Do you play any "competitive" games?

[demiurgeQuantified]

Hii! I'm curious if anyone here is a fan of more competitive online video games... What I mean by this is...basically any game with a major esport/competitive scene! Whether it's a shooter or fighting game or moba or. anything really!! I'm curious what the peoples's tastes are :P

I myself enjoy playing Overwatch. I recently picked it up after not playing it for literal years. Despite its flaws it's still a pretty fun time, I think! I like to play tanks like Roadhog... I'm still figuring out who I like in DPS and Support. I'm not very good at it right now but i'm trying to work on getting better, since I like the core gameplay so much. also sierra needs a nerf

I also dabble in some Counter Strike from time to time, but not much CS2 lol i just like to fuck around in cs: source deathmatch servers running maps like crackhouse or whatever

As you might know, I'm also a huge competitive pokemon fan! Specifically VGC! I've spent tons of time teambuilding and battling... It's something I really enjoy!! I'm pretty knowledgeable on it so if you ever wanna learn hmu :)

[rnottelovesowls]

i used to be. but the community of online competitive Gamers™ sucks! they are usually adults who somehow behave more like children, than children! it's almost embarrassing to watch videos of a grown man smash his keyboard and send death threats in voice chat whenever he loses. that's behavior that i thought was ridiculed back in ye olden days, but apparently it's a normal thing gamers do now. the fact that xQc of all streamers was once considered the "poster child" of competitive overwatch should've told me everything

overwatch was my longest foray into online multiplayer shooters that weren't halo or team fortress 2, and honestly, if it wasn't a competitive game, i would enjoy it a lot more. because i love the art, the characters, the setting, and the core gameplay loop, but i couldn't care less about "climbing the ranked ladder" or whatever. i just want to play for fun. and while there are gamemodes centered around that, there's a sizeable chunk of the community who only considers a game fun if they win. i have described a few things as "a full-time job that you have to pay for", and competitive gaming is one of them. it drains you. and that's not what a fun game that you play after a long, hard day at work should make you feel

[littlelum]

I've done some Mario Kart, Mario Maker 2 (yes, really), and Smash Bros, but I've learned that for my sanity, I can only do it with a semi-casual mindset. Otherwise, I start getting depressed over my skill level.

With that being said, I've spent a while on the Mario Kart Player's Page, which is a community dedicated to time trials. It's really cool, the best part is that there's a leaderboard that combines every Mario Kart game into a single ranking system. I'm ranked ~450 out of ~1000, or ~680 out of ~6,500, depending on whether you count people who have played only one game, or only those who has played at least two.

Since I'm a Nintendo guy, the games I've played never had a voice chat, so I haven't really dealt with toxic people.

[demiurgeQuantified]

With that being said, I've spent a while on the Mario Kart Player's Page, which is a community dedicated to time trials. It's really cool, the best part is that there's a leaderboard that combines every Mario Kart game into a single ranking system. I'm ranked ~450 out of ~1000, or ~680 out of ~6,500, depending on whether you count people who have played only one game, or only those who has played at least two.

wait that sounds so goddamn cool??? how have i never heard of this!! i'm a huge fan of mario kart, especially mkwii and its modding scene...

[littlelum]

wait that sounds so goddamn cool??? how have i never heard of this!! i'm a huge fan of mario kart, especially mkwii and its modding scene...

Yeah, the best part is that since it is time trials, skill gaps are less of an issue, since you are not playing with each other at the same time. I can't think of an instance where a "bad" player gets turned away due to being not good enough.

Anyways, if you're interested you can find the forums here. Some of the games are on discord instead of the forums nowadays, though.

[Watanabe_1994]

Don't get me started on "competitive" games.

That whole era of the "e-sports" band wagon basically fucked over games that I like such as TF2. As valve saw success with "e-sports" with CS:GO, they moulded TF2 into more of a competitive game style with replacing Quickplay with a shitty broken "casual" matchmaking system and one of the worst competitive modes to ever grace multiplayer videogames.

Sorry for the swearing but I'm a bit disheartened by this subject.

[candycanearter07]

hell no hellllll no i will never ever touch a "competitive" game again it basically triggers every single anxiety i have and competitions in general are absolutely terrifying for me

not that i could play any modern ones in the first place, since you know... linux anti cheat

[Licheus]

Sure, I play Dota 2 as a continuation of having played regular WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos while Battle.net was still running (Reforged only revived The Frozen Throne).

As you might know, I'm also a huge competitive pokemon fan!

I played a little bit of generation II competitive pokémon, which was fun. Snorlax being the most dominant pokémon in any meta and tanky, slow battles being the norm is less of an issue than the community makes it out to be, as is often the case. Pokémon is arguably too luck-based, letting a weaker player defeat a stronger one. For instance, I have a win against Uncle Eyeroll, who was number one at the ladder at the time. That’s from lucky critical hits, lucky switches, a lucky team matchup and me just playing way above my usual level one day. But you have to accept that and play the odds to be a good player, that’s ultimately fine game design.

i used to be. but the community of online competitive Gamers™ sucks! they are usually adults who somehow behave more like children, than children! it's almost embarrassing to watch videos of a grown man smash his keyboard and send death threats in voice chat whenever he loses. that's behavior that i thought was ridiculed back in ye olden days, but apparently it's a normal thing gamers do now. the fact that xQc of all streamers was once considered the "poster child" of competitive overwatch should've told me everything

While there’s no doubt it would be greater if toxicity wasn’t so prevalent, let me share my perspective as someone who don’t mind the toxicity that much (not a rejection of your experiences and opinions, I just thought it would be fun to put this in contrast as someone with a pretty different take).

To me personally, social toxicity is a non-issue in affecting the experiencing the matches (although it’s bad for the scene). That’s because I can just mute everyone, and I don’t really see the necessity to do so as a big flaw of the game or community. Maybe I should, but from a purely technical standpoint, it’s just eight clicks each match. But yeah, I have to do that to retain sanity. ^^

An interesting observation is that I actually win more with people unmuted, because if you treat these guys like really fragile children with inflated egos, being kind to them even as they send insults your way, your team will get a slight mental advantage which affects a percentage of matches. But I don’t really enjoy that and it drains me of energy as you point out, so I just mute and play.

To me, the chat match is part of the game and it’s fun and advisable to try to get under the skin of the enemy team, but I understand not everyone enjoying that (all muting is an option). Players are too busy flaming their teammates most of the time, anyway. A friend of mine uses the pride flag as profile picture because it will affect the mental state of bigots, statistically giving your own team a very small edge. ^^

My brother is a much better player than me who enjoys the gameplay and nuances of becoming better. I asked him once if he’d rather have a person in his own team be extremely toxic and flame him really hard, but play the game decently well, or have a kind teammate who was really bad at the game. He just looked at me as if the question was really stupid and said “of course I’d take the toxic guy who can play”, he would enjoy that match much more.

overwatch was my longest foray into online multiplayer shooters that weren't halo or team fortress 2, and honestly, if it wasn't a competitive game, i would enjoy it a lot more. because i love the art, the characters, the setting, and the core gameplay loop, but i couldn't care less about "climbing the ranked ladder" or whatever. i just want to play for fun. and while there are gamemodes centered around that, there's a sizeable chunk of the community who only considers a game fun if they win. i have described a few things as "a full-time job that you have to pay for", and competitive gaming is one of them. it drains you. and that's not what a fun game that you play after a long, hard day at work should make you feel

I think many people play competetive games for complexity of gameplay and the fun in exploiting that to win. That doesn’t drain everyone of energy. I think the best players are even drained by the opposite types of games where they’re not pushed to think and outmanoeuvre opponents, because people have complex needs and some have to be mentally stimulated in that way.

That whole era of the "e-sports" band wagon basically fucked over games that I like such as TF2. As valve saw success with "e-sports" with CS:GO, they moulded TF2 into more of a competitive game style with replacing Quickplay with a shitty broken "casual" matchmaking system and one of the worst competitive modes to ever grace multiplayer videogames.

That’s actually interesting, I don’t know anything about Team Fortress 2. Are you saying the increased amount of money in e-sports negatively affected the design of the matchmaking systems in the game? I can see that happen. Is that sort of what you’re talking about or did I misunderstand?


In general, I think that competition is dangerous in society. But I also think that games and sports can be an exception even (especially?) in a healthy society. This is mainly because games are such clearly separated environments where a loss does not mean a reduced capacity to support yourself, as it currently means in the world of money/competition in the real world.

[Watanabe_1994]

That’s actually interesting, I don’t know anything about Team Fortress 2. Are you saying the increased amount of money in e-sports negatively affected the design of the matchmaking systems in the game? I can see that happen. Is that sort of what you’re talking about or did I misunderstand?

Yes, the hype encouraged Valve to push out the "Meet Your Match" Update that reworked the mp game system to be more like CS:GO and other competitive minded games (Casual Mode) aswell as a half baked Comp mode (Competitive Mode). TF2's competitive base has been small since the beginning and valve overestimated the amount of people who wanted to see TF2 esports. TF2's player-base has always been more casual minded, no ranking systems, no item restrictions, nothing.

[Licheus]

Yes, the hype encouraged Valve to push out the "Meet Your Match" Update that reworked the mp game system to be more like CS:GO and other competitive minded games (Casual Mode) aswell as a half baked Comp mode (Competitive Mode). TF2's competitive base has been small since the beginning and valve overestimated the amount of people who wanted to see TF2 esports. TF2's player-base has always been more casual minded, no ranking systems, no item restrictions, nothing.

Ah, I see! I agree with you. It’s bad to force a game into a competitive place when it works much better casually already. There have to be an understanding of player bases, the soul of the game, what’s valuable to players and (more generally for the gaming media) how to fill all niches to maximise diversity/options for players.

As the youngest entertainment media, games often lose soul to very stupid shoehorning due to trends (and monetary flow, which every area of life is ruined by today, unfortunately). I think it’s a sign of an immature space in combination with a trash contemporary society. It’s such a shame when stupid company decisions affect good entertainment like this.