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[RedDog2008]

As someone new to MWO and spending any amount of time gaming in general I found the switch from 12v12 to 8v8 pretty interesting, and very telling.

I was just feeling like I had gotten my feet under me when the 8v8 switch was made. I was starting to see my match scores go up, finally, and just generally being more of an asset to my random team mates than a detriment. Then the 8v8 switch happened and my first few games were amazing, then the weekend happened and I turned off my computer and walked away.

I came back and played some during mid-week and it was better. My take away from the 8v8 good games I had vs bad is this:

The teams I were on that rock and rolled, had excellent communication. This isn't just everyone tagging targets or shouting them out, in some cacophonous collection of random information with no direction. The communication was two way, targets, grid location and motion were declared AND responded to. If a team mate was getting too far away from the unit they were called out to to get them to watch the mini-map and quit micro-focusing as best as possible.

Pretty consistently some kind of plan was formed. Even if it was nothing more than everyone meeting up in a particular grid square. Often even having a bad plan was way better than no plan and the unit breaking up.

Everyone on the team means something. Crap happens, I ended up disconnecting once because of a power loss during a thunderstorm, that left my team without even my pathetic help. The whole AFK thing though. There should be special place in MWO hell for people who queue up in Assaults and then just never pilot the thing a step.

So all my big lessons from 8v8 turned out to be exactly what every experienced player was trying to tell us new guys with varying degrees of success.
Communicate, stay with the unit, learn the roll of your mech/loadout and be there. 8v8 didn't show me anything new. It distilled all the lessons down. It made my mistakes that much more vibrant and costly, the consequences were almost immediate, same with when thing were done right. You couldn't just be another disposable meat shield for the guys that knew how to play, the quick loss of your tonnage/firepower could shift the battle super quick. Not showing up at all was just as, if not more costly to the team effort.

As frustrating as 8v8 was at times, I feel it actually has improved my playstyle and game knowledge.

[w0qj]

+1
I can echo wholeheartedly with OP's comments!

Similar sentiment also echoed here:
https://mwomercs.com...78-8v8-is-great