TF2: Serious Business Saturdays?

[copulatingduck]

So first of all, I want to thank everyone who came out for TF2: SERIOUS BUSINESS Saturday. I've been getting pretty sick of pubbing it up with teammates who don't cooperate at all, Saturday was completely different. I hope to do it again sometime, namely because of this:

Teamwork: It works bitches

So I'll provide a bit of a backstory to this. First off, there's BALSAC and TBAG, the resident semi-cereals brbu folks who (hopefully) have been itching to scrim it up lately. Well for one reason or another, BALSAC hasn't managed to have a serious scrim since our first where BALSAC was broken in courtesy of [CN] or something like that, I don't really remember the clan, my mind just blocks the whole fiasco out. The point is, it's been a few weeks, and some of us have gotten antsy. Really antsy. Win or lose, we find TF2 to be a lot more fun when you're playing it competitively, even if only semi-competitively (ie you're not in a league, but you do scrim).

So last Wednesday, we hoped to have a BALSAC vs TBAG practice on Granary. Plans were to have a practice on Wednesday, and a serious rematch on Saturday after both teams had learned their lessons. Unfortunately, things didn't work out like we had hoped; neither team even had enough people present on Saturday for a match; things weren't looking good for the "serious business" guys at all. In the end, we decided to go pub crashing, do a little stacking, and see what we could do as a team anyways. We recruited some more brbu members and told them the plan. We were going to all join a pub and go Red. We'd use Vent so we could talk to each other, and the competitive folks could actually get a chance to work on communication (something we were dearly lacking in our first scrim). We ended up in 2Fort, and the results were pretty clear. 7/11 brb members on Red, working with the rest of the Red team managed to completely dominate the match. That being said, Blu did not go down without a helluva a fight.

Personally, I enjoyed myself immensely. While I love the brb servers, during regular pub hours they don't really offer the kind of gameplay I'm looking for. I enjoy a lot of teamplay (4 out of 12 players doesn't count, sorry), with some discussion of actual tactics to employ during gameplay. I don't enjoy the "oh, you're a good player, I'll uber you and hope the 2 of us can steamroll the entirety of the enemy team, and hope that our dumbass teammates will get the message and push the point." Don't get me wrong, during TFT/FNF, brb is where it's at, but the teamplay just hasn't been there during the regular pub hours, at least imho. All that being said, I'm curious who would be up for a repeat of this sort of thing. I had loads of fun, I'd like to think everyone on my team also enjoyed themselves. If this becomes a weekly sort of thing (where we either find an actual team to scrim, or crash a pub server), who would be interested in participating? There's no commitment, I'm just trying to gauge interest.

And lastly, a few remarks about Saturday. First off, when we won the round, I saw some behavior I do NOT approve of. Do NOT under any circumstances comment with something like "ALL BRBU" or the likes, a "GG" will do. If I remember who it was that said "ALL BRBU" I would reach across the internet and slap you. It shows poor sportsmanship, and it's unbecoming of a semi-serious TF2 player. Furthermore, it reflects extremely poorly on our community; just like the clan that had as of late been crashing the brbu servers and completely dominating, you made us out to be a bunch of team-stacking bullies. During the second round, a few people from [501pts] commented "Organizing a team to completely obliterate an unorganized team isn't good practice. It might be fun, but it's not good practice." At that point I realized we were doing the same sort of thing we didn't want on our own servers. I felt pretty bad afterwards, so I switched teams to try and help Blu out.

Furthermore, when everyone left after the 2nd round, we completely kill the server. Dominating a team for 2 straight maps is extremely discouraging, especially to someone who just wants to pub it up and have fun. There were lots of rage-quits, and after the entirety of BRBU left, there were a total of something like 6 people left in the server. In my eyes, that's not cool. So, in the event that we do do this again, some guidelines to follow:

-Go Red (it's easiest), but don't drop out of Blu to force a teamswitch. I know not everyone will listen to me, but for the ones that do, this will

-At the end of a round, do NOT say shit like "ALL BRBU." A "gg" is fine, if you've got nothing nice to say, don't say it. If I see this sort of thing again, you will not be invited to participate.

-Do NOT leave after the first map. During the second map, I would like people to go back to playing on opposite teams. Completely dominating a team 2 maps in a row kills a server quick, especially when you're all planning on leaving afterwards. So if you're planning on coming out, plan on staying for ~3 maps (the first where you get in, the second when we all go Red, and the third where we go back to normal).

-If it's obvious that the other team is getting slaughtered and/or quitting in droves, have a few top people switch to help them out. It's not cool to whoop on people, it just makes us look like a bunch of e-bullies.

In summary, I had a helluva time and I hope we do it again. How about you?

---

For clarification:

We're not looking to whoop on pub scrubs. Unfortunately that's what it turned into this past weekend. The kinds of matches we are looking for are (in order)

-a serious scrim with a real team (assuming we have about 8-ish show)

-joining up on a l33t clan-server running nocrits that has an all-star lineup of fantastic opponents

-just joining #2 and disabling alltalk for some serious play (only if we have enough people)

-joining a random public server, though in the future I think we would have less impact and look less like jerks if it were a 32-man server.

Also, Dave and Duck want admins for the BRBU steam group to post announcements!

[CaffeinePowered]

This idea intrigues me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter

[Mission Difficult]

Sounds like fun. Count me in.

[NiceGuy]

Man, sucks I missed the first one but count me in on any others as long as I'm around!

[ScottyGrayskull]

I'd be up for it. ^_^

[ainmosni]

Hell yeah I'm up for it... tbh I noticed that I play a lot better when the team is organised... I get annoyed when pubbing it up, trying to reach an objective and thinking my team will do what is logical to them with their classes... only to be killed from the back or see the point get capped in the most easy to block way possible...

[jdub28]

I dont think there is a way to join a server, have all of us (or most of us) on one team, dominate the pubs, win the majority of the maps, and not look like jerks. And if you see me or Psyps say all us its most likely because we switched off during the round. I enjoyed playing a serious game. I'm not balsac or tbag so this is one of the only times when I can team with you guys without playing against you too.

Is there a specific time this will happen next Saturday?

[Wedge]

Wait, so you're asking us to go teamstacking on pub servers and beat the shit out of scrubs?  Why?

[jdub28]

I dont think that was the idea but thats what it turned into

[Wedge]

Well I'm jussayin, if you want to organize some teamplay, lets just have whoever is there play against eachother before we go stacking up some random pub.

[copulatingduck]

Wait, so you're asking us to go teamstacking on pub servers and beat the shit out of scrubs?  Why?

No. Sorry that wasn't more clear. The next time I think it won't be on scrub servers. Dave and I tried very hard to find a good competitive server with crits disabled, or alternatively to find a team to scrim with using our ringers, but for one reason or another (space, it being empty, or the server being located in Russia) we just couldn't find a good server for everyone to agree on.

In the future, I'm looking more at some of the various competitive clan servers out there (no crits is one good indication of such a server, sorry folks, but that's how it will be). So far, there has been an complete lack of any competitive matches for either TBAG or BALSAC. I don't know what the people who started the teams envisioned, but there hasn't been much of anything going on with them. What I'm hoping is to just "open" up the team and invite anyone who wants to join to come play in either an actual scrim, or join us in a "more competitive" server.

And before any of you say there's no such thing as a competitive, public server, you're wrong so shutup. Brbu, while competitive, is just the tip of the iceberg, and for a real fix, there are other servers out there with much fiercer players.

Another idea, depending on the number of people, is to just join up a 32-man warpath or similar server.

And again, apologies that this isn't super clear, it's just some vague idea Dave and I had this past Saturday since we could not for the life of us get a scrim going. Hopefully it will be better organized next time. As for what time it will be: we will most likely start looking for servers around 6pm EST if that works for everyone.

[b]edit: If this doesn't quite sound like what you had in mind, feel free to change your vote.

[copulatingduck]

Well I'm jussayin, if you want to organize some teamplay, lets just have whoever is there play against eachother before we go stacking up some random pub.

If we had more people this past weekend, we certainly would have. But I think we had 8 people at our peak, so 4v4, while fun, isn't quite what we were hoping for, considering the maps we were HOPING to play (read: Pro_Granary). Also, 6-8 people IS enough for actual scrims, but everyone was asleep in #tf2pickup or from Team Pandemic or The Experiment.

[Budr]

"Organizing a team to completely obliterate an unorganized team isn't good practice. It might be fun, but it's not good practice."

Basically, what Wedge said. I couldn't help but feel as we were playing that we were acting in a cuntish, immature manner. Also, I think it proved that there is room for massive improvement. Even though there was never any question of us losing, it took quite some while and a lot of effort to finish off an unorganised group of pubs.

So, Duck cleared that up while I was typing but I'm posting anyway to re-iterate that crashing a pub is not the way to go.

[jdub28]

6 is fine for me

Wedge, we werent trying to raid a server. The only place we found to play had us dominating the score board on both teams and coming off as jerks no matter how well mannered we were. A little more planning is all that was needed.

[ainmosni]

Playing organised against randoms doesn't sound fun, I prefer playing against another organised team, this makes for better practice and a better challenge...

Like I said before, when we have enough people on this side of the pond I want to set up an EU BRBu scrim team and that would make internal practice scrims more feasible and also sounds like a lot of fun...

[jdub28]

Playing organised against randoms doesn't sound fun, I prefer playing against another organised team, this makes for better practice and a better challenge...

Like I said before, when we have enough people on this side of the pond I want to set up an EU BRBu scrim team and that would make internal practice scrims more feasible and also sounds like a lot of fun...

I hope it doesn't turn into locked server, go play with the pubs while the big boys do business type of thing.

[ainmosni]

[quote author=ainmosni link=topic=1050.msg27314#msg27314 date=1217839473]
Playing organised against randoms doesn't sound fun, I prefer playing against another organised team, this makes for better practice and a better challenge...

Like I said before, when we have enough people on this side of the pond I want to set up an EU BRBu scrim team and that would make internal practice scrims more feasible and also sounds like a lot of fun...

I hope it doesn't turn into locked server, go play with the pubs while the big boys do business type of thing.
[/quote]

Actually, I want SourceTV be on during all scrims for people who want to watch... I found watching scrims, especially when you know at least one of the teams, very entertaining. Furthermore there are many ways to do some serious matches even without official scrim teams... But teamstacking a pub server is the least appealing option imho...

[Wedge]

Doesn't really matter to me I guess, I don't think I'm cut out for cereal level play, coz' I'm not good with any of those classes.

[Surf314]

My vote is to go on and split the competitives in half and then try and whip your pub team into a fierce fighting machine.  That will be far better practice not just in skill but in leadership.

My vote: use one of our servers go in and announce "hey pubs you're in for a treat we are doing serious business saturdays, we got our semi-competitive scrim players here and they are going to divide in half and each half is going to try and lead their team to a victory.  If you want to participate stay but just know we are going to expect teamwork.  Also we reserve the right to kick anyone playing in a manner that is deliberately ruining the team play."

Then not only do you get actually good practice but you involve pubs in a positive way and could get some more members.  Otherwise we really aren't being better than those clans that have been crashing #2.  Also anytime you see those clans we should challenge them.

[Surf314]

My vote is to go on and split the competitives in half and then try and whip your pub team into a fierce fighting machine.  That will be far better practice not just in skill but in leadership.

My vote: use one of our servers go in and announce "hey pubs you're in for a treat we are doing serious business saturdays, we got our semi-competitive scrim players here and they are going to divide and half and each half is going to try and lead their team to a victory, if you want to participate stay but just know we are going to expect teamwork.  Also we reserve the right to kick anyone playing in a manner that is deliberately ruining the team play."

Then not only do you get actually good practice but you involve pubs in a positive way and could get some more members.  Otherwise we really aren't being better than those clans that have been crashing #2.  Also anytime you see those clans we should challenge them.

This is a fantastic idea, I agree with it completely.

Edit: hah caught your mistakes for posterity!