Get Locked n' Loaded for #AAscrim

"One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it." -Knute Rockne

In games like Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft, and much more, you see hundreds and hundreds of teams competing. You also see literally thousands of LAN tournaments taking place all over the globe every year. With LAN tournaments, high stakes competition and similar activities of that sort comes professional gaming teams - teams that play games for a living. "How do they get so good?" you might ask. The answer is simple: they practice more than you can imagine.

The first thing I need to explain in this article is the division in the America's Army community. There are (at the moment) two communities: the competitive community and the "pub" community. The reason for such division is because not many people are into competitive AA, and/or they don't know how to get plugged in to the community because some people aren't willing to help them learn. They simply label them a "scrub team" and turn a blind eye to them. Well, I am writing this article because teams that want to learn more about competition need to be given a chance. We all need to share our knowledge to help this game grow. This article will cover as much as I can about practicing and how to get plugged in to the competitive community via scrimming.

First things first: the first major step to get involved in competition is to practice. Yes, there are simple ways to practice within your team, but scrims (scrimmages) are an ideal way to test your strategies against other teams strats.

"What are strats?" you might ask. They can be called a variety of different terms: strats, tactics, plans, and more. While there are some teams that can go into a match and just play normally, but strats help with communication, teamwork, and various other attributes that help create a good team.

Back to what I was saying about practicing. An important tool to use in practicing with your team is IRC (Internet Relay Chat), sort of like chat rooms for gaming. A good "sub-tool" to use to access IRC is mIRC. This is a client that lets you access IRC (there are many other clients but mIRC is the easiest to use). Now instead of making this article very very long, you can look at an mIRC tutorial I made some time ago, right here.

I am now assuming you are all setup on mIRC and get the gist of how to use it. This is where the fun begins. By looking at my mIRC tutorial, you now know the basic commands to join a channel, change your nickname, etc. It is time to put those to good use. Once you have changed your nickname and joined the channels you want to (hopefully #aascrim is one of them), it is time to get down and dirty - find some scrims. Scrims are usually 4v4 or 5v5, so in order to find a scrim, either look in #AAscrim for someone else posting a scrim or post your own with the following format:

Type|Map|Server|League


Example:


5v5|Mout|Ours|TWL

This lets everyone know that you are looking for a 5v5 scrim on Mout, on your server, to practice for TWL. Once you find someone that mutually agrees to have a scrim, you work out the details and then have fun scrimming.

People want America's Army to get bigger, much bigger, but that cannot happen unless we get more teams into competition, and one of the best ways to do that is get those new teams on IRC and help them learn how to get plugged in. You see CS:S and CS have huge LANs with huge cash prizes, but why does America's Army not have that many, and none with such big prizes? It's because America's Army competition is not that big. Do you want America's Army to grow? Help the new teams out.

Disclaimer


I have tried my best to give a good outline about why it is important to scrim and practice. I also tried to help you get setup on mIRC. You can e-mail me if you have any questions. Also, if anyone else has any input or criticisms, please post them. I like feedback.

$ubsTanCe- Out!

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Post edited by -S-Co.Smokey at 5/23/2007 1:12:56 PM

i agree with this. competition for aa matches is becoming more fast paced with lower round times, and thats going to do two things which work against each other. its going to drive away those that like to take aa slow, and its going to bring in a large community that has been playing source, ut2k4, etc. now if we could just get some very simple maps that are smaller, and allow for fast competition where its not always defense sided.

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karnifex - IceNine.Gaming - #i9 @ GameSurge

you are right, AA need more teams competing, but sometimes, its happens that are good players in some low performance teams and they leave those teams to go to better teams, even if they don't play and i think that's not good for the players and teams, i believe that if some good player is in a great team, but he barely plays because there are other better players than him, he could go to other less good team, but where he could play and get a good evolution as a AA player, it's just my thoughts, it's like my team, we like to compete and to scrim but our problem is that we don't have at least 4 players often, so it's difficult and since we've lost a player to other bigger team (and probably he won't be in the lineup) and it's kinda hard for us to be a good competitive team but if those players didn't went to bigger teams, then the competition will be not just to a few good teams that have all the good players, but there would be more teams and more competitive between them if you know what a mean.

i think AA is starting to go down hill because ppl aren't really playing the way it was amde. Everyone just rushes in guns blazin while the "defending" style team camps it hard core. This is basically a pipeline match. AA needs to keep it's orignal roots which this new MApmaker is destroying. The fundementals of an AA match is to take your Kill your opennents which what it should be is to get obj. Most clans that play are killing clan that don't worry bout OBJ until the last 2 minutes. Which the've already destroyed an entire fireteam so the 1 person left ot defend obj just get bum-rushed and killed . AA is an amazing game and theres nothing like an AA match for that top spot but the strategies aren't really realistic like that gmae is suppose to be. Idk what i'm ranting about it's just AA seems to becoming Source.

Nice article. Lots of good stuff in there.

gj

well AA is fun and TWL matches are a blood bath for most, it's all in the way you play it...camp or kill all are strats

nice article dude, really nice, ppl need things like this more often..

u should add the mirc tutorial made by element, it really helps alot:

http://www.teamwarfare.com/forums/showthread.asp?forumid=160&threadid=340949

hf

Originally posted by: Moka$
you are right, AA need more teams competing, but sometimes, its happens that are good players in some low performance teams and they leave those teams to go to better teams, even if they don't play and i think that's not good for the players and teams, i believe that if some good player is in a great team, but he barely plays because there are other better players than him, he could go to other less good team, but where he could play and get a good evolution as a AA player, it's just my thoughts, it's like my team, we like to compete and to scrim but our problem is that we don't have at least 4 players often, so it's difficult and since we've lost a player to other bigger team (and probably he won't be in the lineup) and it's kinda hard for us to be a good competitive team but if those players didn't went to bigger teams, then the competition will be not just to a few good teams that have all the good players, but there would be more teams and more competitive between them if you know what a mean.

jCp

I totally agree with what you said.. AA need to grow up in competion .. But the problem is that there are not many active teams.Mainly if you're looking for a canadian french team because your english isn't good. There are about 5 good canadian french teams and it's FRogz,QBC,PNH,KOH,Qckill..So, all the quebekers that are good and are looking for a clan are going to go in one of these 5 clan.In Counter-Strike source you have a lot of choice.. There are a lot of people playing near where you're living.. So it's easy to find a scrim. In AA, when you finally find a scrim on aa scrim, you find an european one.. When your ping is 190 it's not very funny to play..That's why I think your post is a very good one because it's an opportunity for small clan to practice and to become bigger.

It's a good write-up. The problem with this game is that it doesn't appeal to tons of people. I used to love pubbing, but since I came into competitive play, and after a couple gameplay patches, I can't stand public servers. These are two different worlds. And it's not like the DEVS are doing us any favors or anything. :-/

#aapug ~~

your IRC Guide is messed up.