There's a larger issue with players taking games way too seriously, even outside of ranked, but that isn't the fault of SSBM. It's the fault of a terrible gaming culture.
It's not the fault of SSBM at all. It's absurd to consider as such- merely facing opponents of the same skill level will only result in try hard bullshit if you take the game so seriously that you are willing to participate in outright antisocial behavior and to an extent psychological self-harm. You have to be primed to do that- In an entirely different setting the majority of people would instead treat such an equal match as an excuse to fuck around and not care about winning or losing, or as an opportunity to practice against reasonable odds. They have to be primed for it. And I do think RANKS do this. Putting people into outright different qualitative hierarchical categories based on how much you play a game inherently encourages them to be hierarchical.
The important words there are "qualitative and hierarchical". You can separate players into separate game categories WITHOUT applying a value judgement to it; You can have skill based match making that does not reward or intrinsically justify try hard behavior. But that requires not caring about the profit motive; it requires not wanting to force your players into a frustrating addictive cycle, it requires using SSBM properly instead of in the way companies think it is designed for.
There's a larger issue with players taking games way too seriously, even outside of ranked, but that isn't the fault of SSBM. It's the fault of a terrible gaming culture.
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It's not the fault of SSBM at all. It's absurd to consider as such- merely facing opponents of the same skill level will only result in try hard bullshit if you take the game so seriously that you are willing to participate in outright antisocial behavior and to an extent psychological self-harm. You have to be primed to do that- In an entirely different setting the majority of people would instead treat such an equal match as an excuse to fuck around and not care about winning or losing, or as an opportunity to practice against reasonable odds. They have to be primed for it. And I do think RANKS do this. Putting people into outright different qualitative hierarchical categories based on how much you play a game inherently encourages them to be hierarchical.
The important words there are "qualitative and hierarchical". You can separate players into separate game categories WITHOUT applying a value judgement to it; You can have skill based match making that does not reward or intrinsically justify try hard behavior. But that requires not caring about the profit motive; it requires not wanting to force your players into a frustrating addictive cycle, it requires using SSBM properly instead of in the way companies think it is designed for.
Real SSBM has never been tried
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very reasonable sorry if i was rude to you
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