Thank you all for your replies. There are a lot to discuss, but right now I just want to get to the heart of the point I was making with this thread.
I was a bit surprised, although, not a lot as I knew that I'm not totally alone here as my expectations about what this mod should be played like are probably quite the same for other players (actually, let's call them pubbers as I haven't played in a clan and I totally get the competitive part of any game having played TF2 competitively (it gets quite hardcore)).
Yes, If you have enjoyed this game
as a player of a clan in the past years then you are totally right - this game hasn't changed for you. But for the
random pubber that is me it is.
@ Nate. You do understand that the "vet" aspect is a subjective one? And what I mean by that Is that people perceive the possibility of learning from their in game experiences and mistakes different - one person can play this mod for 5 years and still keep on running in the same stupid situations, but another can learn the ropes in the first month and proceed on surprising everyone by improving so fast that they can be awesome in leading others (there have been countless examples in the history of PR of this happening, I even remember that a 13 y.o. kid did it). So it's all a matter of cognition.
Actually one person in this thread totally described my own experiences in this game. And what are they now compared to the "old days". And here is his post:
ksof wrote:So I started playing around 0.875 on VBIOS servers and played for about 1.5-2 years almost every day. PR nowadays is nothing like it used to be.
It used to be that:
I was scared shitless to waste assets. And not only because I could get banned for couple of weeks but simply because I didn't want to get blamed for ruining the game for my team. And that was the general attitude among most of the players. Everyone was trying not to fuck up.
After a year in infantry I felt that I learned enough to get to play armored vehicles. Meaning I looked HOW people played tanks and so most efficient and only after a while when I actually knew how to be good in theory I got to playing armor.
And I've never tried jets. Only played as a gunner in chopper during the times when everyone was flying 1000m+ and it was quite quiet and boring.
Back then everyone or at least most people understood that PR is a serious business. Not in a stupid MILSIM way but in your attitude.
Now, almost everyone is an arrogant prick.
Squadleaders don't know shit and for me personally this is the biggest problem of pr community. How do you expect new players to love the game if there is nobody to bring them to action and show why PR is so good? When I tried coming back to Pr in 2012 and 2013 the biggest problem was to find a decent squadleader. I remember only finding one aussie guy who knew his shit.
I look at these 9/10 squad leading skills guys having 5/30 k/d squad ratio and ask myself "how can they be so arrogant?". I've spent about 600hours in pr recorded on my Xfire until I could say that I understand some shit. And still after about 4 intense years in this game I can only say that I'm a good medic and a decent helicopter pilot. All of the other skills I have are average or below average.
But I'm not afraid to learn. Or ask for advice players that do better job than myself. And this is the second biggest problem PR community has. Fucking arrogance and lack of desire to learn and actually grow better.
Everyone is chasing most acton-packed roles ingame and try to get as much action as possible mistakenly thinking that this is the most fun. My best memory of PR is when our squad was defending Missile Silo on Iron RIdge. I spend 2 intense hours sitting in the sewers staring at the manhole and we defended those fucking manholes for 2 hours straight, never gave it up and score the victory for our team.
What I'm trying to say is that you're not gonna make PR better by making these new MECH INF rules(that I personally like and think that CROWS and so should become claimable as they used to be) or making people into playing as you think is right but with lowering your arrogance, being more open to learn from other players and changing your attitude. Look how others play, look what they do and what makes their game so successful. Learn from there.
Cheers
So you see, guys, it's all a matter of expectations. We expect not to fail and we expect that failure has such negative downsides that they ripple throughout our team. And right now in pubs we don't see a lot of it? I mean, players who are really afraid for their assets being lost. Why? Noone will blame him. The asset will respawn in few mins. Those are just few points, and in the end of the round seems like fewer people even care.
I remember that we even used to not use some assets in a PUB if they got wasted a lot before by someone because of not wanting to lose the match at the end of the round. I haven't seen anything like this happen now. Tank squad doesn't go INF. They are simply being "more careful" after being raped for the whole round by just being bad with their assets or haven't really learned the basics of being a tank driver/gunner in this mod.
And now let's get to the practical side of this post. Is there a way to stop this problem? (let's say that we've concluded that there's a problem with more careless players/ clueless SL's in PUBs compared to pre 1.0) So let's try to answer the question (as it is the more practical thing to do in this situation [looking at you Navo and Nate - I mean, WTF, guys I sincerely come here with a problem question and instead of contributing you just fucking point a finger at some big irrelevance? Thanks for holding the community standards high!])
Murphy asked:
Do we see a way to slowly stop the slip in the opposite direction? Can we facilitate "serious play" on public servers, or do we have to accept that people prefer to derp around instead of being a cohesive unit?
I've written a lot, my fingers have grown tired so I will try to answer in the most short and structural way possible. First I will note the things that IMHO are "wrong" right now and after that I'll get to the question "Is there a way to change all/some of this?"
The first problem. Influx of new players who don't want to learn. Or who want to learn but by not having the platform and by being in a space saturated with bad gameplay long enough that they soon start to, how to say, fall to the dark side and stop caring.
The second problem. People who don't see the first problem and/or don't think that it has an impact. These are people who (as someone from a clan noted in my post -
that they even cringe at the idea of playing in PUBs) are mainly in a clan of some sorts so they're not exposed to the saturation of the main problem - the newbies that don't get a chance/doesn't give a shit.
The third problem. Changed behavioral patterns. It's a hard thing to explain as It may turn out to be quite the subjective thing - based on my experiences or something. But it has to do with some major changes in the heart and mind of PR. Behavior of a random player. I think it has changed.
Have you seen lately a person teaching some other person something that they don't know (I'm always talking about PUBs)? Have you seen people being totally afraid to waste their asset in use that they are afraid to cross "that ridge line and instead the driver hops out and scouts it first"?
You see, I haven't. These things that are meant to be the BASIS of PR (people helping other people in order to make their own game a better one) doesn't happen that often nowadays. Back when I was a newbie - damn, the help I received. It TOTALLY made me understand this mod in the first few months. Of course, I stuck to Infantry for the first 6 months, but I learned a lot by starting to play medic and AR (and even LAT). Of course, I wasn't still nearly a good or mediocre medic, but at least I tried and I thought about my mistakes.
What I see nowadays is the heard mentality of rushing of a cliff. People not being self-analytical. People not thinking about mistakes. But we have to ask: why aren't they thinking about their mistakes? I really think that it has to do a bit more with TOLERANCE.
Yes, you heard me right. I think that the ONLY way we can make newbies into better players (yes, we'll lose some, but I'd rather have fewer servers, but more GG's). Damn, I hate to say it, but the fact that mubmle right now is integrated - it kinda sucks for us, because back in .95 when I was adminning in PRTA server... oh how we kicked players... It was a total kickfest. But we we're within our rights - those kicked we're not in Mumble, wasn't in a squad, wasn't responding and wasn't teamplaying. Mumble was like an anti-idiot filter.
What I fear is that we've grown lazy. The people who are governing the servers - they just want to play as it's so hard to govern 100 persons. So one "bad" thing slips throgh. Then another. And then another. And there - in the end you have a bad game.
Murphy, as much as I hate to say this, but by looking at the PR forums now and by looking at them at the time when I joined (6 years ago), one can see that a lot has changed in the heart of community. Can it be changed back? I think that with this state of mind that we're in (clans people totally separated from pub people gameplay/ideology wise), It isn't going to happen and it will only get worse. BUT there's always hope, I've learned.
Huge shout outs to PRT. That's the best thing that can happen to a pubber and the best experience he can learn from.
Another thing - community involvement. I really don't see how to change the "attitudes of clansmen" so that they'd be more accepting to playing with pubbers as some of them can't fathom the idea of playing with a pubbie.
But if more and more skilled clansmen at least would try spreading out trough the teams and trying to lead their own pubbie inf squads, things could slowly change. Heck, that's how I got my experience at first - by joining only that Squad whose SL I knew Is a good one (usually it was a person from a clan, although back then it wasn't always the clannie that was the most tacticool SL out there - I've had tons of awesome SLs who hadn't their tags).
So to sum it all up: right now there's no platform for a newbie to learn his ropes. It's only trial by fire. And it sucks. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. Can it be changed? Yes, mostly by clan/experienced people involvement by scrambling within both teams and leading different squads - as it happened in TG long time ago.
And ffs stop being dicks to one another. This community can be a functional one only if it's a tight knit one.
Prove me wrong by answering - why mostly only vets from clans have stayed on playing this mod and not the good players/SL's that were w/o a clan?
I really, really love this mod and I would really like to love it again with as much passion as I did before, but when people in servers don't care about the most basic thing of all - ticket count - then I just can't make myself to join a game again. It seems that nowadays the only cure for me and others looking for a good game is by joining up with "vets"/guys who feel the same or some clan (though in my 6 years in PR I've come to dislike the clans as sometimes their heard mentality is a total downer to the community).
One last thing. Maybe if we cant change the clansmen we could try to revert back to the way of the pre 1.0 integrated mumble way of thinking and dealing with problems? I mean, by becoming more elitist we could make newbies strive for higher standards? As it's basic human psychology, I feel it may work, but sadly I fear that there won't be enough support from server owners/communities IF they don't acknowledge that the problem that this post is about EXISTS.