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I'm not here to talk about right or wrong, or even skill. I wrote this to share a lesson this game taught me.
One of my largest troubles with Dota has been internally dealing with poisonous teammates. Friends, even. This game grips me so deeply in my emotions, I almost let it tear several long, real-life friendships away from me.
The absolute worst, though, is the moment you start flaming, blaming, and letting the anger run through your fingertips. Where you're losing, bad, and you NEED that shithead on your team to understand how much he/she sucks.
It's these moments where I act with holy vindication, and then feel a remorse as soon as I close the final scoreboard. Ultimately, I'm the only one left with the anger and resentment.
I spend a lot of time, energy and effort on understanding exactly what it means to become world-class. And one of the fundamental principles I see over and over is acting with ice in your veins.
The writing of Marcus Aurelius holds a magnetic attraction for me - this man acted with ice. Calm, cool, poise, you name it. I ask myself this question often:
Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforward-ness? - Marcus Aurelius
By constantly introducing this question into my life, I've started to embody this everywhere - personally and professionally - and seen amazing results. Rapid technical growth, raises, respect, quality of life and relationships, etc.
Everywhere except for Dota 2. This game, man. For the longest time, I couldn't figure out how to crack the code and control my own internal psyche while playing. If I knew I needed to kill it at work that week, I'd physically pack up my computer so I wouldn't play because of the possibility of letting myself be thrown into a destructive mood. This game brought out the worst in me.
The inability to be responsible for my thoughts and feelings legitimately stunted my progress - I'd spend game after game trying to control my own emotions and not concentrating on the actual game. MONTHS, shit maybe even a year, while everything else in my life accelerated rapidly.
I don't plan on going pro. Not saying I wouldn't jump at the chance, but I don't prioritize this game in my life or see myself able to put in the necessary work and accomplish everything else I want to do. But I take this as a serious hobby, and my mind always wanders to this point: if I were down to being eliminated in TI or some other large LAN, how could I play my best? How could I prepare myself to handle the pressure? How can I develop a world-class mentality when I play dota, and extract growth out of every possible situation?
How could I possibly do that if I get sucked onto the blame train so easily? I couldn't even control my own emotional state in this game during pub games.
Enter SingSing. I never understood why he's so popular or took the time to watch his stream. Then I stumbled on this clip.
"Does this make me a better player?"
There's that question again, phrased with an ideal outcome.
What interests me most when I watch streams is how people act when under immense pressure or distress. I watched with fascination when he was struck with a bit of sheer, frustrating rng terribleness - his response is silence. I can feel the emotion flaring up, and then simmering down, as when he speaks again it's gone.
And, barring when he trolls, he always extracts actionable information out of it, be it about the behavior of the players in the immediate game or how to improve his own choices. He's also impervious to pubs and flaming beyond the requisite temporary emotional flares when shit happens.
Ice. Objective appraisal. Deliberate thinking and improvement. Somehow, seeing this, the way to apply that question finally sunk in.
I had a session earlier chock-full of the same situations that used to cause me to rage. Instead, I observed, appraised, and adapted. Instead of reacting emotionally, I got inside the psychology of my teammates and opponents. All from the guidance of that question - "does reacting to this feeling make me a better player?" If the answer's no, it's gone. In its place, ice and calm. No flaming, no raging, just improvement.
At the end of the session today - of some demoralizing results and situations - I felt myself do something brand new: shrug it all off and take the insights and good bits with me. I got up, and felt a sense of joy in myself. Since I hadn't invested any emotions into the games beyond the moment, I left them behind - where they belonged.
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I'm glad rage didnt eat you up. 5/5 would play with you
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28090 Posts
Really solid blog. Enjoyed the read 
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I had several rage filled sessions for the past months. Its mainly due to my losing streaks in RMM. The worst thing is that the streaks happen when i decide to play at night, and at 3am I still haven't broken it. I'm like how could I sleep without even winning once in this gaming session. Sometimes I end up winning at 5-7am before I go to bed. Its kinda unhealthy. I would curse at the computer, toss my mouse/keyboard, punch a cushion beside me etc. Basically rage. Its especially annoying when you finally climb back to the original MMR, you start having the spree soon again.
My most recent losing spree cost me ~800 MMR, and the streak was 12 games. It started from the afternoon, and by 4am I still haven't cleared it. I rage quit after a self declared roaming support mirana stayed in my mid lane from the start trying to harass and died a ridiculously stupid first blood to the tinker. I ended up in low priority for 6 games.
Turns out low priority was a blessing because it calmed me down. I mean I had to get out of it after all. So I just picked veno and kept pushing. In the meantime I did not know why but I started telling myself no more rage filled nonsense and I have not had one since. It was kinda disgusting behavior admittjngly. Haha.
Arrogant as it may be, 80% of these losses probably have little to do with me. I don't mind losing if its a fun game, I hate it a lot if it is due to idiots or really junk players in my team. I win my own lane, but other lanes decide to feed. Suddenly my advantage is nothing. Or we thrash the early stage, no one wants to listen and buy blade mail, tinker turtles until they win. Or carries with shit farm/item builds/no bkb. Or teammates refusing to push with early advantage and lose due to no late game. Or saying mid is going top and mid still gets a double kill without even needing to dive.
I recently had a game where the opposing mid LD got ganked 3 times in the first 5 minutes, but ends up solo killing and having more cs than our own mid invoker. How can that even happen.
Or recent one where all 3 lanes were won. I had 1.5 bf from the offlane. Lane partner centaur had blink mek. Support tide had early blink. Carry drow had OK farm. Tinker had relatively early BoT. Enemy had a mid sniper with same farm as drow, WK top had a late midas into some items. Jungling naix died few times, but was non stop jungling so he had items. So the enemy decided to push, but our tinker refused to spam march. So we loss towers after towers, while drow and tinker kept feeding subsequently. Suddenly they all had items. How can they even push against march + sof with our advantage. How could we even lose that game that way.
Meh the rage. But its just so frustrating when you lose because its hardly your fault. You could do nothing about it.
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I get this annoying bug where Twitch won't play videos for me, only live streams. I really wanna watch that video. Is there a link anywhere for YouTube or something?
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On July 29 2014 01:56 DucK- wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
I had several rage filled sessions for the past months. Its mainly due to my losing streaks in RMM. The worst thing is that the streaks happen when i decide to play at night, and at 3am I still haven't broken it. I'm like how could I sleep without even winning once in this gaming session. Sometimes I end up winning at 5-7am before I go to bed. Its kinda unhealthy. I would curse at the computer, toss my mouse/keyboard, punch a cushion beside me etc. Basically rage. Its especially annoying when you finally climb back to the original MMR, you start having the spree soon again.
My most recent losing spree cost me ~800 MMR, and the streak was 12 games. It started from the afternoon, and by 4am I still haven't cleared it. I rage quit after a self declared roaming support mirana stayed in my mid lane from the start trying to harass and died a ridiculously stupid first blood to the tinker. I ended up in low priority for 6 games.
Turns out low priority was a blessing because it calmed me down. I mean I had to get out of it after all. So I just picked veno and kept pushing. In the meantime I did not know why but I started telling myself no more rage filled nonsense and I have not had one since. It was kinda disgusting behavior admittjngly. Haha.
Arrogant as it may be, 80% of these losses probably have little to do with me. I don't mind losing if its a fun game, I hate it a lot if it is due to idiots or really junk players in my team. I win my own lane, but other lanes decide to feed. Suddenly my advantage is nothing. Or we thrash the early stage, no one wants to listen and buy blade mail, tinker turtles until they win. Or carries with shit farm/item builds/no bkb. Or teammates refusing to push with early advantage and lose due to no late game. Or saying mid is going top and mid still gets a double kill without even needing to dive.
I recently had a game where the opposing mid LD got ganked 3 times in the first 5 minutes, but ends up solo killing and having more cs than our own mid invoker. How can that even happen.
Or recent one where all 3 lanes were won. I had 1.5 bf from the offlane. Lane partner centaur had blink mek. Support tide had early blink. Carry drow had OK farm. Tinker had relatively early BoT. Enemy had a mid sniper with same farm as drow, WK top had a late midas into some items. Jungling naix died few times, but was non stop jungling so he had items. So the enemy decided to push, but our tinker refused to spam march. So we loss towers after towers, while drow and tinker kept feeding subsequently. Suddenly they all had items. How can they even push against march + sof with our advantage. How could we even lose that game that way.
Meh the rage. But its just so frustrating when you lose because its hardly your fault. You could do nothing about it.
The fact that you couldn't do anything about it gives you less reason to stress about it. Only worry about what's under your control, don't waste your time pointing out the mistakes of others. That's what the OP was suggesting.
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28090 Posts
Honestly when I read the thread title I thought this blog would be about playing with IceIceIce or something.
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On July 29 2014 10:34 Thor-axe the Impaler wrote:
I get this annoying bug where Twitch won't play videos for me, only live streams. I really wanna watch that video. Is there a link anywhere for YouTube or something?
Does this work?
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On July 29 2014 15:24 Rainling wrote:Show nested quote +On July 29 2014 01:56 DucK- wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
I had several rage filled sessions for the past months. Its mainly due to my losing streaks in RMM. The worst thing is that the streaks happen when i decide to play at night, and at 3am I still haven't broken it. I'm like how could I sleep without even winning once in this gaming session. Sometimes I end up winning at 5-7am before I go to bed. Its kinda unhealthy. I would curse at the computer, toss my mouse/keyboard, punch a cushion beside me etc. Basically rage. Its especially annoying when you finally climb back to the original MMR, you start having the spree soon again.
My most recent losing spree cost me ~800 MMR, and the streak was 12 games. It started from the afternoon, and by 4am I still haven't cleared it. I rage quit after a self declared roaming support mirana stayed in my mid lane from the start trying to harass and died a ridiculously stupid first blood to the tinker. I ended up in low priority for 6 games.
Turns out low priority was a blessing because it calmed me down. I mean I had to get out of it after all. So I just picked veno and kept pushing. In the meantime I did not know why but I started telling myself no more rage filled nonsense and I have not had one since. It was kinda disgusting behavior admittjngly. Haha.
Arrogant as it may be, 80% of these losses probably have little to do with me. I don't mind losing if its a fun game, I hate it a lot if it is due to idiots or really junk players in my team. I win my own lane, but other lanes decide to feed. Suddenly my advantage is nothing. Or we thrash the early stage, no one wants to listen and buy blade mail, tinker turtles until they win. Or carries with shit farm/item builds/no bkb. Or teammates refusing to push with early advantage and lose due to no late game. Or saying mid is going top and mid still gets a double kill without even needing to dive.
I recently had a game where the opposing mid LD got ganked 3 times in the first 5 minutes, but ends up solo killing and having more cs than our own mid invoker. How can that even happen.
Or recent one where all 3 lanes were won. I had 1.5 bf from the offlane. Lane partner centaur had blink mek. Support tide had early blink. Carry drow had OK farm. Tinker had relatively early BoT. Enemy had a mid sniper with same farm as drow, WK top had a late midas into some items. Jungling naix died few times, but was non stop jungling so he had items. So the enemy decided to push, but our tinker refused to spam march. So we loss towers after towers, while drow and tinker kept feeding subsequently. Suddenly they all had items. How can they even push against march + sof with our advantage. How could we even lose that game that way.
Meh the rage. But its just so frustrating when you lose because its hardly your fault. You could do nothing about it.
The fact that you couldn't do anything about it gives you less reason to stress about it. Only worry about what's under your control, don't waste your time pointing out the mistakes of others. That's what the OP was suggesting.
Aha I'm totally cool about it already. It just sucks to lose though. Haha
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i thought it's you playing with iceiceice
very dissapointed!!
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On July 30 2014 08:54 evanthebouncy! wrote:
i thought it's you playing with iceiceice
very dissapointed!!
Me too, hahaha.
As for the topic, I'm glad you were able to evaluate things that way. I don't often rage, even in Dota, but that's because I generally don't care about the random numbers involved (kills, gpm, etc) but simply if I played to win. If I did, and we still lost, then it was a team failure. If I didn't, and we lost, then I know what to improve upon. If I didn't and we won, well, that's the best kind of victory :D
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Russian Federation194 Posts
I completely relate to this. I tend to think of myself as nice even in game, but in game I would always get mad at people giving up in the beginning, flaming, or just doing anything that made me mad, I would just type away. I stopped after being in a game with somebody who just got REALLY mad about 20 minutes in and just couldn't stop. I actually liked the other 3 teammates so I was calm and not mad, but seeing this guy just rage made me think, "am I like this too sometimes"? I just tend to do what I see some pro players do and just straight up mute somebody if their flaming or try to see their viewpoint of maybe being distracted by their real life or they just made a mistake.
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konadora
Singapore66224 Posts
thought this was gonna be a drug confession
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^ Same.
Good read, thank you. I'll have to keep that Marcus Aurelius quote in my thoughts.
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EPT
