It doesn't matter to me that the dice pools are a bit smaller, they're still arbitrarily large. A common defense is that the large dice pools create more consistent outcomes but telling a good story at a good pace is far more important to me. I've had players complain during a session when there was lots of guys involved in a fight that were each rolling 10+ dice. Way too slow and completely unnecessary. To each their own, of course.
I prefer 6e's pools to 5e, but I think that they're still not quite "swingy" enough.
I dislike that the dice pools provide consistent outcomes. I don't know if I'd want something as random as a d20 system in SR, but if there's little to no chance involved, why bother rolling? If someone has a dice pool of 20 and they're up against a threshold of 2-3, baring exigent circumstances/modifiers the GM should just handwave it. But if they did that, then that eliminates the 1 in 50 chance or so that they do have of failure on such a roll.
It's like with hacking, at least in 5e. (
Widget for math) Let's say you have a dice pool of 15 and you need 3 hits each time to succeed. Each time, you have a 92% chance of success, and a 8% chance of failure. The chance of succeeding without failure 3 times in a row (without getting marks) is 78%.
This is a waste of time: instead of making someone roll 3 times, make them roll once, against a higher threshold. They have a 79% chance of success if they need 4 hits to succeed. 78 vs 79 is small enough that it shouldn't matter for game balance.
So, instead of having people roll hundreds of times over the course of a session, make them roll dozens of times, against harder thresholds, in situations where success and failure are meaningful. In other words, I prefer 6e's matrix. It's not a matter of things being 'cinematic' or whatever, it's more that I hate rolling for the sake of rolling when there are more efficient ways of accomplishing a goal. I despise 5e's extended tests. I do. They needed to die.
Michael, I really hope you were using grunt rules for those fights with 36 combatants. I think I'd rather stab my eyes out then move for 30 individual NPCs in combat...