Bravo USA-Forever932. Great post. I don't think the community is dwindling numerically although apparently it is with respect to quality according to some posts in this thread. As a dedicated pubber (and proud of it) I play on public servers 100% of the time. I can only squeeze out 4 or maybe 5 hours per week in my busy schedule of job, family, kids, house, etc., for my PR addiction. Often these hours come during off times for the quality of play on public servers, but I have to be honest that I generally have a great time playing PR. If my team absolutely sucks and there are no squads using voip except a 2man locked sniper squad then I start my own squad and raise the bar by having a plan and working as a unit.USA-Forever932 wrote:
Problem is, the PR community (Sometimes even myself) have gone with the mean options. PR isn't being open enough with it's newcomers! If we want this community to survive, we need to open the doors a little. Be like Morpheus, train players in the training server for a spell. Let that new guy be the pointman, tell him to not sprint as much. These are little things you can do. Maybe your squad can be less badass for a round and make sure that it's one more guy that you bring in. Because, I don't care what anyone says adding just ONE player to the community is galaxies better than taking one away. Nobody can argue with that.
What I'm saying here is, drop the snobbish "I'm a PR veteran and I have no time for noobs" attitude. You aren't playing on a ranked server 24/7. No one is tracking you, you're here to have fun, show somebody else the ropes so the community replenishes itself! Not everyone who is here is going to be here forever. Don't take the dwindling community we have left for granted.
As far as the age thing goes, I have to admit to avoiding players with voices that have not changed yet. It is a personal thing and perhaps is discriminatory but I just do not enjoy myself as much. In fact, this weekend I was on the TG server and a very young SL started an Anti-Cache squad. To his credit he said, 'if high pitched squeaky voices bother you then feel free to leave.' At a certain point I just left the squad because I could not deal with the voice. The SL though was very, very good. He had the squad working very well together and he was very decisive. Very quickly his squad had double, triple or even quadruple the score that other squads had. In fact, the squad I joined upon leaving his was being led by a mature player but who had zero skills as an SL and our squad score reflected that.
One way to address these 'growing concerns with PR players' is through making more of the old timers better leaders. Fuzzhead has a great idea for SL training. I imagine that a large focus of the training would be on interpersonal communication and relations: leadership. Any word on when those training sessions might begin?





