How do you guys deal with this kind of behavior in video gaming or elsewhere? · 4:46am Jun 24th, 2020
Unless you play Shogun 2 or some other Total War game, this blog probably won't make much sense. I apologize.
I was playing Shogun 2 tonight, and the person selected as my opponent made an army entirely of cavalry units. I managed to destroy or rout all but one of them. For... I don't know, thirty, forty, fifty minutes, this guy kept running his carbine-armed cavalry around the map, refusing to fight. Unfortunately, expecting an infantry fight (because he had only a few bronze stars next to his profile pic, indicating that he was new), I had built an army entirely of infantry, and all I had left at this point were a badly depleted unit of US Marines (riflemen) and a unit of swordsmen. This went about as well as you would expect. He kept running around, refusing to engage unless he thought he could shoot me and get away with it without being shot in return.
In my mind, this wasted my time as this kind of one on one fight was usually over in minutes in my experience. I got mad and lost my temper, accusing him outright of trolling and demanding he stand and fight; when he eventually spoke in chat, he naturally refused. However, I have no real proof that he was trolling; he probably really wanted to win and was trying to wear me out and make me quit (he suggested I do so, sometime after I called upon him to either stand and fight or else quit), or, that failing (as it did) engage in guerrilla attacks, which he did. My belief - not the right word, I just can't think of anything better - that he was trolling probably comes from my anger over the issue and the knowledge that I could have just conceded defeat and ended the battle and saved a lot of time. Instead, I was stubborn and refused to give up because I was "winning," and spent I-don't-even-know-how-long chasing this guy around the map.
Eventually, having ordered my units to just attack (meaning they would chase him until either they lost sight of his unit or were destroyed), he managed to catch my swordsmen and shot them up, causing them to rout and leave the battle. Shortly afterward, he caught my marines in an awkward position in which they got caught up against a building and failed to fire in time. He shot them up, leading to the fight being lost.
This was incredibly annoying. But as a result of being so fixated on the fight, I ignored the time I was supposed to do something (I'm not saying what). I.. got so fixated on the game I ignored what I knew I should do - just let him win, don't waste time - and spent [length of time] chasing him. I think I did much more wrong in this incident than my opponent did. Even if he was trolling, this does not mean my attitude was okay, nor anything I said to try and make him fight or quit.
How do you guys deal with this sort of stuff?
He was both using tactics and being a troll honestly, in my opinion he was BMing,.
He in my experience is being a normal pvper. It may be anger-inducing but it happens a lot
I dont pvp in total war games. Waste of time. Single player is perfectly fine.
He was a troll, no doubt about it. There are certain non-spoken rules for players that actually enjoy a good and fair battle. Kiteting, BMing, and Gaping are awful practices. There are signs upon entering battle that gives away the troll or just unfair opponents. When encountering them, leave immediately.
Sometimes you get beat, through no fault of your own, and you lose. I played overwatch ranked for a year, so I learned that sometimes, you can try and try and try, but you can't control every variable.
If the roles were reversed, how proud would you be at how you turned a seemingly hopeless situation into a victory through quick adaptation and very well executed micromanaging?
Now that you've seen this sort of thing and felt first hand the effectiveness of the tactic, I would recommend that you try it yourself. Get familiar with the mechanics of the strategy used against you. You'll start spotting 'holes' that can be exploited (if other players don't exploit them first), and thus learn how to handle it when used against you.
Also, maybe look into breathing exercises. Tempers escalate a lot quicker than most people think, and anger lingers. You're gonna have a lot less fun if in the heat of the moment you take it out on your rig, or carry that anger and snap at someone close to you and completly unrelated to the issue.