SupCom etiquette
Have you ever been playing a really fun game of SupCom online, having a great time of smashing through your enemies, when, out of the blue, your opponent begins cursing at you? Surely, this has happened at least once to pretty much everyone who has any experience online.
Actually, I have noticed something pretty interesting about this behavior. If you play on the ranked 1v1 ladder against opponents ranked in the thousands, it happens constantly. My roommate, who plays lots of games at this level, is constantly reporting incidents like this to me. He claims that his opponents insult him more often than not when he wins a game. On the other hand, I personally can’t remember the last ranked match where my opponent said anything insulting or offensive.
My explanation for this is that almost all of the people I play are highly ranked. It makes sense that these players (who usually have played many more matches than lower ranked people) would be less prone to rash behavior than newer players. Also, people with a high ranking might feel like they have a bit of a reputation to uphold. I know I personally would be quite embarrassed if anything unsportsmanlike were said under my account.
Do you have any experiences with rude or insulting behavior in SupCom matches? Do you think that SupCom has more or less of a problem with this than other games? In this poll, we found that only 11% of our readers (plus or minus about 7% for statistical uncertainty) are under 18. If this holds for the (multiplayer) community at large, it would mean that SupCom indeed has an older user base than most games.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I’ve only had one incident of unsportsmanlike conduct recently. Unfortunately, it was at just the wrong time.
By the way, I’ve seen that people are much nicer in general in custom games. I guess when there’s nothing riding on it the gameplay is more casual and nobody feels like being a jerk? On the other hand, really annoying disconnections are a lot more common in custom games.
April 21st, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Cyde Weys: I find almost the opposite is true… In custom games I get called a noob for everything people do not understand the importance of tech 1 control and thus try to tech up then whine and moan when you’re in there base overcharging there factorys…. /rant
April 21st, 2007 at 7:16 pm
I’m with wuped. I have more trouble with custom game by a long shot. People kick me out of rooms 75% of the time with no explanation. It’d be nice if they’d just say something simple like “Sorry, bad ping” or “Sorry, we’re full” and then kick you but rarely do you get that courtesy. I’ve had lots moan and whine in customs too and the silly thing is there’s nothing at stake anyway.
By and large ranked games have been fine. I’ve had lots of post match breakdown chats with people who i’ve beaten, or who’ve beaten me. Most opponents are happy to answer any questions I have. I think the motivator for alot of high ranked players is a certain level of status, so they aren’t going to sully their name by acting like a prick.
I usually curse and grouch if I lose a game. But I don’t do it out of hostility. It’s not directed at the other person. It’s just venting frustration. In every case the other player just laughs.
I used to work in debt collection so I’m pretty ambivalent about someone calling me an asshole anyway. The anomnity of the internet lends itself to that kind of thing, although I think it’s improving alot since it went mainstream in the mid 90’s. Like they say, don’t feed the trolls. If someone is attacking you it’s not personal. It could have been anybody who beat them today. In an ideal world everybody would be civil to each other. But that’d be pretty dull. Most of us are in a work, or school or somewhere we can’t speak our mind most of the time. I have my own personal etiquette I try and follow but there’s little point in trying to impose my model on everybody else. Might as well take people as they and develop a thicker skin, or learn to laugh about it.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I agree with the other posts, I’ve hardly had any trouble in ranked matches. I think bad teammates are often more annoying than a bad enemy as they’ll constantly complain that you’re not keeping up, not teching early enough, teching too soon…
April 21st, 2007 at 10:27 pm
heres a question for you cyde (notice how i didnt say clyde woohoo) why dont you start a poll for the most friendly online game community…because dawn of war is really really bad (all people say is “your mum” and “your gay” and just spam stuff like “2v2 join now” it is so so bad…) so is WC3 …so far supcom has the best most intelligent chat/community ive ever seen
April 21st, 2007 at 11:23 pm
On the note of the online community, I saw something that really scared me today on the SupCom official forums. Someone made a Supcom version of “Banlist”, the WC3/DotA program that automatically bans people from games if their IP matches one from either the user’s or the global “banlist”. Since Banlist was, in my opinion, one of the many factors that lead to the DotA community being one of the worst game communities, I really hope this doesn’t spread.
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:33 am
It wasn’t so much an incident of me being insulted, but just rude behaviour all around.
A player, battlescar (i name names so people are aware of players prior behaviour and to be ready for them to pull some stupid crap) kept rejoining my game after i kicked him for demanding someone else be kicked. My friend and i wanted to play so i let him stay after his second rejoin.
An unexpected early rush from both opponents had me crippled and the game was in their hands until i started fighting back and my friend pressed his advantage, setting up a firebase outside battlescars. Every attack was met with ‘cute’ from him (while being anything but cute, it was doing real damage to his base). Just before my friend was about to launch his final assault, battlescar remarked ‘you bore me’ and just left the game, leaving his partner to fight both of us.
Now i know this example wasn’t in a ranked game, but it’s still extremely poor behaviour that all 3 of us left in the game were annoyed about. Especially after trash talking throughout the game. I can see him just up and disconnecting from a ranked if things don’t go his way.
I know it’s my fault for letting him stay in the game, and hindsight is always 20×20. I thought he just talked crap and might actually put up in the game itself.
The majority of the community is awesome, but there are a few individuals that need to know that even though this is online, they need to shape up.
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:54 am
Boy, sure sounds like Battlescar is a gigantic asshole!
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:54 am
Once in a game it came up that I was a homosexual, the rest of the game I was taunted and abused. I was most uncomfortable and had to disconnect. Hmph!
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:44 am
I wouldnt be so sure CydeWeys. My brother has played Scaffy and Stratboy, beat them, and got abused by them :)
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:03 am
54pikachus: This is hardly the place to do a poll for the best online game community. We’re utterly biased. The majority of the people reading this blog haven’t even played all of the other ones you mentioned (I’ve only played WarCraft III, for instance). The poll would be highly in favor of SupCom as the best online community, but it’d be meaningless data.
Jotto: This Banlist thing sounds very troublesome. GPGnet is a peer-to-peer matchmaking system, so simply by firewalling off any other player’s IP address you can prevent ever having to face them in battle (assuming they have a static IP address, anyway). It could be used for avoiding bad sports in custom games, but it could also be abused to avoid playing against certain great players in ranked games.
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I’m 4-0 in ranked games. Two of those, the opponent Ctrl-K’d after I had Mantises in his base at the 4 minute mark. Neither really explained, just suicided. That was annoying. A third, the guy DC’d about 30 minutes into a Roanoke battle, but I had it well under control. The fourth was a nice game on Saltrock where naval won me the game. Guy I played was pretty cool about it.
That was through the 3-10 thousand ranks. I think it’s really hit and miss at those levels because a lot of the players aren’t that great, and don’t like getting blown out. Overall, I think SupCom probably has a cleaner community than say, the Q3A scene at it’s height. Now there was a cesspool.
The Hyper Viper
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
The big problem with the ranking system is that there is no way to distinguish between players who have low rankings because they aren’t good players and good players who have low rankings simply because they haven’t played many ranked games. Thus, you do end up with lots of blow-outs if you’re a good player trying to rise up through the ranks.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:50 am
So far all (8 or so) of my ranked games have been good. I always wish my opponents a gg before hand and if they beat me congratulate them. So far out of 2 losses one was my own dumb mistake, the other was a great move by the other guy so I told him so. Ranked games are about winning but tbh I’ll only be pissed if I lost myself the game and then it’s me I should be angry at not the other guy :)