The ladder is designed to provide you with a 50% win rate. If you only play to win, you are gambling by flipping a coin and feeling happy on one result and getting mad on the other.
Play to learn, to improve and develop expertise. If you win a game but did not hit specific benchmarks, that is a failure. If you lose a game but hit certain benchmarks perfectly, that is a success and what is more you have a replay you can analyse to identify what went wrong and what adjustments to make to stop it happening again.
Realise that if you win a game then the opponent did not play well enough to help you learn anything. If you lose a game you have the privilege of playing someone who made less mistakes than you did and has provided you with the information necessary to defeat them in the future. Squash any thought of blaming the opponent for your loss.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.
On May 26 2015 20:33 Startyr wrote: The ladder is designed to provide you with a 50% win rate. If you only play to win, you are gambling by flipping a coin and feeling happy on one result and getting mad on the other.
Play to learn, to improve and develop expertise. If you win a game but did not hit specific benchmarks, that is a failure. If you lose a game but hit certain benchmarks perfectly, that is a success and what is more you have a replay you can analyse to identify what went wrong and what adjustments to make to stop it happening again.
Realise that if you win a game then the opponent did not play well enough to help you learn anything. If you lose a game you have the privilege of playing someone who made less mistakes than you did and has provided you with the information necessary to defeat them in the future. Squash any thought of blaming the opponent for your loss.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.
You made me make a account for this site. You have the best answer i saw in this whole topic. I do get angry sometimes but i dont really get angry. I was just reading the topic for the fun of it to see what others do. Then i refresh at the end and happy i did, because then your post came up. That is what i thought as well, not the whole of it at once, but in pieces. Thanks for this great post
To get good? That's a bad reason to play SC2, in my opinion. Nobody is good. Unless you've won a GSL or are in at least Code-A, you're no good. Better opponents can still demolish you with troll builds that shouldn't work, etc... etc...
I don't mean that competition is pointless or bad... but playing "to get good" is too vaguely defined. How can you celebrate success? You get Masters - but then you aren't GM. You get GM - but then you aren't top of the ladder. You get top of the ladder - but then you haven't won any tournaments. You win some tournaments - but those didn't have any stiff Korean competition. You move to Korea - but you can't compete and you return home.
Playing to win will inevitably disappoint you. But learning to compete with humility, even with bm exploding all around you, is probably an important virtue to cultivate.
Personal development through healthy competition (learning to win and lose gracefully, learning to teach lesser players, learning to handle bm calmly, etc...) is a good reason to play SC2.
Play to get better at the game, play because you enjoy the game, play around with new strategies and perfect old ones, but play most of all to refine and strengthen your own character. That's my take, anyway.
Sorry is my last quote of the day. This i found also a rememberable post.
Dont forget the description from Nony under his name: "Fucking up is part of it. If you can't fail, you have to always win. And I don't think you can always win." Elliott Smith ------ Yet no sudden rage darkened his face, and his eyes were calm as they studied her. Then he smiled. 'Witness.'
I just want to say, a big part of the problem lies with the structure of BattleNET for SC2. Now, granted battlenet is a great matchmaker in that it works and you can get a game any time 365 days a year.
But let me relate a story about my first fond experience playing online RTS games. I logged in to the Zone -an old MS gaming site years ago to play Total Annihilation. There I was able to meet friends and chat, and join a clan. My clannies were all awesome people and I would often log in just to chat.
When we played, it wasn't to PROVE SOMETHIN, it wasn't to GAIN POINTs and claim superiority. It was to practice and mess around with your friends. And often , that made you even better than people who took the game too seriously.
I tried that on SC2 chat, even going to the AdoptANewb site, but it just wasn't the same. Somehow, the community just doesn't seem to be able to congregate in a meaningful way on SC2's iteration of Battlenet. I don't know why that is, it just is.
In short, rage comes from this isolated experience of you vs the world, and not having a congregation of friend to enjoy this great game with. I think you should start to experience the game with others if at all possible. Hopefully Battlenet can be a better place to provide that in the future.
I remember I got really pissed after losing to DT's once. But normally I don't get upset after a loss.
After I started varying builds, as opposed to iterating a standard build, the game got more exciting and much less stressful. I was less focused on winning and more on learning a new strategy and having fun smashing unexpecting opponents. Doing a wide variety of builds, making some newbie mistakes and learning that some builds just lose to others and so on makes for a much less emotional impact than having your "perfected" standard build being destroyed by cheese or whatever.
Also, not caring particularly about rank or league is a huge factor as well. If you can get into a mindset where you realize that your rank really does not matter you will be less affected by a loss.
"Fake it until you make it" has never applied more imo
You don't stop raging cus you find a magical way to stop getting angry, you stop raging because you've made it a habit
I also get enraged to the point of retardation sometimes, and my habit is to always queue up the next game and never linger. The rage from the last game wont affect you in the next because after a while it's just what you do. Of course losing streaks just keep building sometimes and shit hits the fan, and thats as far as i've gotten with my philosophy of coping with the pathology of having sc2 ladder in your life
You don't need to have a great learning mindset to get decent at SC2, ive reached high master while throwing up at day9s mantras and hogging the "blowing off stream" thread. Not optimal of course, but it helps convincing yourself your anger and/or frustration isnt holding you back too much
playing against randoms on ladder aside, I've also found i feel a lot less frustrated after losing to a player whose name i recognise(like a streamer or a GM) or just a guy in some group channel i sometimes visit even though ive never talked to the guy, so what was said earlier about the "you against the world" sounds like a good take on it to me as well
In your post I can definitely recognize myself. I've always been a very competitive player, and often really bm in game but I think that I'm slowly fixing my attitude.
You say you want to be good at starcraft. I read some posts and it looks like this point is missing - if you quit playing for a while or play " just for fun" you're not gonna get good.
However to "get good" your goals should be long-term. That doesn't mean your goal has to be "I want to go pro", but at least something you can realistically in a few months of good practice. For example, "getting top 8 in my division", is not a good goal, because you might reach that thanks to a lucky winning streak, and then stop playing because you're not motivated enough, and go on a losing streak immediately after. If you're diamond, for example, getting masters or GM can be a good goal.
The result of having long-term goals is that you're not gonna play to win single games, but rather winning over a large period of time. To do this, it's more important to play a lot of games, than it is to win most of them. Before I realized this my typical practice was like: I get a few wins on ladder -> feel accomplished -> don't for a while not to ruin my record -> go on a massive losing streak because of my lack of practice -> extreme frustration. Now I'm more like: I get a few wins on ladder -> my long term goal is still very far away -> play more games -> I might lose more than 50% of them but it's still fine cause I played a lot and improved. or I lose a few games on ladder -> nice, because I'm even more motivated to play more, which will make me improve
This should reflect on your playstyle too. If you don't play for the single game wins, your style will become less coinflippy and as a result your losses will be less frustrating and your wins more rewarding. That doesn't mean you only have to play macro, but that you don't cheese just because you desperately need that ladder win.
Like someone said before - on short term you'll always be close to 50% winrate, it's fine. But if you practice hard enough, that 52-53% will result into massive improvements, which is what you're working for.
TL;DR play to win, but to win over a large period of time, not the single ladder game you're in.
EDIT: Also, try to force yourself to just type gg or at least leave without saying anything. If you bm your opponent, you are probably making yourself even more angry, other than ruining your reputation.
you have to have some personal introspection time about why you're raging and fix it: it's different for everyone.. Just always know what you're doing, like if you're going to go play dota to "blow off steam" then recognize that you're wasting your time with regards to getting better at starcraft.. to get better at starcraft, you need to be in a mood and humor that is conducive to breaking down your ego/intellect and reshaping it into something better.. people saying that it's "just a game" don't understand the competitive feeling apparently, because when you feel that drive it's not "just a game," just like a relationship isn't "just a relationship" although an outside observer might see it that way. don't let noobs bring you down for taking starcraft seriously, they're just noise, you need to meditate and learn who you are to become a better player and a better person.
People here have allready said all the interesting stuff about bettering your self and shit, so I will just give you the method I used to stop raging. 1. Never rage quit. Stay in the game for as long as you find reasonable, it helps to come to terms with it, and from time to time you get an epic comeback win cause the other guy does something very stupid, or you just weren't as dead as you thought. (P.S don't be a Firecake and hide Town Halls all over the map) 2. GG or nothing, save the insults for someone who deserves them, rather than someguy who is doing his best to win..
A quote from the talk that I like: "Your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, maybe breaking out into a sweat. And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure. But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge?"
As a short term strategy, you can take all that negative energy and drive it into your next match. I call it "using the tilt". In the long term, dealing with rage does involve changing the goal of each match, for example, from winning the match to hitting a benchmark. Playing the game with no social connection is a bad idea, so props to you for reaching out to the forum. Plenty of others have already contributed really good advice on those two points, so I'll just stop here. Good luck, have fun!
Sometimes I feel exactly like the OP so I can understand him. Im a calm and nice person but sometimes it turns me into an asshole. I don´t know why. It must be the fact that you are kind of anonymus on the Internet. And I don´t wanna be like that, like the OP said. This bugs me cause Im pretty close to 30.
What helps me is listening to aggressive music AFTER playing something that made me angry. I mostly listen to Heavy Metal and Electronic Music and soundtracks from Anime/Video Games but Metal is mostly the main genre I listen to. And there comes a band called Slayer into play. Their music is like a vent for me. Somehow all the anger is gone. This also works for me when I listen to Static-X, Ektomorf or Soulfly. Those are 4 bands I can always listen to no matter how I feel.
Try it. Listen to some music you like or that gives you a good feeling and maybe it works out.
think about why you're angry, really ask yourself if there's a reason to be angry (most of the time there really isnt). dont think of the game as a way to win and lose but a way to learn.
Stop playing to win and start playing to improve. A part of your gameplay is bad? Practice it until it's on the same level as your other skills. You loose to a certain build or a certain matchup? Practice it, try new things. Stop paying attention to points and start paying attention to yoru own gameplay. I havent played in 2 years or so but I've never been angry that I lost - every defeat is a learning experience, you can either suck it up and learn or get angry at the game and gain nothing from it.
Sometimes the worst thing you can do is play seriously. I speak from experience, and I would often absolutely go bat shit annoyed if I did badly in certain games.
Honestly, it's so much more conducive to learning and improving to play around.
It isn't 100% relevant, but it explains a few things that have helped me in learning and practicing new/old things in life.
I would get angry not to loose, but to keep getting matched against people who were former diamond/master while i am just silver. There are no new players in this game and it feels like everybody is at least platinium level, even in silver league because that's just where the players that just play a few games a month and thus don't get promoted are. It's just impossible to be matched with players with similar skill and you can't improve when you just face people that roflstomp you because they are not in the league they are supposed to be in. And most of the time when you ask someone how to deal with what they did they just call you a noob and insult you. It's a weird mentality in MOBA/RTS where as soon as you start typing something, no matter what, you are instantly a whiner and you should just "shut up and play".
I just want to say thanks to everyone for posting here. I've read every single post and I will try to put your advice to good use. As stated, I know it's my issue and something for me to resolve - I blame no other player but myself, even if I'm being harassed and/or bm'd.
A lot of my frustration stems from my perceived issues with game balance (especially at non-pro levels). I can either continue to be frustrated and gripe about this or adapt and change. The latter is more productive, I'm sure.
Again, thank you for your input and advice. If you wrote it, I read it. I appreciate your taking the time to help.
EPT
