Competition Team. (*READ THE ENTIRE THING*)

Now that recruiting and Ventrillo are under control, it's time to move on to a competition team.

The Basic Structure:

1: This Team will be used to compete in ladder matches in all the games we play, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Modern Warfare 2 and the way it is looking Battlefield Bad Company 2 (I am downloading it right now). Right now it seems pertinent to concentrate on MW2 and perhaps BBC2 in the near future.

2: DethMoor and myself are in charge of the competition squad. What we say goes. Woodcock and GuerillaPimp will also be used to help make decisions, seeing as ZHOP is Woodcock's creation and Guerilla is one of the first.

3: We will NOT be recruiting for competition purposes only. No sandbaggers! The rules of recruiting still hold true. It is more important to have a squad that gets along than to have a bunch of people that we don't want in our family.

How this is going to work:

1: All active ZHOP members are not only welcome, but encouraged to apply for the team. To apply, simply post in this thread that you want to be a part of the competition team.

2: Once the teams is organized and we know who wants to be a part of it, we will schedule "practice" several times during the week (to be announced after i discuss schedules with DethMoor)

3: There will absolutely be a ranking system. When going into ladder matches, when once player is taken out, there has to be someone to step up to fill the shoes of their higher officer. A dead player can help, but not lead a team. Depending on the rules of the match, they may not even be able to communicate.

4: Do not apply if you do not have a reliable microphone and/or headset. Communication is key in this. As of right now, i am not putting an age requirement on this. This may or may not change in the future depending on how things go.

Question: How will the ranking system be established?
Answer: During our first few practices, we will put each of you in a leadership position to see how you handle the stress of being the person with the answers. You will be expected to organize a plan of attack, keep your leadership position established inside your team, deal with your own players that may try to argue with you. You will be judged by DethMoor and myself on this and your rank will be appropriate to your results.

JUST TO MAKE THIS CLEAR!: OUTSIDE OF THE COMPETITION TEAM, YOUR RANK MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE SQUAD.

Question: How will we be ranked?
Answer: We will rank you using the good old United States Marine Corps Ranking structure (Sorry Deth). This structure makes the most sense, considering, you know, MW2 is Marine based, i think BFBC2 is also.

Question: WTF? Why am i only a Private First Class, I am a good player! WAAAAH!!
Answer: Okay crybaby. You're off the team, better?
More descriptive Answer: Not that the one above isn't absolutely serious, but to be a little more precise: You're ranked on your ability to lead and your ability to play, not solely on your stats. If you can kill 50 people with a twig, wonderful it doesn't help if you can't lead the other players into battle and tell them where to be and when to be there. Do not take your rank as a personal justification of your existence. All players are needed, some just have the ability to lead better than others. As we play together competitively you're rank more than likely will increase.

Things that are expected of you:

1: Stats mean nothing at the end of a competitive match. If you're 100 and 2 and your team lost, your team still freaking lost. If a higher ranked officer tells you to become lightweight class and repeatedly charge into a base to create a distraction more than to kill, you are expected to do so without concern of your stats.

2: You will be expected to be mediocre to good at all classes and expected to play all classes. There are times you are going to need to carry a big gun with a lot of ammo and lay down cover fire, there are times you are only going to be carrying G-18's and running as fast as you can. You are expected to follow the rank structure and have classes set up accordingly. There are times you are going to have to protect and times you are going to have to capture....don't get used to being one class. Your best class will more than likely be utilized, but be expected to play them all. We will go over this in practice.

3: You will be expected to adhere to the ranking system and follow orders from higher ranking players.

4: You will be expected to show up for scheduled practices, failure to do so will result in your rank decreasing. You can't know and lead a team if you haven't practiced with them.

5: You will be expected to get better at team ladder matches. I guarantee no matter how much we practice prior to our first match, we will absolutely get our asses beat in the first match. There are teams out there that do nothing but practice. I don't want to turn our squad into that. Fun and Family is more important to me than competition, but with practice i expect to see us function better and win more as a team and see single players performance improve in time.

6: Absolutely NO DRAMA! is expected from you. Don't like a discussion or a decision? I can be reached via e-mail, personal messages, and Steam chat, feel more than free to start a discussion with me about them. DO NOT CONTACT ME AND BEGIN WHINING AND CRYING ABOUT SOMETHING There is a huge difference between "discussion" and "waaaah! Archimedes butthurt me".

7: You're expected to get butthurt. Your feelings will eventually at some point, be hurt in the throws of competition. Remember, we are friends and family, before you bring it to me, try discussing it with the the person that hurt your butt. Things get said during competition that aren't necessarily meant. Competition brings out the worst in people. If need be, and the situation cannot be resolved, bring it to the attention of DethMoor or Myself. If the problem is with me, and you don't feel comfortable discussing it with me, take it to DethMoor and vice-versa. That is the reason there are two of us in charge, it keeps the lines of communications open. I firmly believe in being open minded. If you have something worthwhile to discuss with me, i will be more than happy to discuss it with you. If you call me 30 times in a row through Steam because DethMoor removed you from the squad, i am more than likely going to ignore you. If you want to be treated like an adult, act like an adult.

8: Expect to practice for the next month to two months before we consider entering a team ladder match event. We need to get organized and get good prior to doing this. I have several squads that i may ask to scrimmage us prior to entering the ladder matches. Scrimmages will still be a about a month off. We will scrimmage internally before we move to external scrimmages. scrim scrim scrim, wanna scrim? (If anyone has any other squads that would be willing to help, please contact me) Remember, the more we practice together, the better we will play together. I am a firm believer in practicing.

9: Expect to be rotated out. A lot of squad members have shown interest in this. I have to check, but if it is only an 8 versus 8 ladder match system, and we have 12 competition team members, we will rotate players so everyone plays. If you get rotated out one week, don't take it as some personal vendetta/conspiracy theory that we are all out to get you, I want everyone that is interested in playing to actually have play time.

Things to remember!:

1: At any time if i see the ZHOP Competition Team putting a strain on relationships and putting the entire ZHOP Squad in danger, i will immediately disband the Competition Team. This is the most important thing to remember: We are friends and family before anything else. I do not want to see all of ZHOP disband and disappear because of the competition team.

I have been a member of several globally ranked squads. I played on quite a few competitive squads. There were two reasons i left those squads. 1) The Squad disbanded because of internal fighting and broke into several smaller squads that pretty much hated each other and i just went my own way. And 2) The leadership in the squad did not know how to deal with the stress of the competition team, there was constant inner-squad dramatic events......i effin hate drama.

The communication lines between the higher ranked officers and the lower ranked officers was broken, severely and things got out of control quickly. So basically i have seen squads ripped apart because of competition, i am going to say this once and only once I will absolutely not let this happen to the ZHOP squad, i will disband the competition team immediately if i see absolutely any sign of this.

2: Make no mistakes about it, i want to win, but fun and comfort with your fellow team members is more important to me. If i see drama breaking out, decisions will be made to eliminate the drama, which includes cutting members from the team. Your status on the team is "at the will" of the leadership of the team, which means at any point, for any reason, you can be cut. We will try to make good, common sense decisions for the good of the squad. I have not abused the power given to me at this point and i don't foresee that changing any time soon. I try to work with anyone and everyone.

3: Video Games are meant to be fun. Once you add the competition component to the recipe, Modern Warfare 2 can become very stressful. People deal with stress differently. Personally I tend to snap at people. This doesn't mean i dislike you personally, it means i got stressed and snapped at you. We are going to run into situations like this. I want everyone to keep in mind that we are competing and with competition, comes stress.

4: I am thinking of running an internal competition with prizes for the winning team. (Yes an actual prize not a pat on the back). This will probably take place soon. I am not sure what the prize is yet, but i will post it up later.

I think i have made all points clear. DethMoor and myself will add things to this thread or create a new thread regarding it when things come up. I am sure i haven't covered everything, but you get the basic idea of it all.

I can be reached through Steam Chat and my email address is ZombieGeek3 [at] gmail [dot] com. Feel more than free to contact me through this website too, there is a private messaging system here.

Two things:

if you want to be a part of the competition squad post your name and a way for me to contact you via e-mail.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here, i will check the thread periodically. If you feel as though you don't want to ask the question in public, feel free to contact me via steam, PM, or through my e-mail.

Post up boys and girls, lets get this started!

I sent you a pm so I didnt have to post my email. Anyone can read these forums.

Joined: Nov 15, 2009 Posts: 1 Status: **Offline**

sign me up man sounds like fun

zhop fury

7 Including Deth and myself.....need at least Ten.

If you've posted your email address up to this point, you can remove it from your post by using the "EDIT" button. I have them all copied..

Exidus i still need an e-mail address for you.

I would like to at least join the practice squad. My schedule is going to get crazy in the next couple months with the new baby girl coming. Still I should be able to block out time for a practice session or two. I'll pm u my email address.

We're at 8 players and 1 practice player.

Would like to get to 10 so that we can have alternates in case someone can't make a scheduled game.

We can probably run with 8 seeing as TWL only has 4 on 4, but if we get 10, we can run two, 4 on 4 teams.