Apparently I'm not done talking about multiplayer, because shortly after posting about how obsessively competitive players might need to take a chill pill every so often something happened that illustrated my point exactly. I've been getting more and more in the ME3 multiplayer, mostly because I'm too broke to buy any new games. So I've been sucking less and less over time, getting used to different classes, etc.
Alright, here's the scene. Its midway through the round, about the 5th wave or so, and I got mobbed by a bunch of Cerberus troops. I go into desperate survival freakout mode and start blasting and Incinerating anything in sight, trying desperately to get to cover. I'm pretty sure I was playing an Engineer. So I finally kill enough guys to get some breathing in when I notice another one off to my right. All of a sudden my brain was screaming "GAH! I'm gonna die! Quick, kill that dude!"
So I blasted him in the face and he went down. It was then I noticed that one of my teammates had been about to finish him off with a melee or something. Whoops. In the heat of battle, I had stolen his kill. I felt a little bad, but chagrin immediately gave way to incredulous giggling when the guy followed me until the next wave started in order to constantly shoot me in the head. Wow, guy who's handle I don't remember but it was probably moronic, are we twelve? Ok, maybe he was twelve - in which case I should write to his parents. This is an M-rated game, after all.
The thing that made me really laugh at this whole thing is that in ME3MP, your kill count does not matter in the grand scheme. There's a tally at the end of the round of who got the most "points" or whatever, but other than the three other internet strangers in the round, no one will ever see it. The only thing that affects your position on the leaderboards (if that's a kind of thing you care about) is your N7 rating, which only keeps track of how much you play. You could literally run around the map and not shoot anything and get your N7 rating up to 1000 - although that doesn't sound like much fun and the rest of the team would probably kick you. But still, you see my point? Someone got so mad about losing a kill that doesn't matter that they were compelled to impotently use ammo to vent their frustration on a stranger's avatar. And all this is taking place in a fake reality.
When I was a freshman in college, a bunch of us went out to play mini-golf. Mini-golf is another sport that I suck at, and now that I think about it I am really lucky I'm not a competitive person because I would have had a rage aneurysm long ago. As long as I'm having fun, I don't care if I'm losing. In fact, if I'm really in the sucking zone I just start laughing and congratulating my opponents on the complete and utter desolation they have wrought upon my head. Anyways, one of the girls in our mini-golfing group was the polar opposite of this mindset - she had to win. It didn't help that there was a guy there she was totally in love with and so was determined to wipe the floor with him. I know, you would think the whole "If I beat him up in the playground, maybe he'll like me" mentality died in third grade. Nay. This girl was frothing with rage halfway through the game, and at one point threw her club on the ground and stomped her foot. Yes, we were all over 18 and considered to be adults. She wasn't even losing - that would be me. I actually ricocheted my ball off a castle turret at one point. She just wasn't in first. These kinds of people are no fun to play with.
So perhaps I should amend my statement about having no problem with players being competitive. Competition is fine, but please have a sense of sportsmanship and remember that its only a game. And to guy who kept shooting me in the head, I'm sorry I stole your kill. Sort of. Not really. Yes, its a little frustrating when you wear down a Brute and someone else takes the last shot to take it down, but this was a low-level soldier. He dies in two hits for cryin' out loud. There's plenty of them to go around. Change your tampon and lets kill an Atlas or something.
Alright, I think I'm done.
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