[Say, it isn't that bad!]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Potentially, but I'd contest that that doesn't scale upward the way you have it. If there's dozens of people on the field it's a sure thing that most of them aren't keeping track of or coordinating with most of the others on a micro time scale. (If there are hundreds, either they just aren't coordinated or a significant chunk of them are staying out of the fighting to do the coordination.) In active close combat it's probably impossible to keep track of more than maybe half a dozen people at once and taking time to improve awareness would be both ineffective (you don't have room to see what's going on anyway) and extremely unsound (because taking your eye off the people trying to stab you right this second for a larger picture gets you stabbed.)

And yet, the post that I responded to, was talking about pairing off a few people in a small fight.

Going from there to dozens is a different scale, entirely.

And yes. If people are breaking off into smaller fights, then you could just play out those smaller fights on whatever scale.