Teamwork in shooters.

[gabe12301]

Most of us have probably noticed that teamwork in an fps is usually rare.
This is evident in The Call of duty series. I don't completely blame the players. I blame the game itself. In most First person shooters I've noticed that there's not really any incentive to use teamwork and using teamwork usually results in the other team multi-kills. I think teamwork fails most of the time because of this:

Predictable environment.

The maps never change. That one camping spot will always be there. Those crates that you use to flank the other team will always be there. How does this effect teamwork? You've probably played the maps many times before and you know how to play well on that map. You've been working alone and doing well all this time, so why stop now?

Lack of vehicles.

Vehicles=teamwork. Vehicles with multiple seats require teamwork to operate and destroy. For example in halo how often have you been killed by those 3 guys in the warthog? If you're driving a tank in most games one player won't stop you on foot by himself. You're going to die when you're trying to kill the guy in the distance but his teammates start spamming grenades while you're not facing them.

That one guy.

No matter how coordinated you team is there's going to be that one guy on you team who refuses to work with the rest of your team. There is no way to deal with this.

Bad company 2 deals with the first two pretty well and offers incentives for working with your team. If a game has two very coordinated teams witch is VERY rare the battles will be more exiting and it should look something like this.

 

[WhatHityou]

I'm not completely for the whole vehicles but i'm not against it. I'm an avid halo player and even with vehicles and incentive for success. I still see a small lack in teamwork there.

 

[Sarynroth]

Yeah I know what you mean although I think one of the main reasons team work is rare is the lack of communication between players. An example of this is on team fortress 2 the team that has mics and and responds to call outs will usually dominate the other team unless they they are doing the same.

The problem is people tend to talk crap quite a lot so most people disable voice communication as well as your points that the maps don't change and that one person HAS to be the lone wolf.

I suppose the way to get around this would be to play with people that you know and are used to playing with. Although it would be nice for more games to add incentives far woring as a team such as rewards for assists and the like.

 

[RatRace123]

I think the lack of teamwork stems from the fact that we can jump into a match with any group of random people. People who we've never met and probably never will meet again.

We've been programmed to think that they're dicks, and they may be dicks, or they may not. Either way we'll probably ignore them and go by ourselves.

I don't think true teamwork can be accomplished unless you're playing in a group with your friends, a group you can trust. That's really really difficult with a group of strangers that we think will turn on us at any moment.

 

[Viking Incognito]

This is a very convincing argument and I think you are right. Good job.

 

[CCountZero]

Another major factor in the lack of teamwork is that there's very little communication.

There's also no leadership, and we all know that most people like to call the shots themselves.

Way I see it, the only real way to have teamwork is to play with friends or in a clan, with voice commms and possibly a pre-made plan of action for a specific map.



Personally, I Rambo in CoD / BF and leave the teamwork for my 5-70 player ARMA2 sessions.

 

[thedeathscythe]

I think it's mainly based on game type. For instance, Team Deathmatch, although team is in the name of the game type, doesn't lend itself to teamwork well. yes, you can roll in a group and rip shit up, but I've been the lone wolf with my friends online (who also run as a lone wolf on my time) and we generally won like that. Games like Capture the Flag have more teamwork, but can still be won by ripping through the enemy, grab the flag, rip through the enemy until you reach your flag (Halo does a good job of not allowing you to fire and to run slower with the flag).

Now a game like Demolition in Socom requires your team to get the bomb in the middle of the map (each team has access to it), and then work your way to go plant it (and there are no respawns, by the way). So in that, you have to secure the bomb, make sure you and your teammates don't die or take too much damage, and then work your way to their plant site, which is probably by now quite well guarded. You can even concede them the bomb for the sake of having a better line set up and risking less casualties for the sake of getting it.

I've always felt Socom was one of the best shooters for teamwork, and I've never played Battlefield but I'm glad you showed me that because now I really want to go out and buy Battlefield Bad Company 2. I play shooters like Modern Warfare 2 and stuff without teamwork, but my play time of those games is short lived, because there just isn't any lasting value to it.

 

[Cazza]

FPS like Cod games should give ways to work together. In Left 4 Dead your passing pills and helping up teammates. Why don't make shooters do it? You could even pass guns and ammo maybe even other items like flash lights.

Sure the game could only give you 2 clips and everyone needs to share. Some people won't. If you want teamwork in games. The game would need to add those features and market the game on those points. Even then it would be hard. Game developers don't want to take the risk.

 

[Wayneguard]

l4d is really the most team oriented game i've played in recent memory. Whatever it's doing needs to be emulated.

 

[gabe12301]

The communication thing is obvious. I should have specified that I was talking about things that the games themselves do.

 

[zombiestrangler]

That's why I roll in a decent gaming clan. Check out TG if you're interested.
tghq.org

 

[Omikron009]

I definitely find multiplayer games the most fun when there's teamwork involved. My favourite online games of all time are Bad Company 2 and Halo Reach.

 

[Irridium]

I think the lack of teamwork stems from the fact that we can jump into a match with any group of random people. People who we've never met and probably never will meet again.

We've been programmed to think that they're dicks, and they may be dicks, or they may not. Either way we'll probably ignore them and go by ourselves.

I don't think true teamwork can be accomplished unless you're playing in a group with your friends, a group you can trust. That's really really difficult with a group of strangers that we think will turn on us at any moment.

What he said.

Another good example is dedicated servers. Each server is a community, and thats where you'll find more people working together.

Which is why Battlefield 2/2142 is so much fun. Especially the Titan matches in Battlefield 2142. Those require quite a bit of teamwork and co-ordination.

 

[Judgement101]

On TF2 I use the sydney sleeper to help out my team...is that teamwork?

 

[Valiance]

You know, it's not too hard to have some decent teamwork in premade games. People join clans/teams for things like this, or they arrange pickup games on IRC. Some of the most team-based games I've ever been involved in actually were when I was playing Quake Live CTF.

That said, I've won over 1000 games on there, had played for a while, was relatively decent/experienced, and had teammates who were also decent/experienced, all of us had pretty good movement and aim, and when you're on ventrilo/mumble/teamspeak, --AND ACTUALLY HAVE A PREMADE GAMEPLAN BEFORE STARTING THE GAME-- it's not too hard to coordinate your team.

It's not like we had coaches or offensive coordinators or anything, but we had our positions mapped out, general ideas for areas of attack, we all knew the maps, etc.

We did several "best of 3" and "best of 5" scrimmages against other teams, and it was by far my most entertaining experience in recent years of playing an FPS, since playing Tribes 2 several years ago. If you can find a community to do it, it's definitely great teamwork.

But teamwork in public games has ALWAYS been a problem. And it always will be until you have something like BF2 or Savage 2, where one player is sort of a "commander" and will give orders to other players from a bird's-eye view (basically one player plays an RTS and commands other players.)

And you have to reward players for following orders and make following orders actually fun (savage 2 did this pretty well but it could have been better or more instant-gratification.)

Anyway, if you're looking for that, you should try ArmA II. I've seen some really coordinated large-scale battles in that game.

 

[Smagmuck_]

If someone wants me to help with teamwork, I will. But if they have spited me in the past, I will go out of my way to be a complete douche to them.

 

[JSF01]

I believe thatmap size and lay out can be partly to blame for lack of team work. The bigger and more open the maps are the less team work there will be because for it becomes easier for large numbers of lone enemys to try to sneek around. Now one of my favorite multiplayer games is Day of Defeat. the maps are relatively small and they force the players into one of maybe two or three choke points. While this may not guarantee teamwork it at leasts creates the illusion of teamwork work at a minimum because no matter were you go you will probably be with team mates and things like people deploying machine guns in open areas for there own purposes in effect creates surppresssing fire for their team mates weather they ment to or not.

 

[laststandman]

Bioshock 2's multiplayer was one of the only games where teamwork felt natural to me. It was so simple: if you fought in a pair, you stood a better chance of winning a fight.