Commanding is about leadership. Many less successful commanders assume an autocratic leadership style, giving commands and waypoints and becoming steadily more autocratic as they find people disregarding those directions. Autocracy is one end of the leadership spectrum.
Players failing to obey orders and pursue a commander's strategic decisions is always a failure of leadership on the part of that commander. The only exception to this is if a team willfully conspired en masse to disobey a commander for troll lol's, which is obviously an irrelevant edge case.
The only solution for commanders wishing to get players to more reliably pursue their strategic vision and orders is to provide better leadership. Punitive sanctions such as resource stripping is not better leadership. A discussion of how to provide such leadership is beyond the scope of this thread.
I'm not the type of autocratic leader, and i would debate if players failure in obedience is purely commanders fault, same as the only exception which is rather rare to happen under the mentioned circumstances but i don't think further exploration of what i think is right or wrong is needed.
I wouldn't want to argue with Mods, but one aspect of P/P zone was left without notice; mainly donating for the purpose of surviving.
Like i've mentioned a couple of times, in case of losing all extractors, and having not enough resources to put at least one back; even in case of enemy backing up, team is unable to stand back on their feet due to those two facts "lack of resource" and "no extractors", commander can't pull out backed up resources out of his sleeve and by a magic trick fix the whole situation. Currenly there isn't a solution to this type of scenario. But having so many people notice all the possible ways of abusing P/P zone idea, it warms my heart that community is so willing to reveal a balancing issue. Surely it would be seen wrong if commander would abuse his power, same as so many troopers that are permitted to abuse their freedom. But in the end, it's the commander that can be penalized, put under pressure and finally responsible for losing the game, average troopers shouldn't fear bigger control over their actions from someone who they can eject as a commander; they should be worried about if what they are doing benefits them as a team, rather then grants them and them alone, bigger res.
The probability of a deliberately errant player is equal for all commanders. If you can't get the average pub team to follow your strategic direction, it is a failure on your part to lead and interact with those players in the most effective way. There's no way around this.
That is why commanding is so hard. That is what separates this game from the animals. That is why good commanders are so rare. That is why the thrill of successfully commanding a team, and the satisfaction of being well lead, is so utterly unique and satisfying.
You, as a commander, must take total responsibility for your leadership and its results. The morale, effectiveness, and responsiveness of your team is your responsibility. You have carrots and sticks at your disposal, they are all available in the broad locker of human social interactions. Use them. Take responsibility for yourself and your team. Win.
While trying to salvage the dead weight of a bad player is reasonable, I feel that this is not the solution. It would further complicate the commander interface, and while that would be fine alone, it also introduces potential balance issues and would likely not be too effective. This games balance is prone to large shifts over minor changes, and this is a completely new way to gain res, so problems would be inherent within it. In addition, as others have stated, most players will help and follow along if clear orders are given. Most times I rambo off are when the commander is giving no clear objectives in hopes of getting something started, or when I spot a potential vulnerability created by the commander's efforts and deem the benefit greater than helping the team. In either case if a commander tells me to do something else I will, and it has been my experience that most players will too. If the entire team is deliberately ignoring you then just leave, there are better servers out there. I think adding a votekick option would help much more than these zones. In the case where there is only one or two completely unhelpful dead weight players, then kicking them would help everyone out and do it without potentially unbalancing the game. Furthermore this could deal with afk players, which are in my experience far worse than unhelpful players. Afk players make your team count as larger than it actually is, and actually do nothing. Unhelpful players can still accomplish something, even if it is just drawing off enemies from you helpful force. Teams so often send two or three people after a single rambo, meaning that a large push always gets the advantage number wise. With votekick trolls and the willfully unhelpful are no longer a problem. If you are looking for more serious games than pubs do gathers.
I think a resounding flaw in many conceptual approaches to this game, is the assertion that you have to account for bad players.? I just don't feel that, at it's core, this 'belief' has any real weight to hold up any argument. There are players with over 500 hours in this game who are considered 'bad' by others, and in comparison to them, do we really shape up? Scary thought. I have over 800 hours play time, I can't recall the last time I spoke of bad players, because there's only players. The player spectrum of the game, get used to it, it's permanent.
I think a resounding flaw in many conceptual approaches to this game, is the assertion that you have to account for bad players.? I just don't feel that, at it's core, this 'belief' has any real weight to hold up any argument. There are players with over 500 hours in this game who are considered 'bad' by others, and in comparison to them, do we really shape up? Scary thought. I have over 800 hours play time, I can't recall the last time I spoke of bad players, because there's only players. The player spectrum of the game, get used to it, it's permanent.
While I mostly agree with you I feel there is a difference between being worse than others and just playing bad. Playing bad comes from doing something wrong, which is generally a lack of knowledge, and thus in my opinion not a huge problem, as it only takes a little communication to deal with it, and communication is what this game is all about. Then there are the rare people who willfully play bad, which I think are often overstated, although somewhat justifiably. They are incredibly frustrating, but equally rare, I have only met around three people who act this way in some 200 hours of playing. Despite there rarity, a well implemented votekick would completely remove the problem. For dealing with the other group of people, good communication is essential, and be encouraging lest they take it personally because nothing good comes from bickering in this game.
Skill mismatches are an entirely different, and there is not a lot that can be done about them. Because of the asymmetrical nature of the game it is easy for people to become better at one side over the other, and I have seen servers where everyone is better on one team than the other. In addition high skill players can just carry their team to victory. Not a whole lot can be done about it, just lose and learn, and have some fun while you do it. Too many people get butthurt about losing a game, although some of my favorite moments in this game have been products of losing in it. This isn't League of Legends or Starcraft, nothing matters if you win or lose, only how much you got out of the match itself. So for that reason I would agree that you don't need to compensate for players of low skill level.
Players failing to obey orders and pursue a commander's strategic decisions is always a failure of leadership on the part of that commander. The only exception to this is if a team willfully conspired en masse to disobey a commander for troll lol's, which is obviously an irrelevant edge case.
The only solution for commanders wishing to get players to more reliably pursue their strategic vision and orders is to provide better leadership. Punitive sanctions such as resource stripping is not better leadership. A discussion of how to provide such leadership is beyond the scope of this thread.
No it isn't. No amount of leadership is going to make people do something that is boring or that they don't see the point in.
If people don't want to stay and repair the base, or run across the entire map to do some boring task like build a completely uncontested extractor, or risk their long-saved-for gear on a risky task, they won't, no matter how nicely you ask them.
Some, I would even go so far as to say most, players are playing to have fun, they will follow the orders of the command only up to the point it enhances the enjoyment of the game. If the commander expects you to risk dying after you've just gotten a gun, no matter how rational, or well explained, or inspiringly put the instruction may be, some people just won't do it.
Commanders can only guarantee control of the team to the extent that they can literally force them to do something, such as use certain weapons or disallow certain technologies, or provide only certain routes around the map, or move the spawn points.
To say anything else is 'always a failure of leadership' is like saying that losing a 10v3 game is 'always a failure of skill' because it's theoretically possible to get 100% hit rates and predict perfectly where every enemy is going to be all the time, and suggesting it is astonishingly narrow-sighted in terms of considering what factors may affect a team's performance.
However, it is certainly arguable that simply hitting players with a stick for not following instructions will probably not help the game, because it'll simply drive the aforementioned fun-seekers out of the game. Why play if the game is simply going to punish you for doing what is fun?
Instead, one might argue that if the game shows persistent problems with getting players to do the things required to win (and it does). Perhaps it needs examining as to why players are unwilling to do them of their own volition?
Essentially, why is it that you need commanders to get players to do useful things? Why aren't players doing useful things on their own? All players want fun, useful things should be fun, yes? If useful things are fun, why are players not doing them? Why are they finding unproductive things to do instead, for fun?
Consider instead that the game has a problem where the way to win, and the way to enjoy the game mechanics, are not the same thing. Winning involves things like avoiding marines as a skulk and chewing RTs the entire game. Winning involves not trying to fight large, pitched battles with a wide variety of mixed weapons and classes, and instead waiting for an opportunity to kneecap the opposing side with an unopposed surprise attack.
In essence, to win, you shoot buildings, to have fun, you shoot enemies. The idea that players should be fighting each other is entirely opposed to the method of winning the game.
The probability of a deliberately errant player is equal for all commanders. If you can't get the average pub team to follow your strategic direction, it is a failure on your part to lead and interact with those players in the most effective way. There's no way around this.
That is why commanding is so hard. That is what separates this game from the animals. That is why good commanders are so rare. That is why the thrill of successfully commanding a team, and the satisfaction of being well lead, is so utterly unique and satisfying.
You, as a commander, must take total responsibility for your leadership and its results. The morale, effectiveness, and responsiveness of your team is your responsibility. You have carrots and sticks at your disposal, they are all available in the broad locker of human social interactions. Use them. Take responsibility for yourself and your team. Win.
Hugh, not everyone is as serious about the game as you or i, some people, are, much to my dismay.... casual.
there, i said it, shoot me. yeah, casual, they just want to go out, shoot/bite shit, and ignore the rest of it.
Commanding is about leadership. Many less successful commanders assume an autocratic leadership style, giving commands and waypoints and becoming steadily more autocratic as they find people disregarding those directions. Autocracy is one end of the leadership spectrum.
Players failing to obey orders and pursue a commander's strategic decisions is always a failure of leadership on the part of that commander. The only exception to this is if a team willfully conspired en masse to disobey a commander for troll lol's, which is obviously an irrelevant edge case.
The only solution for commanders wishing to get players to more reliably pursue their strategic vision and orders is to provide better leadership. Punitive sanctions such as resource stripping is not better leadership. A discussion of how to provide such leadership is beyond the scope of this thread.
I want to agree with this, I really do, but it's just not true.
Sometimes you get landed with complete trolls who are there to purposefully ruin the game. Given that a lot of servers are light on admins these trolls don't get kicked. At that point you either put up with them somehow or the server vacates. Normally the latter.
The other case is people who flat out don't listen. It's not intended malice, but for some reason they don't listen. You can voice talk, team chat, all chat, write their name, NOTHING gets a response. Playing in EU servers my normal assumption is they don't speak English at all, they could still at least type something when you type their name.
Both of these aren't a failure of leadership. There is nothing you can do as a leader with these people to make them better players. The first group should clearly be kicked and I think when we start seeing more admins they won't be an issue. The second group are tricky, you could make an argument to kick them as well and I know some servers do but that seems unnecessarily harsh.
Of course this touches on your point that the probability of getting a player like this is shared among all pub teams so on average they don't matter, and that's true. But when you playing a game with one of these guys you wish you could do something about it.
Now a punishment system like this doesn't seem like the right answer (certainly the idea of punishment zones I don't agree with), but to provoke discussion on what could be done shouldn't just be closed down with "it's just bad leadership".
P.S
For normal games where everyone can understand and wants to play the game I fully agree with you about leadership. The idea that people want to do what's fun so won't listen is a cop out. Leadership would get them to do the boring job now so that they can have way more fun (with better toys) later.
Comments
I'm not the type of autocratic leader, and i would debate if players failure in obedience is purely commanders fault, same as the only exception which is rather rare to happen under the mentioned circumstances but i don't think further exploration of what i think is right or wrong is needed.
I wouldn't want to argue with Mods, but one aspect of P/P zone was left without notice; mainly donating for the purpose of surviving.
Like i've mentioned a couple of times, in case of losing all extractors, and having not enough resources to put at least one back; even in case of enemy backing up, team is unable to stand back on their feet due to those two facts "lack of resource" and "no extractors", commander can't pull out backed up resources out of his sleeve and by a magic trick fix the whole situation. Currenly there isn't a solution to this type of scenario. But having so many people notice all the possible ways of abusing P/P zone idea, it warms my heart that community is so willing to reveal a balancing issue. Surely it would be seen wrong if commander would abuse his power, same as so many troopers that are permitted to abuse their freedom. But in the end, it's the commander that can be penalized, put under pressure and finally responsible for losing the game, average troopers shouldn't fear bigger control over their actions from someone who they can eject as a commander; they should be worried about if what they are doing benefits them as a team, rather then grants them and them alone, bigger res.
That is why commanding is so hard. That is what separates this game from the animals. That is why good commanders are so rare. That is why the thrill of successfully commanding a team, and the satisfaction of being well lead, is so utterly unique and satisfying.
You, as a commander, must take total responsibility for your leadership and its results. The morale, effectiveness, and responsiveness of your team is your responsibility. You have carrots and sticks at your disposal, they are all available in the broad locker of human social interactions. Use them. Take responsibility for yourself and your team. Win.
While I mostly agree with you I feel there is a difference between being worse than others and just playing bad. Playing bad comes from doing something wrong, which is generally a lack of knowledge, and thus in my opinion not a huge problem, as it only takes a little communication to deal with it, and communication is what this game is all about. Then there are the rare people who willfully play bad, which I think are often overstated, although somewhat justifiably. They are incredibly frustrating, but equally rare, I have only met around three people who act this way in some 200 hours of playing. Despite there rarity, a well implemented votekick would completely remove the problem. For dealing with the other group of people, good communication is essential, and be encouraging lest they take it personally because nothing good comes from bickering in this game.
Skill mismatches are an entirely different, and there is not a lot that can be done about them. Because of the asymmetrical nature of the game it is easy for people to become better at one side over the other, and I have seen servers where everyone is better on one team than the other. In addition high skill players can just carry their team to victory. Not a whole lot can be done about it, just lose and learn, and have some fun while you do it. Too many people get butthurt about losing a game, although some of my favorite moments in this game have been products of losing in it. This isn't League of Legends or Starcraft, nothing matters if you win or lose, only how much you got out of the match itself. So for that reason I would agree that you don't need to compensate for players of low skill level.
If people don't want to stay and repair the base, or run across the entire map to do some boring task like build a completely uncontested extractor, or risk their long-saved-for gear on a risky task, they won't, no matter how nicely you ask them.
Some, I would even go so far as to say most, players are playing to have fun, they will follow the orders of the command only up to the point it enhances the enjoyment of the game. If the commander expects you to risk dying after you've just gotten a gun, no matter how rational, or well explained, or inspiringly put the instruction may be, some people just won't do it.
Commanders can only guarantee control of the team to the extent that they can literally force them to do something, such as use certain weapons or disallow certain technologies, or provide only certain routes around the map, or move the spawn points.
To say anything else is 'always a failure of leadership' is like saying that losing a 10v3 game is 'always a failure of skill' because it's theoretically possible to get 100% hit rates and predict perfectly where every enemy is going to be all the time, and suggesting it is astonishingly narrow-sighted in terms of considering what factors may affect a team's performance.
However, it is certainly arguable that simply hitting players with a stick for not following instructions will probably not help the game, because it'll simply drive the aforementioned fun-seekers out of the game. Why play if the game is simply going to punish you for doing what is fun?
Instead, one might argue that if the game shows persistent problems with getting players to do the things required to win (and it does). Perhaps it needs examining as to why players are unwilling to do them of their own volition?
Essentially, why is it that you need commanders to get players to do useful things? Why aren't players doing useful things on their own? All players want fun, useful things should be fun, yes? If useful things are fun, why are players not doing them? Why are they finding unproductive things to do instead, for fun?
Consider instead that the game has a problem where the way to win, and the way to enjoy the game mechanics, are not the same thing. Winning involves things like avoiding marines as a skulk and chewing RTs the entire game. Winning involves not trying to fight large, pitched battles with a wide variety of mixed weapons and classes, and instead waiting for an opportunity to kneecap the opposing side with an unopposed surprise attack.
In essence, to win, you shoot buildings, to have fun, you shoot enemies. The idea that players should be fighting each other is entirely opposed to the method of winning the game.
Perhaps this is part of why issues arise?
Hugh, not everyone is as serious about the game as you or i, some people, are, much to my dismay.... casual.
there, i said it, shoot me. yeah, casual, they just want to go out, shoot/bite shit, and ignore the rest of it.
I want to agree with this, I really do, but it's just not true.
Sometimes you get landed with complete trolls who are there to purposefully ruin the game. Given that a lot of servers are light on admins these trolls don't get kicked. At that point you either put up with them somehow or the server vacates. Normally the latter.
The other case is people who flat out don't listen. It's not intended malice, but for some reason they don't listen. You can voice talk, team chat, all chat, write their name, NOTHING gets a response. Playing in EU servers my normal assumption is they don't speak English at all, they could still at least type something when you type their name.
Both of these aren't a failure of leadership. There is nothing you can do as a leader with these people to make them better players. The first group should clearly be kicked and I think when we start seeing more admins they won't be an issue. The second group are tricky, you could make an argument to kick them as well and I know some servers do but that seems unnecessarily harsh.
Of course this touches on your point that the probability of getting a player like this is shared among all pub teams so on average they don't matter, and that's true. But when you playing a game with one of these guys you wish you could do something about it.
Now a punishment system like this doesn't seem like the right answer (certainly the idea of punishment zones I don't agree with), but to provoke discussion on what could be done shouldn't just be closed down with "it's just bad leadership".
P.S
For normal games where everyone can understand and wants to play the game I fully agree with you about leadership. The idea that people want to do what's fun so won't listen is a cop out. Leadership would get them to do the boring job now so that they can have way more fun (with better toys) later.