I hate to be a nag, but a sentence should generally start with a capital letter and end with a punctuation mark. Groups of punctuation marks should be in multiples of three or in singles. "figgure" isn't a word.

That's a stylistic issue, the solution to which has varied alot throughout the history of modern English literature. I for example have learned my written English by reading really old and boring books. In most of those books sentences that are long and overly complicated exist in abundance.

Do you guys seriously expect this topic not to be locked?

Can I suggest you get back on topic.

First off: i have not played Competative NS. i am strickly pub here. however I played in a clan for Day of Defeat a while back so I am assuming the feel is similar to here.

The feel of a clan game where you are part of a TEAM all working together to achieve goals and objectives is very satisfying and also much more adrenaline intensive. The organisation level is set at a MUCH higher bar. I find it amusing that there is a great deal of "racist" and "flaming" chatter on Comms during a match. We always kept such to a minimum to facilitate communication. if it is happening out of scrim... Why? I understand that there are hotheads out there and also uneducated folks that believe they have the only opinion that matters but still. I have not bothered to try and seriously work on my NS skills to competative level for several reasons. Mostly time but also anytime I see ANY mention of clan versus Pub players or play it is instant flamewar. I enjoy both types of play. I agree that clan play is an entirely different kind of play expirence from PUB or even pick-up-play (which is NOT the same). I agre with Puzl in that I choose to not look into a clan that plays competatively because of what I see as a culture that allows (if not encourages) such commentary. Players that spout such are damaging to themselves, the clan, and the servers they like to play on because they will drive away folks like myself and Puzl that have no interest in hearing what they have to say. Yes I could mute them; Why should I? i will simply find somewhere else to play. If I DID join up with a clan and they had a player or 2 that insulted me constantly for not doing what THEY thought I should be doing I would definetly want to mute them. however on a 6v6 match muting team mates is a good way to get kicked from the team in not the clan.

We had several members that lost their tempers regularly that we forced to stop spouting off and control themselves more. Guess what... THEY GOT BETTER!

Either way, clanners must understand that If a pubber comes by and the clanners are all insulting each other constantly and ripping on the pubbers poor skills. How long do you think they will hang around unless they know someone else in the group? Not long you can be sure. i understand that it is all in fun but to an outsider it apppears to be fairly brutal and mean spirited. Dont get me wrong we had plenty of such in my clan but we were VERY good about keeping it among ourselves and corrected each other publicly anytime one of us started ripping on a pub'er. As such we were fairly popular as a pub (which also helped recruiting).

If you want to attract myself and others like me to Clan play. Calmly tell what I am doing wrong and why. Call me a ************ and I will ignore (mute) you no matter how valid a point you have. It's not about how right or wrong what you are doing is. It's about how outsiders perceive it. Does that make sense?

What you don't realize however, is that you are in the minority. Many experienced players are simply turned off of giving advice because the VAST MAJORITY of pub players that I (and others who) try to give hints to react harshly to it, like you're insulting them or something.

Example:

A couple days ago there was a guy who was clearly a new comm. It was only 4 marines vs. bots, so good time to learn right? I asked "are you new to comming?" and he asked if I wanted to comm, to which I replied, "doesn't matter to me if you're a new comm, you gotta learn sometime."

A few minutes later he starts scanning hives to see if they're dropped, so I say "to save obs energy, you can find the hive by setting way points on them" and he cuts me off immediately saying things like "you elitest ######, if you want to comm then go ahead" and I responded with "You keep comming. I don't mind that you're a new comm. I'm just trying to offer you some advice" at which point he tells me to go ###### myself and he hops out of the chair and insults me some more.

When this sort of behavior is the norm (although not to this extreme ususally), what do you want? The result is that experienced players trying to be helpful get so disgusted with the backlash from people who seriously need help that they simply stop with the trying to offer help.

I think it's that people just want to play the game and can't comprehend that they're doing it wrong.. I mean it's a game, how can you do it wrong right? Anyone telling them they're playing a game wrong must just be some ###### I guess... I really don't know what goes through their head, but I think it'd be a good psychology research project.

I bet that works both ways. Not to defend his rudeness, there really is no excuse for it, but maye he had been treated badly under similiar circumstances before. The important thing is this: If you guys want to bring people into the competitive fold and if you agree that politely helping them to learn is a good way to do it, then you have to accept that in your struggle to educate people you will meet people who do not want to accept your help and who reactly rudely to it.

BTW, I also think it would be a good psychology research project to understand why some people fail to comprehend that there is more than one motive to play a game. Not everyone wants to be the best they can be. Many of you dismiss them as scrubs, and the convenient label serves to build a new negative stereotype, but all you do is reinforce the division and undermine your cause.

And you say that ths behaviour is the norm, yet I can name several people who, after all these years, continue to be polite and helpful, and learn to ignore those who don't want their advice. It does work, maybe not at the rate you would like, but what you gonna do? Get mad at people?

This may very well have been the case. Although I thought that even after his initial rudeness and my continuing to be polite he would have saw that I was acting with good intentions.



I completely agree with you on this. But teaching people the game isn't enough to get them into organized play. Radix has been trying to teach and get people into organized play, but I think just getting the word out that there is a place to go to be taught the finer details of NS is a difficult job.

I also can't just go into a server and start asking random people if they want to join competitive play because that's basically recruiting, which is usually looked down upon by server admins.

There are some in the competitive community who I firmly believe want the competitive community to die, otherwise they wouldn't do so much to destroy it. They are the ones giving the competitive community a bad name by purposely act as annoying and rude as possible. They too would probably make a good psychology project.






When I said that, I was actually looking at it from their point of view. They look at it as a game where they just jump in and shoot aliens or bite marines and to them that's all the game consists of and to them it doesn't need to be anything more because they enjoy playing it that way.



I'd also like to point out that I've met several people who have very willingly took my advice and have become understudies of sorts, but this is quite rare.

With this type of social problem, I think progress for your objectives will usually be small in comparison to the noise of rejection. It takes a strong character to remain composed and focused in the face of a general rejection, but I still applaud anyone who still continues to help those new to the game.

The point I am making is that for every experienced player sick of people who rudely reject an offer of help there might well be an inexperienced player sick of people insulting him for his lack of experience.

In particular, I really feel sorry for new commanders, who get torrents of abuse for being anything less than optimal in their decisions. You get a guy electrifying an RT or building a TF in base and people immediately start to verbally abuse him and vote him out of the chair.

Once I saw a guy on a combat server who tried to bhop, and I told him how and taught him while the game was going. He learned how to after ten minutes.

Then there were those two or three players from a still popular euro public server who I helped to learn how to bhop.

That's twice I get to help people improve during four years of playing NS.

You are correct on so many levels. I do a fair amount of teaching of the nubs that wander into our servers. (especially since we run a marine bot server as 1 of our 3 servers). The thing you all need to remember is that the general public is full of all types of people. Like I have said many times the Gene Pool has a shallow end and a deep end. I ALWAYS start off by asking if they want advice or help. Tell them to ask questions, ect. If they say yes, go for it. The thing is that although the Pubs do not need to Clans to enjoy the game, The CLANS need the pubs to find new recruits. Competative Players are the elite of the game. You all have taken the game to the next level and this is very very cool. But not all of us need to take it to that level. I can enjoy a game of vollyball or football with my friends w/o being in the Olympics or the NFL. I'm happy playing at the level I'm at. Competative play would be a blast; I know this! However, i do not have the time to commit and it would be unfair of me to pull your gameplay down to my level.

Besides, who says the way that many pubbers play is wrong? yes, dropping WP's on the hives would show where the hives were up but does it matter? There are several levels of play for NS. using WP's like that is a very advanced technice that would matter in a clan match because clans would react to a ping. It's rare to see that reaction in a pub game so whether or not we ping is irrelevant. In the pubs if the comm is using up the ping frequently he could drop anothor Obs. they have independant E pools so he gets 2x Obs Energy. Keep em in different places and you are less likely to lose MT too.

I would say that (for example) Running is lvl 1 for movement.
level 2 would be wall strafing - easy to do slight increase in speed.
lvl 3 is along the lines of B-hop and stutter walking to stay silent. Really this level is only neccesary in a competative match. For those types of play it is neccesary. To tell us we are doing it WRONG is insulting. yes, there is a better way to do it but at the level we play at it is alot of extra work for very little reward.

That said, In my expirence simply asking someone if the want advice goes a long way.

BTW if you see me in game somewhere... I'm generally always open to advice. Howver, If I think it is irrelevant I will tell you. It's a two way street.

I probably teach more people to bhop than I do anything else, not that teaching to bhop is all that frequent.

I run a server that plays ze_marinebhop 24x7 (unless we're using it for a scrim). Often I'll be practicing on there and sometimes people will join who have no clue to bhop and they ask how to do the first jump, so I spend like 10 mins explaining and watching them and some just give up, but others manage to get it.

For some I change the map to ns_bhop so I can spec them properly.

A couple of times I've been asked in game how to bhop and I tell them to add me to friends and follow me to my server to learn.

I'm not a clanner, but I have had similar situations with teaching. What you have to do is just learn to ignore the bad ones. If they don't want advice, don't give it. You can usually tell (if with voice chat) within about 30 seconds of talking if they are going to be receptive to advice or not. If they start to edge towards flaming or whatever, just ignore, and mute.

Patience is the key to not only learning, but teaching as well.

The trouble is that everyone (as this thread clearly shows) is entrenched in their own opinions, and this is because there is no new blood coming into the game either through the competitive or pub scene.

I am a pubber only, not that I'd necessarily rule out competitive play in the future, and I see the same people all the time regardless of where I go to play. Unfortunately within all these people (and again somewhat shown on this thread) the most vocal minority form the stereotype for everyone else in their grouping.

What we need is more players actually coming into NS, new players being confronted with a friendly pub scene that clanners take part in, and being offered advice in a friendly manner is what is needed to start bridging some gaps. Unfortunately I have to believe that asmodee's attitude is a severe minority, not only amongst the competitive scene but also the pubbing scene, where people have played this game for so long that everyone, regardless of why they play, gets angry for no good reason at new players. I also feel trepidation on occasions where I could be giving advice to not so hot players in case all that comes from it is an argument that is going to sully my experience in the short hours I can currently play.

I like the OP's idea, I think it's a better way of thinking about nurturing the competitive scene, but so are healing rifts with communities. I'm not going to say pubbers are all innocent of anything but Puzl is right when he says that if competitive NS is to survive then it is competitive players that need to look at what's going on and what needs to change, which is why I commend the OP.

I play on Yoclan and I find it annoying that on this very thread they're referenced as being people that are anti-the clan scene. Maybe they are, I don't know...which is surprising since I've been playing on their servers on off since 2002 and haven't heard any sustained abuse against the competitive scene. I also don't believe that all pub scenes are negative by definition, regular players always playing at the same time on the same pubs have essentially become low level competitive players at least. If I play on servers like Yoclans at a certain time I know I'll know and be comfortable with the abilities of at least 80% of the people on the server, with the games being played fairly competently.

So again, if some pub servers are already acting like this, where people are regularly playing at times with people they know then the gap between the two groups is a lot smaller than some people are making out, if only some differences could be resolved on both sides.

I didn't realise this was a professional forum.

Hate 2b a nag bt its nice to just type without having to FINK about wat YOR typing too much because U know the peepz on the other side have enough brain cells to figgure out what you're trying to say.

Did you struggle to compute? If so.. I'm sorry, maybe you should pay less attention to the details and concentrate on the overall.

back on topic -

I taught tevinhead how to bunnyhop, biggest regret of my life .


Clanners shouldn't need to tempt pubbers into clan play, pubbers can easily group together and form a clan, do it on your own terms and for your own reasons.. this thread is just a solution for people with less time on their hands.


a lot. 2 words

less euros plx

Ah, how many Sphere matches ended due to me saying "###### guys BSG is on, recycling base" and going to watch it.