Mental Health Check Ins - (Syndicate)

[MartinGG99]

Figured I would re-post the same thing (as seen on Mafia Universe) here, in case anyone wants to use the discussion here.

Hi y'all. Billy and I thought it would be good to start a thread to have more of an open discourse about what we're going through, things that we find that help, things that we're still processing, etc.

I'll share some stuff now for sure, but this is basically an open space for people who want to chat and talk about little things they're struggling with or bigger issues or whatever.

Think of it as screaming into a void of people who have probably also been there. That's always pretty comforting for me so I hope it is for you as well. Also this can literally be as casual or as serious as you want it. I'm gonna start it off a little serious, I guess, but please feel free to just let the thread know if you stubbed your toe and it ruined your day.

xoxo
Manasi

[MartinGG99]

Also re-posting my post here.

This is a bit of a lengthy post, but it is mildly related to my mental health even if it doesn't seem like it initially.

Spoiler: show

If you know what games I typically play, you should know that 99% percent of me is not into racing games, and 60-75% of me is not really competitive.

And yet, in the past week I've recently got into a game called Trackmania (the 2020 version). This is exclusively a racing game, and can be really competitive. Dead-to-rights, I shouldn't even know about it. So the question is how did I get here, and why do I like it?

I recently came across a rather cool YouTube channel called Wirtual, which is run by a twitch streamer of the same name. They've played in some of the Trackmania games (in particular Trackmania Nations Forever) for the past 7 years, and they have learned many things about trackmania and its stories. Many of which are often on the topics about short cuts, world-records, and other achievements in Trackmania. These stories are told throughout out his videos, and rather quite well and are occasionally inspiring. So I decided to check-out his twitch channel, while learning about the game and soon after played the game myself.

The game has very few controls for movement. Surely the game is easy, right? Well, actually, no. It's very challenging if you're attempting to reach world records. As a beginner, you can expect to crash frequently if you attempt to race optimally (or even just for track-based medals), and doing so on many maps can be challenging because the difficulty isn't in the complexity of the controls but rather when and where you use them and for how long, as well as the complexity of the track.

However, this ease-of-use/hard-to-master play surprisingly has become one of my favorite features about the game despite me being not very competitive, especially in conjunction with this other feature:

There's a daily thing called the "cup of the day" everyday at exactly 5 PM (or 17:00) UTC, where a previously (mostly) unknown or unplayed track is selected to be the "track of the day". For the first 15 minutes or so, you must finish the track at least once, and can do so multiple times; only your best score is saved. After the 15 minutes or so, you are put into a server of 64 players depending on your world-wide ranking. If you were in the top 64, then you will get into a server containing the top 64. If you're not in the top 64, but are in the top 10% of the rankings, you will get into a server containing 64 players of said 10%. If you're not of the top 10%, you'll get into the 25%. And this continues for top 50% and top 100%.

Because of this, you will qualify into (roughly) equal-skill-level servers. If you're a beginner, you'll get into servers containing players who may be just as new as you. And *this* is what I start liking about it. In these servers you will do single races on the same track; only a select few of the 64 players who initially race will be eliminated. Then with the remaining players the race is run again and again until there's just 1 remaining player left.

If you remember what I mentioned earlier, beginners can crash fairly often. This is definitely true for this "Cup of the day" event, and when I play it, not only do I occasionally crash, but I often see others crash; sometimes just like I do. Heck, for this day alone, I personally crashed twice and was far behind, at risk of being eliminated; but 10 other players or so happened to crash in some way as well.

And I find this absolutely hilarious or enjoyable. Maybe I'm using strong words, because I don't really laugh very very hard, but this is to stress that's an achievement in of itself. I don't laugh very often. I'm very picky with jokes sometimes and its tough to make me actually laugh. I don't really often remember when I laugh or what I've found really funny.

But this? I have never felt it being so easy to just laugh. Why take mistakes so seriously when you can often see some other idiot (just like myself) doing the same damm thing? It's like I can relate to their (potential) frustration and just laugh at it, or the ridiculousness of the mistake, not that I really mean at malice or anything to them.

[dunya]

mental health awareness month is over, but my mental illness isn't.


i was gonna post that on facebook june 1 but

[Hally]

[dunya]

dunya deleted post

[juliets]

dunya deleted post

dunia I love you and as you know will always be there for you. I'm so sorry it has been so rough for you but glad to see you taking so many positive steps. Keep making that daily promise to yourself and reach out if you need help or anything at all.

[nutella]

love you dodo

[Hally]

love you dunya

[dunya]

love you 3 a lot too <3

sorry for the bad energy today.

[tutuu]