Calling all teamless NA players - Project NA kickstart
invTempest
Join Date: 2003-03-02 Member: 14223Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Join Date: 2003-03-02 Member: 14223Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Are you interested in playing NS2 on a competitive level but find it hard to find or create your own team?
Want to take your game to the next level?
Look no further - With backing from NS2Servers.com, Team Inversion, and Nexzil, I am proud to announce the start of "project NA Kickstart".
OK, so what the *%&$ is project NA Kickstart?
Good question, and thanks for asking!
In a nutshell I will be overseeing a team (or a collection if the demand is high enough) with the idea of taking the hard work out of creating a team by providing them with the necessary tools they need to effectively advance their NS2 game to the next level.
OK, so how do you actually plan on doing this?
Great questions, I can see you're already interested!
The first step involves some magic and waving of a wand and is rather complicated as I have to mix the right proportions of various chemicals into a beeker in the right order to... Umm actually it's pretty simple and there is nothing complex about it at all.
The first step is to find players who want to play NS2 competitively but are currently without a team. This is where you, the person reading this comes into play. If you have a desire to play the game at a higher level then we have the desire for you to join our team.
The next step is to not worry about who is going to pay for the teamspeak / mumble / vent / scrim server and let NS2Servers.com and Team Inversion take care of that by providing a scrim server and teamspeak server with ample room.
And finally, play the game and have fun - I know hard concept, but it should work in *theory*.
What is Nexzil doing? I haven't seen them mentioned yet.
I see you have been paying attention - Good job, that is a great skill to have!
Nexzil will be providing their ample stores of NS2 knowledge (team Inversion too). What better way to get better than to learn from the top NA teams?
When they have time, they will be helping out the farm team(s) by giving them pointers and insight into things that they need to improve on as a team. Not to mention they would be more than happy to stom.. I mean scrim the newly formed team and make them rag... ... Actually they just want to help players get into the competitive scene by teaching them as much as possible and giving them pointers.
OK, I'm interested, how do I sign up?
That is awesome, we want you!
The easiest way would be to add me on steam or message me via PM on these forums and let me know a little about you (don't need a biography but a little info would be nice so I can keep track of who is who) and what skill level (low, med, high) you think you are along with the marine and alien classes you can or are willing to play.
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/anatempest
Also go ahead and add yourself to the steam group here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/nakickstart
The # of teams that are formed out of this project depends on the number of players that show interest. I will be trying to form the team as best as I can but I can't guarantee any level of performance.
Also please be willing to take a level of criticism and be willing to lose (Every team will lose at first). This is probably the #1 reason why teams disband and that is what I am trying to avoid here.
Want to take your game to the next level?
Look no further - With backing from NS2Servers.com, Team Inversion, and Nexzil, I am proud to announce the start of "project NA Kickstart".
OK, so what the *%&$ is project NA Kickstart?
Good question, and thanks for asking!
In a nutshell I will be overseeing a team (or a collection if the demand is high enough) with the idea of taking the hard work out of creating a team by providing them with the necessary tools they need to effectively advance their NS2 game to the next level.
OK, so how do you actually plan on doing this?
Great questions, I can see you're already interested!
The first step involves some magic and waving of a wand and is rather complicated as I have to mix the right proportions of various chemicals into a beeker in the right order to... Umm actually it's pretty simple and there is nothing complex about it at all.
The first step is to find players who want to play NS2 competitively but are currently without a team. This is where you, the person reading this comes into play. If you have a desire to play the game at a higher level then we have the desire for you to join our team.
The next step is to not worry about who is going to pay for the teamspeak / mumble / vent / scrim server and let NS2Servers.com and Team Inversion take care of that by providing a scrim server and teamspeak server with ample room.
And finally, play the game and have fun - I know hard concept, but it should work in *theory*.
What is Nexzil doing? I haven't seen them mentioned yet.
I see you have been paying attention - Good job, that is a great skill to have!
Nexzil will be providing their ample stores of NS2 knowledge (team Inversion too). What better way to get better than to learn from the top NA teams?
When they have time, they will be helping out the farm team(s) by giving them pointers and insight into things that they need to improve on as a team. Not to mention they would be more than happy to stom.. I mean scrim the newly formed team and make them rag... ... Actually they just want to help players get into the competitive scene by teaching them as much as possible and giving them pointers.
OK, I'm interested, how do I sign up?
That is awesome, we want you!
The easiest way would be to add me on steam or message me via PM on these forums and let me know a little about you (don't need a biography but a little info would be nice so I can keep track of who is who) and what skill level (low, med, high) you think you are along with the marine and alien classes you can or are willing to play.
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/anatempest
Also go ahead and add yourself to the steam group here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/nakickstart
The # of teams that are formed out of this project depends on the number of players that show interest. I will be trying to form the team as best as I can but I can't guarantee any level of performance.
Also please be willing to take a level of criticism and be willing to lose (Every team will lose at first). This is probably the #1 reason why teams disband and that is what I am trying to avoid here.
Comments
It actually worked okay, but many of the farm teams broke up after 1 season.
Sounds like a pretty reasonable approach. If we get enough people we could have a nice healthy Div2 which would result in few stomps and less rage quiting.
last night.
Fantastic resources Tempest, I only hope people will take advantage of this great opportunity. Best of luck to all.
Nexzil seem to be really good guys, so this team will be all set if they're dedicated. If you're prone to ragequits I suppose it isn't as useful, but there's no other way to become a top tier player other than playing with them.
I think the lack of activity, combine with the lack of players and new teams is sort of a chicken/egg problem....
You would get a bunch of vets together, and a bunch of people who want to try out comp play. The teams would each have at least 1 more experience player. Then we would organize 1-2 scrims for each of these 'pick-up' teams.
I think this would be a great way to introduce the way competitive NS2 works... warm up time, playing both halves, the difference in play style and organization. The veterans can help people learn and the new players can get an introduction to the format if nothing else.
Does that sound like something that could work?
Also it seems like if we make it a weekend low stress event, we can get some people to try it out. Joining a team is a lot of time commitment, and a lot of people may not try out competitive style play because they don't want to make that commitment.
some people may decide they still aren't interested, others will stick around, either way we can raise awareness about how comp NS2 works, and illustrate that the comp community is more friendly then it first appears.
Tempest perhaps sometime we can talk and come up with a devious scheme to
a) publicize the reddit pugs to a wider ns2 audience to funnel pubbers into (semi)organized play
b) coax more of our regulars into forming teams
For reference here is our pug group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/rns2pugs which we are still in the process of moving the nightly pick up games to, and here is the main r/ns2 group http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ns2reddit which we still announce to a few nights a week.
oh and I've started streaming the pugs:
Skill differentials in NS2 are compounded because of the snowball nature of the game.
This creates the situation where low-mid level teams form up, maybe are on 3-4 nights a week but can't find scrims or can only find scrims against teams that destroy them which very few people are willing to put up with on a regular basis.
I don't know if there is enough interest to get that "kick-start" the scene needs, but I think this is a great idea and I really hope it works
All of the above.
Wow. Good luck with everything related to this.
Also getting crushed is part of learning. Sure it's not fun, and I/We get frustrated no doubt. But for example, I think we scrimmed Inversion a while back. We had 1 RT most of the game. But we learned as a team learned some invaluable concepts that we have since employed.
I also second the fact that finding NA scrims is incredibly difficult. Gathers can always use more people as well!
The key to this is getting people to gathers and then giving them access to the competitive scene.(via NA kickstart)
There are four levels to this:
1. Pubs: The place you go when there is no place to go or you do not know any better. I have met a lot of players on pubs who complain about inconsistent games: that being from unbalanced teams, bad commanders, etc. Most people who play ns2 do not know where to find our groups, forum post, mumble servers, etc.
2. Causal/competitive gathers: People need places to meet other players, to hang out, to learn each others place style, and etc. This is ENSL, which is more competitive in nature, and Reddit pugs, which more casual, ranging from competitive players to rookies; who could be casually drinking coffee or casually taking birthday shots of vodka.(I hope i was not the only one) In each, teams are picked every two rounds by captains that try and make balanced teams.
3. Scrim pools: This what NA kickstart is about. Helping players who want to scrim get into the competitive environment, to be able to scrim and form teams.
4. Team scrims: New teams, unknown teams, and teams that want to do regular scrims need to know about each other.
Its like a funnel. Pub players > reddit pug + ENSL gathers > scrim pools(NA kickstart) > teams = competitive play and more fun!
We should try and organize the similar interest, a bit, and then pass the forum posts, mumble, events information on to our team members, so we can spread it to the rest of the NA community.
~I hope this post helps!
/dys/lifesfun
If anyone is interested in collaborating contact me:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/lifesfun
might be helped if there was a steam group for what is essentially a giant team of mercs
then for scrims you could just announce and hope 6 (out of a few hundred idlers) show up instead of your only option being getting owned by a real team
basically get a pug + scrim together. might lead to more teams being formed too.
just a thought
That's honestly my biggest issue right now: learning how to play this game properly instead of just ramboing in pubs doing whatever and still winning. I don't really understand the metagame besides 'kill their rts/defend yours' and have no idea of any timings or strategies, which is one of the reasons I've been putting off commanding since I just feel like I'm doing stuff randomly without any plan. I've been trying to look at some twitch vods of competitive teams scriming from which I've learned a couple things but it would be nice to have some knowledgeable people to learn from firsthand.
Anyway, I joined the steam group, looking forward to this.
cheers!
lifesfun
http://steamcommunity.com/id/lifesfun
I've played in a lot of games competitively and participated in MLG Pro Circuit events and if there is anything I have learned it's that competitive communities die quickly when amateur players feel that it's an impossible task to break into the professional scene. For any of you who have been a professional gamer you know it's a steep climb and it takes a lot of work and getting crushed by an all star team will either make you or break you in terms of determination.
What often works the best to bring amateur players out of the woodwork is to host an online tournament that excludes professional players entirely. Post it on the forums and mention it in game chat that anyone can enter and they can make an impromptu team and just have fun. Set it as a 16 or 32 team bracket and each week players must play their round match (Week 1 Top 32, Week 2 Top 16, Week 3 Top 8, etc.
It's fun and gives amateur players a chance to play against player of similar skill. Just a thought.
An amateur league sounds like a really good idea. Having some support from casters and those who can stream would do wonders. Think of the way that the "pros" who play League of Legends do it. You can find tons of people streaming any day of the week
So, care to elaborate?
Skin level average pub player.