8 ms·

You wouldn't cheat at tic tac toe despite the inherently low stakes of the game so it doesn't seem any different in any other video game. That’s the difference

You wouldn't cheat at tic tac toe despite the inherently low stakes of the game so it doesn't seem any different in any other video game. That’s the difference. The stakes are way higher in video games. People pour thousands and thousands of hours into these games. They dream of going pro and joining one of the big teams. They dream of winning the big tournament for real money. They dream of having a popular Twitch stream with many thousands of viewers throwing even more money at them. Most fall far short of those dreams. Instead they throw temper tantrums and rage at their teammates over voice chat. Some get so frustrated about their lack of progress that they search for alternative means. That’s where cheating begins. It’s really no different from sports.

AmVess 4y ago
There's the cheating, and then there's the fact that there are far too many man-children everywhere these days. They whine, complain, throw tantrums worse than toddlers do. It is absolutely painful to hear a grown man whining about something in a GAME. For instance, I played a free to play game. The servers just went live and it was the VERY FIRST MATCH of the game. It wasn't soon before one guy on our side was crying because we all sucked. I see this type of behavior everywhere.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  I've been that guy. It's hard to have fun in the modern "you will be FORCED to lose 50% of the time" matchmaking systems, compared to the small communities of the past. When I loved playing Halo 1 on the PC, you could actively chose how you were feeling that day, whether you wanted a very competitive match, or whether you just wanted infinite rockets with no shields so everyone's bodies are flying all over. You could have a relaxing game of chaotic fun, or you could load up a giant map sniper duel, or a very classic sidewinder CTF that requires teamwork and cunning and individual talent to make things happen. Instead, every single game now is optimized for streamers, content creators, and a small "Professional" scene. So now, when a single popular youtuber wants a meme gun, the devs add a powerful slug to the double barrel shotgun and a red dot sight, so that youtuber can make a highlight reel of headshotting people across the map with a damn shotgun while throwing the entire tactical part of the gameplay out the window. The community spends 6 years complaining about a tactic that is basically just spawn camping, and the publisher gives radio silence, but there's a weird, niche tactic using your favorite character in the pro scene that is SLIGHTLY better than random in effectiveness, and you better believe that character is getting a hard nerf. Now I boot up the game, and if I have a good match where I did better than expected, the system responds to that by putting me in a much harder game, where I'm expected to lose, because that 50% win rate must be ENFORCED. Even if you constantly improve at the game, you just get put in front of more and more talented people, wiping out any joy you might experience from your improvement. Meanwhile, you continually get destroyed by 12 year olds that don't have to cook dinner every night and have plenty of time to hone their skills. These systems are even implemented in """Casual""" game modes, which are then full of pro players on new accounts making youtube highlight reels. So yeah, excuse my old man anger, I just literally lived through a better time. Right now it is impossible to sit down with my friends and enjoy a PVP game together, because casual multiplayer has been thrown to the wolves, often in service to memes.
  - metalcrow 4y ago
    How did the older games actually accomplish this? I would guess that if you just throw people into a match at random, on average half are going to be better then you, and half worse. So random matches will end up a 50% win-loss anyway unless you're especially good or bad at the game (compared to the rest of the population). So if most of the game's playerbase is kids who can afford to play 12 hours a day, normal people like us would likely get worse then a 50% loss rate with the random system!
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      Many games didn't have a global list of servers, so you just connect to a server you know. Even games that did have a global list of servers, one wouldn't necessarily always play on random servers, but have some favorite servers (often ping-based, which means geographically local, to some degree) and play on those.
    - scrlk 4y ago
      > How did the older games actually accomplish this? Using Counter-Strike as an example: no matchmaking system - relied upon community hosted servers offering a wide range of game modes (official and community created). More competitive matches (pick-up games) were often found via IRC.
      - Tool_of_Society 4y ago
        Yeah I had a whole slew of servers saved that I would regularly play on. If I was in a serious try hard mood I had a selection of servers I'd check. If I was in a half as I'm drunk and want to play I had a group of servers for that. If I wanted to play the warcraft 3 mod I had servers for that too. Even had servers for off the wall stuff talked about above. Now I dunno...
      - usrusr 4y ago
        With the consequence that games were suffering through a much harder sink or swim in terms of popularity: the matchmaking puts the threshold for "sufficiently popular" much lower. I'm not happy about the matchmaking, but there isn't really an alternative.
- pixl97 4y ago
  >everywhere these days. Whenever you have a sentence that has 'these days' and is describing human behavior, just leave off these days. Humans have been cheating pieces of shit throughout history, especially when they are in a position where there is no recourse from the other parties in the transaction.
  - raspberry1337 4y ago
    This assumes that average human behaviour does not change over time, which seems quite unlikely to me.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      When someone tells me something that's been happening for a long time is suddenly going to stop happening, it's most believable when they present evidence that is the case. Being that humans have been cheaters in one way or another in significant numbers. For example modern infidelity figures are around 25% based on surveys. Somehow I just don't think your statement here is backed up by observation.
    - chongli 4y ago
      It’s a market for lemons [1]. You, the player, have no information about the teammates and opponents you’ll be matched up with. Therefore, over time, high quality and well-behaved players tend to exit the market, leaving only the cheaters and tantrum-throwers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
- gsich 4y ago
  >It is absolutely painful to hear a grown man whining about something in a GAME. "It's just a game" is a lame excuse. A game is using real time.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    It's a voluntary activity people do to have fun and relax. There is no point in whining. Just go do something else if you are not enjoying yourself. Kids often don't realise that and get generally overinvested in things so we somewhat excuse their immaturity. It feels less tolerable when it's an adult doing it.
    - gsich 4y ago
      Doesn't matter. If you invest time in a game (maybe even in a competitive or "ranked" mode) you expect that everyone in your team is playing seriously. People who don't shouldn't play this mode or game. What you call "whining" is legitimate. If you don't play you are wasting your teams time, taking them hostage. Sometimes you can't leave a game because other penalties occur.
- vehementi 4y ago
  It's painful to see people lunge to frame others as "crying" when they are not doing so
- vintermann 4y ago
  > There's the cheating, and then there's the fact that there are far too many man-children everywhere these days. They whine, complain, throw tantrums worse than toddlers do. It is absolutely painful to hear a grown man whining about something in a GAME. And you know what would be especially satisfying to do against these pathetic losers? Cheating against them and watch them rage. Seriously, I don't think the "man children" and the people complaining about them are all that different. You were clearly not engaged in traditionally approved adult activities either, if you were there for the very first matches of a competitive computer game.
izzydata 4y ago
When I was younger I probably would have thought it would be awesome to make money from playing video games, but now I feel like the activity changing from a hobby for fun into a livelihood has only been for the worse. This trend may exist for many other hobbies as well such as blogging or making internet content.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  One of the things that drove me nuts about Overwatch 1 was the common demand from other players that you employ the pro-league meta when playing even at the lowest levels. A lot of players seem to imagine themselves as the next Ninja (or the Overwatch equivalent) in training and playing multiplayer in that environment is not much fun. See also this video about why it's considered rude to suck at WoW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    Every gamer is a temporarily embarrassed pro? I wonder if that same analogy applies.
    - nemothekid 4y ago
      No; Overwatch 1 was unique in that a single player trying to do something "off-meta" meant all 5 other players had to play around that one player, and if you were losing it was very frustrating. The game's design and balance IMO was inherently toxic. Everyone "practiced" the "pro" meta so there was unspoken rule book on how people understood how to play the game. One person being off meta was almost like demanding the entire team play rugby when you thought you were playing football. The game wasn't flexible enough to allow individual experimentation.
      - invalidOrTaken 4y ago
        There was plenty of room for individual experimentation---it was the players who weren't flexible enough. Before role queue, any particular player could, at the drop of a hat, mid-match, mid-life, switch to another of 21 very different heroes. Hard for a game to get more flexible than that! But in the end, it seems the players didn't want that, and instead wanted less flexibility for their teammates and the enemy team.
vintermann 4y ago
Some of the most cheat infested games are nowhere near having an "esports" competitive scene. I'd think that in actual esports games, where it can ruin your career to get caught cheating even if it was years ago in casual games, there'd be less "everyday" cheating.

AmVess 4y ago

There's the cheating, and then there's the fact that there are far too many man-children everywhere these days. They whine, complain, throw tantrums worse than toddlers do. It is absolutely painful to hear a grown man whining about something in a GAME. For instance, I played a free to play game. The servers just went live and it was the VERY FIRST MATCH of the game. It wasn't soon before one guy on our side was crying because we all sucked. I see this type of behavior everywhere.

mrguyorama 4y ago
I've been that guy. It's hard to have fun in the modern "you will be FORCED to lose 50% of the time" matchmaking systems, compared to the small communities of the past. When I loved playing Halo 1 on the PC, you could actively chose how you were feeling that day, whether you wanted a very competitive match, or whether you just wanted infinite rockets with no shields so everyone's bodies are flying all over. You could have a relaxing game of chaotic fun, or you could load up a giant map sniper duel, or a very classic sidewinder CTF that requires teamwork and cunning and individual talent to make things happen. Instead, every single game now is optimized for streamers, content creators, and a small "Professional" scene. So now, when a single popular youtuber wants a meme gun, the devs add a powerful slug to the double barrel shotgun and a red dot sight, so that youtuber can make a highlight reel of headshotting people across the map with a damn shotgun while throwing the entire tactical part of the gameplay out the window. The community spends 6 years complaining about a tactic that is basically just spawn camping, and the publisher gives radio silence, but there's a weird, niche tactic using your favorite character in the pro scene that is SLIGHTLY better than random in effectiveness, and you better believe that character is getting a hard nerf. Now I boot up the game, and if I have a good match where I did better than expected, the system responds to that by putting me in a much harder game, where I'm expected to lose, because that 50% win rate must be ENFORCED. Even if you constantly improve at the game, you just get put in front of more and more talented people, wiping out any joy you might experience from your improvement. Meanwhile, you continually get destroyed by 12 year olds that don't have to cook dinner every night and have plenty of time to hone their skills. These systems are even implemented in """Casual""" game modes, which are then full of pro players on new accounts making youtube highlight reels. So yeah, excuse my old man anger, I just literally lived through a better time. Right now it is impossible to sit down with my friends and enjoy a PVP game together, because casual multiplayer has been thrown to the wolves, often in service to memes.
- metalcrow 4y ago
  How did the older games actually accomplish this? I would guess that if you just throw people into a match at random, on average half are going to be better then you, and half worse. So random matches will end up a 50% win-loss anyway unless you're especially good or bad at the game (compared to the rest of the population). So if most of the game's playerbase is kids who can afford to play 12 hours a day, normal people like us would likely get worse then a 50% loss rate with the random system!
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Many games didn't have a global list of servers, so you just connect to a server you know. Even games that did have a global list of servers, one wouldn't necessarily always play on random servers, but have some favorite servers (often ping-based, which means geographically local, to some degree) and play on those.
  - scrlk 4y ago
    > How did the older games actually accomplish this? Using Counter-Strike as an example: no matchmaking system - relied upon community hosted servers offering a wide range of game modes (official and community created). More competitive matches (pick-up games) were often found via IRC.
    - Tool_of_Society 4y ago
      Yeah I had a whole slew of servers saved that I would regularly play on. If I was in a serious try hard mood I had a selection of servers I'd check. If I was in a half as I'm drunk and want to play I had a group of servers for that. If I wanted to play the warcraft 3 mod I had servers for that too. Even had servers for off the wall stuff talked about above. Now I dunno...
    - usrusr 4y ago
      With the consequence that games were suffering through a much harder sink or swim in terms of popularity: the matchmaking puts the threshold for "sufficiently popular" much lower. I'm not happy about the matchmaking, but there isn't really an alternative.
pixl97 4y ago
>everywhere these days. Whenever you have a sentence that has 'these days' and is describing human behavior, just leave off these days. Humans have been cheating pieces of shit throughout history, especially when they are in a position where there is no recourse from the other parties in the transaction.
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  This assumes that average human behaviour does not change over time, which seems quite unlikely to me.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    When someone tells me something that's been happening for a long time is suddenly going to stop happening, it's most believable when they present evidence that is the case. Being that humans have been cheaters in one way or another in significant numbers. For example modern infidelity figures are around 25% based on surveys. Somehow I just don't think your statement here is backed up by observation.
  - chongli 4y ago
    It’s a market for lemons [1]. You, the player, have no information about the teammates and opponents you’ll be matched up with. Therefore, over time, high quality and well-behaved players tend to exit the market, leaving only the cheaters and tantrum-throwers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
gsich 4y ago
>It is absolutely painful to hear a grown man whining about something in a GAME. "It's just a game" is a lame excuse. A game is using real time.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  It's a voluntary activity people do to have fun and relax. There is no point in whining. Just go do something else if you are not enjoying yourself. Kids often don't realise that and get generally overinvested in things so we somewhat excuse their immaturity. It feels less tolerable when it's an adult doing it.
  - gsich 4y ago
    Doesn't matter. If you invest time in a game (maybe even in a competitive or "ranked" mode) you expect that everyone in your team is playing seriously. People who don't shouldn't play this mode or game. What you call "whining" is legitimate. If you don't play you are wasting your teams time, taking them hostage. Sometimes you can't leave a game because other penalties occur.
vehementi 4y ago
It's painful to see people lunge to frame others as "crying" when they are not doing so
vintermann 4y ago
> There's the cheating, and then there's the fact that there are far too many man-children everywhere these days. They whine, complain, throw tantrums worse than toddlers do. It is absolutely painful to hear a grown man whining about something in a GAME. And you know what would be especially satisfying to do against these pathetic losers? Cheating against them and watch them rage. Seriously, I don't think the "man children" and the people complaining about them are all that different. You were clearly not engaged in traditionally approved adult activities either, if you were there for the very first matches of a competitive computer game.

izzydata 4y ago

When I was younger I probably would have thought it would be awesome to make money from playing video games, but now I feel like the activity changing from a hobby for fun into a livelihood has only been for the worse. This trend may exist for many other hobbies as well such as blogging or making internet content.

AlexandrB 4y ago
One of the things that drove me nuts about Overwatch 1 was the common demand from other players that you employ the pro-league meta when playing even at the lowest levels. A lot of players seem to imagine themselves as the next Ninja (or the Overwatch equivalent) in training and playing multiplayer in that environment is not much fun. See also this video about why it's considered rude to suck at WoW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU
- aaomidi 4y ago
  Every gamer is a temporarily embarrassed pro? I wonder if that same analogy applies.
  - nemothekid 4y ago
    No; Overwatch 1 was unique in that a single player trying to do something "off-meta" meant all 5 other players had to play around that one player, and if you were losing it was very frustrating. The game's design and balance IMO was inherently toxic. Everyone "practiced" the "pro" meta so there was unspoken rule book on how people understood how to play the game. One person being off meta was almost like demanding the entire team play rugby when you thought you were playing football. The game wasn't flexible enough to allow individual experimentation.
    - invalidOrTaken 4y ago
      There was plenty of room for individual experimentation---it was the players who weren't flexible enough. Before role queue, any particular player could, at the drop of a hat, mid-match, mid-life, switch to another of 21 very different heroes. Hard for a game to get more flexible than that! But in the end, it seems the players didn't want that, and instead wanted less flexibility for their teammates and the enemy team.

vintermann 4y ago

Some of the most cheat infested games are nowhere near having an "esports" competitive scene. I'd think that in actual esports games, where it can ruin your career to get caught cheating even if it was years ago in casual games, there'd be less "everyday" cheating.