Oh the “joy” of online matchmaking. Sometimes you get lucky and wind up with exceptional and thoughtful teammates.
Sometimes you get something else.
Recently I was playing Friday the 13th with a friend. I saw someone getting attacked by Jason, and I ran in to help them. Jason immediately let them go, and the person ran away while Jason super murdered me. I chalked it up to an unfortunate coincidence, but later in the match, I realized that particular player (the counselor) and that match’s Jason were in a party together. The counselor was basically drawing people in and letting his friend murder them.
As if that weren’t bad enough, that counselor was the last person left with 11 or so minutes remaining in the round. Since you can spectate once you’re dead, I watched, dumbfounded, as the counselor and Jason wandered around together doing pretty much nothing other than wasting everyone else’s time. The counselor found the items to start the car, so I thought, well, good, at least he will escape and we won’t have to wait around.
Nope.
He just sat in the car. He eventually drove it around, but didn’t bother escaping. The Jason just followed him around and didn’t try to kill him.
They wandered in and out of houses and, I assume, the rest of the team (if they were spectating like me), wasn’t really amused. It was a massive waste of everyone else’s time.
And, to add insult to injury, with a couple of minutes left in the round, the counselor finally drove the car to safety and escaped. As you might expect, both I and my friend weren’t thrilled. In fact, we stopped playing that game for the day after we finished that match.
(Might I add here that in the previous match, my friend and I were split up; he was Jason and I was a counselor. That match ended with me fleeing in the water and him water murdering me. DEGAN WATER MURDERED ME.)
(I mean, he did it so other people wouldn’t have to wait on the match to end, but he water murdered me. IF YOU ARE READING THIS DEGAN, YOU WATER MURDERED ME. FRIENDSHIP WHAT?!)
Anyway.
This subject came up again when my partner and I were playing a bit of Killing Floor 2 over the past couple of days. Every mode we were playing was entirely co-op, and we encountered some…less than friendly behavior.
In one match, while my partner and I were at the weapon/ammo pod, the rest of the team welded us in this room where ALL the enemies spawned. We did okay but it was frantic as hell and I almost ate crap more than once. We found the other team members standing around together doing a whole lot of nothing. That was irritating enough, but in another wave of that same match, my partner died and one of those team members tea bagged him.
Side note: perhaps my greatest pet peeve, even greater than lag, is tea bagging. I can’t stand it. And I will go out of my way to take down tea baggers.
I’ve seen people in matches incessantly melee or shoot people on their own team and in Killing Floor 2 there aren’t any repercussions for that, but in Friday the 13th, you can actually hurt your fellow counselors. I’ve seen people do that, too! One person did that to me, and I would have died were it not for a health item and the power of running away from them.
The ironic part of this piece is that I feel confident anyone reading this doesn’t do any of those things. I’ve played with far more respectful players than rude ones (thank goodness), but it never ceases to amaze me when people troll their own team.
Which reminds me of two situations I’ve personally encountered in Overwatch.
I’ve encountered Meis who ice wall their own team in at the spawn in competitive matches. That’s just ridiculous. But the worst troll I ever encountered in Overwatch was a Symmetra on King’s Row. She set up her teleporter so anyone walking through it would immediately fall off a ledge. She wasn’t satisfied it was a guaranteed death apparently because I saw her reposition it further at the edge of the ledge. I actually did something I almost never do: I wrote that person a message simply asking why they were trolling their own team. They responded that they were sorry, but I’m not sure how sincere that was.
I’m literally shaking my head thinking about it.
So, basically, I’m just saying, let’s all try to be nicer. It doesn’t even matter to who or when. Let’s just try to be nicer. I know trolls will probably always be trolls, but I still hope they will be nicer, too. Kindness costs nothing and means everything.
And with that I wish you a glorious day filled with kindness. There can never be too much.
Categories: games
Rebekah Lang 
The Mei and Symmetra sh*t is so annoying.
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Oh my gosh, you’re not kidding. It can be infuriating. And I don’t play Overwatch anywhere as much as you do!
I think Mei is the biggest troll character in anything.
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Couldn’t agree more.
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Whoa those are some gnarly teammates! In Overwatch I’m mostly annoyed by quitters. It’s either in the beginning of a match that my team is doing well in or mid-way through an incredibly long match. When I played Destiny regularly the lazy folk who idled in Strikes really made me grind my teeth given that I was hardly a super Guardian capable of carrying the team. The horror stories out of Friday the 13th are pretty funny (as someone who doesn’t play that game) given that it’s a classic example of a lack of polish with a developer seemingly unaware of how players will exploit a game’s systems.
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They really were. It just bums me out that those people choose to interact that way with others. I’m sure they thought it was all hilarious, but I did not. Then again, I’m getting so old.
I feel like Overwatch has an odd system for quitters. Sure it locks them out for a bit, but it also penalizes everyone else who DIDN’T quit.
Oh man, those people who would screw off during strikes just CHEESE me. There was some exotic quest where I had to do 25 strikes (yay…) and I did them in chunks of five or so at a time. I saw just how often people would quit (often) or do absolutely nothing and they wouldn’t be kicked (also often). I use the Destiny reporting feature for all kinds of thing, both good and bad (I want Bungie to know who the good players are just as much as the pathetic ones), but there was never any recourse for those idlers. Often I would do the entire strike by myself.
Oh yeah, Friday the 13th is sure something. I think it can be fun, but they also need some sort of fix for when people dick around for 10+ minutes and all the killed counselors can do is spectate. I’m sure I will still play it from time to time, but I’m not having as much fun with it as I’d hoped I would.
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Not only is that a very annoying story, a counselor teaming up with Jason also sounds like the plot of a very lame sequel they haven’t churned out yet.
I’ve experienced both of those Mei and Symmetra scenarios, too… Although the Symmetra one, thankfully only once. I’ll never understand it. The one person I just had to message was a Reaper who, every time I saw him on my friendly cam while waiting to respond, he was safely off in a corner, doing the slow-clap emote and avoiding everything. He essentially quit the match without bothering to do so, because of course, that would replace him with someone who actually wanted to play. I asked him why wouldn’t he just quit – surely he had better things to do than just troll a team? “For the LOLs”. Of course. Points for honesty, douche-Reaper.
I’ve found the Overwatch community to be leaps and bounds better than other multiplayer communities… more often than not, I solo-queue and end up meeting one or two really cool people and roll with them for the rest of my night. The flip-side is there are these terrible trolls everywhere, and finding them in Overwatch, which is just so much more fun with a communicative, respectful team, can really sour the experience very fast.
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You’re not kidding! It would be an interesting take on a Friday the 13th movie.
Wow. Unfortunately that sounds like a very Reaper thing to do. It also depresses me that THAT was his idea of a way to amuse himself. Good god.
Overwatch can be so amazing and so disheartening. I’ve also played with people who were so great that I sent them messages of thanks or admiration of their skills, but holy heck. Some people are so deliberately jerks, it’s crazy. I wish there was a reporting feature on consoles. I know Blizzard has talked about that coming, but the last I played, it wasn’t implemented. I will probably check back in once it is up and running.
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When it comes to online gaming, community always is a major consider in terms of behavior.
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Indeed! The positive players far outnumber the negative ones (at least in my experience), but some of those negative ones are POTENT.
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