Avida said:
Its not like tactics just pop out of the ground when the player count goes up - some new options are available, but some old ones are not, its simply a matter of scale.
Now thats out of the way, MAG worries me, ive never been a fan of larger scale battles in FPSs as they always tend to lead to more screwed/easy kill situations, moreover im worried about connects and hit detection because while SOCOM 2 was possibly one of my favorite games of all time the aforementioned issues were HUGE and the sequel only got worse. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgMun4dcQPE]
Good point, you express my own skepticism of MAG. It is a great concept that, if it works, could make for a great game...But I can't help but feel that it won't work out. I've seen so many shooters on consoles with higher numbers of players that, even with dedicated servers, were completely unplayable. I'm looking at you, Frontlines. I rented it within the first week and the lag and hit detection was so awful that the online was unplayable. I don't know if they ever fixed it, never revisited the game.
But, even if it doesn't work well and they manage to fix it, you get SOCOM: Confrontation syndrome: It is a pure multiplayer game and, because the online was so terribly unstable for the first several weeks, you just bought a $60 paperweight.
...And, sadly, I must admit that scale =/= more widespread use of tactics. Sadly, 98% of gamers just do not like working together, and rather go off on their own for their own score's sake. The ideas like the command system and tactical squads in MAG will force the use of teamwork and tactics IN THEORY, but in practice, this rarely works. Look at Battlefield 2. It uses a less advanced and complicated version of the command system, but all the Battlefield players still just go off on their own to boost their rank and stats. Because of this, tactical and teamwork-based shooters often fail...Because gamers are too wrapped up in their own little world to worry about other gamers, or indeed even the concept of actually winning the match, because that matters little if they are still able to get a good K/D ratio and enough experience to rank up and unlock that shiny new M82.
Those who DO try to get everyone to work together do it through yelling and cursing like "FAGGOTS!!! GO CAPTURE ALPHA OR WE WILL FUCKING LOSE YOU FUCKING USELESS ****** FUCKERS!!!" which makes the rest of the team cooperate even less just to piss Mr. I-Take-Things-Too-Seriously off. On the other side of the fence, I could imagine your team leader giving orders and some screaming 13 year old yelling things like "FUCK YOU! I don't need to listen to you!" and run off on his own to get quickly mowed down by an MG emplacement.
So, while I think MAG has some awesome ideas...I must sadly admit that most of them probably won't work out like they were meant to because gamers have this obsessive fear of working together. We can talk about game design ideas that supposedly force teamwork until Jesus Christ comes to take us all away, but gamers will always find a way to work around this and play only to boost their own rank and stats.
