Looking at my entire career in MK9 and all of the controversies I've started, I just feel I should recap and explain how it's made me a better and stronger competitor today. I hope this helps players out there who are going through a current situation or have been that is similar.
Starting things off and my first impression
The day of Power Up came and I got to show off my Kabal. My positive presentation of Kabal was quickly put to an end after a couple games in pools. I had a player refuse to shake my hand and look at me like I was a joke. It wasn't brought to my attention until the end of the day, day before top 8 that my character had a block infinite and it was the only reason I was getting rounds off of people. The word was quickly spreading and people were labeling me as a scrub. At this early stage in my competitive career, I was letting it get to me so I dropped Kabal and went with a secondary (CSZ). I placed top 3 and during the stream and in result thread posts there were a lot of people labeling me as a "dive kick spammer and one trick pony".
I don't know why I was letting all the negativity and hate get to me. Maybe it was because I wasn't used to the exposure and mass effect the opinion of public can have on someone. If I could go back in time, I would've just stuck with Kabal and used the block infinite. Regardless if it caused the game look bad or make me look like a scrub. It wasn't my fault, but I'm glad I inspired players like MichaelAngelo and Erik Warda to get into Kabal.
Getting rid of the "Honor" mindset
When I was watching the CEO stream, I had the most known player at that time publicly embarrass me on stream. I won't mention his name, but he said something along the lines of "Oh, REO? REO is far behind everyone" when a commentator brought up my name. I was actually thinking of quitting the game right after I heard this, but instead it set me off. Every bit of honor I had with refusing to use the characters I wanted, and to play with "fairness" was immediately thrown out the window. I picked up Kung Lao and a couple weeks later confronted the player at Empire Arcadia tournament and won. It felt really good, even though later on he claimed I only won because of a breaker vulnerability his character had.
"Mashing" and "sneaking" my way to EVO grand finals
This was mostly all I read about and heard for the longest time. I had to constantly listen to people rag on me for abusing a "braindead" hitbox glitch that made me "impossible to hit". People were sending me messages on various sites that they were losing respect for me because all I was doing was d+4, d+4, d+4, d+4, and sai spamming and that I was better than that. I had a certain champion claim the match up was 7-3 in Mileena's favor because of said glitch, and that it was a godsend he overcame it to beat me. All of these claims that were completely false, and people were actually believing it.
I even had well known players from other communities saying "REO is trash and I have no idea how he snuck his way to the grand finals". "REO had every advantage in the match up and still lost". It just kept stacking up until finally dying down a few months later. All of this did anger me to an extent. How was I getting people to believe Mileena was insanely broken when deep down I knew she wasn't? At this point I had no choice but to show people what an extremely good character truly looked like.
The hitbox dilemma and Kabal is insanely broken delusion
I finally got to win a major. After all the hard work and practicing I put into my new character, it paid off. Getting home and reading comments and listening to other players talk about the event just disgusted me.
I had countless things said to me as to why I won this major such as:
"The dash nerf made Kabal broken, REO is lucky"
"Kabal iAFB is autipilot and dumb, anyone can win like that"
"Hitbox needs to be banned"
"Kabal has no bad match ups and beats everyone in the cast 7-3, 8-2"
"Kabal needs to be banned"
etc.
It was already bad enough I had to listen to side comments like these all day at the actual event. But to come home and have to read it all over again? It was whatever, I started not to care at this point about anything haters had to say. I got tired of proving people wrong, and have no reason to do so anymore. I never talked shit about other players or stated how everyone got three chances in the tournament but me.
When the next major came and I got 2nd at SBV with "broken unbeatable hitbox Kabal", a lot of people were ridiculing me. I got a lot of comments saying "That's what REO gets for abusing a broken character and controller". "Wow, REO lost to a low tier character, he sucks and is garbage". "How can anyone lose to Jax with Kabal? Kabal wins that much just iAFB spamming". It was okay though, because at this point I was growing immune to the trolling and going along with some of it for fun.
Fast forward to today. I got my fair share of hate at Final Round XV, like "REO had to countperick to win, what a scrub" and the typical Kabal bullshit. But you know what? In the end it's a great community filled with some of the best people you'll ever meet. EVERYONE, and I repeat, EVERYONE, gets hated on, no matter who you are. At the end of the day, it's your choice of letting the haters get to you. Anyone who is thinking of quitting the game of has had a thought of doing so because of haters. My advice is to just hang in there and ignore them, because it'll just make you a better player and stronger competitor in the longrun.
