Teamplay and You: How to Have A Better Experience

[(TLL)Frosted]

Sometime I do sit around doing nothing because I have to go get a new beer or go out and smoke . In a pub it doesnt matter its not like in a league game

[Malecite]

You forgot to cover the "duck and cover" response when an Aero, VTOL, or missile salvo effectively destroys your entire lance in less than 2 minutes. The teamwork in that situation could be going to your buddies grieving widow and comforting her. Unless of course the teamwork is your team actually doing something useful like oh I dont know: providing air cover, providing info with a scout mech, or effectively spawnkilling enemy missile whores... but to date I've never even seen anything close to that.

In fact currently the only teamwork I see is 90 percent of the enemy team firing on 1% of the teams Nark/Tag. The other 9 percent are usually bunny hoping around in BA's murdering mechs with PPC's. Although they've become substantially easier to destroy with the patch.

[Uranium - 235]

I've never seen/heard anyone using the in-game VOIP, does it even work? I have a sexy PC-350 that I'd be willing to use, but never gave it much thought.

People say it's poor, but some is better than none I say.

This game would be totally badass with even a half-organized team.

[~SJ~ Tajin Nevversan]

I also want to throw in that you can still use the Crysis voice-commands (Press F7 for example). This way it calls out your grid location and whether you spotted Aircraft, Vehicle, Infantry.

True, though many servers seem to have turned them off.

3.) Donate cash you aren't using

Even more important: Do not hesitate to ask for cash if you think getting a certain mech (that you cant afford) would help the team.
Almost every time I play a round as BA only or limit myself to a medium mech, I offer the others to give them money if they need it. Sadly, they never seem to want it. In fact they just respawn and buy some new equipment as fast as possible so they can move back on the field regardless of how much more useful they could be if they took the money and bought something with more punch.


Also, if the enemy is pulling back it really won't help your team to keep them pinned down in their base. Quite the contrary, camping the enemy base can easily turn the tide of battle to the favour of the enemy.

[(TLL)Frosted]

Do not hesitate to ask for cash Sadly, they never seem to want it. In fact they just respawn and buy some new equipment as fast as possible so they can move back on the field regardless of how much more useful they could be if they took the money and bought something with more punch.

The problem is that it's kinda hard to share cash when the only time you need it is when you respawn and when you want to give you can only transfer money as a BA

Maybe there should be some kind of team bank where we could put our C-bills in

[Mekabuser=12thVR=]

I'd like to hear some ideas about why none of that teamwork stuff occured in MechWarrior4 and yet it is expected that it will occur here.

??
Of course it happened, all the time. For one u had clans on TS, then by the time everyone was a vet, everyone just kinda knew what was going on in the match.
Second, yes the in game VOIP is not good, but thats not a surprise given the other audio problems, but the beauty of this game , like MW, is that you can type, and the grid is helpful, and people can see it. Even better, one can enter and exit with the old greeting ~S~.IN BF the typing was a joke because whatever you typed was gone a second later. Communication is key, and will be looking at the crysis ingame Fxaudio in the future.

[sgnl05]

Teamwork definitely makes the game better but without a mike it can be a little difficult to coordinate since you have to stop moving and shooting for a bit to type stuff.

What I'd really like to see is some tools to encourage teamwork. MWLL could learn a lot from battlefield 2 here I think.

For example, in BF2 if you spotted an enemy all you had to do was aim in his general direction and press Q+left click to "spot" him. A little "enemy x spotted" sound would play and he'd appear on allies radars for 15-20 seconds. Just enough time for them to see where he was and where he was going. In MWLL if you spotted an enemy a little "enemy x (grid location)" message could appear and maybe a flashing icon on the radar that stays for a few seconds. There could also be a very small money reward (a few hundred C-bills maybe) for spotting enemies to encourage people to act in a scout role.

I'd also like to see a lance/ star system to allow players to work better in small groups and give orders to each other. A commander who oversees the actions of the entire team would be cool too.

[No!Petru]

I'm sure I read that the devs intend to introduce some form of squad system in an old blog or news post, give them time on that one.

Crysis does have built in voice commands like the poster above me says.  F5, F6, F7 and F8 brings up a menu of commands.  F5-1 is a yes for example.  Every time you use a command it references the grid you are in.  Yesterday my team saw someone do the "Help! (D5)", so we all went there and found 4 enemy mechs trying to flank on passive, simple example.

One thing people can just do though is tag along if they see something that resembles teamwork.  Me and my team (we play under the No! tag on EU/UK servers) always play as a group, but often we find ourselves outnumbered as the rest of the team continues doing their own thing while we draw the heat of almost the whole enemy team.  Works both ways

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

Even more important: Do not hesitate to ask for cash if you think getting a certain mech (that you cant afford) would help the team.

I call this hint of the day.
I often have too much cash, but I don't know who could make best use of it so... people: Ask and you'll get what you need!

[Gallonigher]

Thanks Skunker.

I hope more casual players find their way in here and heed your advice.  

A whole new world of gameplay opens up when ppl start playing together with maximum cooperation.  I've been fortunate enough to play alongside some real champions of teamwork, and I'm always looking for their names when I join a server.  They make the experience a memorable one.  

Yes, typing stuff is inefficient and clumsy, but it's miles better than no communication whatsoever.

Maybe us pub gamers could form a sort of loose affiliation with a tag before our name that marks us out as willing teamplayers, so that we can more easily identified by standard.  That way, we can link up with like-minded players and coordinate a tactical solution from the go.

Some of you may be thinking "that's what clans are for".  No, this isn't a recruitment call, this is directed more at casual players who don't want the time, commitment and all the other bs that goes into clanplay.  No mics or mad skillz required, just a willingness to play cooperatively.  It's little more than a signpost, but I think it would be quite beneficial to the game in general.

My only concern is team-stacking, but the more players we get involved, the less of a problem this becomes.  Besides, we're all good sports and willing to 'spread the love' evenly between both teams, right? 

What do you think?

[=]FC[=Striker]

I'd like to hear some ideas about why none of that teamwork stuff occured in MechWarrior4 and yet it is expected that it will occur here.

Teamwork did happen in MW4. There weren't as many moving pieces, so the whole "teamwork" was more just staying together then actually approaching a situation in a tactical manner, but a rudimentary sense of teamwork was always there.

As for the in-game VOIP. It sucks, and you have no chance to mute the really annoying little kid that gives a running commentary of everything he is doing. This is why TLL has disabled the VOIP on our servers, but we offer a TS3 that is open to the public that are playing on our servers. Not many people join, or rather I should say that tons join, but none stay, so it is relatively unused. I recommend jumping on there and sticking around. You never know what kind of whacky and awesome characters you will meet.

Striker

[nordwars]

I've been on a couple of TS2/3 servers advertised on the forums, and have always been the only one there! Which makes me one of the people who join and then leave.

What is the TLL TS3 server IP?

[RickHunter]

Teamwork definitely makes the game better but without a mike it can be a little difficult to coordinate since you have to stop moving and shooting for a bit to type stuff.

What I'd really like to see is some tools to encourage teamwork. MWLL could learn a lot from battlefield 2 here I think.

For example, in BF2 if you spotted an enemy all you had to do was aim in his general direction and press Q+left click to "spot" him. A little "enemy x spotted" sound would play and he'd appear on allies radars for 15-20 seconds. Just enough time for them to see where he was and where he was going. In MWLL if you spotted an enemy a little "enemy x (grid location)" message could appear and maybe a flashing icon on the radar that stays for a few seconds. There could also be a very small money reward (a few hundred C-bills maybe) for spotting enemies to encourage people to act in a scout role.

I'd also like to see a lance/ star system to allow players to work better in small groups and give orders to each other. A commander who oversees the actions of the entire team would be cool too.

Agree 100%. BF2's method of letting your team know of enemy locations was an invaluable feature.

[nordwars]

I also like the sound of that - its a decent implementation of the kind of thing I was thinking of. Using the function key comms shortcuts are a good (interim) feature too, but there is a slight problem in that when pressing 1, 2, 3 etc to select the option you want to say, it then fires the weapon group that matches that number. OK for lasers, not OK for heavy gauss.

Functions for group leaders/coordinators would be greay but it could be a bit hard to organise a leader system in pub games, since (it seems like) nobody knows what they're doing most of the time.

[MrPopo]

Even more important: Do not hesitate to ask for cash if you think getting a certain mech (that you cant afford) would help the team.

I call this hint of the day.
I often have too much cash, but I don't know who could make best use of it so... people: Ask and you'll get what you need!

Cash sharing can be frighteningly effective.  Once I played on a map where someone had convinced a few guys on his team to donate their cash to him, giving him a Mauler at the start against our little Ravens and Ullers.  He quickly catapulted to GC so when we finally brought him down he was back in the fray with another one while his teammates could rank up normally.