Why I'm F**king Done Squad Leading in Pubs

You have an extensive and clear communication on the platoon net. You then say "go for village" and leave it at that. Returning to your Platoon net communication.

You then get snappy with your Stryker driver and complain in local chat with your vehicle crew.

You then get sarcastic with your Strkyer driver and ask him about his vacation.

You then get in a full on argument with him.

You spend magnitude more words communicating on platoon net and complaining in local than you ever do to inform your squad about what is happening.

I realize that SLing is hard and thankless but if you are going to SL in a public match you need to be extremely clear about your intentions. You need to be friendly with your squad. You need to make sure that the communication is going both ways. I SL quite often and have found that you need to talk all the time and be super clear in communication. You are fulfilling a role that in reality has the power of rank and training behind it but in game is essentially just a few game mechanics and charisma.

• Be clear with your squad about the goals you have.
• Update them fully on the changing state of the team strategy
• Understand who is important in your Squad. Ask "who is driving the Stryker".
• Repeat your goals and get verbal confirmation
• don't get snappy or sarcastic. Avoid creating internal conflict.

And look your Stryker driver didn't listen, but he then later came to your position. He wasn't going fully awol. This whole situation wouldn't have happened if you had been clearer in your communication, if you had requested his confirmation, if you used all the time complaining about him to actually communicate with him.

Sometimes the stress of SLing gets to all of us and at that point we need to be able to realize that and retire to a less demanding role.

I pub SL a lot, sometimes I shoot rockets or run around with a medic bag but for the overwhelming majority of the time played I'm a pub SL. I love it, it's a challenge and it is going to be different every game.

Here's what you requested: Watch this clip and tell me if you were in my position how would you have dealt with it?

So many things went wrong here, fixating on a miscommunication with the stryker driver only made it worse. A simple solution would have been to ask for the stryker driver's name, and ask him directly if he has received/understood your order. Stating your order twice may have also helped cut through miscommunication.

The delayed move to Village sucked. Always assume there are insurgents rushing village, any delay out of main because you're waiting for squad members to mount up, or to delegate tasks between SL's is giving insurgents precious time to set up.

Approach village as if they rushed it. Never drive right up to it, I stagger drop so my squad is already spread out when approaching the cap. After the cap is clear and we're at 90% capped I'll bring up the vehicles so we can mount up and move into the city.

Ask the stryker sweep to the south edge of village and look for any signs of rushing insurgents.

Get a rally down asap for the 5 guys waiting to spawn, have them spread out and move onto the cap radius.

Lower your expectation of everyone playing, squad members, blues, and other squads. Instead of getting frustrated because they don't do what you expect, you are pleasantly surprised when they do. Use positive reinforcement/comments when they do. Negativity breaks morale. Work with that, articulate your intentions clearly, cut down on miscommunication and try to keep your squad focused on the task at hand, even if they're doing it at their own pace or way. Make sure the task at hand is helping the team, regardless if the team is helping you. When leading pubs they are just as skeptical of you are you are of them, you have to build rapport and at the end of the game the squad should have at least a half functional squad. Some of those players may join you next game. Comments from squad members like "That was the best game of squad I've played in months" and steam friend requests are indications that you're doing something right.

Hard to argue with that.

This is why I only let people I trust drive the vehicles.

You've made the following mistakes:

1. You brought the supply truck to the enemy and abandoned it.
   Either you should have make stryker go there first, or you could hide supply truck, place rally, go on foot.

2. You didn't get confirmation from the stryker. It wasn't clear that you were talking to stryker. You could see that the stryker was going wrong way. You should have say "stryker stop; how copy". Then you would talk to driver and make him go to Village. Or kick the driver and tell another squad member to drive.

Communication is tough because people don't listen.

If you issue your orders repeatedly to get their attention, and nothing bad happens, people call you an asshole.

If you give people even a second of free thought, they become complete birdbrains. No sense of self preservation. No sense of what the rest of the team is doing, no sense of what the enemy is doing.

Something goes wrong. It's your fault they didn't listen. Pubbie logic.

I don't take this or any team game too seriously, not enough to get mad really, but it's easy to observe and reflect on this. Rearrange the teammates, join a different server, the same patterns emerge.

It's hard coming from Project Reality to Squad because the community is so much larger. In PR, it was the same 200 or so players every week, and there were only a few big servers, so you listened or risked getting banned.

In Squad, server admins aren't as aggressive with bans (which is a good thing) but there's less of a commitment by random players to work as a team.

Squad leading is a chore, I agree, because half the time my guys are running off doing their own thing, and frankly, I'm not the kind of person to get angry at someone over a videogame. But if my medics are running around ramboing, and someone is shouting in my ear, and someone else is AFK, it does suck a lot of the fun away.

The problem isn't you...the problem is your squad mates. There is pretty much nothing you could have done. You said multiple times "go to village" and also marked it with a move marker. If the rest of the squad didn't hear you say "go to village" 1 of 2 things (if not both) are happening.

• 1. The squad isn't paying attention OR
• 2. They are drowning out squad level comms by constantly talking in local chat

None of which is YOUR fault at all. If they can't pay attention, then that is on them.

The only thing I would do differently is in future games if those same people join your squad just kick them.

You should, that would have been a frustrating squad to be in seeing how you SL... Driving the logi straight into the objective without waiting for your stryker (when it's damn obvious INS rushes village 90%of the time), bitching about other squad members on local chat, emotively letting out useless info on squad chat when running into contact 'swearing and blaming stryker' (almost as irritating as hearing "enemies on me").

That was all around a pretty good video on how not to SL

Those pubbies need to know who they should call retard.

This is what I learned from the comments here:

1º "Go to village" Is not considered an order, its supposed to be "Hey everyone listen up and pay attention, I want you to go to village".

2º If your squad member doesn't acknowledge the order or you didn't call him by name its your own fault for assuming he understood it.

3º Being called a "fucking retard" is justified because you only said your intent twice.

4º Using sarcasm against someone ignoring your orders is also not allowed.

5º It is also not the responsibility of your squad members to check the map or compass and verify where the move marker is.