The first op I played in was Smart vs. Baker I at desert fox fields, MOUT. I didn't have my own gun yet, and half of the op was a group of guys trying to get me to win a gun (we had raffle, everyone but three people put my name instead of their own... one of the other three people won it, go figure.)
No worries, I ended up buying a better gun bla bla bla, I'm okay with it. (okay not really I still hate them)...moving on
The op was intense because I was such a newb at the time. I was in the middle of the entire opposing team (a small unit of only four men), in perfect position to kill everyone, unseen, undetected ... and my gun was on safety. I was an idiot. I can't remember exactly what happened, but needless to say I died, and it was pretty funny. I met a guy on the other team who also died, and we had a grand conversation as ghosts. He introduced me to a team who I still play private games with regularly.
The airsoft community can be really open, accepting, and helpful. They tried ever so hard to get me that gun *evil eye at picture above* and are still family to me. This is one of those things about ops, you work more closely with people you don't know. At pick-up games, people tend to stick to their groups (much to my chagrin) but at ops you have to befriend more people, and they have to befriend you. Well, to have any fun that is.
On to what you need to know: A main concern I hear from players that haven't played good military simulation games is boredom and orders. I don't like to play soldier. I don't like to follow orders unless if they serve a purpose. I don't like to sit around guarding an objective or do the boring jobs real life soldiers have to do. That's not what I'm paying for, or spending my free time on. Believe it or not, most event organizers realize this and do everything they can to avoid giving you a bad time.
The difference between an operation and a pick up game is generally the same: Time. Pick-up games are fast, operations are drawn out. This allows the game play to develop more, more realism, and forces players to rely on skill and planning more then manpower, gunpower, or luck.
An example of how the game play develops: In a private night op, we were insurgents searching for two downed helicopter pilots to take hostage, while the U.S. forces were attempting to rescue them. This was played on a huge section of open desert (there was about a mile of playable field between our camp and the enemy camp), which allowed for a huge amount of realism, also I had never played there before, so I didn't know the land at all (which is usually the situation in real life). We started at 10pm. Originally, the U.S. forces managed to find the pilots. Then we ambushed them and captured the pilots, but our teams were split up in a fire fight, and one of the pilots escaped. By then it was around 3 or 4 in the morning, until around 8 we continued to assault each others camps attempting to capture the other teams pilot. On top of this our pilot (as we were the enemy) managed to escape three different times, and we had to hunt him down and capture him each time. (Not my fault. I wasn't in charge of keeping prisoner, we zip tied him for christs sake..)
That was by far the best night op I've ever played, because it developed so naturally. No one told us what to do. No one planned anything. Shit just happened and we had to deal with it. On top of that, there were explosions, real injuries (haha), and so much treachery (you can't tell who's on your team at night... that goes both ways, unless you're the only girl *sigh*)
Just because you aren't playing "shoot 'em up" the entire time doesn't mean it isn't extremely fun. Often you have many other challenging aspects to the game then just attempting to annihilate the enemy. For example, in Shifting Sands, you have to work closely with a group of role-playing civilians to complete your objectives.
I was a civilian in Shifting Sands as well as Mojave Thunder, and, well, all I can say is I get into my role. In shifting sands I pulled out a loaded pistol in the middle of a troop of U.S. soldiers, and just like the 6 aeg's were on me.
I wasn't even killed. We ended up in a giant wrestling match, civilians, soldiers, and insurgents in the mix, until someone finally pulled the "camera" out of my hands.Civilians in these games aren't being payed. They are there, as volunteers, to make the game play as interesting as possible. Aka, If your not having fun, then I'm not having fun either. And I'm not having fun unless I get tackled at least once...
I have been to poor ops, and there is never a guarantee an op will turn out well. There are so may variables involved in the outcome of an op; if the players don't take initiative well, it's going to be a crummy game. Most game managers can't control this (unless they control who signs up for the game, which is generally impossible, or they control the game...).
Let me break it down for you: The larger the op is, the more inexperienced players there will be. The more inexperienced players there are, the less initiative they will take. The less initiative the players take, the more structure game managers have to add to the game. The more structure that has to be added to the game, the less realistic development will happen. Less realistic development = :-(
So in general, you can assume the smaller the op, the better the game play. However, this is not always true. Larger ops usually have bigger budgets. Which means bigger venues, better raffles, more time spent planning, and more awesome stuff (explosions, vehicles, buildings, etc). So it's a switch up. Also, once upon a time I went to a small night op. My team was supposed to be ambushed. The enemy team never found us. Yeah >_> it's never guaranteed to be awesome either way.
**I will say one thing, if you go to an op, please do your part. Read through the player packet, from cover to cover, and understand it thoroughly. Imo, people who show up without reading the player packet shouldn't play. It makes things much more difficult for them and everyone else.
There is a risk in going to ops and events. But it usually pays off. If an op is awesome, it is just awesome, I can't express it in words. If an op sucks, oh well, you wasted some time and money, but you got to hang out with your friends, maybe do some camping, and had a fun weekend anyways. If you can afford to take the risk, I say take it, usually there is someone putting everything they can into making that op turn out, and if you do your part as a player, it might just.
"Yes, 'risk taking' is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called 'sure-thing taking'."
Honor, skill, maintenance.
ThatGirl.
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