I've been trying to to figure out if this efficiency focus is a cause of the scrub personality. I've already determined that most whales in p2w games are scrubs (and devs too often engage a disgusting cycle of monetization and manipulation with them). Scrub here meaning a person with low skill/ability who also has no incentive to improve, instead opting to seek out strategies developed by select authorities, blindly adhering to those strategies, and typically talking down to anyone that refuses to cooperate with their chosen strategy.
One of us has the wrong definition of "scrub" then, because yours is the opposite of mine - I'd say a scrub is someone who knows they are using a suboptimal strategy, but shames their opponent for using a better strategy instead of taking an "If you can't beat them, join them" approach. The scrub would not pay to win in a p2w game, they would (rightly) complain about the unfair advantage their opponents get from decisions that should be out of scope.
I don't have many opportunities to talk about this, so forgive the lengthy post.
shames their opponent for using a better strategy
Aside from this, I'd say our definitions are not mutually exclusive. I haven't actually encountered your type of scrub (despite having spent hundreds of hours playing Destiny1 with random people), so it's hard to speak for the motivation they might be having. Surely they'd use an angle more effective than "stop winning so hard"? Like mimicking the argument I might make towards my type of scrub: accusing them of wanting to command a machine rather than play with real people. Or even complaining that using optimal strategy X is getting boring, so we should try something different. Though both types do seem to share that aspect; neither seems interested in actually cooperating with their allies (which always involves a degree of compromise and adaptation).
The scrub would not pay to win in a p2w game, they would (rightly) complain about the unfair advantage their opponents get from decisions that should be out of scope.
For this part, I assume you mean that they only complain and do not bother trying to compete or adapt. My type of scrub would also have a lack of adaptation and competitive attitude, but they deeply desire victory (this is different from wanting to compete) and understand that the optimal strategy is to spend more money.
A well-designed p2w game will have some avenue for free players to get close to competing with whales, leaving just enough power gap for the whales to stay ahead but not too much of a gap that good strategy can't beat the whale. This is necessary to keep the free players in the game and the free players are needed to help the lesser whales attain their beloved victories (this is part of why it's so rare to see a p2w game with no pvp; Genshin Impact is a bizarre case that I'm still trying to understand). No whale wants to play against only other whales - they'd have to make an effort to get their victory then, unless they knew that they had spent more than their opponent.
The whale-scrub likely has a complex about losing. They lack the right attitude to prosper in the face of adversity. They don't rise up and say "I'll win next time", they stay down and curse other people for their failures. This is what makes p2w such a paradise for them; now they can have a concrete hierarchy and force their way to the top - not through hard work, skill, or any of that gamer stuff, but through the utilization of non-game resources. It's a very 'revenge of the nerd' thing, to conquer the alpha male because you're willing to spend more money than he is on a game.
I don't mean to imply that any guy doing research on optimal strategies is a scrub. Full growth will inevitably involve seeing how other people succeed. The non-scrub will take those strategies and at least consider why they are so successful, then compare to their own strategies. A non-scrub cares about things beyond seeing a congratulatory message on their screen; they would want to know that they beat a strong adversary with their own skill, or they'd consider how they could improve when they fail, or any number of motivations. I'm wanting to place a fixation on victory because it seems to corrupt men who lack secondary motivations.
If a gamer looks up optimal strategies and only ever strictly adheres to those strategies without even considering why they're optimal and how they could be improved, I'd probably accuse them of being a scrub. Though consideration must be given to some possible excuses, like the odd case of just wanting to see how a story ends or the more p2w-model symptom of feeling like you're doing a chore by playing. It is also possible they're merely worshipping the authority of their favorite e-sports-guy, which is a seperate deficiency.
Coming back to the original point: "scrub" should probably only apply within multiplayer games and focus on the inability to engage with other players appropriately or effectively, spreading to a refusal to accept alternate strategies and a desire to ridicule anybody not agreeing with them. That would match both our definitions. A scrub would never be able to maintain a #1 position in a skill-based game because they can't adapt like a normal gamer. Scrubs that aren't dummies would learn to adopt successful strategies from non-scrubs, so the dumb and the desperate scrubs become the prime candidates for the whale role.
Surely they'd use an angle more effective than "stop winning so hard"?
Of course they would - they'd be angry at their opponent for exploiting a mechanic or tactic that in their view should not be part of the game. For example, if stunlocking your opponent is an effective strategy, they will be angry that the developers made such an anti-fun strategy so effective, and angry that their opponent is abusing that mechanic instead of playing the game "as intended."
Emulating the effective strategies used by other people is the opposite of being a scrub.
Ohh, that. Yeah, I have encountered a lot of that. Normally, they'd listen when I tried to explain how the meta worked, eventually understanding how to overcome their new problem. But only in pvp - in pve is ironically where I saw the most stubborn strategists unwilling to adapt or compromise. Maybe the time pressure makes people more willing to compromise?
I don't think there's another term for "bad player mimicks good players but refuses to improve their fundamentals". That's where the above always failed. If one particular strategy is seen as powerful, they'd get fed up and adopt it themselves after a while to "see how they like it" and it would 90% backfire because they don't understand the strategy well enough to back it up. Naturally, since they are then motivated by emotion, they are unwilling to listen to an explanation of why they're failing.
Low skill players can come to understand their limits and strategize around those limits. But a bad player cannot come to terms with their limits, ultimately stunting their skill growth. The most tragic player to play with in my experience is the bad player with moderate skill, who doesn't understand just how strong they could become, but has enough skill to carelessly mimick strategies they see, yet crumples when confronted with a high skill opponent.
One of us has the wrong definition of "scrub" then, because yours is the opposite of mine - I'd say a scrub is someone who knows they are using a suboptimal strategy, but shames their opponent for using a better strategy instead of taking an "If you can't beat them, join them" approach. The scrub would not pay to win in a p2w game, they would (rightly) complain about the unfair advantage their opponents get from decisions that should be out of scope.
I don't have many opportunities to talk about this, so forgive the lengthy post.
Aside from this, I'd say our definitions are not mutually exclusive. I haven't actually encountered your type of scrub (despite having spent hundreds of hours playing Destiny1 with random people), so it's hard to speak for the motivation they might be having. Surely they'd use an angle more effective than "stop winning so hard"? Like mimicking the argument I might make towards my type of scrub: accusing them of wanting to command a machine rather than play with real people. Or even complaining that using optimal strategy X is getting boring, so we should try something different. Though both types do seem to share that aspect; neither seems interested in actually cooperating with their allies (which always involves a degree of compromise and adaptation).
For this part, I assume you mean that they only complain and do not bother trying to compete or adapt. My type of scrub would also have a lack of adaptation and competitive attitude, but they deeply desire victory (this is different from wanting to compete) and understand that the optimal strategy is to spend more money.
A well-designed p2w game will have some avenue for free players to get close to competing with whales, leaving just enough power gap for the whales to stay ahead but not too much of a gap that good strategy can't beat the whale. This is necessary to keep the free players in the game and the free players are needed to help the lesser whales attain their beloved victories (this is part of why it's so rare to see a p2w game with no pvp; Genshin Impact is a bizarre case that I'm still trying to understand). No whale wants to play against only other whales - they'd have to make an effort to get their victory then, unless they knew that they had spent more than their opponent.
The whale-scrub likely has a complex about losing. They lack the right attitude to prosper in the face of adversity. They don't rise up and say "I'll win next time", they stay down and curse other people for their failures. This is what makes p2w such a paradise for them; now they can have a concrete hierarchy and force their way to the top - not through hard work, skill, or any of that gamer stuff, but through the utilization of non-game resources. It's a very 'revenge of the nerd' thing, to conquer the alpha male because you're willing to spend more money than he is on a game.
I don't mean to imply that any guy doing research on optimal strategies is a scrub. Full growth will inevitably involve seeing how other people succeed. The non-scrub will take those strategies and at least consider why they are so successful, then compare to their own strategies. A non-scrub cares about things beyond seeing a congratulatory message on their screen; they would want to know that they beat a strong adversary with their own skill, or they'd consider how they could improve when they fail, or any number of motivations. I'm wanting to place a fixation on victory because it seems to corrupt men who lack secondary motivations.
If a gamer looks up optimal strategies and only ever strictly adheres to those strategies without even considering why they're optimal and how they could be improved, I'd probably accuse them of being a scrub. Though consideration must be given to some possible excuses, like the odd case of just wanting to see how a story ends or the more p2w-model symptom of feeling like you're doing a chore by playing. It is also possible they're merely worshipping the authority of their favorite e-sports-guy, which is a seperate deficiency.
Coming back to the original point: "scrub" should probably only apply within multiplayer games and focus on the inability to engage with other players appropriately or effectively, spreading to a refusal to accept alternate strategies and a desire to ridicule anybody not agreeing with them. That would match both our definitions. A scrub would never be able to maintain a #1 position in a skill-based game because they can't adapt like a normal gamer. Scrubs that aren't dummies would learn to adopt successful strategies from non-scrubs, so the dumb and the desperate scrubs become the prime candidates for the whale role.
Of course they would - they'd be angry at their opponent for exploiting a mechanic or tactic that in their view should not be part of the game. For example, if stunlocking your opponent is an effective strategy, they will be angry that the developers made such an anti-fun strategy so effective, and angry that their opponent is abusing that mechanic instead of playing the game "as intended."
Emulating the effective strategies used by other people is the opposite of being a scrub.
Ohh, that. Yeah, I have encountered a lot of that. Normally, they'd listen when I tried to explain how the meta worked, eventually understanding how to overcome their new problem. But only in pvp - in pve is ironically where I saw the most stubborn strategists unwilling to adapt or compromise. Maybe the time pressure makes people more willing to compromise?
I don't think there's another term for "bad player mimicks good players but refuses to improve their fundamentals". That's where the above always failed. If one particular strategy is seen as powerful, they'd get fed up and adopt it themselves after a while to "see how they like it" and it would 90% backfire because they don't understand the strategy well enough to back it up. Naturally, since they are then motivated by emotion, they are unwilling to listen to an explanation of why they're failing.
Low skill players can come to understand their limits and strategize around those limits. But a bad player cannot come to terms with their limits, ultimately stunting their skill growth. The most tragic player to play with in my experience is the bad player with moderate skill, who doesn't understand just how strong they could become, but has enough skill to carelessly mimick strategies they see, yet crumples when confronted with a high skill opponent.
"Casual."