Reason why Gank squads are bad for game + Solution | Forums

[Mia.Nora]

1.) First of all this is not about revenge, if you want to discuss about old vs new revenge please do so elsewhere.

2.) Second, this is not about Ganking being op, or not having a counter etc. If you want to discuss strategy vs ganks again do so elsewhere.

That being said, this is about why ganking is bad for this game and developers should find a good method of discouraging it. Simply put ganking is against everything this game is unique for; art of battle the skillful melee combat. During gank there is two sides to it; being on the receiving end, and being on the gank squad.

If you are on the gank squad, all you do is spam disablers, and top heavies during the disablers. There really isn't anything else to it. Art of battle completely vanishes.

If you are on the receving end, art of battle vanishes once again. Only tool of avoiding disablers is dodge, where you are trapped in another disabler in return. All you can do is prolonging the fight by repositioning yourself further without getting caught in a disabler.

And this above scenario is for the skillful ganks, not the silly top heavy spams that happens most of the time. Sad thing is those happen, because it still overpowers the caught guy and they dont pose a threat anyway even with revenge.

Art of Battle should be the core of this game, not running around as a mob and beating every enemy with 100% success, since that unique combat is what holds that game together against the huge technical issues it has. If art of battle becomes pointless then game will lose its last bastion. We all remember how bad old revenge was, it was bad because it rendered art of battle pointless. People had silly god mode buttons that made them win without playing art of battle. It had to go for that reason and it was the right decision to do so. However current ganksquads are no better than old revenge, they render art of battle obsolete as much as old revenge did.

In my opinion MOBAs balance ganks very well, since if someone is out for ganking, that means the objective they were supposed to hold vs their opponent is now falling down. Problem with For Honor is that losing an objective is not an issue at all. Lose A,B,C who cares, you will take it back in 20-30 seconds, as opposed to losing a turret or inhibitor in LoL.

I believe the right approach to make ganks less appealing is by making protecting objectives a lot more valueable. Imagine if after 60 seconds of holding an objective it spawned a Flag that gives extra 0.5 point per second. After successfully keeping it for another 60 seconds you get another flag, now spot worths +1 points. If you leave it alone, enemy will break them both and you will lose a very good score potential. That means instead of running in 4 man gank squads, it is immediately better to leave at least one person to defend objective per objective.

Let revenge stay as is, but make coordinated teamplay over the map control being the meaningful teamplay option; not running around as an angry mob.

[Ezcendant]

Agreed. Every 4v4 game mode needs a mechanic to dissuade gank squads. Elim can do it by changing the mode to a sort of "winner moves on" 1v1 thing, as it was designed to be, dominion can, as you said, put more emphasis on the objective values, and skirmish is essentially just deathball v deathball so it's good as is.

[Ezcendant]

Random gibberish

Could you try to rephrase that? We're talking about dissuading large groups of players roaming around by adding more value to map objectives. It improves combat as a whole. You are, well, I've honestly got no idea wtf you were even trying to say. lol

[Mia.Nora]

If you remove strategy and tactics from your so-called "criticism" of "gank-squads", then all there's left is preference, since your "reasons" are arbitrary at best.

I mean, so it's "OK" then, if people use more than disablers in a "gank squad"? So you have a "gank squad", upon you, and if they don't use any disablers on you, then suddenly that becomes OK? To me that doesn't sound very logical. It only sounds like someone priding himself as a superior player grumbling "ooh if they only didn't have them disablers, I'd be able to kill all of them by myself..." -- that's what it sounds like to me.

Besides, to me, the concept of "art of battle" is inseparable from the strategic aspect. You don't just arbitrarily remove it and limit it to just single combat. The very first word lesson of Sun Tzu's "Art of War" states -- 'war is deception". To you, people spamming disablers may seem like dumb and stupid thing to do, but to me, I consider it just a natural way of people finding the most efficient form of combat.

So I don't think it's gonna work. Naw.

I just pointed out how other SUCCESSFUL TEAM vs TEAMGAMES balance ganking vs solo fights. And this is valid with a decade of proven effective success. If the best way of winning the game was roaming as 5 man gank squad in LoL, without developers putting a balance on it by tweaking value of defending objectives; there would be no LoL today.

And I believe proven effective developer actions are way better than your jumble of wordplay in discussing validity of teamplay balance. After all you are a random nobody on the internet (as sad as it is), just like me. Difference is my opinion is based on how the most successful team vs team multiplayer game in the world handles gank vs spreading out balance, as opposed to you just perform a poor display of wordplay.

I was never against disablers, just like I was never against the idea of more players outpowering a single one. You have serious comprehension problems if you thought I meant that. It is of course natural for outnumbered player losing. What I pointed out is how there are not enough incentives in For Honor to not run as a gank squad, whereas other successful teambased games does.

[Antonioj26]

Could you try to rephrase that? We're talking about dissuading large groups of players roaming around by adding more value to map objectives. It improves combat as a whole. You are, well, I've honestly got no idea wtf you were even trying to say. lol

Adding more value to objectives is a good way to do this but I feel like that's already the case. I don't know, I usually play conq in dominion so my views may be a bit skewed but when I'm holding a point it's pretty common I have 2-3 guys on me and I shine really well here with all guard and his health regen on block. Im punishing the entire enemy team by taking 2-3 guys out of the fight so my teammates can cap or boost objectives, I may go down eventually but it will take at the very least a minute or 2 and this is more than enough time to get a solid lead making them regret there decision to form a "gank squad."

I am #1 9/10 times because I play the objective and I've beaten gank squads plenty of times. They defeat themselves with this tactic to be honest, you can just about see where everyone's at because of the markers above the characters heads and you can also tell if a point is being defended by someone if there's a +2 on a capture point on the scoreboard. Go straight to the +1 point if the others are contested or you see a large group of enemies ****ing around out of position fishing for kills and you will win.

[Weird_Eagle]

The only thing I read here is mimimi
In 8 out of 10 games the gank squad's lose the game in dominion.
Your team get ganked and lose the round?
You have done something wrong.
I think it's only an other tread with the for honor aspect.
But the honor will disappear faster as you jam day oh ****, when they implement ranked system.

[Antonioj26]

The only thing I read here is mimimi
In 8 out of 10 games the gank squad's lose the game in dominion.
Your team get ganked and lose the round?
You have done something wrong.
I think it's only an other tread with the for honor aspect.
But the honor will disappear faster as you jam day oh ****, when they implement ranked system.

It's honestly hard to understand what you are saying and who you are talking to. I'm not sure if the sentences about it being your fault you lost to a gank squad was a summary of what I said or if that's what you are arguing. It sounds more like you are disagreeing with me and that my attitude will change once ranked happens. I can guarantee the exact opposite since I just told you I beat these "gank squads" That you mention. These are easy wins.

[Ezcendant]

...and who the fek in the world appointed you to judge which is "right" or "wrong" way for people to play a game they bought with their money? The devs?

No one said anything about right or wrong. I don't know whether you just don't understand the topic or just don't have a defence. I won't speak for Mynban, but what I'm suggesting improves the fun of the game. Getting ganked isn't fun. Ganking isn't fun (unless you're a CoD kiddy). By increasing objective value it encourages at least one player to defend, which lowers group roam size. It also encourages players to try and ninja points, again decreasing roam size and adding more 1v1s to dominion.

That said, you can ignore that strat and still go with a 3 roam if you like.

More tactics, more choice, more fun.

I can explain it to you why that happens in a courteous and easy-going manner

I'm not sure that describes a single thing you've ever posted...

Adding more value to objectives is a good way to do this but I feel like that's already the case. I don't know, I usually play conq in dominion so my views may be a bit skewed but when I'm holding a point it's pretty common I have 2-3 guys on me and I shine really well here with all guard and his health regen on block. Im punishing the entire enemy team by taking 2-3 guys out of the fight so my teammates can cap or boost objectives, I may go down eventually but it will take at the very least a minute or 2 and this is more than enough time to get a solid lead making them regret there decision to form a "gank squad."

Well that's not really a gank squad and it's more or less the aim of the suggestion.

I am #1 9/10 times because I play the objective and I've beaten gank squads plenty of times. They defeat themselves with this tactic to be honest, you can just about see where everyone's at because of the markers above the characters heads and you can also tell if a point is being defended by someone if there's a +2 on a capture point on the scoreboard. Go straight to the +1 point if the others are contested or you see a large group of enemies ****ing around out of position fishing for kills and you will win.

True. I'd say I win about 75% of my VS gank squad games. The problem is they aren't fun. Oh yay, I get to run from point to point avoiding combat all game. Joy...

[Antonioj26]

No one said anything about right or wrong. I don't know whether you just don't understand the topic or just don't have a defence. I won't speak for Mynban, but what I'm suggesting improves the fun of the game. Getting ganked isn't fun. Ganking isn't fun (unless you're a CoD kiddy). By increasing objective value it encourages at least one player to defend, which lowers group roam size. It also encourages players to try and ninja points, again decreasing roam size and adding more 1v1s to dominion.

That said, you can ignore that strat and still go with a 3 roam if you like.

More tactics, more choice, more fun.



I'm not sure that describes a single thing you've ever posted...



Well that's not really a gank squad and it's more or less the aim of the suggestion.



True. I'd say I win about 75% of my VS gank squad games. The problem is they aren't fun. Oh yay, I get to run from point to point avoiding combat all game. Joy...

Well if "gank squad" is exclusively 4 guys then yeah I don't tend to last long in those but it makes the wins even easier but yeah it's not a particularly fun way to play the game if you are just running the whole time. I think more often than not they break away from that once someone gets smart and caps points while they Zerg everywhere.

[Jasado]

Okay, but the OP makes a very valid point. There should be more value in defending zones.

Frankly, I belief if you control a zone, you should be able to fortify it and cover up ledges and such. For instance, that one map with the tower-esque zone that has a moat of spikes and 2 falloff points with a wooden hood above it - there should be some interactables that bring the wooden hood down as a barrier that prevents ledging and turns it into wallsmack.

People who win the zone can break it if they choose or keep it, but it would spice things up and give people more to do. The idea of hoisting a flag that improves bonuses or even summons mini-generals or soldiers to defend an area (other than B) would be nice, too.

Something to break the monotony of getting swarmed on as the only "advanced" tactic to end a game.

Objectives in objectives mode do definitely need more value.

It's not so much that ganking is ******ed (even though it is), is that it's basically the "go-to". Maybe in elimination, since they are adding only the single revive - depending how poorly that zerging team did, the revenge mode guy could actually potentially win post patch now.

I don't disagree that a person being 1v4'd should often lose, but even when they show the potential to actually come out on top, it's basically just impossible.

If you're going to make it impossible, why even make a player go through it? May as well give me the ability to suicide at that point. But then you'd complain they were "griefing" for not trying an already impossible task. Too many people defend the idea of just whooping someone's *** because they played the smartest on their team and lived the longest.

How counterproductive is that.

Clearly, the subject needs more thought than that. There is definitely more satisfying options to explore here, and OP is on the right track with objective values.