u/Forsaken_Duck1610

This isn't bait. This isn't me making some kind of ironic joke. And it's not an ego post. I know that this will never please some of the people in this game's community. I know that this will be subject to various forms of snark and passive detachment and sarcastic criticism.

It all just takes a ridiculous amount of time and practice and discipline. For everyone.

I just wanna make this post for the sake of anybody who finds himself a little bit frustrated with the game.

I like to draw. And no matter how good I get at drawing, I'll never be the best at it and there will always be someone better at it than me. But that's okay, and it's actually kind of humbling. Because it means that you can still at least try to get better. Not to be the best, you never will be. But because it's about becoming. When people see what I draw and they say "I wish I could do that," I get kind of confused. Cause anyone can draw. Not everyone can draw the way they want to, in fact nobody can. But everyone can start. It's just ((Initial Talent × Time)^improval + interest)/fatigue [experience].

I've begun to realize when fighting other Spider-man players, the relationship isn't dissimilar.

I'm not the best at playing Spider-man. In fact I think I'm quite bad. Very little of what I do can be called true combos, I'm only really baby-stepping into stringing together hits consistently recently, or trying to input combos outside of the practice range with mixed results. No matter how good I get at them, I will never be the best. But that's sort of humbling.

I've faced off against people who wiped the floor with me. And I've wiped the floor with others too. What's immediately apparent is simply just a gap of time learning what can and can't be done without getting punished. Just one big skill curve that everyone is on and some are ahead of you, some are also behind you, but you're always surrounded by peers that have the same access to the mechanics you do. There are no crutches to rely on, just themselves.

And either way, I think it's the most interesting and engaging form of counterplay that the game needs to implement across the board. To such a degree that I'll smile after getting beat by another Spider-man and compliment him in match chat. And I'll frown or feel despondent after putting the emphasis on a different enemy Spider-man as a threat, baiting his engagements out and having him go negative for his team to type "Our Spider-man got diffed." And defend him in match chat. Because in either outcome, I know that player was TRYING just as hard as me. It just came down to making even the slightest bit of choices differently.

I'm a big advocate of the idea that this game needs to start standardizing difficulty across it's cast more towards what Spider-man is at. Too many characters are sort of just free value with little to no thought in them. And that will produce bad players who want to coast by. But seeing what other Spider-man players do and GO THROUGH, it doesn't make me think "Oh he sucks." Anymore. Instead I think "here's where he's progressed to." I'm Champion on the character, and it genuinely doesn't mean anything to me cause I'm aware I have a lot to learn still.

It's lead to a very falsified perspective in the community where we equate a bronze player who's never touched the game before as trash because he can't get a long pull every fight, to a leader board demon who is getting blamed for simply selecting the character.

It's one of the big reasons I won't type:

"Hang up the mask" in chat.

Cause it's just senseless discouragement of the exact kind of gameplay this game needs more of. They may not have gotten the clearest picture of it all as you, but they're trying just as hard.

I will type:

"I don't need squids to play for me. (K/D) on a character that aims for you."

In match chat, even after swapping, because Namor is a fundamentally unfair character that abuses auto aim damage that the player doesn't work for and decisions they don't make but rely on the cpu to make for them. It's the difference between drawing and using ai to "draw" for you. It has no merit. They can't improve at putting down a squid. A Rocket player can't improve at holding down a button more than they already do. But the more you play, the more you're going to understand, the more you understand, the more you can anticipate and the more you can anticipate, the more you can counteract.

At the end of the day, I would rather lose interesting and cerebral fights that rely on a never ending learning process from a human opponent who worked to out-think me, than a glorified macro for an aimbot.

No matter how many people try and gaslight you into thinking you just suck in this wildly unbalanced game, Don't let them get in your head. They abuse crutch mechanics just like that more than half of the time. Don't give up. And don't stay down. And don't give up the mask. Like me, you will lose games. But like me, you are also the one playing them.

There are way cooler and more fitting options that the whiny communal boyfriend of the X-Men and latter on traitor/murderer of the founder of the organization.

Admittedly, None of this has to do with him as an archetype. I wasn't expecting Rogue to be a Vanguard, and she's one of the most fun and well designed characters in the game. So I'm not unopposed to the idea of him being a tank because of expectations. I'm opposed to him being a Tank cause all of the ones above are just better, more easily likable characters.