Building a team/misc discussion
Demigod Forums
So, I usually post on topics when I'm a bit more thought out, but felt like sharing my current/past experience regarding team play. This will hopefully give you some insight into how I build teams and perhaps can get some feedback from you.
I became a part of my 1st premade with Kokujin and Kassaum. Excellent players from Brazil. They were good enough to keep me alive while I was getting better at the game and we started using vent. They came across shade and we all started playing together as result. I brought in another great player, KalelSmx that I met pugging. Eventually, Kass and Koku moved on to other things (they'll be back :)) and trousersnake joined the ranks along with purgespam. All the while, I'm been making friends on the forums and slowly adding to the list of people I play with. I've been making offers to play with people here and there, and some have taken me up on it (Impossible - I think you tried to message me, but I'm not getting messages from you... some sort of impulse bug i think re: friends). Recently, I started playing with Jongalt, paintmaster, and tonight played some with murder.
There have been great people on the periphery that I've played with on and off, but aren't part of the regular team per se (playing together nightly, etc): Obscenitor, Atma44x, Killeroak, Boxleitner. I keep adding to the people I play with and of course, against.
Teams are great and they are also lousy. They are great in that, once you are used to each other's play style and you have enough experience, it takes an extremely high level of skill to beat you. You can even be having an off game, and odds are you teammate will be there to back you up, shield/heal/bramble, or chase off whoever is after you. I might be a pretty good individual player, but I'm really only as good as my team.
And now... the lousy side of premades IMO - the game eventually starts to lose some of its shine. Its not something within the nature of demigod either... there are plenty of different settings that can be thrown in to switch things up (high gold, high towers, etc). There's always something around the corner (fixes, modding, new dgs, etc). I believe its something that happens with a premade. People start enjoying winning (amazing, right?). Some would rather win than have a competative game. It may sound like as ass thing to say, but winning the majority of the time gets boring. You can say go play another premade if you want some more competition and I can say, I do and will continue to do so. My core premade (kalel, shade, trouser, purge) are to the point of not turning down any invite from other teams and typically, when not hosting, try to join games that against premades. If we haven't played yet, just jump into any game I have open and we can get one going (we're about due, jaybuddai - even if you have a huge tb :)). That said, most of the time, we don't have premades readily available to play against, so we end up hosting or joining other games.
Another premade problem for me anyway - huge freaking premades. If you read a few of the names above, you can see that I play with quite a few people on a regular basis. This means, we eventually have to host 5v5 games. I personally don't have any connection problems, but many do... leading to laggy, painful games at that level... and I don't kick someone who's part of the team if 5 or more of us are on. Sometimes, I try to get fair, evenly balanced us v us games, but some team members aren't for that. Anyway, minor issues IMO, but issues nonetheless.
Re: team dynamics - some people are great as Puggers in XvX games, but I find that it often takes some time to get a good rhythm going with new teammates. This eventually click, but I'm not there quite yet with some of my new teammates... soon 
