Now, on to forming a team:
Where do I begin_!_!_
A good question! The first step to forming a team is of course to find players. This is by far the most involved task, and I think the biggest hurdle most interested parties will encounter. I’ve talked to a lot of players who were interested but didn’t feel like they could find a team. Well, buckle up, nameless pilots; this is going to require some initiative. You have to get out there and ask. Now, the ideal situation is that you have a group of people that you play with regularly and like and match your skill level, and then it’s easy to get them all in one spot and work together. Sadly, many do not have this luxury. But there are still a lot of options. There are the many community events, like TAW’s War Wednesdays, Weezl3’s Funtime Fridays, and now comic_sans’ Deathmatch Sundays. There are players of all skill brackets present at these, and it’s a great way to meet players in a competitive environment and see their personalities and skillsets. But even outside of these, there’s no harm in sending a message to someone you see on fairly regularly and would like to have on your team. Get on the forums and post. “I’m looking to start a team, I’m looking for X, Y, and Z.” Or “I play A, B, and C; any team looking for a member_” Talk to some clans; see if they want to start another team. Be outgoing, and don’t get discouraged by anyone who says “No.” Just thank them anyways and try and find someone else. Trust me, there are still plenty of good players that aren’t on a team, and some of them have probably never even heard of this tournament. Remember, you only need to find five other people! That’s only one more than four! Which isn’t very many at all! (Though I’d shoot for having at least one sub just in case)
So I’ll just send invites to everyone I see, right_
Woah there, killer. Even with all that I just said, it does pay to be a little discerning about your teammates. These are people that you’re going to have to spend time with on a regular basis in high-stress environments, and you don’t want to do that with people that you can’t stand. You should mesh well together, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be best buds before accepting them in. For an example, I only played with Rei a handful of times before this team was formed, but we communicate well and work together and now we’re pretty good friends (he might feel different, but he can’t deny my love <3).
Here’s a bulleted list of some stuff I look for in a teammate, in no particular order:
• General skill
• Proficiency with more than one mech
• Interest/investment in the game
• Communication skills (both in and out of game)
• Desire to improve
• Ability to work with others
• Lack of annoying voice and personality
• Ability to bounce back from defeat
• Insight into the game
• Capability to take and offer constructive criticism
• Coolness
• Appreciation of bad puns (not really but also kinda yes)
• Availability<-- DON’T OVERLOOK THIS
A lot of people are going to look at general skill as the most important, and to some degree it is. But you shouldn’t look at that to the exclusion of other traits. For example, you could be the best player in the world, but if you’re a jerk to everyone and never communicate with anyone during a match, well, you can go be the best player in the world by yourself. I made a big note about availability because it’s easy to underestimate how important that is. If you have a player that is only available to play one night a week, you will get frustrated just as quickly as every other captain in the league will get frustrated with you. It makes it very difficult to schedule a match, and you might as well pull out all your hair now and get it over with. My personal advice is to look for players that are available at least three nights a week. Most matches last season happened late at night (9-12 eastern) and that’s probably going to be the same this season, so prepare for that. But availability means more than the ability to show up, it also means that they actually do so. Unfortunately, many of these qualities are ones that you have to determine first-hand, so again, send those invites out to more than you need.
Well, now I have six or so players for my team, but I can’t talk to any of them. Halp!
Get friendly with your teammates. Give them your phone number, email, Steam account info, etc. Trust me; this helps with scheduling soooooooooo much. I tried tracking each player’s schedule on a week-by-week basis, but it was way easier to send out a mass text asking, “Can you play Thursday_” I understand that some players might find this uncomfortable, but you will need some reliable way of communicating when someone is off of Hawken/Steam. You have a lot more scheduling flexibility if you can receive a match proposal, send it out to everyone, and respond within an hour. If it’s really that big of a deal, agree to use something like the Hawken forums, but check it regularly. Like more than once a day sort of thing.
Of course, that doesn’t really help with in-game stuff. It’s hard to communicate enemy position effectively via SMS. Luckily, there are lots of options out there. Ventrilo, Teamspeak, Mumble, and Skype are the ones I’m most familiar with. Of these, Skype is probably the easiest for everyone to use, since you don’t have to worry about connecting to a server, but it doesn’t have a push-to-talk option, which drives some people (like me) absolutely bonkers. If hearing every little breath and slurp of another person is going to bother you, get one of the other three (the flip argument is that PTT is slower and requires hitting a key, which can actually mess you up more easily than you’d expect). [EDIT: I'm apparently wrong about Skype. So there you go! You can use PTT. I leave it untouched so that everyone knows I'm fallible and also because the imagery of someone slurping without PTT amuses me.] I honestly know very little about setting up servers for any of these, but renting from a hoster is fairly straightforward and usually pretty cheap for small servers.
Here you can search for hosters by location (for TS) or you could go
here and have your pick of Mumble, Vent, or TS server from gameservers.com (this provider was picked mostly at random from a Google search; I just happen to recognize the name from a few servers I’ve frequented in the past).
Ok, we’re set up and communicating. Now what_
Play together. Not just in formal practice settings. Not even just in Hawken. Get together and just hang out and talk. If you are playing Hawken, party up. Get to know each others’ playstyles and learn to effectively communicate. Offer feedback to each other. Have fun with it.
Then send some messages to various captains. Schedule some scrims. Come to some of those community events I mentioned as a team. You’ve gotta get that practice in. If you feel so inclined, get involved in the mentorship program that Nept and Leon should be typing up and figuring out. But at this point, it’s mostly about enjoying yourself. We hope to see you out there.
Edit: Thanks, Silverfire. My attempts to reserve a post did not work
Edit2: Who calls it "Toggle mute_" God damnit, Skype.
Edited by Daronicus, September 02 2014 - 04:46 PM.
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