Team Member Etiquette

A Guide to Team Member Etiquette
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Introduction

I am starting this thread to present a guide, built by imput from the community, to address etiquette in team play. Being a good sport should be common sense, but you know what they say about common sense. The idea of this guide is to address common problems we face when playing on a team with random people through multiplayer servers.

Feel free to offer you point-of-view, suggestions, and any constructive criticism about the article I present here.
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Similar Posts

Since I failed to search the forums before posting this thread, I missed that this topic has been covered. A commenter on a previous post pointed these two threads out to me. If this topic interests you, check them out.

Shared Armies toggled on: Etiquette
Team Game Etiquette

Note: Please do not reply to the above posts. I received a PM from a moderator for doing so. He removed my bump to prevent having multiple posts on the same topic on the front page.​

Starting with my own point of view, I will provide and outline of the points I'd like to address in team play. Obviously as the situation changes and as the battle grows to be more complex, practicality will win over preference.

The Starting Base

Teammates should try to avoid landing right next to each other at the start.​

Base Building with Shared Teams.

As a player's value is what he contributes to the team effort, a player can hardly contribute if he cannot lend direction to the troops. For this reason, I recommend that players build the factories and the fabricators they want to work with and to not mess with the fabricators and factories of other players.​

My Units are your units, but...

Considering what I've said about fabricators and factories, I must address the combat units. Do what needs to be done with them. The only stipulation I have is that you don't take them all leaving the front I am expanding vulnerable to attack.

If you are going to take the units a player has built, it helps if you inform them of your actions.[1]​

Commanders

Some might say, "Don't touch my Com!" But I am perfectly fine with others using my idle commander and I am more than glad when another player takes control to save the commander from destruction. In the very early stages of the match, one should avoid using another's commander, because the commander plays a very important role in the initial building process.
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Communicate

At any point where you see a problem area in another player's base or units, let them know what the concern is and if you have taken corrective actions. The in game chat is valuable, but even more valuable is voice chat. I've recently joined a clan who uses Teamspeak. If you can't use voice chat, that's ok. Just try to use the chat system and ping.
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Auto-build Mods

The only one I am familiar with is called Auto Factory. After my first shared army match, it occurred to me that I should uninstall it for the sake of the other players. As for the other auto-build mods, if any, I suggest not using them when sharing armies.[2] It may even cause problems, being that two different processes are trying to do the same job. I doubt they are designed for shared armies or even if there is a means for mods to coordinate actions.​

If you see an issue BE the player that A) addresses it calmly and B) takes care of it

I once had a guy grab my commander and queue it to build a huge line of T1 energy. I stopped it three times, before I gave up. I tried to addressing the issue in chat, but I got no response.

ok....Why are we having a thread on etiquette?

I am pretty sure I explained. If it helps, I was inspired by the response I was getting from another thread.

Unfortunately most people on the forums don't need to read a thread like this. It is newer players who don't visit here who are the ones mainly at fault for rude team behaviour.

That's fine. I got some negative feedback from another post and I thought maybe feedback could also refine my behavior as well.

Edit: If this post has no value then it will simply get drowned in the history. No big deal.

I think asking should be in there too. Or at least notifying. "I'm grabbing these units *ping* I'm getting attacked"

Too many team games I have no idea where the backup troops I sent to my front line went. They just disappeared.

Noted. Thanks. I've added more to the outline and sited your post in the section on units.

My idea on shared army teams has always bean that everything is allowed, but that requires complete and real-time communication. You can't, for example, just grab someone's Commander and not tell them about it unless you're saving it from certain destruction. This is why I severely dislike playing shared team with randoms and/or newcomers and only ever play them with people on TS with me.

I hear you there. I've only recently started playing with voicechat. I probably wouldn't have made this post if I'd been part of a group sooner.

Nice post. Maybe you could add some rules about UI mods. I hate teamates with autobuild mods.

Good point. I quit using a mod that auto-queues idle factories, after I started playing shared teams. I just went to look for it, get the name, but I couldn't find it. Hmm...

Auto Factory is the name. I found it.

Edit: Sorry for the double post. I click reply instead of edit on accident.

I think it would be nice if there was increased ways to communicate without voice chat or text chat.

Take a look at Dota2's communication. They have done it brilliantly to allow players who have been muted(mostly as punishment) to still be able communicate on a level that is constructive. They have two different types of pings, one good ping and one bad ping. They have a chat wheel which you can say certain prewritten phrases.

You should post this on the steam forums too, new players look there.


Also I think it would be nice to have in game voice chat for team games.

Those are nice ideas. If there were a thread on that, maybe we could get Uberent's attention.

Edit: To add to that, maybe there could be a better chat window too. It's easy to miss that small window in the bottom left corner.

Another idea would be to attach a message to the ping itself. And possibly a dialog that allows you to check history of the ping message system, in case you were busy when it sounded and didn't get the chance to look at it.

whilst I agree with the intention here, i have to say as someone who mostly plays team games with randoms, such issues arise really quite infrequently. At least a lot less frequently than i would expect form such a new gameplay mode. people seem to either accept what you are doing likely has a reason, or are noobs and let you get on with it as they cant do any better. rarely do you encounter the 'dont touch my units' brigade, at least not in shared armies mode as they default to team armies mode. kinda nice in a way to be on the internet and people coorporating. next stop, world peace.

Yeah but it would be nice to increase the communication level of a group of randoms playing a team game together. When versing a team who is all on voice chat they are at a very large disadvantage. If that could be alleviated then it would make for better games.