Posted 15 March 2013 - 01:46 PM
There's two type of brawling: The Grand Melee, or a Focused Effort.
The Grand Melee is a normal PUG brawl. It inevitably happens in most games. As someone stated above its when someone breaks lines and everyone follows. The results are entirely unpredictable and throws the game to chance. The game could end in 8-0 or 8-7, usually either one of those extremes. The reason for it is normally when one mech goes down, there's less focus fire for that team and they start dropping like flies, ending the match in 8-0 or 8-2 at the best. Funny thing is, they blame this on premades or mech configs. Well half the time they have a premade on their own team that went with or caused the zerg.
It really doesn't matter what configs there are in a grand melee. It just comes down to focus fire and its random because there's little to no coordination in the heat of the fight.
A focused effort to brawl is when you have a team, normally a premade, that coordinates short range mechs into a flanking ambushing group. They come from a direction that the enemy doesn't expect and trounces their LRM mechs right off the bat and then moves up to destroy the rest of the enemy. This is where all the hate for ECM, LRMs, SRMs, Streaks, ect comes from. Since this is the area those systems are the most effective in. Well they are simply getting outplayed in configuration, coordination, and positioning. Even without those systems they would have trounced the unsuspecting enemy.
I personally stay out of the grand melee where I can, unless i'm in a mech nimble enough to move in and out of it at will. Its way too unpredictable. Some players love it, but I think most of that is they have the best chances of winning there, since strategy isn't something they've learned yet. I urge everyone to steer clear of this. It doesn't teach you the needed tenents of MechWarrior.
You don't really learn the maximum potential of your weapons as you're usually not anywhere near the maximum ranges.
You don't learn positioning because everyone is all around you.
You don't learn heat management since you're just blazing till you or your target is dead*
You don't learn maneuvering because there is little reason to do so.
*A mistake many make is making a config that can keep firing longer in a grand melee. Meaning they have less weapons than they could normally.
The grand melee is where the splatcat came from. Its burst is high enough that yes, it can get a few kills in those engagements. But thats the only place it shines. If it gets surrounded by high speed skirmishers, its dead in the water. If it gets caught on a melee unfriendly map, it gets sniped.
More players avoiding the melee makes the A1 more and more usless and more high risk to field. If you don't like the A1, then don't engage in the melee. The melee is also causing LRM mechs to surface. When you're engaged in the melee, you're just a free target to them. Don't engage and they can't really hit you.
The hardest part is getting the masses to learn this. Without a unit/clan to teach them discipline and teamwork, they don't know any better. Heck even if they read this, they just shrug it off and think I'm on a high horse. But hopefully there are some that do take heed. For the others, at least they can't say no one tried to help them.