Personally I have no problem with 6v6 but12v12 would appease the masses, who complain about bots, as there would be more pilots running around so they can try to kill some humans for a change. With respect to weapons, I prefer a few more choices. I am okay with a smaller arsenal as I never use most of the guns offered in COD. However, TF ended up being folks running around the map with the Carbines, CAR SMGs or Smart Pistols. A little bit more weapon variety is not a bad thing.
Yeah but the masses don't understand game design. Here is the problem:
The maps are pretty big in order to accommodate the Titans and give them space to move about, evade each other and so forth. This leads to even larger maps for the pilots themselves if they are outside of the Titans. Now, in order to first of all fill that dead space they have small A.I soldiers who run around doing combat with each other, they are not there to replace people and instead mostly focus on each other, occasionally aiming for any players they come across. To incentivise players to shoot these A.I soldiers they grant a small buff to the players Titan meters if killed so players can get their Titans faster, basically rewarding multitasking of hunting other players and also the A.I.
Anyway, the maps as of now accommodate a total of 12 players, 6 on each side. In very few rare occasions all 12 players manage to call down their Titans and actually keep them alive for a few moments, if you have ever played during one of these times the maps suddenly get very crowded by giant hulking robots. Now, imagine instead if you removed all the A.I soldiers and replaced them with another 6 players on each side, anything between 2-5 would probably be too little to populate the maps properly. The potential scenario would be that all now 24 players called down their Titans about at the same time, you have therefore 24 instead of 12 Titans running around these maps leading to an absolute clusterfuck of giant robots at every corner.
It simply would not work too well. 6 players on each side worked perfectly fine. Especially if you instead of playing the most boring mode in the game, Attrition, which had players spread around all over the map hunting for A.I soldiers for easy points, played a more objective focused mode like Hardpoint or Capture the Flag which focused the players to certain points around the map, making it easier to find other players to shoot.
Edit: I drew some maps to make it clearer.
This here is Hardpoint mode, you have three points across the map where most players will gather towards in order to capture them and gain points for your team. The lines are common routes that people take in order to get between these three points, as shown, it is much clearer where to go in order to find other players and shoot them, making for a much more focused game. Sadly, this is not what most people played.
Instead, most people went with Attrition mode. Attrition mode is all about finding and killing as much as possible, both the A.I soldiers and other players. Not only did this lead to a very stale meta in loadout selection (Smart Pistol for pilots, 40mm Cannon for Titans) but it also makes the mode way more unfocused since you have now players spread all over the map hunting for easy-to-kill A.I soldiers, making the chance of meeting other players way, way smaller. Because most people played this mode and mostly this mode exclusively, I can understand why they would complain about seeing mostly A.I soldiers instead of players, they were incentivised to go after them instead of seeking other players in hotspots on the map. Which is why this mode was the worst for being the most popular.
Ergo, people who whine about the A.I soldiers have no clue what they are talking about and should not. They were basically essential for the game's feeling if you look at it right.
To the people who do complain about them, stop playing Attrition, it sucks. Start playing Hardpoint, it rules.
