I really don't see why we should "expect" this behavior, especially when in real life the least it would get you is an asskicking, on up to and including charges for disorderly conduct and hate crimes. If you can't talk like it normally, don't go talk like it online. If you do talk like that normally, you deserve to be beaten. With a stick. Maybe a few. I'm 30 years old and terminally ill, so online games are often my window to the world. I prefer to play with people who are grown-up about how they play (and I've played with a lot of 15 year olds that were more mature than 45 year olds) and if I can't do that I'll simply go solo-I was one of the best soloing wardens on my server (and getting ranked across servers) before a combat update ruined my class. It took me a long time of playing by myself because I had nobody else to play with before I found a group of people who could be adults about stuff (like that we sometimes had to leave in a hurry because of my son's medical care.) GW2 hits at the end of August. We've not found any group that even seems like they're close to mature enough to handle two adult players with a sick son and medical issues. Sadly, it seems that we'll all solo in this game because I see plenty of asses already-healing your buddy gets you XP, why not do it?
I don't play on-line that often these days, preferring to mostly play single player games. But when I do play on-line I don't rage at other players, what's the point? I play the games for fun, win or lose - It doesn't matter as long as it's fun, hurling abuse at other players (male or female) is not fun. Thinking about it, whenever I have played on-line in the last year it's always been after some-one on my friends list has asked me to join a game.
You say violent sexism is a small issue and haven't seen it yourself, but one thing I'm curious about from someone who would have experienced it first hand, do you see/recieve much sexual harrassment? Frequently being hit on, asked for pictures, generally pestered in a way that bothered you? I see it happening all the time, both to female gaming friends and to random people online and reactions to it vary. It's a little off topic, but have you considered just making your own group of people? I just assume GW2 will have some sort of guild system, you could make your own. There are always people lurking in the woodwork just waiting to be united by someone who took the initiative. I led a family friendly WoW guild for about a year and really enjoyed it, it's a refreshing break from the locker room style trash talk environment I usually frequent. Many a raid was left incomplete due to putting children to bed or people leaving early to get rest before an early shift the next morning but as the leader you have the power to only allow people who are okay with that and likely have similar needs.
That isn't just online gaming that has the problem. It's absolutely anywhere online that a woman comes into contact with the anonymous elements of the internet. I'm pretty active on Reddit all the time and the amount of "Tits or GTFO" or "Picture FOR SCIENCE!" that gets thrown around by adolescent boys (and older, tragically) it's damn right disgusting a lot of the time. It rarely stops there and many people find that they can actively hunt through a persons entire post history just to find a single picture of said lass with even a square inch of her skin on show. I wish I was kidding. Then you get the girls who will have their picture taken with something cool (say, an old school furby they found) and automatically get called a 'whore', '****' and a wide variety of other insults that would make even my 'swearing like a trooper'-attitude look damn right pleasant. There's something about the ability to go anonymous and write whatever the hell you want (Or say whatever the hell you want online) that people seem to find so attractive, especially in the "you're different, show me your bits" department.
well least your wife plays- wish my girl played games.. I did the explorable (level 35) in bwe2 and we completed everything but the part where you harvest the ghost essence.. that little asura sure is cocky too xD we got to around 70% harvested before getting overwhelmed from what I hear.. only teams with devs were able to beat that part.. I wouldn't mind a bit-tech guild- you can join multiple guilds I assume everyones cartman- I bet if I even looked in nexxos computer.. there would be stuff I'd recover that would make my eyeballs bleed btw that's not me.. but he pretty much covers it all from micheal jackson to brittany spears and manages to squeeze in his thoughts on jesus.. I don't care what they say- I'm a better person from having heard it now imagine a world without this guy..
My gf recently changed her name in LoL, so that she would get less sexist comments from no life assholes. The community there is crap though.
I used to be "that guy" but now I've definitely toned down a lot. Anyone who used to kill me twice in a row, hacker and I let them know about it. Now I only use text chat to talk with my squad or if I see someone I watch on the youtubes. I also use it to make fun of people calling me a hack. Mostly to troll them saying I do hack but they'll never catch me
Having been playing a lot more online FPS recently (Tribes and Blacklight) I have come to realise something quite sad. While my name is genderless and so people tend to assume I am a male, I do note that a lot of people will persistantly throw insults around for no reason. The number of times I've seen "noob" thrown out after a kill is made, or "Stupid nub team" when someone is on the losing side, is quite sad. Perhaps it's because in the earlier days I mostly played multiplayer at LANs, but the sense of sportsmanship and idea that we're all supposed to be having fun together seems utterly lost. While I do appreciate the ability to complement people in Tribes using the voice commands (a nice, and rare, touch) - mostly what you see typed out is just verbal abuse.
I've been reported yesterday as an 'unskilled player'. I was playin support Bot with Alistar, I backed after 10 minutes to purchase my heart of gold and some wards. Meanwhile, my carry got killed face-checking a bush....it was my fault bacause I wasnt there :-/
I know it's absolutely no consolation, but it's exactly the same in CS:S and really it always has been. It all depends on the server, the people and the community/clan that run the server, but it's not uncommon to be performing on average and be called "a complete noob" or be on a winning team playing a cracking game and immediately be accused of hacking/cheating/ghosting etc etc. If and when I do play CS:S these days it's on public servers, as opposed to 4-6 years ago when I was playing for and running a clan. The experience is completely different and as I've mentioned many times before, I miss the competitive side of that game. I feel like an outsider looking in on that whole community now, whereas for 3 years I was a part of it and it was a pretty big part of my life. Oh well, c'est la vie, times change etc etc, but I still feel that the amount of immature and unacceptable behaviour in FPS games is at an all time high. The only servers that I play CS:S on regularly any more are servers where a few clan and community members know who I am and thankfully I am usually respected enough to have a good time and enjoy some genuine, light hearted but still competitive gaming. Hacking is still a very large problem in CS:S though, and it only takes one guy with no admin on the server to ruin the game for everyone on both teams. As far as the gender thing goes, people almost always assume that I'm a girl because of my name. In Halo, I usually turn on my mic and just tell them - in CS:S I can do the same if they are on my team in a public server, but I've played entire clan matches where some players on the enemy team have made comments like "tell that Unicorn chick she's ****" etc
Reach. Yes, again 343i have apparently changed the ports that Reach uses and my NAT rating within the game is now "moderate" instead of "good". I'm putting 10 DMR shots into enemy heads and not getting a kill. I'm getting shot in the head 5 or 6 times and dying. My sniper shots lag just that fraction of a second long enough to make it harder to hit someone in the head for a one shot kill, and every game that I've been in this week has black screened. Every game, without fail. The game is so full of dickheads it's not even funny. I met a group of 7 clan players in one game this evening who wiped the floor with my team. I held my own - on my own - and finished with a -1 K/D spread. I think it was 19 kills for 20 deaths. The next game I'm put into, it's the same players, and for the minute or so we're sitting in the lobby, all I hear are comments like "oh look, it's that Unicorn faggit again", "oh yeah it's the tryhard, he's back for more!", "hah, he went negative one in that last game, what a loser"... and so on and so on. The game starts and once again a very skilled team of 7 clan players set about making mince meat of our team. Now, this I have no problem with. I've been on teams like that in the past and it's fair play. Halo clans are annoyingly good at winning games because they're playing as a team against groups of random matchmade players most of the time. They'll wipe the floor with pretty much any "team" they come up against. Anyway, them winning isn't what was bothering me. It was the comments they were making as they killed my team and I. You see, Halo multiplayer has proximity voice, so I can hear what an enemy is saying to their teammates if I'm close to him. They were just constantly trash talking. There's absolutely no class or intelligence in this whatsoever. If you're reading this right now and you're one of the people who does it, take it from me; You're an idiot and a loser. You don't trash talk someone just because you're beating them in a game. First of all, it's one of the most arrogant things you could possibly do. And the whole "tea-bagging" thing really pisses me off as well. I've never seen any game with more immature dickheads in it in my entire life. It's ten times worse than Halo 3 was, and definitely worse than CS:S or any other PC game. The number of games I have lost in the past 4 days is just ridiculous. I'm winning 1 in 5 games at the moment according to my stats on Halo Waypoint. One in five. That's bloody pathetic. And do you know why I'm losing so many games? Why my high Battle Proficiency Rating which I've played so hard to achieve and maintain is falling and why my win percentage is plummeting like a lead brick? Because of the criminally bad players on my team every. single. game. I've scored 43 kills with only 4 deaths and lost the game because some kid scored nothing but died 22 times, and his guest player killed one person but died 19 times. I've been team attacked because I know how to get to power weapons on a map faster than everyone else. I've been team killed after picking up those power weapons which I'm skilled enough to win the game with, often single handedly. I've watched players on my team commit suicide to reduce our team score when a game is tied or close to being tied. It's getting out of hand. I've never had a worse few days gaming than the past few... never. Am I a sore loser? Yes, obviously. Reach is a game that is extremely infuriating when you're constantly losing games. I accept that everyone loses sometimes, that's life. There's always a bigger fish, a better player or a more skilled team. I completely accept that, but when you lose as many games in 3 or 4 days as I have for the reasons that I've lost them, you get absolutely sick of it. The game is absolutely no fun if you lose all the time, which is why I can't understand getting people who are so horrible at playing it on my team so consistently. I've never seen such immature, unacceptable and unsporting behaviour in any game, or anywhere else for that matter. I've said it before in this thread, but I'm saying it again with utter conviction; Xbox Live is a toilet and it needs to be flushed. I've just about had it with the whole situation. I'm strongly considering letting my gold membership run out this month and selling the console. I'm disgusted with some of the people who play Halo Reach on XBL at the moment, completely disgusted. /rant. I know this was a double post, but I wanted to bump the thread. After it gets another reply, if a mod wants to merge this post with the one above it, I'd appreciate it.
This thread is exceptionally interesting. My experience of online gaming is basically the Orange Box... Half Life 2: Deathmatch in particular. And I find that this rings true - the problem for me is that most of the dickwads turn out to be cheats for whom winning is so important that they trashtalk anybody who has real skill out of pure, unbridled jealousy. People like that will never have my respect, and I make sure they know it. There is a small group of guys from Europe, mostly France, who are notorious in the HL2DM community, and they are a bunch of royally arrogant hacking twats. One of them in particular is the personification of John Gabriel's Internet Dickwad Theory; when accused of being a hacker he always laughs it off and resorts to really demeaning and totally impertinent trashtalk about other players' sexuality etc. As Nexxo says, griefers gonna grief. We've all been there mate - it's simply a matter of self-control. I no longer get angry because I realise winning is generally out of the question when you are playing against kids who are so determined to win that their cheats prevent them from losing. Lately my FPS experience has been with my wife on the N64... now that is just bliss.
I've seen many accounts of hackusations. Couple with many cases of abuse and generally many cases of people being outright horrible and it's given me a relatively jaded view of gaming. That said, I too have had some cases where I end up getting a bit irritated. Very seldomly do I personally rage or do I start giving abuse as usuallly I just end blaming myself instead of others for my shortcomings. That said, I will openly admit that I can come off as an incredibly old and "douchebaggy" person at times when I am doing badly. At any rate though, it just really takes a matter of perspective. I miss the days where your rival was the dude/gal next to you and you ended up making some awesome rivalries in the process. Still the online community is so "abusive" in my eyes purely because they can get away with it. In an environment that pretty much guarantees anonymity people are bound to blame others instead of themselves. Sometimes it's justified. But it really comes down to if anything of that matter should even be said at all.
In the first game of Halo I played this morning (was finishing off a credit achievement before starting the day ) I ran and grabbed the sniper rifle. Instantly teamkilled because I got to it first and picked it up. I turned the console off right there and then. I can't be ****ing bothered with it anymore. It's a complete and utter disgrace.
You are not alone friend, I play mostly supports and too many times It's my fault that AD carry dies just because I was not there. And don't make the mistake picking up soraka, because that way you are responsible deaths in every lane... And is community in PS3 games as bad as I have heard? If so I just might save my mind and keep on playing offline games...
Well my online gaming experience is limited. I played America's Army for a while when it first game out (good price-point being a +ve) thankfully there were 'official servers' that were moderated and players got kicked for abuse. Still I remember finding the use of 'rape' in a gaming context a bit OTT. I've checked back a few times since but to be honest I realy don't have any desire to play online any more. I play games to relax and get myself away from RL. As such I stick to the X-series as somehow flying a spaceship is perfect escapism to me. I'm surprise someone hasn't linked this classic yet http://theoatmeal.com/comics/online_gaming
I don't think I'll ever return to playing '3' mate... I got so sick of it in just 6 or 8 months of playing that I gave up on it and set the controller down for years. I had much the same experience with it as I've had with Reach as far as people's attitude goes Also, the Team Slayer playlist (which is the only one worth a damn as far as I'm concerned) was just full of four player teams, clans, boosters or hackers. Of all those, the boosters pissed me off the most. You'd get players who were obviously level 50 ranked Generals or at the very least, Brigadiers who were using a second account, so they got pitted against the less experienced players in the playlist, then proceeded to wipe the floor with them. I also hated most of the TS maps, couldn't hold a decent KDR in any game unless I was playing with 3 of my friends who were decent at the game, but even that was rare. I mostly searched for games on my own without a party and that's what made it suck for me. I just didn't get on well with the multiplayer in '3' at all. Every single map in TS seemed to be one-sided. If the other team held the sword or the shotgun on most of the maps, they won. If they had a couple of Generals, they won. If they had second account boosters, they won. My win percentage in Team Slayer must have been about 30-40% constantly. It's just not for me - I accepted that after about 8 months of trying and went back to playing PC games. At least I'm good at Reach, but not when I have to make up for 7 Recruits/Sergeants or other low ranked, low skilled people on my team in BTB Slayer. I'm only one player. Yes, I can hold my own, but when players on my team are making one kill for every 20 deaths (I kid you not, it happens) there's just no joy in it for me. I've been called a "tryhard", a girl (because of the name, you see), a "faggit" and a "noob" in Reach and the hilarious thing about it is that I'm several times better at the game than the people who are calling me those things or trash talking me after I die. I've been beaten fair and square in Reach plenty of times because players on the enemy team are better than me, but the number of times I've been beaten because they were playing against one or two decent players on my team and another 5 or 6 complete morons is just unfunny. Like I said, I try hard every single game. I've spent the past 7 months getting good enough at the game to have a Battle Proficiency Rating of 77 and a 1.57 KDR with over 20K kills and almost 20 medals per game. I literally make every single round that I fire in every game count. I'll shoot at a player on the other side of a map with a DMR if it means he can't aim straight and hit the member of my team he's aiming at. But all that is completely wasted when you're still getting "matchmade" with Corporals, Sergeants and Recruits on your team. I'm a Hero and with another 10K credits, I'll be a Legend, and yet the shitty matchmaking system still sees fit to consistently throw me into a game against Inheritors, Nobles and Reclaimers with a pack of morons who couldn't hit a barn door with the DMR. It's beyond a joke
Try playing Team Fortress 2 now, it's hopeless! Although things like Steam have allowed easy downloading of games, it's also allowed much younger people to buy said games without the needed approval, so most game servers are just an army of angry, rude children on mics.
In terms of playing with inferior players, that's a given though. There's bound to be a large majority who can't play well. What's amazing though is when you have people who whinge about losing when they don't contribute. Being a pretty consistent (and I daresay, decent if not pretty good BF3 player) it's amazing what we'll go though to avoid responsibility. I don't know it's just strange sometimes, online gaming isn't bad, but it sure does bring out quite a few of the bad sides of humanity. That said, TF2 is still pretty fun, but the skill ceiling is nowhere near as high as say classic Strike or some of the older Shooters. That said, it's a fun game, i just use the mute function. And I don't play much.. But back to BF3, I love it. There are times when it feels like you were robbed a victory purely because 30% of your team decided to sit back and snipe in a large map. It's angering to say the least. That said, I'm not the greatest shot nor am I good at controlling my recoil, but at the very least I'll fight tooth and nail over an objective.
