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Ideas on how to nerf the final boss in the game: Target Cap


DarkDream.2380

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Currently the biggest issue in the playability of WvW is numbers. Without people you can't fight larger blobs. The game gives you the outnumbered buff as a consolation of being a punching bag for the larger zerg. To combat this without breaking the game I believe that the outnumbered buff should give a +3 (or more/less) target cap to all abilities for that server on that map. This means healing will hit more allies and damage will hit more enemies). What this immediately does is remove the invulnerability a larger zerg has in stacking. This does not give the smaller group a dps buff in the way you might think. A group of 15 will still be running into a group of 30+ in this scenario. That larger group has more utilities for a fight (portals, stealth, pulls) and more healing and damage dealers. A larger group still has more dps and more healing per second. That means the smaller group cannot dps down targets as fast as a larger group all pumping numbers at the same time. This target cap buff will allows the smaller group that can outmaneuver the larger group to be able to deal damage and generate downs when getting a good engage.

Currently a smaller group can get the drop on a big zerg but they wont get downs or finish them since the aoe cap on abilities with multi hits (which make up most of the best damaging abilities in the game.. Reaper 4) do not hit the same person for all the hits in a tightly stacked blob. allowing outnumbered buffed players to hit more people will generate more downs but they wont have more abilities being casted as a larger group so they will still run into the issue of finishing those downs. This allows engaging gameplay where larger groups choose to res the downs or fight the group and I hope you can see how this scenario can play out in either teams favor based on the commanders calls. So what this outnumbered buff change would introduce is higher skilled commanders. There is no more ppt relaxing when a smaller outnumbered group still has the ability to wipe your 50 man. That small group still has a huge disadvantage. The larger group just lost their invulnerability. That's pretty much what this change I hope would do.

This would also buff server coverage indirectly. People don't play with the outnumbered buff.. they just stay logged in to farm pips and flip camps/towers to refresh the 10min participation timer. But with this change you will see guilds and players awake in these less populated time zones group up and run tags trying to fight. I bet there are already groups out there but they just wont play since they see it as they have no chance (which they really don't) and instead move to BL's and ppt. This change could also encourage groups that want to prove their prowess at the game to transfer to servers that are dead during their timezone and run small groups with the outnumbered buff and fight map q's. Overall it would see a lot of potential engagement.

The final thing about this would be a change to the way the outnumbered buff might be applied. I'm not too familiar with the ratio of players needed to have it show up but I just wanted to get this idea out there.

Other potential ideas- (LESS SERIOUS AND NEEDING A LOT OF BALANCING AND PLAY TESTING)Something along the lines of changing the way runes work and make it so that holding runes on a BL adds a +1 target cap to abilities SERVER WIDE(all maps for that team). So if you hold all 3 your server has a +3 bonus. But the amount of players needed to do that/ the coordination would make it worth that reward Also it gives roamers and smaller squads something to do on reset in addition to running as flanking groups. This would also reduce the amount of tower humpers. If a server wants those runes they have to get out of tower and fight for those points. It could add a lot of fighting in the middle and reduce the hate stealth characters have since most of the fighting would occur away from towers with the massive reveals. Now the issue this idea introduces would be: What happens when a server that is already massive and outnumbering a another group holds all 3 runes? Simple: give the outnumbered buff that applies to the smaller server immunity to the runic buffs coming from holding BL runes. So the new outnumbered buff would give players on that map +3 and immunity to the other servers that are holding runes and gaining target caps. (this idea would need the most balance and is less serious. I would consider the first half of this seriously. I just wanted to add this into my post since I decided to share my thoughts anyway. I understand I am one person and not on the balance team. I just hoped to give someone ideas and they can take it and run with it however they want)

I hope this starts a discussion on potential changes that we might see post 3rd expansion.

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Options to make smaller groups have more fun (not beating larger groups as that is unfun for the other side) are pretty simple:

  • Lower map cap by 15 and add 1 more map (smaller blobs)
  • Make the game more fun for smaller groups so they don't have to fight larger groups: Fix siege balance, superspeed meta, watchtowers, minstrel meta and upgrade times
  • Make siege impactful again giving small groups more options: Move from stat oriented defending into siege oriented defending like pre-HoT.
  • Remove invisible tags: Guilds can group up together easier if both are outmanned on same map. Enemy can't form "60 man discord only invisible tag" blobs
  • Remove the relinking system (keep lower amount of tiers) so smaller groups can transfer to tiers that match their numbers better on the timezone and it stays that way for more than a month
  • Make gliding unavailable in combat; larger group players are easier to pick off

I do not see any reason why 20 people need higher chances to beat 40 people, just portal bomb, banner to finish downs and portal away, it is not that hard. Only issue is that they have been promoting blobbing and 1-tag play (invisible tags for guilds) so small groups don't have other smaller groups to fight/group with.

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I'll throw my hat in with the "make siege great again" crowd. The whole point of player-constructed siege is to make planning and resource investment matter. To make it so that one lone guy who built an arrow cart in the exact right spot can fend off a tower from being taken by a group of 5 or so. To make it so people will construct ballistas on the wall, and then use it to destroy max distance catapult. In a game where siege is feeble and the walls are paper, the whole mode gets dictated by whomever has the most players and the best coverage.

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@DarkDream.2380 Have you ever been apart of a guild that engages in zerg-busting? I mean, it is still possible and some guilds still do it. Is it challenging? Sure, but isn't it supposed to be challenging? You can obviously make changes to make that easier but what will that do with guilds who are already capable of doing it? They may either risk just becomming oppressively powerful or their challenge may be taken away to the point where they stop doing it because it isn't fun or engaging anymore. It is a slippery slope.

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Make Siege great again.People who keep crying about Siege having defender's advantage are ridiculous.

Siege barely does anything to a attacking zerg anymore, and when they do crack the enemy's siege, they come back after resupping in 5 mins.Outnumbered Defenders are forever stuck getting supply cut and basically forced out of a keep due to running out of supplies.

However, this is only a bandaid for the real symptom : Unbalanced server populations.It's not even funny when yur entire server + link's coverage for all timezones are simply dwarfed by two fairly large servers linking together and having a sizeable force for every timezone.

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I don't think increasing the target limit is a silver bullet. I think it could be a part of a larger change to the "Outnumbered" effect, if it got a complete overhaul.

Linking target limit to the ruins/bloodlust strikes me as a very bad idea. I can only see whichever server is dominating at the time, sending people to claim it, and run big zerg with + target limit. While the majority of players doesn't even know why/how, as most doesn't bother to find out or learn.

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Removing the outnumbered cap basically just means single target damage is even worse than it already is, and that large-versus-medium groups have an even worse time than they currently do because anything over 5/10 takes advantage of target caps.

Sorry, small group did well with mobility and the ability to burst people down and coordindate bursts and coordinated sustain. An overexcess of CC/pulls, mounts and damage nerfs/massive AoE group sustain buffs like FB and Scourge are more responsible for the failure of promotion of small-scale play than the target cap, and nothing will change unless those are addressed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I read most some of the OP.

I believe the great idea here is to remove the target cap on fixed siege - or something like that. Using zerg-size to mitigate damage is cheese of the highest order. Wensleydale or Double Gloucester or somesuch.

OR how about this : you can't upgrade to the next tier until you repair all your walls to full (not my idea, but a great one). This would remove the cheesy "don't bother wasting supply on repairs because it's about to upgrade" nonsense.

Hello? Echo Echo echo echo e..c...h.....o.

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I've talked about this before, but increasing the target cap isn't the solution. The solution is changing how the target cap works, to deal increased physical damage, condition and CC duration when hitting more targets, this way the smaller group always has the advantage of skills while the larger group always has the advantage of more players, especially to revive the fallen.

For offense, increase with more targets (enemies), and for defense, decrease with more targets (allies).

But one thing that'd help alot is if forts had upkeep. Once an objective is upgraded, it needs a constant stream of supply to stay upgraded; so cutting of the supply chain or depleting the supply depot (e.g with a Trebuchet), would downgrade the fort. This way the larger server can't just play the "cap everything and hold until T3 then hold for half day after free" game they often do.

But then certain servers wouldn't be able to have their Garrisons, EBG Keeps and SMC 24/7, how terrible.

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@Svarty.8019 said:I read most some of the OP.

I believe the great idea here is to remove the target cap on fixed siege - or something like that. Using zerg-size to mitigate damage is cheese of the highest order. Wensleydale or Double Gloucester or somesuch.... siege has a current target cap of 50. What do you want to increase it to, 100? I doubt it will make a difference.

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:I read
most
some of the OP.

I believe the great idea here is to remove the target cap on fixed siege - or something like that. Using zerg-size to mitigate damage is cheese of the highest order. Wensleydale or Double Gloucester or somesuch.... siege has a current target cap of 50. What do you want to increase it to, 100? I doubt it will make a difference.

It won't break the game, if that's what you're suggesting. It's just something to help deter the giant zerg turtle/bunker that thwarts us.

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:I read
most
some of the OP.

I believe the great idea here is to remove the target cap on fixed siege - or something like that. Using zerg-size to mitigate damage is cheese of the highest order. Wensleydale or Double Gloucester or somesuch.... siege has a current target cap of 50. What do you want to increase it to, 100? I doubt it will make a difference.

ACs only hit 25 targets. I actually had to go in game to verify this, it got patched a long time ago, but the wiki still lists it as 50.

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@God.2708 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:I read
most
some of the OP.

I believe the great idea here is to remove the target cap on fixed siege - or something like that. Using zerg-size to mitigate damage is cheese of the highest order. Wensleydale or Double Gloucester or somesuch.... siege has a current target cap of 50. What do you want to increase it to, 100? I doubt it will make a difference.

ACs only hit 25 targets. I actually had to go in game to verify this, it got patched a long time ago, but the wiki still lists it as 50.

Sorry for any misunderstanding, in the post of mine I did state fixed siege, by which I mean Oil, Mortar, Cannon.

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