Victrix said:
I don't like the utter lack of coordination on pub games. I spent one match doing nothing but sitting next to control points deep in enemy territory uncapping them. At one point I uncapped their base to level 1, and the only node they controlled was the 'front line' right outside our base, after I'd uncapped all the rest of their nodes. And this was in one of my first games! I wound up scoring top for my team
Yeah, it can be like that. There are good public games to be found, you just have to dig a little. If at least 3 or 4 people on a team are actively communicating (and not just OH SHIT I'M AT SOME IRRELEVANT BASE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP AND THERE'S A SINGLE GUY SHOOTING AT ME I NEED AIR SUPPORT NOW NOW NOW) then you can get a good string of games. This possibility seems to be higher if you have more gaffers in the game.
I don't like the horrendously cluttered minimap. I suspect I'll get used to it with more playtime. I just felt really confused at first, trying to figure out where the nearest node was (playing Zones). I had to constantly bring up the full map to figure out which way to go. Later, I wound up using it as early warning if I felt like defending a node in a turret to spot incoming warhawks early (usually pointless, since I'd defend one node and we'd lose the rest while my teammates did... something)
Yeah, you get used to it and eventually you'll be able to read it pretty easily. It also helps when you've been around the terrain a few times and you can match actual features to what's on the map.
Is it just me, or are the maps large even for 24 players? I counted 9 nodes on one map, that's not quite 3 players per node at most, which means 1v1 or 1v2 fights (at least in Zone, where it doesn't seem to make any sense but to constantly push on uncaptured nodes, rather than defending your own).
I suppose in an organized game you could just go for a majority, and actually play defense, but even holding 6 nodes is 2 players per, which won't resist a real push, and even 5 nodes is still a very marginal point lead, with 3 players at (presumably) the two forward nodes.
Games can go up to 32 players on the large maps, and as someone else pointed out, you can play on smaller submaps. But with a real organized game on a good team, if you capture most of the zones/spawn points, then the main battle focuses on the remaining enemy territories, and you don't really need people actively guarding every zone. After all, in a warhawk you can get anywhere on the map in seconds. As long as you've got people clueful enough to keep checking their map and noticing if some sneaky guy has gotten into the backfield near them, it's not a big problem.
Conversely, if you do want to defend your backfield zones, one man can be effective for one or two zones, since even if he gets killed, he gets the respawn advantage. Taking a backfield level 3 zone down against determined guerilla opposition can be tough if he knows what he's doing.
edit: reading back through the thread a bit, the amount of stat whining amazes me. people really care that much about epeen stat tracking?
Apparently so. :/ Personally, I'd love this game if it didn't track a single damn thing.
(Although I really do enjoy the ribbon requirements.)
