General Etiquette; The Key to Team Control

As my first blog post, I thought I'd touch on a topic that I feel like any player, brand new or hardened veteran, can gain something from.

Although this is my first time posting a blog on SmiteFire, I've been playing for little bit over 8 months now, and when it comes to etiquette I've seen the best and the worst of smite players. Obviously, in the beginning, as most people do, I struggled to learn a new MOBA with an entirely different control system on play style. Inevitably, this led to some very poor games on my part. this was absolutely a learning experience for me, not only because I had not played Smite before, but I also wasn't used to the attitudes of some of the upper level players.

And I found out quickly, sometimes they are poor attitudes. Very poor.

Since then I would like to think I've progressed significantly, as most people would with a significant amount of time invested. I watch streams, I design team compositions and builds, I play with specific friends and associates that I can count on, everything that is necessary to become as good of a player as possible. Now that I find myself in the position of hindsight, I would like to point out that the absolute worst thing you can do to a feeding player is turn into the archetypal anti-noob.

A new player, or a bad player, is simply not aware of the mistakes that they are making (We're going to remove the concept of trolls just for the sake of brevity). No one intentionally plays this game to lose, and usually a player that starts to do poorly is already experiencing some amount of anxiety about their game play. As non-feeding, veteran players, those that are in games with these type of players definitely need to consider doing what ever is necessary to give these players advice. Give them points on how to build, suggest how to alter their play style, even just giving outright orders meant to keep them alive and assist your team, anything is better than screaming at them.

This is not a matter of 'we're all in this together, be friends.' I hate individuals who feed just as much as any other serious player, but if I want to win, I'm going to help them out. As conceited as it sounds, if I'm doing better than they are (by a significant amount), it's not too much of an assumption to say that I probably know more than they do, at least about a given game situation. I can't give them gold, I can't boost their levels, and even cross map ganks are costly and risky. But I can give them whatever knowledge I have to pick up the slack, and if that's what's necessary to win the game, then I'm going to pursue that avenue. Always refrain from griefing teammates, even if it's difficult, because it will probably be you best chance to win.

That said, if you try to help and they give you a hearty middle finger, tear them apart. Comradery is fantastic if it can be cultivated, but if it can't and they refuse to take your advice, point out that they're doing poorly, make a point to stress that it's their own fault, and then leave it. It's better that you leave them angry that they're bad than waste your own time bickering.

tl;dr If they're bad and you yell at them, they'll get worse.