Anti-social behavior of the majority of the playerbase

General Discussion
1

I rarely post or follow forums, but I just wanted to make this to hopefully gain some understanding as to why most players in Storm League (Currently Diamond 4) and under are so bad at communicating online.

Here are the typical behaviors I have encountered from my journey of ~2 years playing Storm League/Ranked:

The mysterious Drafter - This player says nothing in draft and shows no picks until there is 1 second left in the draft, making sure we either don;t have a crucial role or someone panics and tries to fill and we end up with 2 healers or no solo laner, etc.

The One Who Knows Everything - This player will criticize everyone who is not using “THE” optimal build on a hero (according to his superior knowledge), he never admits he is wrong, belittles the entire team, calls them trash and sometimes becomes toxic and abusive, always doubling down on the fact that he is better than you. This guy typically types out entire paragraphs in chat during game and in draft. This guy is also always “on a smurf” and “his main is GM”.

The Team Captain - This guy tries to command and order others around. Pings excessively (spamming), he shotcalls and leads, but gets very angry when either they lose a fight or someone dares to disobey his orders.

The Cheerleader - This person, no matter what, tries to stay positive and completely ignores the fact that SOMETHING is wrong on our team, causing us to be losing hard and triggering some more serious players. They will usually say something like: “We can still come back, don’t give up guys!” (Meanwhile we are 4 levels down and we have an Ai). This person, is a sweetheart, but completely oblivious to the actual mental state of the other players.

The “MVP” - This guy says nothing in game, always goes off to solo camps, split push, never shows up for objective and does not communicate to his team what he is thinking (He knows how to win and he can do it without you). He stat pads all day, never takes a risk where he can die (and not get MVP), he usually gets the MVP award whether his team wins or loses, but in his mind, he won.

"Not this guy again" - The player who is hard tilted and just having a bad day. He sees someone from his last team (that lost) in his next game and immediately calls GG and is still whining and complaining about the last game. This causes his tilt to attach itself to the new teammates and creates chaos on the team and usually leads to a fast loss.

The “It’s not me, it’s you” Player - This player has the equivalent comeback of a 5 year old’s “I know you are but what am I?”. When called out on a bad play, this player will immediately attempt to shift the blame onto the person calling him/her out.

  • Example:

    • Billy: You just lost us the game on that solo camp steal attempt, now it’s 4v5, they have level 20 and obj pushing.
    • Bobby: ACTUALLY, you have 5 deaths, it’s your fault!

These are some examples that I see way too often, people who just cannot grasp how to properly and effectively communicate with their teams to have a better chance to win the game by having us all work together towards a common goal.

I left out trolls and pure toxic players as those are in a category of their own.

I also get it, some people burn out easily or are naturally introverted and it shows in their communication skills online. However, they almost always fall in one of these types of behaviors.

What other types of behaviors have you all noticed, are they more prevalent in certain ranks or game modes?

10 Likes
2

Working on a team is a learned skill.
Too bad society at large encourage soloist attitude.

11 Likes
3

I think it’s a mix of poor communication skills, the nature of the internet anonymity effect, selfishness and a disregard for others. But how can this be avoided or mended in some way?

Think of the ratio between people admitting they were wrong and doubling down…

1 Like
4

I think there always has to be one captain who do the calls and it should always be the tank.

If you cant follow the tank and you dont listen to his calls, you shouldnt be in diamond.

6 Likes
5

Haha, I enjoyed your breakdowns.

I hate cheerleaders the most probably, or rather a subcategory of cheer leader. The ones that have that fake and unconstructive positivity, and when you call it out, they get more angry about people talking than the actual thing that caused the talking in the first place.

I’d rather argue with somebody I disagree with that has a point of view instead of somebody who gets triggered at any hint of conflict, and deluding themselves that problems will go away by themselves if we just act like Stepford Wives and pretend everything is fine, as if talking is why we’re losing as if that caused us to go back in time to make somebody not come to an important objective fight.

I feel like low diamond is the worst though. You’re high enough where you don’t completely suck, but still not really good enough to know what you’re really talking about half the times. So, it’s this weird mish mash of players who are sometimes right some of the times but who think they always are.

1 Like
6

Agreed, however, you need to be a good leader and not blame the team when your plan fails. I’ve seen this scenario too often. Tank makes a bad boss call, makes us lose the game, then blames the team for whatever to shift the blame away from his bad call. Similar to the “It’s not me it’s you” player.

This game is so dynamic, that I find that anyone (even GM#1) that claims they know the best no matter what, are so delusional. They are even unwilling to accept the POSSIBILITY that they are not correct. When I argue with anyone, I ask them this : “Do you agree that it is possible that you are wrong and that I might change your mind with a rational, logical and objective argument?” Some people actually say NO to that, I don’t bother arguing, they are just going to double down until I give up and go on believing in their own superiority.

7

A very large chunk of the player base are also teenagers or underaged kids.

Something to keep in mind while you roll your eyes at them.
(Their behavior is inexcusable, but it is stereotypical of most people that age online).

3 Likes
8

Either the tank or someone on coms with the tank.

2 Likes
9

Tank should shotcall ~95% of the time and initiate fights, other 5% is any other role or hero who is being played by a super high MMR (like a GM leading a diamond team for some reason). The arbitrary 5% just because it happens fairly rarely.

Assassin can and probably should shotcall if he is a ton higher MMR than teammates.

4 Likes
10

So you agree that anti-social behaviors are becoming more and more prevalent in today’s society? Maybe I’m just an older gamer in his early 30s, but I don’t remember ever being this way when I was 12-18 years old. Nor do I remember others being this way. The internet and anonymity truly ruined younger people’s communication skills.

Here’s another thing, 90% of all games, nobody is on voice… I’m always on there myself.

I don’t disagree, but if the tank makes a mistake, he should not blame his team and accept the fact that he made a bad call.

2 Likes
11

I don’t think that’s the case for HOTS. The only reason HOTS exists is because it’s a game built on nostalgia and there’s a large enough history. You only connect with these characters because you’ve already played them in some form. I think a majority of players are not teenagers, just not great communicators lol.

1 Like
12

In society, in general? Yes, but not online. I can’t remember any period where people were mostly civil in online games. Not a single genre or game. Most people were always rude, at least for the ~15 years I played games online.

Interestingly FPS games seem to have good sports who even “gg” the enemy vast majority of the time. They do flame but mostly allies on voice chat. And as usual, the voice chat flamers sound very young.

13

Youth are being socialized in a very different world than people of my age were and it shows. I find most are very cowardly (lack of self confidence?) and lack leadership skills. They also have inflated egos and sometimes refuse to do something just because it was not “their” idea first, so they do the complete opposite.

2 Likes
14

I agree with this. Though i will say that if you have someone literally afk or feed its pretty justifiable to say gg when you get in game with them again. There’s just nothing you can do at that point because feeding is such an irrational decision that it comes from a horrible human being.

Again if i tell you to retreat and you engage/die im going to be angry. If you don’t push with a level 20 boss and try for camps in a close game im going to be angry. Its a team game. If you dont work with your team you’re just being selfish. To be clear angry is “what a throw” or “jesus stop feeding and listen to my pings or in the worst of cases “stop shotcalling youve had 10 deaths this game and clearly have no idea what you’re doing, not insults against their person.

3 Likes
15

You also miss the fact this game draws in a ton of aspergers and angry antisocials who do not represent the average person.

You are about 100 times more likely to meet a mentally stable team player in NHL or FIFA online than in a Moba.

Hots and Lol draw in some of the worst people from the anime community as well, I don’t know why but it just does. They are insensitive, very angry, hostile and not very smart.

Just so you know, I have autism so I am not using the “spectrum” as an insult here. I just don’t like a lot of people who are similar to me because they give everyone else a bad name.

I am 24, started hots at 19 and have gone to great lenghts to try to improve my social sensitivity and team skills.

I think I am barely just now (after 5 years of playing) becoming an acceptable teammate who can take criticism and wants to legitimately learn from better players. But I have barely ever met other non-neurotypicals like me, who want to improve their social skills. They rather revel in hate of “normies” and want to remain hostile.

5 Likes
16

Being angry is one thing, my issue is with people being unable to self criticize and accept blame.

I thought about this for awhile and I think you are correct, many players must have some form of mild autism to behave this way.

I have much respect for you. Thanks for sharing!

4 Likes
17

“Everybody on the internet is very concerned with anything but themselves and looks a lot like a bunch of vicious cycle projection.”

Yeah. Why? The problem is there is no one reason, just one platform (internet) with one reasonably accessible outlet (chat/comment sections).

The rest, as they say, is suffering.

The best thing we can do is simply let it roll off of us. I’ve known some people to have very deep set reasons to play games, and while we may have one view of that, forcing that shoe on all feet usually exacerbates the problems. If nothing else, to simply cede that we may not understand their point of view but that that doesn’t make it invalid, can be a deeply important move.

Just a shoutout to the non-neurotypicals who do their best to meet everyone in the middle. Let’s all work to be just a little better than we were yesterday.

18

Lol, I just played a game with an Illidan that did nothing but complain that he was a GOD (ended with 26k damage and 11 deaths and blamed the team for the loss. In his mind, “DID YOU WIN THE LAST 4 games” means that he is good and it’s everyone ELSE BUT HIM who is bad. I can’t even make this BS up! He always died 1v4 or 1v5 and was clearly mechanically unskilled and did not understand his hero’s limits.

This is probably an example of Autism in the gaming community? Or just a typical young player with no social skills who was raised by bad parents? Or is it a BITTER, angry, outcast of society lashing out at the world? Or all 3?

19

Grant people anonymity and tell them they aren’t responsible for their actions, and you will see how much of jerks people can really be.

That’s the case with this. Anonymous cause online game, not responsible for actions cause it’s a team game (not really, but that’s why team games have it worse usually).

Nothing about mental illness, possibly bad parenting. People are generally ‘nicer’ in real life because being a jerk can lead to real consequences.

5 Likes
20

Nobody uses the poor blizzard voice chat ofc. I mesh on discord