SalamanderJoe said:
Anyway 'Reach Rant' over, still remember your first hate message on Xbox Live, PSN or Wii for that matter?
Sort of. But it's hard since I've had so many over the years. I've had people ***** me out about the most ridiculous things.
Examples:
1: I've had an innumerable number of people hate message me on Live and Steam when playing Left 4 Dead (1 & 2). Some ***** me out claiming I was aimbotting because I kept sniping them off of perches or through walls with the hunting rifle. Some were teammates who complained because I set off a crescendo instead of using an exploitative short-cut. I've even had an entire opposing team yell at me and claim I "sucked" because I didn't run in and attack them directly with a Tank. (note: they never got to use their moly on me)
2: For a while, I had hate messages from people when playing RTS games like StarCraft, Sins of a Solar Empire, or Halo Wars. My tactics are never the same when I play these sorts of games, and I often switch, while in the same game, between rushing (offensive) and turtling (defensive). As a result, when I play against others, especially those claiming their "immense skill" at the game, they often don't know how to attack me effectively or predict my next action. They call me a "scrub" or say I "got lucky" or cheated in some way. I always just tell them, "Maybe instead of bitching me out, you could try a different strategy once in a while."
3: There was one guy, back when I used to play Counter-Strike: Source often, that literally spent a solid 45 minutes to an hour yelling at me and the rest of our team for being scrubs. He pointed a large portion of his ire towards me. See, I often snipe in CS, but I prefer the scout to anything else. Every time I equipped one, though, he'd spend almost the whole round telling me how stupid and pathetic I was for not using the AWP. He'd go on tirades on how much better the AWP was and that if I had any kind of intelligence or skill, I'd use it instead. I almost left the server, but I had 3 friends in there with me and we thought it was funny how bad the guy actually was at the game and how he claimed the other team was hacking whenever he was killed. As if when he died, it was because they were cheating, but when the rest of our team died, it was because we sucked at the game.
Anyway, welcome to the wonderful, soul-eating, mind-numbing world of online gaming. The longer you play, and the better you get (whether or not you get openly cocky or pretentious) the more the hate will come pouring in. After a while, you get used to it and start to expect is as par for the course. The best way to deal with it is either ignore it or laugh it off as someone's pathetic attempt at trying to make up for their inadequacies.
