This post is me genuinely asking the community a question that hopefully will spark proper talking about the subject of teamkilling. Teamkilling used to be something that was a rare occurrence. It is the opposite now. I do understand that mistakes are made, and that is perfectly fine. I just played a game with 30 people and saw teamkilling at least eleven times; none were purposeful from what I am aware. Teamkilling is something we all hate, but it seems that we still see it plenty of times. So it begs the question, why?
My theory is twofold. The first reason is that because of the drop in active units; recruiting, for a while now, has been on a precipitous decline. So, this means we see either a lot of hasty recruiting with little to no training just for the sake of saying, 'Oh look how many people we have!', Alternatively, many people who just aren't part of a unit are playing the game with essentially no knowledge. These two groups of untrained people within a unit and non-unit people are the majority of the people we see teamkilling. The second reason ties into the first. The active units do not spend time familiarizing people with the game. Drilling and marching and does not equate to being familiar with the game. Drilling and marching equates to being familiar with a handful of commands and some history; a game is different. Familiarizing yourself with the game means knowing its nuances, the little tricks, tips, funny little oddities within the game (of which an Alpha version of a game has a plethora of). It is these very oddities, tips, tricks, and nuances not being taught to people that are the cause of this. These nuances range from the small but quick to find details you can look for to quickly ID a person at a distance to knowing the systems of the game itself such as the formations buff system. These types of nuances and details are what cause people to teamkill. On the other hand, you have the apparent lack of common sense training. Common sense training entails things like, 'Don't step in front of a skirmishing group that is firing,' 'Don't go running towards a line by yourself and say nothing because someone will shoot you.'. Lack of common sense training is what causes people to be teamkilled.
I am not asking units to spend a ton of time doing this, but I guarantee if you do this you will see a drop in teamkilling and you may even see some higher attendance in drill. Why? If your officers put their minds to it, I am sure they can come up with a creative exercise to teach these drills and keep it entertaining. You cannot make drill just marching and firing drills, that is incredibly boring. Teach some new formations, branch out, and if you do this drill will become interesting as people are learning things and not repeating it.
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Originally Posted by John Cooley
(greetings to Corporal Behrens of the 18th NC who marched with us about 5 minutes until we recognised him xD)
