55 replies to this topic

[DaFrog]

Sjorpha, on 10 December 2015 - 05:56 AM, said:

Name a top tier sports team, in any sport, with a single bad player in it.

You need a bit of everything in the sense of different skill sets in a strong team, yes, but all those different skillsets still need to be top notch in a comp team. "A bit of everything" in that sense never ever means including a player that isn't actually comp level, it just means to find a top notch defender, a top notch attacker and so on for all the roles you need.

Look, what you're seeing here that you don't like is the basic mindset of competitive gamers. The problem with raging about that mindset is that it is what drives many good players to get good in the first place. You can go out of your way to avoid playing with people who think like us, but I can almost guarantee you that you will then be stuck with generally weaker teammates.

Classic cake and eat it, you want the good players to be in your group to carry you but you don't want them to act and think the way they need to stay good/get better.

But regardless of what we might disagree on, your ragequit drama fit is completely uncalled for. The FRR hub during this event was constantly FULL of mixed groups for you to join. There was 10+ 12mans going most of the time and I saw good players scattered all over the place, you had no shortage of groups to play with mixed skill levels if that was what you wanted.

If you don't like how your unit is run then why not simply switch units to one you like better or hang on the hub solo for a while? You had every opportunity to sort out your playing preferences without the hissy.

Well obviously here we have someone in favor of that behavior and who doesn't study sports history.

Every team is filled with one to two players that are under par in major ability categories, or are older than their prime, or have had serious injuries, but are still on a championship team. The reason ? They bring something to the team that is more than just sheer trigger/hand/eye coordination skill.

Look at all the times countries have decided to make a pro sports team to send to the Olympics: quite often that team didn't get even a bronze medal. Too many egoes and not enough key aspects of the game covered.

The reason Canada has fared better the last 2 Olympics on the ice hockey level is because instead of recruiting the best 25 players, they recruited the best players for specific key situations. Patrice Bergeron is not even close to being the 4 th best canadian centerman in the NHL, but yet he was on both gold medal teams.

Again, if all you guys are happy with that, go forth and multiply. I am not. I asked a question. You all gave your answers, and I am taking steps with that in mind.

[Sjorpha]

DaFrog, on 10 December 2015 - 10:54 AM, said:

Well obviously here we have someone in favor of that behavior and who doesn't study sports history.

Every team is filled with one to two players that are under par in major ability categories, or are older than their prime, or have had serious injuries, but are still on a championship team. The reason ? They bring something to the team that is more than just sheer trigger/hand/eye coordination skill.

Look at all the times countries have decided to make a pro sports team to send to the Olympics: quite often that team didn't get even a bronze medal. Too many egoes and not enough key aspects of the game covered.

The reason Canada has fared better the last 2 Olympics on the ice hockey level is because instead of recruiting the best 25 players, they recruited the best players for specific key situations. Patrice Bergeron is not even close to being the 4 th best canadian centerman in the NHL, but yet he was on both gold medal teams.

Strawman.

What they did in Canada was create the best possible team they could, and all those players are still professional level hockey players.

Casual MWO scrubs are not the equivalent to Patrice Bergeron, he was the best possible choice for that specific role. It wasn't the fact that he was subpar at something that made him a good choice, it was the fact that he was really good at something they needed. You don't get away with implying that being bad automatically brings "diversity" in any positive sense, most bad players are simply bad without bringing anything to compensate for it.

A strong team includes the best possible choices for each task, but it does not include bad players. If you're a great strategist, a great scout, a great dropcaller or whatever might be your way of being good enough, but you actually have to be really good at that thing you're good at and you need to prove it. And you also have to be reasonably good at the actual fighting, there is no way around that because for every players only good at say leading there is a player who is good at both calling and shooting, and guess which one makes the best teammate?

The equivalent of the star spamming you're talking about would be throwing together the biggest names of MWOs comp units and expect them to automatically be the strongest possible team, which would probably be a bad idea or at least risky due to big egos just like you say. (But on the other hand EmP, and HoL before them, is pretty much exactly that and they are the best, so obviously it can work too if someone is strong willed enough to lead them.)

That doesn't change the fact that to make a competitive team in MWO you need 12 competitive players, not "stars" but reasonably competitive level, and it doesn't change the fact that a more competitive branch of a big unit needs to take special time to play and train together if they're going to achieve anything.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be mixed skill groups dropping, I enjoy that a lot and I have spent a lot of my MWO time doing exactly that in 1st Hussars and on the FRR hub. That IS the most common type of 12man on the hub, it's actually a lot harder to gather a competitive group and you really shouldn't blame people for wanting to do that when they can.

Edited by Sjorpha, 10 December 2015 - 02:08 PM.

[nehebkau]

Dunno,
I think that once you start sacrificing inclusiveness and fairness you do more harm than good you get from wins. If a player wants to move to a different group because she or he thinks that she or he will do better in that group -- that is one thing. If there is a mandate to do so it's something different.

That, of course, relies on the charter of the unit. If the unit's mandate is to be competitive, then, it is the leader's responsibility to take steps to ensure that happens including making the most competitive drops they can make. If the mandate is inclusiveness, fun and fairness then that should be the leader's focus which diversity promotes.

So I guess there is no right or wrong without knowing the unit's primary mandate -- in some units its perfectly acceptable and in others it isn't.

On a personal note, I would rather have s**ts and giggles than go all military comp mode. Some of my most fun games have started with pando inadvertently dropping an arty strike on us just after drop.

Edited by nehebkau, 10 December 2015 - 03:49 PM.

[Ivan Romatovich Kerensky]

I am the worst CW player in the FRR. Bar none. I have zero issues with my unit mates grabbing someone from another unit for a night of competitive play. I'm in it for the lulz anyway.

[BoldricKent]

I'll take deFrog side on this, if you have a working 12 man team doing cohesive drops
and someone jumps in to pick out and breaks drop team, without taking care for replacment,
its a misuse at best. Since we are addressing last event, where forming drops and their numbers
were most important factors....killing or disabling drop team for another is very shortsided,
without even getting on morale check.
For such cases, units would need a bit more organization, dependent drops leaders, varied
on time table..etc...i talking about premade premades, a companies that are formed not on a spot,
but on previous agreement that would train and fight together with our without event....
i havent seen such deploying rooster yet....but it would be wise to set it up, at least for bigger units.

[Bud Crue]

In re BoldricKent's point regarding "dependent drop leaders" etc.

I think some of the units do exactly this. Many know for example, that teams affiliated or even within MS have their own sub-units. I would guess there is very little poaching between these units during a night of drops (I may very well be off base here). In these more competitive units I think the issue is about cohesiveness: some of these groups know their members so well that at least in the short term (during a tournament for example) poaching would probably be less than ideal for both the teams being poached and the one getting the player.

Here in the FRR though, I see it as more of a morale issue (and I think that is what Dafrog's OP goes to). For most people I play with in SO and 1stH, etc. if some one "ordered" a member of their unit to join a different group, such an order would likely be ignored unless the player receiving the order wanted to go play in a different group. That doesn't change the fact however, that someone in this normally casual, fun, half-drunken, environment is giving "orders" in the first place, and such orders (outside the confines of a match) are out of character to how we normally conduct ourselves...during a tournament or not.

Edited by Bud Crue, 12 December 2015 - 07:46 AM.

[old man odin]

Bud Crue, on 07 December 2015 - 04:44 PM, said:

Wow. I had no idea that we were the largest faction of the inner sphere. Also, I guess Clan Wolf must have more "warm bodies" than all the other clans combined; more than most of the inner sphere.

Just here for my 'told you so' moment:

http://mwomercs.com/...id-stats-part-1

FRR are the largest IS faction. Clan Wolf have almost a thousand more people than any other faction.

[Bud Crue]

Odins Steed, on 13 December 2015 - 06:24 PM, said:

Just here for my 'told you so' moment:

FRR are the largest IS faction. Clan Wolf have almost a thousand more people than any other faction.

Wow, I really had no idea about the relative sizes of the factions. Always learn something in this game.

[nehebkau]

Odins Steed, on 13 December 2015 - 06:24 PM, said:

Just here for my 'told you so' moment:

The fact that you had to come here for an 'I told you so' moment is a good indication that you put too much of your self worth on a video game and far too much worth on what people think about you on the interwebs.

[Sabertooth1966]

Odins Steed, on 13 December 2015 - 06:24 PM, said:

Just here for my 'told you so' moment:

http://mwomercs.com/...id-stats-part-1

FRR are the largest IS faction. Clan Wolf have almost a thousand more people than any other faction.

I believe that the number in the first stats by faction is how many actually participated in the event. Not how many are in the factions. What those numbers actually show is that we had the most players that took part in the event for the Inner Sphere.

[Tarogato]

nehebkau, on 15 December 2015 - 09:54 AM, said:

The fact that you had to come here for an 'I told you so' moment is a good indication that you put too much of your self worth on a video game and far too much worth on what people think about you on the interwebs.

Did you really expect somebody to make a major point like that in an argument and *not* come back with the confirmed evidence to show that he was correct all along when people didn't believe him? Being right about something feels good.

[nehebkau]

Tarogato, on 15 December 2015 - 07:14 PM, said:

Did you really expect somebody to make a major point like that in an argument and *not* come back with the confirmed evidence to show that he was correct all along when people didn't believe him? Being right about something feels good.

having been married for several score years, I have no understanding of this "being right" thing that you mention.

[Amro One]

They are entitled as much as you are to this matter.

[Veigle]

DaFrog, on 06 December 2015 - 06:08 PM, said:

If I want to join OLD, I am sure Veigle will back me up. I am not a turncoat like Sawyer ...;-)

Damned Frogs

[Chromate]

Did someone say....Hockey?

[A Bag Full of Puppies]

Hopefully when/if cw phase 3 drops and planets actually matter, the players will recognize that poaching could be detrimental. Used to be in a big milsim unit in Davion and got tired of being called inferior by others in the unit because we weren't considered "comp level" individually, but when we dropped together for cw we were a force because we didn't care if the plan sucked or not, we executed it and I swear that a 12 man executing any half decent plan is better than 12 players tripping on their epeens heading into battle.

So yeah we lost to superior teams but we also beat superior groups of individuals...

Don't mess with chemistry!