This isn't a flame, or an attack, just read it if you wish and maybe you'll think twice next time you post...

So the question at hand...is it really necessary to reply to any/every team recruiting thread with "why bother make a new team, just join one?". Having a first person shooter background, I feel like making a team can be the best move made by someone. It not only gives someone the oppurtunity to take on a new role but it also gives players a responsibility, one of which to maintain a team, learn the game better, learn characteristic skills that maybe the outside world doesn't teach...

When I first made a "squad" while playing Black Hawk Down, back in, let's say early in 2004, we were a low key team. In time, people admired our skill, our compassion, and our friendliness to anyone who joined a server we were in. Everyone would hope on voice comms and when we weren't playing, we were just talking, talking about everyday life, talking to complete strangers that shared the same passion towards the game. I met a lot of great people in that time, most of which I still talk to, to this day. We were a successful team, we put many wins under a belt, but we had our setbacks, we didn't always win but we depended on one another to pull together and fix what we were doing wrong, and that's important in competitive gaming. It's a great chance for not only the younger generation but also the older, adult era to really get out there and feel like they have made something. Of course, not all teams can be successful and sure, many teams do fall short of becoming anything well-known, but you live and you learn.

Again, I didn't post this thread to start a debate but LFS has a pretty broad population, and within the population are different genres of racing. You have your regular straight up racing, drifters, rallyers, and on top of that, car classes. Finding someone who shares the same interest in cars and racing with you is a great feeling and it's natural to want to expand by finding more people who share the same values.

I guess the message I'm trying to get out there is let people do what they want to do, regardless if you think failure is right down the road for them, how do you think top name teams have gotten out there and made a name for themselves? I'm sure when they came up with the idea to make a team, many people shot them down and said the same thing some still say today....Regardless, it's an oppurtunity for someone to broaden their role in LFS, whether it's being a leader, learning how to treat individuals, or being a driver who must obey the leader, and listen, and learn, and progress with their experience and skills, whatever it is, it's a chance for the LFS population to grow and expand and all in all, it's a chance for an individual to gain not just racing skill but personality skills.

execellent point!


but why did you abandon TWL im sure it would of worked??

are you making another team? or are you joining a already established one?

Bringing a team of 7 or 8 guys into S2 was not easy, I had a total of 2 members who had already owned S2, and I was getting it the next day, one member was leaving come summer and that left me and the other member...with time restraints...I'd rather just race on the time that I can race, not a set time, of course, I'm looking for teams who specialize in Rallycross but not sure if I'll jump into the team scene quite yet...Not to mention at the time I had a girlfriend which restricts gaming time to a near 20 minutes...lol...but she's outta the picture and I'm back playing when I can

Excellent post, I made one the other day in the Omni team thread after someone said something... here it is:

Quote from mr_x :

*quoted post removed*

It's posts like this which is what I (and most likely many others) are fed up of. Let them have their space to post their team info, it's a thread about their team for gods sake. Not your thread.

This community has been going VERY downhill over the last 6 or so months, posts like this really don't help in the slightest and just drag it down further.

I bought LFS after I saw a very helpful, mature and close community, which is what I wanted, so if I had any problems then all would be fine. However this community is pretty much none of those 3 now. Yes I can post and ask for help, so can most regular S2 players, but as soon as a demo player or new S2 player signs on, look what happens! If I was a demo player now I WOULD NOT buy LFS judging by a few people who post here. Because alot of this forum is just pointless crap/demo player bashing/new player bashing!

I try reading through all the spam to see if i can learn something new/catch up with any news that's going on. These days it's almost impossible without getting confused with all the spam.

Also before I end this post, let me just say that the majority here are fine, but there's 5 or 6 (maybe more) people who are intent on dragging this community down as much as they can (probably without realising it).

Time to grow up guys.


Chris.

EDIT: yes there are more teams coming up every day, but that's these people's choice, let them have a go at least they are trying!

Most the time you'll find that these teams are popping up because established LFS teams won't take them on because they don't have enough experience, which is fair enough. But I see that these new guys just want to race with a group of people and have fun, and are trying to do that. What is so wrong with that?

Quote from Nine :

When I first made a "squad" while playing Black Hawk Down, back in, let's say early in 2004, we were a low key team. In time, people admired our skill, our compassion, and our friendliness to anyone who joined a server we were in. Everyone would hope on voice comms and when we weren't playing, we were just talking, talking about everyday life, talking to complete strangers that shared the same passion towards the game. I met a lot of great people in that time, most of which I still talk to, to this day.

I used to be a huge BHD player too. Played it solidly between 2003-2006, and I may well be tempted to install it again soon! I was part of a squad on there too, small squad, but reasonably well known (Nerds/Nutters UK, or =NUK= was our tag).

And I can reflect on everything you say in that quote from my BHD time. And right now it's the same for me on LFS, when I was with ZWR we used to go on about anything on vent (i still go on there, and we still do!). in dSRC we all keep in touch using irc, even that doesn't end up as chatting about LFS related stuff much. Through my years of gaming I've made loads of friends, and I continue to do so to this day through LFS, and it happens because of the random day-to-day life chat we get on ventrilo/teamspeak/irc

Both great posts. I agree this community is failing and we need some people (no names in particular) to smarten up and grow the f**k up.

Got to agree with what Chris said, even though he IS my teamie

[dSRC] is, (I hope) well known and respected these days throughout the LFS community, yet we started 3 years ago when TWO people decided "Lets make an LFS Team!".
Over the years we have grown, matured, and gained experience. The team has changed personnel in this time, some have gone, some have joined, but there has always been the feeling of 'THE TEAM'.
Can ANYBODY name a team that didn't start in a similar way?

Give these lads a chance, maybe one day they will be the next Ocrana or Mercury...or is that what you are scared off?

Quote from Bladerunner :

...yet we started 3 years ago when TWO people decided "Lets make an LFS Team!".
Over the years we have grown, matured, and gained experience. The team has changed personnel in this time, some have gone, some have joined, but there has always been the feeling of 'THE TEAM'.

This is exactly how CoRe Racing started. Two drivers started a team out of a group of FPSer's and started racing. I raced with them for a while (about 3 months) and they asked me to join. At that point, there wasn't any website/forums or even skins! Just a group of people enjoying racing with and trusting each other. Just like [dSRC], we've had members come and go, and others go inactive and previously inactive members come back, but there was and still is a feeling of TEAM because we were friends on the track before we were teammates.

Nine, I think some of the frustration you are seeing is because we've seen, time and time again, these young people find one other person (sometimes not even that) and come on here and say "Here's my team". Now, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. Good luck to them. Where it goes awry is when some of these so-called "forum teams" start accepting members nearly as quickly as they post their interest in joining. No "get to know them", no "let's race on track first". That's risky for an upstart team, because what happens when your new driver goes out and wrecks people and ends up on the Wrecker's Barricade with your team tag on? Your team gets a bad rep, that's what happens.

The other thing that is very frustrating is to see a guy start a team with one other person, and then a week later, when no-one has joined, they shut the team down, and the first guy starts another. These things don't just go from 2 relatively new LFS guys to 15 league championship caliber drivers over night. You have to have patience. You have to work, very hard, at it. I don't like people that bash on those that get the freewebs sites. It may not be the best choice, but give them credit for trying. After we got a couple more members by racing with them a while, CoRe started with a free "Proboards" forum. Not the best choice, but it gave us a place to talk outside of the game. Over two years (as of April 9 ), all that has progressed into 14 members, a hosted website & forums, a Ventrilo server, and two LFS servers, and active membership in the management of a successful league. The last few things came because the members were willing to help work on and help pay, and trusted a single person enough to give them their money to make the payments.

The point of all that is to show that it takes more than a week and hoping that people join your team to make said team a success. The people that love this sim and the community are voicing their opinions because we want to see these team do it the right way, and not simply post up team startup notices that eventually just turn into spam posts and online arguments.

Sometimes, yes, it's justified because a some of the upstarting teams are a one man band with no clear objective, plan, direction, skill, time, effort, etc. etc. Until there is a clear understanding of why to make a team (i.e. not just because I couldn't get to one, or it's "cool" to have a team tag) and how to achieve whatever goal(s) it is that is the objective it's better that the team leader mulls is over a few times before proceeding.

I have no problems with social teams who just drive under the same team name for fun or whatever, it's a reasonable enough goal, but a couple of the teams that I've see crop up in the past have just been utterly doomed it's a bit disconcerting.

For a quick comparison take WoW guilds. There's a massive amount of nonsense guilds who are nothing but a single person running around major cities begging for gold and spamming "join my guild" with no explanation. Then there are the guilds that actually set out to achieve something (such as hardcore raiding, or just hanging about on guild chat / VT etc. and doing casual pvp whatnots). I'd much prefer to see more of the latter and less of the former, which is why I never sign off on guilds / teams / etc. unless I see something in it other than fail.

Three cheers for Nine and mr_x.

I see what your saying Banshee and I agree completely, maybe kinder messages towards the team leaders like "Maybe you should work on getting more members that are interested in joining before you actually create the site", it's obvious the attitudes of some individuals are getting in the way to a kinder and friendlier community.

Great post mr_x, glad we think alike so much , and yeah, my BHD era ended about 2006, our timezones probably never matched up but who knows, maybe we ran into eachother lol, not sure if you are familiar with big name squads in the U.S., but I'd say the most popular team I joined was GNS (Genome Soldiers).

I wouldn't say everyone posts abuse and negative comments, but after so many 'teams' posting here and joining another 'team' people just get sick of it.

More then half the teams that pop-up only exist to carry a tag, its like its some sort of fashion statement and only lasts a few days. No one has a problem with someone who really sets out to make a team and really sticks to it, take for example a guy named shaun he started a team called Team Zoom.
This fella has stuck with this same team since he announced it to the LFS world even though I'm sorry to say he doesn't have the members he really deserves.

Then you get some off beat demo racer who decides to create his new drift clan, only to join another team the following day because he didn't have 50 members in the first 10 minutes. So some comments may come across as harsh or abusive but if you've seen it 100 times then there's a good chance it will happen again, and we all know respect is earned not dished out with a proleet clan/team tag.

Just wanted to add that the question in the OP's post, "why bother make a new team, just join one?" is precisely question the team founder should ask him/herself because it is what defines it as the unique team the founder wants to establish. In other words, if the founder can't think up a sound reason for that question, I personally do think it's a case of "join an existing one". It's not really abuse more than common sense, unless it's worded as a flame in which case it's not the right way to go about things of course.

Quote from Rooble :

I wouldn't say everyone posts abuse and negative comments, but after so many 'teams' posting here and joining another 'team' people just get sick of it.

More then half the teams that pop-up only exist to carry a tag, its like its some sort of fashion statement and only lasts a few days. No one has a problem with someone who really sets out to make a team and really sticks to it, take for example a guy named shaun he started a team called Team Zoom.
This fella has stuck with this same team since he announced it to the LFS world even though I'm sorry to say he doesn't have the members he really deserves.

Then you get some off beat demo racer who decides to create his new drift clan, only to join another team the following day because he didn't have 50 members in the first 10 minutes. So some comments may come across as harsh or abusive but if you've seen it 100 times then there's a good chance it will happen again, and we all know respect is earned not dished out with a proleet clan/team tag.

A lot of people carry a tag to show unity, to show organization, to show a sense of an established group of individuals, and that catches the eyes to players who wish to join a team. My message to those irritated about the players creating teams...don't check the team forums, simple as that, don't put yourself in a position where your only going to get frustrated, it's not worth it. I could join or even make a team of a solid six guys, that just like to race, just like to have the tags on, to like being within a team, and not race competively in a league but still gain that sense of friendship within the team, that's a successful team IMO, it's not about having the biggest team, hell, I could have four guys that could easily be out-numbered by the general public in a server, yet we all have a good time what were doing, and of course, advertising a team that only has four members may look in some eyes "pointless" or a "lost cause", but to them, it's a chance to make new friends, and all the posts that are made with a negative fashion towards these guys is basically saying, hey, you can't make friends here, find a group of people that you may/may not like and try and form a connection / friendship with them.

Quote from Nine :

A lot of people carry a tag to show unity, to show organization, to show a sense of an established group of individuals, and that catches the eyes to players who wish to join a team. My message to those irritated about the players creating teams...don't check the team forums, simple as that, don't put yourself in a position where your only going to get frustrated, it's not worth it. I could join or even make a team of a solid six guys, that just like to race, just like to have the tags on, to like being within a team, and not race competively in a league but still gain that sense of friendship within the team, that's a successful team IMO, it's not about having the biggest team, hell, I could have four guys that could easily be out-numbered by the general public in a server, yet we all have a good time what were doing, and of course, advertising a team that only has four members may look in some eyes "pointless" or a "lost cause", but to them, it's a chance to make new friends, and all the posts that are made with a negative fashion towards these guys is basically saying, hey, you can't make friends here, find a group of people that you may/may not like and try and form a connection / friendship with them.

I think the comments you made about what makes a successful team to you are fine. I guess what I was getting at are the posts of teams that add guys that they don't know, only to see the team break up a week later because of that "stranger" factor, or because they got mad when no-one joined. The whole point of a team is to get a few guys together than enjoy racing (or whatever) online and get along. It gives you a sense of belonging to something, rather than just getting on and doing a couple pick-up races and then getting back off. Teams are great because for part of the time you are online together, it's not just about racing.

We had a member of our team that was having major surgery, and through the friendships we've formed on our team and with other teams/drivers, we made up a bit of a get well "card" (more like an image) that everyone "signed" with a get-well comment. That was great, because it had nothing to do with racing. It was all about friendships, even though none of us have ever met in person. I just don't think I would have experienced that if I wasn't on a team the valued our friendships first over racing.

I totally agree, don't get me wrong, you bring up a strong point, teams shouldn't just let walk-on's onto the team, but that's where I say "ya live and ya learn", I have always been against that type of strategy and I guess maybe it could work sometimes, but in the long wrong, your correct, recruiting that way isn't very successful, but that's what a team needs to learn...