Being a squad leader in Project Reality has made me a better person

[whathe12]

I've been playing PR for 5 years or so now and have amounted many, many hours of gameplay. It wasn't until the 1.0 Beta or so I began taking the SL more frequently and more seriously. I had attempted being an infantry SL in the past but that experience didn't really turn out well. During a round on Muttrah City, I noticed all of the assets were claimed and there was absolutely no infantry squads so I decided to create one. It was during this round that I found out that by building multiple FOBs and utilizing a defensive mindset, one can easily become the top squad and significantly help their team win. My squad became the top squad and our squad as a whole had about a 2:1 K/D ratio and myself as well as a couple other squad members had around 1000 points as a result of constructing a few FOBs.

During this round, I found success by being affirmative with my actions and thinking what would be best for my team. I also didn't take shit from any squad members and made sure to let them know that my orders are the only orders that they should obey. I kept my squad with in 50 m of me at all times and wasn't afraid to verbally discipline a guy if they stranded off too far. We won that round by a somewhat close score of around 50 or so tickets. When the loading screen came, I felt a massive weight off of my shoulders when I saw that not only were most of my squad members atop of the leaderboards, we also gained the top squad spot. This was a first for me as I had never led a successful squad before.

Ever since that round, I have been a SL almost every round I play and the rewards I get from being a SL are amazing. In real life, I was recently elected a captain for my Junior Varsity Rugby team. I can credit this to PR because being a SL has helped me develop my leadership skills and as a result I feel like a much more confident and profound person. I'm able to tell others what to do and how to do things with ease when I'm put in a leadership role. I'm able to communicate better and get to the point when talking with other people IRL. I just wanna say thanks to the PR team and the PR community for making these past 5 years great and for creating a game like no other. You guys can catch me playing mostly on HOG and FCV, my ingame name is -GT- Gilligan.

[Neecap]

Congrats on becoming captain for your rugby team! And people say computer games are a waste of time!

Myself, I think I'll log some more hours into this and experience the multitude of maps and the battle flow before i try squad leader. So far I've been lucky and pretty much only gotten into serious squads with leaders who communicate clearly and precisely what they want and when.

[OldGoat5]

It aint easy leading a group of 8 random dudes into virtual battle, it sure takes skill to get them to believe in your orders, keep them from dying, and coordinating with other squad leaders.

[Rhino]

Pretty nice to hear we have had a positive affect on someone's real life

[Arab]

Glad to see PR is therapeutic in some ways

[Finrar]

I think pr made me worse person...

[rPoXoTauJIo]

I have learned English and lost faith in humanity due to PR

[Zeno]

I have learned English and lost faith in humanity due to PR

God damnit Poxo, were were having a happy moment here...

[KillJoy[Fr]]

Pretty nice to hear we have had a positive affect on someone's real life

Yeah, Pr improve my english tho

[communistman]

I have learned English and lost faith in humanity due to PR

You made me truly laugh out loud. I appreciate that.

PR is an amazing social experiment, really--throw 100 relative strangers into a several square mile area with various specialized assets, and give them 3 minutes to fully organize and engage in actions involving several layers of coordination. I used to work in management, now in sales and I can decisively say that playing PR (and more specifically squad leading) is an excellent way to hone your communication and interpersonal skills as a whole.

EDIT: It also teaches you to your mom.

[fatalsushi83]

PR helped me remember my English. I've been living in Japan for 10 years and after the first 4-5, I seriously started to forget how to speak. When I first started using mumble, people didn't understand what I was saying half of the time because my grammar was so messed up. Thanks to PR, I'm starting to sound normal again.

The only thing that sucks about being an SL is that once you get good at it, the rewards began to outweigh the enjoyment of real life

[Archosaurus]

Squadleading in PR has made me very skilled with women and largely increased my patience to the point where I'm zen-like most of my days.

Half of the randoms in PR after 1.3 are pretty much like women anyway and need to be held from the hand.






@fatalsushi83

I really want to visit Osaka and Kyoto some day.
Tokyo people and culture just seems very, very crooked.

[ComradeHX]

I only learned how to pretend to be better person.

[fatalsushi83]

I only learned how to pretend to be better person.

That pretending of yours isn't fooling anyone on the forums

And yes, some parts of Japanese culture are really messed up and I hate them (child porn anime is allowed but you'll get arrested for making an image of a vagina), some things I like. It's a pretty weird country. Definitely visit if you can, though.

[matty1053]

Yes! I learned more words in different languages in PR than I did in grade school! (Yeah, the Spanish teacher was sketchy... she didn't know any words in Spanish... other than a few racial slurs.)

[ComradeHX]

That pretending of yours isn't fooling anyone on the forums

And yes, some parts of Japanese culture are really messed up and I hate them (child porn anime is allowed but you'll get arrested for making an image of a vagina), some things I like. It's a pretty weird country. Definitely visit if you can, though.

I've made my pilgrimage to akiba.

Image of vagina is fine, you just need to censor a tiny bit of it.

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Squadleading in PR has made me very skilled with women

I think PR SLing does help personality construction - it's a roller coaster of emotions, I feel bad if my squad is unsuccessful in objectives, dies a lot or just isn't having fun, after a bad round I can feel quite low. Getting over this and SLing again is a good personality trait.

But a good round when people are working well and you have a few effective killers in your squad to carry the rest it can be a high and staying humble is good.

I also think that when playing with other SLs and the CO talking is great mental exercise too, a head explosion amount of multi tasking at times (want to kill guys that use all SL chat when it's not needed then).

[TmanEd]

I've been playing PR on and off for years, I can work just fine within a squad, but I got the squadleader position forced upon me once and hot damn am I not ready to coordinate my seven squadmates plus keep communication up with all the other squad leads. I'll let you folks do the leading for now.

[Rudd]

I've been playing PR on and off for years, I can work just fine within a squad, but I got the squadleader position forced upon me once and hot damn am I not ready to coordinate my seven squadmates plus keep communication up with all the other squad leads. I'll let you folks do the leading for now.

Some men aspire to greatness, some men have greatness thrust upon them.

[UncleSmek]

Yeah man I can understand where you are coming from. I started playing this game 2007 and about a year in I started squad leading by the age of 13. Now, 7-8 years into the game I still squad lead and as I graduated high school I've always had a leader/manager role in all my professional endeavours . When I was 19 I was in charge of the marketing for a 6 million dollar company and having to be in that leading role and being comfortable with it, mainly comes from handling complete strangers in PR and actually succeeding doing it. So yeah, thanks devs!