Thats why you dont play solo but find players who just like you. Then you know what you get into. When you play solo you already accepted you will end up with strangers who dont see the game as you do. Not everyone care to get better in a game mode that have no rewards other then exp and gold.
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'Real sports" are connected to contracts and bank account…you’re messing around with other peoples money and livelihoods and you’re going to find out if you are being bad and not giving it the 110% needed to win your matches.
Outside the HGC and w/e else they had, There’s no real stakes like that in HotS. And yes it sucks but it is what it is 
You don’t have to love or like it but you must accept it!
You’re posting to a community of millennial snowflakes who never had to put effort into anything. They won’t understand any of what you said, despite it all being correct.
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It depends.
Casual players might take it with a grain of salt if it’s ‘accidental’ griefing from say panic casting on an unfamiliar hero. Basic courtesy there is a simple apology like “soz, didn’t mean to” in chat so long as it doesn’t happen enough to indicate it’s actually intentional. I did have one particular game with a pro smurf or something that was troll-griefing to give the other team a handicap before turning things around, but that was actually indicated with chat (tongue-in-cheek humility) instead of not typing anything.
Similarly, select ‘funny’ moments allow momentary griefing; some get highlighted in the ‘wtf’ or ‘funny moment’ reels, but I see a few occasional games where a stitches/garrosh/anduin thinks dragging an ally down for a party death is funny, and same deal, if they have the courtesy to say as such in chat, then it is tolerable.
But otherwise, the upset player that feels offended, or predicts they’re already going to lose, or the ‘I’m protesting blizzard’ sorts tend to get reported and some times banned as people who want to play the game are here to play the game.
Shard down there has some 20 - 30 accounts at this point that get banned since he’s the sort that does intentionally throw games, and then blame anyone else for their conduct before trying to convince themselves that they’re the smart/skilled/whatever player despite their inability to get an account above 300.
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I have lots to say on this competitive analogy, which I’ve read since I’ve been on the forums, but I do agree with several posters to say comparing almost any esports to physical sports is a bad analogy.
First off, a player constantly correcting another player on the field is disruptive. A sport like soccer has practice so when a more experienced player suggests you do something different that is more productive.
This is also what coaches are for, they guide the team and take the heat when the team does poorly. They are leaders, please tell me how that works in a 20 minute game with random people, or even people they know.
Also, in any IRL sport, in a real game that means anything, players that criticize other players excessively are quickly disliked by the team. It is obnoxious and doesn’t help, and it just reveals their selfishness. I would 100% say that’s the same way in HoTs and other MOBAS.
I can and will go on with this, but I do agree with other posters in that there are huge gaps in connecting esports to physical sports, and a big misunderstanding in what is acceptable in the latter.
While I fully understand the opinions expressed and thank the participants, I’d like to remind you that my analogy with a real sport was mainly about the intentionality of the individuals, not about the group’s performance.
- Of course, a coached sports team will perform better overall than a group of 5 random players.
- Of course a basketball player isn’t going to troll on the court or risk getting mauled in the showers by his mates.
- Of course a sport will be better supervised with a referee on the field.
- Of course a sport, even at a low level, has more sporting/financial/cultural stakes than a HotS QM.
The only possible analogy is the individual who makes up the team, nobody forces him to come and play, so what does he owes ? (apart from behaving respectfully, which I think we can all agree on).
If you find the sports analogy unacceptable, we can try it with the world of work.
At work you are expected to do your best everyday and use your education to do the work the best possible way. Online games however is just a hobby. You cant expect people in online games to play to thier best everyday when its just a hobby.
You cant force people who come home from 8 hour work to do thier best in a videogame. They already tired and just want to do the game at thier own pace.
You need to figure that games is just a hobby for most people. Not everyone comes home and then have the energy to play competitive. Thats why you need to find people who are like yourself.
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I didn’t read your post because I already know what you’re saying, I used to think like this too.
But your analogy is flawed when comparing HotS to an organized/competitive sports team.
HotS is more like a PICKUP game of BASEBALL with kids/teens from the neighborhood. Some days you got a good crew that shows up and you have a good game, others your get stomped by one side having actual athletes who play on the local school AAA team. Other times… you ain’t got enough players, some ain’t even got mittens, you get what you get if you wanna play. I’ve played games with only 1 fielder a pitcher and first baser and back catcher who played on both teams and was just some kid’s dad that couldn’t do anything else but we were glad to have him and play!
In HotS, what you get is what you get from what the matchmaker has to work with, sometimes you ain’t got any tank/healer mains and everyone just wants to play damage, they CAN play other roles, but not as well as their mains, so when forced to flex, their skill may not match their current rank that they got by playing mostly their mains, hindering the team.
While sportsmanship is usually encouraged, unlike the kids from your neighborhood that you would see again, the people online are anonymous and don’t owe you anything, they were thrown in this game just like you were. What you get is what you get…
The only standard is whatever you get. Nobody chose to be in THIS or THAT specific game, they just wanna play! Getting frustrated won’t do you or anyone else any good, you can’t go and “unwaste” your time after the fact, complaining about what the reality of the quality of players who still play this game is equally absurd.
They tried to make the matchmaker find better games, but they complained about that too because games took an extra minute or two in queue. Unacceptable! cried the community. Top tier players could seldom find games because of the smaller pool of games they could be in.
Lastly, don’t even waste your time, sanity and efforts trying to “teach” people “how to play the right way”, you will just end up getting silenced and/or banned. You will also increase your chances of being trolled because you care so much… it makes you an easy target… To people who don’t have to give a damn about you or your time, efforts and sanity.
TL;DR: Deal with it, it is what it is. You just show up. Nothing is owed.
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If you had at least read the exchanges that followed, it would have saved you the effort of covering things already said about the comparison. But your opinion is welcome !
The real question is:
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It’s not even an amateur sports team. This game is the equivalent of a group of dads waking up on Saturday morning to play pickleball. The only responsibility is to grab some beers or mimosas after the game.
You whining about stuff means you get to sleep in Saturday since no one will invite you out to hear that garbage.
I see what you mean now
Yeah, millennial snowflakes only because they take a different position than you.
It’s one thing for a rando Nancy to drop in a thread to gibe as many people as possible, but that last post of yours effectively kills any credibility you had here.
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I assume it is because online games offer anonymity and teammates are unable to hold them responsible. It’s much the same how people act more rudely in situations where they can remain anonymous than when interacting with other people face to face.
I believe it comes down to the human brain having a difficult time associating text or character pixels on a screen as being an actual human being on the other end. Logically we know there’s another human on the other side, but we can easily dissociate from someone when none of our 5 senses can actually detect them.
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Pretty much. Being an anon on the internet makes some people think accountability dont exist. Hence why some people choose to be toxic and use words they would never use face to face.
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This is a video game. It’s perfectly ok if you have a competitive mindset, but expecting the same from your fellow players is misguided. One player may be more skilled than his teammates, but he’s just playing for fun, even if he’s tired or drunk. Another may be less capable, but always tries to give 100 percent. Nevertheless, they all play at the same level, they are all gold players or whatever for different reasons.
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Talking credibility with insults, I’ve seen more eloquent, even here. 
So when you start a game, you never expect anything from your future teammates? You just roll the dice and see what happens?
I doubt it, I know it sounds cool and wise to say “Let everyone do what they want” but we all have expectations, even if it’s just not to have a leaver, and some will set the bar lower than others.
anonymity dampens some of the unspoken accountability, but there’s a few other factors:
- the lack of direct contact reduces context clues people use for ascertaining meaning and tone, so in lacking those, people are more prone to different conclusions they’d have made otherwise.
- if people lack more in-person experience, they don’t develop much empathy for people that aren’t them, so they ‘care’ less about anything that doesn’t agree with them.
People have a different expectation of being ‘competitive’. I came from an aram of being ‘main tank’ dehaka, so in my next game, I left ‘tank’ to another player that had a dehaka option. They weren’t keen on being a ‘tank’ – something they complained about far later in the game instead of voicing concern at draft despite the only other option being arthas – so they decided to neglect taking ‘tanking’ talents (spell armor against mages in aram) and then complain that the game was going to be a bust, and they wanted to afk/quit/feed.
In their mind, they might think they were trying to be ‘competitive’ by picking a front-line hero, but there’s a lack of bushes and other lanes to build dehaka for much else aside from an anti-mage damage sponge. So, in their book, no one else taking something else for them to build – whatever – they had in mind was them being competitive, but to others, it looks like they were the one dropping the ball instead.
So the anti-social habits boil down to fault finding in thinking [they] were the ones that are ‘owed’ something because they put in a token gesture in the first place.
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I crave harmony in my matches, and people with ‘athletic’ mindsets often go around kicking hornets nests with little to show for it. The matchmaking system is already designed to sort the good from the bad, if we all play our way we’ll find our rightful place in the standings and be matched with the people we deserve, be they try-hards or casuals.
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I think I (and even we) have GB of replays that would prove otherwise. 
But I like your positivity !