Can we stop bashing on Zerg RvR?
1. It provides immersion to a “realm war”
2. It gives new players something in RvR to do that doesn’t require time and $$ investment.
3. It keeps the game running for crying out loud.
4. It promotes an inclusive atmosphere
5. Many people admit that they aren’t good enough for 8man and maybe don’t want to use voice com, so they need a place to have fun.
6. It’s good RPs for 8mans when they team up and Zerg bust!
2. It gives new players something in RvR to do that doesn’t require time and $$ investment.
3. It keeps the game running for crying out loud.
4. It promotes an inclusive atmosphere
5. Many people admit that they aren’t good enough for 8man and maybe don’t want to use voice com, so they need a place to have fun.
6. It’s good RPs for 8mans when they team up and Zerg bust!
Post edited by Sym on
Symonde (Cleric)
Symfriar (Friar duh)
Symsorc (Double duh)
Sympets (Theurg)
Symmond (Arms)
Some random mids and hibs
Symfriar (Friar duh)
Symsorc (Double duh)
Sympets (Theurg)
Symmond (Arms)
Some random mids and hibs
Comments
without any effort or skill you do crazy amount of rps, ist a joke
you see it from the side of a zerg player, but did you ever seen it from a side of a smallman player?
5) Everyone in this game can small man and 8 man if they dont fear the realese
6) It sure is, but not as fun, if it would be done on a daily basis the zergs would log off and never log back on and point #3 would be void.
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It's become pretty clear though that cross realm spying is inevitable, and yes, there does seem to be some tactical avoidance going on.
I had a half assed idea that would likely never come to fruition...
- Add keep/gatehouse's at the EV gates instead of the open gate and tower combo. Make the gates a capturable asset that can be defended. The tower behind these gates doesn't make much sense from a defensive/why would an army put this there standpoint - just make the gates little mini keeps where people can pass through if they own it. The idea is to have a more forward defensive point. This does however highlight the issue that there arent many decent chokepoints to defend. Gatehouse? Go through the water around EV or use a boat. You can't really "defend" anything unless somebody is actively attacking it - and they won't actively attack it unless they've got some further objective down the road. It leads to passive play IMO.
You can dream though. I think human guile and cowardice aside, the way the map is designed allows for people to sort of endlessly circle each other without having any "forced" points of defense. As in - if you want to go any further, you need to get through this.
That'd all require quite a bit of work though. I don't expect anything of the sort.
Zerging is good for variety. It can suck late night however when Mid rolls out 3-4fg when everyone is pretty much running around on solo/small/duo - but that's just the nature of the game. Personally I'd like those people to pare down a bit so the fights aren't 20v4 and the like as they clean everybody off of EV, but you can't stop people from doing what they want in that case.
yeah this. When it´s keep fights ofc zerging is natural. However it´s pretty hard to defend what people are doing. Building zergs of 80 people to run around in EV and catch people fighting who are group vs group fighting and stay there till they no longer can find anything to kill.
Sure some people prefer that playstyle but it completely ruins the game for others who love the 8vs8 / small group fighting but are completely uninterested in zerg fights.
100% true and that problem should be addressed
Yes this is something. I don´t know if it is a coincidence that this thread came up right after I suggested a group quest to give people a reason to not ONLY run with the zerg every time they play DAoC but I think not.
Why is it always "Why are you bashing on the poor zergers?". I mean let´s be honest here, it´s those trying to run normal group sizes in EV that are being bullied. Back in the days it used to be an insanely disrepectful and taboo thing to go to agramon with a zerg. Zerging was for the regular frontier zones with keeps and stuff. Now, zerging the island is an every day job and more and more people who prefer regular group vs group action quit the game.
High rr used to be a prestigous thing, look at who is RR13 now. Almost every single one is a major zerger, There is just too much in the game rewarding zerging right now. 3 high RP reward zergfriendly daily quests and no single group quest, massive bonuses for defending or taking a keep (if you were involved in killing players) and way too little action in group roaming.
Sure there will always be someone saying "Yeah but your 8 man sometimes kills 4 mans isnt that zerging?" well yes it probably is but it might not be unthinkable for most players to fill up their group slots to have an 8 man while it might be quite unthinkable for most to build a 70 man zerg. I always start the day running small man and then fill up the slots if there are enemy fgs out, that is not the issue here.
Haha yeah I´ve ran with the zerg a couple of times and I honestly dont really get it. Maybe you can think its fun a couple of times but I think a lot of people later realize that there is just no gameplay in that but they still enjoy DAoC as a whole and stay in the zerg because they dont feel there are much other options for them.
I mean first you have to run around for hours sometimes to look for proper action as a zerg. If you are really lucky you get an open field button vs another zerg. However, this fight will end in less than 1 minute and there will be no real CC other than stuns because it´s all just AoEing eachother down.
Why waste the best group vs group PvP game ever made on that? I can never understand it but at the same time Im fine with people playing the game that way aslong as it doent entirely ruin the best gaming experience of my life which is DAoC group vs group.
You can still show the cups, hammers and trees when someone walks by an outpost that you own but I just dont get why you should have swords telling everyone where 2 groups are having an fg vs fg fight. "Hey look we are having an epic fight over here, bring your zerg and ruin it please." What kind of feature is that ?
Predict 8 mans start to search for solos/small man instead of fighting each other.
there is good smallman action until the zerg arrives, then its nearly impossible to play
The flaw I find with your arguments is that there are no smallmans/group quests while ignoring the fact that several of the daily quests can be completed by smallmans/groups. You put forth the notion that because they can be completed in zergs that they aren't bothered to be completed by smallmans/groups. At the same time you don't even entertain the very real possibility that the majority of players simply don't like to smallman/8man. The smallman/8man community had been ever shrinking long before these daily quests were implemented. In fact, I recall the group daily quests were implemented to help stir smallman/8man action. Incentives will only go so far to lure players to a play style they don't enjoy.
I think the bigger issue here is the intense stratification of the four basic playing styles: Solo, Smallman, 8man, and Zergs. It seems like most are in their own salty camps, defending their way as the best, with the rest being idiots. Just play your game. For one group to call out another group for playing a certain, inclusive, and zergy way, and/or to demand for nerfs or boosts favouring one way or another stinks of millennial entitlement and elitism. Folks will still zerg, it helps keep subscriptions thus the game going. They can help a player shake off the rust, try out a new class, and maybe develop the skills to perform well in an 8man. Don't like 'em? Turn your group into a bomb, and uh, don't macro.
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Why people are so against having ONE daily quest in the game that requires your group to get most of the kill credit for your kill to count is beyond me.
Is it so hard to understand that the group roaming ascept of the game has been highly threatned to go extinct the last days and that some of us would like some action being taken for that ascept of the game to be saved? Especially since many of us love group vs group but are completely uninterested of zerg fights where people just spam AOE spells and the bigger army always wins?
You speak of new players and returning players. Alright I just came back after 8-10 years and I knew literally noone who was still playing the game. Making new contacts and getting respect was difficult for sure but far from impossible.
There will always be keep fights and all that. We are simply trying to find ways to keep the small man and 8vs8ing in the game alive. Introducing one real group daily kill quest and removing small swords on RvR map for EV zone is a great way of keeping that alive. Maybe not perfect but trust me when I say that it will be enough for the situation to improve.
I'm not against it, but since the majority of the current daily quests can already be completed by smallmans and groups, I don't see the need to devote energy to creating more of what already exists. I would prefer Broadsword focus its energy on things that truly need to be fixed/updated.
And I hope you are kidding me when you say that the current way the quests work was to promote fg and small man roaming. Because I just came back to the game and saw those and thought "ok thats a cool idea to make new chars cstch up, but this is gonna make people zerg and add all the time." So If they were made for that reason they need to fire someone.
You can see yourself if you compare statistics - Zerg players are making 100k ish over 5 hours and you yourself and other that run smalley/8 are easily doing this in 2 hours.
Whilst i am not a zerg style player, you also have to consider that if zergs weren't around many of those 70-150 players would either be pveing, afk or not playing at all.
It isn't the zergers themselves that are preying on and or ruining your 8 man experience - its the zerg leaders leading them to you rather than tackling realm objectives and enemy zergs.
This has mostly been seen over the last few years as zergs have become more mobile with speed 6 horses and recently speed 6 on healers/sorcs and multiple insta ports which removes the supply line for solos and smalleys to run intercept on.
I didn´t immediately get back to the 8vs8 community when I returned the game, as stated I knew noone. I made PuGs using LFG chat and at some hours this was working really well and the randoms in my group had a lot of fun. A while later things got worse and we never found any other PuGs to kill because everyone would either zerg or be in a hardcore set group.
Naturally I was forced to get back into the hardcore 8vs8 community and run with set groups aswell because this was the only way to get even 8vs8 fights on primetime. It would be one thing if my random PuGs sometimes died to a really good set group but still was able to get a lot of other even fights like it was for a while but when there is no such action it becomes pointless for the average player to run 8 man.
I think that maybe the term average player is a bit confusing because perhaps the average player is indeed someone who prefers to only run in zergs.
But if we part RvR players up into 3 tiers instead like this:
1. tier 3: Very casual players who prefer to join the bg and stick the leader, maybe with a beer or a glass of whiskey beside the computer and chat with his friends.
2. tier 2: Still sort of casual, might join bgs sometimes but prefers the small man and 8 man aspects of the game. Uses the LFG chat a lot to fill slots in his/her PuGs and tries to find people who work well to play with this way.
3. tier 1: Hardcore player with set groups and has private invite only channels where they search for stand-ins when needed, in-game LFG chat is rarely ever used.
Clearly the tier that is dying out here is the tier 2. These types of players still exist but most of them have already quit the game. By the way the state of DAoC is looking right now they are forced to either go to the tier 1 or 3 or simply only play on off hours such as during the day. I´m not saying a group quest and removing small swords from EV will be the magical solution for this but at least the situation will improve.
I guess something that I personally think would be a great idea to make the tier1 seem a bit less closed is if the 8vs8 community some day a week or so hosted events where each group has to have at least 3 players from a list of randoms that have signed up at a forum thread to try some 8vs8 with a good group. Of course there would be huge issues with certain people not being able to swallow their ego and flame these poor randoms but if the interest for this type of weekly event is high enough I would definitely be up for trying to make it happen.
I might sound like an elitist but I really do care about these people who feel left out because I´ve been there myself. First you go for weeks trying to introduce yourself but are never given the chance. Then suddenly someone gives you a chance and you perform well and then after you´ve earned one groups respect you earn the respect from pretty much everyone and you get asked to stand-in by someone every day. Obviously nothing changed in your gameplay over these 1-3 days that changed everything but it´s just too hard to be given that chance as things look right now.
there is no point playing smallman
John Luke Picard
“Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
Mr. Spock
Maybe Picard quoted Spock?
Only that its hard to know what the many needed in this case since so many of the people who prefered roaming DAoC felt forced to quit the game. On pryd/exc there was pretty much no zerging other than for keeps as I mentioned. And if there was, it was just some randoms on rr3 deciding to stick up. If one realm had 8 groups running, they all tended to run by themselves.
Spot on for me btw
Creating a quest that rewards only "tier 1" players will not lead to the sudden creation of new "tier 1"groups. The "tier 1" community's elitist attitude and ridiculous entrance barriers that have long been a staple of those types of players are more responsible for its dwindling population than the daily quests you feel aren't fair or whatever.
Huge misunderstanding of what I wrote. First of all the quests are mainly for the tier2 players to feel that they get something out of their 8 man roaming. The tier1 players will get RPs either way, this quest is not to give the tier 1 players more RPs, its to create more roaming action. In order for tier 2 players to have fun there have to be other tier 2 players running in full groups. If they only face set groups almost every time they play 8vs8 and maybe a group outside of the 8vs8 closed community 5-10% of the times at most, they will not enjoy themselves.
Not everyone in the 8vs8 community is toxic. Every night I run past a couple of fg vs fg fights where I see two random groups fighting who I know would have added on my fight but I still pass them by because I dont wanna destroy the only even fight they might get the whole night.
Also about the 8vs8 community being ridiculously closed, yes this is a chain reaction that happens in all games when the elite only fights the elite all the time. However it´s not impossible, you should see my post about coming back to the game after 8 years break and not knowing a single person. I got my chars temped and went from spamming LFG chats for grps to joining an elite EU primetime set group in only 1 month.
However, it wasn´t easy and I felt like it should have been easier. I have some ideas of how to get new people into the 8vs8 community
If you feel like it´s hard to get 8vs8 roaming groups and need advice on how to get them or how to get into the 8vs8 scene or whatever, don´t hesitate to contact me on discord.
Chamie#8164 on discord.
I will answer pretty much anything from my getting back to the game story, who to ask for decent roaming pugs on various realms, how the 8vs8 meta looks or whatever you need to know basically. You can also find me in the official dark age of camelot discord.
Oh please, give me that quest just to prove how wrong you are
This quest you want created is not going to create more action. Tier 2 players aren't going to go out and constantly feed tier 1 players simply to complete a quest. It might happen at first, but Tier 1 players can't help but hunt everyone else constantly, you even see it now with smallmans and solos they hunt down.
I mean I'm sure that not "everyone" in the 8v8 community is toxic but that playerbase has historically been extremely toxic. If it wasn't it would have more people amongst it.
The hey day of long sieges is well forgotten with unlimited power to heal wall climbers, catapults and the abstinence of sieging anything that remotely looks defended.
Ghost Keep (2016) was a fine example of extended sieges - however that was also accompanied by oldstyle quest rewards and a huge rp bonus - the last Ghost Keep (2018?) didnt see any sieges that remotely compared to it.
Players for the most part players seem to want easy realm points
- Hence realm hopping to the larger zerg.
- Zergs farming solos/8mans rather than engaging with other zergs.
Possibly there is another solution that hasnt been explored.
When you run a BG/raid people are fickle and generally have to patience for any sort of failure.
I personally still don't get why people dodge and avoid - you get nothing for never engaging. A week or two back on Hib we faced a zerg that seemed to be two or three times our size, yet they never came after us. They never would engage outside of an easily won open field fights against significantly smaller numbers. It was pretty pathetic - hence my suggestion somewhere else that map routes be considered. We give people and zergs too much ability to freely move around the entire NF map. You should, at some point, have to pierce a defensive structure or skirt around a risky area to enter into another realms territory...
As it is you can port, boat, port to EV and walk or swim, swim around the entire EV island, port to CK on EV, boat to EV or just about anywhere else...
No wonder people are avoiding each other and going for the easy kills - they've got a thousand ways to avoid each other at every step.
What if the map/objectives forced zergs to run into eachother?
What if zergs couldn’t run at speed 6? Makes no sense that a group of 80ppl can catch a smaller group. It’s like road traffic, the more cars the slower it goes.
For ports, should we only be able to port into enemy territory without the possibility to port out?
If zergs can’t be as nimble as they are now, they will be forced to fight each other since they won’t be able to catch smaller numbers as easily.
I’m not saying this as a hardcore 8v8 player, it just isn’t logical for a massive zerg to move fast, it would bring a bit more realism to the game I think.
I also think removing swords from the map would help, what is the logic behind knowing where every fight is? I know it is to promote action, but if you want action just flame a keep, makes more sense than a fight radar in your warmap.
there should be a sign on the map where they are
they destroy the game because they just search for kill lesser numbers
I think that in order to find out what needs to be done to revive the group roaming in DAoC aswell as going back to having zergs fight zergs you have to look at how things were back before and compare it to now and ask what changed.
I´m a returning player after 8 years so I will compare today to how it was from 2001-2010. Other than the Ywain cluster my experience has only been EU servers so I will talk mostly about them.
DAoC used to be divided into at least 4 big communities. EN, FR, DE (GER) and US. Since DAoC is open RvR with no real tasks other than earn RPs and dont lose your relics, the community will sort of form their own rules or playstyles. I noticed a pretty huge difference between EN servers and German servers back in the days.
On EN servers it was relatively quickly decided that 8 people is the maximum in a group for roaming, if you wish to run more you will focus on capturing objectives for your realm, keeps and towers. With that being said, when agramon came there were very little issues of zerging within agramon on EN servers obviously since agramon had no towers, no keeps. If a zerg ever ran there it was to cross from one frontier to another by land.
During primetime the set groups that liked 8vs8 tended to stick to agramon (tier 1 players). It was of course pretty useless to form a PuG with randoms to fight these so the more casual players who wanted to roam just stuck to the normal zones where they could find some 8vs8 fights (sometimes) and other things to do. It has been said however that Excalibur had more zerging issues pre merge than Prydwen had, I played only prydwen and the cluster.
At the time I tried German servers, there was no code like this. In fact, there were zergs who looked for the 8vs8ers only to ruin their fights and get a few RPs. An IRC channel was therefore created where groups signed up every night to go to a secret zone that they always changed and used /anon. So here the art of forming massive zergs only to hunt 8 mans probably always existed.
There were many issues with choosing secret zones like this. First of all the occassional PuG testing the 8vs8 zone did not exist so the action was worse. Second of all it was unfair because one realm would have insta port while the others had to take long boat rides. But the biggest problem of all was that with few groups the realm issue becomes huge, some days there could be 3 groups signed from one realm and only 1 of each from the others.
The 8vs8 scene on the German servers did however manage to survive
However there was one thing that always kept the 8 man roaming alive during even for players who did not belong to a set group, the RPs were good. There were no zergable daily kill quests that gave you at least 20k RPs every time you completed one so every time you ran with the zerg you would have to share ALL the RPs with everyone else hitting enemies.
This resulted in that once players reached realm rank 5 or so they tended to try group roaming. What they would find out then was that even with a bad group that lost all 8vs8 fights, you would still have a chance of earning more RPs than with the zerg because you would still find some small mans to kill, intercept a tower take or kill stealthers.
So the group roaming always existed although some people here and there of course tried to use foul tricks like roaming with 12 people instead of 8 so they would always be 12v8 vs other roaming groups.
So today we have EV instead of agramon which is effectively smaller, has insta port and of course the zerg runs speed 6. For the casual player the best way to farm RPs is to make sure the daily quests get completed each day.
The easiest way to complete some of these is to run in a massive zerg and look for swords on the map indicating where the enemy is already fighting so it will be difficult for them to run away.
EV brings more action than agramon did, so its not all bad in fact I kinda like EV. But I hope my post will open your mind to understand why the way the quests work need to change.
I mean seriously look at the way the quests are designed. The for the realm quest is working as intended and perhaps the solo quest too, the others are NOT. Maybe you can make arguments that the battle for the buggane should be a realm objective and therefore working as intended but you cant say that "Roaming with friends" is.
The one thing that is awesome for group roaming in todays daoc is realm switching and fast pve. If you take that away, you kill it.
This is how zerg RvR works, it isnt much deeper than that. All of us 8vs8ers were zergers at first. We stopped because it ruins what truly makes daoc, the CC and control mechanics. A zerg vs zerg fight has only one tactic, have support spam AoE amnesia and all casters AoE nukes. Good luck CCn anyone with anything other than a stun. DAoC is not the only game with keeps and realm wars but this interupt and CC system is unlike any other mmo.
At Keep sieges zerg fights become a lot longer and more tactical.
lol then maybe thats why all your fights sucked cause you didnt do anything right in it? we do CC and use strategy, we arent like what everyone say where its just bashing your head into the keyboard and thats it
In what way?
When I used to play Alb I'd log on every day, look at the realm map, and mutter "Goddamnit Herorius" because he'd steamroll everything in his path and I'd log on with everything taken by Hib. Every. Damned. Day.
I opted to play Hib as of fairly recently as I never have bothered before, and I've ran with him a few times, and it's enjoyable. I never got the feeling that we were distinctly avoiding people or just taking keeps for the sake of it. To me, it feels like everything that is done is trying to get a response - I don't think 50+ people want to sit and attack an empty keep - they want people defending it. They want action. Kills. RPs. Exciting stories to remember - not plunking away at some gimp NPC guards and slamming at a door for hours on end.
As others have said - something might be considered with the incentives. As it is now, there isn't a huge reason to go die against huge numbers with healers tucked away spamming heals through walls. Zergs CAN avoid each other fairly well if they want to. Map travel is open and free by and large with a few exceptions. As pointed out above, you've got what is essentially 40k RP's a day sitting on the table and the zerg is a quick way to take them. Also pointed out was another flaw that is harder to solve - in zerg v zerg, the loser really can't sustain too many losses before they lose too many people to demoralization which just leads to the rest logging off or doing something else as there isn't usually much to be gained out of feeding the massive zerg that already beat your arse multiple times. The only real win for these people is exiting the realm war and just going to 8v8/small/solo/PvE/log off. Being able to defend might work as well, hoping to get a few picks from a defensive position.
If you want to blame the zerg leaders, bring a case for it - but I think the problems are beyond them to an extent, as they're just responding to the environment they're playing in.
that is what every commander has to deal with, you have to be careful with your fights...the more you win, the more people will join up...more you loose...the more 8mans and solo's we get
Just tonight we were running Mid and we watched Mid zerg do nothing. But Albs had to wait for the mid zerg leader to log before they would attempt to take their keep back..
No offense but you sound quite delussional. First of all almost every time my group has joined in when the zergs engage eachother we have been on the winning side so they probably didnt suck because we misplayed.
When you mezz someone in a zerg fight someone will have AoE break that 1 second later because the more people everyone hit, the more people they will get kill credit and RPs from.
It´s not like there are billions of different zergs running there is one per realm at a time so it is unlikely that we have seen different fights.
If you seriously think that you have been to an open field zerg fight where people respect CC when there are at least 40 players on each side then please show video proof of that. Because during the 17 years of dark age of camelot I have NEVER seen that. Not when I´ve played myself nor in a video.
Alright maybe in an alb zerg the CC could last longer at times because they have less AoE nuking but show me the zerg fight where mids dont have thane hammers being spammed everywhere.
yupp these tier 2 players still exist not denying that. I can mention a few people who build roaming groups and fill with in-game LFG chat and even a couple of guilds that I would classify as tier 2. They seem to be dying out though because most EU prime time nights when we run now we face only other tier 1 groups in 8vs8 and most others run with the zerg.
However, during off peak hours this is not the case and I believe that´s because tier 2s can get fights vs other tier 2s a lot easier when set groups and bg leaders are not running.