It's a common banter in online games to chat something like "you're so bad - uninstall the game". Recently something happened to me that made me actually uninstall a game.
I don't play computer games much anymore (reasons in separate blogpost), but it is still an itch that I get every year or so.
So recently I installed an old favorite of mine: Rainbow 6 Siege. I had to relearn new player characters, that got introduced into the game. I had to learn new maps that got added or redesigned. And I had to adapt to changed weapon characteristics and game mechanics etc. etc.
While I just reinstalled the game to relief some stress and out of curiosity I am a very competitive guy. In other words: I don't like to lose and I like to give it my all for some time. And it's a game where 1 team of 5 players plays against 5 other human players. And half of the players is always gonna lose. So by the very nature it is a competitive game. Blink and you lose. Keep that concentration for hours. So because I am a competitive guy from the get go I try my best to be in the winning team.
The problem is that if you're like me and you have a life and you don't play regularly you don't really get 4 other friends to play with you and get really, really competitive for some time until you lose interest again. So you play solo-queue. That means you play with 4 strangers against 5 other strangers.
But here comes the frustration: Europe. If you play from Europe, you get put into a game with other European gamers, because Rainbow 6, like other games of its kind is kind of also a reflex game, and it turns out speed of light matters and so you get put into a game with people close to you.
But Europe is so multicultural, you can't really communicate with other random players online. If I play online, I might play with 2 people from Bulgaria/Russia, one guy from the Netherlands and one Italian guy/girl. I am not expecting every European to speak German, but a surprisingly low percentage of European players seem to speak English.
The Russians: no chance. Maybe they understand: yes / no. Not very useful in a competitive game where everyone preferably should be using headsets and microphones and talk and communicate the whole game duration with their teammates. Even if I could speak Russian, that wouldn't help my Italian team mate.
Italians: You have better luck finding Italian gamers who speak German, than English.
The French don't speak English, because some wrong sense of pride. So they might understand a bit of English but they prefer not to speak it.
At this point you need to know that the game tries to estimate your playing skill and tries to put you into a game with similarly skilled opponents and team mates to keep you challenged but not overwhelmed. It does so by keeping track of how many games you lose or win.
But now you participate with a team made of random people who get annoyed by each other because they can't understand each other. You got people just randomly leaving the match. Leaving you with an uphill battle of 3 people in your team vs 5 other people. You have people that get so annoyed, bored, funny spirited, or incompetent they start killing their own team. It's a shitshow.
I won slightly more than half of my placement matches (the first 10 games) due to random luck on how many of my teammates or the opponents quit half way during the match. You are supposed to get penalized for leaving the game and of course you will not rank up but some people don't care. And of course I am also not the best player not playing regularly. So the game determines I am "low silver" rank (that is in the lower-middle skill level).
I am hoping I can win enough matches so the game will think I am a better player and put me into games with good players (which are more likely to speak English or just randomly kill each other or leave the game) but it's not happening. I randomly win or lose half of the games I play in because I am not that good that I can win the game on my own. And sometimes I win games undeservingly where I didn't contribute much. All in all instead of getting better I derank slightly to "high broze".
I learned the hard way that you have to be very selective at what time of day you play. If you play too early in the day you get put into a team of teenagers that just love to make Nazi jokes instead of giving useful information, or timezone wise you get into Russia. If you play too late you get into a game where nobody says anything any more because they don't want to wake their spouse or sleeping kids. And you wonder why you are not getting information any more.
What really was the tipping point for me when I actually played one of my best games ever. I was getting points left and right. Insane plays. Like I make up 95% of my teams effort. But three French players were just purposely dying. Purposely blinding the only two players still making an effort, barricading me into a room. And shooting me. And when the game started automatically punishing them for it they started shooting around me, so I could not hear anything any more (sound is critical in the game). When they could have easily won our team the round they just left the computer for a minute. All of that is called "griefing". I was wise enough neither to engage with them or give them any reason to do stupid stuff. But apparently they knew each other and were drunk or something.
When the next game was similar, I just gave up in frustration. I had seen the new content. The curiosity was satisfied. I don't have the time, or the patience to suffer ("grind") through the ranks doing something that I don't enjoy. I uninstalled the game.
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