why attacking teammates is bad
In many cultures past and present there is an unspoken horror which occurs when two nations collide, enemies clash and fools compete. Most commonly referred to as friendly fire in todays world it is a stomach churning act when the guy who is meant to have your back, doesnt. He just attacks you instead. For this essay Im choosing a to focus on a narrow spectrum in the void that is attacking teammates and honing in on team attacking in the internet sensation know as CRPG, a mod some for the kick ass game Mount and Blade Warband. In know some of the readers take themselves quite seriously but this is after all the internet and you are best not to even take yourselves seriously while online, playing games especially falls under this category. First of all both Elmetiacos and BD_Baby_Wolf are both morons, fact. Mainly because in sub section 2 of the CRPG online rules (that were recently introduced to me):
Remember that this is the internet. Don't be insulted if someone calls you an idiot.
A smart CRPG Admin. [1]
They still get insulted even after being warned, blatantly ignoring the golden rule in the process (Use common sense. [2]) But I digress, we must crack on with our chosen subject else this just turns into a flame essay and no good will come of this task.
Imagine you are the captain of a ship called San Hermenegildo in the Napoleonic wars, its night but you know the ship to your starboard, the Real Carlos, is your ally. Its late and night and BOOM shoots reign in from her direction. Inconceivable. Both ships attack each other and explode and the sneaky British ship escaped after pulling off a sly one, I.E running past gansta style popping holes in dem bitches. British +2 Spain -2. [3] See that negative 2 there. Thats bad for Spain at that time but in their defence they were led to believe that their allies were the enemy and the orders at that time in the war were probably to attack the enemy. This is a basic
It was him teamkill set up by the British captain and good on him for pulling it off, I must say. The best way I have witnessed similar results replicated on CRPG against teammates would be running behind some boy/girl who has their throwing axes/knifes out and then just start lobbing the chosen projectile at anyone in heavy armour (must be heavy to avoid instant kills :S) then switch to main weapon and run off on a tangent. The guy with the axe embedded in his back is like WTF and attacks the guy with the axe out he just ran past. The victim after losing first hit usually attacks back and a fight to the deaths ensues. (I say usually because in some situations the victim does not attack back and no death occurs. One can only assume the guy with the axe in shoulder doesnt want to kill a coward and only wanted retribution for the hp lost) Now the It was him is a bad teamattack for many a reason:
1. The dickhead throwing the weapon gets away as there is no real way to track damage income to you so its a matter of instinct and player skill to track damage income.
2. He must be caught in the act.
3. The gods will frown upon him.
4. The guy that does the teamkill now has -1, much like Spain.
5. He also has an axe in him.
6. The victim is either killed and has to respawn or is shown as a yellow belly to all.
7. The victim is left feeling abused and confused. Where are the tinternet police? Oh wait its the internet. The most he/she will get is an admin with free time.
A horrible list of negative side effects to the It was him teamattack but for the purposes of this essay you must prepare yourself for more of the above depravity. Another one of the team attacks I have witnessed and committed is the
Oopsie. For example: on 16th September 1917, the British submarine HMS G9 mistook the destroyer HMS Pasley for a German U-Boat and attacked with torpedoes as per standing orders. Pasley, not recognising G9 as British until too late, responded to the attack to by ramming the clean fuck out of G9 only leaving one member alive to tell the tale.[4] Badass I know but who here committed the Oopsie? Protip: G9 did, thats who. The equivalent in CRPG can be a number of things, the round ending when you have an attack charged, you have to get rid of that screen when it pops up and it causes your guy to launch an attack randomly. You could be camping a doorway with a dodgy camera angle and just see movement and swing, into a teammate! I think everyone has thrown something and its just made a B line for some allies head. Sad times. Usually a quick sorry sorts this mess out but if youre laughing or trying to run away a fight usually breaks out, and a fight for no reason is a waste of a fight. Just one more reason why teamattacking is bad.
The Kick, one of the most hilarious team attacks in CRPG, When incited the kick causes the victim to stumble drunkenly in the opposite direction. I must confess, there was this one time, back when I was like lvl3, I was on some ladders with an archer and he was shooting at someone off in the distance. He just wouldnt get out of my way. I tried to go behind and in front but he was in the middle of the ladder! I wasnt going to walk backwards, I had came a long way so...so I kicked him, Right off the ladder. I didnt mean to! He just fell, flailing his arms around. I think he was O.K tho (He wasnt) and just played on. With 20/20 hindsight I would never have pushed that kick button and should have just typed in chat until the archer noticed my plight. Whenever that might have been. Added to the stumbling is the fact the kick actually inflicts damage! Minute amounts of damage but enough to kick a shirtless peasant to death, after 5 10 minutes. Usually kicking in CRPG is just a basic way to grab someones attention. Hey you! Get behind the shieldwall!, The enemy is this way! or the classic Your too close to the edge. but when used to intentionally kick an ally from a great enough height to kill him/her, even for the purposes of comedy, it is a bad thing to do. The victim has no idea why you just turn on them, and on top of this has absolutely zero chance of retaliating. Also there is the time factor of trying to get back up to the point you fell from, its usually quite a distance away and that can be a real pain!
One more to add to the list, the blatant
Fuck you team attack. Committed when you just walk up to an ally and hit them. Taking their health and honour and leaving them weakened for an opponent to finish off for you. This team attack can happen anywhere, at the spawns, at a flag, in the middle of a fight or just before you rush the enemy lines. This is a bad team attack because if witnessed by the enemy they will realise they are playing against some hard motherfuckers. I mean I bet Iraq were shitting themselves in the Gulf War when America were killing a quarter of their own troops. [5] Well it would have sent the shits up me that all Im saying! The Fuck you is one of the most commonly seen team attacks in CRPG due to how easy it is to commit. 0 for style IMO but a 7 for annoyance. Most users just shrug this off but if someone who gets annoyed by losing HP is hit, they usually end up getting hit again in most cases I have seen.
For the teamattackers out there with some extra gold, they always seem to prefer the classic
Horse Ram. The clue is in the title, get a horse with armour, ram it into archers and peasants = Bad times. First of all this is cruel to the horses as they usually are the first to go down before the mob gets the rider. Secondly, not only is health lost but the person rammed by the horse lies down for a short nap! Mid battle!!! I think we can all agree this is a breach in protocol and a failure for situational awareness. Battlefields are not a place for a nap! Usually the victim gets annoyed at feeling like shit for having to scuttle out of the way and at the fact the horse came out of nowhere so there was nothing they could do about it. One of the worst feelings in battle is feeling you are useless as it eats at moral. Another goal in the back of the next for why attacking teammates is bad. Team feels bad.
Archers who
Spray and Pray are the last possible culprits for attacking teammates. Thoes guys who just stand at the back of combat and fire arrows in, Great idea isnt it? No, because by the time I have turned to run at you for your crap aim the guy who I was fighting has stabbed me in the back! Just like the French in WW1 when they lost 75,000 in 4 years to friendly fire[6].
Now that we have seen all the likely attacks coming from your teammates we should probably take a look at the definition of a teammate. The oxford dictionaries definition is as follows:
a fellow member of a team
Thanks for that oxford dictionary. Where would we be without you! So in CRPG a teammate is someone who fights the enemy with you. They do not fight you, they fight the enemy. So if someone with a clan flag above their heads attacks you, they are no longer a teammate and you can engage them at will. They have defaulted on the basic teammate agreement and must suffer the consequences. I know this is totally contrary to the rule of no intentional teamkilling/teamwounding but this player is no longer a teammate so using common sense he must now be an enemy? Or perchance a really over active spectator?? Impossible, enemy it is!
The only way I can see to completely remove all negative side effects from attacking teammates would be to remove the option to inflict friendly damage on all CRPG servers. Effectively removing team attacks from the game forever! We all know deep down in our gaming soul that this option could destroy the game we love. It removes such a basic element of game play from our gaming experience that it dulls the realism of the game to a point where the gamer no longer connected to the attacks he is making. Downside to this is your going to end up with dickheads all over the shop standing in front of you blocking your attacks to the enemy, and you wont be able to stop them! Its two sides of the same coin and CRPG has stuck to the side that lets you kick ass!
Attacking teammates is bad for a wealth of reasons barley touched by this essay. It is a subject that incorporates aspects of playground bulling, age old naval tactics, re-defining game definitions and self respect while playing a game on the internet with strangers. All in all I hope we all learned something here today about why attacking teammates is bad, a lesson we could use in the future to better ourselves.
From the desk of BrigadierBillyBrown
REFRENCES
[1],[2]
http://wiki.c-rpg.net/index.php?title=Rules[3],[4], [6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fire[5]
http://www.slate.com/id/2064055/[7]
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/teammate
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