Re: So, what now?

Let me first agree, then disagree ... smile

First, large groups are not always blobs, it takes alot of leadership and player disclipne to be a non-blob group of 40 players. However I point to classic WOW 40 man raids as a specific example about how 40 players can work as a team. The agreement part comes in when we realized that the reason WOW removed 40 man raids is because it was so difficult to find leaders and players capable of being coordinated in a group of 40.

I would say its impossible with a 1000 player base spread across all the worlds time zones to get more than 1 group of 40 players capable of being a team, and I doubt if we have even one. Because they wouldn't need to be organized to fight any of the competition anyway.

I think we see someone like M2S going out in smaller coordinated groups, but running into larger numbers which negate thier coordination advantage. I hesitate to even call the larger numbers 'blobs' because its a negative term, a large number of players working in unison isn't really a blob, its just a 'less complex' form of cooperation; with the basic strategy of sacrificing bots to reduce the enemy's numbers even more.

What makes the coordinated-blob effective is the ability to 'prime target' and basically kill a bot before they can counter. If coordinated groups were able to 'tank' more damage in general, the effectiveness of winning through atrition would be negated. Just making individual 'bots' tank better wouldn't help, as the blob would then have that ability too. Active armor is NOT going to help for that reason.

Of course, any coordinated 'tank' buff would need to have a coordinated 'damage' counter, or limited time effect, or it would be impossible to kill any bots.

Re: So, what now?

Obviously, this topic needs some expert help

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42963384/ns … nnovation/