Large Scale DM:
All that matters is your killrate.
You can die to each of your opponents (fraglimit-1) times and still win as long as you reach the fraglimit first.
Since there is only 1 victor, the chances your death will contribute to your loss is equal to 1/(playercount-1). You can even affect this by employing the nonsensical strategy of dying to players who are behind.
Survival hardly helps in achieving optimal killrate. Surviving means wasting time picking up health and ammo. Surviving means taking lower risk options that involve dealing less damage.
Dieing and respawning means you get to pick up the weapons for a free ammo refill.
The weapons that rule DM are the high damage weapons. There's no point in using safer, less damaging weapons since survival is not a priority.
There is little point in investing the time to grab "super weapons" as they're just not strong enough and they force you into the survival playstyle.
DM is shallow and repetitive.
Large Scale LMS:
All that matters is survival.
You can kill (PlayerCount-2) players and still lose by dying before the last player.
Conversely, you can win by doing absolutely nothing, as long as the enemies kill themselves.
Melee weapons and other high risk weapons are a very bad idea in this mode.
The mode is very slow just because it's more optimal to take the low risk low damage options as opposed to the high risk high damage options.
And of course, there is the problem that after dying you have to wait a while for the next match to begin.
Duel (health pickups on)
Running away is very easy to do in MM8BDM.
As I explained here:
http://cutstuff.net/forum/index.php?topic=10847.0Thus, duel strats are focused on this odd cadence between engaging each other at full health and retreating for health.
Duel strats are about reliably dealing damage to the foe and securing the kill before they heal up on maps with item layouts designed for large scale DM.
Progress in a duel is slow with the match state resetting to zero often. And only 2 people can play at a time.
Duel (health pickups off, no plant barrier)
High risk high damage and low risk low damage strats are both viable.
As long as your opponent takes more damage than you before the fraglimit, you win.
Thus, constant progress is made and there are many ways to go about this.
This is a good mode, but it only accomodates 2 people.
Small Scale DM and Small Scale LMS can be considered as gradients between DM/LMS and Duel.
2 Team TLMS
Whatever contributes to a team effort of the enemy team dying before yours.
This presents more viable options and playstyles than any of the previous modes. In addtion to high-risk high-damage bum rushes and low-risk low-damage pot shots, one can also flank distracted foes with melee/tricky weapons or stun them so their teammates can ensure kills.
Every player's effort matters since every death/frag contributes to whether one team wins and one team loses.
Main problem with TLMS is one it shares with LMS, in that you may have to wait a while after dying.
2 Team TDM
Whatever contributes to a team effort of the enemy team dying more than yours before the fraglimit.
Very much like TLMS but without waiting long times to respawn.
Unlike TLMS, item placement on maps is relevant to this mode.
Different from TLMS, part of the team effort is grabbing health capsules, but unlike Duel, there aren't more than enough health capsules to go around.
From my pont of view, TDM has advantages over all the previous mode, though it does have one problem.
TDM can be griefed.
A suicider hurts only themself in DM/LMS. In TLMS, they just count as 0 players. But a suicider in TDM can bring their team to their knees, and suiciders on both teams can make the match never progress.
TDM is a fantastic mode, but remember to have votekick ready.
Multi-team TDM/TLMS can be considered as gradients between 2 Team and no Team DM/LMS.
Terminator
DM but more luck. Luck involved in finding the terminator sphere and picking it up when it drops.
Luck involved in landing killing blows on the terminator for the hefty frag bonus. While this is similar to getting kill stolen in DM, it's just amplified here.
Possession
People enjoy running/hiding for dear life without being able to act?
People enjoy chasing players in a game where running away is so easy?
Team Possession
Oh, now the possessor has bodyguards.
Some merit to a team working together to protect a singular objective, but Possession's problems are intact.
1 Flag CTF
Running away is really easy so trying to stop the white flag carrier isn't fun.
There is merit to gameplay focusing around a singular objective though.
Attack and defense is in odd balance.
Offense goers get to pick up more weapons on their way to the objective but takes time from respawn to get there.
Defense goers respawn near their defending objective but have fewer weapons to pick from.
Would say this is in defense's favor though since the lower travel time outweighs offense's more weapons.
CTF
1 Flag CTF but slower.
Say there are no good runner catching weapons
suddenly, both flags are being held by carriers in the opposite base and the game just revolves around hunting them down. If that were fun, we'd be playing Team Possession.
Say there are good runner catching weapons
just touching the flag sends it back. So I hope you like seeing the Flags at their spawn points cause that's where they're gonna be.
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