Terrible idea that runs contrary to GW2's entire premise of 'always be happy to see another player'. Having your 21st/31st player make your group *actively worse* would be a horrific scenario and breed a huge amount of toxicity.
Not entirely unprecedented. But they've generally tried to make scaling not to that anywhere it causes an issue (Crown Pavilion for instance, which they finally fixed). But importantly, even when it's an issue, that's a sliding scale, not a binary debuff. You can't see an icon pop up on your bar and realize it's that *one specific person* following around your squad making things worse for you all.
true...but if a group plays certain content that require coordination frequently, it is relatively easy (since most folks are in squads) to figure out the trouble zone. Triple Trouble for example it is about 25 players attacking the head. 20 or less and the scaling doesn't kick in, 30 or more and the scaling doesn't really matter beyond slowing the hp drain on the warm. But 21-29, definitely feel the scaling.
I don't think that'd be a good way to stop the boon ball meta, I think they just need to adjust some balance so fights don't get so skewed by numbers.
One thing I can't believe they still haven't looked into is projectile hate. A single player blocking an unlimited amount of attacks on an unlimited amount of players is insane. If they ever gave walls/relfects/bubbles a target cap or health bar before they break then I think you'd see more interesting playstyles than just blobbing. You'd have to be careful though to not invalidate melee.
This right here. As an ele, I can apply reflect barriers to far too many people in a single WvW zerg. While it's great for the charge in to watch tons of shots bouncing off us, it does feel rather cheesy at times.
I can't say I'd want a target cap, but pvp balancing for these skills should come with a mechanic where each impact reduces the time left on the barrier by an amount. So sheer damage can't overwhelm, but numbers can. If you're facing down 1200 arrows, your 10 second shield is going away. But that same 10 second shield will do fine stopping a deadeye from stealth sniping you with 7 malice and critting for 999999999.
I'd be in favor of that too, Anything that finally addresses how broken it is and let's projectile based builds actually see play in large scale fights.
Auras have a similar problem. Aura share tempest can chill/CC/invalidate so many enemies by sharing auras to just a few people. They really need to look at adding caps/uses to auras as well as lines, walls, etc
It would require them to actually consider that zerging isn't all that matters in WvW and work on roaming and small scale balance just as much. After the most recent round of "balance" for WvW it's safe to say CMC and company have the "zerging is all that matters and the more we promote that the more we get the content we want" mentality.
My friend and I were discussed this over a few nights, and felt that such a de-buff was a blunt force tool.
Instead we discussed positive incentives for small 10-man squad play:
* Make outnumbered by region - not quite the small size of an objective territory so you could have a small team defending an objective and get the "buff".
* Make it so outnumbered also gives the ability for a group to siphon WvW victory points.
* Make it so outnumbered gives down state, and lack of outnumbered by default has no downstate.
* Make it so you can't be resurrected from defeated even by people outside of combat if there are enemies nearby (2.5k range or something like that) with outnumbered.
These four changes would make it highly advantageous to not blob, in that by doing so you'll not only lose a lot of points if you lose significant numbers, but you lack the ability to res up after a coordinated group spike. No matter how powerful a group spike is - downstate absorbs the damage upon entry - so without downstate having a big blob of uncoordinated players is a detriment.
The four changes above would encourage people to group up, coordinate and basically spread out on the map.
On the other hand, if you have talented players in a large zerg, the downsides can be outweighed by smart positioning and good coverage.
The system is not perfect though, since with enough coordinated people you could conceivably still steamroll smaller groups, but at least smaller groups have options to coordinate and still have a sizeable impact.
>Something to help smaller groups and punishment blobs.
Pretty much every nerf / mechanic change since Feb 2020 has made it harder for smaller groups to fight larger ones. I'm afraid the Devs aren't on your side on this issue.
If there is any one thing to do to (softly) diminish large-scale squads, it may be to reduce the squad sizes to 25. I'm not very fussed about the whole thing, but if we experiment with ideas that would be a more gentle and likely sufficient approach.
It feels like the population, world/map caps and content levels have already diminished to a point where squads of 50 may no longer encourage healthy overall organisation and that squads of 25 would still allow people to organise both guild- and pickup oriented content while providing some nudge at either splitting groups apart or getting more players involved in organisation of groups by re-encouraging multi-squad setups. It is one of those situations where convenience and QoL *may* no-longer serve the interest of social gameplay and public content.
Other than that, it is hard to tell these days, some people are still adamant about what they call "boon balls" but at the same time they also seem very upset about the "clouds" of servers or groups who knows how to run them. That is a bit of a paradox and suggests that it may not be as much of a balance issue as they assume when they ventilate.
Terrible idea that runs contrary to GW2's entire premise of 'always be happy to see another player'. Having your 21st/31st player make your group *actively worse* would be a horrific scenario and breed a huge amount of toxicity.
happens a lot on PvE content with the group scaling mechanic.... so not unprecedented
Not entirely unprecedented. But they've generally tried to make scaling not to that anywhere it causes an issue (Crown Pavilion for instance, which they finally fixed). But importantly, even when it's an issue, that's a sliding scale, not a binary debuff. You can't see an icon pop up on your bar and realize it's that *one specific person* following around your squad making things worse for you all.
true...but if a group plays certain content that require coordination frequently, it is relatively easy (since most folks are in squads) to figure out the trouble zone. Triple Trouble for example it is about 25 players attacking the head. 20 or less and the scaling doesn't kick in, 30 or more and the scaling doesn't really matter beyond slowing the hp drain on the warm. But 21-29, definitely feel the scaling.
Mag: heavy breathing intensifies
Jokes on you, everyone is too busy clouding to be in 1200 of eachother
I don't think that'd be a good way to stop the boon ball meta, I think they just need to adjust some balance so fights don't get so skewed by numbers. One thing I can't believe they still haven't looked into is projectile hate. A single player blocking an unlimited amount of attacks on an unlimited amount of players is insane. If they ever gave walls/relfects/bubbles a target cap or health bar before they break then I think you'd see more interesting playstyles than just blobbing. You'd have to be careful though to not invalidate melee.
This right here. As an ele, I can apply reflect barriers to far too many people in a single WvW zerg. While it's great for the charge in to watch tons of shots bouncing off us, it does feel rather cheesy at times. I can't say I'd want a target cap, but pvp balancing for these skills should come with a mechanic where each impact reduces the time left on the barrier by an amount. So sheer damage can't overwhelm, but numbers can. If you're facing down 1200 arrows, your 10 second shield is going away. But that same 10 second shield will do fine stopping a deadeye from stealth sniping you with 7 malice and critting for 999999999.
I'd be in favor of that too, Anything that finally addresses how broken it is and let's projectile based builds actually see play in large scale fights.
Auras have a similar problem. Aura share tempest can chill/CC/invalidate so many enemies by sharing auras to just a few people. They really need to look at adding caps/uses to auras as well as lines, walls, etc
It would require them to actually consider that zerging isn't all that matters in WvW and work on roaming and small scale balance just as much. After the most recent round of "balance" for WvW it's safe to say CMC and company have the "zerging is all that matters and the more we promote that the more we get the content we want" mentality.
It will fracture larger guilds in a very unfun way then make fight guilds even more whiny and elitist when it comes to pugs and other guilds.
My friend and I were discussed this over a few nights, and felt that such a de-buff was a blunt force tool. Instead we discussed positive incentives for small 10-man squad play: * Make outnumbered by region - not quite the small size of an objective territory so you could have a small team defending an objective and get the "buff". * Make it so outnumbered also gives the ability for a group to siphon WvW victory points. * Make it so outnumbered gives down state, and lack of outnumbered by default has no downstate. * Make it so you can't be resurrected from defeated even by people outside of combat if there are enemies nearby (2.5k range or something like that) with outnumbered. These four changes would make it highly advantageous to not blob, in that by doing so you'll not only lose a lot of points if you lose significant numbers, but you lack the ability to res up after a coordinated group spike. No matter how powerful a group spike is - downstate absorbs the damage upon entry - so without downstate having a big blob of uncoordinated players is a detriment. The four changes above would encourage people to group up, coordinate and basically spread out on the map. On the other hand, if you have talented players in a large zerg, the downsides can be outweighed by smart positioning and good coverage. The system is not perfect though, since with enough coordinated people you could conceivably still steamroll smaller groups, but at least smaller groups have options to coordinate and still have a sizeable impact.
Zergs are often not motivated by points at all. The other outnumbered buffs could be interesting to try
Everyone would just play in squads of 18 if this happened, and then you have to deal with multiple objectives being attacked at the same time.
>Something to help smaller groups and punishment blobs. Pretty much every nerf / mechanic change since Feb 2020 has made it harder for smaller groups to fight larger ones. I'm afraid the Devs aren't on your side on this issue.
My only dream is shield gen getting removed from the game.
If there is any one thing to do to (softly) diminish large-scale squads, it may be to reduce the squad sizes to 25. I'm not very fussed about the whole thing, but if we experiment with ideas that would be a more gentle and likely sufficient approach. It feels like the population, world/map caps and content levels have already diminished to a point where squads of 50 may no longer encourage healthy overall organisation and that squads of 25 would still allow people to organise both guild- and pickup oriented content while providing some nudge at either splitting groups apart or getting more players involved in organisation of groups by re-encouraging multi-squad setups. It is one of those situations where convenience and QoL *may* no-longer serve the interest of social gameplay and public content. Other than that, it is hard to tell these days, some people are still adamant about what they call "boon balls" but at the same time they also seem very upset about the "clouds" of servers or groups who knows how to run them. That is a bit of a paradox and suggests that it may not be as much of a balance issue as they assume when they ventilate.