Stretching the blob to allow for massive battles

[Kakarat]

Generally players form zergs because that's the easiest solution to winning a fight. Got pushed out of an area? Get more players. They also form zergs however because players generally want to be where the action is and where they feel like they are contributing.

Splitting up the zerg however has solutions that can be borrowed from any strategy game. The penalties for concentrating your force in one place is that this usually leaves other locations undefended.

So how do we make players not want to leave "areas" undefended?

One thought I had was that NPC lieutenants could form up along a battle line of opposing NPC lieutenants. Then, your PCs group up with each NPC lieutenant and get buffs for doing so. Then, as the fight progresses, good things happen for the team that keeps their lieutenants alive and bad things happen for the team that leaves their lieutenants to fend for themselves. So each column in my picture above would essentially be a group of x players "attached" to an NPC lieutenant. We could play around with whether or not you can give the lieutenant advice as to charging forward vs retreating. We would, of course, not allow all the lieutenants from grouping up in one big blob.

The lieutenant idea goes back to the PvE fight again... much like the Warhammer keeps. People will catch on quickly to kill the lieutenant to move the fight forward/win... Unless the lieutenant is healable from a player I don't see it being very good.
But then again there are discussions of staying away from healing from the get go.