"No N00bs!"

Hello CyberNinjas! Today, I'm going to talk about Noobs. Newbies, n00bs, new players. We were all one at one point. With just about every major game having online multiplayer features, players can link up with other players to play cooperative or competitive games and have a blast. Unfortunately, there's a sense of elitism in the gaming community where new players are looked down upon. I'm going to explain my stance on this and tell some stories from the two main games I play, Destiny and Warframe, where I've experienced this sort of elitism.

"I saw people looking for players who had insane requirements, like having certain weapons, PvP experience, a certain amount of raid completions, and limits for how many times a player could cause a team wipe before their either kicked, or the player leaves."

In Destiny, you start out at level 1 and progress to the "Soft Level cap" of 40. From there, you can raise your light level to deal more damage as well as take less damage in activities where enemies are higher than level 40. Most endgame activities require players to be at a certain light level to even enter that activity. When one of the endgame activities called a raid went live in the latest DLC release in Destiny, titled Rise of Iron, I went through the trouble of finding a fire team to join so I could enter the raid (For some strange reason there isn't any sort of matchmaking for any of the raids.). I was well over the required light level for the normal difficulty, which is 370. I saw people looking for players who had insane requirements, like having certain weapons, PvP experience, a certain amount of raid completions, and limits for how many times a player could cause a team wipe before their either kicked, or the player leaves.

"I don't think that players should be excluded from instances because they don't have a certain arbitrary limitation that the fire team leader placed."

 I often saw "Know what you're doing" and "No Squeakers/Noobs" the "know what you're doing", I understand, but if players don't know, don't ruin their experience by kicking them out. The same thing goes for no squeakers (kids or adolescents) or noobs. Destiny is Teen rated, so it's a given that you're going to run into players who are young. The only real real reason I can see players requesting to not have those players int heir fireteam is because younger players can either sound annoying, the adults don't want to have to watch their language, or they've had bad instances with younger players. I get that.
 
I don't think that players should be excluded from instances because they don't have a certain arbitrary limitation that the fire team leader placed. A lot of them are stupid requirements and makes the fire team leader look like they wouldn't be fun to play with anyways. When the harder iterations of the raids come out the players that either have no experience in the harder difficulties or the raid at all are often excluded while the super-hardcore crowd, an even smaller percentage of the player base that raids, completes them. I get that gamers like having a sense of pride in their gaming accomplishments, hell, I have a gamer score of over 10,000 on xbox live and I'm proud of that! (It's also the reason why I won't ditch Xbox for PS4) But, having a sense of superiority because you can play a game better, have enough connections to enter endgame activities without having to search for other players you don't know, or the time to do every aspect of the game doesn't give anyone the right to look down on other players who aren't like them. 

I find elitism a nasty thing in gaming because at the end of the day we're all playing video games. It's just. a. game. It's not your life, it's nothing that serious. Losing all your save data is serious. Having 30,000 raid completions, multiple challenge emblems, and the top tier weapons  is nothing to me if you're a jerk to other players and don't try to help players out. It's the kind of thing that makes me a solo player in Destiny. I don't use LFG anymore because it's a mess. I used to be stoked about reaching max light and getting all the raid gear, but after having so many terrible raid attempts because of elitism I gave up. Moving towards Warframe now, I'm going to talk about how different the elitism is in that community.

Warframe, for the most part, has a great community. Players are very helpful to new players, guiding them through the star chart to unlock all the planets and get a hang of the game. In some instances, players have given players very valuable items to aid them in their journey. The only time you really notice any elitism s once you move towards the endgame activities. Players are ranked by a system called the Mastery Rank System. This ranking system ranges from 0 to I think 30. (If I am incorrect, please leave me a comment with the correction and I will gladly fix it.) How players advance in ranking is by leveling up new items. That means Warframes, companions, archwings, and weapons. once you are eligible for rank-up, you have to complete a test. Provided you pass, you rank up. This may sound pretty simple, but the higher you rank up, the more difficult the tests become. They won't end up being impossible to complete, they'll just become controller throwing table flipping hard. Oh, and failing blocks you from attempting the test again for 24 hours, so it's ideal to beat it in the first shot. Higher ranked players are looked at with a level of respect because you really had to endure some crap just to get to that high rank. For some players, this goes to their head and when matched with lower ranked players, they will either not revive them when they do go down, or troll them until they leave.

Ive seen instances in the recruiting chat channel where, just like with Destiny, players make requests for certain Warframes in addition to the players mastery rank. in most cases the lowest rank they'll play with is 7. Some clans won't even let lower ranked players join if they're below a certain rank. For new players starting out, this can be a bit daunting because there's many things going on in the game that the game doesn't tell you. Like it's level and mod system for example; when you have a Warframe and weapons equipped they all have a max level of 30. As you level up the items, you gain more mod capacity. To enhance your items, you put mods on them. When a mod is put in a slot that has a matching polarity, the capacity cost is halved, allowing you to use more mods. Once you max the items level, you may double the mod capacity of the item with either a orokin reactor or catalyst, both items are super rare and can be bought with real money in the market. Doubling the capacity also lets you to either upgrade the mods and make them stronger, or add more mods to make your item more effective in combat. This is a lot for a new player, and if you don't know what you're doing, you'll have many instances where you're either going to be one-shotted, or deal little to no damage to enemies.

When I first started Warframe, I knew none of this, and had no ideas what I was doing for a while. I ended up looking at other peoples build ideas and watching how they made use of their Warframe selection, even if I didn't have the Warframe they were using. Mastery Rank tests took me weeks to pass because I would constantly fail them. Little did I know that I could just go to any relay and practice any of the tests before I officially took them. I didn't have any significant help from other players. I have a couple of friends I play Warframe with every now and again and we help each other out.  I bounced from clan to clan because every time I asked for help with something, I seldom got it. As with Destiny, I became more of a solo player when it came to building my arsenal, but just about everything, save for the items my friends have either gifted me with or traded with me, I have acquired in Warframe I had found on my own.

All of this being said, If anyone wants any help in Warframe, or just wants a new friend to knock some heads with, my Gamertag is Gamenerd300 on Xbox Live. Add me and let me know how you found me.

See ya next time CyberNinjas.