Toren wrote:Oh, and having watched all the videos of that big battle in the MMO, it looked fun but didn't really have any elements of a real "group" fight. More like a bunch of disjointed, small scale fights over a large area. Which is, again, just a product of the games poorly thought out design.
I would say going head on with a tightly packed huge group will look fun, but will be exactly the definition of disorganized in my book. The large battles are long (this one was 4 hours if you count from the first rally point, 3 from the moment the main force entered enemy territory till porting back home.) and generally composed of many small scale skirmishes before the final battle. In this particular case it was skirmishing and tactical playing - scout parties, patrols, siege camp with healers, commander and guards, "outposts" who were guarding the possible "breach" locations - the enemy couldn't cross where his operations plan suggested (so we guessed right after hearing their words and interviews about the battle). Also killed some of their scout groups during skirmishing with our own forward troops. After all those skirmishes we ended up in pretty good advantage of 70-75 ( pretty much 0 casualties during the skirmishes who were just healed in the camp and ready for the final big battle instead of respawning on the other part of the map without the chance to rejoin) against thinned out enemy who is improvising (they had no backup plan how to get up there). As result when the final battle started it was very good for us - a moment where the enemy is splitted in defenders (12) and reinforcements (30 after the skirmishes) against something like 70, but because of the terrain and time (night comming soon, so we couldn't wait another hour for them to make their way up, had to jump down ourself) only the mounted ones (45 to 55) took part in the battle. But even in such situation (45-55 vs about 40) we had the initiative the whole time, cleared their cav from the field before dismounting and making a final push for their on foot part. And we've won with like 10-12 casualties combined, while they all died and the defenders respawned and fighted 2 times.
Going heads on 75 vs 50 in 1 big "team battle" would have resulted in much higher casulties even if it was still a win, you can't convince me that's more "organised" then what happened. It's just not really clear what's happening on the big picture through the eyes of a regular soldier (video from someone's POV), you need to be involved in the commanding and planning structure to get the whole picture
But for organisation and "disjointed team" let's just agree on organised chaos. All of this comes with experience. You start with complete chaos, go through semi-organised chaos and then into organised chaos. Lowering the chaos part are steps to be taken by everyone, it's just few groups pioneering it atm. Even the ones leading 5-10 players in YO know it's not easy, now add 70+ speaking 5 different languages. All the organisation will come with practice and that was the 1st so large fight with many other smaller scale ones (involving 60-70 players). That's why I don't believe in groups who think they will be factors but don't play wave 1. Right now it's groups with absolutely no practical clue how to coordinate and plan big and groups who are just scratching the surface and will be on completely different level compared to everyone else when wave 2 starts. Then we can really talk about organisation and large scale
Toren wrote: Hell, even a few more guilds of the Blood Pact have fought with us on the server.
I'm sorry, but the time is not static. The Blood Pact that I joined (april 2016) is very different from the BP during wave 0 (july 2016) after 2 months of "sparing" with the russians. Even more different when wave 1 (back in December) started and completely different now after working hard during the 2 months downtime on the lessons learned during the Decembers testrun where we were ... well let's say catching up, not pioneering. And I don't speak about members or anything - I mean organisation, tactics, battle commanders expertise, average level and fighting style.
The russians I fighted against in may-june 2016 are not same ones I played with/against few months later on russian YO servers and definetly not the same ones on wave 1. And I'm speaking about the same 3 guilds with pretty much the same veteran core of fighters.
For that reason "somewhen in YO server" holds no real (up to date performance) value to me personally.