Koniving, on 04 May 2014 - 08:44 AM, said:
The risk of a 12 player organized premade group dropping against you means a highly organized and challenging force; it's made pug players much more cooperative when a commander steps up to the plate and throws down some orders. Instead of "Beep you" or "screw yourself noob," I'm seeing "Yes sir!" "Omw (On my way)." "Roger that."
I've seen much more of the maps being used. Instead of the default strategies, players are willing to go to new locations. You know the fight at I9 that always happens on Alpine; Snipers Hill? The enemy took it after we wiped out an entire lance at the most southern part of the map that no one has played in for 1.5 years! It was thrilling. Instead of trying to climb the mountain, I gave orders to take the J/K9 mountain across from it and we had the high ground that overlooked the meta highground, and blasted them to crap! But, their base could LRM us, so I and another player or so went and made our assault on the enemy base to take out the turrets.
I wiped out 5 of them in my Ember (firestarter hero mech), but got attacked by some Muromets hiding out there. After having fought 1 medium, 1 light and 2 heavies head to head with only the help of a Centurion (I was scouting, the Centurion followed me, and I gave orders to cut off enemy retreats whenever I found something; they usually showed up at the last second) in a 97 kph standard engine Ember (35 ton light mech; no speedster here!) armed with 1 MPL, 2 SL and 4 MGs, + five turrets mostly by myself (as their main target) I wasn't in the best shape anymore and so the AC/20 + 2 AC/10 combination instantly obliterated me after two misses. (No wonder he was hiding in the base; there's no way you'd have enough ammo to take on much with that build!)
My team wiped out the entire force except for the Muromets when the time ran out. The funniest thing, the entire enemy force had Steiner tags -- that almost never happens unless it is a 12-player premade force. In other words, a clusterduck of pugs obeying orders of an experienced player virtually beat an entire 12 man premade.
The low number of assaults but the high number of heavies per match is making it very easy to win against them with a counter insurgency of a large number of lights and mediums. Weight matching altogether seems to be gone and that, too, has been extremely joyous for me because my Lights have had a chance for the first time in ages.
But, that's an old player living some of the best times the game has had since closed beta.
Edit: play changed to plate. (I just woke up).
It seems as if I might be the only one who had fun. Though that may be for the new players. What about the more experienced players who have been playing solo? What has been your experience?