Quxudica, on 28 June 2015 - 02:53 AM, said:
Walking for two-three minutes and never firing a shot or even seeing the enemy team is dull. It doesn't matter if you are on the winning side or the losing side. It's not good gameplay, it's not compelling gameplay, it makes the match boring and is a waste of a game. What's more is it's entirely avoidable by improving the overall quality of the game mode, introducing more mechanics into it beyond "stand in this box" and designing maps specifically to encourage combat flow towards important locations. For instance just take a creative leap for a moment and imagine that the bases turrets stayed, but required power from a generator in another area of the map to function. Suddenly you've got a deterrent to early base rushes, a reason to split forces for both attackers and defenders and an added layer of depth to the mode in general.
There's a massive amount of potential in the concept behind base assault, it does not have to be this piss poor of a mode. If you want the introduction of tactical depth you should be arguing for a complete overhaul of what Assault is, not backpeddling to an even more bare bones version that could barely be called an Beta product.
The problem is that if objectives are too complex then people will just
ignore it in favor of turning the mode into a reskinned Skirmish every match, as we've plainly seen from turrets existing now.
Simple objectives are not inherently bad.
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Assault never encouraged team splitting because the game has never been built to encourage team splitting. Partial team defense does not work, you will never consistently (and likely never in general) see three to six fresh MWO pilots defeat 6-12 equally skilled fresh enemy pilots and it's self delusion to think you would. Because of the nature of the games damage and heat systems every additional mech is an exponential increase in offensive capacity.
There are legitimate arguments for removing turrets, but this claim that three minute base rushes are good things is not one of those arguments. The argument that actually has merit is how restricted movement is made for lighter mechs because of turret placement and ranges (especially on smaller maps) when combined with the overcrowded 12 man team size. Another argument with merit is how turrets are detrimental to comebacks and could be considered a contributing factor to snowballing.
If you truly want a game mode that encourages breaking up the death ball you should be advocating for a more complex fleshed out Assault mode that includes multi-stage or optional objectives in different locations on maps that are actually designed for it (instead of just being generic arenas with "bases" arbitrarily slapped down in them).
I think this community has become so accustomed to playing with these unfinished game modes we have lost the ability to see what more could actually be done with them.
I've seen plenty of times where 3-6 people held off a much larger group of enemies while the rest of the team was doing something else (usually a flank maneuver, or perhaps dealing with a base capture) because it's rare for the whole group to push if they see a firing line because they don't want to get focused down.
I also remember some epic games on Alpine in Assault where I would go cap in my Jenner (which gave a reason for short range mechs on that map, by the way, unlike now) and then tell the rest of my team to push when the enemy came back to defend, and I even remember 1 game in particular where the lights (including me) had to deal with almost the entire enemy team with no help from the rest of the team because they sat on the H8 hill with me screaming at them to push but we still managed to win after an epic fight; that was pretty funny, definitely the sort of match to remember, but now that never ever happens because turrets are dogshit.
Edited by Pjwned, 28 June 2015 - 08:16 PM.
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