HOW TO: Help your team in Strat - A guide for strat newbies

[Ded10c]

The tactics ZA suggests are actually amongst the most effective in the game.

And thanks for the "put that in your APC and transport it" - made my day.

[Feared_1]

forgottengames, it looks like you got completely owned. Play strategy more often and you will become better at it. You will eventually learn how to handle tough situations.

To learn how to become a better dogfighter, play some DM's.

To learn how to become a better commander, play some MPI's.

To learn how to become a better strategy-player, play more strats. A DM and an MPI will not teach you to be a good strat player. Strategy has evolved so much that the experienced players already know the methods used that are most effective in the game. You are not playing with robots. You are play with experienced, fine-tuned players who know exactly what they are doing. If you ever found yourself not knowing what you're doing in that game you played, it just means you were not experienced.

There are plenty of current strategy players who have become very, very skilled in a short period of time; pretty much all of them are on bz2 every day. Don't expect to win the first few times, and don't get discouraged. Be persistent.

I can help you in game if you want it.

[Red Devil]

last Sunday, he said he was uninstalling bz2 and going to focus on his school work.

[forgottengames]

Yes, that is true. I just took one last look through the forums and found something worthy of ranting on.

[Zax]

1. This could be 1.2 where if your name wasn't known you were kicked on site. Be thankful you get to play in strats at all was the old method... player base dwindled, this became suicidal.
2. If you wait for your team or other team to build a base, then you are only inviting a huge stalemate. The idea of attacking before bases is to deny another player an advantage.
3. Commanding is a fun one. I trembled in my shoes the first time, and my heart rate goes up to maximum the whole length of the game if it is a 3v3 or 4v4 and I have to cmd it. I hope this is normal, but there could be something wrong with me. Case is, it is a rush and if you do not like that rush BZ2 strat is not for you.

[Zero Angel]

1. This could be 1.2 where if your name wasn't known you were kicked on site. Be thankful you get to play in strats at all was the old method... player base dwindled, this became suicidal.

Actually a few disgruntled players who AVed (purposely crashed) strat games was worse. Known nicks or leave in Vet Strats kept the quality of the games high as new players had to prove they had a minimum level of competence, or be 'vetted' by playing DMs, open STs (where the hosts suspended the 'rule'), and interacting with strat players. Newbies were being diverted to 1.3 as well, so 1.2 lost its fresh supply of new blood. AV'ing from a small amount of players was worse though, there were a few people in the history of BZ2 who would do nothing but refresh the game list and crash strat games which really is what hastened the demise of 1.2.

Your other points, however, are good ones.

[MrTwosheds]

He is right ZA, being routinely kicked from strat games is exactly the sort of thing that makes people fed up with a game, maybe it never happened to you allot, It certainly happened to me. Its even worse once you know they know you and you know your first on the kick list if someone else shows up. Why would you spend an evening waiting in lobby's for ages only to end up getting kicked.

[Zero Angel]

Yeah, kicking a long-waiting player for a vet is a deplorable move. Nowadays, newbies/unknowns will sometimes get kicked in favor of a better player but most people are decent enough to let them play if they've been waiting a long time in lobby with us. I think one good thing that 1.3 did though, is that now that its easier to host, people who can't make it into a vet game can simply host their own. That said, people are less likely to kick newbies. I think that's due, in-part, to the fact that joiner IPs are publically displayed, making cloaking/smurfing inconvenient enough to not be worth it.

I highly recommend that players who are really interested in strat, join this teamspeak server when they want to play

# -|Ugonland|- # TS3 Server
74.91.115.34:9988

That's where a lot of strat players hang out. You are practically guaranteed entry into a game if you come onto Ugonland.

[Zax]

Gahhh! The kick list. Forgot that one. If they are polite and tell me the player had to leave for a moment and the spot was saved, it lessens the blow because I wouldn't want someone taking my spot if I suddenly got jettisoned from the game.

To be fair, there are certain stipulations I will follow as host or commander. If some guy with no name is on my team being useless and kind of clueless, I will prompt him to say something. If I don't get any kind of text from that player in any language, I'll request host to kick that player NOW, as he will obstruct the game. I don't even think about it. If I am host and the other commander starts yelling to have that same type of player kicked, no questions asked... If you can prove you are a human being and not what I call an "android," or a player that seems to fly around shooting things but can not be reached through spoken or written forms of communication; you are safe and will be allowed to play and learn the game.

ZA, I was around bz1 boards the earlier days of BZ2 and didn't start bz2 at least 3-4 years after 1. The list was always, ALWAYS like this for the reasons the players refused, and I do mean refused, to mess around with bz2:

1. Physics
2. Orange tanks
3. The horrible, mean community

Ask BFT, Apollo, hitchcock, anyone else in the bz1 board. I tried to turn people on to it but they cited that whole kick factor as a big one.

Addendum:

Of course, the modern landscape is absolutely removed from this old way. With huge 5v5 strats (still don't like those) almost anybody on in a given night gets to play. You are allowed greater freedom, and the game isn't flying over a huge canyon to minigun the other rec into submission. I'll still kick an android without hesitation, because communication is so key that unless you are the ultimate player who knows what to do and where to be at all given times, please go elsewhere.

[Feared_1]

Games that are marked as "Vet Strats" are usually enough to keep unwanted newbs out. If they join, they may be kicked for a better player if it is known that a better player is waiting. Why? Because that's how Vet Strats work. In 1.2, BZNES has a preset server message that said something like "Vets please, 1 yr minimum online experience." 1 year is very small, now, but players who have clearly not played for very long simply should not join vet strats.

1.2/1.3 Strats (without the word "vet" being used) should not be like this, and are open to anyone who wants to join.

[Sly]

**Without trying to get this outta hand (again)**

I will wholeheartedly disagree with those who say that kicking newbies from 1.2 games caused 1.2's downfall. Did it even contribute to it? Not even in the slightest. I will explain why because I was one of those guys who did get kicked, and also because most of the ones who complain about it here have never had the level of understanding that those who have actually played strats competitively possess. When a newbie joins a vet strat, he is overwhelmed. Imagine if you threw a mexican migrant worker into the stock market and asked him to buy out certain stocks; he wouldn't know where to start. People would be yelling at him for getting in their way etc. That is exactly what happened in vet strats those many years ago. It was a fast paced, and by fast paced I mean that even when the game ended, you almost immediately started a new one. Newbs just slowed down the entire process and were not worth the effort. When I was pretty young (around 13-14), I wanted desperately to get into vet strats, so I just joined one game and asked them how I could accomplish this. They told me to play DM's, so I did, and oh how many DMs did I play...I became a pretty decent dog fighter and I even met some vets who I became friends with. When I joined my next vet strat, the friends who I knew there backed me up and I was allowed to play. Afterwards, I did still get kicked out of a lot of games because another, stronger player wanted in. But guess what I didn't do? I didn't cry like a little bi*** like I am even seeing some players on this forum do now even though they are allowed into strats...No, I, like so many others who wanted to become the best kept training and kept becoming more and more known. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp really; it's not the vets that were immature, it's the people who got kicked and then became so enraged that THEY were not allowed in. HOW can they not allow ME to not play (Ego of course playing a part in this). THEY are the IMMATURE ONES bla bla whine whine cry cry.

So, what did cause the downfall of 1.2? Many factors. The biggest PROBABLY being the fact that the game is old man. I remember playing an old game on the ps2 called Socom: US Navy Seals, where I got into the top 100 ranks online. As new games in the series were released (the newest being for the ps3), the number of players dwindled. It's just what happens to games. They get old, and people leave. Do you think that even games like StarCraft 1 will be played for the next 1000 years? Probably not, all games have a point where they die. BZ2's just came earlier since it was not really a game most people can get used to or enjoy. Another big factor contributing to its downfall was the AVing bug. Many people have done it (even I have when I was younger and far less mature than now, so I know I contributed to the problem as well). There were some really immature guys who literally spent 2-3 hours of their lives every day AVing all of the games in bz2 just because they were angry at being owned in one strat earlier that week. Then you had the whole 1.2/1.3, and then another 1.3 split, and another 1.3 split, and another....I still see sessions hosted in 5.1, 6.1 etc. where stragglers got left behind. Then you had a lot of other smaller BS that popped up. Gamespy crashed many times; then there was the incident where a person spammed 500+ servers into bz2 which caused no strats for a while. 1.2 was back after all of this; but the last glimmer of hope was taken away by one **** ****** ********** called general dim aka mtc aka bear, who had the same type of ego that this forgottenenemies guy has. Basically in his head it was HOW CAN I LOSE I CANT LOSE IM THE BEST NO WAY CHEATERS HACKERS NOT FAIR U SUCK IM THE ALPHA MALE I MUST DOMINATE etc. In any case, his AVing spree put an end to the last consistent strats that we had going each weekend night.

That's how it happened; argue against it if you must. But know that if you argue against it, you are probably just assuming that same IM ALPHA MALE I CANT BE WRONG THEY DARE KICK ME DONT THEY KNOW WHO *I* AM whiny grudge against being kicked from vet strats that so many others possess. I have played in these games. My exposure to these events is like me being at ground 0 while you viewed from the distance with a pair of binoculars. I know how it went down because I was there to receive every painful blow, along with my other buddies, until it finally faded.

[Zax]

I guess I may have fallen victim to "selective memory" because I do remember the vetting process of other people needing to back you to kickblock®*

Thing is I almost never did it through DMs and your experience may have varied. I was a middle-school (aka not there when the game was released but about a year or two after) bz1 player and some of that carried over, so I picked up on bz2 strats and flying pretty quickly and was endorsed to at least be parts of teams without having to kill myself for months.

Still, if not having contributed to its downfall, it surely prevented it from rising to its full potential in the crucial early days when BZ1 fans were looking at the sequel. The majority did not like bz2 and did not move to it for various reasons, this being one of them.

Some don't have the patience to bash their head against a wall to get strats going, ESPECIALLY since bz1 strats were hot commodities at the time (before DM completely and utterly took over) and getting a full game was easy and quick. Can't blame em for hating the dreaded pregame warmups. Game full, sync up, start in 10 seconds vs 30 minutes of people alternately taking a dump? It's simple logistics.

*My name was actually the acronym of an already existing player and I got confused for him quite often, and apparently this person was not very well liked. Oops.

[Sly]

Letting people into games would have made sense if you had more than one newbie. But, for the most part, if you let a newb play it would be 4 vets versus 3 vets and one newb, usually resulting in an 8 minute game. Furthermore, I have seen vets allow newbs into strats before. What was usually the outcome, 9 out of 10 times the newb would try to rejoin for ships/sniper, or would simply just leave the game after 5 minutes of being bored. This is why, if you wanted to get into vet strats, you had to do your "head bashing" in DM after DM until you improved. Otherwise, there were plenty of other non-vet strats and MPI's DM's whatever up to keep people busy. Not saying all people did this, but it was difficult for vets to distinguish between a mature player and some 11 year old. Trust me man, we tried before to let newbs in, but it just ends up being a waste of time for 7 other people. It is easier to do it nowadays since there is a wide diversity of players in strats (a lot of intermediates, so if you stick a newb with a vet it won't mean too much).

p.s. Hell, I even one chatted some newbs who came into strats that got kicked offering to train them. 99 percent of the time, they turned out to be some ADHD kids who would just spend 5 minutes with me then say OK LETS PLAY MPI THIS BORING LOLOLOLO.

[APCs r Evil]

Hell, I even one chatted some newbs who came into strats that got kicked offering to train them. 99 percent of the time, they turned out to be some ADHD kids who would just spend 5 minutes with me then say OK LETS PLAY MPI THIS BORING LOLOLOLO.

I've had that happen a few times... I've never had anything more mood crushing, almost painful, come from my time with BZ2.

[MrTwosheds]

I remember Bear from 1.2 and 1.3, a fairly good player, you sure it was him AVing 1.2? Could have been just another cloaker I suppose.
So difficult to tell who's who these days. Some people just got no honour.

OK LETS PLAY MPI THIS BORING LOLOLOLO.

There's quite a few of them about in the afternoon (GMT) I think their all the kids of old BZ2 players...