134 replies to this topic

[Natred]

Its nice to see some friendly conversation reguarding this topic. Honestly from what eveyone is saying and my own feelings going to have to say 12 vs 12 for the win.

[MustrumRidcully]

I am definitely looking forward to 8v8.

[TWIAFU]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 24 August 2017 - 08:21 AM, said:

Easier to do because less eyes to spot your flank, not sure why that is hard for you to understand.

Yea!

And while you and some LRM Raven go to flank, you leave the 6 others to face 8 and loose. Then you and your other flankers have to fight 2 vs 8. Now you loose 8 to 0.

[Thorn Hallis]

Natred, on 23 August 2017 - 01:52 PM, said:

8 vs 8

Less cbills to make

Actually the rewards where higher when we had 8v8.

[Kroete]

El Bandito, on 23 August 2017 - 09:10 PM, said:

Less pugs to yell at = less elitist attitude.

Tryhards and metawhores dont even understand that pug is pickupgroup and that they are part of a pug if they play quickplay.

They have groupplay, they have compplay and they managed to get most pugplayers out of cw and now they want quickplay also as their playground?
Go play group or comp if you cant bear the randomness of quick play!

Hope pgi will do a client poll, if not the loud minority will again make the game worse for more then 80% of the playerbase.

Edited by Kroete, 25 August 2017 - 03:43 AM.

[Bud Crue]

MustrumRidcully, on 25 August 2017 - 12:22 AM, said:

I am definitely looking forward to 8v8.

I've had the realization, just a moment ago actually, that I truly do no care anymore.
8v8, 12v12, whatever. PGI is going to do what it needs to to minimize costs and keep this product going as long as it can be made profitable to do so. I don't believe for a second that the 8v8 "test" will be a test, or be about gathering data, or be about improving game quality. It is about maintaining a viable gaming enviornment within which they can continue to sell the mechporn that pays their bills. I'm convinced that 12v12 is done no matter what the "test" shows. We are going to 8v8. So my personal preference for one or the other just doesn't matter.

[Jormunrek]

I'd rather it stay at 12v12. I don't want smaller maps or arena style play. Also 12v12 is more forgiving of newer players, disconnects, solo players in QP, and potato teammates...

[Archer Magnus]

How about it changes from round to round? Just random.

I would love to play 8v8, 12v12, 16v16

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Kroete, on 25 August 2017 - 03:41 AM, said:

Hope pgi will do a client poll, if not the loud minority will again make the game worse for more then 80% of the playerbase.

You realize by posting on the brown sea (aka these forums), you ARE part of the loud minority right?

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 25 August 2017 - 06:38 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 25 August 2017 - 06:38 AM, said:

You realize by posting on the brown sea (aka these forums), you ARE part of the loud minority right?

Minority indeed.
Even PGI folks post more on Reddit than here.

Seriously folks, If you want to have a better chance of having your voice heard, then really you ought to be posting in both places. And if you REALLY want to have the best chance of having your opinion counted, then, well, as long as you are willing to couch your commentary within a few lines of initial unmitigating praise, then get on Russ's and the other PGI folks' twitter accounts.

[Dimento Graven]

MischiefSC, on 24 August 2017 - 06:01 PM, said:

Matchmaking with 8 v 8 is easier because it's got to stretch 33% less to fill each match. No question at all, it'll be a better NPE in the context of tighter bands for matchmaking.

IF the matchmaker has accurate enough info to make use of it. Currently it doesn't matter because the need to build a match quickly out of 24 available people roughly matched for tonnage gives it few options. Cutting that by a third will, without question, give it more ability to be selective in who it puts together.

That goes without saying, I absolutely agree, BUT, that's AT BEST a temporary fix IF PGI isn't going to advertise their game. Eventually with a continuing decline of population even 8v8 will have problems. Heck, we really don't even know if there's enough of a population to support a properly delineated population, so this may not even be a moot point anyway.

And all a smaller drop size does is hide other issues that'll only be less noticeable, but still there.

Quote

As to tactics and strategy we have both comp and the historical 8 v 8 play (though prior 8 v 8 didn't really have a matchmaker for most of it and mixed teams with pugs).

I can tell you from experience that 3 v 1 is a delete button if everyone involved is any good. 2 v 1 is not; you can survive that most the time just fine. Even in 1 trade though 3 v 1 is enough to all but ensure, even on a push, that the 1 guy is getting deleted. The more 3 v 1 opportunities you have the more you've got 1 guy getting deleted in 1 second of exchanged fire.

That's where 8 v 8 is more tactical. You've got, at most, 2 sets of 3 v 1 instead of 4. If you've got a firing line 12 v 12 makes 3 sets of 3 v 1 in any given push or flank not hard to arrange, in 8 v 8 it's barely 1.

Think of it like critical mass. It's about how easy it is to arrange 3 mechs on 1 firing lane that the enemy comes into. With 8 people you must spread a bit more thin. What you have more of is 1 v 1 and 2 v 1, which is viable trades on both sides (depending on mech, position and skill).

The only 'strategy' that 12 v 12 allows is for 2 or 3 guys to wander off from the deathball to die. That's not a flank.

I disagree on this. Organized pre-made teams in 12v12 disrupt your pattern, but obviously we all agree on this point: The majority of quick play groups aren't pre-made organized teams, and only in the rarest circumstance will a randomly assemblage of 12 people function at the level of a premade.

The symptoms of 2 or 3 guys wandering off to die is a function of disorganized, non-communicative groups NOT because there are 12 people on the team. Even back in the original 8v8 days you had those same people wandering off to die, only it hurt a lot more than in 12v12.

Quote

8 v 8 will increase reward for smart play and punish bad play because your individual performance both in terms of doing and taking damage is more important, you are a bigger percentage of your teams armor and firepower. Weapons and play styles that require your teammates to tank for you (sniping and LRMs) will suffer the most.

Not hard to predict and we've got plenty of testing for it.

While the "reward" for good/bad play will be more immediately evident in a probabilistic quicker win/loss, I don't necessarily agree that the end of match CBILL/POINTS reward will be any larger. With 1/3 less opportunities to score damage, get kills, etc., the overall rewards will decline, not increase.

Quote

You also seem to mistake 'comp play' for Div A finals. MRBC goes down to Div E and includes a very wide range of player skills. You'd probably have a ton of fun in Div D-E, it's not a whole ton different from QP and you'll see LRMs there often enough.

https://mrbcleague.com/

Go watch recordings of matches. There's both 4 v 4 and 8 v 8 stuff there to see. 78 teams signed up for last season. The skill curve there is actually very wide and it's an excellent view of what pretty much T4-T1 8 v 8 would look like. Because of how MRBC breaks divisions up those matches are a better matchup than 90% of QP/group queue matches.

Like I've said, I don't believe what works for COMP play will work for the general population. When we had 8v8, very few people wanted it to stay (small units liked it, that's about all I can remember) and the majority wanted 12v12.

12v12 should be what a BattleTech game should be about.

Thorn Hallis, on 25 August 2017 - 03:40 AM, said:

Actually the rewards where higher when we had 8v8.

Yeah, that was when we had R&R (repair and rearm) costs too.

And after R&R you typically had about the same (if not less depending upon component destruction of your own 'mech) as you get now.

Once PGI eliminated the R&R costs, they reduced the rewards to more or less what we're getting now.

Archer Magnus, on 25 August 2017 - 06:38 AM, said:

How about it changes from round to round? Just random.

I would love to play 8v8, 12v12, 16v16

Y'know what?

I like this option.

THAT would keep us on our toes I think...

[Kroete]

[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 25 August 2017 - 11:43 AM.
name & shame, reply removed

[GoatHILL]

I watched a player last night spent 2 mins trying to kill a stripped legged Cent. while the rest of our team was across the map fighting. Whether me was new, drunk or just that bad me is the reason we don't want 8v8.

[C E Dwyer]

process, on 23 August 2017 - 02:01 PM, said:

Why not both? Also, couldn't matchmaker scale down to 8v8 as a low-pop relief mechanism?

This is actually the best option, when population is above a certain number 12v12 happens when it's bellow it 8v8 happens.

I prefer 12 v12 I think completely reverting isn't good for the game, it's certainly not the cure for the Match maker.

But it is an intelligent compromise.

I doubt though that P.G.I would be willing to code something that 'complex', even though it's been a feature on Wargamming net games for years.

[Dimento Graven]

Cathy, on 26 August 2017 - 09:06 AM, said:

This is actually the best option, when population is above a certain number 12v12 happens when it's bellow it 8v8 happens.

I prefer 12 v12 I think completely reverting isn't good for the game, it's certainly not the cure for the Match maker.

But it is an intelligent compromise.

I doubt though that P.G.I would be willing to code something that 'complex', even though it's been a feature on Wargamming net games for years.

Archer Magnus's suggestion of having the MM cycle between 8v8, 12v12, and 16v16 seemed really cool to me.

It makes 8v8 or 12v12 based on 'population levels' seem even more of a half-assed mediocre option.