Largest Zerg

adirondack

Ahtu wrote: »

Guilds who force their members to run certain builds are the ones making their members ineffective, not large zergs. Zerg surfers can create their own build and make sure they are effective in battlegrounds and Cyrodiil, whereas guilds with predefined roles' members are completely defenseless when separated from the group. As long as AP is around, these guilds will continue to be ineffective until they can stop making excuses and make the necessary adjustments, or fade from existence as more players catch onto the current era of armies dominating in Cyrodiil (Vivec).

Ahtu -

I respect you a great deal - you are most certainly one of the best pug herder around (not an easy thing, I know) and you have an understated ability to stay positive even when things aren't going perfect. You are a lot of fun to follow and I strongly encourage you to keep doing so. It is good for the game.

Your comments above are what I am addressing. I'd remind you that a person only need to have 2 addons to completely convert their character from a solo zerg surfer to a role-specific guild setup. Using something like DressingRoom (or AlphaGear) and ChampPointRespec, you can convert your char into a PVE tank, PvP meta, or any PVE setup with just a button click.

A few months back I made a post about my 'Limitless Templar'. My builds weren't good - the point was to demonstrate the flexibility that a little creativity can provide. So although I understand the problem you are addressing above, I believe this problem is 100% solved.

Whether or not I am in my zerg surfer build or on my GroupPvP build, when I run into 60+ AotP my ability to survive remains relatively the same.

Good hunting, Ray

Telel

If zerg surfers can be so effective and self-reliant compared to people who learn the mechanics then why are they in a zerg?

That is like saying the tuna fish is better at being a shark because it knows what it's like to not have teeth, but knows how to swim in a mass herd, and turn into delicious khajiit treats once plucked from its native habitat.

Khajiit thinks that perhaps if you meant that the tuna is better off hiding with other tuna and that's what makes them a better fish then you'd be right. However last time this one checked no one at the beach has ever seriously shouted a warning of 'tuna' man eating tuna!'. They instead just make a second fire and grab more cutlery.

Now if you wish to say a deadly virus no one wants to see spreading is more successful at existing than the shark then khajiit thinks they can support your analogy. From a cooties safe distance of course.

Zer0oo

how many faction do you need to stack nowadays to break 200ppl? 2-3 or is it even possible

#makecyrogreatagain

Crispen_Longbow

Zer0oo wrote: »

how many faction do you need to stack nowadays to break 200ppl? 2-3 or is it even possible

#makecyrogreatagain

It's kind of a general assumption that the servers allow about 150 people for each alliance.

Last night AoTP was running 50-70 at various points.
EP Tamerial comboys had a raid of 15-20 stacked in them.

Then you have the rest of the EP zerg surfers...
"Drac" players were surfing them
"Final" Players were surfing them
"Moist Sinsation" players were surfing them
"Animosity" players were surfing them
"Justice League" players were surfing them

EP players and guilds will complain about AoTP breaking the servers but they have no problems surfing right along with them when their guilds aren't running.

Crispen_Longbow

Ahtu wrote: »

Guilds who force their members to run certain builds are the ones making their members ineffective, not large zergs. Zerg surfers can create their own build and make sure they are effective in battlegrounds and Cyrodiil, whereas guilds with predefined roles' members are completely defenseless when separated from the group. As long as AP is around, these guilds will continue to be ineffective until they can stop making excuses and make the necessary adjustments, or fade from existence as more players catch onto the current era of armies dominating in Cyrodiil (Vivec).

80 AoTP people in "Their own builds" chasing down 12 players in "group builds".
End result
The 12 players will die.
40 of the 80 players will die to those 12

AoTP to the left - Organized Guild groups to the right.



80 AoTP people in "Their own builds" chasing down 12 players in "Their own builds".
End Result
The 12 players will die.
3 of the 80 players will die.

Yes I can see why Ahtu would want guilds to be more like the group on the left in the image above.

LOL you guys really are clueless

_Crow

We had 50ish people last night, but when Omni attacked arrius with TD, it brought down dang near every EP that was online upon them 😂. I think if they would have hit arrius with help from at least one more AD guild they would have had a much better chance! You guys should try running 48 I'm Omni! 😯 It's actually super fun!

_Crow

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

Ahtu wrote: »

Guilds who force their members to run certain builds are the ones making their members ineffective, not large zergs. Zerg surfers can create their own build and make sure they are effective in battlegrounds and Cyrodiil, whereas guilds with predefined roles' members are completely defenseless when separated from the group. As long as AP is around, these guilds will continue to be ineffective until they can stop making excuses and make the necessary adjustments, or fade from existence as more players catch onto the current era of armies dominating in Cyrodiil (Vivec).

80 AoTP people in "Their own builds" chasing down 12 players in "group builds".
End result
The 12 players will die.
40 of the 80 players will die to those 12

AoTP to the left - Organized Guild groups to the right.



80 AoTP people in "Their own builds" chasing down 12 players in "Their own builds".
End Result
The 12 players will die.
3 of the 80 players will die.

Yes I can see why Ahtu would want guilds to be more like the group on the left in the image above.

LOL you guys really are clueless

The group on the left looks like they are having more fun and not taking things too seriously 😯

Crispen_Longbow

_Crow wrote: »

We had 50ish people last night, but when Omni attacked arrius with TD, it brought down dang near every EP that was online upon them 😂. I think if they would have hit arrius with help from at least one more AD guild they would have had a much better chance! You guys should try running 48 I'm Omni! 😯 It's actually super fun!

We had 12 when we hit Arrius. Yes we know wherever Omni goes on the Map all of EP will come. Same thing happens when we hit DC all of DC comes. It's because people enjoying fighting Omni, it's always a challenging fight to take us on. We can count on Drac & Final bombers bombing us once AoTP has engaged us. We can count on EP tamriel comboys, Justice league and all the rest of EP guilds to be stack in the middle of AoTP.

As I posted to Ahtu comment. The longer the 12 of us can hold out because we are in group builds the more we take down with us. If the 12 of us were just in solo builds we would die like the rest of the pug guilds in a few seconds.

_Crow wrote: »

You guys should try running 48 I'm Omni!

Nah that's AoTP strategy. Numbers over quality.

Crispen_Longbow

_Crow wrote: »

The group on the left looks like they are having more fun and not taking things too seriously 😯

Crow confirms AoTP is the group on the left.
Nothing wrong with having fun and being the group on the left. It's when the group on the left stacks so many players knowing the servers can't handle it and disconnects anyone they try and fight that is the issue.


The other issue is for all the other EP guilds and players that complain about AoTP stacking so many in one spot but continue to zerg surf them. [edit]
[edited for baiting]

Satiar

The spirit of Pact Militia seems to live on. Crispen, you guys try the mountain lately?

Elong

Satiar wrote: »

The spirit of Pact Militia seems to live on. Crispen, you guys try the mountain lately?

God, Steve, that's small man these days compared to what AP are doing : (

Feanor

Since when is running 50+ considered „fun“?

frozywozy

As far as I know, I haven't seen anybody else in Drac complains about AotP in these forums. Not sure where you are coming from with these accusations. This being said, you will never see me zerg surf them since I usually log out when they are on. The only time you have seen me around them is when I was defending my last emp keep.

Elong

frozywozy wrote: »

As far as I know, I haven't seen anybody else in Drac complains about AotP in these forums. Not sure where you are coming from with these accusations. This being said, you will never see me zerg surf them since I usually log out when they are on. The only time you have seen me around them is when I was defending my last emp keep.

You were surfing them pretty hard last week when I was on from Chal thru to Aleswell, let's not pretend you don't.

JTorus

frozywozy wrote: »

This being said, you will never see me zerg surf them since I usually log out when they are on. The only time you have seen me around them is when I was defending my last emp keep.

Have you watched your own twitch streams?

Anrose

frozywozy wrote: »

As far as I know, I haven't seen anybody else in Drac complains about AotP in these forums. Not sure where you are coming from with these accusations. This being said, you will never see me zerg surf them since I usually log out when they are on. The only time you have seen me around them is when I was defending my last emp keep.

So 5 days a week during the last campaign, then?

Soul_Demon

Satiar wrote: »

The spirit of Pact Militia seems to live on. Crispen, you guys try the mountain lately?

I would hope no one falls for that one still.....but if someone does I want to see it in a vid.

Rin_Senya

Firstly it's sooo cute to see the members of a certain guild which was known for faction stacking and zerg surfing with their 24m+ groups now come here and QQ about other's doing it to them! I wonder what happened to the joy of ‘challenging’ frontline fights now that the shoe is on the other foot...

Secondly it's interesting where the information that Dracarys "hates" AotP is referenced from. @frozywozy for example is free to share his views but he doesn't represent Drac's guild view. We don't require our members to drink from a punch bowl.
As a guild we don't hate AotP. We have friends who play with them including @_Crow Additionally whilst some other guilds avoid them to the point that they even swap to another campaigns we actually try to fight them and for a lot of us those fights are some of the most fun (I said a lot because people are free to have different personal opinions and reasons for fighting them).

We have always said that every playstyle should have its place, should be supported by ZOS and have viable counter playstyles. Personally I think it's a shame that ZOS don't care about PVP whatsoever and will never fix the server performance. I feel it shouldn't be a such of a problem what AotP do because as @Crown referenced it’s not the first or even the largest zerg this game has seen. The game was introduced on market as a huge AvA game and PVP used to be one of the main features. It's not players fault that developers simply don't want to invest some money to fix their own product.
It's pointless to blame players for how they play if you are still here at this point. We all are customers and AotP members are not breaking terms of service and are having fun playing a game they love. Same as other people including yourselves try to do. This doesn't mean that I or Drac as a guild agree with many of the points AotP raised about organized raids in this thread or that we wouldn't prefer or recommend their groups to split up.

Sandman929

_Crow wrote: »

Ok ok! I'll give you guys the true secret to beating us long term... Ready?
...

Form your own EP guild that is welcoming and helpful to new and casual members, and pick them up from zone in your own raid before I can invite them to my Zerg. And if you really want to stick it to me, make sure you are not being a massive *** to these members and make sure they are having fun too! Then they will have no reason to run in my Zerg!

Boom! There is the secret, can't wait to see all these new Zone guilds popping up! ❤️

I don't know the PC environment, but this is a fair point assuming it's anything like the console environment. Older, experienced players couldn't possibly stack any more chips on their shoulders and they're incredibly rude and toxic to new, or new to PvP, players trying to find their way in Cyrodiil.
A night filled with successful play in a group of friendly people is much more enjoyable than being teabagged and ridiculed in zone as a noob.

MipMip

Ahtu wrote: »

Guilds who force their members to run certain builds are the ones making their members ineffective, not large zergs. Zerg surfers can create their own build and make sure they are effective in battlegrounds and Cyrodiil, whereas guilds with predefined roles' members are completely defenseless when separated from the group. As long as AP is around, these guilds will continue to be ineffective until they can stop making excuses and make the necessary adjustments, or fade from existence as more players catch onto the current era of armies dominating in Cyrodiil (Vivec).

What makes you think that organized groups ‘force’ their members to use certain builds? I have been / am in several 12-16 man raid guilds and have friends in a number of other similar raid guilds, and I have never heard of anyone being ‘forced’ to use a certain build – rather, theory crafting a clever group setup (roles, skills, gear and how it all combines) together is part of the fun and of course once we have defined a setup we do want (and do not feel forced) to actually use it.

Also, I certainly wouldn't say that groups with predefined roles are ‘ineffective’, quite the contrary. I wonder on what metrics you base your assessment?

Ixtyr

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

The spirit of Pact Militia seems to live on. Crispen, you guys try the mountain lately?

I would hope no one falls for that one still.....but if someone does I want to see it in a vid.

Rin_Senya wrote: »

Firstly it's sooo cute to see the members of a certain guild which was known for faction stacking and zerg surfing with their 24m+ groups now come here and QQ about other's doing it to them! I wonder what happened to the joy of ‘challenging’ frontline fights now that the shoe is on the other foot...

Secondly it's interesting where the information that Dracarys "hates" AotP is referenced from. @frozywozy for example is free to share his views but he doesn't represent Drac's guild view. We don't require our members to drink from a punch bowl.
As a guild we don't hate AotP. We have friends who play with them including @_Crow Additionally whilst some other guilds avoid them to the point that they even swap to another campaigns we actually try to fight them and for a lot of us those fights are some of the most fun (I said a lot because people are free to have different personal opinions and reasons for fighting them).

We have always said that every playstyle should have its place, should be supported by ZOS and have viable counter playstyles. Personally I think it's a shame that ZOS don't care about PVP whatsoever and will never fix the server performance. I feel it shouldn't be a such of a problem what AotP do because as @Crown referenced it’s not the first or even the largest zerg this game has seen. The game was introduced on market as a huge AvA game and PVP used to be one of the main features. It's not players fault that developers simply don't want to invest some money to fix their own product.
It's pointless to blame players for how they play if you are still here at this point. We all are customers and AotP members are not breaking terms of service and are having fun playing a game they love. Same as other people including yourselves try to do. This doesn't mean that I or Drac as a guild agree with many of the points AotP raised about organized raids in this thread or that we wouldn't prefer or recommend their groups to split up.

Omni's members are free to express their opinions in the same way Dracarys members are free to express theirs. Neither should be a reflection on the guild as a whole.

We've never run more than 24, by the way. Both as Omni and for those of us who were formerly members of Vehemence. Glad to see you continue to insist that we do, though.

For what it's worth, I couldn't give less of a *** over how many groups a guild chooses to run. The game was marketed as being capable of supporting 2,000 players on a single server and massive several-hundred-player fights were part of what many of us signed up for. My only issue is that the game blatantly can't support that the way it did in 2014, and when you're stacking 60+ players in the same blob in one spot, any time other players attempt to approach and need to render those players, it often leads to hard crashes. That's not fun. It's frustrating, aggravating, and drives players to leave the server and avoid PvP altogether. I don't find that to be healthy.

We've actually had a significant number of fun, long-term engagements fighting AotP over the past couple months as well. It's obviously challenging, and when we're outnumbered that significantly, it forces us to play differently. It's still not particularly pleasant when abilities don't fire, mashing a skill 5-8 times before it registers becomes the norm, and every fight we lose another player every 2-3 minutes to a crash, but if the game would work as it was marketed to, I imagine it'd actually be quite good.

Knowing that the game doesn't work as intended, though, it's difficult for me to retain much respect for the players who continue to consciously choose to enable game-breaking behavior. It's one thing to have one raid run up to Sejanus to fight and have a bunch of disorganized pugs surf you - it's another entirely to deliberately organize and stack every player possible into the same spot and never split them up.

As someone who's run a bunch of different PvP guilds over the years, I just genuinely feel sick about the way AotP is being run at the moment. Crow has a great opportunity to absolutely dominate the map on multiple fronts, empower and help improve the skill of his players, train dozens of new potential Leads, and legitimately be capable of having three or more coordinated raids at different points of the map to actually really make a good play at map control, giving good fights to multiple enemy forces at once, spreading the factions out to actually help to counteract poor server performance, and give everyone a better gameplay experience. The biggest problem with lower server caps over the past few years has been that it's led to people generally always consolidating all fighting to the same 2-3 spots on the map at all times. AotP has the people now to do something most guilds have never been able to do, and that's actually force there to be more fights and spread people out more. Instead, they're just brute-forcing everything, continuing to perpetuate and exacerbate a long-standing problem, and have expressed absolutely no remorse for it.

When Zheg and I and the others discussed starting up Omni in the months following VE's retirement, one of the first points we were able to agree upon was to no longer build around and recruit for a consistent 24-person group anymore. Not because there's anything wrong with running 24 people - but because there was legitimately nothing to fight on the map that required it, or could withstand that. It's not needed. There haven't been enough competent guilds of a similar size in some time, and the only time having 24 would be useful was if we were fighting faction stacks - and both Omni and Dracarys have demonstrated over the past year and a half, 16 or 18 people is absolutely adequate to fight 40-50 enemies in a lot of scenarios anyway.

That in mind, AotP's reluctance to ever even consider breaking their one 60-man into two 30-mans is what boggles my mind. If you have remotely decent leadership and some semblance of group organization and theorycraft (even if it just means covering your basic Healer-to-DPS-to-Support ratios, not even talking full group build stuff), there's no reason why 30 people shouldn't be able to have a 70%+ success rate when pushing any objective or most other groups you'll encounter. So why don't they? They already have 80+ people willing to log in every night to fight. They already have people like Ahtu and others willing and able to lead. Give them time and actually remotely challenging situations and they'll continue to develop and improve. And then they could have 2-3 different forces pushing different areas of the map at once - Ahtu goes north to Glademist to push back DC, Crow can take Bleakers and Dragonclaw while they're stretched thin. Or Crow can push Alessia and hold AD at Bay while Ahtu fights DC in the north. You'll still get good fights, but do so without melting the servers, and considering you wouldn't outnumber everyone you fight in every single situation, you might actually help your players learn and grow and improve - be they leaders or just members.

The infrastructure is already there and in place. That's an infrastructure that many GMs have tried to develop and have failed. It's something I've considered in the past myself - and I know others in Omni have brought it up too. "What would it be like to have two 18-man Omni raids on the map at the same time?", or even just "What would it be like if we had another guild *in general* that we could trust and coordinate with so when we push up to Arrius for 25 minutes and hold 75% of the EP on the map there, AD actually does something useful and takes back Alessia and Sej instead of continually potatoing into the Ash Gate?"

That's what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, most of us don't play often enough anymore, are burnt out, or have other RL obligations that would make it hard to consistently do that - not to mention the effort involved in recruiting people and training enough additional leads to support it. Heck, we can barely get enough people online to play more than twice a week now, between conflicting schedules and frustrations with how terrible the servers have been performing in recent months. We don't have that infrastructure or the time, resources and interest to manage that in 2019 the way we might have if this was 2014. Crow does, and it just blows my mind that he's choosing to just continue to take the path of least resistance, stack everyone in one spot, and force the servers to melt when he could be doing so much more that would have a far more positive impact on all players - those he leads and those he fights - than what he's doing now.

Ahtu

MipMip wrote: »

Ahtu wrote: »

Guilds who force their members to run certain builds are the ones making their members ineffective, not large zergs. Zerg surfers can create their own build and make sure they are effective in battlegrounds and Cyrodiil, whereas guilds with predefined roles' members are completely defenseless when separated from the group. As long as AP is around, these guilds will continue to be ineffective until they can stop making excuses and make the necessary adjustments, or fade from existence as more players catch onto the current era of armies dominating in Cyrodiil (Vivec).

What makes you think that organized groups ‘force’ their members to use certain builds? I have been / am in several 12-16 man raid guilds and have friends in a number of other similar raid guilds, and I have never heard of anyone being ‘forced’ to use a certain build – rather, theory crafting a clever group setup (roles, skills, gear and how it all combines) together is part of the fun and of course once we have defined a setup we do want (and do not feel forced) to actually use it.

Also, I certainly wouldn't say that groups with predefined roles are ‘ineffective’, quite the contrary. I wonder on what metrics you base your assessment?

Dracarys is different obviously, but my experience with guilds that I've tried to play with is that I was required to run a certain build in order to play with them and have a certain amount of health. At the time, I was playing a glass cannon bow build, so I can see why they didn't want me, but it just turned me off to ball groups in general. By ineffective, I mean that these groups tend to go off on their own and split up, but a faction stack requires an opposing faction stack to win the battle.

Ahtu

Ixtyr wrote: »

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

The spirit of Pact Militia seems to live on. Crispen, you guys try the mountain lately?

I would hope no one falls for that one still.....but if someone does I want to see it in a vid.

Rin_Senya wrote: »

Firstly it's sooo cute to see the members of a certain guild which was known for faction stacking and zerg surfing with their 24m+ groups now come here and QQ about other's doing it to them! I wonder what happened to the joy of ‘challenging’ frontline fights now that the shoe is on the other foot...

Secondly it's interesting where the information that Dracarys "hates" AotP is referenced from. @frozywozy for example is free to share his views but he doesn't represent Drac's guild view. We don't require our members to drink from a punch bowl.
As a guild we don't hate AotP. We have friends who play with them including @_Crow Additionally whilst some other guilds avoid them to the point that they even swap to another campaigns we actually try to fight them and for a lot of us those fights are some of the most fun (I said a lot because people are free to have different personal opinions and reasons for fighting them).

We have always said that every playstyle should have its place, should be supported by ZOS and have viable counter playstyles. Personally I think it's a shame that ZOS don't care about PVP whatsoever and will never fix the server performance. I feel it shouldn't be a such of a problem what AotP do because as @Crown referenced it’s not the first or even the largest zerg this game has seen. The game was introduced on market as a huge AvA game and PVP used to be one of the main features. It's not players fault that developers simply don't want to invest some money to fix their own product.
It's pointless to blame players for how they play if you are still here at this point. We all are customers and AotP members are not breaking terms of service and are having fun playing a game they love. Same as other people including yourselves try to do. This doesn't mean that I or Drac as a guild agree with many of the points AotP raised about organized raids in this thread or that we wouldn't prefer or recommend their groups to split up.

Omni's members are free to express their opinions in the same way Dracarys members are free to express theirs. Neither should be a reflection on the guild as a whole.

We've never run more than 24, by the way. Both as Omni and for those of us who were formerly members of Vehemence. Glad to see you continue to insist that we do, though.

For what it's worth, I couldn't give less of a *** over how many groups a guild chooses to run. The game was marketed as being capable of supporting 2,000 players on a single server and massive several-hundred-player fights were part of what many of us signed up for. My only issue is that the game blatantly can't support that the way it did in 2014, and when you're stacking 60+ players in the same blob in one spot, any time other players attempt to approach and need to render those players, it often leads to hard crashes. That's not fun. It's frustrating, aggravating, and drives players to leave the server and avoid PvP altogether. I don't find that to be healthy.

We've actually had a significant number of fun, long-term engagements fighting AotP over the past couple months as well. It's obviously challenging, and when we're outnumbered that significantly, it forces us to play differently. It's still not particularly pleasant when abilities don't fire, mashing a skill 5-8 times before it registers becomes the norm, and every fight we lose another player every 2-3 minutes to a crash, but if the game would work as it was marketed to, I imagine it'd actually be quite good.

Knowing that the game doesn't work as intended, though, it's difficult for me to retain much respect for the players who continue to consciously choose to enable game-breaking behavior. It's one thing to have one raid run up to Sejanus to fight and have a bunch of disorganized pugs surf you - it's another entirely to deliberately organize and stack every player possible into the same spot and never split them up.

As someone who's run a bunch of different PvP guilds over the years, I just genuinely feel sick about the way AotP is being run at the moment. Crow has a great opportunity to absolutely dominate the map on multiple fronts, empower and help improve the skill of his players, train dozens of new potential Leads, and legitimately be capable of having three or more coordinated raids at different points of the map to actually really make a good play at map control, giving good fights to multiple enemy forces at once, spreading the factions out to actually help to counteract poor server performance, and give everyone a better gameplay experience. The biggest problem with lower server caps over the past few years has been that it's led to people generally always consolidating all fighting to the same 2-3 spots on the map at all times. AotP has the people now to do something most guilds have never been able to do, and that's actually force there to be more fights and spread people out more. Instead, they're just brute-forcing everything, continuing to perpetuate and exacerbate a long-standing problem, and have expressed absolutely no remorse for it.

When Zheg and I and the others discussed starting up Omni in the months following VE's retirement, one of the first points we were able to agree upon was to no longer build around and recruit for a consistent 24-person group anymore. Not because there's anything wrong with running 24 people - but because there was legitimately nothing to fight on the map that required it, or could withstand that. It's not needed. There haven't been enough competent guilds of a similar size in some time, and the only time having 24 would be useful was if we were fighting faction stacks - and both Omni and Dracarys have demonstrated over the past year and a half, 16 or 18 people is absolutely adequate to fight 40-50 enemies in a lot of scenarios anyway.

That in mind, AotP's reluctance to ever even consider breaking their one 60-man into two 30-mans is what boggles my mind. If you have remotely decent leadership and some semblance of group organization and theorycraft (even if it just means covering your basic Healer-to-DPS-to-Support ratios, not even talking full group build stuff), there's no reason why 30 people shouldn't be able to have a 70%+ success rate when pushing any objective or most other groups you'll encounter. So why don't they? They already have 80+ people willing to log in every night to fight. They already have people like Ahtu and others willing and able to lead. Give them time and actually remotely challenging situations and they'll continue to develop and improve. And then they could have 2-3 different forces pushing different areas of the map at once - Ahtu goes north to Glademist to push back DC, Crow can take Bleakers and Dragonclaw while they're stretched thin. Or Crow can push Alessia and hold AD at Bay while Ahtu fights DC in the north. You'll still get good fights, but do so without melting the servers, and considering you wouldn't outnumber everyone you fight in every single situation, you might actually help your players learn and grow and improve - be they leaders or just members.

The infrastructure is already there and in place. That's an infrastructure that many GMs have tried to develop and have failed. It's something I've considered in the past myself - and I know others in Omni have brought it up too. "What would it be like to have two 18-man Omni raids on the map at the same time?", or even just "What would it be like if we had another guild *in general* that we could trust and coordinate with so when we push up to Arrius for 25 minutes and hold 75% of the EP on the map there, AD actually does something useful and takes back Alessia and Sej instead of continually potatoing into the Ash Gate?"

That's what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, most of us don't play often enough anymore, are burnt out, or have other RL obligations that would make it hard to consistently do that - not to mention the effort involved in recruiting people and training enough additional leads to support it. Heck, we can barely get enough people online to play more than twice a week now, between conflicting schedules and frustrations with how terrible the servers have been performing in recent months. We don't have that infrastructure or the time, resources and interest to manage that in 2019 the way we might have if this was 2014. Crow does, and it just blows my mind that he's choosing to just continue to take the path of least resistance, stack everyone in one spot, and force the servers to melt when he could be doing so much more that would have a far more positive impact on all players - those he leads and those he fights - than what he's doing now.

We split up the raids when necessary based on what's happening on the map. I would rather just stack together for many reasons but sometimes we have no other choice. It's hard not to want to help out when you hear your allies fighting against the enemy.

Mintaka5

I'm about as worried about a large zerg, than I am about a broke poison DOT bowtard solo. It's pointless.

JTorus

Ixtyr wrote: »

Omni's members are free to express their opinions in the same way Dracarys members are free to express theirs. Neither should be a reflection on the guild as a whole.

We've never run more than 24, by the way. Both as Omni and for those of us who were formerly members of Vehemence. Glad to see you continue to insist that we do, though.

For what it's worth, I couldn't give less of a *** over how many groups a guild chooses to run. The game was marketed as being capable of supporting 2,000 players on a single server and massive several-hundred-player fights were part of what many of us signed up for. My only issue is that the game blatantly can't support that the way it did in 2014, and when you're stacking 60+ players in the same blob in one spot, any time other players attempt to approach and need to render those players, it often leads to hard crashes. That's not fun. It's frustrating, aggravating, and drives players to leave the server and avoid PvP altogether. I don't find that to be healthy.

We've actually had a significant number of fun, long-term engagements fighting AotP over the past couple months as well. It's obviously challenging, and when we're outnumbered that significantly, it forces us to play differently. It's still not particularly pleasant when abilities don't fire, mashing a skill 5-8 times before it registers becomes the norm, and every fight we lose another player every 2-3 minutes to a crash, but if the game would work as it was marketed to, I imagine it'd actually be quite good.

Knowing that the game doesn't work as intended, though, it's difficult for me to retain much respect for the players who continue to consciously choose to enable game-breaking behavior. It's one thing to have one raid run up to Sejanus to fight and have a bunch of disorganized pugs surf you - it's another entirely to deliberately organize and stack every player possible into the same spot and never split them up.

As someone who's run a bunch of different PvP guilds over the years, I just genuinely feel sick about the way AotP is being run at the moment. Crow has a great opportunity to absolutely dominate the map on multiple fronts, empower and help improve the skill of his players, train dozens of new potential Leads, and legitimately be capable of having three or more coordinated raids at different points of the map to actually really make a good play at map control, giving good fights to multiple enemy forces at once, spreading the factions out to actually help to counteract poor server performance, and give everyone a better gameplay experience. The biggest problem with lower server caps over the past few years has been that it's led to people generally always consolidating all fighting to the same 2-3 spots on the map at all times. AotP has the people now to do something most guilds have never been able to do, and that's actually force there to be more fights and spread people out more. Instead, they're just brute-forcing everything, continuing to perpetuate and exacerbate a long-standing problem, and have expressed absolutely no remorse for it.

When Zheg and I and the others discussed starting up Omni in the months following VE's retirement, one of the first points we were able to agree upon was to no longer build around and recruit for a consistent 24-person group anymore. Not because there's anything wrong with running 24 people - but because there was legitimately nothing to fight on the map that required it, or could withstand that. It's not needed. There haven't been enough competent guilds of a similar size in some time, and the only time having 24 would be useful was if we were fighting faction stacks - and both Omni and Dracarys have demonstrated over the past year and a half, 16 or 18 people is absolutely adequate to fight 40-50 enemies in a lot of scenarios anyway.

That in mind, AotP's reluctance to ever even consider breaking their one 60-man into two 30-mans is what boggles my mind. If you have remotely decent leadership and some semblance of group organization and theorycraft (even if it just means covering your basic Healer-to-DPS-to-Support ratios, not even talking full group build stuff), there's no reason why 30 people shouldn't be able to have a 70%+ success rate when pushing any objective or most other groups you'll encounter. So why don't they? They already have 80+ people willing to log in every night to fight. They already have people like Ahtu and others willing and able to lead. Give them time and actually remotely challenging situations and they'll continue to develop and improve. And then they could have 2-3 different forces pushing different areas of the map at once - Ahtu goes north to Glademist to push back DC, Crow can take Bleakers and Dragonclaw while they're stretched thin. Or Crow can push Alessia and hold AD at Bay while Ahtu fights DC in the north. You'll still get good fights, but do so without melting the servers, and considering you wouldn't outnumber everyone you fight in every single situation, you might actually help your players learn and grow and improve - be they leaders or just members.

The infrastructure is already there and in place. That's an infrastructure that many GMs have tried to develop and have failed. It's something I've considered in the past myself - and I know others in Omni have brought it up too. "What would it be like to have two 18-man Omni raids on the map at the same time?", or even just "What would it be like if we had another guild *in general* that we could trust and coordinate with so when we push up to Arrius for 25 minutes and hold 75% of the EP on the map there, AD actually does something useful and takes back Alessia and Sej instead of continually potatoing into the Ash Gate?"

That's what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, most of us don't play often enough anymore, are burnt out, or have other RL obligations that would make it hard to consistently do that - not to mention the effort involved in recruiting people and training enough additional leads to support it. Heck, we can barely get enough people online to play more than twice a week now, between conflicting schedules and frustrations with how terrible the servers have been performing in recent months. We don't have that infrastructure or the time, resources and interest to manage that in 2019 the way we might have if this was 2014. Crow does, and it just blows my mind that he's choosing to just continue to take the path of least resistance, stack everyone in one spot, and force the servers to melt when he could be doing so much more that would have a far more positive impact on all players - those he leads and those he fights - than what he's doing now.

Exrtemely well put. I think though, the appeal to diversify the battlefield will fall on deaf ears, considering the nature of this very thread was intended to boast and build a (personal?) record-breaking zerg group.

I say let him have it. No, seriously. Every time it starts, rather than fight, walk away. Give him the entire map, no resistance, no fights, just one empty keep after the next and a long lonely boring run across the map with a scroll; including all the minimal baseline AP that goes with it. Every time that obnoxious group shows up like a bunch of champagne-laden girls ready to wreck the next stop on a bachelorette party gauntlet. Just leave.

Turn on name tags, and they'll easily be identifiable. Encourage others that there's better, less frustrating combat somewhere else, even in another campaign for that evening.

See how long it lasts then before dissension in the ranks starts after countless hours of PvDoor.

_Crow

Long term goal before I have even started the guild is to eventually split up the super Zerg and it still his. It will take time to gather enough raid leads! 😉 The end goal as I have stated many many times, is that we will have a 48 man Zerg north, and a 48 man Zerg south fighting both factions at the same time! 😃 That's what is going to happen, and it's just matter of getting consist raid leads and time at this point. We will then only stack more then 2 raids if DC or AD stacks a super zerg of 60+.

This is the plan and we are going to reach it, but like I said, it's going to take a bit of time is all 😉

WitchyWarrior

Sandman929 wrote: »

_Crow wrote: »

Ok ok! I'll give you guys the true secret to beating us long term... Ready?
...

Form your own EP guild that is welcoming and helpful to new and casual members, and pick them up from zone in your own raid before I can invite them to my Zerg. And if you really want to stick it to me, make sure you are not being a massive *** to these members and make sure they are having fun too! Then they will have no reason to run in my Zerg!

Boom! There is the secret, can't wait to see all these new Zone guilds popping up! ❤️

I don't know the PC environment, but this is a fair point assuming it's anything like the console environment. Older, experienced players couldn't possibly stack any more chips on their shoulders and they're incredibly rude and toxic to new, or new to PvP, players trying to find their way in Cyrodiil.
A night filled with successful play in a group of friendly people is much more enjoyable than being teabagged and ridiculed in zone as a noob.

That is EXACTLY what happens on PC as well. Every single word you just said.
And yeah, it is a million times better playing with friendly fun people than ones who are ragging on everyone.

antihero727

_Crow wrote: »

Long term goal before I have even started the guild is to eventually split up the super Zerg and it still his. It will take time to gather enough raid leads! 😉 The end goal as I have stated many many times, is that we will have a 48 man Zerg north, and a 48 man Zerg south fighting both factions at the same time! 😃 That's what is going to happen, and it's just matter of getting consist raid leads and time at this point. We will then only stack more then 2 raids if DC or AD stacks a super zerg of 60+.

This is the plan and we are going to reach it, but like I said, it's going to take a bit of time is all 😉

If 48 is a goal then there is no hope for your guild ever figuring out how bad you are making performance issues. 48 should not be a goal 48 should be an embarrassment. See the big picture, your not going to need that many when everyone either quits pvp or jumps servers.

Telel

_Crow wrote: »

Long term goal before I have even started the guild is to eventually split up the super Zerg and it still his. It will take time to gather enough raid leads! 😉 The end goal as I have stated many many times, is that we will have a 48 man Zerg north, and a 48 man Zerg south fighting both factions at the same time! 😃 That's what is going to happen, and it's just matter of getting consist raid leads and time at this point. We will then only stack more then 2 raids if DC or AD stacks a super zerg of 60+.

This is the plan and we are going to reach it, but like I said, it's going to take a bit of time is all 😉

When people tell others to be more like Chuck Norris this is not what they meant.

Ixtyr

_Crow wrote: »

Long term goal before I have even started the guild is to eventually split up the super Zerg and it still his. It will take time to gather enough raid leads! 😉 The end goal as I have stated many many times, is that we will have a 48 man Zerg north, and a 48 man Zerg south fighting both factions at the same time! 😃 That's what is going to happen, and it's just matter of getting consist raid leads and time at this point. We will then only stack more then 2 raids if DC or AD stacks a super zerg of 60+.

This is the plan and we are going to reach it, but like I said, it's going to take a bit of time is all 😉

Why two 48s and not three or four 24s? Why not two to three 24s right now? There's no need for more than 24 organized players in almost any fight, particularly if you're forcing enemy groups to split up to defend multiple objectives.

If there's an issue with not having raid leads yet, start training them now. Let Ahtu call the shots during a faction siege against Omni & AD at Arrius, then pass lead to Protege#1 mid-fight while everyone is focused and already running full steam. Let them call for 5-10 minutes and then pass back. Do that for a few weeks. When your new raid lead's confidence is built up from having had success in big fights, they'll do better when they're on their own and can't rely on you or Ahtu to fall back on. Boom, 4-8 weeks later you have a new raid lead.

Then you can be doing this every night, instead of just stacking everyone and breaking the damn game for everyone else:

Raid 1 at Glademist. Raid 2 at Aleswell. Raid 3 at Sejanus. Raid 4 defending BRK. That's map control, and it avoids server-melting. If you're not total potatoes, you should still win most of those fights.

If the server caps were still 600/faction, I'd understand shooting for 48 as a goal to some extent. Any time post 1.5, though? What's the point, unless you have absolutely zero confidence in the competence and skill of your own players?