2010-07-12, 00:25:28
A couple of minutes ago i found two blogs/articles about a phenomenon which is quite common in games in general and especially in the battletanks community. It is labeled as the "scrub mentality'. I didn't know that term until recently, but I know that phenomenon quite well and fought often against it in discussions on the forum and with other players on bnet. What is the 'scrub mentality''?
That term labels a behavior of categorizing things in the game as 'cheap', 'noobish', 'unmannered', etc and creating rules to forbid them. Most often those rules are a kind of etiquette in a certain group. I provide you with a quote which describes the scrub in a short version:
This way of playing a game limits the own learning process and thus any improvement.
Why does this apply to btanks? Everyone knows the 'long range is noobish' guys, or the 'teleporter+short range is too easy' whiners. They hurt themselves in the long run. But it is even more dangerous in the funmap part in which a small group of people can influence the development of a map. Banning exploder (creating hcl with it being banned), a tank which is clearly not imbalanced, is a result of scrub mentality brought into the map by brute force (Don't mistake that as the reason for exploder/trader being not in league, that is a different case because of bot-rating formulas). As well as Tinker gets removed with hcl to give another example. This is extremely dangerous in my point of view and developers have a really hard time judging forum posts/suggestions if they are a result of scrub mentality or really well thought and argued. Changing the map characteristic features, like the movement part or banning/removing things, is something which needs caution. Especially in a communication like the one from players to mappers, as frequently only those people post who don't like something post (all others just play without giving much attention to the forum) and in most cases they really post because they don't like something, not because it is a real problem (even tho they probably think it is because of their scrub mentality making them unable to handle it).
The two articles:
http://www.calculatedplay.com/2010/03/th...mentality/
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-t...art-1.html
Edit: Maybe the exploder example is not the best one, that is if exploder would destroy games (which i doubt), but you get the point anyway (i hope).
That term labels a behavior of categorizing things in the game as 'cheap', 'noobish', 'unmannered', etc and creating rules to forbid them. Most often those rules are a kind of etiquette in a certain group. I provide you with a quote which describes the scrub in a short version:
Quote:The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevent him from ever truly competing. These made-up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant.
This way of playing a game limits the own learning process and thus any improvement.
Why does this apply to btanks? Everyone knows the 'long range is noobish' guys, or the 'teleporter+short range is too easy' whiners. They hurt themselves in the long run. But it is even more dangerous in the funmap part in which a small group of people can influence the development of a map. Banning exploder (creating hcl with it being banned), a tank which is clearly not imbalanced, is a result of scrub mentality brought into the map by brute force (Don't mistake that as the reason for exploder/trader being not in league, that is a different case because of bot-rating formulas). As well as Tinker gets removed with hcl to give another example. This is extremely dangerous in my point of view and developers have a really hard time judging forum posts/suggestions if they are a result of scrub mentality or really well thought and argued. Changing the map characteristic features, like the movement part or banning/removing things, is something which needs caution. Especially in a communication like the one from players to mappers, as frequently only those people post who don't like something post (all others just play without giving much attention to the forum) and in most cases they really post because they don't like something, not because it is a real problem (even tho they probably think it is because of their scrub mentality making them unable to handle it).
Quote:Unfortunately, a game becoming less fun because it's poorly designed and you just losing because you're a scrub kind of look alike
The two articles:
http://www.calculatedplay.com/2010/03/th...mentality/
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-t...art-1.html
Edit: Maybe the exploder example is not the best one, that is if exploder would destroy games (which i doubt), but you get the point anyway (i hope).
