Hardin4188, on 08 October 2014 - 07:19 AM, said:
I play all weight classes, but I mostly play heavy. Catapults especially. If you think all three game modes are the same then that's probably why most people just swarm together anyway. It's a real shame how poor tactics are. It is especially bad though in skirmish mode where there is no clear objective except to kill everyone on the other team. No having to defend strategic spots or your base. Sure the base turrets can kill damaged mechs, but a well organized base rush can win.
In solo play, simple tactics are the best. In group play you have room for more options. but asking pugs to coordinate without VOIP is just not viable. dont get me wrong, I would LOVE for more tactical options to be there. They just aren't right now.
I have seen exactly 1 base rush win in Assault in the last year. Most of the time it ends up that half the team fights and the other half sits on the base and they get taken apart piecemeal.
The reason the deathball works so often in MWO is that in MWO:
1) Numbers in general and concentraiton of firepower in particular win the day. It is more than multiplicative, it is actually some kind of polynomial curve in that the larger the numeric advantage, the greater the difference between damage done to damage taken and TTK goes down in an accelerating curve.
2) It is easier to fall back when you get hurt if you have an entire team to help protect you (see #1)
3) The nature of heat (4 mechs have 4x the heat pool as 1 mech exasurbates #1)
4) etc
(there are other facotrs, but i dont want to list them all)
When they raised the Time to cap on both Assault and Conquest, they effectively eliminated the tactical options for those game modes and made the deathball the best/only option.
Personally I would LOVE them to lower the cap requirements for Assault and force people to play defense again. I would LOVE a change in cap time to allow heavies and assault more weight in cap ability for conquest so they have more value capping. Or lower the cap time. Whatever, just change it from conquest=fast skirmish with a timer'
All of this is not the point. The point is the differnece between the game modes is really very limited and while everyone is welcome to their opinion, I thinnk in the end most people are just picking nits.
Hardin4188, on 08 October 2014 - 07:34 AM, said:
The original poll should have been advertised better. I didn't even know about it until yesterday.
I agree generally. Russ has indicated on twitter that this poll will hopefully be advertised on the ffront page of the login screen. That should be adequate for getting people a good chance.