It creates awareness alright. It also makes aliens aware of your position.
And since we're talking about newbie training, that is not a good idea.
Which brings me to another point which is often overlooked: training with other newbies will only get your skills up to the best they have to offer. The carefully controlled environment and bots of the Wrath Newbie server will never produce a good player out of you if you realise this.
This is why Wrath (and training in general) needs two things: a constant challenge, and rational explanations of what you're doing wrong.
Examples:
* Sometimes Wrath is visited by players who are content in simply slaughtering newbies by the dozens and gathering 60 kills alone while their teammates barely get 10 each. They don't offer any feedback, just pound the enemies into the ground. That's not training, it's punishment. Sure, some people will be able to come out with insight and skills out of something like that, but the vast majority won't.
* Another example is something we saw just the other day: a human builder who disregarded advice from everyone telling him why his base was wrong. Eventually they had to actually demonstrate how a single goon could wipe out everything in a couple of tries. His excuse: we're all newbies here so a newb setup is just fine; no use worrying about an advanced tactic. Which is wrong; if you don't think ahead and plan to evolve you'll never get past the newb level.
To get back on topic; luvs2spooge, here is my advice:
* Do what other players said above; practice alone on devmap. Learn how to move with aliens and shoot the guns. Learn the maps. Practice interesting setups as a builder (think of good spots and configurations; time what it takes to build them).
* For pure move and shoot skills, practice against bots. Wrath offers bots, albeit dumb, they are good enough for newbies. Servers with "Arena" in their name offer "invasion", which is a human base under constant alien storm. There are servers where you can practice trick jumps. You can setup your own local server and add bots to it.
* Customize your keyboard and mouse binds for fast in-game actions (healing, buying, evolving, building, communication). Get a good HUD (I like Volt's). You can find details all around these forums. These modifications will improve your reaction time. You will not get anywhere if you don't do this; you simply can't compete against players who spend half a second at the armory or heal at the touch of a button.
* Go on servers and spectate good players. Learn what they do right. Learn what bad players do wrong. If you play and you get beat up constantly, spectate your nemesis or ask them how they do it (on Wrath at least they are pretty much obligated to tell you).
* Challenge yourself constantly. As a builder, look for new ideas. As a fighter, try limiting yourself to a certain class or gun until you get better.
* Read these forums for strategy tips and for lots of other advice.
* Practice, practice, practice. I've been playing Trem for about 4 months, after not playing any FPS previously, and I'm still a long way from being a good player. But I still learn and try to make it up in other ways. For instance, you can be an outstanding builder even if your shooter skills are mediocre.
* Be polite and it's a good idea to add "newb" to your nickname. IMHO it helps, at least you won't get yelled at (as much). You'd have to be a really bastard or really cranky to get upset at a person who openly admits they're newbs and nicely asking for help or forgiveness. Also, it helps to remember that in-game chat is not a perfect means of communications. Confusions take place. You could even get kicked and temporarily banned once in a while. It happens. Don't take it personally.
* Control your temper. Sometimes the game gets really heated and there are things that will simply make you go nuts (like deconners; a person who destroys their own base in the middle of a game then runs away from the server, causing their team to lose).
