izigame.me

Ah Paladins - you truly were something special. So why did I hate playing you half the time?
These things are complicated... I'll say this - there's never been a multiplayer game I've played where there was so much toxicity. Why should this be the case?
- Frustration with bad matchmaking - people get sick of most matches being a "stomp" one way or the other
- No incentive to continue fighting a losing match - some people just stay in spawn and wait to re-queue for the next as soon as they get a whiff of a loss (leading them to hate even more on those struggling on and prolonging the torture)
- Balance issues? If you die to X or Y "imba" attack/character enough times it feels bad - balancing could have been better, but asymmetrical games will always have this issue to one extent or another.
- Free game = free account = people not worried about being banned for toxicity? (were such bans even ever a thing??)
- No option to mute people by default - you have to do it manually at the start of every match (and then you'll still see hate in the post-match lobby - maybe even directed at you causing serious ego bruising)
- Small teams meant 1 bad player on your team could likely make you lose (so people hated that) (maybe games should've been 10v10?)
- The game's card system while being one of its best features also encouraged experimentation - meaning sometimes players were trying out something new and not performing well
- Matchmaking was account-based rather than character based - so you could be amazing at one or two or even 10 characters, but if trying a new character which plays radically differently, you'll still be matched against the same calibre of players (games could be decided by whether people were playing familiar characters or trying new ones)
In short, people hated playing when they were losing, because you'd get wrecked - close matches (where the real fun was) were rare. And in a game where you lose 50% of the time, that means someone's raging 50% of the time. Rage reminds you that you're wasting your life playing video games with kids or immature adults. This ruins the escapism and reminds you that YOU are an immature adult and should be doing something better with your time - like exercising or investing in Nvidea.