Hey gents, I video'd the first pug last weekend from Tickster's team perspective. It was a fast game and a quick overview was: 1) Instructions on where to go by Trickster 2) Everyone changing squads to try to go to dam 3) Change of instructions so not everyone was going to dam by Trickster 4) Game start - everyone went to dam. 5) My squad (Alpha) hit north - BE was there. We wiped them out built north and oddly only a RAX was dropped. I was expecting a VF which is how we normally play that map. 6) Heading out with Trickster on foot to their base. 7) Whole squad dying on way to their base with no squad revive by engie I upgraded 30 seconds before he died. PRESS FSA - wasn't going to happen. 8) Screams that our base is being over run. 9) Death in middle. I think massive play tactics are very different from 10-20 player games. Having APC's spawning near end game was very helpful. But the COM being caught out in the open in a huge game is always going to be bad. Instead of staying with 30+ players defending - running into middle will result in quick death. I understand that you want to get out of base when you're being overrun - but I think it would have been better to move up to where the rax was outside the overrun base. Or instruct more APC's to be pushed and parked near the COM vehicle. Even a jeep to run over players while we took down their buildings would have been good. We didn't have enough grens or riflemen. Lots of guys running towards the buildings - I assume to throw engie grenades never made it. The grens were effective at a longer distance and were making headway. How many people mined the bridges ? Had we delayed and mined the crap out of main then jumped in the APC it might have helped. Anyway - credit to Trickster for trying to organize total chaos. Some dicks tried to mic spam him but mostly it was well organized. Why everyone went to dam was supposedly they missed the APC. I did as well - spent the time mining then killed myself and spawned in the APC to help take north. I'll rip the video down from 21 Gig and post - with link HERE when done. If someone has same from BE that would be interesting. I was setting up to video the second match and was kicked due to my not joining a team yet. So I went and did something more interesting. I can't report on subsequent match's. Next time open one or two slots as Spec and I'll do a over-view video with someone else. It's fun to announce the games and watch as the action unfolds. PS: My 1080p 27" monitor is due in shortly so videos will be higher quality soon.
Yeah, I kinda agree that going for middle when be had mongol APCs was sort of a bad idea. I'm still buttmad that I got stuck between two apc carcasses as a gren, not being able to do jack shit.
We had a similar game too though, except that it went more like 7) FNs voice tearing through my eardrums on attacking the comm in NF main 8) FNs voice rupturing my cochlea on chasing the NF comm going towards middle 9) FNs voice filling up every single neuron in brain, screaming to kill the APCs around the NF comm 10) Blackout for 5 seconds, all I can hear is the wild distortion of FN as he is yelling louder than his mic can handle. 11) The decibals are over 9000!!!1 12) Round is seemingly won, BE screamed our way to victory. Entire team proceeds to put microphones in mouth and yell "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH"
I didn't find it very enjoyable to play. Well I rarely like a game where FN exploits the rush weakness of the game. The newer money map makes him play normal - except he'll scunt into base and still try to exploit. So Trickster knew they would rush - I don't know why we didn't keep five or six grens back at base on a perimeter with cameras dropped everywhere. I think unless you define a perimeter and use the other 20 players to take the map - hell you need ten. Also I think you tell newbs to take dam. It doesn't take any high level of experience to take dam. You drop a camera then attack. Tell them targets won't be happening since you'll be too busy shitting your drawers. Once you drop a rax - you'll have ten engies building it in like 1/10 of a second and rushing into their base. Like they did ours. begin game two gren missiles would have eliminated an APC. A jeep is a bit harder but a rifleman next to the rax could eliminate that push. Tactics have to be completely different on massive pugs than on regular games. I think it necessary to define defense squads, some focusing on resources, and some immediately defined to attack and keep attacking. Once you get on the defensive you waste resources (people). Anyway - FN and Trickster stepped up and that was needed or we would have just been playing cards in the dam. So in that respect congrats. Although Trickster was animated - I don't think he was really screaming. Just constantly instructing the team. Only issue was lack of defense against the expected FN's sneak attack. Half of those guys who thought they couldn't get in the CV should have been positioned as defense. Heck I've learned to expect FN's sneak attacks and react quickly. He spawned his team next to my CV on one game and I immediately backed up - killed three, turned and got out of dodge screaming like a little bitch "GET BACK HERE OR GAME OVER". It was fun watching them attack the next location since they all dropped from the mountains. I saw five parachutes open and thought - HOW PRETTY. Team came back and I didn't even bother moving the CV, I just lobbed UGL at the CV. Shit I need to rip that video of the PUG.
Actually, I felt we had lost the game when the team rolled over in main and handed it to BE without taking E3 or their main. I took the CV off Spartacus and was relocating to north, where we actually still had buildings. I then caught sight of the BE CV and decided that, given we had 2 APCs in the area, I fancied our chances of melting the BE CV before they could get APCs to us. And so I rushed that CV. I walled FN and FN walled me. APC #1 got there first. About 5 people spawned from it and that was it. APC #2 drove away in the opposite direction from which I asked. Eventually, APC #1 died, APC #2 probably got lost, and thus I was with FN's CV pretty much on my own. I didn't get caught out and neither did FN. Both of us felt that we could kill eachother's CV before the opposing comm. Difference is, FN's team listened, mine did not. So in that respect, FN was correct, I was not. I also want to point out that despite how many people insisted on going to dam regardless of me telling them not to, it was still really poor. We should have had it and secured it, but we kept giving it away. Dam squad might as well have been the "limited skill" squad. As for "leaving a perimeter", you don't do that in Empires. You commit every single player you have to playing as aggressively as you can 100% of the time. This is how games have always been won, and how they will continue to be won. Defensive playing has never and will never be in the metagame. The best defence is a good offence. I still don't get how you can possibly insinuate that rushing is exploiting. Empires isn't a territory control game. It is and always has been a perfectly valid strategy. It's just that teams these days are hopelessly incapable of reacting to an APC. It used to be that if an APC got sighted heading behind your teams, people were very aware that it could end the game, and made damn well sure that they got rid of it. Nowadays, people seem to have the attitude that "someone else will take care of it". It's pretty fucking poor.
On this rare occasion, my intention is not to rip on Spartacus, but I do want to throw out there that he needs to work on his building placement. The north was just sat there with nothing more than a rax and 2 refs for at least 15 minutes, during which BE could have taken it at any point. I don't get this situation where commanders aren't constantly placing buildings or giving targets or relaying info. If a commander is really playing properly, he should literally not have time to spit he should be so busy. That base at top should have been clusterfucked with multiple spawns, vfs, a backup radar, turrets, armouries, repair bay, etc. We had the resources for it. I'm not by any means blaming Spartacus, that made absolutely no difference to us losing (given that our problems lied in offence earlier in the game, and defence later on an area I fortified after taking over the CV), but I just want to throw it out there that a lot of commanders need to step up their game in these pug settings. You can't treat it as a regular 5v5 pub game in which no-one will play aggressively. That's kinda why I love playing against FN. He knows what to expect from me and I know exactly what to expect from him. We may have different opinions of exactly how to go about things, but we'll both try and use every facet of the game that we can. I'd probably say that while my tactics are superior in a scrim setting where I'm able to rely on my team to do exactly as I ask, FN will usually get the better of me in a pub game where he's able to properly get the most out of his less-than-cooperative team, whereas I can't really force that level of cooperation.
You guys are (almost) all scrubs, I was playing on my laptop (worse accuracy due to mouse), without any sound (yay for situational awareness), with three people talking over my head and a 2-year-old noisemaker (baby) just rampaging around the room and I still placed top or close to the top in the two rounds I played out fully. Also 4 extra spots would be nice but that's already planned for next time. I hope I'll be able to play from home and record my POV too.
"Honestly, I'm not even mad. That was just an amazing movement by BE. Their entire team moved as one. That was incredible. I've never seen that many people from one team in such a high density." Oh Spartacus you and your cute little speech. So I watched the video of that mvalley round. It seems like the game was in constant jeopardy for NF, I get the feeling that pretty much everyone was ignoring trickster and just ramboing or trying to be individuals. Trickster can only command his own clan because EPIC will always play in a way he expects them to, but if it's just vets he's screwed. Sorry Truckstar, but you should reroll again for charisma. But honestly I'm kinda disappoint in that team of players. PUGs always show the worst as well as the best in terms of gameplay.
You make a baby rape joke, nobody bats an eye. You make a joke about hating emoticons and everybody looses their mind.
The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic Joseph Stalin Why is one mans death more of a tragedy then the death of millions? Because we can't wrap our minds around that level of grief?
Oh, you're absolutely right. I've never really been that great at controlling pub teams. Admittedly, I used to be a bit better a few years ago, but I was never really able to capture the attention of a team like FN or HSM could, or even some of the shittier commanders. It simply isn't something I'm good at. I'm also not very good at dumbing down strategies in an attempt to get people to actually follow them.
I have never heard myself on a mic that much. I'm six feet tall and 21 years old, but I sound like a little bitch. I don't think anyone likes the sound of their recorded voice. There's something about how it sounds just slightly different than how you hear it vibrate through your head. And hot damn, that's a shit mic. Lol, but you're right. I was pretty shit in the CV. I struggled to give relevant targets and fulfill all of the other com duties. This kinda freaked me out.
It's always a blast to see things from the receiving end. Also thanks JGF for recording and uploading. It's given me insight into a few new tricks and techniques for pug games that I will have to try next time.
Holy shit Twitch.tv is crappy took me 30 minutes to watch, 30 minutes to buffer. Sorry about the Ref Extrems, I'm not great at reading text chat. So in lieu of Twitch.tv's carriers peering with someone who can actually get the bandwidth to me I found this - might be useful for anyone else trying to watch those clips but bufferign every few seconds http://www.twitchtools.com/clip-download.php
