I had an interesting experience on Office tonight. It's nothing new, but the experience came full circle tonight and I felt like putting it down in writing.
I joined the T squad and they were getting their asses kicked. To their credit, they were up against some tough competition. Some of the CTs were Cinci, Coke, deadguy... Anyway, they, the Ts, were camping in the Projector Room area. As many of you know, camping as a T on office is an iffy strategy. It works half the time against decent competition, but up against good competition it doesn't. Either way, the current strategy of camping was not working. We had to try something new, but convincing the rest of the team to move is...difficult, to say the least.
When the CTs have momentum and are rushing hard, the best strategy to stop them is the Counter-Rush. You just rush them as they are rushing you. Now it doesn't always result in an immediate win. Most of the time the first rush or two results in a lot of deaths. But it scares the CTs from rushing as hard or at all the next round. It disrupts their momentum. That allows you to finally break out of camping and take the fight outside of the projector room area.
So I tried to convince my team to do this. Being that I wasn't an established player that round (ie: a player with a good ratio near the top of the list) they weren't inclined to listen to me. So I had to lead from the front, even if that meant on my own. So I rushed garage, and by rushed I mean went outside and tried to hold off the CTs, several rounds. The first time I was alone, but I got a few kills. The next few times I was still alone, but I was getting 3 sometimes 4 kills before I died. I was slowly moving up the ladder. After several rounds of that I was able to convince a good number of guys to hold garage with me.
We rushed out of the projector room area and sprinted towards the garage. We met the CT rush head on. We killed a bunch, but we all died. This is still going according to plan. However, as always, after a strategy does not result in a decisive win, your teammates are less inclined to listen to you. No one wants to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the team. And especially not after dying for what seems like nothing.
The next round I rushed again with only a few followers, but just as planned, the CTs did not rush garage. They don't want to sacrifice themselves either. However, due to a lack of support, we could not hold it. We lost that round again. However, because the CTs did not rush and because my ratio had taken me to near the top of the player list, I was able to convince the team to help me hold garage. We only needed about a third of the team (5-6 guys) to hold garage. The rest could watch long hall and the hall with the 2 vending machines. We won the next round. And the next. And the next.
However, people tend to be sheep. When they see a sizable group (5) going one way they go that way, too. So sometimes too many people went garage and left the other side of the map undefended. However, my instructions had resulted in multiple wins in a row, so when I told them to cover the other side of the map, they listened and went back. We won again and again until the map reset. Sometimes it was really close, because the other team had really good players. But what we lacked in individual talent, we made up for in teamwork and strategy.
Now this isn't a brilliant strategy. Many people know this strategy. But convincing your team to follow that strategy is extremely hard (in pickup games anyway). It's called the Collective Action Problem (CAP). It infects all aspects of life. The majority of workers like the benefits that unions get them, but only a minority will strike with the union. The CAP in Counter-Strike is equivalent to everyone agreeing to rush office and then only 3 people actually do it. "If everyone else is rushing then I don't really need to. I don't want to risk getting shot early in the round." Well if 12 guys are thinking the same thing, the rush fails completely. So in order to prevent that from happening, you have to con your team into winning. And how you do that is another discussion.
I got lucky tonight. I could have easily lost the trust of my team if for some fluke reason the strategy failed early on. Then they would have reverted back to nature (aka camping) and we would have continued to lose. But I got lucky. No rogue CT managed to pull off an unbelievable streak in the first few rounds of "non-camping." So they trusted by judgement and we won. I, as an individual, am nothing special. The team knew what they had to do to win. I just had to trick them into doing it.
Edited by Silent Bob, 20 January 2007 - 03:42 AM.
