Lefty Lucy, on 13 November 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:
This game having a relatively slow TTK is the reason why "the blob" dominates tactics, and why things like flanking maneuvers are basically pointless against competent opponents.
In order to effectively reduce the enemy team's ability to fight, you need to kill their mechs. Most importantly, you need to kill their mechs as fast as possible in order to minimize damage to your own team as well. For all but the most powerful mechs, 1 v 1 TTK is slow in this game. Slow enough that if one mech is losing a solo fight it can quite easily return to its team before dying. This is why focus fire is of utmost importance.
Similarly, if you attack a mech from an angle it is not currently observing, it almost always gets a chance to return fire. Combine this with relatively long cooldowns compared to other shooters, and the only way to effectively damage an enemy mech without simply trading damage with them is to hug cover obsessively. It also means that trying to "flank" a prepared defensive position is pointless because getting the first shot in combat is only a minor advantage, rather than a decisive one.
Don't get me wrong, I think this game is fun with relatively slow TTK, but suggesting even *slower* TTK as a way to improve gameplay is incredibly misguided.
I absolutely agree with this.
The problem is that without further lowering the TTK it takes a lot of effort to break up the current stagnant gameplay and "The Blob". The CW gamemode might be a way in that general direction. But ultimately I think the game and gameplay could benefit from going back to 8v8. In more than one way.
Back in beta times the idea/impression/expectation with 12v12 was that it would open up more tactical opportunities by breaking up into lances and doing flanking maneuvers. I think after almost 2 years with 12v12 it goes without saying that, compared with 8v8, 12v12 forces the team even more to form up "The Blob" and the move together. The causes for that are manifold: The mechanics of the gamemodes, the sizes and terrain of the maps, the fact that MWO is a shooter with pinpoint aiming rather than a turn based game with random aim and all the mechanics that stem from that.
In 8v8 breaking up into lances was dumb as well. But back then a flanking maneuver of one or two mechs was a viable move. I am aware that some of that was caused by the worse matchmaking and other problems back then. But still I think that in 8v8 a good run of a single pilot can sway the match more than in 12v12 and thus in 8v8 there actually are more tactical possibilities in terms of breaking from the Blob.
I'd like to make the distant comparison to tactical first person shooters here: I think with the way MWO's gamemodes work and with the given map sizes MWO is much more like Counter Strike and less like Battlefield and there are good reasons why Counter Strike is competitively played in small 5v5 teams and not in teams of 16v16 and more like Battlefield.
And this is just the gameplay side of it. Matchmaking especially in the group queue would become a lot easier in 8v8 not to mention the big step back up in performance we could gain from returning to 8v8.
Well long wall of text that is possibly in vain because going back to 8v8 would mean scrapping a lot of work done and thus I don't think PGI will ever do it.