Since I joined this forum I’ve noticed a pretty negative attitude towards competitive gamers.
What’s so wrong about it?
Why is it such a bad thing to be a player who’s put their heart into the game. Who’s worked their -yoik- off to get atleast decent at every aspect of the game?
Like when I started I was so bad I didn’t even know how to look around. The person who taught me how to play participated in Halo: CE tournaments and won a good bit of money from them. I worked from there to the point where I could beat all my friends with ease including my Halo Sensei. Then I got live for the first time in 2005 and jumped right into Middy FFAs. Needless to say I got beat badly. But I kept working because I loved the challenge. By 2007 I was good enough to either win or get top 3 in most of the FFA’s I was playing. This took mastering the combos learning map movement, predicting other players movements and upping my sensitivity from 3 to 10. In Halo 3 my natural talent and everything I had learned in Halo 2 carried over. But since I played nothing but FFA and 1v1 in Halo 2, I was horrible at teams. So I spent 2007 through 2010 perfecting my teamwork.
All this time I never had any problems with casual gamers other than the occasional angry guy who thought I was modding. In fact I added them whenever possible even ones that spoke other languages and became pretty good friends with alot of them. I like the casual community because after playing intense competitive matches it’s really nice to chill and play Zombies or a game of Left 4 Dead on Foundry. The whole time I never looked down on bad players because that was me at one point and I understand that not everyone wants to be the best. They’re are there purely to enjoy the game in their own way.
I understand that there are alot of players out there who talk some pretty fierce trash but that’s on both sides.
Competitive players can be condescending and just straight up rude to casuals, but on the other hand casuals seem to judge every good player because of this.
Atleast that’s my understanding so far.
Why are competitive/elitist players shown in such a negative light on this forum?
I didn’t realize they were. You can probably tell by my rank that I’m on this forum quite a bit, and I’ve never noticed significant negativity towards competitive gamers at all.
What you might be hearing is the flip side of the coin; discussions based on whether the games should cater to casuals or competitive player, etc … many discussions here have two sides which share views and exchange opinions in a civil manner. You get your occasional angry debate and those people who feel their views are of more value after giving their Halo service record spiel “I’ve been playing since CE … in my day we only had one set of armor … I had to walk 20 miles in the snow carrying my Xbox to a system link party” etc.
You may also be hearing a lot of people defending Halo Reach and Halo 4, since those games are significantly less competitive than prior installments. People still enjoy them, so discussions of matchmaking mechanics can get divided based on people preference for or against a more competitive Halo.
But as far as people casting competitive gamers in a negative light? I don’t think so.
You are a competitive gamer, so maybe you’re noticing that side more than the others, but casuals get a lot of grief as well.
People will generally come to the conclusion that the only form of any mindset is the most extreme, most bigoted value, causing many to assume that people who play games competitively are people who can only be the following:
Rich MLG tryhards
People who are completely unwilling to any form of change
Likewise, people will assume that people who play videos games casually are people that:
Are less than twelve years old
Like CoD and hate Halo
Unfortunately, this is the world we live in. People will always jump to stereotypes, ignoring the fact that not every human being is a robot programmed to think or live in only one way.
So basically, I’ve seen many people casting both “competitive gamers” and “casual gamers” in a negative light, which is pretty ridiculous.
You’re not thinking of competitive players. ALL players are competitive and are trying to win the game. If not, why do we even have a kill and time limit in all gametypes?
What people hate are toxic players. The rude, condescending teabaggers who will gang up and mercilessly wail and attack their opposition to make them quit the game. Who will all abuse glitches or map exploits to get an unfair advantage to make them regret buying the game. Who will hold out the objective just so that they can continue to spawncamp and pad out their stats. Who will even go so far as to dox your information just to prank you for daring to challenge them.
They like to defend themselves by saying they’re more competitive but the real competitive player would be the team who would score that flag 3 times in a minute.
Because they’re labeling themselves as such it gives off a bad impression of “competitive” gamers, despite the fact that everybody playing is being competitive.
What it boils down to is “lul u don’t find what I find fun wtf man”.
This is why I really want ranked playlists with visible ranks (preferably ones that go up and down and only take W/L into consideration cough) and social playlists with an xp progression system (whether it’s based off of Halo 3 or Reach/4 doesn’t really matter to me). If you don’t care about ranks or being competitive, you don’t have to play ranked.
I guess I’d be a competitive player because, unless I’m just playing around with friends, I don’t find a “casual atmosphere” fun. I never enjoyed playing social on Halo 3 on my own, and Reach could barely hold my attention.
I found playing for that little numbered rank fun. Not only that, but I loved the idea of getting matched with people around my skill. Without it, I get bored easily, and extremely frustrated with poorly matched games.
I’m not going to bother getting in to things like who 343i should be catering to (really doesn’t seem like the place), but I’ll just say I think it’s completely stupid that anybody would be made fun of for liking a competitive or casual atmosphere better.
I honestly feel that if a ranked and social split still existed in Halo, tensions between competitives and casuals wouldn’t be so high.
> People will generally come to the conclusion that the only form of any mindset is the most extreme, most bigoted value, causing many to assume that people who play games competitively are people who can only be the following:
>
> 1. Rich MLG tryhards
>
> 2. People who are completely unwilling to any form of change
>
>
> Likewise, people will assume that people who play videos games casually are people that:
>
> 1. Are less than twelve years old
>
> 2. Like CoD and hate Halo
>
>
> Unfortunately, this is the world we live in. People will always jump to stereotypes, ignoring the fact that not every human being is a robot programmed to think or live in only one way.
>
> So basically, I’ve seen many people casting both “competitive gamers” and “casual gamers” in a negative light, which is pretty ridiculous.
I hate generalizations like that. I grew up with both Halo and CoD, so I became great at both. However, when I started going into game chat and talking to people in both games, I was immediately spat on when I said that I played Halo/ CoD as well. This is because of the generalizations that you stated above. Die-hard H2-era Halo fans are starting to hate what Halo is becoming because of the more CoD-like elements, while CoD: MW2-era fans are hating what CoD is becoming (I can see why, CoD:AW is way too futuristic AKA Halo-like to MW2-era fans).
CoD, with the release of Ghosts, has been becoming less MLG based, and everyone is hating that change because of all the OP weapons introduced, hence the lack of MLG gameplay. Halo, with the release of Reach, is becoming much more casual based, and that is what ultimately brought down Halo 4. Both franchises have been trying to cater to both sides, and they are only making the game crappier with the constant compromises.
CoD has already dug its grave with AW, now it’s time to see whether Halo will do the same with H5:G
Lots of players hate to lose and instead of understanding why they lost they go for the easy target: the competitive player blaming them for all their reasons why a game isn’t ‘fun’ or ‘they ruin the game’.
Real competitive players are too busy winning and playing the game making players quit and breaking their resolve to bother berating other players. They let their gameplay do the talking and sadly many think playing good = no lifer when in reality we are all playing games for fun. Only difference is competitive players are playing it at a high level of skill.
Some reason playing a game at a high level of skill has become demonized as a bad thing and if you aren’t goofing around you are somehow clearly not playing the game right when in reality thats how it’s meant to be played: competitively (at least Halo that is).
I hate the terms “competitive” and “casual”, but for the sake oft his conversation I will use them. The main issues are
-Rampant elitism. Many, not all, but many “competitive” players think that they are inherently superior to their “casual” counterparts. “You’re only a 35 in ranked, you’re opinion doesn’t count.” Sound familiar? This leads to backlash from the people who play “casually”.
-Competitive players tend to want to drain the fun away from a game to make it more “skill based”. An example would be spawn trapping. Does it take skill to push a team back and control their spawns? Yes. Is it fun for either side once the spawn killing starts? No, but its effective.
-A sense of entitlement. Competitive players seem to have an idea in their head that Halo 1-2 were made specifically for them and no one else. This is simply not true. Halo CE’s multiplayer was thrown in quite literally last second with no real attention paid to competitive value. Halo 2 was banking on the idea of having a massive Battlefield/Battlefront style multiplayer, but was also abandoned and the multiplayer we are familiar with was thrown in at the last second.
-The Us vs You aspect. This is literally the biggest problem the Halo community faces. Both sides are guilty of this. This is why I hate the tags “Competitive” and “Casual”. It creates a completely unnecessary divide between players and causes conflict. Its not like “Casual” players don’t play to win, otherwise what would the point be?(With the exception of trolls.) On that same note its not like “Competitive” players don’t want to have fun.(With the exception of tryhards who want to drain the fun away from the game as mentioned before.)
That sounds like the other side of the coin that Martini was talking about.
I 100% agree with the toxic players statement, Players that do nothing all day but play Halo and rag on everyone they beat and let the time run out in objective games instead of getting quick caps and getting it over with.
Those are the people that give up the most gratifying wins! Because they think they’re the best players because they can run their mouth and pub stomp.
The wailing on the opposition one though, every good team tries it’s best to wail on everyone they play against simply because it’s in their nature and in MM they play as a squad and want to find another team that can hold them off even though they are putting their all into that game.
The tea bagging and trying to make people quit, from personal experience is because the team their playing is no challenge and they want them to quit so they can move on to the next game. They don’t even want to wait for the few minutes it would take to win, and usually before the game even starts they have a team in mind they want to find and embarrass in MM! When they don’t match them they want to get the game over with ASAP so they can return to searching.
@ Hylias Hero
“-Competitive players tend to want to drain the fun away from a game to make it more “skill based”. An example would be spawn trapping. Does it take skill to push a team back and control their spawns? Yes. Is it fun for either side once the spawn killing starts? No, but its effective.”
I agree with everything you said except this.
What you’re failing to understand is that they aren’t trying to drain the fun.
Pushing teams into their spawns and trying to predict each individual spawn is how they have their fun! They want to make the most impressive plays they can and that is their enjoyment in the game and vice versa they also love to try and get out from under the thumb of other good teams who manage to get them spawn trapped!
EDIT: It’s like the Halo version of a Thumb war lol!
@ Demon B58
I respect your opinion, but I disagree. While yes for some it will fun to spawn kill an enemy who has no chance to fight back because they die before being able to act, in my experience this is not fun. Its boring to have no challenge. As for the other side? I can think of no one who has fun having to sit there feeding someone’s K/D for the next 10 minutes while they hold the flag and not being able to do anything about it because they stole all your vehicles and power weapons. The only possible moment of that situation that could be fun is getting lucky and managing to end someone’s spree to deny a Perfection out of spite. Plus its not like spite is a fun or positive emotion anyway.
If anything, it’s the other way around. Stupid players tend to get a lot of hate here because they suggest ideas that don’t complement the fundamentals of Halo.
And there’s a difference between stupid players and casual players. I think of it like this, and don’t get offended when I say this: all stupid players are casual, but not all casual players are stupid. I could write a whole essay about what I mean, but I’m lazy so I hope people understand my point there instead of try to make me out like I’m bagging on casual players.
The general “hate” that competitive players get are usually irrelevant. Mostly because
the majority of the hate comes from stupid players, who instead of admitting someone is better than them they make themselves feel better by bringing other players down
people tend to stereotype competitive players as these trash-talking tryhards whose greatest accomplishment is to get a 50 and ruin the fun of others. When in reality both competitive and casual players have that one person who gives them a bad rep.
In fact, I think this whole thread is irrelevant. There is no clear line between “casuals” and the “competitive community.” All humans are inherently competitive. Each and every one of you here have the desire to win. What makes the difference between a “competitive” player and the “casual” player is how much the W matters to them.
> You’re not thinking of competitive players. ALL players are competitive and are trying to win the game. If not, why do we even have a kill and time limit in all gametypes?
>
> What people hate are toxic players. The rude, condescending teabaggers who will gang up and mercilessly wail and attack their opposition to make them quit the game. Who will all abuse glitches or map exploits to get an unfair advantage to make them regret buying the game. Who will hold out the objective just so that they can continue to spawncamp and pad out their stats. Who will even go so far as to dox your information just to prank you for daring to challenge them.
>
> They like to defend themselves by saying they’re more competitive but the real competitive player would be the team who would score that flag 3 times in a minute.
>
> Because they’re labeling themselves as such it gives off a bad impression of “competitive” gamers, despite the fact that everybody playing is being competitive.
Agreed.
Sounds like Team Invisible the type of players your referring too. That was all they did, play for stats.
Hopefully MCC will have Ranked and Social Playlist just like H2/H3. Everyone will play what they want to play. For the serious games, where winning means everything, play ranked.
For the social experience, where wining is great, but if you lose, so what. You just want to have fun, but not be serious, play Social.
Everyone wins this way, no idea why Bungie removed this from HR, and why 343 didn’t have it for H4.
Both sides need to realize there’s two sides to every story.
Both communities hate toxic players.
Toxic players give both sides a bad rep.
Toxic players are both sides real enemy.
Competitive players are disliked because to them winning is everything and they don’t know how to not try.
Casual players are disliked because competitive players have a false stereotype of them being bad at the game and sore losers.
The Ranked and Social split needs to return. There needs to be Ranked playlists for people who are there purely to get the win and rank up, and Social playlists need to return for players that are competitive but the win doesn’t mean everything.
Also I think that with toxic players out of the equation both sides would compliment eachother pretty well!
> > I disagree with that “Every player is competitive statement”
> >
> > Not every player is competitive.
>
> This. Some are strictly forgers, others are just there to play. Winning is nice but they don’t really care so long as they’re enjoying themselves.
No. Every human being is born competitive.
Every single person who has ever played Halo has had the drive to win. It’s biological; you can’t turn off that survival of the fittest mentality even if you really tried. It’s just imprinted in our nature. Therefore, every player is somewhat competitive. In fact, the whole goal of the game is to WIN; you don’t play campaign and try to die, you don’t start a firefight match hoping to score the lowest, and you don’t go into a CTF game to help the other team score your flag.
Yes, there are more ways to have fun in Halo than to win. Yes, some people just want to have fun with friends in custom games, some just want to forge, and some just want to immerse themselves in campaign. That’s the beauty of Halo. But that’s beside the point. We are all inherently competitive in nature, because we all have that drive to be on top.
Not to say that one person is as competitive as another; there’s no on and off switch between casual and competitive. All players have that drive, but some more than others. Lots of people don’t mind it as much if they don’t do well, and at this time and age it’s perfectly acceptable. That’s what people on these forums would call a “casual player.” Then there’s the more dedicated, who take the game more seriously than others and strive to win all the time. Then he’s considered a “competitive player.” But regardless, it’s irrelevant to put a person strictly into a “casual” or “competitive” group.
Your desire to win is not an on or off switch like most people like to think it is. It’s always there, except some people are more compelled than others. That is what differentiates players from others.
So yes, everybody IS competitive at heart. Some not as much as others, but regardless, we all have the same drive in the end.
while the statement is vague and overarching, lets assume that is the case, you do not compete in every thing you partake in. there truly are people who don’t compete.
being one of the veteran players here, playing online halo since online was available, i have talked and played with many people throughout the years, many of which weren’t competitive.
so sorry but you are incorrect.
if people do see the need to compete why would they need to compete in MM, some are strictly forgers or speedrunners, they take MM with a grain of salt.