[Noobs] Philosophy of a Team Game

Philosophy is the key word here. This is a guide of sorts to help new gamers, or gamers new to online multiplayer. MNC is a great game, and a great team game and it kills me to see people treat it like a single player death match against bots. So i want to lay down a few guidelines to better the public community, with the hopes of raising the competition in pubs.

Mindset of a Killer
Like many veterans will tell you, obsession with KDR is a mindset that has been imposed onto gamers through games like counter-strike, call of duty, and of course, Unreal. But the news here is that MNC is not any of those games. MNC has an objective, and its not to kill the entire enemy team. Just remember that having a godlike KDR and losing is still losing.

[Advanced] KDR and KDA are statistics that seem to rule the gaming world. Competitively speaking, KDR and KDA are great ways to assess ones self after a game. But this really only applies to a competitive match up. This is because KDR is only a valued stat if you have a team of competent players vs another team of competent players. The first thing people will point out if you brag about your KDR is how poor your competition is. In every game, there are other statistics that you should have your priority based off of. If you are looking to be a killer though, i will list target KDR for different classes.

Sniper- High kills, low deaths, low assists. Our #1 KDR fanatic. and its ok to fall prey to the KDR mindset when playing sniper. You should try and kill everything in front of you, from a safe distance away. Upgrading your priority skills first, then beef up your base defense with all the extra money you are going to have. Annihilator presses are last resort. Im not saying you never press it, but if any other class in MNC can get there first, you should let them press it. This is because you have low survivability and no escape ability.

Assault/Gunner- High kills, medium deaths, high assists. Your meat and potatoes of your team. One pulls aggro, the other a master flanker. Pick your poison, but just remember that you are your teams front line fire power. Notice the "medium deaths". You are going to die, its in the job description. Dont go PvPing by yourself to boost your KDR, but rather identify your team mates and pick optimum opportunity to lay the hurt down. Example: support has a forward fire base which has been seen and is under pressure. This is your chance to flank(assault) or assist(gunner). As good of a killer as you are, you also make an excellent body guard.

Tank- medium kills, low deaths, high assists. I love what you do.....wait. But one of my personal favorites here. The tank is a force to be reckoned with. Use his death spin to instantly kill bot waves and early game squishies. You shouldnt be focused on kills, you should focus on pushing your lane. But should the opportunity present itself, jump>float>land>spin>charge. Obviously you need to learn to dodge stuff when floating, but that just takes practice. Anyways, the only reason you focus so much on pushing your lane is so you can get to what you are REALLY good at, killing turrets. Grenade 2+ and the jet gun will melt lvl 1 and most lvl 2 turrets. As much damage as you can potentially do, remember that you are the slowest class in the game so getting back to the front lines can take a while. So long that the whole push you just started could be lost. DONT DIE

Assassin- low kills, low deaths, low assists. my least played class, so i feel more comfortable with a link: Here

Support- medium kills, low deaths, medium assists. Hands down my favorite class of all time no matter the game. This guy makes a team of average players, way above average. Remember your name(support) and the world should be in the palm of your hand. You arent frontlines but you are forward. You arent a killer, but you will get kills. You arent the scariest class, but you can do some pretty scary things. The thing is, you shouldnt be focusing on anything but not dying(in relation to KDR). However, good firebase placement will score you alot of kills and assists. Just remember that you should never be hugging your firebase. There is always something for you to do. Over heal turrets/pros, harass turrets with airstrike, upgrade/hack turrets, buff bot waves, zone control, shotgun taunts, the list could go on forever. The point is, dont be that guy who throws down a firebase outside the main base to only sit there and over heal it. Reserved for link(A full guide coming soon).

MVP
Being the MVP in MNC will come from two things:
1. Territory control
2. Organized pushes
These two things are what will separate the men from the boys. Be the guy to tell your team to push lanes. Be the guy to tell your team that we need turrets. Be the guy who watches the annihilator. Be the leader, be the MVP. If everybody has this mindset, your team should be in firm control of the game and a win should follow suite.

[Advanced]
Territory control- This is basically zoning. Just like in a MOBA, keep the other team away from your bots. You dont have to kill them outright, you just have to keep them away. I like to use the Gunners Mortar for an example. You can shoot this thing in a pros general area, and he will move from that area. I promise. Dont chase him away, just let him know that this is your space and he is not allowed. If for some reason he doesnt get the message, he will get it soon when he is dead. This type of technique can be used with almost all classes, across almost all games. Just remember that eventually you will become the #1 target, so dont claim too much territory at once. Essentially, you want to imagine a line down the center, and anything on your side is no mans land. You want to *slowly* extend that line further away from your base, and closer to theirs. This is mainly the job of the Support and the Tank. Keep that firebase inching forward, so that your tank can clear bot waves with cover. A lvl 3 firebase will also be a beacon for assaults and assassins, so make sure its in a spot that can hit bots and pros but is still in a hard to reach spot so your team mates can heal in peace

We have found the enemy, and it is us
Be accountable. Be a captain. If something goes wrong, assume it was your fault and that there is something else you could have done to prevent it. If you die, assume it was your fault. You were over extended, you over estimated your own ability or even that you didnt tell your team what the plan was. Dont blame your team. The blame game is for losers, and we arent losers.

Understand your role
Playing support? Keep the pressure on. Playing assassin? Make sure every bot gets cold steel in the back. Play the role you are supposed to play. Nothing, and i mean NOTHING, can replace this notion. Do your job, do it well.

One life to live
The last point for success in my philosophy is playing like you have one life to live. In a game with little penalty for death, dont throw your life away. Play like you are unable to respawn once you die. Or, at the very least, make sure that you take something important with you. Not a bot, not even another champ. Im talkin turrets and money ball. If you are going to die, make the enemy team make a choice. Either focus on eliminating you to protect their turrets, or lose turrets to try to stop the bot push. Make your death come with a consequence. Dying because you just wanted to fight somebody is dumb, and you should feel dumb for doing it.

and that pretty much sums it up. Personally i apply this philosophy in every game i play. And i have been playing games for a very long time, and i am good at ALOT of games. Take my advice if you are genuinely interested in being an asset in team games

If any other players have other things to add feel free.

tl:dr uninstall and go back to sim city

It's "a lot" and not ALOT especially not in caps.

If you're talking philosophy I'd rather recommend Chance's Quake Bible ( http://www.myeg.net/article/article_det ... cle_id=281 ) because he bases his theories around insights.

Your entire guide could be summed up as "don't die, be smart" without giving any concrete advice or even numbers to get by.

I'm having a bit of trouble to see the use in your guide but please - by all means - enlighten me (as it is the point of philosophy to gather new insights and to prove one's own ignorance)

well first of all, chance's guide was a great read. I hadn't come across that before and it was fun to read it and think "yup, yup, that's right, yup" because everything is pretty spot on.

but realistically, he spent a lot(grammar police) more time developing that guide then what i put in. I wrote this guide after a couple days of pubbing and thinking to myself "what could instantly improve my team's skill?". I wanted something short and to the point, attention spans on the internet can be hard to keep.

i do like how you summed up the guide. it is all about not dying and playing smart. i do believe that i lay out a very basic and concise mindset for new or noob gamers to utilize. honestly, most people need to take baby steps first and thats exactly what this is intended to be. i could spend hours developing in-depth analysis of these very concepts but would it really improve somebody if they havent applied this yet?

i am interested on why you would feel that you cannot get any use of this

Basically this tells you to be a Teamplayer.

What are the class roles?
How does one control territory reliably?
How does one gain the ability to see his own mistakes in times of doubt?
Why should I not put my life on the line? When could it be OK to do so?

Since we're talking newcomers here they need explanations, so they understand why it matters.

This is the driving factor when adressing new people, to give them insight. I don't gain insight by reading your guide, it tells me what to do without telling me what to do or why.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you'll feed him for the rest of his life.

I'm a new player, so I guess I'm your target audience.

And I'm curious... Do you really have success telling your team what the plan is? Like, on the in-game mic? Just random people in a random server, and not friends of yours?

Because I saw those guys. One of them was a tank, and he was standing under the enemy's shielded moneyball, railgunning it from two feet away, while a rocket turret shot at him until he died. His friend the gunner was posing like a statue perched atop a cylinder outside our spawn on spunky, right over the support overhealing his fully-overhealed firebase in a defensive position, even while I shouted ATTACK ATTACK, THE BALL IS DOWN in the chat window.

But at least their hair was perfect.

If I was starting a philosophy guide for pubbing, I would start with the fact that both teams are probably horrible. Then I would move into the personal responsibility you mention, but I would go in a completely different direction with it.

Basically, I believe you should assume that you have to do everything for yourself.

Territory control is for comp games, you should be too busy for that in a pub, and anyway you can't rely on your team to exploit the advantage it creates. It's just another word for deathmatch in pubs.

And lastly, in a game where dying has little penalty, I do not see it as obvious that you should avoid dying.

I think you should shed all fear of death and overextend yourself outrageously. Because remember, just as your team stinks, so too does the enemy. How will you tell how far this particular pub full of random chowderheads will let you go if you aren't even asking?

Never show them the respect of fearing death at their hands, unless they have earned it through repeated domination.

But that's just my way... if you're out there having success with whipping chowderheads into line, maybe I should hook up my mic and start experimenting with reporting turret status and asking for lane pushes.

So talk some more about that if you don't mind.

Grimbar is pretty much dead on the money. What I take away from the OP is ways that you can achieve a "win", but the only reason I understand that is because I already know what all of those things mean and do.

One example is this

VERY GOOD philosophy to have, but doing that doesn't directly help you win games. It helps you become better at the game and is the foundation of all strategy, but its also a bit misleading. Saying you should always blame yourself means that you don't have an understanding of what you are doing. It would be better to teach people how to analyze their (and their team's) play.

Also something newer players need to learn is how to remain calm and properly defend rushes/aggression. Biggest reason I see losses is a team, and players, crumbling under pressure.

thanks for the quality replies.

so, first with grimbar....

you can see that i do lay out basic examples for every aspect, but at the same time they are not extensive. if you read through again quickly trying to answer these questions, the answers are there. Granted, like i said in my previous post that i did not expand my thoughts further into a more advanced breakdown. The only thing that i believe may not be explained is territory control, but as you know, that is a complex idea that differs from map to map and class to class

once again i do believe this does, but due to your words of wisdom about fishing (sounds like my dad) i will revisit this guide to clarify further.

yes i do. and im not saying you HAVE to be the one to do this but if you find that your team has zero organization then yes you should assume that role. You dont have to be bossy, but saying "guys we need turrets BAD" or "we are losing the bot push, lets create some pressure" should do the trick. Most people will have a positive response to this.

the common mindset. but in reality if both teams are horrible, then the team with more organization will win. If you consistently throw your life away then it become a grindfest, the clock ticks down to zero, overtime begins and both money balls lose their shields. Whereas if you were stay alive, and direct your team you can achieve what i call a "base lock" meaning your bots are pushed fully forward and the enemy team is having trouble leaving their base. The benefit to this is that your money ball is protected by its shields while the enemy money ball is under constant fire. all of the sudden, your team of chowder heads feels like all stars

agreed. will update this further due to the high demand of more indepth analysis. or potentially a new guide, for, you know, us old school dudes

There is a bit more of a penalty for dying than you would think. There are several things that happen when you die.

1. Of course your not on the field, therefore the other team can push harder and get further.
2. Your not earning money. just like in other games (provided were not talkin zombies) a dead person cant benefit the team.
3. The longer you live and the larger the kill streak you get, the more money pr kill you get. (up to 100$ iirc)
4. If arent dying that often then the other team isnt profiting from your death.


So not dying does 2 big things, it limits the amount of money the other team recieves that means they have to chose more btwn towers or skills. They wouldnt really have excess money to spend willy nilly. or they would have to choose btwn a skill or the 1st anhiliator.

And it gives you a larger chance to earn more money by getting kill streaks. more money for your team means more, well I hope you get the jist.

It's even worse than you say, Fitz. Dying also loses your partial juice bar, and - worst of all - your speed boosts. This last point means that you have to run gold speed, thus "losing" your golden endorsement, which sounds like lunacy to most people who live one careful life instead of many furiously violent ones.

I am surprised to hear my way described as the common mindset. I thought it was the opposite - that everybody and their brother plays with "stay alive!" as the #1 Thing Above All Else, Obviously.

I forget who said it, but one vet posted telling me he would not even trade his life for an annihilator press. I would hesitate so little on that decision that time would go backwards.

But my lineage hails from Tribes 2, where the hotkey for suicide was pretty heavily used.

zomg!!! a tribes player?!?! played Tribes vengeance pretty heavily myself. I didn't know people like you existed.

Staying alive is one of the highest priorities in any team strategy based game because your presence on the field helps determines what kind of map control you have (which is the most important thing in MNC).

However, some key momentum swinging plays require a sacrifice. The more common examples of these are sacrificing on an annihilator to prevent (or ensure) a breach that otherwise could not be prevented. Now, a worthy sacrifice and getting yourself killed are two entirely different things and knowing when to make that decision requires a lot of experience and a lot of not dying. Its much easier to understand a game if you are alive for most of it

Probably the case in MNC but I'm not sure you can make such a universal claim.

Anyway, didn't mean to derail the thread! I'm actually encouraged by the OP's claim that he's had luck with organizing random pubbers via the mic. Maybe I'll hook mine up and start experimenting!

Maybe I've just pulled on a tangent of your guide, but some tales and tips of being "team captain" just by reporting some information/needs over the mic would be interesting content to me.

added advanced sections for the mindset of a killer, and territory control

will be up by the weekend hopefully