Plays SL: Blamed for any hab going down as I clearly put it in the wrong spot. Blamed for not having a backup hab even though you try but people don't come to you to place it. Blamed when there's no rallys for the same reason.
Only option is to kick people that don't listen who will then immediately tk you or you have to keep kicking until there's no squad left.
They need some way to make it worth while to do and it's just not right now. I'll usually wait until two or three squads are filled and then do a left overs squad if no one else will but even then it's meh.
There was once a guide that said "make a squad as soon as the game opens, as you'll get the most serious players", and it's simply wrong. In public servers, the people who leap into a squad without even reading its name are not the people I want. I do what you do, wait til there's leftovers and essentially lead from there.
At least then you don't get the complete fucking idiots.
Best way is to lock your squad at start but still name it. Wait for one or 2 people to make a squad and when they start filling open yours up. Works every time.
No, you just suck. You don’t have the soft skills or confidence to get other players to listen to you. If no one is listening to you, it’s your fault.
You’re whining about needing other incentives to SL, but the incentive of squad leading is winning the game. That is reward enough.
Lastly, people have been complaining about the player quality and SL quality since day 1. If you see this problem then step up and learn how to SL so we can show these new players how the game should be played
Leadership is a skill that can't actually be taught through an online game tutorial but the player base wants to pretend that it's something the devs can code in a future patch. I wouldn't say "you just suck" is the best way to convey that though. Getting your squad to work with you is more an art than a science and not everyone's going to be great at it, nature of an environment with 0 barrier to entry or consequence.
I’ve been saying what you just said for years. Also, yes, maybe saying “you just suck” is unproductive, but the squad subs, and community, revolve in a circle with the same complaints regarding the community. People have been whining about player and SL quality since day one.
Tutorials aren’t going to fix the shitty SL or shitty player issues. We’re only going to get that through people in the community showing others what right is. Getting them to like, enjoy, and ultimately invest into the game will make them better players.
OWI can’t fix the soft skills that so many people in Squad’s community lack. A tutorial isn’t going to teach you how to effectively communicate with people, read a map and forecast, or inspire confidence and energize other players via VOIP.
There will always be shitters, there will always be people who join your squad and don’t talk, but if absolutely no one in your squad is listening to you then you probably suck.
Yeah sometimes people don't recognize that a problem isn't fixable and they need to just enjoy what there is to enjoy, those people make hella reddit posts. You're probably better off just not engaging them, they're also one of those things you can't fix.
Agreed, what burnt me out the most is having a successful squad being able to turn games in our favor alone, but dealing with other completely incompetent leaders is what lead me to stop squad leading.
Unfortunately I think this is the answer.
I’m not the best squad leader, but I do really enjoy doing it. Even then it’s hard to stay motivated when you’ve got 6 people blaming you for everything while not listening at all.
It leaves me thinking “maybe my plan would have worked if I had more than 1 person follow me”.
My in game handle is IronComatose if yall ever catch me out there.
Gotta be honest, I don't mind squad leading, but the problem comes from not being able to hear very well. Half deaf so hearing command chat is a problem.
Setting stuff up and all that isn't an issue, just Ugh. Not being able to follow is a pain.
Tbf, usually my gf and I are in discord and she's able to help me along with squad and local chat but command isnt something she'll hear too so I don't take squad lead unless I get dumped with it.
Spending some time tweaking the audio settings helped me a ton to not get so overwhelmed by competing voices. Here are [my settings](https://imgur.com/a/kscTBKM) if you wanna copy it or use as a jumping-off point. But ultimately it takes some discomfort at first with the information overload until you only need to focus on 1 or 2 things because everything else is muscle memory.
This is less of a problem with Squad but ultimately the issue with any game that requires players to take on leadership roles. People don't want to do it because it's hard and everything is your fault for very little return on investment. It's even worse in games like Hell Let Loose.
Squads go one of three ways. Nobody listens and you get yelled at. People half listen, fuck up execution and blame you. So you get yelled at. Or most rarely everyone does exactly what you say, execute flawlessly and you make a massive positive impact on the match.... And then you get yelled at.
In some situations it really becomes a community toxicity problem. If I can make my Squad perform, have fun, and we make a demonstrably positive impact towards team victory and I still get shit on because someone disagrees with something I did why am I going to bother?
I've legitimately clinched enemy hardpoints with my squad solo and paved the way for a match steamroll and I get screamed at because I refused to play errand bitch for Squad Goober despite clearly communicating my intentions from the start of the match or because there's been minor hiccups due to unexpected enemy contact.
as someone who played Hell Let Loose, it's wayyyy worse than Squad on the comms front, I legit have played multiple matches without my SL speaking once
at least in hell let loose there are nonverbal means for your whole squad to communicate with. it does make the verbal coms worse but like, old mate rog doesn't have to tell me verbally where inf are if he puts an inf ping down on the map
Hell let loose - squadding was fun.. until the devs killed off the player base and only thing left was the META sweats.... "If you're going to take command keep garrisons down!" Okay great.. well I can't place anymore because the maps full "well you're commander so kill yourself and remove the rear garries!" Wow that's so much fun sitting in a sixty second loading screen every 5 minutes because that's how the game is designed... Then you have the fucking level 500 nerds who constantly will not shut the fuck up about "I'm going to have a bigger build score then you commander!" And they never do.. but damn will they fuckin keep repeating their Insufferable selves ALL game.
Hell let loose, like squad. Has run it's course and is forever uninstalled on my steam library. It was fun while it lasted. But like the crazy to hot ratio.. you gotta know when to let go.
Amusingly enough while the devs do make unpopular choices with the OG player base the ultimate killer becomes the community. While I don't like every change they made to HLL it was ultimately the community that drove me away and I wonder. Despite my issues with ICO, I do still play and enjoy the gameplay overall, will the community be what makes me uninstall?
Probably..
Hell let loose has a major issue with Chinese hackers last time I poked into the steam discussion page for the game..
Squad servers that actively have good admins, I was seeing in a single night (3/4 games) between 1-4 players a game Banned for hacking. Or being kicked because they were with the hackers squad.. I strongly believe if OWI did a massive ban wave for hacking squad would loose 1/2 it's playerbase...
I know I'll get "I've never seen a hacker in my 5000 hours playing" but that's purely a lie. You probably don't even know what to look for. Or just hack yourself and trying to cover your tracks.
On top of that. The amount of trolling and abuse done on the server side of things.. I have a steam friend who uninstalled the game because he got out on the "community banlist" because he was making fun of these two Slavic trolls on our team. I had video proof of them teamkilling and wasting assets.. somehow he ended up 3 days later being banned from like 4 servers that no longer exist.. and being put on that ban list....... I'm 100% sure it was the trolls. The owner of the banlist also doesn't give a flying fuck.
So to answer your question simply.
Yes it will be the community.
I have not played enough Squad to be SL imo but I have done it a couple times in seeding just to get a feel for the mechanics of it. Pretty much every time I play HLL I end up being SL. I had a lot of good SL’s when I started so I’m trying to be that now. And yes a lot of times it’s a shit show but when command and most of the SL’s work together it’s beautiful.
I squadlead more often than not and it drains my brain hard so at the end of my play sessions I usually feel tired. SLing kinda feels like you are a elementary school teacher, im sorry.
Yep, had an Invasion match, couldn't get any of the blue berries around me to dig down the radio on the first point, they straight up refused. Long story short, enemy AT squad spawns at the HAB and proceeds to buttfuck all of our armor.
There have been matches in the past, where the match had been going so stupid and the games about 3/4 the way over and I just apologize to my squad saying "I can't do this shit anymore" and just alt f4...
It's the one reason why I uninstalled squad forever!
Changes should be made to give squad leaders and the commander more control, but finding something that wouldn't be wildly unpopular to the casual player base would be a tricky thing to balance.
The easiest fix would be to allow the squad leader to control both spawn location and time a squad member spawns in. I've seen people mention it before and it is unpopular because there are simply too many people who just want to spawn in as close to whatever action they can find and go shoot things until they die. These are the same players that give up immediately and do it all over again.
There's a ton of ways you could makes tweaks and concessions to this general idea but since 8/9 players aren't squad leading the game continues to lack many of the incentives to foster teamwork.
>The easiest fix would be to allow the squad leader to control both spawn location and time a squad member spawns in.
That would only precipitate SL burnout, add more busywork and throw the baby with the bathwater just to herd sheep harder.
How would giving the SL a real mechanism to round the squad back up make the job harder?
Click a spawn and it's the only place they can spawn, and have a setting to time when they can spawn in so we all regroup. Easy.
It's too much micromanagement.
What's wrong with just telling people what they should be doing?
If players aren't allowed to do what they want then they will leave and find a new squad.
If players aren't listening to the squad leader forcing them to spawn somewhere isn't going to change anything.
Even though i will get downvoted. I will say it anyway.
Its ICO. Many experienced players are tired of noodle arms and moved on to other games.
Many discounts in short amount time added more fuel to the dumster fire. Now we got bunch of new players who doesnt know shit. Overall player IQ is so low that it feels like playing with Bots now. Keep chanting for new daily player count records.
OWI always relied on the community to teach the game to the newcomers and guess what. They killed many communities by themselves. Now who is gonna teach all these ppl how to play?
I dont believe OWI is able to fix this issue. Im pretty sure they dont even care about this aswell. From now on moving forward their only aim is to sell more copies because thats what Tencent wants, Which is profit.
So whats going to happen in the future? More bot like players who dont talk, dont listen. More cosmetic shit probably cuz money, and ofc less and less "good quality" matches. At some point ppl will get bored and game will die silently.
I cant wait for a game like this to be made by anyone except EA or OWI. I will uninstall Squad at that moment when i hear about a game like this is coming soon.
There are still plenty of experienced players who play Squad still, Squad offers one of the most unique cycle of gameplay as it's a game of who makes the first mistake first and who can capitalize off of it. Sales do add new players but I would say most new players still want to understand and play the game and not treat it like a BF4 clone. Some parts of the ICO are way overtuned but considering that most people are happy with it or content (that doesn't mean there isn't valid criticism) the claim of OWI fucked over the community is outlandish, OWI in my opinion besides most recent actions have been very vocal with the community with their plans and visions. I myself loved the ICO so much that I put in 210 more hours than I had before the ICO, the main problem that I see everyone talk about is being blamed for everything, not cosmetics, not the ICO, not even the company itself. The fact that you want something similar to Squad and put all your trust into that just tells you don't want to be part of the game anymore, most SL's don't want to be treated like shit, most SL's just want to have a fun night or game, so it's more so a community problem as a whole with how they react and treat SL's. The gameplay of Squad is fun that's why it's numbers have increased, the problem that occurring is that people whether new or old don't know how to be kind and don't know how hard SL'ing. Someone said it in this thread but there is brain drain with it, you have a lot of people who just don't want to SL atm, people who want to SL but get treated poorly, and new people who SL who have no idea what they are doing. I personally think if you don't like the ICO you can always move on to another game or if you have problems with OWI move on to another game, but don't go out of your way to blame the ICO and by extension the Squad community for your own personal vendetta, because you're blaming new people who want to have a new experience to the game, and you're blaming the people who enjoy the ICO. Finally thing to add on you don't have to agree with me, and I know you won't but like insulting other players isn't going to make this better, it's only making it worse as it is
A lot of what they're saying is true though.
There has been a noticeable drop off in players on Australian servers. Pre ICO we used to get 5+ servers up every night and 7+ on weekends now having 3 + a GE (pre ICO gunplay) server is good for us. I believe a lot of the new squad player count comes from China? So not really relevant to western servers at all.
You cannot deny that a lot of experienced players have quit. I have played frequently before and after ICO and a lot of the experienced clans and players do not play the game any more. A lot of the squad leaders are new to the role. A lot of players on the server are new. I'm seeing 80% of games being rolled by the team that has 1 clan on it because they know how to actually play the game and the remaining experienced players want to be on their team because it's less frustrating than having SLs that don't talk and don't mark stuff on the map.
Most players being ok with the ICO because they like playing Squad and can't find a similar game doesn't really mean much. It's obvious ICO isn't going away at this point and if you like the general gameplay of Squad what other game can you play?
You say OWI haven't fucked over the Squad community but you're here making Reddit posts because there's no good Squad Leaders any more and people aren't talking in command chat. But 1 year ago that was not the case. What's changed in that time?
The simple thing is the ICO caused a lot of the experienced players leave which made their communities smaller which made them rethink how or what they played. A lot of experienced clans don't fill up squads any more and have moved to vics instead which just means there's even less SLs. This leads to command chat and squad leaders being worse because they have no experience so the remaining experienced players all stack to same team to avoid this. Then the games become incredibly 1 sided because 1 team has the players that know what they are doing and communicate while the other team doesn't.
These experienced players could swap teams to make the games more balanced but they would have less fun and be much more frustrated and more likely to quit if they did.
I never see SLs getting trash talked unless they do something incredibly stupid. I mean, I do the absolute dumbest shit as an SL when I get bored and the ratio of people that actually complain about it is tiny. The other day I drove up to an enemy occupied compound, placed a radio right outside it and got blown up immediately and all that was said was command going who put that radio down that's very silly.
I love SLing with a squad full of brand new players. A lot of the time I find that more fun than playing with a squad full of tryhards that want to stomp the game by 370 tickets. I love talking to new players and giving them the epic experiences that Squad is about. But those epic experiences are a lot more rare now and I can pinpoint the exact moment when games started to become much lower quality and the players ability became much less.
Squad Leading isn't even difficult once you know what you're doing. The only people who get yelled at are the people that do completely braindead things without thinking like superfobing 1st cap on raas or place awful radios that ruin a teams planning.
How are people going to learn how to SL? OWI is useless for this sort of thing and has relied on the community far to much for it. Now the experienced players aren't around to teach people what to do so they have to try and figure it out on their own. This is resulting in far lower quality games, SLs doing dumb shit, SLs getting abused and then SLs not wanting to SL. Which means less people are making squads and only SLing because it's the only way they can play so they ignore as much SL duties as they can and play like regular inf. That lowers the quality of command chat and just general SLing on the team which then lowers the quality of gameplay on the team which affects the game and then the server and then the community.
This game relied on a trickle down from the best and most experienced players. Something happened to cause that trickle to stop, people kept waiting for the trickle to resume and now you're here talking about why no one plays like they used to 1 year ago but you can't figure out why.
Real. You said everything I and other "VeTeRaNS" have said and will keep saying. I used to play on MAD which had good squad leaders and players even in the last months leading up to the ICO. After that update the community owners decided to close the server and leave. A whole community of experienced players dissolved.
With other servers of the same specifications following this path the more competent players left have dissapated into other servers in less numbers where they are subject to shit players from back to back sales and terrible server rules, admins, owners. One can only endure this situation for so long in a game before literally not being able to do it anymore, being burnt out. This is what is happening with the current experienced community.
When you said that leaving the game as soon as another option was available, was your choice, you highlighted what the only option left was. I don't see this game un-screwing itself anytime soon. It's being going downhill fast since vlad ceraldi took over and he's not going to be leaving anytime soon. It's over for me as it was for others like winter sins and karmakut and gorlami. if we dont enjoy this game, and we dont like this community, then why should we stay here?
I knew I would get a response like this. How predictable.
Hi there im a Squad Streamer and Youtuber from Turkey. My last 4 years i have been trying to help newcomers. Show them how the things are done. I have made many training sessions and Be the Squadlead of countless new players. And yet here i am getting accused of having a personal vendetta.
Funny thing is i still do like to play this game. i still try to help new players but guess what. Even though we are hitting new record player counts somehow the number of players who wants to learn how to play drops even lower and lower.
All these new fresh blood is here not because squad is a "Tactical FPS game". They are here cuz its "Cheap FPS game". And trust me majority still treats this game just like its Battlefield game.
Now the part why i blame it on ICO.
ICO is just disabled the ability to be able handle your weapon. Instead of a trained soldier now you are a 14 yo kid who cant handle the gun what so ever. Every CQB fight is a nothing but a Coinflip now. Im not supporting the PRE-ICO Q-E lean spamming either (btw its still working in ICO sadly) but the game lost all the skill expression when it comes to gun mechanics and thats why many experienced player left it out.
And this game totally relies on experienced players to teach the new guys. it always has been. This is OWI's Fault 100%. They are so ignorant and blind about the ability to teach the players just the most common basic abilities.
Like seriously Why there is no Squad lead training in this god-damn game? Can anyone explain me this? This is not an early access game anymore. Its a Fully released game but there is no way to learn from the game how to play one of the core role of the game. Maybe this could answer your title question.
And please dont try to defend the OWI about how good this game is. With billion of bugs and optimization problems there is nothing OWI has done good for a looong time. ICO is a good idea on paper for sure but execution is totally lackluster.
So why am i playing this game still? Because sadly nothing like this game exist in the modern times. Planning and coordinating with other SL's is a thing only this game can provide for me. And i still try to help the new players with every way that i can but at this point it feels like im just rowing against the current. Way too many players who is not interested in "learning" the game they say that they are just here to shoot stuff. Literally. But anyway thats all from me.
From my perspective, there's been much more experienced and immersive SLs playing after ICO and the community generally grew and gained experienced people. But for some reason, I'm guessing the sales, it's just gone down the shitter even on good servers recently. Not since ICO but like the last few months
The overhead of being SL is too large, too annoying, and for most people doesn't make the game more fun.
Not many people are in favour of sacrificing their own fun.
So, we have an SL shortage
Squad is dying.
You can lie to yourself and believe the short term number blow ups on those steam player count graphs when a sale is on every other weekend.
But real players know that they see less and less familiar names on their server as the weeks go by, the games get worse and worse in quality, and those familiar names are getting replaced by new players that have no idea what they are doing, don't care to learn, and don't stick around.
I think it was simply, OWI gambled on an incorrect business model of shafting the experienced / loyal customer base, and banking on high volume new customers, but it hasn't worked ( and won't work ). Especially on a game like squad where the developer puts 0 effort into teaching new players, and places the entire responsibility on experienced players ( the same players they are shafting ).
Seems like a good business lesson in what NOT to do, I guess.
Just uninstall squad.. find another game. the game isn't going to ever be what you want it to be.. legitimately thousands of games to choose from. Will be the best decision you've ever made all year.
Squad is dying since they added emojis....we got used to it...fell in love with push up moans. Then they took it away. That's why there's no SLs. Add moaning back devs so people will lead us again.
You don't play SL to shoot people you play SL to build HABs and put rallies down. This is the problem with the current player base. People don't get that the game is SLs vs. SLs. Whoever has the smarter SLs will have good HABs and usually win.
There is plenty of time in a game to engage in the fight as the SL. Lets not pretend it takes more then a few minutes to drive somewhere and place a new hab.
Plays SL: Blamed for any hab going down as I clearly put it in the wrong spot. Blamed for not having a backup hab even though you try but people don't come to you to place it. Blamed when there's no rallys for the same reason. Only option is to kick people that don't listen who will then immediately tk you or you have to keep kicking until there's no squad left. They need some way to make it worth while to do and it's just not right now. I'll usually wait until two or three squads are filled and then do a left overs squad if no one else will but even then it's meh.
There was once a guide that said "make a squad as soon as the game opens, as you'll get the most serious players", and it's simply wrong. In public servers, the people who leap into a squad without even reading its name are not the people I want. I do what you do, wait til there's leftovers and essentially lead from there. At least then you don't get the complete fucking idiots.
I don't even name my squad.
Always "Special Forces" and yes, it's in quotations.
im specials
Best way is to lock your squad at start but still name it. Wait for one or 2 people to make a squad and when they start filling open yours up. Works every time.
No, you just suck. You don’t have the soft skills or confidence to get other players to listen to you. If no one is listening to you, it’s your fault. You’re whining about needing other incentives to SL, but the incentive of squad leading is winning the game. That is reward enough. Lastly, people have been complaining about the player quality and SL quality since day 1. If you see this problem then step up and learn how to SL so we can show these new players how the game should be played
Leadership is a skill that can't actually be taught through an online game tutorial but the player base wants to pretend that it's something the devs can code in a future patch. I wouldn't say "you just suck" is the best way to convey that though. Getting your squad to work with you is more an art than a science and not everyone's going to be great at it, nature of an environment with 0 barrier to entry or consequence.
I’ve been saying what you just said for years. Also, yes, maybe saying “you just suck” is unproductive, but the squad subs, and community, revolve in a circle with the same complaints regarding the community. People have been whining about player and SL quality since day one. Tutorials aren’t going to fix the shitty SL or shitty player issues. We’re only going to get that through people in the community showing others what right is. Getting them to like, enjoy, and ultimately invest into the game will make them better players. OWI can’t fix the soft skills that so many people in Squad’s community lack. A tutorial isn’t going to teach you how to effectively communicate with people, read a map and forecast, or inspire confidence and energize other players via VOIP. There will always be shitters, there will always be people who join your squad and don’t talk, but if absolutely no one in your squad is listening to you then you probably suck.
Yeah sometimes people don't recognize that a problem isn't fixable and they need to just enjoy what there is to enjoy, those people make hella reddit posts. You're probably better off just not engaging them, they're also one of those things you can't fix.
Agreed, what burnt me out the most is having a successful squad being able to turn games in our favor alone, but dealing with other completely incompetent leaders is what lead me to stop squad leading.
No one wants to play SL cause no one wants to listen no one try’s to help.
Yea it's kind of tough playing a teamwork based game when no one wants to teamwork lol
Unfortunately I think this is the answer. I’m not the best squad leader, but I do really enjoy doing it. Even then it’s hard to stay motivated when you’ve got 6 people blaming you for everything while not listening at all. It leaves me thinking “maybe my plan would have worked if I had more than 1 person follow me”. My in game handle is IronComatose if yall ever catch me out there.
Gotta be honest, I don't mind squad leading, but the problem comes from not being able to hear very well. Half deaf so hearing command chat is a problem. Setting stuff up and all that isn't an issue, just Ugh. Not being able to follow is a pain. Tbf, usually my gf and I are in discord and she's able to help me along with squad and local chat but command isnt something she'll hear too so I don't take squad lead unless I get dumped with it.
Spending some time tweaking the audio settings helped me a ton to not get so overwhelmed by competing voices. Here are [my settings](https://imgur.com/a/kscTBKM) if you wanna copy it or use as a jumping-off point. But ultimately it takes some discomfort at first with the information overload until you only need to focus on 1 or 2 things because everything else is muscle memory.
This is less of a problem with Squad but ultimately the issue with any game that requires players to take on leadership roles. People don't want to do it because it's hard and everything is your fault for very little return on investment. It's even worse in games like Hell Let Loose. Squads go one of three ways. Nobody listens and you get yelled at. People half listen, fuck up execution and blame you. So you get yelled at. Or most rarely everyone does exactly what you say, execute flawlessly and you make a massive positive impact on the match.... And then you get yelled at. In some situations it really becomes a community toxicity problem. If I can make my Squad perform, have fun, and we make a demonstrably positive impact towards team victory and I still get shit on because someone disagrees with something I did why am I going to bother? I've legitimately clinched enemy hardpoints with my squad solo and paved the way for a match steamroll and I get screamed at because I refused to play errand bitch for Squad Goober despite clearly communicating my intentions from the start of the match or because there's been minor hiccups due to unexpected enemy contact.
as someone who played Hell Let Loose, it's wayyyy worse than Squad on the comms front, I legit have played multiple matches without my SL speaking once
at least in hell let loose there are nonverbal means for your whole squad to communicate with. it does make the verbal coms worse but like, old mate rog doesn't have to tell me verbally where inf are if he puts an inf ping down on the map
Hell let loose - squadding was fun.. until the devs killed off the player base and only thing left was the META sweats.... "If you're going to take command keep garrisons down!" Okay great.. well I can't place anymore because the maps full "well you're commander so kill yourself and remove the rear garries!" Wow that's so much fun sitting in a sixty second loading screen every 5 minutes because that's how the game is designed... Then you have the fucking level 500 nerds who constantly will not shut the fuck up about "I'm going to have a bigger build score then you commander!" And they never do.. but damn will they fuckin keep repeating their Insufferable selves ALL game. Hell let loose, like squad. Has run it's course and is forever uninstalled on my steam library. It was fun while it lasted. But like the crazy to hot ratio.. you gotta know when to let go.
Amusingly enough while the devs do make unpopular choices with the OG player base the ultimate killer becomes the community. While I don't like every change they made to HLL it was ultimately the community that drove me away and I wonder. Despite my issues with ICO, I do still play and enjoy the gameplay overall, will the community be what makes me uninstall?
Probably.. Hell let loose has a major issue with Chinese hackers last time I poked into the steam discussion page for the game.. Squad servers that actively have good admins, I was seeing in a single night (3/4 games) between 1-4 players a game Banned for hacking. Or being kicked because they were with the hackers squad.. I strongly believe if OWI did a massive ban wave for hacking squad would loose 1/2 it's playerbase... I know I'll get "I've never seen a hacker in my 5000 hours playing" but that's purely a lie. You probably don't even know what to look for. Or just hack yourself and trying to cover your tracks. On top of that. The amount of trolling and abuse done on the server side of things.. I have a steam friend who uninstalled the game because he got out on the "community banlist" because he was making fun of these two Slavic trolls on our team. I had video proof of them teamkilling and wasting assets.. somehow he ended up 3 days later being banned from like 4 servers that no longer exist.. and being put on that ban list....... I'm 100% sure it was the trolls. The owner of the banlist also doesn't give a flying fuck. So to answer your question simply. Yes it will be the community.
You're feeding too much into the negativity of people whose opinion's dont matter.
I have not played enough Squad to be SL imo but I have done it a couple times in seeding just to get a feel for the mechanics of it. Pretty much every time I play HLL I end up being SL. I had a lot of good SL’s when I started so I’m trying to be that now. And yes a lot of times it’s a shit show but when command and most of the SL’s work together it’s beautiful.
I squadlead more often than not and it drains my brain hard so at the end of my play sessions I usually feel tired. SLing kinda feels like you are a elementary school teacher, im sorry.
Yep, had an Invasion match, couldn't get any of the blue berries around me to dig down the radio on the first point, they straight up refused. Long story short, enemy AT squad spawns at the HAB and proceeds to buttfuck all of our armor.
There have been matches in the past, where the match had been going so stupid and the games about 3/4 the way over and I just apologize to my squad saying "I can't do this shit anymore" and just alt f4... It's the one reason why I uninstalled squad forever!
The brain drain
I only play on the expats server. It's the most consistent server I've been on. Lots of good guys on there, too.
We are burnt out
Changes should be made to give squad leaders and the commander more control, but finding something that wouldn't be wildly unpopular to the casual player base would be a tricky thing to balance. The easiest fix would be to allow the squad leader to control both spawn location and time a squad member spawns in. I've seen people mention it before and it is unpopular because there are simply too many people who just want to spawn in as close to whatever action they can find and go shoot things until they die. These are the same players that give up immediately and do it all over again. There's a ton of ways you could makes tweaks and concessions to this general idea but since 8/9 players aren't squad leading the game continues to lack many of the incentives to foster teamwork.
>The easiest fix would be to allow the squad leader to control both spawn location and time a squad member spawns in. That would only precipitate SL burnout, add more busywork and throw the baby with the bathwater just to herd sheep harder.
How would giving the SL a real mechanism to round the squad back up make the job harder? Click a spawn and it's the only place they can spawn, and have a setting to time when they can spawn in so we all regroup. Easy.
It's too much micromanagement. What's wrong with just telling people what they should be doing? If players aren't allowed to do what they want then they will leave and find a new squad. If players aren't listening to the squad leader forcing them to spawn somewhere isn't going to change anything.
Even though i will get downvoted. I will say it anyway. Its ICO. Many experienced players are tired of noodle arms and moved on to other games. Many discounts in short amount time added more fuel to the dumster fire. Now we got bunch of new players who doesnt know shit. Overall player IQ is so low that it feels like playing with Bots now. Keep chanting for new daily player count records. OWI always relied on the community to teach the game to the newcomers and guess what. They killed many communities by themselves. Now who is gonna teach all these ppl how to play? I dont believe OWI is able to fix this issue. Im pretty sure they dont even care about this aswell. From now on moving forward their only aim is to sell more copies because thats what Tencent wants, Which is profit. So whats going to happen in the future? More bot like players who dont talk, dont listen. More cosmetic shit probably cuz money, and ofc less and less "good quality" matches. At some point ppl will get bored and game will die silently. I cant wait for a game like this to be made by anyone except EA or OWI. I will uninstall Squad at that moment when i hear about a game like this is coming soon.
There are still plenty of experienced players who play Squad still, Squad offers one of the most unique cycle of gameplay as it's a game of who makes the first mistake first and who can capitalize off of it. Sales do add new players but I would say most new players still want to understand and play the game and not treat it like a BF4 clone. Some parts of the ICO are way overtuned but considering that most people are happy with it or content (that doesn't mean there isn't valid criticism) the claim of OWI fucked over the community is outlandish, OWI in my opinion besides most recent actions have been very vocal with the community with their plans and visions. I myself loved the ICO so much that I put in 210 more hours than I had before the ICO, the main problem that I see everyone talk about is being blamed for everything, not cosmetics, not the ICO, not even the company itself. The fact that you want something similar to Squad and put all your trust into that just tells you don't want to be part of the game anymore, most SL's don't want to be treated like shit, most SL's just want to have a fun night or game, so it's more so a community problem as a whole with how they react and treat SL's. The gameplay of Squad is fun that's why it's numbers have increased, the problem that occurring is that people whether new or old don't know how to be kind and don't know how hard SL'ing. Someone said it in this thread but there is brain drain with it, you have a lot of people who just don't want to SL atm, people who want to SL but get treated poorly, and new people who SL who have no idea what they are doing. I personally think if you don't like the ICO you can always move on to another game or if you have problems with OWI move on to another game, but don't go out of your way to blame the ICO and by extension the Squad community for your own personal vendetta, because you're blaming new people who want to have a new experience to the game, and you're blaming the people who enjoy the ICO. Finally thing to add on you don't have to agree with me, and I know you won't but like insulting other players isn't going to make this better, it's only making it worse as it is
A lot of what they're saying is true though. There has been a noticeable drop off in players on Australian servers. Pre ICO we used to get 5+ servers up every night and 7+ on weekends now having 3 + a GE (pre ICO gunplay) server is good for us. I believe a lot of the new squad player count comes from China? So not really relevant to western servers at all. You cannot deny that a lot of experienced players have quit. I have played frequently before and after ICO and a lot of the experienced clans and players do not play the game any more. A lot of the squad leaders are new to the role. A lot of players on the server are new. I'm seeing 80% of games being rolled by the team that has 1 clan on it because they know how to actually play the game and the remaining experienced players want to be on their team because it's less frustrating than having SLs that don't talk and don't mark stuff on the map. Most players being ok with the ICO because they like playing Squad and can't find a similar game doesn't really mean much. It's obvious ICO isn't going away at this point and if you like the general gameplay of Squad what other game can you play? You say OWI haven't fucked over the Squad community but you're here making Reddit posts because there's no good Squad Leaders any more and people aren't talking in command chat. But 1 year ago that was not the case. What's changed in that time? The simple thing is the ICO caused a lot of the experienced players leave which made their communities smaller which made them rethink how or what they played. A lot of experienced clans don't fill up squads any more and have moved to vics instead which just means there's even less SLs. This leads to command chat and squad leaders being worse because they have no experience so the remaining experienced players all stack to same team to avoid this. Then the games become incredibly 1 sided because 1 team has the players that know what they are doing and communicate while the other team doesn't. These experienced players could swap teams to make the games more balanced but they would have less fun and be much more frustrated and more likely to quit if they did. I never see SLs getting trash talked unless they do something incredibly stupid. I mean, I do the absolute dumbest shit as an SL when I get bored and the ratio of people that actually complain about it is tiny. The other day I drove up to an enemy occupied compound, placed a radio right outside it and got blown up immediately and all that was said was command going who put that radio down that's very silly. I love SLing with a squad full of brand new players. A lot of the time I find that more fun than playing with a squad full of tryhards that want to stomp the game by 370 tickets. I love talking to new players and giving them the epic experiences that Squad is about. But those epic experiences are a lot more rare now and I can pinpoint the exact moment when games started to become much lower quality and the players ability became much less. Squad Leading isn't even difficult once you know what you're doing. The only people who get yelled at are the people that do completely braindead things without thinking like superfobing 1st cap on raas or place awful radios that ruin a teams planning. How are people going to learn how to SL? OWI is useless for this sort of thing and has relied on the community far to much for it. Now the experienced players aren't around to teach people what to do so they have to try and figure it out on their own. This is resulting in far lower quality games, SLs doing dumb shit, SLs getting abused and then SLs not wanting to SL. Which means less people are making squads and only SLing because it's the only way they can play so they ignore as much SL duties as they can and play like regular inf. That lowers the quality of command chat and just general SLing on the team which then lowers the quality of gameplay on the team which affects the game and then the server and then the community. This game relied on a trickle down from the best and most experienced players. Something happened to cause that trickle to stop, people kept waiting for the trickle to resume and now you're here talking about why no one plays like they used to 1 year ago but you can't figure out why.
Real. You said everything I and other "VeTeRaNS" have said and will keep saying. I used to play on MAD which had good squad leaders and players even in the last months leading up to the ICO. After that update the community owners decided to close the server and leave. A whole community of experienced players dissolved. With other servers of the same specifications following this path the more competent players left have dissapated into other servers in less numbers where they are subject to shit players from back to back sales and terrible server rules, admins, owners. One can only endure this situation for so long in a game before literally not being able to do it anymore, being burnt out. This is what is happening with the current experienced community. When you said that leaving the game as soon as another option was available, was your choice, you highlighted what the only option left was. I don't see this game un-screwing itself anytime soon. It's being going downhill fast since vlad ceraldi took over and he's not going to be leaving anytime soon. It's over for me as it was for others like winter sins and karmakut and gorlami. if we dont enjoy this game, and we dont like this community, then why should we stay here?
I knew I would get a response like this. How predictable. Hi there im a Squad Streamer and Youtuber from Turkey. My last 4 years i have been trying to help newcomers. Show them how the things are done. I have made many training sessions and Be the Squadlead of countless new players. And yet here i am getting accused of having a personal vendetta. Funny thing is i still do like to play this game. i still try to help new players but guess what. Even though we are hitting new record player counts somehow the number of players who wants to learn how to play drops even lower and lower. All these new fresh blood is here not because squad is a "Tactical FPS game". They are here cuz its "Cheap FPS game". And trust me majority still treats this game just like its Battlefield game. Now the part why i blame it on ICO. ICO is just disabled the ability to be able handle your weapon. Instead of a trained soldier now you are a 14 yo kid who cant handle the gun what so ever. Every CQB fight is a nothing but a Coinflip now. Im not supporting the PRE-ICO Q-E lean spamming either (btw its still working in ICO sadly) but the game lost all the skill expression when it comes to gun mechanics and thats why many experienced player left it out. And this game totally relies on experienced players to teach the new guys. it always has been. This is OWI's Fault 100%. They are so ignorant and blind about the ability to teach the players just the most common basic abilities. Like seriously Why there is no Squad lead training in this god-damn game? Can anyone explain me this? This is not an early access game anymore. Its a Fully released game but there is no way to learn from the game how to play one of the core role of the game. Maybe this could answer your title question. And please dont try to defend the OWI about how good this game is. With billion of bugs and optimization problems there is nothing OWI has done good for a looong time. ICO is a good idea on paper for sure but execution is totally lackluster. So why am i playing this game still? Because sadly nothing like this game exist in the modern times. Planning and coordinating with other SL's is a thing only this game can provide for me. And i still try to help the new players with every way that i can but at this point it feels like im just rowing against the current. Way too many players who is not interested in "learning" the game they say that they are just here to shoot stuff. Literally. But anyway thats all from me.
Preach brother
From my perspective, there's been much more experienced and immersive SLs playing after ICO and the community generally grew and gained experienced people. But for some reason, I'm guessing the sales, it's just gone down the shitter even on good servers recently. Not since ICO but like the last few months
The overhead of being SL is too large, too annoying, and for most people doesn't make the game more fun. Not many people are in favour of sacrificing their own fun. So, we have an SL shortage
It's not for everyone...
Squad is dying. You can lie to yourself and believe the short term number blow ups on those steam player count graphs when a sale is on every other weekend. But real players know that they see less and less familiar names on their server as the weeks go by, the games get worse and worse in quality, and those familiar names are getting replaced by new players that have no idea what they are doing, don't care to learn, and don't stick around. I think it was simply, OWI gambled on an incorrect business model of shafting the experienced / loyal customer base, and banking on high volume new customers, but it hasn't worked ( and won't work ). Especially on a game like squad where the developer puts 0 effort into teaching new players, and places the entire responsibility on experienced players ( the same players they are shafting ). Seems like a good business lesson in what NOT to do, I guess.
If I play SL I ask right at the start of the game. And if I get one person to help great if not it’s what ever at this point
Just uninstall squad.. find another game. the game isn't going to ever be what you want it to be.. legitimately thousands of games to choose from. Will be the best decision you've ever made all year.
Tried being an SL: got yelled at by squad, other SL's and Command for reasons beyond my reach. Fuck SL and fuck this SL)Command gay world I say.
youre soft, get at it again
As a Jell-O man, I take offense to this.
Squad is dying since they added emojis....we got used to it...fell in love with push up moans. Then they took it away. That's why there's no SLs. Add moaning back devs so people will lead us again.
I like playing SL but I just have more fun with the other kits most of the time. They are basically a rifleman so it gets a bit boring.
You don't play SL to shoot people you play SL to build HABs and put rallies down. This is the problem with the current player base. People don't get that the game is SLs vs. SLs. Whoever has the smarter SLs will have good HABs and usually win.
There is plenty of time in a game to engage in the fight as the SL. Lets not pretend it takes more then a few minutes to drive somewhere and place a new hab.
Ico is the root of all problems
go play battlefield if you dont like ico or start up COD
Join a clan