I've decided, it's the absolute worst.
There's something pure and beautiful about the harshness and savagery of 1v1 competitive multiplayer. When you lose there's only two directions you can point your frustration:
1) At your opponent - fortunately, this is generally frowned upon and ridiculed under any number of names like "Johns" or "Salt".
2) At yourself.
(I mean technically there's a third option in the game itself, but it generally leads to people not playing the game anymore)
So naturally, people are inclined towards the latter. This is what drives self improvement. Being able to look at ones play, identify the flaws and seek to rectify them. Top players in any competitive activity will all attest to how important the ability to learn from defeats and 1v1 play forces you to confront these weaknesses until you do something to address them.
The problem with team-based competitive games is that they provide a new direction for one's frustration: your teammates. It basically ruins the cycle of loss and self improvement from all angles. The first is that it obfuscates the reason for a loss. anyone who has played a team based competitive multiplayer game will confirm that they've played matches where they lost despite personally making the right moves. How is someone supposed to improve when the reason for their defeat was beyond their control? If someone is consistently unable to identify why they lost any given match, something is very wrong.
Secondly, losing because someone else played wrong is terrible. Tracking one's personal improvement is made more difficult by the phenomenon of being carried by a team. Having to determine if a win was "earned" or if you coasted off the exploits of your teammates is something you never to to deal with in a 1v1 context. conversely, you don't have to deal with losing because your teammates didn't pull their weight either.
Worst of all though is when the prior elements combine, allowing people to consistently blame losses on teammates and avoid any self criticism. Losing because one person didn't pull their weight is bad enough, but when that person is blaming the rest of the team, it's even worse. They get by on taking credit for false negative victories and deflecting criticism onto teammates on every opportunity. The nature of team games mean that these people are never forced to confront their loses in the way they would be in a 1v1 game. Playing with these people is a waste of your time, and actively damages your enjoyment of the game.
It's the worst.
There's something pure and beautiful about the harshness and savagery of 1v1 competitive multiplayer. When you lose there's only two directions you can point your frustration:
1) At your opponent - fortunately, this is generally frowned upon and ridiculed under any number of names like "Johns" or "Salt".
2) At yourself.
(I mean technically there's a third option in the game itself, but it generally leads to people not playing the game anymore)
So naturally, people are inclined towards the latter. This is what drives self improvement. Being able to look at ones play, identify the flaws and seek to rectify them. Top players in any competitive activity will all attest to how important the ability to learn from defeats and 1v1 play forces you to confront these weaknesses until you do something to address them.
The problem with team-based competitive games is that they provide a new direction for one's frustration: your teammates. It basically ruins the cycle of loss and self improvement from all angles. The first is that it obfuscates the reason for a loss. anyone who has played a team based competitive multiplayer game will confirm that they've played matches where they lost despite personally making the right moves. How is someone supposed to improve when the reason for their defeat was beyond their control? If someone is consistently unable to identify why they lost any given match, something is very wrong.
Secondly, losing because someone else played wrong is terrible. Tracking one's personal improvement is made more difficult by the phenomenon of being carried by a team. Having to determine if a win was "earned" or if you coasted off the exploits of your teammates is something you never to to deal with in a 1v1 context. conversely, you don't have to deal with losing because your teammates didn't pull their weight either.
Worst of all though is when the prior elements combine, allowing people to consistently blame losses on teammates and avoid any self criticism. Losing because one person didn't pull their weight is bad enough, but when that person is blaming the rest of the team, it's even worse. They get by on taking credit for false negative victories and deflecting criticism onto teammates on every opportunity. The nature of team games mean that these people are never forced to confront their loses in the way they would be in a 1v1 game. Playing with these people is a waste of your time, and actively damages your enjoyment of the game.
It's the worst.
