Zuri
saviour of the lions
Posts : 87
Join date : 2011-06-08
 | Subject: "The Difference between Good and Great"  Tue Jun 14, 2011 2:39 am | |
| Actually just stolen from thread below: http://www.teamquitter.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2848Actual thread is this one, where Tommy basically explains how to improve. http://www.teamquitter.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=215Quoted from Tommy, from [QQ] - Quote :
- Experience, coordination, taking advantage of resources, and common sense.
Basically, to get good at the game, you just need to keep playing. Of course, there are people who have been playing since release and are absolutely horrible, but that is because they haven't built on their experiences. Just doing something isn't enough. You have to take something away from it. Look at what you did right, what you did wrong, what they did right, what they did wrong, and how you could have improved. Not only do you need to understand this, but you then need to implement it in a logical fashion.
Guilds who have been together for a long time have distinct roles for specific players and they all know how they must interact with one another. If each player on the team is just playing their own game, the team as a whole will fail because of the lack of a unified idea. With good coordination and knowing your teammates, knowing what to do in-game will become second nature. When people ask who calls tactics for QQ it's kind of strange, because I have to respond, "no one, really". Of course, most of the time, Smgz will be the one calling for offensive pushes or adaptations, Famous will be calling movement or offensive splits, Josh will be calling defensive splits, and so on, but everyone knows exactly what their specialized job is, how to communicate it, and how to execute. Communication shouldn't be exact directions, it should just be an objective statement about the state of the game. If I'm at the flagstand as a monk, and Josh says 'there is an assassin, warrior, and mind shock ele in the base', I should have already tabbed through their flag team and evaluated their threat. 99% of the time in such a situation, I know to hit 'x' and get back to the base asap. There are no tactics called, no one is asked for in the base, and no one needs to be told what to do. On the other hand, if I find that there is something like two warriors and a dom mes, I'm going to call out to send an offensive counter-split. Everyone will know their roles, and the defensive support character will remain at the stand while another team collapses on their gankers. This is where coordination and experience interact, as you need to be aware of all possible scenarios, be aware of the current state, and choose the appropriate course of action. If something is not working, tell your team about it. If something is working, tell your team about it, if you have any idea at all, tell your team about it. Too many teams that I have guested with say things like 'everyone stop talking, you're cluttering vent, let me call tactics', which is absolutely ridiculous because the lack of useless information should be assumed and a single player can never accurately gauge the status of their own team or the opposition. Contributions from every single player are absolutely vital and the interactions are what make teams great as well as fuel excellent communication. The monks generally let the offense know what their capacity is at any given moment, the offense generally lets the monks know of necessary pushes and the possibility of impending pushes or falling back, and the flag runner needs to let the entire team know how he can cushion himself into the flagstand (followed by massive use of heal party, AMIRITE?). If all of the proper information is fed to every member of your team, then they can make the appropriate sacrifices and decisions to win games.
Taking advantage of resources is a short one and a very basic one. Basically, know what everything does. Know every single skill, every single ability, every single synergy, every calculation, and basic game mechanics like that. Also be very aware of what is currently being run, what has been run in the past, and what success they have had. If you are curious as to how a seemingly novel build or strategy might play out, it's probably posted on the forums somewhere. Another source of this information is observer mode. Obs mode is not something to rely on primarily, as your own experiences will be far more valuable in the learning stages and progression up the ladder, but make sure high-end tactics and builds are something that you are familiar with.
Finally, what I believe to be the biggest reason that seperates top players and guilds from lower ones: common sense. This applies to pretty much all aspects of the game. Someone asks me for help with a build. I say okay. They give me a skillbar. It's absolutely horrendous. I ask them why they are using the skills that they do. Response: "DURRR". I say okay, well then, why that armor set? "DURRR". Hmm, how about that superior divine rune, are you actually getting anything out of it? "DURRR". Now realistically, I could just tell them how to make their builds the best, but that really won't help them. When I started playing the game, I got my initial mesmer builds from the forums and never questions the skills on them. It wasn't until I started to analyze the skills and their synergies myself that I started to build effective character and team builds. Most players either don't know why they're doing something, don't care why they're doing something, or are just plain stupid. For newer players, I try to rule out stupidity, but can't emphasize enough how important it is to analyze every last aspect of something in order to come to a decision. Thoughts such as "my bar is good because it kills lots" and "this skill is good in this build because it's a degen skill in a degen build" need to be properly evaluated, because chances are that the bar can kill a lot more or another skill can supplement a degen build even more. The majority of players don't know how to or don't care to evaluate their decisions. It doesn't always need to be entirely conscious, but you really need to fully understand exactly why you are doing every action. Too many ideas seem rather mindless, such as when the domination mesmer goes back to defend his base alone (an action I saw by a top guild member this last week), the monk equips a superior rune (a recent conversation I recently had on guru), using a paladin (the old premade), or the leader creates a team build out of character templates (which I experienced last week during guesting. The leader was like, okay, we're going to run a crip shot, a dom mes, an emo, and two warriors, with umm, let's see, an air ele runner. And then they went on to rage as if they actually expected victory through those antics). It's too much of the pug mentality, and that shouldn't be what's going on in a guild team. I don't want to call it stupidity as much as it is a failure to reason, but in order to be a top guild, you honestly have to think a lot more and try a lot harder. Does that mean playing a lot more? No, of course not, but it means understanding each of your decisions in order to ensure optimal results. For new players, they're going to need more experience in order to be able to do this, but for those who have been around, it's simply a matter of wanting it more and being willing to think about every last detail and try harder. Is that always worth it? Not necessarily. If one simply wants to be a casual gamer, then they are free to do as they like, but if one really wants to win and be competitive, it's absolutely vital and it's mind-boggling to me that they're not willing to make such a basic committment. Once again, it's not about playing more, it's about more intense evaluations of the game when you do play that will lead to a more complete understanding, and thus, better results.
I realize that I haven't specified where the top guilds break away from the "rest" in many parts of this post, but in terms of the positive qualities that I laid out, you can basically use the heuristic of "the top teams have it, the rest don't". Let me know if there's anything that I need to clarify.
EDIT: To add onto what Josh said, it's always clear when guesting or watching obs mode which members of a rank 50 guild are truely good and deserve to be in a rank 10 guild and which members are absolutely horrendous and don't deserve to be in the top 1000. There are always members of those mid-ranked guilds that you can mark as horrible, and it's always a wonder why they are allowed to play. They then, slow the progress of the rest of the guild. As Josh said, sad but true. | |
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