Massive battles: will "big numbers" always win?
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Hi everyone,
Thinking about my (honestly, not really extensive) past experiences with big battles in MMO (I played quite a lot the WvW in GW2, but that's basically all), I always noticed that 99% of the cases it just was a matter of who had the biggest army. I would really enjoy a game where superior ability could let you win against the sheer power of numbers. How do you think Fractured will deal with the issue?
I am sure that the mechanics of interactions with environment, coupled with a sort of "fog of war" effect to allow ambushes, could help doing the trick, but then there will also be the issue of lag tied to the big number of players...
What do you think about it?
Ciao!
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They mentioned you are able to defeat 4 players alone, so it should also work the other way around.
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Since environment can be used in battles it will surely affect even the big battles. The group that comes in prepared has the advantage.
I would imagine group compositions and battle tactics affect the outcomes especially if the group knows what it is doing and knows how to play together.
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Friendly Fire, no more mindless zerg
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even in IRL big army's usually win. if you want a small team to win vs a bigger team, the small team should use tactics and use the landscape to their advantage.
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its depending on the quality of players the quality of gear and type of environment that this is happening to
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Is it possible for a human guild to repel a giant demon invasion? I think not
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yes I totally agree: numbers do the trick, usually, but tactics and a good use of environment can help small teams. Friendly fire would be great from this point of view (even it could lead to ruined friendships :D) : will they implement it?
I am still a bit concerned about lag due to too many players acting together, but of course it does not depend on the games mechanics..
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@zidroc Can the giant demon invasion quit attacking itself for 5 seconds? ...no, no it can't - friendly fire is in effect XD
on a more serious note, It also depends on how big a difference you are looking at, and what sorts - if you are looking at 100 demons and 90 humans, the difference may not be so significant. Similarly, if you have a really good Illusionist supporting a dodge tank, then the team can tie down several blood demons - whose boost depends on getting hits - something a dodge tank with a passive AoE DoT/CC and buffed evasion is patently made to deny and punish. Good match-ups and tactics can situationaly stymie numbers, if used right.
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@bubbo said in Massive battles: will "big numbers" always win?:
Friendly Fire, no more mindless zerg
This is brilliant actually.
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Big numbers won't always win, smaller numbers can also win too if they have enough skill, tactics, and a clear mind they can do anything.
Example:
The guild I was in Exploited, and the same one I'm in this game 5 man and killed an entire Zerg guild. They had a clear mind of thought, had the skill, and enough tactics to kill the Zerg. I would rather take Quality over Quanity anyday just because a Zerg can only get you so far in the game before you meet real skill players, and they kill you.
To answer your question, it's really depends on the players and their skill. A small team of skilled players can easily kill a giant Zerg, but the Zerg can also have good tatics or just be mindless. But, in my opinion. No, big numbers won't always win.
eXploited will just kill all of the Zergs, since unlike them we don't take mindless zombies. We throw them in the trash where they belong.
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They already said friendly fire will be in the game. That alone will have a pretty big effect on a zergs ability to function in a fight. I'm not overly concerned about it myself given that feature.
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with friendly fire you have to be careful in big zergs and usualy doesnt work (unless everyone is ranged picking of targets one by one)
id expect more small group tactical Guerrilla warfare
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Since grouping gets rid of friendly fire, armies are probably gonna move around in parties limited by the max group number.
Also makes me wonder if there are going to be raid style bosses and how that's gonna work out.
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@cinnao as much as i can remember, no one said that party will prevent FF.
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The current plan for alignment puts the implementation of friendly fire in a difficult spot. As it is, good players are incapable of harming each other while neutral and evil players that aren't partied can. Leaving the system as is would result in the gvg meta on Syndesia being everyone flagging themselves as good so they don't have to worry about friendly fire.
The simplest solution is to turn on friendly fire for everyone but then that defeats the purpose of having a good alignment catered towards people that want to deal with as little pking as possible. If you make it so all guild/alliances members can't hurt each other to even it up, then why have friendly fire at all.
@zerp said in Massive battles: will "big numbers" always win?:
I am still a bit concerned about lag due to too many players acting together
SpatialOS scales server resources depending on need, so at least server side lag shouldn't be a problem. And the game seems to be aiming for fairly low specs; couple that with good optimization, and huge battles shouldn't be a problem for medium spec computers.
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@target a simple answer will be to turn on good FF in other planets then their own.
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@grofire I don't see how that would help. The big gvg fights will take place on a guild's home planet because guilds can't conquer towns on other planets. Also your suggestion would lead to beastmen going to Syndesia and being able to kill everyone which goes against the intent of the alignment system.
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I would say all else being equal numbers will almost always win. Although I don't put it past the ability of a small group of well organized players being able to take down a group substantially larger than theirs.
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I've played lots of games where skill > numbers.
In Archeage it was routinely 50 vs 300 and we'd wipe the floor with the other guys because of lack of coordination.
Numbers don't always mean victory. Sometimes numbers get in the way.
Now if all 300 of the other guys were one guild, on comms, all coordinated, then yeah numbers will win.
