Casual Enjoyment vs The Ash Ketchum Approach?

[happyninja42]

I fall into Camp 1. I am definitely not the best at any game out there, and I don't give a shit. My enjoyment is the game itself, not in my ability to be better than others at something.

But that's how I am at pretty much anything. I don't really have a competitive streak in me. Conflict of just about any kind bothers me, as it tends to foster negative behavior more than anything else, particularly in the gaming community. So I tend to stick to single player games, or games where the human players are working cooperatively to beat the game. Games like Payday 2 for example.

The enjoyment of competitive gaming for me is seeing the game played at the penultimate level. I like being good because the fun to be had when you play well, while understanding everything, is immense. Beating other people is just the mechanism through which one hones their skill. In the end, the same love for the game that you described is at play there, just, a much more devoted one, willing to risk ones ego and worth ones free time and in some cases travel expenses.

I don't know how other genres and their playerbases are but 2D fighting games are like this.

That's fine. I understand the enjoyment of competition, I just don't personally share it. I've seen too many examples of it breeding toxic behavior and out-of-game hostility, that I prefer to just avoid it all together. The amount of annoyance/stress I get when those events do happen, sour any enjoyment I might get from participating.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I fall into Camp 1. I am definitely not the best at any game out there, and I don't give a shit. My enjoyment is the game itself, not in my ability to be better than others at something.

But that's how I am at pretty much anything. I don't really have a competitive streak in me. Conflict of just about any kind bothers me, as it tends to foster negative behavior more than anything else, particularly in the gaming community. So I tend to stick to single player games, or games where the human players are working cooperatively to beat the game. Games like Payday 2 for example.

The enjoyment of competitive gaming for me is seeing the game played at the penultimate level. I like being good because the fun to be had when you play well, while understanding everything, is immense. Beating other people is just the mechanism through which one hones their skill. In the end, the same love for the game that you described is at play there, just, a much more devoted one, willing to risk ones ego and worth ones free time and in some cases travel expenses.

I don't know how other genres and their playerbases are but 2D fighting games are like this.

That's fine. I understand the enjoyment of competition, I just don't personally share it. I've seen too many examples of it breeding toxic behavior and out-of-game hostility, that I prefer to just avoid it all together. The amount of annoyance/stress I get when those events do happen, sour any enjoyment I might get from participating.

Yeah those things do happen and you need to be the kind of person that finds salt amusing to a deree if you are good cause some people can't take their ego being hurt.

I was mainly responding to the bit about getting good being a thing you do just so you can be superior to other people. I bet a few people really do do that but, let me tell ya, that's a really inefficient approach if that's your only goal lol, just go get a job and buy a pricey car or something lol.

Most people get good just cause its that much more fun to play the game well.

 

[Sonmi]

I only strive to be the very best among my friend group. As long as I can lord over them with a smug sense of superiority, I am satisfied.

It gets really bad with games like Super Smash, though, where I apparently get absolutely insufferable (Which has ruined a date or two in the past)

Lets take the magical rainbow of Smash and remove all the pretty items and fun mechanics and just be two characters...woo...

Anything other than 2 Player No-Item Final Destination is a cancer in the body of Super Smash Bros and ought to be eradicated.

There are plenty of viable stages, though, it's far from limited to only Final Destination, which is now more of a counter-pick than anything else.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

One could make that argument in older smash games but 4 has an official final destination setting built into the game for netplay so nobody has a leg to stand on beingon the side of no items final destination being not the intended way to play the game any more.


Though I will say I find games where matchups change based on the stage somehow...offensive, be it throwable robots and cars or more platforms to run around with that bendfits the speedy chars. Alas, my cup of tea is 2D airdashers and I'm staying there.

 

[happyninja42]

I fall into Camp 1. I am definitely not the best at any game out there, and I don't give a shit. My enjoyment is the game itself, not in my ability to be better than others at something.

But that's how I am at pretty much anything. I don't really have a competitive streak in me. Conflict of just about any kind bothers me, as it tends to foster negative behavior more than anything else, particularly in the gaming community. So I tend to stick to single player games, or games where the human players are working cooperatively to beat the game. Games like Payday 2 for example.

The enjoyment of competitive gaming for me is seeing the game played at the penultimate level. I like being good because the fun to be had when you play well, while understanding everything, is immense. Beating other people is just the mechanism through which one hones their skill. In the end, the same love for the game that you described is at play there, just, a much more devoted one, willing to risk ones ego and worth ones free time and in some cases travel expenses.

I don't know how other genres and their playerbases are but 2D fighting games are like this.

That's fine. I understand the enjoyment of competition, I just don't personally share it. I've seen too many examples of it breeding toxic behavior and out-of-game hostility, that I prefer to just avoid it all together. The amount of annoyance/stress I get when those events do happen, sour any enjoyment I might get from participating.

Yeah those things do happen and you need to be the kind of person that finds salt amusing to a deree if you are good cause some people can't take their ego being hurt.

I was mainly responding to the bit about getting good being a thing you do just so you can be superior to other people. I bet a few people really do do that but, let me tell ya, that's a really inefficient approach if that's your only goal lol, just go get a job and buy a pricey car or something lol.

Most people get good just cause its that much more fun to play the game well.

Well, the OP worded it as "I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!". Which does imply a drive to be superior to the other competitors. But I get what you mean. And to be honest, I don't 100% avoid competitive games, but they are an EXTREMELY small percentage of games that I play. In fact, the only game I am currently playing that involves player vs player is SMITE, and I play that very casually, like 1-2 matches a day if that, mostly just to get the daily bonus. Currently I've encountered very little salt in that game, which is why I'm still playing it. But if I get the level of salty dogs that I recall from my time playing LoL, yeah that's the day I stop playing.

 

[wings012]

A solely singleplayer game has a lot less pressure to be good. Just enjoy it as you will. Turn up or down the difficulty as you see fit.

Multiplayer gaming in essence requires you to git gud, or you'll be getting your shit pushed in and that tends to not be very fun unless you're masochistic. Even cooperative multiplayer gaming requires you to do your part. Whereas in some games its not too big an issue, like Halo where your buddy can just fall back and respawn you, a member flappin' about uselessly in Vermintide is not going to end well for everybody.

Dark Souls is kinda the weird opposite. You gotta git gud to solo but you can active EZ mode by summoning people. Though the odd red phantom just mess with you every now and then.

I try to enjoy things casually, it's probably better for my mood and heart. But my personality tends to gravitate towards gitting gud to a certain extent and I get very frustrated if shit doesn't go my way. Kinda why I stopped playing HoTS. I don't really wanna play it without my friends but I got one friend who is a total chucklefuck and always ruins our teamwork.

 

[EHKOS]

Well, whenever I have a stroke and decide to buy one of the Black Ops games, I'm usually a decent player and I'm fine with that. I really don't want to aim for the top of the leaderboard every match, be that one guy who racks up 30 kills and 2 deaths, and pops killstreaks like they're going out of style.

I recently got done playing Burning Blood for a while and I put so much work into being a good player. I tried as hard as I could, and hit A3 before conceding B3/C2 was where I belong at my skill level. But I wanted to hit that S rank so bad. But that game is seriously broken for online, and the recent patch kind of shook things up a little too much.

But normally I don't play multiplayer games. I used to play TF2 a lot just when it started getting hatty, and I got to be a good sniper. Then, suddenly, all my skill evaporated and I started to suck really bad. So I quit. I realized there wasn't really a point, no matter how many times you helped your team win, it didn't amount to anything and you could play infinitely. That really took the wind out of my sails so I don't play multiplayer shooters anymore.

 

[Zeras]

I'll probably be echoing alot of the responses here, but I really don't like to play PvP/PvE multiplayer games; the majority of the games I own are single player RPG/ story-laden FrstPrsnShtrs. The only games that had multiplayer that I liked to play were/are Super Smash Bros. (and sequels), Halo: Reach and Halo 4 (the cooperative modes) and Mass Effect 3 multiplayer (before I got a pretty good - in my eyes - readiness score for SP) since I do like working with people for a common goal, even when I might not be as good as everyone else playing.

I also don't like the competitive nature of multiplayer, since it seems to bring out the ugly in people who apparently take too much time out of their day to insult other people who get lucky and make them lose - it's a game people!