There are many players out there that literally annihilate every player in pubs but are without a clan. The lonewolves should gather up and make a clan or something.
Well, in my case, I am without a clan because I exclusively play Aliens + Lerk. So I don't really fit into a clan setting. I imagine that's the answer you'll get from many other lone wolves. They simply only enjoy playing one side whereas a clan would expect you to split your focus.
"I want to play the game because I want to, not because I have to"
playing competitively can get tiring and is one of the quickest ways to burn you off a game if you don't absolutely love it. when you join a team, you've basically signed a contract saying that you'll be around to practice with them, especially if you're playing at the higher levels.
I know several people that are very good players but have no interest in clanning because they either are too busy irl or just don't have a taste for competitive.
I don't get it. Why do you have to use a 3rd party VoIP? the in game one works great.
For a variety of reasons. First we often are trying to organize two games at once and it is nice to pick from a common pool. Second we are a community of NS2 players and often talk after games end, pub together, play combat together, etc.
playing competitively can get tiring and is one of the quickest ways to burn you off a game if you don't absolutely love it. when you join a team, you've basically signed a contract saying that you'll be around to practice with them, especially if you're playing at the higher levels.[/quote]
Pugs / Gathers work nicely in that mindset since you can play when you want and how much you want without a commitment
There are many players out there that literally annihilate every player in pubs but are without a clan. The lonewolves should gather up and make a clan or something.
Well, in my case, I am without a clan because I exclusively play Aliens + Lerk. So I don't really fit into a clan setting. I imagine that's the answer you'll get from many other lone wolves. They simply only enjoy playing one side whereas a clan would expect you to split your focus.
"I want to play the game because I want to, not because I have to"
playing competitively can get tiring and is one of the quickest ways to burn you off a game if you don't absolutely love it. when you join a team, you've basically signed a contract saying that you'll be around to practice with them, especially if you're playing at the higher levels.
I strongly oppose putting comp gaming all the way into this context. The general idea is to get likelyminded people together to play some games in an organized setting. Everything else is details your team (including you hopefully) decide.
If you want, you can have a loose roster of 30 people and once a month you gather up 6 people and go play a round or two. Obviously you aren't going to reach the top level that way, but that's not any kind of a problem unless you yourself find it unsatisfying. It's never more serious or time demanding than you yourself make it to be.
I don't get it. Why do you have to use a 3rd party VoIP? the in game one works great.
The only thing you can achieve with the in-game voice system is the game chat itself, as in talking about the round when it's in progress, and if the game crashes, you're pretty much SOL. With a 3rd party software you can do the same along with anything from organising your lineup, deciding the server to play on, talking about the tactics, talking about tournaments, playing on public servers but only talking to each other as well as play other games with no interruption in chat capability, all this without taking into account the fact that some people might want to just hang around and chat without actually playing anything.
The in-game voice chat is really only useful in communicating with people you meet on the server and forget about after disconnecting.
The only thing you can achieve with the in-game voice system is the game chat itself, as in talking about the round when it's in progress, and if the game crashes, you're pretty much SOL.
I'll give you that one, for when the game crashes, although I've found it is pretty rare that NS2 crashes... at least for me.
With a 3rd party software you can do the same along with anything from organising your lineup, deciding the server to play on, talking about the tactics, talking about tournaments
You mean you have to do all that manually? Picking lineups, server, etc.....? NS2 gathers need to get with the times then and make things more user friendly.... I'm sure it would help start even more gathers.
To clarify, Team Fortress (Classic), had a dedicated IRC channel that everyone went to for gathers. This channel had an automated bot where an op could start a gather by simply activating the bot. Anyone in the channel that wanted to join the gather just had to type something like "join". As soon as enough people "joined", the bot would randomize the teams and send a private message to all of them with the server ip or link in which they could click to auto-join the server for them.
playing on public servers but only talking to each other as well as play other games with no interruption in chat capability, all this without taking into account the fact that some people might want to just hang around and chat without actually playing anything.
This doesn't have anything to do with playing in a gather....
What is the big deal anyway? It only takes one mouseclick to get into the gather channel, and you're good to go. Also, you're able to use voice detection instead of push to talk. Which can be handy.
What is the big deal anyway? It only takes one mouseclick to get into the gather channel, and you're good to go. Also, you're able to use voice detection instead of push to talk. Which can be handy.
You never want to hear someone talking when they haven't pressed down a button, you need to have in-game audio all the time; you should only be talking when making calls or strats, most obnoxious thing in counter-strike scrims you can get
Every voip program ever should be PTT enforced, god damnit I HATE it when someone starts eating/swallowing/talking to someone/grunting/moaning/whining/bitching.
You mean you have to do all that manually? Picking lineups, server, etc.....? NS2 gathers need to get with the times then and make things more user friendly.... I'm sure it would help start even more gathers.
Yeah, well, sorry, I was speaking generally, not only about ENSL gathers. But then again, even in gathers the same can be achieved with both the in-game voice system and a 3rd party software, just that the latter has way more options in customisation. If your only problem is downloading a program, I suggest you get over it. It's just so much more convenient.
What is the big deal anyway? It only takes one mouseclick to get into the gather channel, and you're good to go. Also, you're able to use voice detection instead of push to talk. Which can be handy.
You never want to hear someone talking when they haven't pressed down a button, you need to have in-game audio all the time; you should only be talking when making calls or strats, most obnoxious thing in counter-strike scrims you can get
Of course, no argument there. But that doesn't mean you can't use voice detection, as long as you set the threshhold high enough.
There are many players out there that literally annihilate every player in pubs but are without a clan. The lonewolves should gather up and make a clan or something.
Well, in my case, I am without a clan because I exclusively play Aliens + Lerk. So I don't really fit into a clan setting. I imagine that's the answer you'll get from many other lone wolves. They simply only enjoy playing one side whereas a clan would expect you to split your focus.
"I want to play the game because I want to, not because I have to"
playing competitively can get tiring and is one of the quickest ways to burn you off a game if you don't absolutely love it. when you join a team, you've basically signed a contract saying that you'll be around to practice with them, especially if you're playing at the higher levels.
I strongly oppose putting comp gaming all the way into this context. The general idea is to get likelyminded people together to play some games in an organized setting. Everything else is details your team (including you hopefully) decide.
If you want, you can have a loose roster of 30 people and once a month you gather up 6 people and go play a round or two. Obviously you aren't going to reach the top level that way, but that's not any kind of a problem unless you yourself find it unsatisfying. It's never more serious or time demanding than you yourself make it to be.
if you aren't playing competitive anything to get better at it, you aren't competitive.
you will not get above mediocre level in anything with what you described, thus not competitive.
you're thinking of PUGs, not competition/league play.
clearly this is as much my opinion as your post was yours.
There are many players out there that literally annihilate every player in pubs but are without a clan. The lonewolves should gather up and make a clan or something.
Well, in my case, I am without a clan because I exclusively play Aliens + Lerk. So I don't really fit into a clan setting. I imagine that's the answer you'll get from many other lone wolves. They simply only enjoy playing one side whereas a clan would expect you to split your focus.
"I want to play the game because I want to, not because I have to"
playing competitively can get tiring and is one of the quickest ways to burn you off a game if you don't absolutely love it. when you join a team, you've basically signed a contract saying that you'll be around to practice with them, especially if you're playing at the higher levels.
I strongly oppose putting comp gaming all the way into this context. The general idea is to get likelyminded people together to play some games in an organized setting. Everything else is details your team (including you hopefully) decide.
If you want, you can have a loose roster of 30 people and once a month you gather up 6 people and go play a round or two. Obviously you aren't going to reach the top level that way, but that's not any kind of a problem unless you yourself find it unsatisfying. It's never more serious or time demanding than you yourself make it to be.
if you aren't playing competitive anything to get better at it, you aren't competitive.
you will not get above mediocre level in anything with what you described, thus not competitive.
you're thinking of PUGs, not competition/league play.
clearly this is as much my opinion as your post was yours.
PUGs are Pick Up Games. No long term teams there.
Once we are talking about actually long lasting teams with some kind of identity, it's going to be damn hard to draw any clear line where the game starts being competitive by your definition. I guess if you want to have the league participation, you're going to force the team to play 2 hours a week to get the job done, but that's it. If we start talking about some kind of conscious attempt of self improvement or skill level, you can probably include or exclude a mix of teams from almost any level of ENSL. Some teams try harder than others and often it isn't really even all the way related to their level of play.
Most of all I just want to avoid sending out the message that comp play has to be something time consuming and requiring heavy commitment. For me the competitive starts when you're playing for a certain long term team and do your best to win organized games whenever they're on. After that, unless you count spending 2 hours a week to play a league match as the difference maker, I don't think there's any line you can draw to point out where the comp play starts.
After that, unless you count spending 2 hours a week to play a league match as the difference maker,
i suppose i'm biased, but in the past few games i've played competitively, that's pretty much exactly what it was even for the lower leveled teams, as it's the only way to progress up.
There are many players out there that literally annihilate every player in pubs but are without a clan. The lonewolves should gather up and make a clan or something.
There are many players out there that literally annihilate every player in pubs but are without a clan. The lonewolves should gather up and make a clan or something.
nakickstart
What do you mean by that? What is it?
You might've seen them if you watched the tournament yesterday. They're called HeLix now
I haven't had a chance to try out reddit (or the EU equivalent) pugs, though I am registered now and ready to go if the opportunity arises.
I haven't had many opportunities to join gathers this week, due to having to baby-sit (and therefore being at risk of needing to go AFK) - don't want to ruin the game for others if this happens. I will, however, be doing them any opportunity I get. I have had a few gathers where I've done really well, on both winning and losing team, though these are the minority - I will be focussing on practising these more to gain confidence in the more competitive game style.
I am tempted to try out for a clan, but am concerned that I don't really have enough hours at the right times to be able to put into organised play. eg 7pm on Sundays is about an hour too early for me to be able to play, which is bad for the ENSL league games, I'm led to believe. Baby's bed-time, followed by our dinner time means this just isn't possible. Are there slightly later games at all? In the absence of those, then gathers may be all I can reasonably expect to play.
Many thanks for all the suggestions and comments here. I have been paying particular attention to sounds, ie not rushing like a loon all the time. I always use sound a lot (other people's) and try to minimise my own, but focussing on this helps to hone those skills and game sense a bit, which has made a big impact even to pub games. I'm reckoning I'm at around 5:1 to 10:1 K:D on average for the last 2 weeks at the moment in pubs, based on the screenshots I take at the end of every game, and that's up directly as a result of the pro tips people have given on these forums to this and my other topics recently, so thank you for that!
Comments
"I want to play the game because I want to, not because I have to"
playing competitively can get tiring and is one of the quickest ways to burn you off a game if you don't absolutely love it. when you join a team, you've basically signed a contract saying that you'll be around to practice with them, especially if you're playing at the higher levels.
For a variety of reasons. First we often are trying to organize two games at once and it is nice to pick from a common pool. Second we are a community of NS2 players and often talk after games end, pub together, play combat together, etc.
playing competitively can get tiring and is one of the quickest ways to burn you off a game if you don't absolutely love it. when you join a team, you've basically signed a contract saying that you'll be around to practice with them, especially if you're playing at the higher levels.[/quote]
Pugs / Gathers work nicely in that mindset since you can play when you want and how much you want without a commitment
I strongly oppose putting comp gaming all the way into this context. The general idea is to get likelyminded people together to play some games in an organized setting. Everything else is details your team (including you hopefully) decide.
If you want, you can have a loose roster of 30 people and once a month you gather up 6 people and go play a round or two. Obviously you aren't going to reach the top level that way, but that's not any kind of a problem unless you yourself find it unsatisfying. It's never more serious or time demanding than you yourself make it to be.
The only thing you can achieve with the in-game voice system is the game chat itself, as in talking about the round when it's in progress, and if the game crashes, you're pretty much SOL. With a 3rd party software you can do the same along with anything from organising your lineup, deciding the server to play on, talking about the tactics, talking about tournaments, playing on public servers but only talking to each other as well as play other games with no interruption in chat capability, all this without taking into account the fact that some people might want to just hang around and chat without actually playing anything.
The in-game voice chat is really only useful in communicating with people you meet on the server and forget about after disconnecting.
I'll give you that one, for when the game crashes, although I've found it is pretty rare that NS2 crashes... at least for me.
You mean you have to do all that manually? Picking lineups, server, etc.....? NS2 gathers need to get with the times then and make things more user friendly.... I'm sure it would help start even more gathers.
To clarify, Team Fortress (Classic), had a dedicated IRC channel that everyone went to for gathers. This channel had an automated bot where an op could start a gather by simply activating the bot. Anyone in the channel that wanted to join the gather just had to type something like "join". As soon as enough people "joined", the bot would randomize the teams and send a private message to all of them with the server ip or link in which they could click to auto-join the server for them.
This doesn't have anything to do with playing in a gather....
[/quote]
You never want to hear someone talking when they haven't pressed down a button, you need to have in-game audio all the time; you should only be talking when making calls or strats, most obnoxious thing in counter-strike scrims you can get
Yeah, well, sorry, I was speaking generally, not only about ENSL gathers. But then again, even in gathers the same can be achieved with both the in-game voice system and a 3rd party software, just that the latter has way more options in customisation. If your only problem is downloading a program, I suggest you get over it. It's just so much more convenient.
Of course, no argument there. But that doesn't mean you can't use voice detection, as long as you set the threshhold high enough.
if you aren't playing competitive anything to get better at it, you aren't competitive.
you will not get above mediocre level in anything with what you described, thus not competitive.
you're thinking of PUGs, not competition/league play.
clearly this is as much my opinion as your post was yours.
PUGs are Pick Up Games. No long term teams there.
Once we are talking about actually long lasting teams with some kind of identity, it's going to be damn hard to draw any clear line where the game starts being competitive by your definition. I guess if you want to have the league participation, you're going to force the team to play 2 hours a week to get the job done, but that's it. If we start talking about some kind of conscious attempt of self improvement or skill level, you can probably include or exclude a mix of teams from almost any level of ENSL. Some teams try harder than others and often it isn't really even all the way related to their level of play.
Most of all I just want to avoid sending out the message that comp play has to be something time consuming and requiring heavy commitment. For me the competitive starts when you're playing for a certain long term team and do your best to win organized games whenever they're on. After that, unless you count spending 2 hours a week to play a league match as the difference maker, I don't think there's any line you can draw to point out where the comp play starts.
i suppose i'm biased, but in the past few games i've played competitively, that's pretty much exactly what it was even for the lower leveled teams, as it's the only way to progress up.
What do you mean by that? What is it?
You might've seen them if you watched the tournament yesterday. They're called HeLix now
I haven't had a chance to try out reddit (or the EU equivalent) pugs, though I am registered now and ready to go if the opportunity arises.
I haven't had many opportunities to join gathers this week, due to having to baby-sit (and therefore being at risk of needing to go AFK) - don't want to ruin the game for others if this happens. I will, however, be doing them any opportunity I get. I have had a few gathers where I've done really well, on both winning and losing team, though these are the minority - I will be focussing on practising these more to gain confidence in the more competitive game style.
I am tempted to try out for a clan, but am concerned that I don't really have enough hours at the right times to be able to put into organised play. eg 7pm on Sundays is about an hour too early for me to be able to play, which is bad for the ENSL league games, I'm led to believe. Baby's bed-time, followed by our dinner time means this just isn't possible. Are there slightly later games at all? In the absence of those, then gathers may be all I can reasonably expect to play.
Many thanks for all the suggestions and comments here. I have been paying particular attention to sounds, ie not rushing like a loon all the time. I always use sound a lot (other people's) and try to minimise my own, but focussing on this helps to hone those skills and game sense a bit, which has made a big impact even to pub games. I'm reckoning I'm at around 5:1 to 10:1 K:D on average for the last 2 weeks at the moment in pubs, based on the screenshots I take at the end of every game, and that's up directly as a result of the pro tips people have given on these forums to this and my other topics recently, so thank you for that!