or Battle.net. Queues are archaic tools and do not belong in this sort of gameplay. Nobody should have to wait to join in the fight (initially).  If they are going to focus on World PvP or open PvP, they really need to try and do it on as few servers as possible, with the ideal being a single server world, like Eve. These are some of my opinions.

Originally posted by Axehilt

World PVP will never escape the zerg.

I agree to a point.  In any PvP / RvR game there will be 'zerg'.  If it is possible it will happen.

 

Problem #1: Your decisions don't matter in the zerg (because only player count matters.)

Solution #1: Instanced PVP.  It keeps teams balanced, and implements a player cap appropriate to the map.  The player cap can be as high as 200 if the gameplay and game population can support it (Planetside.)

Here I strongly disagree.  Instanced PvP does NOT promise balance.  See Pirates of the Burning Sea.
This was tried and failed horribly there.
For details look at the PotBS forums here or on FLS's own boards.
In addition, destroys 'immersion' =  very unpopular with players too.
The only time it 'works' is in a skirmish type combat by agreement - which is incompatible with open world PvP and RvR more akin to Dueling.

 

Problem #2: Gameplay isn't tactical enough.

Solution #2: Objective-based PVP with objectives spread across the map.  Objectives done in this way force teams to split up, because victory can't be obtained without controlling multiple objectives.  Teamwork is still important but now putting all your eggs in one basket is a terrible idea.

WOW's slowly-captured-nodes PVP maps are a good example, but certainly not the only way to do this style of gameplay.  Personally I always hoped they did a bit more with PVP objectives, by having Quake Wars/Enemy Territory-like objectives that tell a narrative as you progress through the map.

This is a solution.
I call it 'player density'.  That is, the game world must spread players thinly enough that 'zerg squads' cannot cover all objectives.  That is not to say that 'zerg squads' cannot and will not exist.  In fact - they should.  The 'Zerg' is roughly equivilent to an an offensive in WWI & WWII.  A concentration of force for an attack.  Perfectly valid tactic.  But, it should not be the only way to play.  'Zergers' need to appreciate that by concentrating force in a small area they potentially leave large areas vulnerable.
As part of that make limited supply a part of the problem.  Zerg squads then have the problem of keeping themselves in supply - and the more force you have at one point the more diluted the supply is.  (100 units / 2 people = 50 each whereas 100 units / 25 people = 4 each.)

As a part of this - travel times and world size factor in.  Large worlds with long travel times discourage zerging.
Again, PotBS is the counter example.  Small world, short travel times and concentrated PvP zones.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Problem #1: Your decisions don't matter in the zerg (because only player count matters.)

Solution #1: Instanced PVP.  It keeps teams balanced, and implements a player cap appropriate to the map.  The player cap can be as high as 200 if the gameplay and game population can support it (Planetside.)

Here I strongly disagree.  Instanced PvP does NOT promise balance.  See Pirates of the Burning Sea.
This was tried and failed horribly there.
For details look at the PotBS forums here or on FLS's own boards.
In addition, destroys 'immersion' =  very unpopular with players too.
The only time it 'works' is in a skirmish type combat by agreement - which is incompatible with open world PvP and RvR more akin to Dueling.
 

 

Implementing instanced PVP poorly is not an argument against instanced PVP; it's an argument against implementing things poorly.

What's well-implemented instanced PVP?  WOW and WAR.  Queue up and eventually port into an instanced battlefield with fair teams.

(although I hesitate to mention WAR; their implementation of PVP instancing is excellent; the balance and depth of their PVP gameplay is terrible.)

Instanced PVP results in huge gains in gameplay with only minor losses in immersion.  So even if I valued gameplay and immersion equally, it'd be a net positive.

...and personally I value gameplay more than immersion.

PVP instances have plenty of room for improvement too.  Even if all they do is steal ideas from the more interesting FPS games (TF2 "Push" objectives; and the huge variety of objective types in Enemy Territory/Quake Wars.)

I think the instanced thing would be a good idea especially if it was aimed at a more casual PvP market.

The way I imagine it is something like Shogun: Total War where the map is divided into regions, the army counter is moved into an adjacent region and if there is an opposing army there the game zooms to a battlefield for the actual fight except in this case the players are the soldiers and not the general. The winner of the battleground/scenario (or the aggregate winner if there's enough players for multiple battles) takes the region.

Originally posted by tupodawg999

I think the instanced thing would be a good idea especially if it was aimed at a more casual PvP market.

Name the most skill-intensive, competitive game you know.

The environment for that game is instanced.  In other words, it happens in a tightly controlled arena, so that gameplay focuses on the skill of the combatants.  Additionally, teams are controlled and even.

Whether you named a fighting game, a FPS, a real life sport, a Ultimate Fighting Championship match, or a MMORPG Arena, you named a game where gameplay happened in a controlled arena with even teams.

I just find it odd that you'd infer there's something casual about instanced PVP, when it's the default setup for any serious PVP.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by tupodawg999

I think the instanced thing would be a good idea especially if it was aimed at a more casual PvP market.

 

Name the most skill-intensive, competitive game you know.

The environment for that game is instanced.  In other words, it happens in a tightly controlled arena, so that gameplay focuses on the skill of the combatants.  Additionally, teams are controlled and even.

Whether you named a fighting game, a FPS, a real life sport, a Ultimate Fighting Championship match, or a MMORPG Arena, you named a game where gameplay happened in a controlled arena with even teams.

...

Real Life Sport?

Where only a select few can make the grade to even play?

And even then it is broken down to grades?

How would you make that work in a Pay to Play MMORPG?

You sign up and then get 'tested' after which you get an email "We are sorry but you do not have the required skills to participate in PvP in this game.  You may, if you wish be an observer - a 'fan' if you like.  You may watch the RvR play out but you may not actually participate because you are not good enough / and or the teams are unbalanced.  Have a nice day and we look forward to your continued subscription..."

"I just find it odd that you'd infer there's something casual about instanced PVP, when it's the default setup for any serious PVP."

It's not "serious" though. Death has zero sting in those games. Most RPGs get people attached to their characters so it stings much more when they get stomped in PvP. Hence if you try and have "serious" PvP in an RPG you're more or less guaranteed a small player base unless for example, your avatar is a ship and not "you". Battleground/scenario type PvP is less immersive and the deaths so frequent they become non-serious enough to attract much larger numbers - hence more casual.

edit: I'm not using the word "casual" in a negative way btw. I'm just saying I think a PvP game built around instanced battles could prove popular even with players who are normally very PvE orientated.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by tupodawg999

I think the instanced thing would be a good idea especially if it was aimed at a more casual PvP market.

 

Name the most skill-intensive, competitive game you know.

The environment for that game is instanced.  In other words, it happens in a tightly controlled arena, so that gameplay focuses on the skill of the combatants.  Additionally, teams are controlled and even.

Whether you named a fighting game, a FPS, a real life sport, a Ultimate Fighting Championship match, or a MMORPG Arena, you named a game where gameplay happened in a controlled arena with even teams.

...

Real Life Sport?

Where only a select few can make the grade to even play?

And even then it is broken down to grades?

How would you make that work in a Pay to Play MMORPG?

You sign up and then get 'tested' after which you get an email "We are sorry but you do not have the required skills to participate in PvP in this game.  You may, if you wish be an observer - a 'fan' if you like.  You may watch the RvR play out but you may not actually participate because you are not good enough / and or the teams are unbalanced.  Have a nice day and we look forward to your continued subscription..."

Major League or Little League, you're playing the same sport.  With even teams.  In a controlled arena (baseball diamond.)

Which results in the same skill-focused gameplay.  The little leaguers just have less skill, so they get put into their own bracket.  This is fair, and has a place in MMORPGs as well (WOW level brackets, for example.)

Originally posted by tupodawg999

"I just find it odd that you'd infer there's something casual about instanced PVP, when it's the default setup for any serious PVP."

It's not "serious" though. Death has zero sting in those games. Most RPGs get people attached to their characters so it stings much more when they get stomped in PvP. Hence if you try and have "serious" PvP in an RPG you're more or less guaranteed a small player base unless for example, your avatar is a ship and not "you". Battleground/scenario type PvP is less immersive and the deaths so frequent they become non-serious enough to attract much larger numbers - hence more casual.

edit: I'm not using the word "casual" in a negative way btw. I'm just saying I think a PvP game built around instanced battles could prove popular even with players who are normally very PvE orientated.

Ah, what you're describing is more the idea of broad appeal vs. niche appeal.

Your average gamer cares more about good gameplay than they do good immersion.

So when a PVP Gamer looks at the pros/cons of various MMORPGs and notices one game lets him PVP almost constantly while another forces him to deal with consequences (in a way which doesn't add to gameplay), he will tend to choose the former, gameplay-focused game.

So since one game is focused on what the majority of players want out of a game, it has broad appeal.  The other game appeals to a minority of players, so its said to have niche appeal. 

Well, technically a proper zerg is a tactic.  You've gotta be able to convince those three dimwits who think they can solo five enemies apiece to realize that the group is stronger than the individual.

I hate to be the jerk of the thread, but perhaps you need to L2P.  If you're lost in a group setting, there's something wrong with your ability to play a mmo and compute the information coming at you.