This moment has always stuck with me over the months I've been playing this game, because this was also the day I got my first win ever. Even though the first game was basically a joke, I was still so ecstatic because I had lost 7 games in a row, and this one was just easy, it was a 11-0 surrender win, and I only died once! I also didn't get any kills, so it was actually kind of boring, but still.
Feeling good, I decided to queue my second game, where my brother, who was much better than I was, was watching me play and sorta coaching me. So anyways one of the players on my team got 4 kills and people were saying "let him ace!" and my brother, who was watching, was getting excited, saying that this is gonna be the second ace this game. Well, I didn't really have any trigger discipline or game sense because I was new, and I was on edge and looking for threats, so I accidentally wandered into the enemy spawn area, and the first thing I did was see a red outline and instinctively shoot before my brain can even register what is happening, because I knew a few milliseconds could mean the difference between life and death in this game. You know the usual "shoot now and ask questions later" mentality?
Then I realized what I had done: I had stolen a well-deserved ace by killing an afk player, and everyone, including my brother, were flaming me for making this mistake, with my brother jokingly saying now they're gonna come and raid my house, and I was sooooo mortified and red and hot in the face, apologizing profusely, as if that would unshoot my bullet and give my teammate the ace. And the person who should've got the ace said it was okay, and it made me feel a little bit better, but not much though. If this was literally any other online game, i would have just left right then and there, because I couldn't bear the embarrassment and the criticism and I felt like I was dying inside, but because this is Valorant, and I didn't want to get punished for leaving, I know I just had to stick it out for a few more rounds, as I tried my very best to keep calm so I can focus on the here and now, and I was awarded for staying with a double-kill at the end, and our team just barely scraping by with a 13-12 finish. I wanted to just call it a day after that, for this really tilted me and stressed me beyond belief, but my party member wanted to play one more game, so not wanting to let him down, I agreed to queue again.
I tried to let the past go. New game, I tell myself. New players. Fresh start. Things were actually going quite well this time, and during this game, one of my teammates was close to getting an ace, and my brother made that very clear to me, so I pointed my gun towards the ground so I wouldn't be tempted, and guess what? My teammate actually got the ace this time! But we didn't get the win, sadly (11/13 still close.) So I got 2 wins that day, which is much better than my usual 0. But after that I had to take a break from Valorant for 3 weeks just to recover from the psyche damage, but I never stole an ace ever again after that. So I guess there was sort of a happy ending to my story.
(I put paragraphs in my post-you happy now, Mike?)
