Yes, there will absolutely be big groups of people "zerging"/killing people mindlessly, especially in the beginning of the game. They will CDG (coup de grace) anyone and everyone they come in contact with, steal all of their hard earned possessions. It's annoying, but part of the game. However, when you murder someone, a non-sanctioned CDG, you will lose spirit. This "spirit" is used to be able to find your body again, when you yourself have died. Same goes if you're arrested, you will lose spirit, spirit you need to have as much playtime as possible (if you plan to be in battle a lot).

There will however be armies, sponsored by barons, counts, dukes etc who would dispatch this threat as soon as possible. Having a large group of people slaughtering their subjects is a real problem, which doesn't exist in any game I've ever played. Because, if the subjects don't feel safe, they will move, and if they move, there will be no tax, resources or craftsmen.

I think the best system countering hordes of Zerg players is the fact they can't log out of the game. Their biggest protection is their ability to group up, steam roll some towns, and then log off and meet up later. The fact that they can't "log off" the game means that every time they go to sleep or to work they could very well wake up in jail the next day if they didn't have enough online to protect them. So while it is true most bounty hunters won't go solo against the Zergs I am sure a town or two would put enough players together to hunt them down, or could ask for help from the count/duke and catch at least some Zergs as OPC.

I suppose, knowing they will be hunted, Zergs might want to create a permanent defendable settlement with walls and some guard towers or something. But that basically means they evolve into their own town which is pretty easy then for a large royal army to siege and attack. Add on top of this the weather system and the fact the Zerg Horde would need to be self sustaining on top of spending a lot of their time PvPing. They would need a permanent settlement to go back to while offline which is a perfect target to hit.

tbh I think spirit loss in PvP needs to be higher. You need to be CDG'ed over 100 times to lose all spirit from full spirit. That is kinda dumb. That means if my WoW guild wanted accounts just to grief they would need to kill us 100 times. There is 358 of us. That is 30,000+ kills needed to defeat a zerg from us. The problem is NPCs instantly permadie on CDG and our OPCs can't spirit walk so once they are CDGed they are removed from play.

Sure that 30k number is a bit off because we won't be age 15 and we will have probably already been CDGed by the time we have the skills and finances to wage a war but either way it will be over 15k kills needed.

It is the biggest fear of this game and no one has found a feasible answer.

Posted By Jinxklown at 6:17 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

Yes, there will absolutely be big groups of people "zerging"/killing people mindlessly, especially in the beginning of the game. They will CDG (coup de grace) anyone and everyone they come in contact with, steal all of their hard earned possessions. It's annoying, but part of the game. However, when you murder someone, a non-sanctioned CDG, you will lose spirit. This "spirit" is used to be able to find your body again, when you yourself have died. Same goes if you're arrested, you will lose spirit, spirit you need to have as much playtime as possible (if you plan to be in battle a lot).

There will however be armies, sponsored by barons, counts, dukes etc who would dispatch this threat as soon as possible. Having a large group of people slaughtering their subjects is a real problem, which doesn't exist in any game I've ever played. Because, if the subjects don't feel safe, they will move, and if they move, there will be no tax, resources or craftsmen.

Spirit only matters when you have fame lol. Unknowns have to be CDG'ed 100+ times to permadie.

Your second paragraph makes little sense to me tbh. Their is travel time in this game that has been estimated at 30m - 120m to travel between towns. Let's say that we get lucky and the nearest stronghold is only 30-45m away. That is 30m of slaughter and pillaging. Not to mention towns, villages, and hamlets don't have sheriff titles and custom laws so they are even more vulnerable.

About your point of people moving.... that is what griefers would want....

If I were griefing a town with my guild from another game, I would love nothing more then to force the people out of the town and leave the mayor fucked because he can't pay taxes to the count who then may or may not be able to pay taxes to the duke.

Idk what games you play because it happens in WoW, SWTOR, Minecraft, Day Z, The Forest, H1Z1, Life is Feudal, ARK: SE just to name a FEW survival and MMO games.

it's an mmo sandbox - of course there will be zergs lol

it's upon the community, at whatever level be that county, duchy or kingdom to try and counter it

this is the very essence of a sandbox game

bullies will come and kick sand in weaker kids faces

mommy isn't there to watch over the kids

its up to the weaker kids as to how to best deal with the bully

Posted By CuteLilPuppyDog at 6:18 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

I think the best system countering hordes of Zerg players is the fact they can't log out of the game. Their biggest protection is their ability to group up, steam roll some towns, and then log off and meet up later. The fact that they can't "log off" the game means that every time they go to sleep or to work they could very well wake up in jail the next day if they didn't have enough online to protect them. So while it is true most bounty hunters won't go solo against the Zergs I am sure a town or two would put enough players together to hunt them down, or could ask for help from the count/duke and catch at least some Zergs as OPC.

I suppose, knowing they will be hunted, Zergs might want to create a permanent defendable settlement with walls and some guard towers or something. But that basically means they evolve into their own town which is pretty easy then for a large royal army to siege and attack. Add on top of this the weather system and the fact the Zerg Horde would need to be self sustaining on top of spending a lot of their time PvPing. They would need a permanent settlement to go back to while offline which is a perfect target to hit.

The scenario provided is that they don't care about jail time. So your scenario about waking up in jail or OPCs being killed makes little difference. About the dukes, again army travel time is estimated to be around 20-120 minutes depending lol.

About the base building that makes the least sense out of everything. Being anonymous is way smarter then being protected. You will never be able to out manpower a king as terrorists in game. Attempting to do so is stupid.

Posted By Dleatherus at 6:33 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

it's an mmo sandbox - of course there will be zergs lol

it's upon the community, at whatever level be that county, duchy or kingdom to try and counter it

this is the very essence of a sandbox game

bullies will come and kick sand in weaker kids faces

mommy isn't there to watch over the kids

its up to the weaker kids as to how to best deal with the bully

That example doesn't work what so ever. A bully IRL would most likely not fight the weaker kids if he was out numbered 12 to 1. This is where the safety of a game comes in. There is no pain and few consequence to fighting 12v1. Sure you lose spirit but you still have over 100 more deaths until it matters and even then, what is 30 bucks.....

Not to mention even if the bully decided to fight, IRL you cant just respawn with everything fully healed and ready to fight again.

TBH zerging isn't even the main problem. One of the main issues is the fact that you can respawn fairly easily, multiple times.

Sure you can say well that means the defending players can too. And your right but here is the thing. Most players only play games around 2-8 hours of the day. This means the average player will be an OPC for 22-16 hours a day. OPCs and NPCs can't respawn. That is OP. What stops me from grabbing a guild from WoW getting them into the game, waiting until the time zones line up for the most optimal strike when most people are asleep. Nothing. This now means I have the respawn advantage.

NPCs need to not be isntant perma-death and OPCs need an algorithm that allows them to determine the success chance of a spirit walk. If the player has over say a 60% chance of clearing the walk then just respawn the OPC with his 2hr spiriti immunity. If the player has a 59% or less chance to succeed then let him attempt it when he gets back.

I use to think the same way as you until I actually looked into it

Posted By Wicked FlamezZ at 6:43 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

Posted By Dleatherus at 6:33 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

it's an mmo sandbox - of course there will be zergs lol

it's upon the community, at whatever level be that county, duchy or kingdom to try and counter it

this is the very essence of a sandbox game

bullies will come and kick sand in weaker kids faces

mommy isn't there to watch over the kids

its up to the weaker kids as to how to best deal with the bully

That example doesn't work what so ever. A bully IRL would most likely not fight the weaker kids if he was out numbered 12 to 1. This is where the safety of a game comes in. There is no pain and few consequence to fighting 12v1. Sure you lose spirit but you still have over 100 more deaths until it matters and even then, what is 30 bucks.....

Not to mention even if the bully decided to fight, IRL you cant just respawn with everything fully healed and ready to fight again.

TBH zerging isn't even the main problem. One of the main issues is the fact that you can respawn fairly easily, multiple times.

Sure you can say well that means the defending players can too. And your right but here is the thing. Most players only play games around 2-8 hours of the day. This means the average player will be an OPC for 22-16 hours a day. OPCs and NPCs can't respawn. That is OP. What stops me from grabbing a guild from WoW getting them into the game, waiting until the time zones line up for the most optimal strike when most people are asleep. Nothing. This now means I have the respawn advantage.

NPCs need to not be isntant perma-death and OPCs need an algorithm that allows them to determine the success chance of a spirit walk. If the player has over say a 60% chance of clearing the walk then just respawn the OPC with his 2hr spiriti immunity. If the player has a 59% or less chance to succeed then let him attempt it when he gets back.

I use to think the same way as you until I actually looked into it

which brings us back to my last point:

it's up to the weaker kids as to how best deal with the bully

Posted By Wicked FlamezZ at 6:32 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

Posted By Jinxklown at 6:17 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

Yes, there will absolutely be big groups of people "zerging"/killing people mindlessly, especially in the beginning of the game. They will CDG (coup de grace) anyone and everyone they come in contact with, steal all of their hard earned possessions. It's annoying, but part of the game. However, when you murder someone, a non-sanctioned CDG, you will lose spirit. This "spirit" is used to be able to find your body again, when you yourself have died. Same goes if you're arrested, you will lose spirit, spirit you need to have as much playtime as possible (if you plan to be in battle a lot).

There will however be armies, sponsored by barons, counts, dukes etc who would dispatch this threat as soon as possible. Having a large group of people slaughtering their subjects is a real problem, which doesn't exist in any game I've ever played. Because, if the subjects don't feel safe, they will move, and if they move, there will be no tax, resources or craftsmen.

Spirit only matters when you have fame lol. Unknowns have to be CDG'ed 100+ times to permadie.

Your second paragraph makes little sense to me tbh. Their is travel time in this game that has been estimated at 30m - 120m to travel between towns. Let's say that we get lucky and the nearest stronghold is only 30-45m away. That is 30m of slaughter and pillaging. Not to mention towns, villages, and hamlets don't have sheriff titles and custom laws so they are even more vulnerable.

About your point of people moving.... that is what griefers would want....

If I were griefing a town with my guild from another game, I would love nothing more then to force the people out of the town and leave the mayor fucked because he can't pay taxes to the count who then may or may not be able to pay taxes to the duke.

Idk what games you play because it happens in WoW, SWTOR, Minecraft, Day Z, The Forest, H1Z1, Life is Feudal, ARK: SE just to name a FEW survival and MMO games.

Indeed, and killing people could make you infamous, could it not? We have no confirmation of how the fame system works exactly.

Yes, there will be travelling distances, nothing will be instantaneous, I am quite fine with that, but the baron who should have their own personal army (however small and even if it's just NPC's) would be able to send it and deal with the issue. Just because there's travel to be made for the threat to be dealt with, doesn't mean that my point is invalid.

What I meant about "Having a large group of people slaughtering their subjects is a real problem, which doesn't exist in any game I've ever played." was purely the fact that killing off towns will be a problem not just for the town, but a problem on a larger scale. Something which does not exist in any of the games you mentioned. Not even Life is Feudal, if another town next to you is brought to the brink of extinction, but your town is not, you don't have to care.

I agree with Dleath, you will not be able to prevent zergs. Like the previous posts say, CoE will be different from other games as it will allow the players to come up with ways to deter players from zerging. Caspian said in interviews that players that are continuously griefing will essentially cut them selves off from interacting with large cities. In a survival game that will be a big punishment.

I do not think this is a large issue. When the testing begins the devs will be able to fine tune the system so that zergs will not be able to drive and maintain a Hobbesian world. I would even suspect that some lands might fall to zergs. Might be out of design for not being organized enough.

I feel the two major deterrents to Zerging are Reputations and OPCs. It is true that many will start down the path of killing everything in sight early in the game, even CDG some as they go. They will soon come to realize that NPCs will stop talking to them, so they can not get any localized informantion or quests for money. Cities will put a Bounty on them KOS and ban them from the city, meaning they can no longer get supplies or their equipment repaired. Sure they can move on to the next town but it will happen all over again and soon they may run out of places to go.

With your character staying in the game all the time there is truely no where to run. With bounty hunters and adventurers, which with enough time, can track you back home. When you go OPC then the town folk can raid you house (or have the bounty hunters do it) kill you in OPC form (possibly multipe of times one for each citizen over a 2.5 hour span) and take your items and then for good measure burn your house to the ground to send a message. Destroying your house causing you to rebuild or killing your horses making you walk to buy another one is also sending a message that Zerging will not be tolerated in this area or kingdom.

Sure at the start of the game many will try it, but over time I feel that unless this is a permant lifestyle of your character (outlaw) then Zerging will not be that prevalent and will quickly fall out of favor, it just won't be worth in the long run.

Posted By Dleatherus at 6:52 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

Posted By Wicked FlamezZ at 6:43 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

Posted By Dleatherus at 6:33 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

it's an mmo sandbox - of course there will be zergs lol

it's upon the community, at whatever level be that county, duchy or kingdom to try and counter it

this is the very essence of a sandbox game

bullies will come and kick sand in weaker kids faces

mommy isn't there to watch over the kids

its up to the weaker kids as to how to best deal with the bully

That example doesn't work what so ever. A bully IRL would most likely not fight the weaker kids if he was out numbered 12 to 1. This is where the safety of a game comes in. There is no pain and few consequence to fighting 12v1. Sure you lose spirit but you still have over 100 more deaths until it matters and even then, what is 30 bucks.....

Not to mention even if the bully decided to fight, IRL you cant just respawn with everything fully healed and ready to fight again.

TBH zerging isn't even the main problem. One of the main issues is the fact that you can respawn fairly easily, multiple times.

Sure you can say well that means the defending players can too. And your right but here is the thing. Most players only play games around 2-8 hours of the day. This means the average player will be an OPC for 22-16 hours a day. OPCs and NPCs can't respawn. That is OP. What stops me from grabbing a guild from WoW getting them into the game, waiting until the time zones line up for the most optimal strike when most people are asleep. Nothing. This now means I have the respawn advantage.

NPCs need to not be isntant perma-death and OPCs need an algorithm that allows them to determine the success chance of a spirit walk. If the player has over say a 60% chance of clearing the walk then just respawn the OPC with his 2hr spiriti immunity. If the player has a 59% or less chance to succeed then let him attempt it when he gets back.

I use to think the same way as you until I actually looked into it

which brings us back to my last point:

it's up to the weaker kids as to how best deal with the bully

which brings us back to my last point:

That scenario is completely different.

Posted By Sullen at 7:02 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

I feel the two major deterrents to Zerging are Reputations and OPCs. It is true that many will start down the path of killing everything in sight early in the game, even CDG some as they go. They will soon come to realize that NPCs will stop talking to them, so they can not get any localized informantion or quests for money. Cities will put a Bounty on them KOS and ban them from the city, meaning they can no longer get supplies or their equipment repaired. Sure they can move on to the next town but it will happen all over again and soon they may run out of places to go.

With your character staying in the game all the time there is truely no where to run. With bounty hunters and adventurers, which with enough time, can track you back home. When you go OPC then the town folk can raid you house (or have the bounty hunters do it) kill you in OPC form (possibly multipe of times one for each citizen over a 2.5 hour span) and take your items and then for good measure burn your house to the ground to send a message. Destroying your house causing you to rebuild or killing your horses making you walk to buy another one is also sending a message that Zerging will not be tolerated in this area or kingdom.

Sure at the start of the game many will try it, but over time I feel that unless this is a permant lifestyle of your character (outlaw) then Zerging will not be that prevalent and will quickly fall out of favor, it just won't be worth in the long run.

Let's say half of my WoW guild comes into CoE. that 140 players. We train everything in combat. We attack a town where in our server is 3am. a town has what? 75 people on average?

Half of those being NPCs. so 38 approximate players. Now on average how many do you expect to be online at 3am? sure times zones matter but even shifted 3 hours into the past it is 12am and 3 hours forward it is 6am where people are asleep, going to school or going to work.

I expect maybe 2-5 of those 38 to be online at 3am on average. That means that only 2-5 people have the same respawn advantage as my 140m zerg team.

Let's say your baron butt buddied your town and made a stronghold only 10m away. Even then that means that the stronghold needs word of an invasion. What is the 2-5 people can't find another online player in that stronghold to dm in skype, discord, etc. Now one of the NPCs, OPCs or Players has to make a 10m+ (may not have a mount) trip to that stronghold and then a 10m trip back. Using the footage of combat (ik it isn't the best reference but it is something) you can drop someones vitality to 0 fairly quickly. How long do you think said town of 75 can defend against 140 people who do not care about permadeath and jail and are constantly spirit walking back to the war zone where only 2-5 of the defenders are allowed to spirit walk.

Now your town is trashed and without the NPCs it only has 38 people where some of them will probably leave. The town rep is lowered so no new NPCs come.

How would you suggest people defend against a 140 vs 75m zerg at 3am server location time where most people are in bed. Lets not forget the majority of a town won't be combat vets either. (blacksmiths, farmers, schools, librairies, etc.) So it's really more like 140 soldiers vs 15 soldeirs and 60 citizens where the 140 soldiers can respawn.

This is for a town.... let's not even get into 140m vs a village or hamlet.

Posted By Wicked FlamezZ at 6:36 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

Posted By CuteLilPuppyDog at 6:18 PM - Sun Aug 28 2016

I think the best system countering hordes of Zerg players is the fact they can't log out of the game. Their biggest protection is their ability to group up, steam roll some towns, and then log off and meet up later. The fact that they can't "log off" the game means that every time they go to sleep or to work they could very well wake up in jail the next day if they didn't have enough online to protect them. So while it is true most bounty hunters won't go solo against the Zergs I am sure a town or two would put enough players together to hunt them down, or could ask for help from the count/duke and catch at least some Zergs as OPC.

I suppose, knowing they will be hunted, Zergs might want to create a permanent defendable settlement with walls and some guard towers or something. But that basically means they evolve into their own town which is pretty easy then for a large royal army to siege and attack. Add on top of this the weather system and the fact the Zerg Horde would need to be self sustaining on top of spending a lot of their time PvPing. They would need a permanent settlement to go back to while offline which is a perfect target to hit.

The scenario provided is that they don't care about jail time. So your scenario about waking up in jail or OPCs being killed makes little difference. About the dukes, again army travel time is estimated to be around 20-120 minutes depending lol.

About the base building that makes the least sense out of everything. Being anonymous is way smarter then being protected. You will never be able to out manpower a king as terrorists in game. Attempting to do so is stupid.

Jail is not the issue, the issue is now that you've caught them you take away everything they stole and destroy everything they have to support themselves. If you continue doing this and shutting them down they will lose interest quickly. If all they enjoy doing is PvP greifing no care for items or jail time then you can't do anything to stop that. You could inflict harsher penalties on their soul time but you could also argue those players probably don't care about buying a 40$ spark every few months.

As well, how do you expect them to remain anonymous while simultaneously running around in a huge horde burning through cities? If they stay in a city they are more likely to be recognized, and they cant survive as a group outside in the winter without any housing or settlement. Further on that note, if they are getting killed again and again quickly losing soul they will need heirs in order to remain together. They will need a permanent settlement, whether they make it on their own or take refuge in towns.

@Wicked FlamezZ

allow me to turn the question back upon you - how do they deal with it in other games?

at the moment we can only speculate since we don't know all of the mechanics involved

most mmo games have mechanics that allow for zergs to have fun, but not for them to be OP - usually in the forms of timers for objectives that took considerable time and effort to establish

case in point would be the cassus belli where a king has 28 days to defend somebody else's attempt to seize his throne

will it stop a zerg from raiding a small hamlet at 3am in the morning? - nope - nor should it

a good sandbox allows for all styles of gameplay from solo hermit right on up to zergs

a great sandbox will have enough checks and balances in place that neither extreme of style is the only 'sustainable' way to play the game