I dunno, that quote sounded pretty scrubby to me, but not because he was talking about how unhype something was. …Even though most people I hear saying something is boring because of combos IS from people who aren’t relatively good at fighting games. I can accept they’re boring because of repetitiveness, but at least Marvel 3 isn’t J-Stars Victory Vs. (Good god I don’t know how anyone played that game without vomiting from cutscene overdose.)
Most people can’t even consistently do lightning loops when they need to. Some of the best Zeros drop that shit once in a while.
It’s almost like people play games because they enjoy them first and foremost. Some people think Chess, baseball, or LoL are boring. It’s not a statement on balance or fairness, the enjoyment factor of anything is subjective.
“I think top tier character X is boring so I don’t play them” would be a scrub quote under that definition, so it’s obvious bullshit. Being scrubby is about holding your opponent to an out of game standard, not commentating on the excitement factor. Unless of course, you want to label doing anything but playing the toppest of tiers scrubby behavior.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, so I don’t really care about the argument, but did you just insinuate that David Sirlin is an academic? That should be a scrub quote.
And against evenly matched opponents, it’s basically a coin toss as to who’s better that day, so why bother when you’ll ideally only have fun 50% of the time? Your Daigos, Justin Wongs, and Infiltrations don’t come to be because they hinged the value of their time upon wins and losses, but because they enjoy the game enough to put in the work where others won’t. That’s why, in games not called MvC2, people can take tournaments with a lower tier character. No amount of strategy can overcome giving a shit.
Because Playing to Win was the first time the modern day definition of “scrub” was written down. The only other thing that comes close is Seth’s “On Cheapness” as part of Domination 101.
Okay, maybe I oversimplified it with that statement. What I mean is that, for some people, finding that level of oppressive tech, running top tiers and breaking the game is fun. There is enjoyment to be gained, not just from winning against your opponents, but from doing so by finding some tech that allows for your continued dominance.
Sometimes just PLAYING a good game is more fun than winning in a bad one
There’s all sorts of bad FGs from the 90s that you can win by just doing the same OP move over and over, and it’s not fun winning by doing that, either against the CPU or a human opponent. That’s why those games were long forgotten.
Smash is boring to me, I don’t care how balanced the game is or how much skill it takes do play it, it’s boring and I’m never buying it or watching on stream.
That’s my personal opinion, of course, but let’s say a good part of your audience thinks that about your game, it’s just not a good idea to keep making a boring game if people aren’t interested in watching it or buying it, no matter how good it is on the competitive aspect.
(just hypothetically, I know a lot of people love Smash)
Well, he does have a point, even if the wording is terrible. Sol, Ky and Elphelt all have very gooid normals, easy combos, good mobility and are very straightforward and easy to play. Somehow they all ended up in A tier aswell. A new player picking Sol or Ky will win 8/10 games against another new player who picked Kum or Zato. And the guy was responding to a new player I think.
Lil late to this party but I wanna add my 4 cents:
The difference for me between a Scrubquote and an otherwise legit grievance is a scrub would try to discredit a game, game mechanic, or ruleset from a position of ignorance or covering for his short comings; while a reasonable complaint comes from a place of understanding how the game works and explaining why it’s not his cup of tea or how the game may possibly be undermining its own general design.
I have a lot of issues with Marvel 3, but my re-purchase a few months ago shows that I can look past some questionable (“imo”) design choices. But what really gets me, and what had me retire the game for four years, was a lack of a burst mechanic. I argued years ago that burst should have been added in Ultimate as an alternate XF activation. I personally saw no reason to not add this. And its inclusion in the completely useless H&H mode was a slap in my face that made me drop the game. Yes, Marvel is zany. Yes, you will get eaten up by certain combos. Yes, it’s kinda supposed to be this way (an argument I find banal but w/e). I still otherwise love the game as a product and concept. But not having burst, a burst with an obvious cost and utility, was something I personally found baffling.
Now: Am I being scrubby here? Am I covering for my losses? What if I well understand that I can be bursted from a win? Would I be Scrubquoted or would that start an actual convo?
These are things I think we can all think about when roasting scrubs. And for the most part, it’s pretty easy to do so. You don’t get too many cases where it’s nuanced to this point. But again, there’s no harm in being slightly more surgical before putting somebody on blast.
Complaining about a game is not scrubby. Complaining about how a player plays the game is.
Most fighting games have a lot of stupid shit in them. Pointing that out is not scrubby. Continuing to play the game then crying that your opponent used the stupid shit against you is scrubby. Whenever you play a game competitively you enter an unwritten contract where everything is fair game and you don’t get to cry about it. Someone landed one hit on you into an infinite? Better luck next time stupid. Don’t get hit. But when discussing the game itself, it is entirely reasonable to say one hit to death is really dumb and maybe the game isn’t worth playing.
