oh come on, that's how MAD was formed initially. Course i was the cw clan leader at the time so it's a little different. Still regret the ugliness around it, but frankly, if a clan doesn't do any player retention and comraderie, then you better be really ative or you're just gonna lose people. It's their choice really.
And plus they followed moojuice. Despite their skills, they are retarded for believing a French-Canadian would bring a revolution.
I've only heard stuff about the way things went down with MAD, and I know that quite a few people from CW still resent you for it. But I always made it abundantly clear that if people want to go, then we could work it out more than amicably, as long as each player came to me themselves. That is, if Moojuice wanted to go, he could have said, "Hey look, I want to try out something myself, and a few other guys in EPIC are interested, that's cool right?". And as I said, all I'd ask is that each of those members speaks to me themselves, which Aridian and Reznov were both able to do. Instead, Moojuice went sneaky about it, and I had no idea which clan they'd decided to stay in until the day we scrimmed. And it's not as if we weren't scrimming. We were really active at the time, we'd just played about 5 scrims in 3 months. Like I said, I'm not mad that they left, I'm was just a bit disappointed at the way it went down. I mean, Reznov and Aridian were newish to EPIC anyway, so they probably weren't as embedded into the clan as others, so I don't feel particularly wrong-done by them. But with Moojuice, whom we took from BSID at his request, even though we weren't really 100% sure about his skill (at the time), nor his attitude, I was. I felt like we'd done him a bit of a favour at the time, so the least I expected was a bit of common decency back. But then again, this is the internet, so fuck knows what I was thinking.
Well, I guess I can't argue with someone who's calling me a shit player since I wasn't in the almighty EPIC. If this game had any where near the player numbers of retail/digital based competitive games you can be sure that some *X* clan would have came along quite awhile ago and taken you down from your high spot. But as with all things in life your arrogance is a moot point right now since the mod is in its worst shape since I've been playing in '08, and all this clan bickering is quite telling of peoples need to drum up drama in the forums because that has become the mod instead of actually playing it.
Admittedly I forgot about you Kayoss, and you were really the only player I ever thought was genuinely skilled in Consortium. And without a doubt, if it was a major commercial game, then there's more players, so you get more people playing, and thus the percentage of people able to dedicate 100+ hours a week to the game rises considerably, whereas at the moment, there are/were only a very few (YouzY, Pdezzi etc), and not enough to form their own clan. In fact, if the game was commercial, there would probably be quite a few of those clans, and not a single current clan here would stand a chance. Although I will throw it out there that given this isn't CS:S where you can form a team with 5/6 players, as opposed to the 20 required to have a proper functioning clan in Empires. So who knows. Either way, it isn't like that, and we've held the top spot for a good 3 years until we sort of stopped playing regularly back in September. I don't know if there's actually been any scrims since then though, but I know that an active clan would probably stomp us if they played us now. I always said, the best clan is always the most active one. And don't hate on forum clan drama, it's about the only forum drama that's actually interesting.
Nah, Consortium would have finally went 2-0 if pickled_heretic's squad didn't go against my orders and purposely abandon NW duststorm at the start of the map. I think Consortium would have eventually sneaked in a 2-0 if we scrimmed a few more.
All because it's about funny things, all other drama is like watching a cliche soap opera... oh what happened to that old humour from the BSID threads.
Had we carried on the way we were going, without a doubt we'd have lost both rounds sooner or later. The activity of Consortium was going up, and the activity of EPIC was going down. And as I said in the previous post, and every post I've ever made regarding this stuff, the most active clan wins. Consortium took those 2 rounds against us (across 2 matches) because we were rusty as fuck because we weren't playing much, and Consortium were putting in the hours. Obviously I still maintain that we had some pretty bad luck with disconnects in the canyon game, and gambling on a new commander for the first time in the Duststorm game (who fucked up), but in the same vein, I won't act for a second like we haven't beaten other clans because they had bad luck or gambled on a new player, because we have, on multiple occasions. The more active clan always wins. There's leeway, experience, genuine skill, strategy, but all that together adds up to maybe 20%, with base activity of the clan constituting 80% of how well they're going to perform. But I will say this. If we're at full activity, if every member of the scrim team in EPIC is playing regularly, and we're playing a decent map (not some shitty chokepoint map), you won't touch us, and let's be honest, you know that full well. But I've no doubt that old BSID team that people speak of, the same could probably be said for them, so who knows.
Me (Engineer) Simon (Rifleman) Opie (Engineer) Goose (Grenadier) Lion_IX (Engineer) The deaf guy that was absolutely awesome (Rifleman) Duke Pending (Engineer) Bojangles (Rifleman/Grenadier) Harlequin (Rifleman/Engineer) RPG (dizzyone) (Comm) ... What do you mean we have to field 15 people, goddamn young whippersnappers with their 20 vs 20 scrims Would also have included Headshotmaster but he'd would have wanted to have commed and rage super hard if denied :p
lol @HSM....miss those rages... hands down orig. BSID (which i scarcely got to see even when i started playing) was the best at the game at the time and likely would rock anyone these days if they were to reunite and hotjump into the game. They had what the average pubber never could develop consistently. Faith in their backup and knowing when to listen to commander (which is pretty much always [96% of the time] ) Props to the once great empire of BSID for the unique matches and strats that always made the game more exciting. EPIC is just different, there focus always seems to be loose and skill based, as in how many ppl can u kill before u die. To me that's not Empires at its best, but it does produce results.
Idk, I'd disagree with the latter part, in relation to how many people you can kill before you die. I generally feel that the best way of summing up how we played was just, if we don't know what we're doing, the other team certainly doesn't. But it's joking to be honest. We tend to recruit on raw skill rather than if they follow the commander or anything like that, I won't disagree, and I do prefer that we keep a very loose playing style, rather than being rigid to play. We never plan any further than the starting rush, we don't even choose research until the last possible second. But on the other hand, we separate the commander and commanding jobs, so I usually command from the field whilst someone else is in the CV. We keep a constant stream of information coming from our commander and for the most part, the team follows what I say to the letter, with some really advanced tactics at both a squad and team level. It's certainly not disorganised, just "organised chaos" as it were. I just genuinely believe that the single greatest weapon you have is unpredictability. So many scrims we've won from players doing stuff I didn't even ask them to. It's gotten to the point now where, I organise my 3 squads, and then I pick 1 or 2 people and just tell them to quite literally, do whatever they want. Cause mayhem in the enemy main base, dick around with jeeps, take out refs, do whatever. I think the game has evolved over the years. Maybe I'm using an analogy people won't understand, but back in the 50s/60s in football, formations used to be 2-3-5, with the 5 people attacking. Nowadays, you're more likely to see 4-4-2. To a lot of people this means nothing, but let me explain, that's a monumental shift in the style of play, for a game that, rulewise, hasn't changed at all. And that's what I think has happened in Empires over time. Whilst rigid coordination is very good at a low player count (i.e. what BSID used to scrim at in the 1.0x days), at a higher player count when we're talking 16-21 players, that tends to work against you. It's why we tend to play much more rigidly at 11v11, but we vastly enjoy the larger games where we can play in our own style. I don't know how many people can really understand what I'm getting at, but I feel like this is one of those things I myself really understand. I've played in excess of 100 scrims, and I've seen pretty much every setup for a team imaginable. Over time, I've just picked and chosen from the best I've seen and amalgamated them into the style that EPIC would play in. I always felt Opie was one of the top Comms I've ever played with. I can't say I rate HSM, but Valiant and Opie sit up there as 2 of the best pub comms I know of. I can't rate for scrim because I never saw Opie command a scrim and I always command our scrims, so Valiant never really gets a look-in. And what little I played with Goose during the old Empires pugs, he was fucking incredible, even though he barely played any more. He's one of my all-time highest rated players. And finally, Simon. I think of myself as a pretty good Empires player. I'm proficient with every class, I can command pretty well. I'm a really good all-rounder. But the one thing I genuinely think I'm the best at, is as a tactician for scrims. I make mistakes, but for the most part, I feel unrivalled. Except for Simon. Simon is the only guy I ever knew who could genuinely beat me in pure strategy. He's the only person who, when planning for a scrim or pug match, I could quite happily hand my team over to, and anyone who's scrimmed with me knows how fucking uptight I am about that. But as for teams overall, I think it's really about teamsize. If we were to go on about the best scrim team ever, I don't think you can, unless you pick a teamsize. If we're talking 11v11, where coordination matters most, that old BSID team probably wins out, because no clan can match that level of coordinated tactics combined with genuine talent for the game. But when you start getting to 14v14 and even on to 21v21, then I rate my own clan highest, simply because of the playing style we've adopted. Maybe I'm just drivelling on, but I've spent a good 4 years virtually studying how to win in scrims, and however sad it may sound, I feel really passionate about that. Pure Empires tactics, is just really interesting.
bsid actually did something similar. instead of trickster mouthing off every second of ever minute of the round, dizzy would just set waypoints "move to this location" and rarely speak as the rest of the team would proceed to slaughter whatever dizzy needed dead
Well EPIC is more team-oriented, which works for a bunch of point-and-click drones. But since they are so dependent on Trickster, they will not stand a chance against a half-decent team with coordination if he is not around. Maybe Kim Jong-Un (Lawliet) could lead them but I wouldn't go anything above MEG. Aside from the BSID rambo-style of play, I prefer squad-oriented play though you need to find enough competent leaders with communication skills (i.e. mostly a mic).
I think you're right. I don't think this is because the players in EPIC aren't good enough, but the honest truth is, I've built the playing style around me and what I can do. Sure, someone else could lead them, and over time they could change to their play-style, but the one we use now is based around me, and we've been doing that for 3 and a half years. It's not easy to suddenly change who's running things after so long of doing things in such a way.
well then! who can scrim these days? best believe i can field a team. who's down to play my team next sat 8/9gmt ish?
