Standoff, yon zerg! (part two)

Two potentially harmful gaming practices were discussed last week: Keen pondered the impacts of zergs in Age of Conan, while The Heartless Gamer was annoyed by reports of ranged standoffs in Warhammer Online. These aren’t features implemented by developers—they’re a result of natural human behaviour. They aren’t very desirable either, so let’s discuss what can be done to mitigate them in the upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Last week, I examined the Zerg. In this post, I’ll examine the Standoff…

The Standoff (part two)

Standoffs usually happen when larger groups of opposing forces (most often, zergs) are too scared to engage in close-quarters combat with each other. The casters slowly inch their way forward (into nuking range) then scurry back (out of enemy range). The healers stand in the middle row healing their nukers. Finally, the melee… well, they just sit back and twiddle their thumbs because standoffs don’t really offer them any kind of combat role.

If you get too close to the enemy in a zergy standoff battle, chances are you’ll draw some heavy focus-fire from ranged DPS, so it’s really all about perfecting your attack and retreat techniques… And Sigmar help you if your computer lags for even a second… You could get blasted by twenty different enemies simultaneously! That’s why this is primarily a zerg issue. Dealing with focus fire in a 6v6 or 10v10 match is manageable for your group healer(s) so people will risk getting into the fray. Dealing with focus fire from a zerg is not, so they turtle up.

Don’t confuse an open-field standoff with a siege standoff. They may share similar characteristics, but in a keep siege, at least one side is trying to bust through while the other is defending the objective. The kind of standoffs I find lame are when large zergs of bored people camp outside a major bottleneck or respawn location (e.g., battleground portal keeps from DAOC).

Here are some things devs can do to discourage standoffs:

Zerg management

• Most standoffs are the result of zerg on zerg situations. People aren’t too keen on painting a target on their foreheads by breaking rank when there are a dozen or more enemy ranged DPS with itchy trigger fingers. They call this getting wiz-killed, insta-killed, or just plain suicidal. So, the obvious solution is to attack the root cause of this problem… zergs. I explained many zerg management techniques devs could employ in part 1 of this two-piece article.

Fewer bottlenecks

• Bottlenecks are a great place to find RvR but they can also be a wonderful breeding ground for zergs. When you gather up enough people in these hotspots, the once-fun skirmish will almost always degenerate into a boring standoff. It happened in 300, didn’t it (This is Spa…)!? The solution is to give players several avenues of transportation and attack. Allowing players to flank their enemies from several angles means there are several angles that must be defended. This will ultimately split the focus of both zergs and hopefully siphon off smaller groups to clash away from the giant mob.
  

Gap-closing abilities

• Melee are pretty useless in a standoff battle because they’ll likely get roasted before closing the distance between themselves and their targets. Enter stealth and speed buffs! Stealth may be considered overpowered in solo vs. solo combat, but it is a great anti-standoff weapon. Groups of stealthers can pop out in the middle, side, or rear of enemy ranks, kill some squishies, and mainly draw the zerg’s attention inwards while their allies make a mad dash to close the gap. Speed buffs can come in the form of cooldown abilities, group buffs, and potions that allow melee classes to get into melee range with ranged DPS before they get nuked down. Coordinate these with stealth, and you have a wonderful way to end the standoff and turn it into a good ol’ fashioned battle

Here’s the main thing you can do to avoid standoffs:

Get organized

• It takes two to tango my friends! The best way for you to avoid a standoff situation is to not enter it in the first place. It’s easy to be distracted as a healer/ranged DPS in pitched battle, but it’s really no fun for your melee friends. If you want to play this kind of game, they have dedicated the entire FPS genre to it. Simply disengage yourself from the standoff and search out more interesting RvR prospects and I guarantee you’ll have a much better time in WAR. Rather than camping an enemy spawn camp, roam around the zone looking for other people on the move. Back in DAOC, they called this 8-man RvR, and it was the best MMORPG PvP experience I’ve ever encountered. There’s something courageous, thrilling, and perhaps a bit crazy about two groups of mortal enemies entering into each other’s clipping range and changing course to meet head on! That’s my kind of RvR!
  

So there you have it. Like zerging, standoffs are a part of RvR generated by human behaviour and only encouraged by a lack of proper game design. Properly addressing zergs and standoffs is quite possible given the proper amount of effort on behalf of the developers and players involved. These are two of my least favorite MMORPG practices, and I hope to see less of them in WAR than I did in previous MMORPGs.

Can you think of any additional strategies to avoid standoffs in RvR or do you actually enjoy them?

Related Posts

• Standoff, yon zerg! (part one)
• When Armies Collide