Random thoughts about some recent experiences playing online
Posted: 12 Dec 2010, 19:31
Smurfing ruins the game.
you are a beginner trying the game out at first and you will run into experience players who will come in with superior knowledge and rape you in the lower levels. So a ranked system/match making does not prevent noob abuse in a free game. It helps in a commercial title because to smurf you have to buy a whole new game.
email registration do not prevent smurfing. As all they have to do is fill out username password and email addy. Delay on registration does not prevent smurfing as people who plan on smurfing will have a smurf waiting in the wings.
It is just part of internet culture and we should NEVER EVER tell new players that 1 chevron means noob as they would be assuming that all chevs are noobs and I know fuck tons of you guys smurf.
Noob bashing.
Players are just as big an asshole in league of legends as they are battleforge as they are in spring. So all this "you fucking noob" shit and all these people with attitudes, it is just part of this generation of gamers and isn't changing.
Support bashing.
"My team sucks I do all the killing!" "YOU ARE AN IDIOT DO SOMETHING!" "why am I doing all the work?" All common things to hear in lol when playing support characters. Says the guy with 20 kills that you have spent protecting with icemagic the entire match(you have 7 kills and 20 assists). Same happens in battleforge if you play a caster deck, people say you are doing nothing because they don't see your units killing a lot and their shit ubers up. Because you are casting boost/damage spells with all your effort. Same shit happens in TF2, medics are taken for granted and players seldom thank them. Often bitching about how they do so little for the team.
This happened even when I used to play competitively, I always opted to do support roles in order to get some sort of order to my teams. Yet in order for people to believe I was competent I would have to occasionally stop playing good team work and then go rape people for a bit for my team to believe I have the capability to play the game.
Shit is going to happen that way, people don't appreciate subtlety, you have to bash them over a head with a rock to get their attention so try and at least remember to thank support players(here the case would be econ or bombing runs). The TF2 community actively encourages thanking medics and still they go unthanked.
Reputation systems.
Reputation systems do not work. For the same reason they do not work IRL. People become popular because of political maneuvering within a community. People become unpopular for combating trolls. I know this from years of experience in many communities with karma systems. You will be loved and hated to the point of +1 to -1 karm most of the time with 100s of votes. People who never step on toes are more liked and will be more accepted but they will have no actual respect from anyone. Other times you may have high profile doers who may or may not abuse their notoriety. Other times high profile personalities are seen as pricks because they are often harsh to new people, this is because they are constantly barraged by people and like most interactions on the internet, people are dicks here.
People are largely overly opinionated assholes on the internet.
Don't believe me, go read gamefaqs any time a popular game gets released, cod, halo, gears. Hell even you guys act this way about popular games and really get stupid about it. I was reviled with the way you guys acted with regards to mw2 and spore. I thought it was some of the most crass and vulgar displays of arrogance. As if ANYONE here including myself has done something at that level. The internet is filled with pricks whose overinflated sense of self worth is so high that they cannot see anything as acceptable because it wasn't their design idea(as if they could actually execute a game design).
This is nothing new, I have spent hours in the gym listening to asshats prattle on about how they could do this or that better than some professional coach or athlete. Fact of the matter is they cannot and could not. If they could, they would be there. You are all arm chair quarterbacks at one point in time or another and don't even tell me this isn't true.
Human nature.
These things are all going to happen over and over again because of human nature. People do not act this way just because it has become more common and thus seems easier to get away with. It is like thieving, we all can do it, we are just taught not to because it makes things more complicated. However, it is the nature of a person to want something and take it, just that we are taught to respect the property of others because this cultural group think is what keeps us most of the time from reducing down to the level of animalistic killing.
So with each new player you are going to have to teach the same lesson and with each new person you are going to have to chance meeting a dickhead. Is he really a dickhead? probably not, probably just some 15 year old hormonal prick lashing out because he didn't get his hungry hungry hippos for christmas or something.
Until our games are able to enforce our societal rules or at least mimick the sort of consequences we can levy in society we cannot do much about these sort of behaviors. Some of them simply will happen and we have to recognize them as just things people will do. Humans ARE jerks, maybe that is why we are alone in the universe, aliens see hear our tv and our radio transmissions and are like "fuck those guys, I got enough problems."
you are a beginner trying the game out at first and you will run into experience players who will come in with superior knowledge and rape you in the lower levels. So a ranked system/match making does not prevent noob abuse in a free game. It helps in a commercial title because to smurf you have to buy a whole new game.
email registration do not prevent smurfing. As all they have to do is fill out username password and email addy. Delay on registration does not prevent smurfing as people who plan on smurfing will have a smurf waiting in the wings.
It is just part of internet culture and we should NEVER EVER tell new players that 1 chevron means noob as they would be assuming that all chevs are noobs and I know fuck tons of you guys smurf.
Noob bashing.
Players are just as big an asshole in league of legends as they are battleforge as they are in spring. So all this "you fucking noob" shit and all these people with attitudes, it is just part of this generation of gamers and isn't changing.
Support bashing.
"My team sucks I do all the killing!" "YOU ARE AN IDIOT DO SOMETHING!" "why am I doing all the work?" All common things to hear in lol when playing support characters. Says the guy with 20 kills that you have spent protecting with icemagic the entire match(you have 7 kills and 20 assists). Same happens in battleforge if you play a caster deck, people say you are doing nothing because they don't see your units killing a lot and their shit ubers up. Because you are casting boost/damage spells with all your effort. Same shit happens in TF2, medics are taken for granted and players seldom thank them. Often bitching about how they do so little for the team.
This happened even when I used to play competitively, I always opted to do support roles in order to get some sort of order to my teams. Yet in order for people to believe I was competent I would have to occasionally stop playing good team work and then go rape people for a bit for my team to believe I have the capability to play the game.
Shit is going to happen that way, people don't appreciate subtlety, you have to bash them over a head with a rock to get their attention so try and at least remember to thank support players(here the case would be econ or bombing runs). The TF2 community actively encourages thanking medics and still they go unthanked.
Reputation systems.
Reputation systems do not work. For the same reason they do not work IRL. People become popular because of political maneuvering within a community. People become unpopular for combating trolls. I know this from years of experience in many communities with karma systems. You will be loved and hated to the point of +1 to -1 karm most of the time with 100s of votes. People who never step on toes are more liked and will be more accepted but they will have no actual respect from anyone. Other times you may have high profile doers who may or may not abuse their notoriety. Other times high profile personalities are seen as pricks because they are often harsh to new people, this is because they are constantly barraged by people and like most interactions on the internet, people are dicks here.
People are largely overly opinionated assholes on the internet.
Don't believe me, go read gamefaqs any time a popular game gets released, cod, halo, gears. Hell even you guys act this way about popular games and really get stupid about it. I was reviled with the way you guys acted with regards to mw2 and spore. I thought it was some of the most crass and vulgar displays of arrogance. As if ANYONE here including myself has done something at that level. The internet is filled with pricks whose overinflated sense of self worth is so high that they cannot see anything as acceptable because it wasn't their design idea(as if they could actually execute a game design).
This is nothing new, I have spent hours in the gym listening to asshats prattle on about how they could do this or that better than some professional coach or athlete. Fact of the matter is they cannot and could not. If they could, they would be there. You are all arm chair quarterbacks at one point in time or another and don't even tell me this isn't true.
Human nature.
These things are all going to happen over and over again because of human nature. People do not act this way just because it has become more common and thus seems easier to get away with. It is like thieving, we all can do it, we are just taught not to because it makes things more complicated. However, it is the nature of a person to want something and take it, just that we are taught to respect the property of others because this cultural group think is what keeps us most of the time from reducing down to the level of animalistic killing.
So with each new player you are going to have to teach the same lesson and with each new person you are going to have to chance meeting a dickhead. Is he really a dickhead? probably not, probably just some 15 year old hormonal prick lashing out because he didn't get his hungry hungry hippos for christmas or something.
Until our games are able to enforce our societal rules or at least mimick the sort of consequences we can levy in society we cannot do much about these sort of behaviors. Some of them simply will happen and we have to recognize them as just things people will do. Humans ARE jerks, maybe that is why we are alone in the universe, aliens see hear our tv and our radio transmissions and are like "fuck those guys, I got enough problems."
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