Team Play

Thrax Panda said:

A well coordinated team will always be better than an individual (witness counterstrike, where 4 guys playing together will almost always win the map).

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I'm gonna have to disagree with this analogy. CS pubs are nothing like Tribes. Most often players will stick together, whether team or not, simply out of necessity. The side with the most skilled players wins the map 99.9% of the time. Tribes, as has been said before, is totally different from any other multiplayer experience. In CS, individual skill outweighs team play, in both a pub setting and in a match environment, even though both are important. But Tribes really emphasizes the need for cooperation. A team with flawless communication and coordination can dominate another with uber players who have no idea whats going on. So, I think my main point is, don't compare apples and oranges, and pubs will be pubs .

the distinction between teamwork and teamplay is easy to see:

teamwork is work, work is not fun, you do it because you have to

teamplay is play, play is fun, you do it because it adds to the enjoyment

when doing things becomes work instead of play, it's no longer fun for anyone but the most anally associated players

I guess I can pipe in now about my experiences with the trainwreck that is planetside beta and its interpertation of 'team play' vs 'team work.'

Initally, when looking at planetside, I thought that it was going to be the be all end all of teamwork and teamplay. People would have to stick together to be effective and new teams would flourish.

Sadly though, considering the current state of PS, this has all gone awrye. Counterstrike and BF1942 folks are have been overrunning the community. This is what I have noticed so far:
- CS and BF folks seem to practice 'team play.' That is, they will see a clear goal, and strive themselves to reach it. This is seen with 100 grunts and no support running to the command point to capture a base.

- Tribes brethean appear to resort to that if all is lost, but not without first finding the 'team work' in their team. Flag not defended? ok, I'll sit here and watch it. Getting pounded with heavies? ok, lets take out their invys. We think of the cause, not of immediate effect.

To further elaborate, taking a base in planetside could be made much easier by taking down generators first to dissallow the defender to continue spawing 'MAX' or heavy armors. Like I have said, the current strategy is just a large cluster of grunts running at a base, shooting at whoever is shooting at them and rushing the command point as fast as possible. The attackers will, in the end, currently almost always win becuase of resource balancing issues but in the meantime they get mowed down by the defenders heavy armors and vehicals. Why not organize a strike and disable the generators to level the feild? Becuase CS and BF players normally do not think like that. Single goals lead to single minded people. Single minded people lead to retarded 'clusterfuck team play' that infects 90% of the popular games today.

The inclusion of 'team work' in a game will eventually result in players having a much better sense of accomplishment and worth in a community. The inclusion of 'team play' will allow the game to be widely enjoyable and dynamic. Play and Work seem pretty self explainitory as to what each style represents.

I was going to try and formulate some final though about how this was blundered by the Planetside team and how it could be improved upon for the next tribes game, but found myself at a loss sufficing to say that I don't envy the next Tribes devs.

I think for the purpose of this discussion we should use "teamplay" to describe a game that offers extra rewards for accomplishing group objectives, while "teamwork" describes a game that requires groups to accomlish objectives.

marweas == smf (smart mutha fucka)