Quote Originally Posted by Februs View Post
I admire your sense of personal accountability. Sadly, that is a quality that a lot of players lack. It's all too common to see people just gun their way forwards without any regard to their role, responsibilities, or teammates. It's a mentality that I think has been bred into the current generation of gamers by instant gratification games which value personal stats (such as Kill : Death) over your actual result/win rate, and quite frankly, it shows in how they play.

A certain degree of anxiety is a good thing in a game mode like this, because you really should feel at least some accountability for the success or failure of your team. That's the same in Feast as it is in a savage raid or an extreme trial. It sounds harsh, but if you're not feeling at least the slightest twinge of anxiety when you go into these kinds of things, then you probably don't belong there. It's always nice to see players who do, even if they preform badly, because at least you know that they are somewhat invested in favorable results and will likely improve over time, regardless of if they get chewed out for playing badly along the way.
Thanks. Today I'll be stepping in for the first time (I have the next two days off, so gonna try to grind out the Garo mount before I lose my nerves and/or before the queues dry up), so if anyone here sees me on their team, sorry if I'm not doing so well. Do know that I'm trying, at least, and like the rest of you wish that we could use chat so I could get some pointers.

I mean, I understand where the anti-chat people are coming from, I do - everybody should be allowed to learn and make mistakes with helpful feedback and support from their team, not sarcasm and "FAIL" ASCII macros. But at the same time...they're just words. I get them all the time in WoW, and they didn't stop me from PVPing there (as a healer, too, which is arguably way more difficult than trying to heal here due to the current melee pain train meta over there). Yes, I used to get people send me whispers in a match telling me to uninstall, or someone in chat saying "ugh our retard healers are just handing the match to them". You know what? I just skimmed it, or ignored them. Even harshly-worded advice I took note of ("Jesus Christ heals, why don't you try line-of-sighting next time?"), because that was how I adapted to challenged presented, but it seems like here, people would just cry about being harassed rather than look for the kernels of truth buried within the rudeness. I see it in PVE, as well.

It's kind of like a double onus, to me. Veterans SHOULD work on keeping their tempers in check, even in a competitive mode. But new players should also actually read what is being presented, not just how it's being presented, and draw their own conclusions from there before immediately crying foul. For the most part, in WoW, I didn't pay attention to things like "heals???" or "wtf our healers are awful", because only I am the most accurate metric of my own performance. I know when I'm doing as well as I can with the noobs and the yoloers, and I also know when I make a poor decision and am not with my team when they need me most. That's kind of why this whole thing frustrates me - have some confidence, people! Rather than applauding a mass gag order that protects your delicate sensitivities, feel more mature about yourself and acknowledge when vitriolic statements contain valuable criticism, and when they're just an idiot blowing hot air.

Now, I have none of that. I simply have to go in, play a match in utter silence other than "Get medals!" "Nice job!" "Nice job!" "Nice job!" "Nice job!" "Nice job!" "Fall back!" "Nice job!" "Nice job!" "Nice job!" "Nice job!" "Nice job!". What does that tell me? What value is there in those statements? I could think, "Awesome, I got medals like they said" and run around with 10 stacks all match and because the other team is just as poorly coordinated still somehow win. And I'll think that's how every match is supposed to be played, instead of someone - even if worded harshly - being able to say, "dude don't grab that many stacks next time, you nearly cost us the match. only get like 2 as heals". And heaven forfend the person who tries to use that damned "Nice job!" macro unironically, FFS. People are already starting to see it as sarcasm, even in the rare case it might not be. What will the pearl-clutchers do now?