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This is something so commonly talked about, yet also so commonly asked. How do you ladder without rage? How do you not let losses bother you? How do you just play to improve while also enjoying yourself? There is an abundance of good advice on the rational and analytically side: watch your replays, learn from your losses, be polite to your opponent. Those things tell us WHY we want to ladder without rage, but practically they do not help us with the how. (I know there are some other things and guides that do help, this might be a different/better approach) Like most good things, it's easier said than done.
Well I've been somewhat dedicated to SC2 over the past year, playing enough to spend my bonus and go from gold to masters. As dedicated as a casual player can be. However, rage has always been a big problem that has always been there. For me it would manifest itself in two ways. The first is the actual rage, yelling and screaming, resisting urges to pound on my desk and keyboard, uncomfortable and awkward moments with my girlfriend, me basically acting like a spoiled kid who never learned to lose on the playground. The second is just not playing as much as I would want to, because I am afraid of the feelings of loss and rage. So I just choose to miss out on a good experience, and life is short.
So we don't want to be like that, and we want to ladder, improve and enjoy ourselves. One of the reason I love SC2 unlike any other video game, is that I strongly believe the game can have a healthy impact on your mind and cognitive skills - it's like weight lifting for your brain. Importantly, the good feelings we get when winning often have little or nothing to do with all of the good SC2 has to offer. Taking ladder too seriously and raging over losses is like a weight lifter trying to use way too much weight to train with. His expectations for himself are way too high, and the result is he is only putting his health at risk, while making it more painful than it should be. Losses do hurt, but they don't have to hurt as much as they often do. Don't underestimate the health risks of the stress and rage SC2 can cause, if you are one to consistently go down that path. Certainly if you are at or close to the point of yelling or hitting things, there is a problem.
Now for the best part, the practical advice. How did I do it? It's quite simple, but if you want it to work, you better fucking do it.
Lose, and lose often. Do whatever it takes. Off race, try weird cheeses, play random. Dedicate one play session to trashing your rating in a way that is either fun and/or provides new learning opportunities. For me, after playing only zerg on ladder for so long, because I didn't want to hurt my precious rating, I started playing terran, but not in the sense of a permanent race switch.
I bunker rushed, I bitbybitprimed, I two port bansheed. It was fun as hell and I was winning like 2 out of 20 games at first, I quickly went down to diamond and eventually starting playing vs. platinum opponents. The learning aspect should not be underestimated. One of the more notable lessons for me was that double 11 rax bunker rush is a lot harder to do than I gave it credit for. More often than not, I would lose when trying this in TvZ. Sure enough the occasional win would award me some zerg rage, and sometimes I would try to explain to them that I play zerg, and I almost always lose when I try to bunker rush. They didn't want to hear it, they need to try it too.
Hopefully I haven't lost you yet, because we're not done. You might be thinking, well thanks but no thanks, I want to play against good opponents. The most important part was the next day, after I had gone from low masters to low diamond, effectively an entire league lower, I went back to zerg.
After playing a few games, a light bulb light up in my mind, and I immediately experienced the brilliance of what Day 9 has talked about when he would make an iccup account to a certain rank, and then start over with a new account. Well accounts are expensive in SC2, so we have to trash our rating instead, this is a good thing especially if you are like most and focus primarily on one race. You need to play other races to get better, period. I can't begin to describe the difference of dealing with bunker rushes as zerg, after losing with them dozens of times as Terran. I'm better at holding them off, I also have respect for people who micro well enough to win with it. It's my own fault for losing to them, and regardless of how may times you say that to yourself - you can't actually know it without losing over and over as terran using the same strat.
I'm trying not to drag this on too long, but absolutely most importantly - more than learning bits of the other races - is the chance to play your main race again, at a lower rating, and rank it back up. I'm sure this is why Day 9 did that in BW, it was part of his strategy for success. This gives you the opportunity to focus on your game in a more relaxed setting, and you will go on a nice winning streak as the difficulty slowly ramps back up. During this winning streak you get to focus on your macro, scouting, etc. Whatever it is you need to work on, without the stress. As I ranked back up fairly quickly, eventually I'm playing vs. master again. Only I'm really fucking comfortable with my macro now, I've been practicing it in a relaxed setting for dozens of games at this point, and I'm now facing masters with an extremely healthly and confident state of mind. The result is I can focus more on the aspects required to win at that level, shutting down multi- drops, dealing with sick siege spread, scouting at the crucial moments, whatever it is you struggle with. I have so much comfort in the mechanics aspect at that point, because I've been practicing vs. easier opponents, I can focus on what I need to to win at a slightly high level.
Trying to ladder 100% of the time at your "peak" rating, is once again, like lifting too much weight. You aren't at a weightlifting competition, you're laddering for fun and practice. So take it easy. Unless you're in grandmaster or something, use your rating as if it is a weight sit. Switch back and forth between different difficulties. It's important also that this isn't a one time thing, do it consistently, I now like to trash my rating once a week. When I say trash, I'm 100% trying to win, I'm just that bad at whatever race/cheese I'm trying out at the time. I'm also getting pretty solid with terran in the process, after that there is protoss, random, and endless cheeses to try out.
<3 TL, I hope this is a good for some people, I wanted to contribute something more than just going off topic in the general forum
 
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United States22154 Posts
5/5 I actually liked this blog a lot.
Back when I played I enjoyed going random and doing builds like mass planetary fortress (with pf rush, ofc) and one base mass infestor.
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HAha dude, this is awesome. If I play plat terran and lose to zerg the most, maybe I should go offrace as zerg? That would help me in that matchup right?
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Although I don't think this is the best way to eliminate ladder rage + Show Spoiler + I really think people could learn a lot about themselves and how their emotions and perceptions work
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Very nice blog. Basically this is a long winded way of telling people not to care about what ranking they are, just to have fun, which reminds me of the story of how I learned this......
Once apon a time, I was in everyone's favorite league, the gold league. I was ranked 3rd in my division, and I really wanted to get into Platnium So one day I laddered for a solid 2 hours in the hopes that I would get promoted; but I didn't. Infact, I got DESTROYED on the ladder, went 1-8 for the first 2 hours, and started hating on myself (Like Day[9] said would happen), saying "Wow I suck", "I am terrible", ect. So for my 10th game I decided I didn't care, and since I couldn't win any kind of macro game I decided to Planetary Fortress rush the poor toss to the north of me on shattered temple. I did the entire build, and unfortunately for me my opponent was smart, and he blocked the Command Center with a probe...... I lost that game. But I wasn't mad; in fact I was happy had a nice chat with my opponent and then GG'ed. I had stopped caring about wins, and somehow I won the next two games with the macro games I had tried and failed to play earlier. Long story short; if you want to have fun, throw a game now and then on some crazy strategy that is absolutely horrible but fun to do (Mass nukes anyone?  )
Please forgive the wall of text.
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I need to get nack to SC2. I played random and what you are saying about respecting your oponent because you've been in his shoes is just true.
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This is exactly what I did a month ago. I was worker rushing, offracing, cheesing like a madman. I don't regret it.
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This is so fucking true its beyond me how this isn't on the fucking disc when you buy it.
Starcraft is a lovely game, but the beauty of the game isn't that much about the visuals of the game, more of how it can be such a rollercoaster ride for the brain. Starcraft is the hardest game I have ever played and it's ladder system is really brutal. Nothing about it makes a competitive environment, you never really feel good unless you are at the top of the ladder. Always having to struggle every game is incredible tiring for both your brain and body. What is so clever about this game though is the amazing feeling you get when you win that one game, that one game where you somehow pulled out a victory out of your hat and crushed your opponent with sheer brilliance.
No other game has ever made me jump of my chair and scream VIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICTOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLYYYYYYYYY. As much as this is awesome it is still unhealthy for your skill. Not getting that win will get you frustrated and I promise you play so bad when you are frustrated... There are a lot of solutions for that problem, but in the end you are still just running away from the problem.
DEAL WITH LOSING!
Stop being fucking 5 years old and look at yourself, you are most likely a 13-25 year old guy/gal raging at a computer screen because you can't look within yourself and realize that the game most likely isn't imbalanced. That the game isn't broken, that he isn't a skilless newbie, but indeed a very fine gentleman who just this game beat you.
Now that you've come over your "invurnability illusion" of you not ever being bad you can finally improve. Think of every game as a lesson, what do you want to do, how will you do it etc etc. The hardest thing for me when I started doing this was looking at the replay without bias, it is so hard to do because you remember the feeling from when you played the game at that moment. Instead of then being a fucking dicktwat-fucktard and just leave the replay saying "omg he got lucky" think of why did he get lucky AND WHAT CAN YOU DO TO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN THE NEXT TIME. (AND YES CAPS HELPS WHEN YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE A POINT)
And how you find improvements based on your source of information (the games you played) is not something easy to do. I learnt what I consider the basics of it by watching day9, but even that can be very hard. If you still don't really know why you lost try posting the replay here and people will most likely help you.
It's first when you have overcome these two basic step of realizing you lost and then seeing your gameplay as a whole you can make huge improvements.
TL;DR
Allow yourself some ounce of mortality.
Be rational about your skill and look for improvements.
Improve.
???
Win GSL.
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Everyone should try all the races at some point. It helps so much with understanding the match ups. It is horrible to tank your rating down, but if it helps you then surely it is worth it?
I have managed for the most part to play starcraft for fun. I only started playing quite recently, and at first I was more than happy to stay in bronze and I played because I truly enjoyed the game and didn't care if I won or lost so long as I was improving and having fun. Anyway, about two months ago I experienced my first game in which I truly raged. I have never EVER BM'd an opponent before, even after a frustrating loss, but this one game started off with a massive cannon rush into wild cannon contain that I scouted and no amount of drone stacking could rescue me from (Tal D'arim), followed by mass void rays even though i nydused my way out and had a hidden expansion - i lost my lair and all my tech. Anyway, i scouted he had 3 bases to my 2 now, and he was picking off my overlords with his phoenixes. I made hydras for his phoenix void ray combination but was fairly certain he was way ahead after killing so much of my stuff and having three mining bases. He attacked,my hydras popped out right as he killed my extractor and two queens. He ran them away. I was angry, I quit (with a 'gg' I may add) and was horrified to find not only did i have a higher income and drone count, i had a much higher army value than him as I left. I went and got into bed and lay there shaking with anger at myself for leaving a game i could have won merely by breaking down the rocks at my new third and rebuilding my army. I was angry at myself for at least two hours.
But since then I have forced myself to lighten up and take the game less seriously. I am doing much better now that I am taking the time to review my replays, and while I won't deny I get a little frustrated with losing still, it is much easier to deal with. Then again, I am a very casual weekend gamer and only in silver league (almost gold, yeah!) so not sure it affects me as much as any of you 
To be fair, most recently I have been doing wacky things with my own race, attempting to beat Terran with mass speedling (it just doesn't work against protoss -_-), doing speedling drops in ZvZ (that is FUN - no one ever expects it and you can clean out their main!) and other crazy fun things I don't expect to win - like double expand before pool, or mass queen. And I think stopping taking the game seriously and messing around (and having a few surprising wins) has really helped out ^_^
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Haha! Nice blog man, though it's something I've already been doing. It's a load of fun, and even if you lose you really can't rage about it since the strategies involved are hilarious anyway.
I usually just warp-prism zealot drop my enemies every time then 4 gate them to death. I don't even expand, because I really don't think I need to. It's the most aggressive Protoss all-in in my opinion, and I always do it for the heck of it. When I actually want a real game, I probably start an expo when the robo goes down and attack a bit later with an additional 4-5 gates.
I'm more passive in a real game, super-aggressive in a nonsense game.
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On November 23 2011 05:06 Mr_Wo_Ot wrote:
Stop being fucking 5 years old and look at yourself, you are most likely a 13-25 year old guy/gal raging at a computer screen because you can't look within yourself and realize that the game most likely isn't imbalanced. That the game isn't broken, that he isn't a skilless newbie, but indeed a very fine gentleman who just this game beat you.
Now that you've come over your "invurnability illusion" of you not ever being bad you can finally improve.
Truer words never spoken, sadly the "I only lose because X is imbalanced" is like the main thing ladder people bitch about--it's pathetic. It's also an infinite circle where they convince themselves that the game is broken so instead of improving they just cheese.
T_T
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Good read. I used to have a lot of fun playing SC2. After a two week break because I was on vacation, it stopped being as much fun, I raged when I lost, played less, got worse because of that, lost even more. And the way I fixed it and started having fun again was simply typing gg when I lost. That was all I did. It really improved my attitude about the game, and since then I've started playing more again, got better, started winning more. It was awesome, and it was only because of two letters.
gg
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i disagree with you. Tanking your rating and smurfing/playing people at a lower skill than you will not help. You'll be winning more often than not due to your enemy making mistakes that shouldn't be made, and that doesn't make you a better player.
How do you make ladder rage free? Realize you suck, admit you suck, and that your losses are only helping you improve. With that attitude, you won't care if you lose.
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I know that if I lost, I got outplayed no matter how you see it, he outsmarted me even if his build / strat was easier than mine he won which means he in reality outplayed me
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On November 23 2011 06:03 thirnaz wrote:
I know that if I lost, I got outplayed no matter how you see it, he outsmarted me even if his build / strat was easier than mine he won which means he in reality outplayed me
This ^
If you failed to hold or scout a cheese, you still got outplayed. There are always ways to hold off cheese, even if it requires you cheesing too. It helps. you tell yourself that 'okay, this is what I lost to, how can I deal with it better next time and I should remember that this is a good place to scout in the future for proxy gates' etc.
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On November 23 2011 06:02 Masq wrote:
i disagree with you. Tanking your rating and smurfing/playing people at a lower skill than you will not help. You'll be winning more often than not due to your enemy making mistakes that shouldn't be made, and that doesn't make you a better player.
How do you make ladder rage free? Realize you suck, admit you suck, and that your losses are only helping you improve. With that attitude, you won't care if you lose.
You misunderstand, it's just off racing and trying things you aren't good at, not smurfing. Realizing that you suck and your losses help you only goes so far for some people at least, because it is kind of circular. In the sense of "have the right attitude about losing, so then when you lose you will have the right attitude". That's just how that sounds to me.
What I'm saying is an action step, doesn't matter how much you care about losing. If you can bring yourself to queue up as a something you will likely lose with, and do it consistently, that attitude WILL change.
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I feel like losing matches for no reason works for a while but stops having a use after a while, and it starts to hurt your actual skill too. After I did this for a while I've been trying to force myself to play last couple of days and I noticed I just stop caring about wins/losses but give up really fast too. ( for example fuck up a part of your build order you get behind somehow and you do an Idra GG)
I think it is the best to play when you want to play and with a very neutral mindset.
I have 2 accounts, using one for playing when you don't feel like playing helps a bit but I came over ladder fear a few months ago simply by telling you time spend laddering is time spend practicing, and customs can but are not neccesarily are good for improving.
I notice this post is more about rage/tilting rather then improvement but I think the important part is to improve with the a rageless mindset.
But basically how I am trying to play now is not to play more then 5-6 games a day since I will have an 80% win ratio instead of 40-50% when I force myself to play and start losing to idiots who do not have any thought process in their play.
I don't think I have the right way to practice figured out yet. But have you? I wish Day [9] would give us some insight on improving proccesses rather then telling obvious stuff and bronze level funday mondays which are only fun cause he is quite hilarious.
Just my 2cents.
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I started using my Buddy's account and began relearning Protoss.
Without the stress of ladder points, division ranking etc. it's really a great opportunity to learn new builds and try out many different play styles without fear of your ladder rating.
Good blog
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Nice read. Thanks for posting!
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EPT
