Editorial: A Viewpoint on Mixes

[DISCLAIMER: All opinions expressed in this article are solely the author’s opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Sauerworld.]

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[13:10:42] <ySoSrs_> .mix sauer.woop.us

[13:10:56] <bottie> ySoSrs_ is looking for mixed games on sauer.woop.us. Join #sauercom to respond.

I’m usually in #sauercom quite a bit throughout the day. My Hexchat logs extend back to February 19th, 2015. A ctrl+f search through my logs showed me 200 matches for “.mix,” the command we use with bottie to spam channels with messages of mixed games. A ctrl+f search gave 80 results for “.cw.”

Mixes get people involved in casual games. Mixes let us have a pretty evenly matched up game and don’t get put into stressful situations where we HAVE to score the flag or we’ve let down our whole clan. Mixes don’t give us competition, something you humans innately love. They let us grow complacent, casually grabbing flags and rocket jumping like an Impressive R̶e̶t̶a̶r̶d̶ Shithead back to our base, running around and gunning without much thinking. They’ve killed serious team games. They’ve killed competition.

We generally coordinate more during a clanwar. Last time [tBMC] did a clanwar, ztk, wickedjoe, and I were all in mumble together coordinating where we’d attack from, when to attack, where the enemies were coming from, how neon is completely raping us. But when we play a mix, I don’t generally have my headset on. I understand some people still mumble during a mix, but when I’ve done that, we usually talk more about our cocks and fucking bitches than the game. A clanwar is actually a team game. There’s coordination, communication, teamwork… a mix is simply running around alone without coordination. Any “teamwork” that happens is by coincidence. In that way, it’s very much eTeam with a five second respawn time and flags (but the flags don’t really matter).

A clanwar has the spirit of competition. When I’m wearing the [tBMC] tag and I have two others with me, I really do want to perform better than the people wearing the vaQ’ tag. There’s an air of competition, a feeling that everyone is playing to their best. That the game really matters. I don’t get that feeling with mixes. Hell, I don’t even go for the flag. I just try to deal as much damage as possible. Win, lose, I don’t give any fucks. Neither will achieve anything memorable. It’s either flagrunning practice for our dearest friend s̶u̶p̶e̶r̶m̶a̶n̶ RAMBOSPAIN or a shooting gallery for me. But winning a mix won’t get me any glory. It doesn’t let me say “Jajaja, HD, I fucked you right in your puC last time we clanwarred!”

Why would we play mixes over clanwars then? Clearly, clanwars are much more intense and competitive, aspects we love in arena fps’s.

There aren’t that many active clans. !s] and .cS| are the most active ones, and both are very large compared to everyone else. It must get pretty fucking boring for them to constantly face each other. vaQ’ and w00p| sometimes come on with sizeable numbers, but these are really the four clans that can do clanwars on a regular basis. They actually used to do this to some extent, but I’m sure they’re all burnt out from fighting the same people over and over and seeing the same ragefests.

Let’s look at the past 20 logged clanwars from the Impressive R̶e̶t̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ Shitheads. Thirteen (13) of the clanwar matches logged were three games or fewer – 30 minutes of playtime, not including the time spent picking maps and bickering. The rest of them still should’ve taken at most an hour to get through.

While I’m writing this, I’m speccing a game on SWU. There aren’t any people of the same clan playing in the mix going on. There are two clanless people, an applicant to Results of Incest, a vaQ’, an !s], and an |RB|. eCTF reissen was just played. With a mix, everyone gets to play, not just the players that have a couple teammates on.

Mixes let us balance teams so we can prevent the team of Jumper, Boomerang, and Star from crushing a team of Frosty, Acuerta, and Star. If we put together Acuertas shitty overall skill with Jumpers tactical mind, Frostys‘ inability to flagrun with Boomerangs high fragging level, and pit Stars flagrunning capabilities against his gift for being a retard, we can get a 10 minute 3-3 game instead of a 2 minute 10-0 game.

So we can sacrifice competitive levels for higher participation rates…. Right?

Fuck no. “But swatty, we get more clans involved and we can play longer blublubblub” Shut the fuck up. You’re wrong.

Mixes are killing competition. I’ve seen two clans with three people of each clan converge on a server – and then instead of doing a clanwar, they opt for a fucking 4v4 mix. Out goes the teamwork and coordination that goes into a clanwar, replaced by mindless jumping and shooting, with each person essentially trying to do everything by themselves. The whole competitive atmosphere in Sauer is completely destroyed, with SSL and DKSC trying to spark some, but it’s still only existing in the tournament matches. On the occasion people practice for the tournaments, it’s almost always competitiveless mixes.

Mixes are driving people away. I don’t have precise statistics and if any of you want them, go hump a stump. More competition = more people will stick around. With less competition, there’s not as much left for the many people who want to play competitively.

I’m still speccing that same mix as I’ve been writing this. There are two !s members, a clanless player, a Crowd applicant, a w00p, and an |RB| member playing. I doubt these mixes are building team skills, team coordination – they’re just solo fragging and solo flag running.

Every time we play a mix in favor of a clanwar, we’re destroying competition. And from that, our playerbase.

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