Depends on the game. Playing Random Team games in War3 is just painful, you will find maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 players that aren’t totally clueless. I actually enjoy playing 4v4 RT games sometimes, just to watch the really strange things my teammates do. “CHECK IT OUT, I’M MASSING FARMS! HAHAHA THIS FUCKING OWNS!!!”
On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a die-hard game like Quake3. I can go into pretty much any q3freeze server, get frozen while adjusting my mouseaccel/sensitivity, and count on some guy to tear down the gates of Hell trying to thaw my heavily-camped body.
Yeah, PlanetSide was a huge leap forward in team based gameplay
While it had a terrible launch and so gets ignored by the gaming populace now, WW2 Online came out a long time before Planetside and in my experience goes much farther when it comes to team based gameplay (though it’s been quite a long time since I last played Planetside).
A lot of that is of course due to the muture/dedicated community the game has now, but the amount of planning and coordination that goes into almost every attack and defense is beyond any other online game I’ve experienced… Artillery placed in strategic locations to cut off supply routes or armor reinforcements, airforce bombing runs as infantry squads coordinate together and armor blocks the flanking valleys, while the navy pounds the city’s harbour and other squads run resupply missions to the frontline - large scale planned attacks like that are common in the game since the command structure is entirely made up of players. Your company belongs to a squad, squad belongs to a brigade, brigade belongs to a division - right up to Allied or Axis High Command, it’s made up of real players every step of the way and the plans and orders coming down from High Command are taken seriously. Pretty much all squads use TeamSpeak while playing which helps too.
That much structure in a game is definitely not for everyone (though things aren’t as strict as they sound), but it’s great for teamwork. The mechanics of the war also work better so that you feel like you’re actually fighting for something and that each city or town is valuable; every battle in the campaign counts as your side gains or loses territory and comes closer to winning or losing the war. Along with the supply system and Research and Development program, things just feel much more like a war than they did in Planetside.
Of course even in WW2OL there are still lone wolf players, but they’re fewer than any other games and still get involved in the teamwork (you have to really). I’ve only been playing the game for a few months now (funnily enough I discovered it after quitting Planetside and pretty much found that it’s the game I always wanted Planetside to be) but the amount of effort and teamwork people put into the game still staggers me when I stop and think about it.
FiringSquad recently did a pretty good re-review of the game:
Comparing Planetside with WW2 Online isn’t fair. If you’re a WW2 Online player, then almost by definition you’re about as much of a diehard as they come. :) As such I’d expect a lot more teamwork out of WW2 Online simply because the players have effectively been cherry-picked by their own need for dedication.
Planetside, on the other hand, manages to have a decent level of teamwork with a much larger and less tightly-bound player base.
