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Is it any surprise that Deathstroke became
a figure of controversy in the Injustice:
Gods Among Us community?
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There are a lot of things that can be said about the online fighting game community, but one thing that can't be said is that honor is not important. A large amount of time, effort, and training are spent by gamers to learn and hone their skills and by extension, building their gamer reputation within the community. For the elite players, big money can even be made participating in high-stakes professional gaming tournament play.
One thing that really gets under a fighting gamer's skin is a player that fights without honor. In my own days in the early fighting game community (which admittedly was just me and a bunch of other similarly unfocused early 90s slackers huddled around a Street Fighter II arcade cabinet at the local Dairy Queen), people with little skill were looked down upon if they resorted to "dirty" tactics such as crouching and hitting low kick ten times in a row to gain a victory. We used to say that they were "playing cheap," or "bringing the cheese." These days if an unskilled player hits the same move over and over again to eek out a cheap or dishonorable win, they are said to be "spamming." "Spammers," as the community calls them, rank just above terrorists in the great hierarchy of dirtbags in the world, though admittedly not very far above terrorists.
When Injustice: Gods Among Us was first released in April of 2013 it became apparent to the fledgling Injustice community that Deathstroke was going to be a problem. Deathstroke had two gun moves (Machine Gun - [ ↓ , → , Medium Attack ] & Quick Fire - [ ↓ , → , Light Attack]) that fires super fast multiple gunshots that can cover the entire screen. Inexperienced or otherwise low-skilled players used these two moves excessively, (aka "spammed" the moves) in online play inflicting large amounts of damage from an all-to-safe distance for the sake of honorable competition. Highly skilled "honorable" players found themselves beaten all too often by spammers using Deathstroke that the character itself earned the disparaging nickname of "Spamstroke." By utilizing these tactics dishonorably, Deathstroke spammers made few fans and fewer friends within the Injustice community.
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| A Deathstroke player "spamming" the Bane player from across the screen from a video that teaches Injustice players how to defeat spammers. |
The Injustice community spoke out about the spamming tactic to the point that NetherRealm Studios, the makers of Injustice, included some changes to the game in a patch. Some of the changes were that Deathstroke's gun damage during his Character Trait mode (were all gun moves are unblockable for a short time) was weakened, while his cooldown period afterword (where all gun moves miss for a short time) was slightly extended. Furthermore, the inclusion of more teleporting characters and tactics served to turn the tables on Deathstroke spammers by essentially eliminating their damage-from-distance advantage, forcing them to engage in a more honorable fashion. Needless to say, higher-skilled players within the Injustice community found this a bit more to their liking. I simply wonder, who in the world ever expected a mercenary rouge like Deathstroke to fight fair in the first place, right?
