ScarecrowES, on 14 February 2016 - 01:11 PM, said:
You post strays as close to the overall tone I've been hoping to hold this conversation to. Unfortunately, I've had to be on the "jerk" side of the argument in order to hold it there, but I think you've expressed it well enough.
In the end, every player should get to enjoy the game. However, as you've expressed, no single player has the right to exercise his or her own enjoyment to the detriment of others. This is a point I've been trying to maintain throughout all off this.
A certain balance is always maintained in a community for the particular needs of each individual and the community as a whole. When that balance is not maintained, there will be conflict. Obviously, by the fact that the OP is the subject of conflict during matches, he's obviously found himself on the wrong side of that balance. And it's very easy to see why. In this case, he's put his own enjoyment ahead of the enjoyment of the other 11 members of his team by not being an equal contributor. And the community, in this case his team, has taken action to try to restore that balance.
As you say, both sides have a right to have their say, but clearly only one side is at fault here.
I'd tend to disagree. What is most wrong here is not his sense of enjoyment or the sense of enjoyment of the other members of his team, what is wrong here is that while he has chosen to express his dissent in a more positive manner (explaining himself, his reasoning, and his process), he has done so because he has experienced, consistently, others expressing their disapproval in a nonconstructive manner (insults and degradation rather than offers for assistance, questions, or reasoned arguments).
Further, I'd like to restate one of my main points-
no player nor group of players has the right to decide whether or not others get to experience the game in an enjoyable fashion.
It doesn't matter how many of them and how many of him there are. This is not a thing we can base on quantity.
I'd like to emphasise this,
reasonably, which is to say, 'in a reasonable fashion', not 'in a morally good fashion', not 'in an orderly fashion', not 'in a just fashion'.
Reasonably, he cannot be expected to change a build that has worked for him and continues to work for him to something radically different in a single step just because someone else's sense of fun doesn't match his. If he's continuing to experience positive results (insults and yelling aside), it would be unreasonable to expect him to change his actions, particularly if they currently bring him enjoyment. It would be especially unreasonable to expect him to
stop having fun because of this disagreement, just as it would be especially unreasonable for those players who hate his build to start
liking it because he does.
Is he using his Atlas to the pinnacle of performance? Beats the hell out of me. I don't know what his decision making process is once the match starts, I don't know his reflexes and aim, I don't know his precise loadout, I don't know what teammates and enemies he typically sees, I don't know what his actual typical battlefield effectiveness is (and if anyone insists that it can be measured by damage numbers alone, I'm going to have to disagree about that quite strongly).
Is he
wrong for using it in a way that many others don't? No.
Is he
wrong for wanting to be allowed to develop his build in his own way at his own pace? No.
Part of the problem here is the question of
what is 'trying to win'? More specifically,
how do we quantify it and measure it against fun?
This being a team-based competitive game, it would be unreasonable of him not to try to win. However, it is unreasonable to expect that every player using an Atlas should try to win the exact same way, to say nothing of every player playing the game.
Frankly, from here, it only gets ontological.
At any rate, I.... what was my point? Oh, right.
He's not wrong for trying to play differently. They're not wrong for trying to play the same. However, deciding that he is
wrong and
bad and
disallowed from fun is unreasonable, and at best morally questionable.