Weekly Discussion #10 - Frequent noob mistakes

Sorry about the late discussion this week, I flew across 5 time zones to visit family and completely lost track of what day it was.

Anyway, what are some things you see that immediately make you think "this person is clearly new to the game"?

The first thing that comes to mind for me is ringing hydro with energy storage.

of alle the 100 things clearly underbuilding buildpower and overflowing the value of a scathis before hitting min 15, always a pleasure seeing that xD

Required rating for participation in balance talks when?

“salem is the best destroyer”

“percy is the best t3 unit”

“aeon has bad t2”

“uef is the defensive faction”

“janus is bad”

“janus is op”

“ras boys are op”

“air is op”

“navy is op”

Starting an acu upgrade on less than 200 energy

Building a line of t1 PD

Not building any units and still managing to be behind on eco vs someone holding the frontline

starting on building a game-ender (on any map that doesnt have a crazy amount of mexes at base)

Focusing on some pointless stats or wondering if T2 fab is better than T3 fab. Much more important things/"low hanging fruits" to focus on for improving than those.

starting t2 mex at min 3 when they have 200 mass in storage

The embodiment of depression...

Really new to the game usually shows in idle Units. And the well known storage around t1 mex or hydro.

Making t1 spam when the enemy has T2 or T3 units on the map.
Not ringing T2 mexes before upgrading them to T3.
Ringing T1 mexes.
Not checking you can meet the power requirements of radar/shields/etc before building them
Overlooking the extreme importance of reclaim and starting mass on map
Not playing your position on the map
Dying quietly, never asking for help or advice
Never trying to communicate with the team and trying to get everyone working to the same aim
Behaving childishly as soon as anything goes wrong.
Unable to see challenges and setbacks as the strongest learning opportunities
Decides on what they want to do at game start and never adjusting to what is occurring on the battlefield
Sunk cost fallacy. I see ppl upgrading their ACU all the time and then insisting on throwing it into danger and suiciding just because they feel that as they spent the mass they must use their upgrade. Sigh.
Not hosting lobbies. Easiest way to find other noobs and learn is to host all welcome lobbies
Not understanding that with team games, you will lose most games. All it takes is one player on your team to mess up and your team will be behind.
Flaming team mates. No one plays better or learns from abuse and insults

Stalling power for long time.
Forgetting to eco or doing it in wrong way. Ringing t1 mexes and not ringing t2-t3 ones.
Not scouting.
Not reclaiming.
Being very polite. Much more than high rated players. Thanking for e. Thanking for units. Thanking for help on battlefield. Thanking in many words for teaching the game, in the end. etc.
Never complaining. Never accusing or insulting. Never of course is bad word, but I don't remember ever seen someone new to game complaining, it usually comes much later.
Very open for teamwork. Tell him to build eco, he builds eco. Tell him to build t3 air, he builds t3 air. Tell them to push all together in south, they push all together in south. If they don't know, they (sometimes) ask and discuss to learn.

I am active practice everything Wikingest said, so dont listen anybody If u lose means ur team is bad, if opponents lose, u are carry guy. Thats all u need to know about faf.

DONT BELIVE BH HE IS LIEING

lack of scouting, or worse attempting a blind strat attack

Attempting to build a 5th mex before hydro is finished
(and it happened again to me in a tourney game ..)

These are not noob mistakes but things that noobs have a hard time finding out, it took me like two years!

  1. You can boost your build range when assisting other units. So if for example your acu is building something, you can select nearby engineers and right click on the acu and you'll find that some of the engineers that should be out of range to immediately assist actually can. This can be a major time save especially in groups and buildings or factories can be assisted to completion much quicker. I do this constantly, every game.
  2. This bug/feature of attack deployment from the factory is a major boost to your economy and gives you a fast start on pretty much every map. Absolutely essential to use.

@auriko make pgen > 5 mex > hydro, usually works well

FAF Website Developer

Some noob give aways:

  • only building one factory
  • PD wall
  • no scouting
  • attacking without vision
  • not playing the role they are supposed to have, or communicate about it
  • nickname = fiore (just kidding ;))
  • building armies of only one type of unit
  • not helping teammates even though their army is doing nothing
  • walking ACU in army/firebase

Check out my maps here:

Madness 1 - 10

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/480/h-master-s-maps

  1. Stalling mass.
  2. Thinking that stalling mass is okay.

Trying to protect everything with PDs and AA buildings instead of just making units.

Playing vs me and expecting to win

profile picture credits to petric

Joining a custom game and expecting to actually play.

Some of the ones that don't just uninstall the game after getting repeatedly kicked from most lobbies (even all welcome) go on to develop some sort of Stockholm syndrome and say things like "should I leave?" immediately after joining a game, maybe because they don't want to wait 10 minutes before getting yeeted and would like to know upfront.

@ftxcommando your reply is an interesting outlier in this thread. Most people mentioned things noobs do, while you only mentioned things noobs say. I was wondering, how often you play games with noobs in them ?