What truly makes someone a scrub?

I’ve been called a scrub due to being terrible at Tekken, even due to being unable to defeat someone who’s more experienced than me and how I never go back and forth with them. I acknowledge that I’m not great of a player, but I’m still called a scrub just for sucking. I will admit, I do have a lot of pride, and I find it terrible to just go home and reflect on my experience while waiting for the next event to come by so that I show off my “improvements”. If anything, I just tell myself that I’m competent enough to play the game and that I’m not as completely terrible. I was also told that it takes year to become good at a game, but I don’t plan on taking that long.

Unfortunately a lot of people call anyone who is new a scrub. This is incorrect. A scrub is different to a newbie. A scrub is a state of mind whereby someone is not only not very good, but makes excuses for why they are not very good, or why they lost, and refuses to learn.
A fighting game veteran can also be a scrub.

I’ve played Tekken for years, but I would say I’m new in terms of being competitive with it. I make excuses, but I’m willing to learn.

Some people use the term scrub to refer newbies or “casual” players, but the term is mostly used to identity individuals who exhibit certain traits and behaviour that don’t foster growth and improvemnt within a competitive scene.

eg. Blameshifting, refusal to learn/practice, not deferring to more experience players, inflated sense of skill etc

In some contexts parts of your post might be considered scrubby, eg:

Perhaps you are in fact completely terrible? I’m not saying you are or aren’t, it’s just an example of why someone who has beaten you badly might consider this a scrubby attitude. If you lose hard often, then consider the possiblity that you are not as good as you think you are.

And:

Do you mean you intend to get better (by way of tournament placement) without practice? Or you have a training regimen that will enable you to become proficient at the game in shorter period of time? Or do you just mean you don’t intend on getting serious about the game? Depending on your answer, some people might also consider your statement to be a sign of “scrubbiness”.

with that kind of attitude you’re never going to learn anything, if looking back on your losses is “terrible” and not “educational”

then you’ll just have to settle with not being good

Scrubs seem to like to call other people scrubs.

it’s based on attitude. poor sportsmanship= scrub

He may just be saying it to say it, but other than that ilitirit is right, from your description the only thing that could make you look like a scrub is your confidence, not that it means anything by itself but high confidence in your skills with a lack of actual skill is one of the trademarks of a scrub. with that said this may or may not be the case, its hard to tell.

A scrub is a person who, you can say, doesn’t play to win
[LIST]
[]He/She make excuses when he lose, like he only lost because you were lucky, or that he has a live, your character is top tier (bonus points if is not), his character is low tier (bonus pints if is not) etc
[
]Plays according to some sort of self imposed set of rules, since he can consider some type of play/strategies as cheap or not honorable like: throwing is cheap, throwing to much fireballs is cheap, hitting someone when is dizzied is cheap, winning by timeout is cheap, winning by chipping damage is cheap, Running away/turtling is only made by cowards, etc, etc.
[]Everything is spam for them, if you are zoning, you are spaming to them, if you use your bnbs, you are spaming the same combo to them, etc, etc
[
]For some reason has a disproportionate confidence on his abilities
[]Many times they see the experienced players with hate, because they think that they are cheap motherfuckers with no life.
[
]They think that playing to win is not fun
[]They refuse to learn (from their mistakes, how to beat a character/strategy, etc)
[
]They don’t understand well how fighting games works but feel that any kind of opinion that they have is still good
[*]They see some characters as cheap, even if the character in reality can be considered low tier, they still think that it should be nerfed.
[/LIST]
You can have players that are good enough to be considered mid level players and still have this kind of mentality, you can even have high level players with traces of scrubby mentality

It’s pretty much never used in this way. Even if this is considered ‘correct’.

Well, how long did it take you to become a good player?

Scrubs are the guys who suck and have no intention to stop sucking.

I’m usually doubting myself half of the time, so this is my way of being confident. Is it there to do? My skills are truly nothing to be confident about, and you can’t boast about being a terrible player.

Cable, Sentinel, CapCom

Sometimes I’m playing someone who has NO chance of beating me and after the match is done they think I got a lucky win or that they made a single mistake that cost them the match, or the controller messed up on one thing that cost them the match when in reality they have no strategy at work no gameplan and no chance of winning even if I’m messing around with them.

This is scrub confidence when someone thinks wins are close even when they aren’t. When they compare their percieved skill to their opponents actual skill instead of being able to objectively compare their actual skill level to their opponents actual skill level. I guess one of the easiest ways to tell would be the win count, are you getting crushed when you play him or are you splitting games?

The goal is to get better and you need confidence to do this, the key thing is to have an Accurate guage of your current skill level; again none of this may be the case in your situation.

I would say that what qualifies someone as a scrub is more of a mindset than any actual specific way of playing. Id say a scrub is someone who is hostile towards other players solely based on gameplay, is unable to accept and move on when they lose, has preconceived notions about other players/characters (i.e. seeing a certain character and automatically assuming that the player sucks or is trolling you), and is deluded about the tactics and strategies they use to play. Examples of things i would say classify someone as a scrub:

  • Someone using turbo calls you a scrub turbo user
  • Someone who sends rage mail/insults you just because they are frustrated with their loss
  • Someone who talks trash when they are up a ton of games or down a ton of games
  • Someone who will talk trash solely based on character usage (i have no qualms with calling people out on character usage if they are talking shit to me but when someone says something like " <insert character name> is such a bs character, stay free fraud" just because they lost or don’t like the matchup is just douchey)
  • Someone who abuses game mechanics and has a chip on their shoulder (id say someone who just spams but slams with honda, wins, and then gets all cocky is a scrub).

Honestly if someone is losing really badly and then the person beating them calls them a scrub then i would say the person who called the other person a scrub is more of a scrub than the person losing.

Scrub - a player who doesn’t want to improve themselves in order to overcome their obstacles. i.e. they whine about characters, matchups, “cheapness”, and don’t bother ever trying to figure out a solution for their problems.

The term “scrub” does not discriminate between new players or veteran players.

Scrub…

by DSP standards: A guy who has a bunch of numbers on his gamertag, therefore he has to suck.

by my standards: A guy who plays not to win. And has this mindset of making fun of everything that is not proper in his eyes when it comes to gameplay. Also people who do some random crap and think they are the coolest.

I have always seen a scrub as somebody who continually uses cheap tactics like spamming moves and they refuse to get better at the game so they just keep resorting to their dirty little tricks, from my experience they cant handle losing either if playing online they will often sent angry and abusive messages because they cant handle the loss. In general scrubs are just bad sportsmen

Being a sore loser alone doesn’t make you a scrub, some of the people taking money home every major and regularly in top 8 are among the sorest losers in the entire community.