1) Use an over complicated code system consisting of 18 different orders, but lacking certain key ones. Make the system complicated enough that no one will be able to remember it, and will at all times need the list of codes next to them if they are to be used.
2) Use piss poor training methods to try to get the squad some experience, such as making one six man squad stay within 50 meters of each other, while going against 2 three man squads that have to problems splitting up and shooting at you from two directions.
3) Condescend to your squad members. You’re the leader for a reason after all! Clearly you know everything there is to know, and your squad mates are lucky they even know the controls of the game!
4) Insult your squad members intelligence and ability if they even THINK to contradict you, one again, you’re the squad leader! You’re always right!
Now some background on why I wrote these up. I still play Battlefield 2, specifically the Project Reality Modification for it, and I joined a community that decided to start setting up a competitive team to go against other clans/communities/whatever. I was invited to join one of the 4 squads our team would consist of, specifically the Armor squad, which meant I was supposed to specialize in Tanks, APC’s, AA, things along those lines. I’m GOOD at that, so I joined.
Well, the problems with me and the SL started early, he was constantly talking to me during our training sessions as if I had no fucking idea what I was doing, and as if I barely had the controls for making the vehicles move down pat yet…but I kept my mouth shut, after all, he hadn’t played with me that much, he might not realize that I already know what he’s going over and then more…
Problems didn’t stop there. THEN all the squads felt the need to institute a code system for sending messages (Because you know in game VOIP can be spied on <rolls eyes>) consisting of 18 different orders. Example is 10-1 for important message, and 10-0 for the squad is dead. So if youre in squad alpha, rather then saying “Shit! The entire squad just got mowed down at A1 Keypad 5!” You’re supposed to say “10-1, Squad Alpha 10-0 at A1Kp5.”
Yea, sure it’s shorter. But with already 18 commands, and more on the way since the initial set lacks important codes, who the hell is going to remember that? So of course, all of us end up with a print out/copied down set of codes sitting next to us, and every time someone requested something, rather then responding right away in a tank, I was forced to look at my codes and figure out what they wanted. Real effective eh?
But I dealt with it, if they wanted to over complicate our communications, fine, maybe they’d learn when we started getting destroyed due to having to look at our code lists before reacting that it was a bad method.
Then last night though, I really got pissed off.
Our squad leader decided we needed to do some infantry training, as sometimes there would be large skirmishes going on that were infantry only, and the non-infantry squads would need to play in them to make sure our team was fully filled.
I had some small issues with that, but the reasoning was fine, and I was willing to do it.
However the training method seemed designed to be pointless and piss us off.
The armor squad, well 5 of us and some random person from another squad, started out by going over how we need to have the squad move in a certain ORDER….yes…because…it’s important the medic be in slot 4, squad lead in slot 5, one rifleman in slot 6, our machine gunner in slot 3, and two riflemen in slot 1 and 2…otherwise we will fail clearly.
But FINE, let’s do it. It’s pointless, but fine.
That took about 20minutes to sort out with the squad leader being a blowhard that doesn’t realize that once were formed up, we clearly are ready to friggen go.
By the time we did that though, the OTHER team, consisting of two 3 man squads from our Community Teams infantry squads decided there was no point waiting, and had already taken the final objective, meaning our tickets were bleeding and it was a short time til it was over.
Was it good enough to sit around though, or restart the map and have EVERYONE start at the same time? Nope. We lose rather handily obviously. I suppose 6 men all within 50 meters of each other running across the desert in a line didn’t help us take back the position either. Clearly though the solution IS keeping the squad bunched up like that. It MUST be after all, right?
Well next round starts, same shit different map…..we once again, get our asses handed to us due to not being able to attack the next objective and defend our current one, maybe something to do with being all bunched up? Everyone’s getting pissed now. We’re just getting killed, and we’re lucky if at any given time 4 of the 6 of us are alive.
Well, next map begins….but wait….the squad leader is AFK for some reason…didn’t tell us, but he’s gone….I start being the closest thing we have to a squad lead and telling the squad where to go. We take objective 1, and quickly troop off together, though not in a pretty line, towards the second objective. We take it…
Most of us get killed there though. Now we only have to take the enemy main….I tell 3 people by name to go to the place we just took and defend it. Me and one other person hoof it way around the fight and get to their main base. Manage to get on a building roof with only two ways up, one of us covering each, until the base it neutralized and they can’t take the one we took last. I tell the rest of the squad to move up…and lo and behold we WIN! Just in time for the squad leader to come back and make a joke about ‘Look at that, I have 0’s across the board and still am part of the best squad!’ Well yea, wonder if the fact you weren’t here has anything to do with that?
But we go back to his way. We’re on a map with swamp around a city….3 points to take. We take the first one fine, then we start taking fire.
Best solution? Send two men to flank where the fires coming from, have 2 remain and defend, and 2 slip off without being seen to take the second objective.
Squad leaders solution? Keep the squad all bunched up in an alley until the fire subsides…or what actually happened, we all die.
We end up spending the rest of the round running around the city trying not to die, and take the second objective as they take our first…then they hit us from multiple directions, kill us, take the objective, and as we try to cross the swamp, in a nice line, they pick us off.
We’re not done yet though! Now we have one more map, we’re all pretty damn pissed off obviously, but what are we going to do? We try AGAIN. Still in the same tactic. Now heres a map where he specifically pisses me off again, I’m acting as point. I get to a building corner of a street that I KNOW had enemies down it at one point recently. I carefully look around…say clear….and hear the squad leader say “I don’t know what just fuckin happened, but someone screwed up because I’m point now!”
Because yes, it’s my duty while facing forward to know that the squad leaders going to run across a street, right?
Well, once again, we get our asses handed to us. End up just trying not to get killed in our main, hardly get to move without being shot…and a few of us choose to call it a night, why wouldn’t we? We’re fucking pissed…
But a conversation strikes up after the fact in our Ventrilo about what happened, and the squad leader is adamantly insisting we did great, that we’re really doing well! Etc etc….
I try to point out however that we DIDN’T do well…if we had been doing well, we wouldn’t be constantly getting wiped out. I usually am relativly soft spoken in vent, I always let people talk over me, just the way I am…this time though, I shouted over the squad leader and someone else and told them to quiet down and let me talk….they did temporarily, probably from shock if nothing else.
Well I try to explain that having a six man squad go up the way we did against two three man squads is useless, because we aren’t going to get shit out of it. They try to claim that it’s to get the basics down. Now tell me, how the hell are you supposed to get the basics of working in a six man squad down when you’re lucky if 4 of the men are alive at any given point?
He’s going on about how we only lost because we’re not used to working together, etc, etc….nevermind the one time we didn’t stay close enough for one grenade to kill the entire squad we did great….but I persist in my point, having one hell of a time actually getting to be HEARD since I keep getting shouted over again.
Finally the squad leader tells me to shut up, calls me the squads ‘weak link’ and that I’m wrong. That ‘[he] could understand if he was doing something wrong, but that [he] was doing it right and that [I'm] wrong.’
Lovely squad leader eh?
Finally the OTHER member that’s supposed to be helping us asks me what I would do since I’m ’such a know it all’ I try to talk again, get shouted down by the squad leader…and tell him to shut up, and that it’s fine, take this as my resignation, and left the squad.
So some lessons if you’re going to be making a competitive squad for gaming.
Rule 1: Be polite to your members, this isn’t the military, they have the choice of leaving.
Rule 2: Use your head. If your getting slaughtered, you’re doing something wrong.
Rule 3: If someone in the squad wants to make a point, let them, don’t tell them to shut up.
Rule 4: If something works when you’re not around, yet what you want to do doesn’t work when you ARE around. Take a hint, you’re doing something wrong….
Get the idea?
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