EPTI also might just be pointing out obvious things in this, but I just felt like writing it down lol
I was thinking about a picture that I saw on 4chan (/b/ to be specific) yesterday that sarcastically described all the different types of gamers. It was meant to be funny, but it gave me some thoughts after a while of thinking about it.
There are three base types of gamers (this can apply to a lot of things actually), there are people who play games to win (I'll call these people "competitors"), people who play to enjoy the game (I'll call these guys "recreationalists") , and people who play for the sole purpose of making other people angry (for lack of a better term and to not use the word "troll", I'll call these people "asshats").
All three of these base types have people of different skill levels from casual to progamers, though I have noticed some interesting things through my experience playing video games. In order to enjoy a game the most as someone who just wants to have fun, one's skill level must be at a point where the game is not frustrating. This means that a recreationalist will probably be more likely to play games that have a small learning curve, like TF2 or LoL unless they want to devote a lot of their time to playing a game like SC2 or DotA 2 that requires a lot of frustrating practice to get to a level of skill where those games become fun. Fun also turns a lot of people away from multiplayer games to single player games because they don't require practically any skill to play, but a lot can still be very challenging at higher difficulty settings, so skill can still be a factor.
For someone who plays just to make other people angry, a varying amount of skill is required based on what their game of choice is. For example, if they want to TK people in an FPS to make them mad, a very low amount of skill is required, but if they want to say EZ after beating someone in SC2 to make them rage, then a certain amount of skill is required based on what the level of the people they are playing is. From personal experience, the amount of rage generated from opponents after winning is dependent on two main factors. They are how close and how long the game was. Let's take a game of LoL as an example (I'm sure this can apply to SC2 and DotA in some way as well), here is a sort of graph of rage vs time:
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/z8i1S.png)
If a game ends at about 20 mins or before, chances are it was completely one sided and the other team played very poorly, causing them to rage a lot. 30min-35min is about an average time for a game, so it was probably much closer and the other team played decently, so their rage is lessened drastically (not a rule for every game). At the 40 min mark and on, rage increases dramatically due to the time investment in the game and also due to game balance and how the game is won or lost later on. LoL games usually end in the late game, from my low-level experience, with one team getting baron (a monster in the jungle that gives a huge buff to damage and regen) and pushing for a decisive engagement that pretty much decides the game. In terms of how much the other team rages from lowest to highest in this situation:
- Being on the team that has baron, winning the engagement, and winning the game
- Being on the team that has baron, losing the engagement, but still winning the game
- Being on the team without baron, winning the engagement, and winning the game+ Show Spoiler +A good thing to say here is "Baron debuff?"
- Being on the team without baron, losing the engagement, and somehow still winning the game
Playing to win is something that I do not have very much experience with, so I won't be writing very much on it. From my limited experience, playing to win requires much more skill than the other types due to the fact that losing is incredibly frustrating and made even worse by asshats. This makes it so competitors are usually much better at the game on average than other people, since they need to be in order to enjoy the game. I'm not saying that all competitors are good at the game, I'm just saying that they seem to be better on average.
I have also noticed some different sort of skill ceilings between the three types. I'd say it goes competitor>asshat>recreationalist in terms of how skilled they can possibly be. Competitors are the people who want to win the tournaments and are compelled to play and practice as much as they can, asshats need to be at least somewhat competent in order to win any games, and I'd actually argue that the mindset of someone who only plays for fun is flawed to play at a high level since they only play for fun and not necessarily to win so they won't be inclined to practice just for the sheer sake of getting better. This means that a recreationalist will probably take much longer to improve than a competitor or asshat since they don't need to be as good to enjoy the game as much.
