The purpose behind Leagues

[Evan20000]

Really guys? Did it really have to come to writing this?

Let me start with saying that no particular teams will be named in this guide and these issues have been coming up long before FFL, so don't think today's events were the lone cause of this. I'm writing this because I think a lot of you are completely missing the purpose behind the leagues. In the beginning, there were only pubs and people found it difficult to play on their friend's teams because of the auto assign, randoms, etc... Eventually, the start tournament command was implemented and teams had friendly scrims and fun was had by all. The point of the private servers for scrims were to have fun, competitive matches and develop healthy, playful rivalries. Eventually, this was taken to it's logical conclusion and tournaments were started for teams to gain renown and prestige. This creates a strong social bonds within the community, bringing us closer together. The intense rivalry between fLb and ACE was shown during the Summer League and APL finals, where despite the fair amount of tension, everyone likely left having a good time. The emotions that run high during a Playoff Bo5 can bring out some of the best and worst emotions this community has to offer. Upon winning, a team likely feels they worked hard, ran a virtual gauntlet and overcame high stakes with just their teammates and F pressing skills to become the best of their time period. This "journey" is what all teams (likely) strive for upon creation and few ever achieve it. So I ask you, what happens when you take the hard work, friendships, fun and bonding out of this equation by placing "winning" first no matter the cost? If you do end up winning the whole thing, the first thing you will notice is that you won't have the respect of past winners and will (Hopefully) have a hollow feeling inside for alienating the rest of the community to do so. Even if you obeyed all the rules, nobody had a good competitive game, which is where the premise of leagues originated from. If this league was truly about winning, there would be cash prizes, sponsors, and Kuja paying people to cut the internet to people's houses.

tl;dr: While competitive leagues may be fun and good games were supposed to be had by all, shallowing the experience with poor sportsmanship ruins it for everyone and nobody will care about your "victory".

Originally Posted by hurripilot

Amen. Competition is about being truly the best, through personal skill and ability, and through the greater skill and coordination of the entire team.

Now, I don't know exactly what the circumstances were that spurred this noble and articulate explanation of what the nature of competition is in this game, but I can tell you that the idea behind creating a competitive atmosphere is to test abilities in certain skill-sets. Baseball, for example, as well as many other physical sports, test hand-eye coordination, judgment, physical fitness, speed, throwing power, and precision, among numerous others. Now there is an intimidatingly large book of rules on how baseball should be played, but out of all this, a set of higher-level strategies, or "meta-game", developed. These strategies came to be so that teams could make the best use of the players they each had. We can approach the development of clans in Altitude in the same manner of thought. Because of Team Sammich's distinctive upper and lower-level strategy, we will be using them as an example:

As some of you know, Sammich started out as fLbSS, a team formed my Kuja with the intention of introducing more serious competition to the Altitude field. SS was formed for the first Pro League season, due chiefly to the lack of competitive teams for this new League. After participating in two leagues, SS had gone from a gathering of competent players to a real team with serious potential. After APL2, SS broke from fLb and became Sammich. In this incarnation, they have become one of the best teams in Altitude. How did they accomplish this?

Well, Sammich was left with a pretty good cast of characters. UFO, Mikesol, Matattack, X, Texas, and Nasty Manatee, among others. This is where the individual excellence comes in. Mat, X, and Tex are 3 of the top 5 Explodets in this game. All three have excellent territory control, defensive, and offensive capabilities. The unique element that Mat and X brought was mobility. The Explodet is notoriously slow and cumbersome, but with Remote Mine, Flexible Wings, and Turbocharger equipped, it becomes surprisingly light and agile. This allowed Mat and X to virtually revolutionize the way the plane is played, bringing aggression and speed to what was previously a slow and somewhat reserved playstyle.

Meanwhile, Mikesol developed a frightening role for Time Anchor Miranda that had been previously pioneered by DevilsAdvocat, bomb-runner. Mike's blend of repeated warps both backwards and forwards, as well as his fearless style and effective use of terrain, bewildered his opponents and left them falling all over themselves.

So what do we have here? A group of individuals, each with great talent, clearly stars in the team have emerged. Mike's anchor running is devastating, as are Mat and X's unique take on Explodet. Combined with the great skill present in Texas, UFO, Nasty Manatee, and the rest of Sammich, they have the potential to be unstoppable. Now we reach the group strategy as a whole. Sammich realized that to succeed, they would need a strategy that incorporated the strengths of each of their players into one unit. With brutal force, mat and X deliver their blows, sweeping across the map and pushing the enemy out of their way, fragmenting them in the process. Following behind, Mike jumps in and out of obstacles, abusing cover and confusing his opponents. Confused, out of position, and out of energy, there is little they can do to stop the final drive into their base and the inevitable drop.

The result of all of this is well known. Sammich are champions, the team to beat now that ACE has all but dissolved. So what's the point of all that tl;dr up there? Well, without the guidelines, the formats, the schedules, and the rules, none of this would have occurred. There simply would not have been any need for it. The Altitude community as a whole would be far poorer for it, and would likely have dissolved by now. Sammich as a team would not exist, and we as a community would not have had the immense privilege of seeing them work together in almost perfect cohesion towards the same goal. This level of individual ability and collective thought and strategy would never have been reached by anyone in this community.

Now obviously this is all a bit dramatic for a 2D airplanes game where we shoot nerf-rockets at each other, but the point needs to be made. The Leagues, Ladder, and the people who sacrifice the immense time and effort to organize and facilitate them must be respected. They are the ones who allow all of us, not just Sammich, to strive for excellence, both separately and together as teams. These people and their Leagues, as well as Ladder, take this game to new heights and add untold depth to what is otherwise a 7v7 cluster**** of an arcade shooter.

Discuss.

[Ingbo]

ye to me its like wheres the honor at winning cause of an advantage against the other team? it just seems pretty pointless even if youre only there cause of the competative element of the game.

[Evan20000]

Exactly. At the end of the day, we play this game for fun. We find competition fun, but if we let it overtake morality and sportsmanship, nobody really wins in the end.

[wolf'j'max]

/agrees
theres no point in taking a win over sportmanship since theres no prizes, say the team wins
$200 then i'd understand it sort of. but we do this for fun, theres no loyalty this way, third place in APL was bad. so were this ffl semi finals.

[Evan20000]

200$ is nothing when you think about it. 200$/number of players on the team isn't worth being a total dick about it.

Also, 2500 posts.

[hurripilot]

Amen. Competition is about being truly the best, through personal skill and ability, and through the greater skill and coordination of the entire team.

Now, I don't know exactly what the circumstances were that spurred this noble and articulate explanation of what the nature of competition is in this game, but I can tell you that the idea behind creating a competitive atmosphere is to test abilities in certain skill-sets. Baseball, for example, as well as many other physical sports, test hand-eye coordination, judgment, physical fitness, speed, throwing power, and precision, among numerous others. Now there is an intimidatingly large book of rules on how baseball should be played, but out of all this, a set of higher-level strategies, or "meta-game", developed. These strategies came to be so that teams could make the best use of the players they each had. We can approach the development of clans in Altitude in the same manner of thought. Because of Team Sammich's distinctive upper and lower-level strategy, we will be using them as an example:

As some of you know, Sammich started out as fLbSS, a team formed my Kuja with the intention of introducing more serious competition to the Altitude field. SS was formed for the first Pro League season, due chiefly to the lack of competitive teams for this new League. After participating in two leagues, SS had gone from a gathering of competent players to a real team with serious potential. After APL2, SS broke from fLb and became Sammich. In this incarnation, they have become one of the best teams in Altitude. How did they accomplish this?

Well, Sammich was left with a pretty good cast of characters. UFO, Mikesol, Matattack, X, Texas, and Nasty Manatee, among others. This is where the individual excellence comes in. Mat, X, and Tex are 3 of the top 5 Explodets in this game. All three have excellent territory control, defensive, and offensive capabilities. The unique element that Mat and X brought was mobility. The Explodet is notoriously slow and cumbersome, but with Remote Mine, Flexible Wings, and Turbocharger equipped, it becomes surprisingly light and agile. This allowed Mat and X to virtually revolutionize the way the plane is played, bringing aggression and speed to what was previously a slow and somewhat reserved playstyle.

Meanwhile, Mikesol developed a frightening role for Time Anchor Miranda that had been previously pioneered by DevilsAdvocat, bomb-runner. Mike's blend of repeated warps both backwards and forwards, as well as his fearless style and effective use of terrain, bewildered his opponents and left them falling all over themselves.

So what do we have here? A group of individuals, each with great talent, clearly stars in the team have emerged. Mike's anchor running is devastating, as are Mat and X's unique take on Explodet. Combined with the great skill present in Texas, UFO, Nasty Manatee, and the rest of Sammich, they have the potential to be unstoppable. Now we reach the group strategy as a whole. Sammich realized that to succeed, they would need a strategy that incorporated the strengths of each of their players into one unit. With brutal force, mat and X deliver their blows, sweeping across the map and pushing the enemy out of their way, fragmenting them in the process. Following behind, Mike jumps in and out of obstacles, abusing cover and confusing his opponents. Confused, out of position, and out of energy, there is little they can do to stop the final drive into their base and the inevitable drop.

The result of all of this is well known. Sammich are champions, the team to beat now that ACE has all but dissolved. So what's the point of all that tl;dr up there? Well, without the guidelines, the formats, the schedules, and the rules, none of this would have occurred. There simply would not have been any need for it. The Altitude community as a whole would be far poorer for it, and would likely have dissolved by now. Sammich as a team would not exist, and we as a community would not have had the immense privilege of seeing them work together in almost perfect cohesion towards the same goal. This level of individual ability and collective thought and strategy would never have been reached by anyone in this community.

Now obviously this is all a bit dramatic for a 2D airplanes game where we shoot nerf-rockets at each other, but the point needs to be made. The Leagues, Ladder, and the people who sacrifice the immense time and effort to organize and facilitate them must be respected. They are the ones who allow all of us, not just Sammich, to strive for excellence, both separately and together as teams. These people and their Leagues, as well as Ladder, take this game to new heights and add untold depth to what is otherwise a 7v7 cluster**** of an arcade shooter.

[Evan20000]

I'm editing that into the OP if you don't mind.

[Kuja900]

Hurri you vastly overestimate sammich

[Evan20000]

If it were fLb in his article, the point would still stand, though. ^^

[hurripilot]

Originally Posted by Kuja900

Hurri you vastly overestimate sammich

Here's the point............................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .... Here's Kuja.

P.S. - Sure thing sin. As always, I am honored

[Ingbo]

Originally Posted by Kuja900

Hurri you vastly overestimate sammich

oh how i love you kubie <3

[Beagle]

Wait so what happened

[hurripilot]

Originally Posted by Beagle

Wait so what happened

+1, I demand an explanation for why I wrote that diatribe!

[wolf'j'max]

KLF showed up 4 so FU played them 4 v 4, they started losing so they won 5 v 4 after.
semi finals FU v IL. IL being ahead 2-1. fourth game IL|FU 'loses connection' and FU doesnt decide to spectate one. they win the round. fifth game IL|FU loses connection again and they just play 5 v 4 again with the argument 'flight lag bombs' is that even an argument anymore >.>

but w/e lets get on.

[hurripilot]

Originally Posted by wolf'j'max

KLF showed up 4 so FU played them 4 v 4, they started losing so they won 5 v 4 after.
semi finals FU v IL. IL being ahead 2-1. fourth game IL|FU 'loses connection' and FU doesnt decide to spectate one. they win the round. fifth game IL|FU loses connection again and they just play 5 v 4 again with the argument 'flight lag bombs' is that even an argument anymore >.>

but w/e lets get on.

Oic. Well then, bad form, FU, bad form indeed.

[Ingbo]

Originally Posted by hurripilot

Oic. Well then, bad form, FU, bad form indeed.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

[elxir]

sitting one of your players can drastically affect your team mojo tbh

[Evan20000]

Originally Posted by elxir

sitting one of your players can drastically affect your team mojo tbh

Remember you get to choose who to sit. You still have a slight advantage over the other team, sitting the person least beneficial against the other team's (forced) plane comp.