I’ve heard the following claim before. When it came up today on Slack, I thought it might be worthy of further conversation in this asynchronous forum.
“People play stuff they know is bad because they don’t want to face their own poor play. It’s sad because being like ‘Hey, I don’t want to practice a ton. I’m just competing for fun’ is a totally fkin reasonable thing to say. But they are afraid to say that, so they lose on purpose instead.” (edited for captizliation and punctuation)
This comment struck a chord with me because in my Netrunner play, I have at times dodged “the best decks” because playing sub-optimal decks gives me a ready excuse for losing.
I have done this. And I’m not sure if I should feel like I was wrong to do it. But I think there is an interesting conversation to be had about why people do this and whether it is something to avoid. I wonder how much fear of facing the fact that we are not elite-level players drives deck choices?
What do you think?