Halo 3: Improvement Techniques 15.) The Evolution of Team Cohesion and Strategy

Previously all of my blogs dealt with individual strategies for winning while alluding to eventually having to play as part of a team. This changes today. From here on out I'll be speaking about team play in objective and slayer gametypes. I'll begin this short 4 part blog series by first explaining what makes for a great team, and explaining the general evolution of a team's strategies. Later blogs will deal with how to discover what type of role you should play for your team, basic team strategies without being map specific, and for the last blog I'll go ahead and give you some basic strategic personnel placement on a few specific maps and then I'll explain why you should set up that way. But first....

What makes a team great?

A team is essentially just a group of more than 1 player all working for the same objective. Every time you enter a team social playlist by yourself, you are essentially forming a team right on the spot. Just because you've done this doesn't mean your team will be any good, much less great. Certain factors make teams effective, and they are all controlable.

1.) Communication-- No team can be worth a damn if they don't communicate. By now, from playing slayer individually, you know how hard it is to focus on all the information you have running through your screen. It is hard to see the two people in front of you and guess where the other two people are behind you. This is where having just one teammate watching your back comes in handy. But that teammate has to be able to vocalize, and vocalize often, the situations he is in....as should you.

Team speak is generally abbreviated to make the passing of information as quick and easy to understand as possible. This is why teams generally develop their own method of speaking. They generally are simplistic modes of communicating coded information. By knowing the voice and icon of the teammate who speaks, you can place their target in relation to your position and see if you can help out. Here's an example: "1 on S2 with 2". When someone says that, what they are really saying is they see 1 enemy target on the place on the map that is called S (snipe) (level)2 and they have put 2 shots into that person already. If you are in position to shoot that person as well, or chase that person and take them out, you now have some valuable information. You know that person's shields are probably 2/3's depleted and are ripe for a beatdown should you need to because you hopefully have full shields. You also know that an enemy holds a position for future spawns should anyone else die. So, barring anyone on your team trying to occupy that area, future spawns of the other team will occur in the area your teammate just mentioned.

Other important things to communicate to your team are power up and power weapon respawns if someone on your team is timing these things (and on good teams someone is always timing these things). You should also communicate the numbers of teammates and enemies on respawn. This is especially important for objective games like CTF or Bomb. If you know you have the numbers for a push, it would be helpful for the whole team to know this information so you can all push in unison and be more effective.

Any good team will tell you communication is the real key to victory. A team can use any number of strategies, but the team that talks the most and shares information the most, is generally the winner.

2.) Trust-- You must be able to trust your teammates have your best interests and the team's best interests in mind. If a team has one person on that team who's only philosophy is "I am a great asset to this team because I am a great killer and because of this I know everything", chances are your team will suffer for the selfish play of that individual. You can usually spot these types of players because they often call out power weapons for themselves, thinking only they can use these weapons to their full potential. These guy often kill just for the sake of killing, and will go out of their way to place blame on others before analyzing their own gameplay. Get these people off your team as fast as possible. Sure, they may be good killers, and their stat lines may prove it, but if you aren't winning games it doesn't matter if that guy goes 48-0 and you lose 50-49. If he really was that good, he'd have found a way to position you for the win. You need to trust everyone on your team wants to win for the glory of the team, not for their own personal glory.

3.) Awareness-- Everyone on your team must be aware of situations as they develop. Communication is an important tool for informing people of situations, but being aware of how to act should these situations occur is key. Here is an example: Your team is leading in a slayer game 44 to 40, but the other team has hold of the best defensive position on the map. Everyone on your team should realize the chances of you losing out on kills by assaulting a difficult position increases the chances of you losing the game. Evereyone must be on the same page and know there is no need for you to go after the other team. You have the lead. Make those campers come after you in a position where you hold the advantage.

4.) The ability to Team Shoot, or Team-work-- This is another one of the more important aspects of team play. It should not matter who gets the most kills in any one game. It only matters if the team wins. If you see one of your teammates shooting someone, don't assume they will win the encounter by themselves. Put a few shots in their target as well. You'll get an assist, you'll kill that person quicker and your teammate will in all liklihood survive. This is just good team play, and it should become second nature for you to do this at every opportunity. The really great teams manuevar themselves into positions where should any one of them become engaged at any time, they will always have at least 1 other team mate to help team shoot their attacker.

After all is said an done, any good team must have these four attributes. Without them you will most definitely plateau and eventually lose to teams with better communiocation, trust, awareness, and teamwork in shooting.



And now we'll discuss the basic evolution of Team strategies.

By now you've probably gone through the first stage, and maybe even the second stage of basic team strategies, but I'll explain the in thier general order.

Stage 1-- Is just a team based on individual skill. You put four people together who's only goal is finish the objective, but there is no communication and no real strategy to getting things done except for killing the other team more times than they kill you. This type of team stragtegy is the simplest, and more often than not, it fails against teams with lesser skilled individual players who are at least working together. The whole will always be greater than its parts. This stage is only concerned with its parts.



Stage 2-- Teams generally start to realize they need to work together to accomplish their goals. What is their usually simplistic solution? "Let's all run together in a big group." This strategy is good for dealing with stage 1 teams, and depending on the individual skill of the players on this team, it could even beat other stage 2 teams easily. But there are drawbacks to this type of strategy. First of all, your group is often easily found. Four people running in a tightly knit group are easy to spot, so slipping through is generally never done. Secondly, you are all ripe for grenade tosses. One grenade into your team mass will hurt everyone on your team. You might win as a group, but the chances of you all dying at the same time increase dramatically. And Third, the group can get distracted quite easily. Should someone try and attack you from the front, that person will most likely die, and die quickly, but should you get attacked on two or even three fronts, your ability to team shoot will break down and you will inevitably die en masse. And the last reason this doesn't work, you will be shot by your teammates as often as by the enemy. If you're packed so tightly together, shooting lanes will be hard to come by, and since the reaction of most players when they get shot is to shoot back, someone on your team will inevitably shoot you in the back. It is unavoidable.



Stage 3-- At this point, teams begin to make complicated gameplans for victory. Generally they'll say thing like player A is to run for rockets, player B is to run for invis, player C is to snipe and player D is to run an end around and flank from behind. Rinse and repeat. These stage players generally always beat the first two stages, but they run into problems with others who have reached this same stage. Why is this stage not the best strategy? Because the plan is so rigid. Everything hinges on everyone spawning and doing their job perfectly. A rigid game plan also becomes vulnerable to attack. Your team is trying to do everything at once if they use this strategy. A team that decides they can't live without rockets will send 2 or 3 people to ensure they get them, and that one guy will most assuredly die without rockets throwing your whole plan out of whack. For the rest of the game, your team will be playing essentially like stage 1 players, and you'll stand no chance.



Stage 4-- These are the guys who realize every game has a new variable. They have a starting gameplan, but they can scrap it without missing a beat and still come out on top. This is because their gameplan is versatile and any one player can assume the job of the other player should it become necessary. Everyone on the team has no problem sniping, everyone has no problem charging. They all do what needs to be done in order to win. This is what I like to call the Objective driven stage. This is because this team has learned a basic formation and formula to winning. Their simple formula is they want map control so they can grab the power weapons whenever they spawn, but they don't want to be spread so far apart that they can't easily help another teammate should they get into trouble. When a power weapon spawns, players A,B,C or D will grab it....whichever one of them is closest. They don't care who gets it, only that their team gets it. They do this because they realize that anyone on their team having it is more important than the other team posessing it. Denial is the name of the game here. They want to deny opportunities for the other team to win, while increasing their own opportunities to win. With each kill they force the other team's hands even more, and hopefully they set the other team to panic and have the revert to previous stages of strategic gameplay.

Their formation is simple as well. It is almost always in the shape of a diamond. Why a diamond? Because a diamond allows even shooting lanes for each player so no one crosses streams and frags each other. The diamond also allows teams to focus fire on one specific target should they need to. The diamond also allows easy manuvarability for teams. If you attack on point on the diamond, and the other two points then flank you, you become surrounded, and the diamond never loses its shape. The BR setup on lockout in halo 2 is an excellent example of a diamond set up, but since we're dealing with Halo 3....

Let's use setting up in the snipe area of guardian as an example of a diamond set up. With each placement, imagine a point, and then draw a line to the next point I mention. Eventually you'll see the diamond form and understand why this shape is ideal for teams. The first person is situated on Snipe 3 along the rail. He can see blue room, the upper level of gold room, and the invis. He has ample cover by kneeling in front of the rail, and should he need to, he can drop back into snipe 2 or 3 to recharge his shields. Player B is in snipe 1 and covers the hammer area. Should he be called upon to jump to snipe 2 and help team shoot, he can do it in a hurry, or he can run to the rail at snipe 2 and also help shoot the blue room. Player C is positioned along the elbow to snipe 2 from Green area. His position allows him to shoot the dish, or anyone charging from hammer to snipe one. Should he be called to, he can also slip into snipe 2 or green 1 to help shoot over there. Player D is on the second level of Green area where the bubble shield spawns. The cover to his right shields him from shots from invis, but he can always shoot there should he need to. He has a prime shooting lane into blue room and he can even shoot below him in hammer room should he need to.

Now draw the line from player D to player A and the diamond is complete. Each point has a connection to another player, and those players are his support. Player D gets support in blue room from player A. He gets support in Green area from Player C. He also has the ability to shoot player B's targets at invis should he need to. And he doesn't have to be uber vigilant either. Any approach to his position, just like his teammates' positions, can clearly be seen by the rest of the team. Plus they can all help team shoot any would be agressor. Not only is this good for racking up kills, it is also good for denying the overshield power up, the hammer, the bubble shield and brute shot from the other team. Sure they get to rush for invisibility but their chances of getting it unmolested, or even successfully, drop significantly. They also get the flare, probably the most useless piece of equipment in my opinion because your reticle still lights up red if an enemy passes in front of it. They also only get 1 battle rifle and a plasma rifle, and their access to grenades is limited as well. They could run out onto invis landing to grab the stick nades there, but that's pretty much suicide with 3 people able to shoot them at once.



If you look at other maps, and want to make up stage 4 strats for your team, just imagine the diamond. No one should be in a position where they don't have possible support from at least 2 other teammates and available cover.



hope this helps, and feel free to leave comments for strats you think work well so others can mull them over for themselves.