My team sucks!

[republic]

I've noticed yet another sign that society is slowly unraveling because of the anonymity and social retardation caused by the Internet.

Whether it be World of Tanks, Wargame: Airland, or anything else I play I've noticed a trend that someone will send over global chat that "my team sucks".  Generally they have some sage wisdom to go along with it.  "If they would have listened to me and ________"

This really irks me.  All I think of when I see that is "What a little <expletive>..."  It is a strange mix of "look at me look at me"and "I must win all the time, this loss doesn't count because it is someone elses fault (like always)"

If they were really as good as they try to appear, they should be helping other players.  "It'd be better if you put those Leopards in the treeline, they'll get killed out in the open." etc.

[Gusington]

People like that deserve some of this.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

It's not only in games.  I think this attitude is the end result of the trend in education and parenting towards building self esteem through positive reinforcement.  These kids grew up being told everything they did had merit, even if they failed to follow directions.  As a result, they come out with an overdeveloped sense of self worth and an inability to recognize that their own efforts might not be up to snuff.  After all, if all they've heard for their entire life is that every thing they ever attempted was wonderful, how could a failure possibly be the fault of their own actions? 

I see it a lot at my work.  We hire 3-4 co-op students every year.  While we do get some good ones, a lot of them come in with the attitude that they already know everything.  They have a lot of trouble listening to advice.  They constantly seek out praise for doing work that is simply expected of them and they really can't seem to internalize criticism of any sort, no matter how constructive it is or how softly it's been offered to them.  Instead they lash out and blame everyone around them or they get surly and start gossiping and bitching about whoever told them they did something wrong.  Just not to that person's face. 

[republic]

Ya thats a key trend.  Nothing is ever their fault.  They can't learn from mistakes, because a) they don't make any b) they know everything already.

[Nefaro]

It's not only in games.  I think this attitude is the end result of the trend in education and parenting towards building self esteem through positive reinforcement.  These kids grew up being told everything they did had merit, even if they failed to follow directions.  As a result, they come out with an overdeveloped sense of self worth and an inability to recognize that their own efforts might not be up to snuff.  After all, if all they've heard for their entire life is that every thing they ever attempted was wonderful, how could a failure possibly be the fault of their own actions? 

Exactly spot on.

Another poor outcome of the PC-parade that started decades ago.

[mikeck]

Yep. It's the "everyone gets a trophy" plan. Kids no longer experience failure at a young age in either school or sports; therefore, they never learn how to deal with failure. So when they get a bit older, and they don't get a trophy when they lose, they have trouble dealing with it and deflect.

One of the most important things you learn playing youth sports is how to deal with losing and adversity, eapecially as part of a team. If no one loses then there is no need to learn how to deal with team adversity.

[jomni]

All I know is that my team sucks if I end up being the best player. (Given my skill level)

[SgtRock]

My team sucks, it's true 60% of the time. :D I don't understand WOT players that can't understand the simple concept of stay together, stay alive. Too many players in pub matches seem to think, racing off by them self, just to be the first to die is how the game is played. ::)

I remember there seemed to be a lot of stoners that play WOT, seen it myself where several players doing dumb things driving off cliffs, into water, not even trying to win, then say I'm high, I'm stoned. I've also heard from players that use team speak hearing some very very strange things, drug related.  I quit WOT, too many idiots and jerks with zero enforcement or moderators that don't or won't ban players. That automated system of enforcement is a joke, other MMO's let players know they banded players to help keep others in line, never seen that in WOT. Too many players with names like X-name-X that kill team players all the time, still there and get away with it. Is this a bigger issue with free to play games? Maybe it's too easy to just create another account and keep being a jerk.

[Keunert]

and best of all is that it is most of the times the very mindless guy that storms off alone and gets killed first is there to complain until the game is finished.

but to be honest my WoT experience is quite different: even though that are a lot of the 'my team sucks' idiots there are even more guys congratulating players that do well, even though they are on the other team. i got really sucked into WoT lately and played a lot and this gentlemen like behaviour surprised me. my last game i was the second last of my team and they adviced me to attack even though i had a slow loading, weak armoured TD. i fought a Hellcat and i lost. but instead of blame they applauded me for trying it. i would say i see as much nice behaviour on WoT as i see idiotic behaviour.

[Huw the Poo]

I always thank the healer!

[undercovergeek]

i got 'you suck' -ed the other week on wargame - airland battle, not been used to it (not because im great but because ive never been on the receiving end) it was quite disarming for a while - after about half an hours thought i realised id wasted 30 mins pondering over what a child had just called me and paid it no more heed - made all the better by knowing if it was at a lan party i would have just got up and crammed his keyboard down his neck

on the flip side, although life has many moments of joy there are non so pleasing as watching/listening the 'you suck' caller getting owned and battered on an FPS. A while ago whilst part of a serious BF3 clan we came across a team of children thinking they were the best to ever play the game. We had played long enough together that we even had a team dedicated to seeking out these idiots and spoiling their game. They would sacrifice their score and K/D ratio and just head off to destroy these little bas***** who never realise theyre being so predicatable, getting killed and then running to the exact same spot to find you and kill you back, all the guys had to do was just move one bit of scenery over and shoot the idiots as they would go past, then theyd go to that spot and get it from somewhere else and so on and so on - listening in on the headphones to them screaming and swearing was hysterical - then they would quit - we always wished you could tag that team/player and follow them wherever they went from server to server

[weateallthepies]

Yep. It's the "everyone gets a trophy" plan. Kids no longer experience failure at a young age in either school or sports; therefore, they never learn how to deal with failure. So when they get a bit older, and they don't get a trophy when they lose, they have trouble dealing with it and deflect.

One of the most important things you learn playing youth sports is how to deal with losing and adversity, eapecially as part of a team. If no one loses then there is no need to learn how to deal with team adversity.

Gaming is really useful for this as a parent, I play a lot of boardgames with my daughter and it really helps with learning how to lose gracefully. Most other activity is out of my control in terms of rewards and expectation since it's through school or other organisations, but the gaming is something we can do together.

She has her head screwed on alright though, she even taunts some of the gaming group. :)

[Greybriar]

In World of Tanks, my team usually sucks. I have been in matches where I have killed 50% of the enemy team and my team still lost.

So why get upset? Maybe criticism will anger them enough to try and learn to play the game.

[W8taminute]

I sure hope that in todays' real world army that they don't teach this everybody gets an award type of stuff.  If they do then we will lose the next world war.

[ArizonaTank]

I see the same thing in War Thunder.  Explicative laced (blanked with * [thankfully]) comments about "noobs", "rammers" "kill stealers" etc.  The interesting thing is that as I get higher in level, the name calling seems to subside.  Maybe because you play long enough, everybody gets rammed, and everybody has a kill stolen...so no sense in getting upset about it. 

But it is kind of funny to see players complain about their own "team", because I see so little teamwork....pretty much everyone for himself...

Most disturbing to me however, is that I occasionally see a user name that is racist or something out of porno fantasy land.  I don't see them often, and they are not obvious terms / phrases.  Gaijin, the Russian devs probably don't know enough colloquial American English to have built these into their filters.  The porno names are just juvenile.  But I almost stopped playing the game for good the other night when I saw an anti-Semitic user name.  Instead, I reported the name to customer support and haven't seen the name since.  While these names are pretty rare (out of thousands of usernames I've seen, maybe only half-a-dozen have been offensive), it still sucks to see some neo-Nazi scum ruining a great game. 

And, War Thunder is a great game.  World of Warplanes can't even come close IMHO.