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In large part due to the horrible miscarriage of conversation in this thread right here (and because that thread moves at lightning speed and I've long since lost track of it), I’m going to engage in a fruitless endeavor here and try to bridge the gap in viewpoints between the two sides that have once again arisen in this debate (‘scrubs’ vs. ‘tryhards’), since it is also my firm belief that a fundamental break in understanding is responsible for not only the vitriol in Heim’s thread, but for much of the vitriol between Scrubs and Tryhards everywhere.
First of all, a highly, highly relevant pair of articles:
Timmy, Jonny, Spike
TVTropes on Player Archetypes (pursuant to TJS, above)
Read those. They’re important.
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Back? Good.
Now. The reason you read all that is because there is no such thing as a scrub, and no such thing as a tryhard. What you’re talking about are Timmies and Spikes respectively, and the reason these two can never see eye to eye is because they want completely different things out of the game. I'm going to tell you what those things are, try and break down what each side is actually trying to get out of any given match of MWO, and then maybe - just maybe - we can start moving beyond Scrubs and Tryhards and get to the work of actually helping to fix the game?
The Competitive View: Spikes in MWO
Players like Heim, Adiuvo, and literally everyone else in the RHoD tournament are primarily Spikes. They’re in the game to win it – not because they hate fun, hate originality, and hate you, but because to a Spike, the most satisfying portion of the game – the best and most entertaining fun – is to demonstrate mastery. They want to be the very best, like no one ever was.
A Spike does not have any real emotional attachment to or personal investment in his ‘Mechs, the way a Timmy or Jonny does. They’re tools to Spike, a means by which the real important part of the game – his own personal skill, knowledge, and ability, and the combined talent of the team he surrounds himself with – can be put to the test. Spikes buy the Dragon Slayer because it’s an optimal chassis – they didn’t give it a cool name when they bought it, and they didn’t bother with zippy colors to put on it either. The ‘Mech is unimportant save as a means by which the player’s mastery of the game can be demonstrated – it’s why you hear ultracomp-bracket players talk about specific pilots in their games rather than specific ‘Mech designs or weapon systems. In their section of the game, what you play is not even remotely important. It’s who you play, both with and against, how good they are, and what that says about your own talents and abilities.
A Spike can’t put away the poptarts and run ‘what’s fun’ any more than a Timmy can put away his mixed-armaments Battlemaster and run ‘what’s good’ – to a Spike, a ‘Mech such as a 6xSL, 1xLL, AC/10, LRM-5 Battlemaster interferes tremendously with his own abilities and denies him the chance to show how good he is. It’s not fun to pilot a poorly optimized ‘Mech. He’s better than you are in such a ‘Mech, but being better than his opponent is only really tangentially important to most Spikes. They want to be the best they can be, and to do that they use the best tools the game gives them and fight the best opponents they can turn up. Anything less, and there’s just no point to it, no improvement, no mastery.
Spikes exist at all skill levels, but the ones at the top catch a lot of flak in many online games because their in-it-to-win-it nature, by necessity, makes them rather insular – you don’t see top-end Spikes in the general game population because there’s nothing of interest to them in the general game population. They’re divorced from the issues of the so-called ‘Steering Wheel Underhive’ (nice one by the way, ultracomp guys – what a great way to ensure that everyone else hates you even more than they already do), and tend to see the problems or issues of the general populace as petty and significantly less important than they’re made out to be.
These are the proponents of top-down balance, and they don’t particularly care if the play experience on the way to the top is fun or not or if the game has any kind of new player retention, training, or tutorials. In the eyes of an ultracomp Spike, nothing matters beneath the highest levels of competition. If you’re not playing to win, and to be the best you can be, then it shouldn’t matter to you what you’re using or how good it is/isn’t. Play whatever you like, do however you do in it, and let the game do whatever. If you don’t like it, there’s a solution already built into the game, and that solution is Git Gud, Son. If you don’t want to Git Gud, then there’s no reason the game should pander to your badness – you already have all the tools you need to deal with your problem yourself, why should the devs compromise top-level performance for you?
Party Night: Timmies in MWO
Now for the other side of things. Nothing drives a Spike crazy faster than trying to argue with a Timmy (as you’ve no doubt noticed, just a time or two, here on the forums), because the Timmy doesn’t care about the Spike’s demonstrated mastery of the game. A Timmy does not give the remotest flap that the House of Lords won the Beta Invitiational. The rankings, leaderboards and other competitive standings tools that Spikes use to measure themselves against their peers are all so much smoke to Timmies. They don’t care, they can’t care. It’s not in their make-up to bother with all that stuff, because that stuff isn’t part of the game to them.
A Timmy’s in the game for the experience of it. He’s in it for the AWESOME. They’re in the game for that one match in twenty where all the stars align and that crazy Battlemaster I laid out above goes hog-wild and pulls down 600 damage and four kills, because that is by God a match to remember! Timmies put lines in their signature commemorating that game where they were in a legged Cicada and yet still managed to kill two Cataphracts and a Stalker before losing to base cap (I’m a Jonny/Spike rather than a Timmy, but c’mon – we all have a little Timmy in us somewhere, right next to our Captain). Timmy is in the game to play the game – he wants to take his big stompy robot out and shoot at other people’s big stompy robots, he wants to laugh and BS with his friends while he does it, and he may very well have a drink or two at his side when he’s at it.
A Timmy’s ‘Mechs are his buddies. They’re good friends he’s had good times with; he has stories for each of them. They have snazzy paint jobs, awesome names, and the thought of selling one is usually pretty painful for a Timmy once he’s decided he likes a given ‘Mech. He wants his ‘Mechs to have personality, character, and most of all he wants them to be AWESOME, because AWESOME matches can only be had in AWESOME ‘Mechs. Whether or not they’re actual Awesomes is another story – but Timmies are the most likely candidates for the cockpits of any Awesomes out there, because c’mon, let’s face it – how can it not be awesome if it’s literally named the Awesome?!
Timmies can and do chime in on gameplay balance, to the eternal frustration of Spikes, because a 12-2 rollover is not awesome, regardless of which side of it the Timmy’s on. If something is way out of whack, to the point where it’s ruining matches and making it difficult for Timmy to find those matches where he can do his thing and enjoy the thrill of a really awesome game, then he’s going to go and try to get the devs to fix it so he can get back to finding the awesome. ‘Gitting Gud’ is not a solution for Timmy, because Gitting Gud is not awesome. In a Timmy’s eyes, any two-bit jackwad can slap two PPCs and two AC/5s on a Dragon Slayer and Git Gud – but winning matches that way is boring as snot and completely not worth the Timmy’s time, money, and effort.
Timmies, obviously, don’t care about balance at the highest levels. They don’t necessarily want to impede it, just as Spikes don’t actively want to impede the lower-level play experience, but if the game is a torturous slog to play up until one Gits Gud, then the game has nothing to offer Timmy and he’ll leave. The public queue play experience is all Timmy cares about – the ultracomp leagues aren’t even worth watching or paying attention to. If he wants to watch a bunch of mechanical pogo sticks jump out of boxes and try to potshot each other to death, he’ll drag two Whack-A-Mole machines next to each other and give them Nerf guns.
To put it in the most succinct, oversimplified TL;DR manner as possible: Spikes don’t remember/care about the match, they remember the result of that match, because the result is what proves the capabilities of the players therein. Timmies don’t remember/care about the result of a match, they remember the match itself. Because it was awesome.
Man in the Middle: Jonnies in MWO
This section is going to be shorter, because the Jonnies are much easier to explain and also because they’re often the mediators between Timmies and Spikes, since a Jonny is in many ways a blending of the Timmy and Spike mentalities. And also because they’re not really important to the discussion at hand, but damnit I’ma write it anyways.
A Spike wishes to demonstrate mastery. A Timmy wishes to find the AWESOME. A Jonny, on the other hand, wishes to demonstrate mastery of AWESOME. We’re the schmucks going out there in Dragons trying to buttstab you to death, the schlamiles in 385XL Victors with AC/20s (pre-Giganerf, anyways) doing the same thing we did in Dragons but with more armor and jump jets. We’re the ones trying to get Spike to stop lobbying for kill-it-now Timber Wolf nerfs because the Timber Wolf is one of the most insanely versatile ‘Mechs in existence, and thus a perfect tool for Jonny. Jonnies take meta chassis and give them non-meta armaments, or take non-meta chassis and try unique, nearly-but-not-quite meta armaments on them, because a Jonny’s desire is to win with style.
Winning with the bog-standard ultracomp meta Dragon Slayer is no win at all for a Jonny. Our ‘Mechs are pieces of ourselves – the ‘Mechlab is our real test, beating the meta is our cause. Koniving is likely the most well-known Jonny on the board – he has ALL the ‘Mechs, and he’s constantly looking for new ways to use bad ‘Mechs in new, surprisingly good ways. And then making videos of it. To put it simply, a Jonny is one who is inclined to try and Git Gud, but on his terms rather than the metas. Some players end up seeing Jonny-type players as the champions of both the Timmy and the Spike causes – Timmies see Jonnies as Crusaders For Justice, spitting in the meta’s eye and winning games regardless of the fact that they’re using so-called ‘terribad builds’ (we don’t, actually – or at least not with any expectation of success. We’re just more flexible in how we define success than a Spike, and more willing to accept a loss provided we learn from it), while Spikes see (top-end) Jonnies as the guys who create the meta in the first place. Somebody has to conceive the top-end meta builds in the first place, and it’s usually the rare ultracomp Jonny/Spike who does so.
NOW.
Why did you just read three and a half pages of this crap?
Because Timmy can’t solve Spike’s problems, Spike can’t solve Timmy’s, and both sets of problems are equally valid. Neither side can truly grok the other’s desires; each can only see what the behaviors of the other mean to someone on their own side of the game. To a Spike, Timmies are Scrubs – a bunch of no-talent idjits with no skill, no understanding, and no basis for opinion. The Timmy’s issues don’t matter to the real point of the game, and half his problems could be solved by simply Gitting Gud.
And to a Timmy, Spikes are Tryhards – those puffed-up, full-of-themselves jerkbags who’re constantly, constantly, constantly trying to take the AWESOME out of the game. They have no appreciation for the wild, glorious chaos of a truly AWESOME match, and if they bring up their tournament history one more time as some weak, misguided justification for trying to de-AWESOME the game Timmy’s going to punch him straight in the dong.
What you all need to do is remember that people are fundamentally different. There are no such things as scrubs, and no such things as tryhards. Try to see any issue you’re weighing in on from the viewpoint of all sides, and if you can’t do that, then at least remember that there are other viewpoints beyond your own, and the guys who see from them are your fellow MWO players as much as anyone else is.
Well. Unless the guy’s one of those N.O.P.E. hipsters. In that case, let ‘em have it, Charlie.
*has discovered that the MWO forum administrators are bassholes who've disabled the ability to reserve the first post after the OP for additional clarifications/comments down the line. Stop merging my posts, you jerks!*
Edited by 1453 R, 24 June 2014 - 01:24 PM.
