Why social skills are important in a team game

[zybork]

I think it already occured to most of you: Sometimes, I have really good games, lasting for "about an hour", where I have the impression, that all the players enjoy the game - WHICH IS THE F... ONLY REASON WHY ANYONE SHOULD PLAY IT, BLOODY HELL! - and that all is fine, altough there are players of very different skills, however, all is fine, and I really endulge myself, which can be wonderful after a hard day's work (especially before Christmas, when all the customers go mad, btw.)

Then, I play matches that really ssssuck. You've got some elite players, some unskilled players, some noobs and newbies, but nothing is right, it is all a mess, the game lasts for about "five seconds", no matter if (as usual) aliens win, or if humans do.

And one time, I started to realize why.

It's definetely not the skills. Really! Because in both cases you've got teams of mixed skills et cetera et cetera, so what is it? Two words: Cooperation and balance. And, as a third (did anybody expect the Spanish Inquisition ), IQs that do not go below 60... end of rant. It is because players have a minimum of respect for the others (including the opponent team) and are not too dumb to count 1+1 together. But I am babbling, let's summarize:

In a good (human) team, people have realized, that you are nothing agains a dragoon if alone, that it is a good idea not to waste money for the even bigger gun. People tell you what they are planning to do giving you the chance to cooperate with them. And if they realize, that one team is way too good, they switch, making the game balanced again, just to give everybody despite his skill the chance for a long, joyful game. In the end, the skilled can say, "Bad day, I only killed 34 609 noobs this game" and the unskilled are happy because they got enough money to get a luci-gun for the first time in their life, and even survived long enough to try it out. Everybody's happy. Perfect.

Now, to the b-a-d team: People are running around like frightened chickens. Got 500 credits? Go buy the biggest gun! Well, they get killed instantly because without a helmet, they don't see those dretches that have been walking right behind them for a minute, but hey, the got BIG guns... No joke, I have watched those people. And if someones a far better player than others, why should people care? Why should those players try to get to both teams, if they are in a slaughter-raid? It is about yourself having fun, who cares about anybody else in the game? Also, people always go alone. Just always. Because it is about YOU making money, who cares about that this is team game? Okay, you may have been feeding the aliens for 12 times, but now you have a few bucks to get this really biggg gun.. The base needs no protection because it surely has those turrets and can defend itself, so a builder is not necessary as well.

Über-nerds of this world, I have bad news for you: You mave have fast reaction times or slow reaction times, you may have learned all the maps by heart or have no idea of them, it all doesn't matter as long as you are lacking one thing, that is essential to any team game: social skills.

[daenyth]

+1

[Nux]

The public server is a crucible full of hot and cold parts. In other words public servers are raging, moody places which makes them great places for beginners who are getting to grips with the game.

The few players who rise above the rest can find each other and stick together. They can just float on top of the boil or they can have some real fun facing each other. That where private servers come in.

[Death On Ice]

Several public servers admins support aimbotters, either out of curiosity, or some other reason. Without naming any names, I would like to say that the Tremulous experience is only fun when admins do their job.

Hey - Lot's of repliers telling me to play somewhere else: Usually I'm playing at the Else.

[X-20]

Common sense... new concept for alot of people.. anyway i support this, Id give you a +1 also but i cant give karma yet 

[The MC Horton Crankfire]

+1, sticky this.

Another problem: when the enemy team gets deconned, and you know they've been deconned, that should be enough information for you to know that you should stop attacking them until they have time to recooperate. But with many players (even most? I certainly hope not, but I dunno...), not only does this knowledge not stop them from getting cheap kills, but they still don't stop after people are flooding the chat with messages telling them to. Why is it common practice to do this, and why aren't admins as rigorous with these players as they are with the deconners themselves?

[meren]

zybork, that idiot stereotype you're talking about is the only reason why I decided to join a clan. Because in a clan you can play decent games with decent people around you.

It is so likely to see at least one of these in a public game:

- killwhores: don't care either about base nor team play. also winning or losing is not important, the only important thing is that their names should be at the top of either of two columns on the last screen of the game. spec one of them and see how they eagerly chase a dretch to kill instead of trying to help other people to kill a goon. or a tyrant killing s1 human in the hall instead of letting dretches try to eat him.

- deconners: some sick guy switches his damn team and deconnes RC/Overmind and disconnects.

- spammers/campers: stays in the base and constantly spams corners, doors, etc. this thing is not respectful to other teams players at all.


yeah, public games are frustrating. scrims are better for a decent tremulous experience; of course if both teams have good players (because otherwise other team camps till the last damn minute).

[player1]

Another problem: when the enemy team gets deconned, and you know they've been deconned, that should be enough information for you to know that you should stop attacking them until they have time to recooperate. But with many players (even most? I certainly hope not, but I dunno...), not only does this knowledge not stop them from getting cheap kills, but they still don't stop after people are flooding the chat with messages telling them to. Why is it common practice to do this, and why aren't admins as rigorous with these players as they are with the deconners themselves?

Because most of them are also players who are just trying to enjoy themselves and not paid professionals working 24 hours a day to ensure your personal gaming enjoyment?

Most admins will deal with the worst offenders, issue stern warnings, and shepherd players back towards the goodness. Yes, ppl who attack while knowing the other team has been deconned are cheap and cheesy, but then, lots of ppl are cheap and cheesy, especially in an Internet context, especially with so many fine examples of sportsmanship to follow.

Also, flooding the chat with messages to stop is like yelling at a puppy who's peeing on the rug. Any attention is good attention. It just excites and overstimulates their sense of weaniness; not only can't they stop themselves, you're just making it worse. They'll do it again next time, just to see if you're watching.

Sometimes, when you're an admin (have you ever actually maintained a server?) you hafta get back to playing, since no one is paying you to do otherwise, and I don't know about you my but time ain't free. I can't chase down every little player for every little infraction. This is the Wild West out here. Care to help?

As to why it's common practice among players, that is the level of perceived morality on the servers you frequent.

Cheers!

To the OP: You've finally found the one weapon that unlocks all the others - teamwork!

[Caveman]

2¢... If you don't have the time to administrate a server, don't run one.

[The MC Horton Crankfire]

2¢... If you don't have the time to administrate a server, don't run one.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[tuple]

"We've been deconned" is the most overused excuse in this game.  It used to mean that belier13 had connected and deconned eggs and the OM.  Now anytime a builder moves RC poorly or without properly announcing it, its "WE'VE BEEN DECONNED!  BAN!".  I call bullshit.  You don't get to call out deconners when its your team that screwed up, NOT the admins OR some griefer.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were admins somewhere protecting botters.  However, I suspect it is more common that admins are protecting someone they know isn't a botter.  I know players from before there were public bots who come in under assumed names to servers I admin.  I search for IPs and find, low and behold, its old school whats his name joined for a round or two.  Half way through the match I'm cancelling vote kicks cause the noobs are too busy screaming about botting to bother speccing him to learn.  Meanwhile, I'm speccing him, to learn.  What do I do then, I assign him an admin level that basically keeps him from getting vote kicked if I'm not around.

I will freely admit that I have been extremely tempted to just kick killwhores outright.  I was verbally abusing one killwhore who camped under the stairs in transit in a bsuit with a psaw to kill dretches, for about 5 minutes.  After a while, his friend says "but he has more kills than you!"  Seriously, morons.  I usually end those matches with "but you still lost cause you suck".  I should just start kicking them outright.  Fortunately, no share means kill whores are less effective at screwing the match.

Ok, I'm done bitching for a good 37 minutes!

[player1]

Sometimes I just can't smite and applaud fast enough!  

@Tuple:

[The MC Horton Crankfire]

"We've been deconned" is the most overused excuse in this game.  It used to mean that belier13 had connected and deconned eggs and the OM.  Now anytime a builder moves RC poorly or without properly announcing it, its "WE'VE BEEN DECONNED!  BAN!".  I call bullshit.  You don't get to call out deconners when its your team that screwed up, NOT the admins OR some griefer.

I don't know if you meant that in response to what I said, but if you did, then this is an entirely different situation. I agree, it's awful when people cry decon anytime the RC/OM goes down (especially when the builder told the team well beforehand, heh), and I always try to tell the mods to cancel the inevitable kickvote that comes after that, but when a team actually is deconned, the other team has no excuse to keep attacking.

[Tycho]

nice topic I'd give a +1 to OP if I could.

Personally I like to be on top of the board but I despise killwhoreing and I usually end up in middle of the board because of chainsuiting tyrants while killwhores run amok and lucispam bazillions of dretches only to never actually enter the alien base and kill some buildable. The best is when we got 4-6 pulses and lucies and I'm the only guy who fires at the goon sniping our RC because all the heavy guns are firing at those juicy killwhore-food dretches... This makes me most upset. Especially when I get flamed for saying "We could have won if someone else would have helped me kill thos f***ing eggs" just like Tuple said...

And this works vica versa too: tyrants chewing armourless humans then running away at the first sight of a luci thus leaving us dretches evoless until they are chased off and we manage to survive the following spam.

[Dance Commander]

its really not necessary to have teamwork on all levels.  only the top few on each team need to work together to pull off a win.  sad, but its true.  the other people just get in the way on alien, or teamkill on human.  if you cant tell when to stop slashing/firing, your going to be a hinderance to your team, social skills or no social skills.  the top few working together obviously makes everyone feel as if they are playing better and having a good fun game because the other team is being drained of evos/creds, but its really just the top pulling the weight.  Teamwork is hardly needed on aliens, unless your in a scrim or doing an SD rush/base attack.  Especially in atcs, which is so small you always are somewhat near a teammate.  Other maps are bigger, but you'll still have backup because of people just playing the game.  Consciously backing up your teammates is really only needed on aliens in elite games, like the old pick up ones we used to have on SGA  or in scrims...
it is important for the top few to work together on humans though.

[Paradox]

One thing that really pisses me off in Halo 3 (another team game) is the people that don't have voice. Come on people, a mic comes with the 360, and they are only 5 bucks. It applies just as much to trem as it does to halo, by not communicating, you hurt your team more than help it.

[jr2]

Hmm... I try to communicate (with the keyboard), and I have a mic.. perhaps I should try using TS2 more often.  I haven't really played with it too much before.

[Johnpp]

One thing that really pisses me off in Halo 3 (another team game) is the people that don't have voice. Come on people, a mic comes with the 360, and they are only 5 bucks. It applies just as much to trem as it does to halo, by not communicating, you hurt your team more than help it.

I agree, that would get annoying, but then there's the fact that some people may not want to spread their voice over the internet. Plus, I'd turn it off, so I wouldn't have to live with the over-used swearing that would most likely be there.

[player1]

Even if you just use the keyboard, even if you don't have any chat keybinds, you can still communicate better than half of the casual players out there. I agree that a mic is great for match play, and for general clan play or private server play in general, but there are still a ton of players out there who don't even use teamchat when they are moving base or coordinating an attack. Just a general "moving OM" or "arm down" or "incoming - DEFEND" doesn't take that long to type, especially if you are in the spawn queue. I try to report in enough to let the team know what's up where I'm at, and if the enemy is suddenly weaker or threatening.

Also, in maps with location tags, you can just type "..." in teamchat, to let your team know all is quiet at your current position.

Lastly, keeping the ROFLs to a minimum helps to not flood chat so much, so important messages stick around a bit in crowded games. Everybody enjoys a good "LOLWTF?" death-rattle every now and then, but you don't have to do it every single time (you spamfeeders know who you are).

[zybork]

its really not necessary to have teamwork on all levels.  only the top few on each team need to work together to pull off a win.  sad, but its true.  the other people just get in the way on alien, or teamkill on human.

No, this is not true. If an unskilled player realizes he gets in the way of others and tries to stay behind defending or whatever, this *is* social skills - because he recognizes the needs of the team to be more important than his own ones.

I'll never forget this one game where we (human team) played against a bunch of lone-fighter aliens, who always complained that four of us were "camping" at the base, killing any dretches that came of course but also dragoons and even tyrants because the instant one arrived he immediately got gunned/rifled/pulsed down from all sides at once, giving him no chance to even have a small chew on our precious buildables. (It was in that railway-station map.)

They complained about our excessive camping and so on and did not realize that meanwhile the rest of our team killed all the eggs, grangers, and then - Overmind down! - and they were done for.

I'll never forget that they lost this game, altough they had one superb player and we were only average at best, we won because of our teamplay. I'll never forget this game.

And thanks for the tipp about the clan, maybe I will join one. But I'll ask about this in the clans-forum, not here.

[jr2]

Hehe.. you mean Transit?  I was a builder once... I considered it my personal mission to keep 2-3 eggs on the human base ceiling, as the humans were too busy running around trying to kill aliens.  That was a short game, needless to say.  One or two players did notice the eggs, and even managed to kill a few of them (and me) sometimes, but they either didn't communicate (possible), or they were ignored by the killwhores / Halo-style players (more likely).  I had a good laugh at the end of that match.  Pwnt by a stubborn Adv Granger!! XD

[Owl]

You remind me of player1 when I first read some of his posts.

I'm sure you'll learn and grow to be a great player. You've at least got the personality.

[Revan]

Hehe.. you mean Transit?  I was a builder once... I considered it my personal mission to keep 2-3 eggs on the human base ceiling, as the humans were too busy running around trying to kill aliens.  That was a short game, needless to say.  One or two players did notice the eggs, and even managed to kill a few of them (and me) sometimes, but they either didn't communicate (possible), or they were ignored by the killwhores / Halo-style players (more likely).  I had a good laugh at the end of that match.  Pwnt by a stubborn Adv Granger!! XD

WOW!!! thats superb genius, that map is hard

also +infinity on the "if I kill you its skillz, if you kill me its aimboting" shit -- I was once accused of it on aranchid when I discovered what a  + pulse rifle could do

[AllmanBros]

And if someones a far better player than others, why should people care? Why should those players try to get to both teams, if they are in a slaughter-raid? It is about yourself having fun, who cares about anybody else in the game? Also, people always go alone. Just always. Because it is about YOU making money, who cares about that this is team game? The base needs no protection because it surely has those turrets and can defend itself, so a builder is not necessary as well.

Ok, I'll stop enjoying myself to make sure players who can't kill stuff on their own can have fun, too.

No thanks. If you can't kill something by yourself, go with your groups. Don't expect more experienced players to do it for you. I've played with the cream of the crop of trem players (skillwise, in public games) and I can tell you, its more fun to play against them than with them, so no, experienced players dont hop onto a team with other experienced players to demolish the opposing team.

[jr2]

And if someones a far better player than others, why should people care? Why should those players try to get to both teams, if they are in a slaughter-raid? It is about yourself having fun, who cares about anybody else in the game? Also, people always go alone. Just always. Because it is about YOU making money, who cares about that this is team game? The base needs no protection because it surely has those turrets and can defend itself, so a builder is not necessary as well.

Ok, I'll stop enjoying myself to make sure players who can't kill stuff on their own can have fun, too.

No thanks. If you can't kill something by yourself, go with your groups. Don't expect more experienced players to do it for you. I've played with the cream of the crop of trem players (skillwise, in public games) and I can tell you, its more fun to play against them than with them, so no, experienced players dont hop onto a team with other experienced players to demolish the opposing team.

You know there's only 2 teams in Trem.  Unless the cream of the crop players are equally balanced there *will* be a problem.  (Unless counterbalanced by a really n00bish player on the team with more good players.)

[AllmanBros]

And if someones a far better player than others, why should people care? Why should those players try to get to both teams, if they are in a slaughter-raid? It is about yourself having fun, who cares about anybody else in the game? Also, people always go alone. Just always. Because it is about YOU making money, who cares about that this is team game? The base needs no protection because it surely has those turrets and can defend itself, so a builder is not necessary as well.

Ok, I'll stop enjoying myself to make sure players who can't kill stuff on their own can have fun, too.

No thanks. If you can't kill something by yourself, go with your groups. Don't expect more experienced players to do it for you. I've played with the cream of the crop of trem players (skillwise, in public games) and I can tell you, its more fun to play against them than with them, so no, experienced players dont hop onto a team with other experienced players to demolish the opposing team.

He said "player", and unless he made a typo that is one good player in the game, on both teams.

And yes, I realize there are 2 teams 

[St. Anger]

//Slightly Offtopic

Tremulous needs an "official" definition for killwhore. I don't know how many times I've been called a killwhore just because I had a high amount of kills.

[AllmanBros]

//Slightly Offtopic

Tremulous needs an "official" definition for killwhore. I don't know how many times I've been called a killwhore just because I had a high amount of kills.

Exactly. Doesnt matter how many eggs you've killed, or any structures. At the end of the game theres always someone...

[BeerBastard]

//Slightly Offtopic

Tremulous needs an "official" definition for killwhore. I don't know how many times I've been called a killwhore just because I had a high amount of kills.

I would say a definition would be someone who goes out, to kill only. Not attack the other base. Sometimes its hard to tell, if some just get sidetracked on the way and have to return for health.

Another note is, I don't think it should ever be used before stage 3. Killing a lot in stages 1 and 2 have a goal in themselves.

[Kaleo]

You said "...end of rant." half way through? What was the second half?