Jack, you've got Shyamalan on the brain. Outlawl, you're not noticing his interpretation failures (brought on largely by your writing). Ease up. Were you both emotionally disengaged, you might notice that you're debating using different definitions – hence all the (perceived) strawmen and twisted meanings.
Here's an example:
Jack said:
I usually just screw around in pubs or practice routes. I always find it amusing when people take them seriously, and when people seriously use them to gauge others' skills.
Outlawl, you incorrectly interpreted that sentence as Jack screwing over other players in pubs, either by not trying, or by running routes without regard to the flag. You then responded overly aggressively with:
Outlawl said:
This is just ridiculous, claiming that you "don't try" in pubs is stupid. You play the pubs as you would a pug, since after-all, thats the only way you're going to improve. No one plays a game at 80% OPTIMUM POTENTIAL, you can't tone down your aim or how well you ski to the level of seriousness you want to have, you play the game as you normally would. Albeit, sometimes you concentrate more in pugs than you would pubs, that still doesn't mean you shouldn't take pubs as seriously.
What Outlawl meant, as he later clarified, is that pub players don't typically play poorly, just for kicks. There's no effort switch flicked to 30% upon entering a pub server; people may not play “pug serious”, but they'll typically play somewhat seriously.
Jack, you misinterpreted Outlawl's posts as providing pub players with one option: Try or Get Banned. Understandable, given his writing.
But look! You've also written poorly constructed, ambiguous sentences:
Jack said:
Even a 30th percentile PU player could get 15+ capper kills in the public server (aptly named, "Shithole"). At 90th percentile, you get 30+. Every Pub-->PU player was 5x better after playing 1/5 the amount of time in PUs than pubs.
Alone, the preceding sentence may've been taken as intended – as “relative to their earlier selves” - but combined with the first sentence and its implications (that public servers are shitholes, with *chocolate cookies* players), a different interpretation is suggested.
Ironically (dare I say, hypocritically?!!!1), when the sentence was misinterpreted, you saw twists and responded as passive aggressively as possible!
Jack said:
ty hyperbole and twist (hint: relative to their earlier selves, they were 5x better in 1/5 the time).
The both of you were debating pleasantly, if poorly, a post or two ago. Now, though, it's deteriorating into Buhlitz-style sentences.
Effort in pub play shouldn't be up for debate. It's very simple. Most vet players don't exert maximum effort during pubs, at least not in terms of position play; however, they don't intentionally suck, either – especially when it comes to 1 v 1 fights. Noone wants to lose, after all. This sort of play is fine and expected.
At the same time, if you're intent on contributing nothing, you shouldn't be playing. If you want to run routes, or duel a single adversary, go to an empty server – there are always plenty of those. If you're mindlessly practicing routes in a pub, you're simply hurting your team and being a JackAss.
What is up for debate is whether pugs provide greater opportunity for progression than do pubs. Jack, you're throwing around a lot of useless anecdotal evidence and false precision:
Jack said:
ty hyperbole and twist (hint: relative to their earlier selves, they were 5x better in 1/5 the time). This can be backed up by anyone who has competitively played LT in T1 (disci, binswees, sharp, etc). There is plenty of evidence (see: any pub in T1 with a pickup player in it playing against non pickup players).
Jack said:
Even a 30th percentile PU player could get 15+ capper kills in the public server (aptly named, "Shithole"). At 90th percentile, you get 30+. Every Pub-->PU player was 5x better after playing 1/5 the amount of time in PUs than pubs.
And in case you're unaware:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/volvofal.html
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/fakeprec.html
You're also oversimplifying skill development by relegating it to the realm of positional play. You know that cg'ing you were practicing in pubs? That's skill development. Those routes? Skill development. Weaponry and dueling skills are better practiced in pubs, as you yourself admitted, because you're not irritating teammates and because you're able to focus/experiment without having to worry about flag play. And I imagine there's not a whole lot of route improvisation happening in pugs, where your team stands to lose.
If we must get into the anecdotal, I, being a top-tier competitive Legions player, am in a better position than yourself. I avoided pugs “like the plague”, as did most of my members. (In fact, I think only Filt3r played them on a regular basis, for only he was able to tolerate the TeamSpeak community with any regularity). I was an excellent player and widely regarded as the top duelist and sniper; I also led the top-ranked NA team.
Amazingly, I managed without pugs. Now, I know – you'll leap immediately to the idea that I would've improved more rapidly with pug play, but no, probably not. I, and my entire team, for that matter, improved rapidly in pubs and in practice – and we improved rapidly because of our opposition: each other.
Because opposition is really what it's about, isn't it? I could call 8 Omni into a server, 4 per team, and have an excellent pub. I could do the same with 2, or 4. And we could do that at any time, irrespective of whether enough people were on TS for pugs.
Pubs, just like pugs, are what you make them. If vets are intent on only screwing around, then pubs'll devolve into skilless messes. All it takes, though, is a handful of people playing properly for a fun, challenging pub to commence.
This [sic] can be backed up by anyone who has played competitively with me (Filt3r, Deskari, Xpress, Ragol, Slyboots, Outlawl, Floks, Shade, Sketch, Zwei, Strife, Detta, Van, Kryst, Ucan, Sid, Roach).