8v8 Discussion Thread
They have changed turf takeover to 8v8 to see what it’s like (for lag I bet) what do you lot think.
Forum Discussion
I didn't PvP last night but ran a bunch of Ops instead, I'll get some TT in tonight.
When I did play the night of the patch the lobby was always full (at 8v8) on NA east. At 12v12 it usually was unless I tried to get a match early in the day or late at night where it can be less active than we would like to see.
I'm wondering if maybe they turned it down to 8 to give some people less lag to make other adjustments to help with the lag issues and also to see how it works. I do wish they'd just add bots to the matches so that when you get one of those overflow lobbies and it's 5 people in them, you could get a decent match going at the very least.
The general gist I'm getting is that 8v8 isn't as popular as 12v12 between here on the forums and the tweets I've seen.
Turf Takeover is my favorite mode since I tend to like the potentially longer play time afforded by the bigger multi-stage map.
I had noticed the smaller teams this morning when I switched off from the Weekly Challenge but dismissed it initially as an underpopulated lobby. I will state that I was never really effected by lag issues in Turf Takeover- at worst all I observed is some minor stuttering or the Cart on certain maps and the audio breaking when things got really chaotic.
I don't think I've played enough just yet to form an opinion but based on the handful of games I have played so far I have some first impressions.
The map does appear under-populated as other people in this thread have mentioned and even when you are in the specific region where the action is occurring there doesn't seem to be a lot happening because a certain percentage of your team gets vanquished, then has to respawn and then sprint to try to rejoin.
The dynamic for Pushing the Cart or capturing an objective has definitely changed with the smaller team size. Previously you'd have certain players on your team working the objective- Pushing the Cart opposed by those trying to stop it from being pushed or players in the actual Objective Zone trying to capture it or prevent it from being captured. Beyond these players actively working the objective itself you had the other portion of the team supporting that activity by flanking their opponents or trying to support those working the objective with mid-to-long range fire.
With the smaller teams this dynamic doesn't work as well since not actively working the objective stalls the progress, so the attacking team can't really afford to spare any players to invest time in flanking the defenders to thin out the opposition while the defending players don't have to modify their tactics much at all on maps where Pushing the Cart is the initial assaulting team goal.
It seems that the first side to gel as a team gets an advantage and that any rapid vanquish streak removing members of either team quickly enough forces a shift in the tide of battle as those vanquished players race to try to rejoin the action. A team which gets a decent number of players vanquished is more likely to see more get vanquished which results in that team being strung out between their spawn and wherever the heat of battle is occurring which makes it less likely for them to be able to function as a team again.
My impression is also that the attacking team will be disadvantaged on certain maps where Bombs or Batteries need to be carried. Because players carrying an item to an objective point have their special abilities disabled, they can't sprint and their position is singled out to the enemy team they usually need to be escorted and there are now fer team members who can do so- especially since there can be three simultaneous carriers. With 12v12 this means that battles which reach the final objective point become desperate crazy affairs full of chaos- which is arguably the best part- but with the smaller team sizes I haven't observed the same level of action and I'm having a hard time recalling if the assaulting team has been successful in any of the more recent Turf takeover games I've been in.
Since I completed the Weekly Challenge I'll be more active in Turf Takeover so I should be able to flesh out what I think overall but I do agree with one of the other opinions that a choice between a 12v12 and 8v8 might be a good option- with the caveat being that players will probably ultimately wind up in whichever one is being picked more often on that particular day.
Does anyone else think they should bring back old maps? I appreciate new maps but I miss places like the lunar base and the time park.
I jumped into some TT last night and I have to say, I've played the PvZ shooters since right around when GW1 launched on PC and I've seen some skewed games over the years, but not as bad as it has been in BfN since the TTK patch and 8v8 changes was implemented. Every match I was in last night was a blowout one way or the other; either the attackers blew through all the points and steamrolled at the last point or the defenders held the first point the entire time, with one exception on turning point where the plants took the first point but didn't get the 2nd.
The actual play does feel better since the TTK update, less people running away so easily, main weapons are feeling better, and it just seems more fun to actually move and shoot but these match results are terrible. The TT maps in BfN feel huge and having smaller matches indeed feels and plays worse than 12v12. If your're trying to fix lag some players have, this isn't the way to go about it.
I was open to the change as my posting can show but it's just not working out well. By all means, fix that lag, but something must be done about these lopsided matches. They're frustrating and boring and are not going to help retain and grow the population.
I was hoping somebody brilliant at Popcap figured out how to make games more focused and fair. But now i know this solved nothing. At least for me.
As far as i understand console players get a bit more performance headroom with less players. But i play on PC so~
@Screion wrote:I was hoping somebody brilliant at Popcap figured out how to make games more focused and fair. But now i know this solved nothing. At least for me.
As far as i understand console players get a bit more performance headroom with less players. But i play on PC so~
Same here. I've been a few matches with you before in fact. I don't really mind them trying to fix issues for any platform, even if I'm not experiencing the issue myself, but this change is making the matches play badly. I jumped out of the PvP stuff and directly into Ops afterwards and had a lot more fun, even finally beat the elite Yeti for the first time last night with a pretty solid team that I didn't know but we worked together very well for several rounds.
Thanks for the thoughts and feedback. Nothing (like this) is permanent and we'll continue to monitor the feedback and data to determine next steps. As soon as we determine what those steps are we'll let the community know.
@Shaun_Popcap wrote:Thanks for the thoughts and feedback. Nothing (like this) is permanent and we'll continue to monitor the feedback and data to determine next steps. As soon as we determine what those steps are we'll let the community know.
Not trying to bust your chops here - just trying to catch you while you're on the forums.
Has any consideration been given to the spawn points of a 12 v 12 being adjusted to fit the 8 v 8?Spawn points will be considered when its determined where we go from here. Don't have anything I can share just yet.
- @Shaun_Popcap Thanks for letting us know.
Okay, so I’ve played more Turf Takeover since the changes and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m having much less fun.
The main issues that I experienced happen when playing Defense. While playing on the assaulting team the game seems about the same or even easier at times but when on Defense it seems really off from the previous experience with the attackers seeming to just steamroll right through everything with little effort more often than not.
What I noticed on multiple maps while playing defense is that the TTK changes, combined with the smaller team size and the fact that some objectives in Turf Takeover were made easier all at the same time make it super easy for the attackers to practically sprint through the objectives.
On almost every objective when I was on defense I noticed that once I got vanquished, waited out the killcam, respawned, and sprinted back to the objective the capture progress would have already gone from 0% to 90% or more.
While the new TTK feels good the smaller team sizes, delay in respawning and returning to the objective combined with the changes to make some objectives easier to capture the defending team really has no chance to actually defend when the team needs to simultaneously have players inside the objective to prevent capturing and outside the objective to help keep the attackers at bay.
I love Turf Takeover And I don’t have a problem with either being on the losing side or being vanquished by players but the speed at which the attackers can blow through every objective to reach the end now has drained all the fun out of playing defense and I can totally understand why more people would want to Team Swap off of the defensive team or just quit playing in favor of another mode.
The feel of Turf Takeover now is totally off when playing defense and what used to feel like a fun, fair, and skill/tactics based experience is now so frustrating and skewed towards the assault team I don’t want to even try to play it any longer.
- @realitysquared I think that's true if you can get to the first base when you're on the attack.
I was finding all too often the defence team were camped at the spawn, with the attacking team being held there until game over. I've stopped playing TT, too many frustrating elements atm, the worst of which is the uneven teams through team-swapping which makes many of the recent changes hard to assess properly. - @ToastedSarnie Yes, that stonewall defense occurs as well, however that sort of thing Also happened prior to the update so I did not want to cite it as a direct consequence of the changes, the way the rapid capturing of objectives by the assaulting team can be attributed to all of these combined changes.
Prior experience showed that even when the assaulting team broke the defense and forced them to regroup after respawning the defensive team could still rally and put up a good fight and that allowed for good, involved and prolonged battles over every objective- but after these combined changes once the defense is initially broken at an objective that objective is as good as lost before the defense can even manage to get back into the fight, let alone regroup to keep up a decent fight so rather than seeing pitched battles which can run the timer down to Overtime we see shorter battles which are over the minute the initial defense is broken. - @realitysquared Yes, I appreciate what you mean & the good observations. I wasn't saying the stone-walling was a direct consequence of the change to 8 vs 8, just that there's so much of it that (for me) it's often prevented the game from getting going enough to be able to assess the change properly.
