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The original title was "'I'm not mad because we lost the game', or why do people inherently suck at team games". This piece has been lying around for a while; when I stumbled upon it, I found it surprising how I was basically speaking to myself in the future. It has its emotional background and it might seem messy at times, but nonetheless I think it can stand on the ground on its own in its current form.
I'm sure you've made it through a moment like this before - you attempted to play a semi-organized game of Team Fortress 2 / Counter-Strike / Quake / <insert whichever team-oriented title you want here> with your friends or voices of people completely unfamiliar to you and after such match was done, all you hoped for was those thirty or so minutes to be returned back to you. The game was lost before it started, they had stronger players, our guys were morons, didn't pay attention, couldn't hit things, whatever. It doesn't help that other people told you venting wouldn't solve the problem - your disappointment haunted you for the rest of the day. But, I mean, why shouldn't I begrudge people for wasting the precious time of others by joining a game and then not even trying to win at it? There are always Russians or 14-year-olds that the blame can be put on, they should learn how to play before trying! In Dota it's even more apparent - 'lol 5 carries gg', disconnects. Because why bother, right? If those retards don't know anything about how to compose a team, there's no way we can win, therefore it's a waste of time. I think you can see where I'm going with this.
'I'm mad because of the incompetence of these people.' The match was ours, we would've won this if only our idiotic teammate didn't screw up n-times when we needed him. Why did he not support us when we needed it the most? Why was the flank uncovered for such a long time and why weren't we told about it? Why was the buff not popped off before the team fight? In short, why is this guy not doing what I think is the right thing to do right now? Probably because he doesn't know what is the right thing to do, let alone what you think about it. I'm just gonna put it here for consideration - there are other people playing the game with you. Like, real human beings, made of flesh and blood. Possibly from all around the world, most commonly from a more or less local area around you, but still different than you. Ever thought that purifying your mind would help you and others enjoy yourselves and probably also help you excel at what you are currently doing? It actually would - try it, being positive and supportive not only feels pretty good, but also helps a ton.
Sounds fair enough and all that jazz, but it seems like I'm just being jaded about people being mad at pickups and pubs. Because who cares, right? You have no idea how much inconsistency and absurdity has been compacted in that simple question. A short example - I don't care, it's just a pickup, and yet I still try my hardest and I'm still irritated when we get destroyed. I don't care, it's just a pick-- OMG YOUTUBE! Another one - I don't care, it's just a pickup, I'm gonna do whatever and completely ignore my teammates' ambition of winning the match. And there's also this, to spice things up - I don't care, it's just a pickup - why are you so mad, I'm obviously not gonna do any of this in a real game. Well, tell you what asshole, you are. How many times have you spent a night asking yourself how is it that you have to carry your team so much, are they unable of stepping it up? Why are we losing, obviously those guys are much weaker than us? What is going on, why is my scout partner being such a fucking moron? et caetera. At some point you just tell yourself that you can't be arsed anymore and without a word you either quit outright or slowly lose interest while making everyone's experiences dull, filled with anxiety and generally unpleasant. I'm not even gonna touch on the subject of what you would call a 'real game', because apparently your understanding of the term 'real' in this context is completely skewed towards whatever definition you managed to imagine in order to satisfy the trait responsible for unnecessary deaths of millions of people over the span of the last few thousand years.
The simplest, yet complete answer to the question at hand would be contained in those simple four words - because of humans' pride. We're being taught from the very beginning that faults and mistakes are not nice and therefore, by admitting to our own faults and mistakes we could potentially expose ourselves to rejection and disdain - even admitting them to our own selves is undesirable. The cognitive bias bestowed upon us prevents us from realizing what lies at the core of the issue we're dealing with whenever it concerns us being inferior to others. If you thought that all this shouldn't concern you, a red light should immediately turn on for you. If you ever felt that there was not much for you to improve at, that your team is at fault and they should train harder or that your practice regime became tedious and boring, it was only because you thought that is the case. You thought you are strong enough and that you shouldn't need to do all that to play good. Should that be the case, I'll tell you what you really didn't care about enough - you didn't care about winning. With a strong desire to win comes the understanding that there will always be losses and that there always will be someone who might surpass you eventually. If you want to succeed, then nothing, that doesn't impact your own or your team's game and abilities directly, matters. It doesn't matter that they have a stronger lineup - we can outsmart and overpower them. It doesn't matter that one of our players doesn't perform as expected - we can shift the main focus onto someone else, plug the holes and move forward. It doesn't matter that they utterly destroyed us - we will annihilate them next round. It's one of the things I don't like about TF2 - there's so much emphasis put on the individual skills and abilities of a player when the game at its core is supposed to be team-oriented. It's only F2 and his crew who got it right since the dawn of time. [Epsilon eSports have been on the top of EU standings ever since they joined the org in 2010 - ed.] If you ever take a player for a basic entity of interest in a game like this, then surely something is not right. In team games, the basic entity of interest is the team and anything that concerns winning at team games should revolve around improving the team's chances of succeeding. We all put so much emphasis on each other's performance because it's in our blood to compare units that way. If you want to succeed here, you have to drop the idea of improving as an individual and understand why and how everything you do impacts your team's efficiency and growth. Your kills, your points, your spectacular actions don't mean two shits if your team doesn't directly gain anything from them. That's why team games are so easy to pick up, yet so ridiculously hard to improve at - the focus has to be shifted away from the self and towards the group. If you don't care about it, there's no hope for you and I wish you best of luck in your endeavors.
To put it in simple terms - yes, I am mad. I'm mad at people being incompetent bastards, who don't give two shits for the well-being of others, the value of the time they can spare and want to spare on playing competitive video games, the desire of others to experience a valuable and entertaining evening honing their abilities to eventually achieve greatness and fulfillment. I'm mad at people not understanding the basic mechanics of video games, who think they are good or, worse yet, think they want to be good and then after a few days or so change their minds, just like that, and either lose interest or begin to either blame or mock other people. I'm mad at people who are so full of themselves that they would rather have their heads ripped apart than admit that a small change in their plans would result in a completely different, possibly positive for us, outcome of a given situation. I'm mad at people who pretend like they care, some being quite outspoken about their commitment towards improving their game, and yet are unable of remembering about the simple mistake they've done five times already, unable of taking any sort of constructive criticism to the heart or even giving any advice to ignorant people, resorting to silent passive-aggressive approach instead of speaking up openly about the problems infesting the team's gameplay in a friendly, cooperative manner. I'm mad at people with no respect towards another human being whatsofuckingever, flaming, trolling and acting cool as if they had to cover up some of their own personal problems. I'm mad at people in general. And yet, am I any better?
 
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As a general rule, people are fucking stupid. Once you combine that with the anonymity and lack of accountability that is the internet, people REALLY just don't give a shit, run off and be their stupid selves, and are thus terrible at team games.
Face-to-face interaction holds individuals accountable and thus pushes them to be better at group/coordinated tasks, but anyone that's gone through school knows how terrible it is to have to work on any kind of "group project". People are just stupid.
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On June 22 2013 01:29 Stratos_speAr wrote:
As a general rule, people are fucking stupid. Once you combine that with the anonymity and lack of accountability that is the internet, people REALLY just don't give a shit, run off and be their stupid selves, and are thus terrible at team games.
Face-to-face interaction holds individuals accountable and thus pushes them to be better at group/coordinated tasks, but anyone that's gone through school knows how terrible it is to have to work on any kind of "group project". People are just stupid.
You are one of these people too. If you don't want to call yourself stupid you should switch over to "people value things differently".
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I get mad at Starcraft.
When it comes to team games I'm almost the complete opposite though. Whether it be sports or dota/counterstrike, I hardly ever get noticeably mad.
Once you start whining in a team game you effectively stop doing your part. And for some reason... I'm really aversed towards this kind of behavior. I hate people who whine about russians etcetera. I just say "shut up and play".
Ironic since in Starcraft I've adopted these same negative mannerisms.
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On June 22 2013 01:50 LaLuSh wrote:
I get mad at Starcraft.
When it comes to team games I'm almost the complete opposite though. Whether it be sports or dota/counterstrike, I hardly ever get noticeably mad.
Once you start whining in a team game you effectively stop doing your part. And for some reason... I'm really aversed towards this kind of behavior. I hate people who whine about russians etcetera. I just say "shut up and play".
Ironic since in Starcraft I've adopted these same negative mannerisms.
Pretty much my experience as well, the reason being that I care far less about non-RTS games so I'm not emotionally invested in them. This is pretty much what it comes down to for me, any time you're emotionally invested in something and then lose most people instinctively look for external factors to blame. In team games, this would be their teammates, in sc2, it's imbalance / "bullshit (cheesy, greedy, ect)" strategies. The key to improving- ironically enough- is to accept that the only factor the can be changed is yourself, and that it wasn't impossible to win, you just needed to play better- which is what most people (or at least I) instinctively do when they're not emotionally invested.
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United Kingdom3685 Posts
Most people inherently suck at most things. People just generally suck :/
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On June 22 2013 03:12 Sayle wrote:
Most people inherently suck at most things. People just generally suck :/
And yet. we continue to reproduce. Ain't that a quirky paradox, eh.
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I only skimmed, but please tell me you are at least ranting about a team and not pub games. Even then, if your teammates didn't have the same dedication as you, I don't see why you couldn't join another, or make your own and kick out people who don't take it seriously. Then instead of being mad at people who don't play seriously, you can just stomp them every game.
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It's funny because when I go to the gym to play basketball, people aren't screaming at each other for their incompetence.
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On June 22 2013 03:52 Jerubaal wrote:
It's funny because when I go to the gym to play basketball, people aren't screaming at each other for their incompetence.
I'm not the one playing basketball, though there are quite a dedicated few always playing, I just work out. However, I see a small dab of trash talk, but mostly high fives, butt slaps, and just an eagerness to try hard and win. Remove accountability, a la the internet, and there is small incentive to care what others think.
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On June 22 2013 04:26 danl9rm wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2013 03:52 Jerubaal wrote:
It's funny because when I go to the gym to play basketball, people aren't screaming at each other for their incompetence. I'm not the one playing basketball, though there are quite a dedicated few always playing, I just work out. However, I see a small dab of trash talk, but mostly high fives, butt slaps, and just an eagerness to try hard and win. Remove accountability, a la the internet, and there is small incentive to care what others think.
I wonder if this isn't also something to do with the inherently mental nature of games. When we play games like basketball or even table tennis or frisbee, we assume that people are inherently limited by physical ability or maybe even just training. You couldn't make that basket? Oh well, you did your best. In LoL or CS, though, there's no physical limitation (for the most part), only mental. So the majority of the blame lands on their mental capacity.
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On June 22 2013 07:10 Jerubaal wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2013 04:26 danl9rm wrote:On June 22 2013 03:52 Jerubaal wrote:
It's funny because when I go to the gym to play basketball, people aren't screaming at each other for their incompetence. I'm not the one playing basketball, though there are quite a dedicated few always playing, I just work out. However, I see a small dab of trash talk, but mostly high fives, butt slaps, and just an eagerness to try hard and win. Remove accountability, a la the internet, and there is small incentive to care what others think. I wonder if this isn't also something to do with the inherently mental nature of games. When we play games like basketball or even table tennis or frisbee, we assume that people are inherently limited by physical ability or maybe even just training. You couldn't make that basket? Oh well, you did your best. In LoL or CS, though, there's no physical limitation (for the most part), only mental. So the majority of the blame lands on their mental capacity.
That, and it's easier to express more hate against an anonymous avatar like a video game character or stack of units controlled by a player. It's the same concept why people are easily pissed at other drivers. If cars were completely invisible, then you should rarely see any road rage or frustration at others.
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On June 22 2013 03:35 makmeatt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2013 03:12 Sayle wrote:
Most people inherently suck at most things. People just generally suck :/ And yet. we continue to reproduce. Ain't that a quirky paradox, eh.
People aren't stupid to the point of self-destructive. We're surprisingly (and frustratingly) incompetent as a general population.
It's funny because when I go to the gym to play basketball, people aren't screaming at each other for their incompetence.
That's the internet for ya.
You are one of these people too. If you don't want to call yourself stupid you should switch over to "people value things differently".
Your comment is irrelevant to what I said. I specifically mentioned that "people are stupid" is a generalization. Everyone is surprisingly good at something, and obviously people are capable of extreme intelligence; however, we often give your average person too much credit for what they're capable of. The average person isn't as good at most things as what we think "common sense" would dictate.
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On June 22 2013 01:41 spinesheath wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2013 01:29 Stratos_speAr wrote:
As a general rule, people are fucking stupid. Once you combine that with the anonymity and lack of accountability that is the internet, people REALLY just don't give a shit, run off and be their stupid selves, and are thus terrible at team games.
Face-to-face interaction holds individuals accountable and thus pushes them to be better at group/coordinated tasks, but anyone that's gone through school knows how terrible it is to have to work on any kind of "group project". People are just stupid. You are one of these people too. If you don't want to call yourself stupid you should switch over to "people value things differently".
No you fucking goof. Your IQ is obviously average at best so you don't understand the problem the OP is describing in this post. To anyone with an above average IQ playing online teamgames is a constant mental fucking struggle. It's very hard to cope with the intense stupidity which is the 'average' of human mental processing power. The 'average' is retarded beyond belief and makes incredibly stupid choises, CONSTANTLY, which is like torture to people gifted with a higher IQ. But please man, stay average, stay stupid, and definitely don't learn anything from what I just wrote (because that's what average dumbasses like you do). Trust me, it's goddamn annoying topping the list in every single multiplayer match, yet having low- to average-IQ teammates mess up everything you try to achieve simply by making stupid choises that can be avoided with just a little bit of thinking.
People are goddamn fucking stupid and there's nothing more to it.
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EPT
