There was a game we used to play on COD4 where we would have one zombie and three survivors. Survivors could use a pistol. Zombie had to use the knife. If the zombie killed a survivor, the survivor switched sides and now there were two zombies and two survivors, so on and so forth. I think it would be awesome to have a MAG mode like that where it starts off with one zombie and he infects more, who infect more until there's only one person left.

It takes a little planning so far as I could see from Beta.  The game aims to encourage splitting forces by objective or role, as did Resistance 2 with 64 players, however so far as I could see there's nothing actually stopping this either, you've just got to make it happen.

Clearly it would be mayhem to have oddles of players in close proximity all the time, but it does make for a nice experience when it plays out correctly - but it doesn't seem sustainable for long periods.

For some reason the annalogy that comes to my mind is the big pie fights in Laurel and Hardy, which would actually be a pretty hilarious mod if this was on PC - 256 gamers engaged in a standup pie fight at the same time.

This was planned.  Basically the Officer in Charge of SVER told everyone to meet in one spot when there were 5 minutes left in the game.  Obviously, people listened to him.  I'm not sure if the OIC can speak directly to everyone, or if orders had to filter down from platoon leaders to squad leaders to the soldiers.

The reason the game is designed to avoid something like this is that it's a massive clusterf*ck.  When is the last time you've seen US soldiers bunching up in such close proximity to each other like this?  Hell, I bet this never even happened in WW2, except in the rare circumstance (D-Day where tons of soldiers were working on limited beach space).  You are just asking for a mortar, grenade or artillary round to kill and wound dozens of soldiers by bunching together like this.

The nice thing that this video demonstrates, is that if the soldiers/squad leaders/platoon leaders ARE willing to listen to the OIC, then the OIC has some flexibility in how they approach the battle.  If one squad is struggling to take their objective, he can ask another squad whose "default" attack objective is somewhere else, to help out the struggling squad.  So even though the game defaults to each objective having 2 squads attacking and defending it, an OIC can shift units around at will and to where they are most needed.  During the beta, I can't tell you how many times my squad would take our objectives, and just sit there while every single other objective couldn't get taken (half the time other squads couldn't even secure the burnoff towers).  If we had an OIC giving us commands, he could have told one of our squads to help out another objective.

While it's not necessarily realistic, it does seem to be something people wanted, which is all that matters. I think there was a lot of confusion as to what 256 players entailed, and the finished product wasn't nearly as exciting as the imagination of gamers thinking they would possibly be playing this. I think at the end of the day, designers need to understand that if they create games for themselves, or for small markets, they're only going to get a certain cut of the market in response interested. Just look at the most popular FPS on the PS3, and look at which modes are most popular, Free For All and Team Deathmatch. For the small market that wanted MAG as it is, I'm sure this game is fantastic, but it's obvious there was a holy hell of a lot of folks that thought they were getting something grander in scale. That probably much larger group is not being serviced by MAG at all.

This was planned.  Basically the Officer in Charge of SVER told everyone to meet in one spot when there were 5 minutes left in the game.  Obviously, people listened to him.  I'm not sure if the OIC can speak directly to everyone, or if orders had to filter down from platoon leaders to squad leaders to the soldiers.

The reason the game is designed to avoid something like this is that it's a massive clusterf*ck.  When is the last time you've seen US soldiers bunching up in such close proximity to each other like this?  Hell, I bet this never even happened in WW2, except in the rare circumstance (D-Day where tons of soldiers were working on limited beach space).  You are just asking for a mortar, grenade or artillary round to kill and wound dozens of soldiers by bunching together like this.

The nice thing that this video demonstrates, is that if the soldiers/squad leaders/platoon leaders ARE willing to listen to the OIC, then the OIC has some flexibility in how they approach the battle.  If one squad is struggling to take their objective, he can ask another squad whose "default" attack objective is somewhere else, to help out the struggling squad.  So even though the game defaults to each objective having 2 squads attacking and defending it, an OIC can shift units around at will and to where they are most needed.  During the beta, I can't tell you how many times my squad would take our objectives, and just sit there while every single other objective couldn't get taken (half the time other squads couldn't even secure the burnoff towers).  If we had an OIC giving us commands, he could have told one of our squads to help out another objective.

and again, I feel sorry for those noob. this is in no way, a 256 player death match, and in no way would that be grander in scale, just something noobs would have fun with. MAG for that small group of people who are actually good at fps, there is nothing more grander than what MAG provides. I feel sorry for all those who thought this was going to be a brainless, mindless, tacticless. clusterfuck.

I take that back, this is Zipper,  they make military simulators and SOCOM.........the good Socom's ........ anyone who thought they would make a massive infinity ward game is stupid imo.