Nationalism and Ns2
Nordic
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
The other day I was spectating on my regular server. There was a European spectating with me. He said that Americans play too defensively. My regular server does tend to play a bit to defensively as marines, even compared to other American servers so it seems like it could be true. This was not the first time I have heard a comment like this either.
Are Europeans more aggressive in their play? Are Americans really that defensive? Is this just a public difference, or does it apply to competitive ns2 also?
I have also heard that Aus players are/were bad ass in their play of ns2? Is/ this true?
How do different regions of the world differ in their approach to playing ns2?
Are Europeans more aggressive in their play? Are Americans really that defensive? Is this just a public difference, or does it apply to competitive ns2 also?
I have also heard that Aus players are/were bad ass in their play of ns2? Is/ this true?
How do different regions of the world differ in their approach to playing ns2?
Comments
Personally, I don't necessarily play the same way all the games.
Sure, I play differently in different games myself all depending on my mood. I don't know if I could call what I do rather defensive or rather offensive. During the most recent draft tournament, our commander kept saying "Don't be pussy" in a Russian accent most of us were trying to be defensive.
This is what I am talking about. Russia has its own separate ns2 community in many ways. I hear things like this, that Russians play weird. But HOW do they play weird? What is different?
In other words, they play bad and I don't understand why the level is so low on their servers. You got it now? I still prefer my first sentence...
The second thing is that russian community is pretty little and in the same time is pretty self-contained. Our community not enough big to develope player's skills itself. It's just group of 30-40 constant people that plays every evening together. If not for my efforts, it is unlikely russians would have any NSL team for past 1,5 years.
Look at this graph from steamspy:
http://i.imgur.com/C3PdglU.png
Russia has the biggest coefficient of Players / Owners (except some very small countries). That means russian servers is the most rookie-friendly servers in the world because we have higher percent of newcomers that don't throw away ns2. Especially taking into account that 90% of russians prefer to play only with russians.
And yeah many russians really don't understand some depths or basics of the ns2 gameplay. But IMO europeans and especially americans don't understand it too. They just always play by the usual "pattern". However, the russians don't know even this pattern.
A greater knowledge of the game and confidence of your own abilities allows you to play much more aggressively than otherwise another less skilled player normally would since you are more qualified to quickly analyse the situation and execute a strategy.
I think the main difference is that NA has a lot more players and servers and there isn't much of a community. I think its partially because there is a steady stream of players starting the game and quitting after a few weeks which results in individuals improving but not the server and then that results in the skill stagnating. AU and JP had less players and only a couple of servers each, so they have more of a community, play longer and eventually get better. Those that don't improve tend to migrate to other games or servers.
For any pub server you play on, if you have regulars, they should be considerably higher skilled than the rest the average servers anywhere.
Another thing I've noticed is that American pub commanders get phase gates way too early. They research phase tech before even getting weapons 1 with the expectation of securing tech points but by the time it's finished, aliens have taken 60-75% map control and phase tech never gets a chance to be used. Perhaps this contributes a lot to the 'defensiveness' in American pubs?
I'm sorry but I played a couple of times on AUS at that time and the level wasn't this high to be honest. The most popular EU servers gathered better players in my opinion, so you take away the random servers and rookie friendly ones. Maybe your players were more intelligent in their way to play the game, as you said, welding each other, and that kind of stuff but the overall skill, the individual skill level was at best, equal to those EU servers I'm referring to. Despite the silly ping difference between me and you, I've never felt any kind of difficulty or hard challenge. And well, the lesser amount of servers might help to gather up all the players onto one or two servers and therefore, increase this skill level, I guess.
Pela is just a stick in the mud, it depends when you played, with any server the skill will vary depending on who's in the game. I've had games on Aus servers where it felt like a 9v9 comp game and also games where I've just alt-f4'd immediately.
Mainly EU mornings so AUS evenings. But I agree, there are good and bad players in every countries. To me, there's no continent with a higher skill level in overall. Only servers at best.
There are top tiers and low tiers wherever you are. personally i feel like i rarely see pgs before upgrades anymore and i play predominantly NA servers. The ones that do usually get chewed out once we start getting destroyed. Granted I try to stick to the captains server where bad comms are pretty much not allowed, but others, you get a mix of everything.
Russians are just... Weird, yeah. I remember comming for the russians on russia#1 or something once, it was the weirdest game ever. I mean, except for the commander who barely spoke 6 words in russian, it was just odd. Marines run around like confused guinea pigs for 10 minutes, and then successfully turtling for 30 mins with only data+crossroads. I do love playing with the russians though
I think it's more of a thing like someone mentioned above, in that server-based communities stagnate to a certain extent. Pub servers with regular populations develop their own meta games. YO clan had very same-y games for the last 6 months/year it was regularly populated. When I went to play on TTO servers, the game flows were quite different.
My experience -- and note, this is strictly pub play:
* Koreans -- Of all the worldwide servers I've played on, the Koreans exhibit the most teamwork. If you're a comm, and you ask marines to go somewhere, they all do it. No people randomly running off doing their own thing, which is most US/EU games, these guys actually listen and follow your orders. It's like a commander's wet dream. On top of this, they all look out for eachother, lots of welding etc.
* French -- haven't played on an all-french server but played a number of times with french comms on EU servers. This is just my experience of a handful of comms, but they all seemed to be risk-averse, thinking it better to hold onto current ground at all costs and rarely risking one tech point to take another.
* US/AU -- mostly we play the same, I think, though there seem to be more egos on the field on American servers.
Anecdotally, clan play:
* I've not done NS2 competitively, but back in NS1 days one thing I definitely noticed in the competitive scene vis-a-vis aussies and yanks is that aussies tended to take a lot more risks and think outside the box, like a flat-out relocation outside a hive in a tournament game.