Grey Carter said:
I was listening to a conversation on Live (I find them grimly amusing) where one guy claimed that raging, and bellowing obscenities is part of the "COD experience," and when I think about it, I kind of agree with him. It's probably part of why I enjoy the series, no matter how broken its various installments get (and BLOPSII is very broken), playing it with friends is basically an evening of beer, gaming and creative expletives.
I guess it's what you're looking for in an evening.
Personally, I put up with enough stressful nonsense and stupid crap that makes me facepalm in regular life.
Don't need my game time contributing to it.
Though I also believe there's a significant difference between the kind of jabbing vulgarity and "anger" you find among a casual night with friends and the kind that ends with a controller going through a TV.
canadamus_prime said:
What I really have to shake my head at is when people make excuses as to why they lost. "Oh that character's overpowered", "HAX", "fucker campers," that sort of thing. If you (generic) were really had any skill worth mentioning you wouldn't have to make excuses as to why you lost. One thing's for sure, no one ever makes excuses for why they won. You don't hear the winners complaining about hax or overpowered characters or campers or whatever. It's only the losers who can't accept the fact that there just might be someone better than them. And that's what makes them truly losers in my mind.
When I get lagged out, I blame my ISP, not the person who is winning (and having lived with 56k up until 2009, yes, that was a common occurrence). It's the net. Shit breaks, it lags. It's not infallible.
As for "cheap strategies", I can see anyone getting bored with them after a time (a lazy victory feels hollow), but if you're playing to win, identifying the dominant strategy is in fact, playing the game as intended. So anyone bringing "skill" into the argument is already shooting themselves in the foot.