I only have around 8-10 games played in Seal Rock but I believe it suffers from a few issues:
  1. It's way too much RNG - Random starting locations and random node spawns is just too much randomness. RNG too heavily affects the outcome of games. A well coordinated team can obviously overcome unfavorable node spawns, but that's hard to come by because...
  2. The RNG creates chaos - extra hard to coordinate anyone - When a match starts everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off. Very rarely does anyone in my party stay together. In the other modes everyone at least has a location go to when it starts. And then when a node spawns near players they just attack or defend those nodes - they don't group like they should.
  3. Lack of coordination leaves specific roles in the dust - As a melee, I have a tough job in large scale PvP. If I don't have healing support, it's very hard to perform my role. I try my best to move strategically to help my team get and hold nodes and proactively move to sparse areas right before a new node spawns to try to be there first but I've found that I basically just have to follow wherever my healer(s) randomly decide to go if I want to have any combat impact.

I'm sure as everyone gets more experience a "meta" will start to form and things will streamline a bit but because of the RNG involved here, I think it will take a lot longer for that to happen than it did for Secure/Slaughter, and even then everything has to adapt to wherever things happen to spawn at.

I like random in games because it provides uniqueness to each game, and it can highlight your ability to strategize and adapt. It extends the life of fun too because it doesn't become boring as quickly. But the benefits of the randomness are counteracted by the all the issues I noted above when it comes to overall fun of the mode.

I know these are just early impressions - I hated slaughter as a DRG and it took many games for me to learn how to be successful there and then it became more enjoyable. I'm just worried about how many games that'll be for Seal Rock.