Questions regarding teams.

[LionJar3]

Hey guys. I'm curious about a few things.

 First off, for those already on a team:

 

   -What made you want to be part of a team?

   -What attracted you to a particular team?

   -What things make you glad to be of that team, or part of a team in general?

 For those not on a team:

   -What are your reasons for not being on a team?

   -What would you expect when becoming a member of a team?

   -What would attract you to join a team?

 

 

I'm just curious because it seems like many people are polarized on this issue. There are lots of well-organized teams out there but also lots of people who are content to stay solo. I feel like Airsoft/MilSim works best as a team sport and wonder why more people don't join existing teams or get organized themselves. 

 

[hudsons89]

I think most people set up teams with people from there local site or just pick people up on the way. For example I started off with a team of two (chap I knew from school) and then added people we introduced people to airsoft or found people at games. 

 

I like being part of a team for the chatting between games. Fire support helps during games too. 

[Feyd]

I'm part of a team, we were all going down together as mates anyway and the site we mainly play at really plays better if you have a bit of organisation to you.

We're picking up people slowly, but I enjoy skirmishing with a regular group of people, you know who you can rely on to cover you if you need to charge screaming at the enemy. We're looking to improve our game play, but not at the cost of fairplay, I don't want to be standing next to a guy getting laced up not taking his hits, it's about fun and knowing the people you're playing with have the same mindset that you do...

[ninja master of coffee]

I find you can do more with a reliable group of people with you that you know. My team plays Milsim for the most part, we're all friends, we vote on things like positions and command structure. For a while we avoided having any kind of command structure but we found it works better with one, much easier to make plans and implement them though we still generally discuss plans. The other major benefit that is only really possible with a team is good communications, you can't really have a radio net with people who aren't in some kind of team and honestly, communication and intelligence wins games as much as good shooting. What I would say is that the whole command structure developed from a pre-existing group dynamic. Obviously it's not for everyone though I would say it helps massively with MilSim games, given that the games we go to already have some kind of a site organized command structure it helps if you can just slot into that.

[amateurstuntman]

I am kind of in a team but only in the sense that we are all similarly mental and give each other lifts.  My experience of teams is almost entirely negative.

 

They take things too seriously, get totally focussed on winning to the detriment of fun and that makes them more and more likely to cheat.

Then you get a situation where they are a local team to the site and the site gives them more leeway which leads to more cheating, hot guns and stupid game scenarios.

 

They never want to be split up so you end up with a team of 15 guys Vs about 10 walk ons and some rentals and just spend all day getting your *albatross* handed to you by a bunch of bragging morons.

 

in 25 years of airsofting I can count on one hand the number of times I have been to a site and the local home team haven't been a bunch of twats.

[kojak]

I haven't yet had the pleasure of experiencing airsoft in the UK, but I think this may be an apples and oranges type comparison if you're talking about walk-on sites versus organized games.  I tried dozens of pay sites all across California as a solo player in my formative airsofting years, and it is off-putting when a team that plays there exclusively shows up and steamrolls everyone.  Or when speedballers appear and sprint around like crackhead maniacs.  Then there's the "hardcore milsim" team that seems to exist only to breach doorways in a stack, which is fine, except they don't let a little thing like getting shot ruin the choreography.   

 

Anyway, I'll try to answer LionJar3's questions from my perspective:  

 

   -What made you want to be part of a team?

   -What things make you glad to be of that team, or part of a team in general?

 

Nowadays I only play in hosted scenario games, where membership in or an invite from a team is almost mandatory, and walk-ons do not occur. It might be a paid multi-day event, half a day on private land, or a night game at a pay site reserved for the purpose.  Fortunately there are enough like-minded players in my area that a network of local teams has emerged, allowing us to play in an organized event almost every weekend.  The airsoft hobby (as I currently experience it) is less about shooting people with little plastic balls, and more about hanging around waiting for something to happen, waiting in ambush so long we fall asleep, campsites blowing away in the wind, hiking for miles without enemy contact, lugging heavy things up steep hills, getting lost, field repairs, freezing cold, heat exhaustion, running out of ammo, falling into creeks, and so on.  There is no way I would have continued with this hobby if it wasn't for the camaraderie that makes all of the above more fun than "winning the game".  

 

As a team we get opportunities that solo players never would.  Most often it's invitations to interesting team-only games, like an upcoming OP on a docked cargo ship, but we've also done non-airsoft things like independent films, photo shoots, and OpFor for "real" training.  We carpool to games, occasionally in other states.  We organize and host games, and rely on other teams to organize and host them for us.  We pool our resources for repairs, vehicles, and heavy weapons.  We maintain our spare guns and gear in an armory, for our own use or outfitting a new player/prospective member.    

 

   -What attracted you to a particular team?

 

The difficult part is finding people you're compatible with, but in my case it was just dumb luck.  The very first local team I ever met invited me to do some training with them, and over the next few months continued to include me in their training sessions and games, essentially taking me under their wing.  I was invited to join a few other teams in the meantime, but stuck it out with my "first choice" despite not knowing for sure if they were considering me.  It sounds silly but I felt a genuine sense of achievement when they finally slapped a patch on my shoulder.  

 

Membership has waxed and waned over the years, but we remain a tight-knit group and strike a good balance between "milsim" and not taking things too seriously.  

 

[jal3]

Hey guys. I'm curious about a few things.

 

 First off, for those already on a team:

 

   -What made you want to be part of a team?

   -What attracted you to a particular team?

   -What things make you glad to be of that team, or part of a team in general?

 

 For those not on a team:

 

   -What are your reasons for not being on a team?

   -What would you expect when becoming a member of a team?

   -What would attract you to join a team?

 

 

I'm just curious because it seems like many people are polarized on this issue. There are lots of well-organized teams out there but also lots of people who are content to stay solo. I feel like Airsoft/MilSim works best as a team sport and wonder why more people don't join existing teams or get organized themselves. 

 

 

 

I used to be on a team(s) because:

Good friends, fun outside airsoft too.

Fun to develop team play skills and gear.

Easier to organize for trips than solo.

 

I'm not on a team because:

I have enough contacts that i don't specificly need a team to play somewhere (carpooling, etc).

I haven't found a team (currently) who both caters to my playstyle and is active (here; scenes around denmark are rather small).

[heroshark]

The team I play with was created out of a lack of any local sites ,so essentialy we organised games and played amongst ourselves and picked up new players/friends along the way .There was the odd away day but only certain members would do the away days .Our team still run like this with very little structure, but people seem to find their own niche in general .Its more of a group of friends than a team ,I don't think I'd like it if it were too serious or structured.

[FireKnife]

I don't really do 'teams'. I do the whole tag along with a group but aside from saying we all fall under a single name that is about it.

 

If I am playing with other against them I don't mind as I am there to have a laugh and we can always do that in the safe zone afterwards. Plus what moments are better then someone you know out playing you and you finding a hilarious way to get them back? (I recall getting back a team mate that jumped through a window to get me by me sliding down a hill, blatting rounds into him in the next game).

 

I just find that teams lead to either people taking it too seriously or lots of "why can't I be with him". At the end as good as they are I would rather have "drinking and shooting buddies" than a team.

 

'FireKnife'

[thatguy404]

I'm part of a team in the sense that we're a group of guys that have the same place of employment, carpool to games, help each other out etc.

Once on the site, we're more than happy to swap ourselves around to opposite teams (I love blasting my friends)

All more than happy to work on our own, or help out other players on the site. 

I love rounding up a group of rental players, and getting them away from the spawns, and getting them taking objectives with me.

 

We have a good relationship with the marshalls on the site, and they often swap us to balance teams, or use us as objectives in the games to help gameflow.

[ninja master of coffee]

While I've definately encountered the home team that can't lose, at the site I play at it's mostly made up of various teams that form the nucleus of play. It's a site that runs scenario MilSim type games so organization is essential, if people turn up and refuse to be part of that, that side just gets hammered since the other side will just take advantage of their lack of coordination. That said it's all good natured, we all have friends on either side of the normal team divide, we all chat and have drinks and a laugh after the game. My own team tends to act as a squad for a side each game we play, often having newer players added and we will organise these players, I find it gets newer players into a more structured game rather than being left on the sidelines while the experienced players actually get to fight. That said this all requires a much more structured game type, I don't think it would work in a regular walk on skirmish but that's why I don't play those games.

[daladzor]

I'm part of a team

What made you want to be part of a team?
Just seemed the logical move as we always tried to play on the same team anyway at skirmishes, decided what sites we'd visit together so, just seemed right.
 

   -What attracted you to a particular team?
Formed it ourselves, group of similarly minded in not taking much seriously and skirmishing for the laughs at the end of the day.
 

   -What things make you glad to be of that team, or part of a team in general?

For me, its having a few people at a skirmish with me that I can rely on to stick with me through thick and thin (whether our plan is smart or not , more often not, and who for CQB I know will be right behind me as going into a room)
For my team, we are all friends from either before airsofting (school and college, or made whilst  skirmishing and playing together for years.)

[LionJar3]

Thanks guys, I appreciate your replies.

[3vi1-D4n]

For those not on a team:

-  What are your reasons for not being on a team?

 

I don't play anymore.  Reason I don't play anymore is because I no longer have a team.  Reason I don't have a team is because if the local games are games where it doesn't really promote any form of planning or expectation setting, which is critical in building teams and leadership.  

 

Its like milsim junkies demanding to do real world drills in a game where the opposition just respawns a minute later, which would render real world drills to be useless. Its more effective lone rangering in games where a team slows you down.  Otherwise "teamwork" is basically demanding people to behave the way you want them to, without any real need or measure of what good teamwork would be.

 

-  What would you expect when becoming a member of a team?

 

That everyone has similar ideal/goals and objectives, and will help each other and strife to be the best they can be in the situation we have agreed to be in. Inspire people by our actions to promote honor, healthy teamwork and gamesmanship, not just within the team but in other teams.

 

-  What would attract you to join a team?

 

That games would actually promote people to think ahead and work together; high fps, limited ammo, heavy team based penalties for getting hit, and objectives that require more than just one person to achieve (not something like take the flag from A to .