Two rules of three: Idiot Teammates

You know them, you hate them. They sit at the back of the map, or spawn, and snipe, or mortar, or camp in a corner with a their gun, waiting for you to happen by so they can shoot you and resume waiting. More often the not, these are the guys on your team, and when you look at the scores at the end of the match, there is no surprise waiting. These guys are high level, at the bottom of the leaderboard, with more deaths than kills. There you sit, at the top, or near it, sighing or banging your head or yelling, asking, in vain, how they got where they are doing what they did. I have a theory dictating players like these.

Xiant’s Postulate: “The skill of players on your team is inversely proportional to your own level of skill.” Ergo, the better you are, the worse your teammates will, inevitably, be. And because such a concept as this is endlessly rage inducing, and you asked for it, I’ve put together a not-so-comprehensive list of real world things you can do to cope. The first three are probably not good for your health, the second three are somewhat better. Let’s dig in.

There’s no winning

Unsafe option 1: Alcohol. After a long day at school or work, sometimes the only option you can think of is the bottle. While always a sure-fire way to drown your sorrows, let me advise against it. Now, I’m not saying don’t drink to ease the pain. I’m saying don’t make a drinking game out of your gaming woes. Because it is a drinking game. Much like anime is essentially a thirteen to twenty-six episode way to smash yourself*, gaming rage is a sure way to make your liver cry like tiny baby man. And because you aren’t three hundred, sandvich filled pounds of man (I hope), your liver will fail before you reach the end of the third round.

If, for whatever reason, you do completely waste yourself in the middle of a n00b destruction session, do not hesitate to get on the mic and make a complete ass of yourself. After all, everyone in the lobby, especially those twelve year olds, want more than anything to know you are in a state of such utter inebriation that Addendum 1 to Xiant’s Postulate is in effect. “Your skill as a player under the influence of alcohol or other perception altering substances is directly proportional to the amount of love and respect your teammates will show you.”

Unsafe option 2: Smashing your console/PC. Spending three hundred/fifteen hundred dollars on a box of what is essentially refined sand is truly a foolish endeavor. I mean, why not just throw it all back to the beach in larger, greener pieces? It’s not like the ocean is polluted by anything else, or at least anything so technologically advanced. Make the ocean a tech-nerd, I say!

Only don’t. In the first place, it probably won’t be good for whatever you smash your platform of choice on. Even if it’s on a concrete floor, there’s bound to be something rather pointy and footstab-happy that embeds itself in the material. And heaven forbid you do it on a desk. You’ll chip the wonderfully lacquered, cheaply cut wood. Don’t get me started on glass. That’s just a masochist’s wet dream, right there. Of course, I don’t have to mention the fact that it’s a good wad of doughnut batter you’re throwing in the trash because some intelligent man told you that you are, in fact, less capable than an untrained marsupial of striking your foes with a metallic cone ejected from an elongated barrel.

Unsafe option 3: Hostility towards family and friends. Probably the most convenient and least economically harmful option, it’s not necessarily the most effective means of dealing with the whiny fifty-five year old on the other team. Don’t get me wrong, how can any of those you know fully understand the sheer audacity of your teammates to be so utterly idiotic? It’s impossible. I know, trust me. And everyone deserves a good chewing out once in a while, especially when it has to do with video games. But while screaming about the camper in every corner is cathartic to a degree, when your spouse, BFF, or, stop me before I go too far, mother, tells you that “You ought to stop playing those gosh darn games,” I can’t say I didn’t warn you in the most serious, direct way possible.

Sometimes there’s good ways too!

“Safe” option 1: Turn your platform off and go outside. I know that reality is the worst game ever, but you’d be surprised at the player base. I mean, I can’t imagine the sales this thing rakes in. When games get you down, pop into “reality,” walk through some doors, maybe look at one of those weird brown things called trees or the incredibly rendered skybox out your window.

In all seriousness, though, the best thing to do when you get angry at a game is stop playing it. It’s hard, because we’ve all had those time when the very next game is absolutely awesome. And we want the game after that one to be just as good. Never expect that sort of thing. Unless you have a full team and you know doing whatever will not affect the outcome of the overall round, never, ever assume that two rounds are the same. This is a recipe for frustration that has few equals. Avoid it if at all possible.

“Safe” option 2: Give absolutely no shits about anything. So it’s a bad night, or you can’t actually help your team win no matter how many points/kills/flags/smiles you collect. If you can’t force the win, accept the loss and just do whatever the hell you want. Put on that Dead Ringer and push the cart as a spycrab. Run around in circles for ten minutes. Hide in plain sight, giving color commentary to your team’s progress. Enjoy the scenery while everyone else does the dirty work. Have a cup of tea and explain how exquisitely you brewed it. If no one finds you as you provide the lobby with the most interesting one-way discussion of their lives, you’ve won the game already. Even if you have no way to communicate with either your team or the server, make it known that you are the best person to ever put icing on a cupcake. Shoot it into a wall if you must. Someone will definitely thank you for it.

“Safe” option 3: Take the failures like a challenge. You know you’re better than everyone else in the game. You’ve proven it to yourself on multiple occasions, and people have said similar things in the past. Now it’s time these morons knew what you know. It’s time to take it to ’em. Who’s the best guy on the other team? Make him cry that you’re hacking. Make him complain about your class. Make him rage quit, or at least mad. Then, when you’ve conquered, and there’s complaining, troll the living shit out of ’em. Whatever’s in your basket of tricks, use it. Put them so off balance that they go directly to the bottom of the scoreboard. Use Addendum 2 to Xiant’s Postulate. “The amount of anger in the enemy team is directly proportional to how much you are owning their faces.”

*It’s a Gundam!