How ineffective are you allowed to play in team games?

Ok so quick story before the question. So in recent team games where I participated there was a player called broberts5.
He got called out for building a canal in an all ground map to play ship.




This of course posses the question how ineffective is one allowed to play in team games. Does it depend on ones rank? On how many players there are. What about trying to get intel but sacrificing units for it. Does the value of the intel determine if the action is ineffective. Of course there are obvious examples such as terraforming the environment to suit your fac. But what about lesser cases. What about building owls for radar vision and anti radar, while there is active AA in the area, if building an advanced Radar or iris would be better. What about silos considering that using them is in itself innefective to a degree. What about ecoing ? Also is it determined by the visibility of the ineffectiveness? A canal on either team is easily spotted but if somebody constantly builts and reclaims something to waste metal that's not so obvious. Also what about the difference in skill between players should it be considered or be weighted positive/negative ?

In the end my question is summarised is how far are you allowed to "strain" against the meta in a team game if doing so hurts your teams winning chances ?

[Spoiler]

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Zero-K:Code_of_Conduct


2. Help New Players

You are not obligated to interact with new players, but if you do, offer them friendly advice and help with any issues they may have. Mentor them and teach them how to play. Be forgiving of their mistakes and be sympathetic when they fail to perform well.

Do not expect or demand that other players (new or otherwise) follow your advice, and do not insult or abuse them if they do not listen to you.

3. Cooperate With Your Team

When playing in a team game, do your best to coordinate with your teammates and to work for the mutual success of the whole team. Communicate your intentions. Ask for help when needed and offer it to others when they need it.

Understand that not everyone on your team will be willing or able to communicate and cooperate to the same degree; have patience with them and do your best even so.

Pursuing all-or-nothing strategies without the consent of your team, or resigning on your own because you faced an early minor setback, is disrespectful to your teammates. A pattern of such behavior may result in moderator action, and in any case you will be damaging your own reputation in the community.

Do not grief, teamkill, or otherwise attempt to sabotage your team or any of your teammates. This includes deliberately playing poorly in order to ruin the game. Note that using tactics that others disagree is allowed, as long as you are attempting in good faith to play well and are not trying to ruin others' enjoyment of the game.

quote: I think as long as you're not deliberately sabotaging your team

As an observer, its extremely difficult to know if its deliberate or not when a someone newish is playing especially bad. When it comes to team trolling, I get the impression there is a ton of false positives and false negatives. False positives suck because a newbie gets yelled at by a 'toxic community', and false negatives suck because an entire team of players have their match ruined, and no-one does anything to prevent it. There are depths of ineffective play that basically force your team to lose, especially in small teams. In a 3v3 or 2v2 there's usually no way to win with someone who doesn't make troops, regardless of elo. Weak players are fine with elo, useless ones break things imho.

There's no way to ask people why they leave ZK, but based on what I see in the teams room, I'd say false positives and false negatives are one of the biggest sources of frustration and bleeding of the playerbase in ZK, for teams players at least. Of course, by its nature, no-one can prove that either way, but certainly storage-building-like behaviors and frustrated responses to them are very common.

An optional minimum skill level for a room is, in theory, a way to solve this. If you see a player spamming storages and terraform here, you can be a lot more certain they are trolling (less false positives and negatives). Plus, its optional no-one is forced into anything. However, this solution also sucks because it locks out new players out in the wilderness where they might never learn from good players.

I'd like an option on a room I create that requires players to have played a specific single player mission. That mission would be designed to quickly assesses and requires whatever the best minimum bar for teams rooms should be (eg. make at least some kind of troops and expand). Newbies don't get locked out of anything, and false positives and negatives are greatly reduced. And anyone not willing to take 5 minutes to learn a game before entering a teams match isn't worth the trouble.

Maybe you could claim its a still a barrier for potential players, but if its brief and optional for rooms, the argument for me is that its a lot less of a barrier to fun than the constant stream of false negatives and false positives, and all the frustration that arises from them.

Playing silly experimental styles in lob pot is something I'd love to do. Unfortunately, purple. :(

So instead I play lobpot the couple of times a month I feel up for trying to carry a team.