The reason 6v6 skirmish will never be fun

[WMorton]

Larger scaled skirmish would be interesting, i'd really like to try it.

It would be interesting to experiment with that but I personally want TW to focus the minute(small) amount of attention they already have invested in MP on putting out Battle mode, but after that I would love to try to vary the number of people in skirmish and hell we could try everything from 7v7-12v12

 

[Yukmouth++]

It would be interesting to experiment with that but I personally want TW to focus the minute(small) amount of attention they already have invested in MP on putting out Battle mode, but after that I would love to try to vary the number of people in skirmish and hell we could try everything from 7v7-12v12

It has to be insanely easy to implement...........

 

[Younes]

Noting the competitive community can't experiment on with later on in 5 years when custom servers are out.

 

[WMorton]

It has to be insanely easy to implement...........

I mean it should be. All its really doing is increasing player count and adjusting the UI

EDIT: we could maybe get larger maps, which would be the more time consuming part. Also adding additional player spawns, but im pretty sure that is as simple as putting down an asset and assigning it to a player slot through code, which would probably take less than an hour.

 

[dirtshrimp]

Noting the competitive community can't experiment on with later on in 5 years when custom servers are out.

Yes, nobody is going to be playing skirmish or any of the official gamemodes for that matter when the custom servers are released. I get the feeling that TW already knows this which is why the MP dev team is close to nonexistent.

Of course if that is the case they should just release custom servers immediately.

 

[Bernie Sanders]

I mean nobody can say you're wrong when literally nobody plays multiplayer.

I wonder if Taleworlds will ever comment on what they think the reason multiplayer is so dead is. Regardless of mods not being available, for it to have such a massively low retention rate and playerbase is just sad. Nothing but a failure, idk how anyone can argue otherwise.

 

[Roadpork]

I agree skirmish is very flawed, but there are some mistakes in your reasoning here. Basically, your assumption is that there will always be a minimum of 2 cav and 2 archers due to the nature of their classes in a single fight, but this doesn't necessarily hold. As an example, if the proper fight is chosen, it is possible to fight in areas (or times e.g. when opponent is caught moving) when there is no effective crossfire. In this situation, a team with more inf has an advantage, with the 2nd archer being dead weight either in the group fight, or not involved creating a 3v2 (or similar). Another example would be if you managed to position yourself defensively around a single objective, with 3 inf and 2 archers, this would be a nightmare for cav to attack, most likely being dismounted early.

And this is exactly what we saw in 6v6 tournaments in Warband, where eventually on closed maps (the most comparable style to BL maps) the normal set up ended up being 3 inf minimum, with a mix of 2/1 in the support classes (either 1 archer or 1 cav, usually the former).

There are other reasons that the other classes are preferred in skirmish, mostly due to respawns. It becomes less impactful if you catch a 2/2/2 team out of position and kill their archers, if those archers simply respawn and starting shooting you again. Similarly, to take our second example of the 1 cav, being defensive and dismounting 2 enemy cav matters much less when doing so disrupts your whole defense, creating space for the attack, and then the cav simply respawn and return instantly to the fight.

There are also mechanical balance issues regarding the classes themselves e.g. cav much discussed being too strong, and archers being able to bypass shields too often. And finally the melee mechanics themselves are not yet good enough to benefit melee fighting which inherently discourages players from engaging in it, even inf.

TLDR the root of the issue is in the game mode which disproportionally benefits support classes, not the 6v6 numbers.

respawn is a very good point.
also, the tank class is different from MOBA games, we don't have healer classes, which makes "tanks"(if we have any) not tanky at all.

you are right, we can have different compositions in the skirmish. If we organize team well.
anyway, I don't think this game should be for e-sport. so... might be the whole idea of e-sport was totally wrong.
The reason we need audience base before step into e-sport is: e-sport games are kind of consuming players to please audiences.
e-sport is not designed for player's fun. (Might be it has some fun but its not the main purpose)


My first FPS game as I remember was wolf3D, then Doom, then my first multiplayer game Quake2, then the first time I join a clan of DeltaForce, and then .. we finally have a phenomenal game CS which came from Halflife. That's how difficult a new game type to gain its player base.

 

[wimpyspud]

I think between 8v8 to 12v12 would optimal for skirmish. Ideally teams should always be infantry heavy and that does not happen much with 6v6. I think the current maps are also large enough to accommodate more players. Of course, larger teams means more people would have to play the game...

Maybe they should let the clans specify the size for clan skirmish games.