There's a big thing that most players lack: Situational Awareness
SA isn't just being aware of what's around you. It's being able to simultaneously look at where your team is, where the enemy team is, the current score, the time on the clock, the movement/flow of the game, and the common strategies used for a variety of maps and game modes. In a way, it's kind of like a sixth sense. A gut feeling of how the game's going, and what you need to do to achieve victory or at least avoid a complete stomp.
I typically run as the drop commander when I play in a group because I'm familiar with the common strategies for each map. I know a lot of unorthodox strategies as well that work in specific circumstances. Overall though, I'm able to maintain good SA of what the enemy team is doing, which allows me to stay a step ahead of them.
Example 1 (Wanderer can back me up on this one):
- Map is River City Assault. Our team spawned on the side of the ship. We had 1 disconnect.
- Naturally, the team gravitated towards fighting behind the Citadel, which often isn't a good position. Sure enough, we get pinned down there, and we already lost 2 players who went far left towards the upper city side overlooking the dropship.
- At this moment the score is 0-2 (0-3 technically because of disconnect). We have 9 guys directly behind the citadel. The water to the right is clear, and on the enemy team's side, there's 4 mechs behind the citadel, and 1 mech near their base. The rest of their team was on the left side near the dropship area after our 2 doomed players tried to push left.
- If we pushed across water to the enemy team's base, we stood a good chance at being able to capture it, or force their team to come at us one at a time. So I called for everybody to start moving far right to go towards their base.
- Result: 1 single player pushed with me (I'm in a Kit Fox with ECM). Halfway across the water while we're taking fire from the few mechs that are behind the citadel we notice our team is still hiding behind their side of the building.
- Both of us turn around and again I state they need to come across water now while it's mostly clear. With that we begin moving again to the right. Once again we get halfway across the water and notice our team isn't following us.
- At this point as I'm running back for a third and final try to rally the team to push, a Jenner on top of the Citadel killed me with a well placed laser shot.
- The enemy team is still split. My team still has a chance to take their base with minimal effort, so I again state (while I'm dead) that they need to push NOW or else they're going to get picked off one by one where they are. Nobody moves.
- Nope, they elect to stay there. A couple minutes later another 2 friendlies die, and the enemy mechs that were near the shuttle have now come back to the citadel's left side. The enemy team pushes from both sides, catching our remaining mechs in the water behind the citadel from the right and left. 2 escaped towards upper city but were hunted down in short order.
Naturally, I was livid.
My plans aren't flawless. Sometimes the enemy does something unorthodox I wouldn't expect. Sometimes they push faster than I can react and the general plan turns into, "Shoot a lot and hope for the best." I make mistakes that will cause my team to lose because I, nor anybody else, can perfectly orchestrate a good plan 100% of the time.
I will say this though. No matter how low in skill the individual players on my team are, if they follow the plan, we often win. The times that hurt the most are when I have a team that follows my plans and we lose, because I know I likely contributed to that failure with a bad plan, or a plan that was countered. It doesn't happen often as most losses happen when my team pays absolutely no attention to the plan, but when it does, I apologize to my team, congratulate the other team for playing well, and I move on, hoping to learn from the game to better my future strategies.
Edited by Aresye, 24 August 2014 - 11:13 AM.
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wanderer, on 24 August 2014 - 09:33 AM, said:
