Have you ever felt bad for winning in a competitive game?

[someonehairy-ish]

I tend to be feel bad for people in the enemy DOTA2 team if they have players leave early on in the game. Or if they played better overall but we ended up winning through sheer rat DOTA or something.

I also tend to feel bad for enemy teams that get utterly crushed. Sometimes you'll have a game where it goes great for you and you just snowball and murder everything, which is great, but you know the whole time how frustrated the enemy team must be. For example, on my disruptor game earlier today I won with a final tally of 23/5/25 (kills/deaths/assists), which is completely obscene on a support hero. They were playing heroes with very few silences and stuns, so there really wasn't a lot they could do to counter me. It was a bit sad to watch after the first 20 mins or so ^^

 

[novem]

I generally don?t feel bad because if I see that my opponent is particular under matched I will usually try some ridiculous strategy out against them. Sometimes they win as a result but that just makes it more fun.

Nope, you play to win or don't play at all.

You may want to look into games you enjoy to play, as opposed to games you feel compelled to win.

 

[Shadow flame master]

The very few times I feel bad is when they find out that I'm screen watching, and even then it adds an extra amount of challenge to the game.

But other than that, no, I don't feel bad at winning a competitive game.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I don't think I've ever felt bad for winning... Nope, I doubt it. When i play competitively, I play competitively and I'm looking for a battle.
But there are many moments where I felt that my victory was a empty victory or that I wasted my time on the match since the enemy was so much weaker than me, that it was a one-sided battle all along and the outcome was clear since the start. Happened a lot when I was playing DotA regularly. Similar in TF2.

Spoiler

I'm the silencer in this case and iirc 10 out of the 14 kills on OD are all my doing. I did feel sorry for him because I completely ruined his game. Permanently losing 20 int lowered his damage so much that he couldn't do anything to anyone. I know how he felt... or at least I know how I feel in such situations so I was feeling sorry for him.
But I didn't feel bad for winning. Just disappointed in the waste of time since it was a easy game and neither the enemy nor did I enjoy it much.

 

[Headsprouter]

Sometimes when I have a really good round in TF2 I feel like a bit of a dick. Especially when I play Pyro, because my tactic is:

1. Ambush target.
2. Airblast target.
3. Shoot with reserve shooter (a shotgun which mini-crits airborne targets).
4. Repeat 2 and 3 until you or the opponent dies. If you find yourself with more than you bargained for, run.

If I see a Heavy unaware of my presence I simply run up and try to crit him with my back scratcher.

But yeah, not to toot my own horn, but as Pyro in particular, sometimes I kill people so quickly and before they get a chance to realise they've started flying through the air that I start to feel bad for them.

I suppose it'd be worse if I just went full w+m1, but an opponent who is nor ready for a reserve/degreaser combo tends to get wrecked if my aim is on point.

And if I'm doing really well, every non-melee random crit warrants an apology. Will never feel bad destroying those douchebags who say "thanks!" after every kill.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Not really, no. If I know I'm going up against someone I'm definitely going to beat I might pick a character I'm just learning or not as competitive with, but if I'm going into a competitive game (one where the point of the game is to, you know, win) I'm always going to try to win.

 

[Il_Exile_lI]

I've had online games in MLB The Show where I just annihilated the opposition. I didn't necessarily feel bad for winning, but more for the fact that I won by like 15 runs. The thing is, baseball isn't like other sports where you can just run out the clock, so it's not as though I could stop hitting. I suppose I could have just given away outs by taking 3 strikes every at bat, but I feel like that would have been insulting to the other player.

 

[Brian Tams]

Well, let's take this to the TCG arena.

Game: Magic The Gathering
Location: My LGS
Event: Alara Reborn Prerelease

Story: After opening the greatest sealed pool of my life, I proceeded to get paired with an 8 year old who was there spending time with his Dad and had just learned the game. Poor guy. I almost had to self-report myself for child abuse afterwards.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Story: After opening the greatest sealed pool of my life, I proceeded to get paired with an 8 year old who was there spending time with his Dad and had just learned the game. Poor guy. I almost had to self-report myself for child abuse afterwards.

...you monster.

(just kidding, not your fault and hopefully you didn't obliterate him instantly.)

It's tough when you're playing kids, anytime I play my youngest brother in anything regarding strategy I have to tone it down a shit ton otherwise I'll beat him before he even realizes what happened, which is just frustrating and he doesn't learn anything and I don't feel anything good about it.

OT: Yeah, sometimes. depends on the person. If someone is being a shithead and thinks they are all that and tries to talk trash, then yeah, I'll destroy them without mercy. If someone is trying hard or is just playing for the enjoyment of the game, then I'll typically try to match their level in some way so it's still fun for both of us, win or lose.

 

[Kotaro]

Well, let's take this to the TCG arena.

Game: Magic The Gathering
Location: My LGS
Event: Alara Reborn Prerelease

Story: After opening the greatest sealed pool of my life, I proceeded to get paired with an 8 year old who was there spending time with his Dad and had just learned the game. Poor guy. I almost had to self-report myself for child abuse afterwards.

Something similar happened to me when playing Yu-Gi-Oh! online not too long ago. I was running my Lightsworn deck, which is an absolute beast in the current metagame, and started a random match with the first person I got paired up with. Based on his deck build and how he played it, the guy was clearly still learning the game and didn't know what he was doing.
In case anyone doesn't know (I assume this will apply to most people here), Lightsworn is a very, very fast and aggressive deck type. Basically you mill your own deck and then pull monsters out of the graveyard, while using your graveyard to power-up your other stuff.
Because of how my deck worked, I couldn't hold back against this guy at all, because if the game dragged on for too long, I would be at risk of milling myself out. So I ended up thrashing this poor fellow, and I felt like a jerk for doing it.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I can only remember two times, both in Resistance 2. The first time it was just me and some other guy, and I murdered him. He didn't kill me once, no matter how hard he tried. I felt so bad that I actually sent him a message saying I was sorry about it.

The other time I was on this roof with only two ways up. I killed twenty people in a row and no one could touch me again. I don't know what it was, but I was just in the zone. I ended up feeling kind of bad because I felt like I was ruining the fun for the other players.

 

[major_chaos]

Sometimes in League of Legends I feel bad when the other team is really trying their hardest and being really good sports, but still loses because they have one or two AFKers/tantrum throwing losers. On the other hand I confess that if my team stomps in a totally fair game I'll occasionally say "I almost feel bad for that. Almost" or something along those lines just to try and generate salt from the other team, especially if they were being mouthy at the start of the game.

 

[JimB]

I hate the feeling of failure more than almost any other, so I feel bad about winning whenever the other person seems to feel like a failure. My sympathy makes me feel guilty.

 

[Pyrian]

Warhammer 40K, tabletop.

Videogames don't make me feel bad. (Bored, maybe.) But crushing people on the tabletop, across from an army they clearly poured a lot of time and effort into? Sometimes because they don't know what they're doing, but more often because their army is just wrong for what I'm playing, or they're just hopelessly unlucky? It doesn't feel good.

Like when I'm playing Dark Eldar and someone shows up with an army of terminators in land raiders. It's like... I'm sorry. Your army is cool, but it's going to lose horribly and there's nothing you can do about it. And it's a league game, so we can't really just say "screw this".

Or the time my friend was having an unlucky game and ended up counting on his tricked-up Canoness to slow me down - best-possible invulnerable save, immunity to instant kill, three wounds, died to three bolt pistols. At least the pain was ending.

But the absolute worst... Wasn't me. We had a scaling league where each army started at 1,000, and each time you LOSE, you gained 200 points of army (100 each for a draw). In the last pre-finals match, my friend who'd won every game and therefore still had 1,000 points of speed freak orks, faced a kid who'd lost every game and had a full 2,000 points of Imperial Guard. The vastly outnumbered Orks wiped the poor newb completely off the table with scarcely any casualties. He cried and never came back.

(Interestingly, the single most lopsided game I've ever played was in the finals of that same league, crushing that same speed freak player with my Eldar skimmer tanks without taking a single casualty. I didn't feel so bad about it, though.)

 

[clippen05]

Nope, never. I play competitive matches to win. And in any game I've played online, I don't recall cheesing to win. If somehow I did do an exploit or glitched some how, I would feel kinda bad, but only for a moment. It's not that big a deal.

 

[Brian Tams]

Story: After opening the greatest sealed pool of my life, I proceeded to get paired with an 8 year old who was there spending time with his Dad and had just learned the game. Poor guy. I almost had to self-report myself for child abuse afterwards.

...you monster.

(just kidding, not your fault and hopefully you didn't obliterate him instantly.)

It's tough when you're playing kids, anytime I play my youngest brother in anything regarding strategy I have to tone it down a shit ton otherwise I'll beat him before he even realizes what happened, which is just frustrating and he doesn't learn anything and I don't feel anything good about it.

OT: Yeah, sometimes. depends on the person. If someone is being a shithead and thinks they are all that and tries to talk trash, then yeah, I'll destroy them without mercy. If someone is trying hard or is just playing for the enjoyment of the game, then I'll typically try to match their level in some way so it's still fun for both of us, win or lose.

Yeah, I actually remember that game very clearly, because it was the game that I realized my normal play style just wasn't making the game enjoyable for neither me nor my opponent, a realization that eventually led to me exiting my local magic scene.

Like, usually I play fast an aggressive aggro decks, and then combine that with an aggressive play style in an attempt to unsettle my opponent mentally. With the kid, though, I dropped that act and played pretty loose. I ended up talking to him and teaching him about the more complicated interactions between cards, and before I knew it, I was having fun. I'd been playing magic in a competitive setting for years and along comes this 8 year old who reminded why I had first gotten into magic in the first place.

I just remember that because it was impactful on me.

So, no, I didn't just curb stomp him and moved on. But I did take him out in two quick games. Poor guy didn't win a single match that night (but he still had a blast).

 

[4173]

Local modern event (Magic: the Gathering), I'm playing UR storm and paired against a young teen playing the BW token event deck. The games were actually kind of close, since my draws weren't optimal and the event deck packs discard, but both of my kills were long, drawn out affairs.* I knew I wasn't about to make him quit the game, but I still felt bad having these long, solitaire turns at his first modern tournament.




*For those that actually know/care about the details: game 1 I had to do the mini-Grapeshot wrath your board, game 2 I eventually had 3 active Pyromancer's Ascensions because my Grapeshots were near the very bottom of my deck.

 

[Inglorious891]

Hmm...
Nope!

And this is coming from a guy who rolls mini-sentry engineer and has dominated 4/5th of the players on the enemy team. Multiple times, in fact.

In the end, it's a competitive game, and I'm not going to feel bad for winning and/or doing well unless I'm cheating or exploiting in some way.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I one made a smurf account in LoL. Smurfing is when experienced players start over with a new account so that they can basically smash new players with ease. I played one match and felt like a massive asshole after. Woo look at me, 40 kills and 0 deaths against people who are brand new to the game. It's not fun, and all you're doing is making the new players feel like they suck. Given the apparent prevalence of smurfing, it's no wonder that a lot of new players quit before making it very far. Anyway, I only did it once, and then never again.

 

[FPLOON]

Only if I tell my opponent(s) that I'm not that good at the game in general... It feels me with guilt more than it does to them feeling shame to be beaten by someone who sounded like a "noob" overall...

Other than that, I usually just feel happy that I'm playing against someone for a change... considering I rarely play online, anyway...