Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't know much about the specific examples you gave, most of my online gaming experience is about League of Legends, but I can repeat what I've read about interesting anecdotes there. Korean players have a reputation for being much more individualistic and trying to maximize their own in-match resources to increase their impact on the game, as opposed to North American players who try harder to get their teammates to cooperate with their plans to take objectives that will provide large team buffs. The people I read describing their experience guessed it's because Korea has much lower ping, so a single person performing near-perfect micro(pressing buttons at the right times and places required to kill their opponents and avoid getting killed) will have a much larger impact on the game outcome in Korea than North America. Because in North America, even if you play perfectly, the restraint of not seeing an enemy attack until 60 milliseconds after its launched may make it unavoidable in a way it isn't in Korea where there's 10 millisecond ping. So in Korea, it's incentivized to get really good at really fast reaction speeds, and play the game more like it's a FPS. Whereas in North America, reaction speed counts for less, so it's more incentivized to get really good at strategy, and play the game more like it's chess, where you try to get your team and the enemy team positioned in a way that your victory is inevitable.
This is refuted by the fact that SEA players have the highest pings on average, on one the of the most reflex loaded FPS games, csgo, and still play exactly like you described. I dont know whats the deal but SEA players cant play as a team to save their lives. This includes east asians as well.
Players letting all their teammates die whilst hiding behind cover and not doing anything about it (baiting) is very frowned upon and immediately chastised in all regions but its the norm when playing in SEA servers. They are the opposite of Russians in ingame temperament, instead of charging they hide too much.
Did they not play sports as kids or whatever, I dont know.
More options
Context Copy link
Adding to the interesting speculation here: might language barriers play a much larger role than we think? North Americans all have a common lingua franca, Asians do not, at least not to that extent. And that also includes Russians. There is no reason to emphasise team play if you can't coordinate because you can't communicate. But that doesn't account for MEs being relatively good team players, unless they are mostly Arab-speaking.
FYI as a ME resident, all communication is done in English because you rarely get teammates who all speak the same language outisde of NA and because callouts and common strategies are standardized, for e.g the infamous RUSH B that the Russians are so fond of is one of those strategies, everyone knows immediately what to do when "RUSH B" is uttered.
There isnt much strategizing when playing with randoms either. I used to be very very high ranked so my definition of strategizing is more strict than most gamers.
More options
Context Copy link
To be clear about League of Legends, the USA+Canada is one region(NA), and Korea is its own region because League has just really taken off there. So Korea probably actually has even more of a lingua franca than NA, since NA would be mostly english speakers but have a few spanish and a few french speakers, where as Korea is almost all Korean.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link