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But I've been thinking about what that team size means for organized play, much less for competitive and professional teams. Finding 2-3 other people to play with at any given time is fairly easy, but it gets progressively harder and harder to completely fill up a team as the size grows.
Even for casuals, getting 6 players together at once is a challenge. For instance, when TF2's new 6-person PvE mode came out this summer, I remember how annoying it was to sit around wringing our friends' lists until a 6th buddy came out rather than opening up the server to random players who may or may not know what they're doing. (And you really needed that 6th...) We often spent more time organizing the game than playing it.
It's even worse in games like MechWarrior: Online where individual skill takes a backseat to teamwork. You drop into a game with a handful of people you trust on VOIP... and several randoms who are just as likely to get you killed. Hawken rewards individual skill a bit more, but even here padding with pick ups are likely to hold back an organized team.
Moving up into the competitive space, Hawken's primary game modes mean consistently maintaining a group six players to train--and a full dozen people to scrim.
Admittedly, World of Tanks demonstrates that even tournaments of 15v15 are viable, but I take a look at that and wonder how that could ever transition to competitive play in situations where serious money is involved. Wargaming compromised by introducing an eSports oriented 7v7 mode, but even that is really pushing it.
Let's face it: More players means more expenses. More salaries from teams. More ways to split a prize pool. More airfare, hotel rooms, and meals at offline events. On the tournament side, it translates into a smaller pool of potential competitors for each event and greater equipment costs.
When considering which new games in which to invest, even the most heavily capitalized professional gaming teams are going to take a look at Hawken 6v6 and think: Okay, that's 50% more expensive than, say, a 4-person Halo 4 team. Are they getting 50% more value for their investment_ Certainly, LoL and DotA 2 are potentially big enough that a number of pro teams have decided to take on the risk of buying 5-player teams. But a lot of that is Riot and Valve essentially funding the pro scene out of their own pockets, and whether that ultimately helps grow the scene or comes back to bite them in the ass remains to be seen. Is that how Meteor wants to spend their shiny new VC dollars_
Ultimately, it's a matter of optimizing fun vs logistics. As we haven't seen much variation in team size during closed testing and proper grouping support isn't even in the game yet, the discussion is all theoretical at this point. But it's definitely worth talking about now.
What do you guys think_
Edited by Tezkat, November 03 2012 - 10:47 AM.
