SuperFunkTron, on 01 September 2017 - 06:03 AM, said:
Just a question for the guys saying that 8v8 will lead to doom and gloom; how do you get to that conclusion? Aside from having a larger population to select players from for better balance potential, the single most prominent change in game will be smaller death balls. Flanking maneuvers will be likely be more forgiving as players will run into smaller groups of enemies and will be less likely to die immediately upon cornering. Time to kill will likely increase as more fights will be 1v1 or 1v2. The use of 2 or 3 man flanks will provide more noticeable distractions and results. Less players will be needed for a push to gain traction... The more I think about it, the more 8vs8 seems likely to be the more dynamic option of the two.
I'd like to hear the arguments as to what we lose (aside from giant scores) by switching to 8vs 8 as well as why 12 vs 12 is so superior? Logic is a huge plus, purely or heavily emotional responses will likely convince me you're just being hysterical
I support 8v8, but I've heard some of their counter-arguments.
They think, because there are less mechs on the map, it will be far more critical to deathball in order to have a critical mass of firepower. They feel that scouting will become riskier for the team as a whole, since a larger percentage of the firepower for the team is splitting off. There is a fear of the impact a single disconnect can cause - though they ignore that a reconnect option exists now, unlike when 8v8 used to exist. They feel like less mechs results in a less dynamic fight (though I am not clear how they got to this conclusion).
However, I've been here since closed beta. I've experienced 8v8, 12v12, I love scouting with 4v4, and I've participated in quite a bit of 1v1 and 2v2 lobby games. You know what I discovered? The larger the map and the fewer the mechs per team, the more map gets used. You don't need as much cover to hide your movements. As a result, you have more flexibility in where you can go. It also, as a result, means scouting becomes more important, since the team that identifies where the enemy is
first can be more proactive. A note: scouting doesn't mean the light mech engages the enemy, only that it sees them and reports their position to the team.
Further, with 12 mechs on the map per team right now, the odds of you making a bad poke and getting lit up by 4+ mechs is going to be far higher than than the odds of that happening when you only have 8 mechs on the enemy team. Just because people naturally spread out to some degree. You'll have more forgiving "bad peeks." I mean, instant annihilation will still happen time to time, but the risk is, overall, reduced.
As a tie in to that, because the risk of instagib is reduced, the ease of access for brawler mechs to actually make a successful push
increases. The "critical mass" necessary to instantly vaporize a push just won't be there
in the same extent as it is currently. This allows for a more diverse combat style in any given match.
Then we have the match making argument and the PC performance argument. Both of which are practically sure things.
What will bother some people is that they might need to wait longer for the actual fight to start. They don't want to deal with the whole "movement" phase of the fight, and want to jump right into the trading portion of the battle. Maps like Alpine or Polar Highlands will be their bane, because now they need to actually
locate the enemy, first. These are the people who usually want tiny maps. Those who thought Old Forest Colony was great, even though you could literally snipe across the map at the enemy spawnpoint at the very start of the game.
That's no bueno, in my eyes.
Edited by Pariah Devalis, 01 September 2017 - 06:33 AM.