by RickJames » Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:39 pm
Let me offer my 2 cents as someone who was brand new to ut (and online gaming in general) a little over a year ago. When I first played ig, and was new to ut, I could barely get 11 frags. I then played mostly weapons tdm for a year (minus my inactivity during the fall and spring due to school). Now, after just 20 or so ictf pugs in #ipug spread out over that year, I'm at a level where I can hold my own in any pug. I feel that I improved mainly because of my desire for competitive play. I made friends with (and picked up tips from) a lot of notorious ragers/trolls because they recognized that I had the desire and potential for improvement.
As such, I think that there should only be two criteria for pugging in #ipug:
1. A desire to play competitively and improve
-Of course, there's nothing wrong with playing to have fun, but if you treat pugs like nothing more than organized pubs, you aren't gaining anything from pugging. You have to be willing to devote effort to improving, and you need to have a thirst for competition. If you just want to sit in front of your pc and "shoot the guns", pub servers are available that fill much faster than pugs do. Pugs should be fun, but the fun comes from the challenge.
2. A minimum of ut experience
-All I mean by this is that players who've been playing ut for a week and don't know what dodging is will improve faster in pubs.
I don't think that there needs to be any means of enforcing these criteria- I think that things like "achievements" and "pictf" are silly and will just hurt activity. I do think that new players should be aware of them, though, so that they can decide if pugging is for them or not. If a new player has the right mindset, then they are an asset, not a detriment, to a competitive community