The Psychology of Rage

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Since my blog post on the "Flow" was relatively popular, I decided to continue writing in the same fashion at least once in a while. Today I will be discussing "Rage" or "Toxic" behaviour in Dota 2.

I will start off analysing the possible and probable causes for it - anonymity and competitiveness. It will be followed by what I assume to be a "correct" response and attitude towards the issue for people who do not participate and dislike this form of behaviour.

I have provided some references and I strongly recommend reading through them. I only touch the tip of the iceberg on some topics, due to a limited format of a blog post.

Shall we begin?

Anonymity

see also: (Madigan, J., 2010)

Being anonymous means having to face no consequences for your behaviour in the real world. It is not necessarily a bad thing - after all we all need to share some things with the outer world once in a while, and being anonymous can help us open up.

But for Dota 2 being anonymous mostly means having a license to be an asshole. No one can deal physical harm to you as a response for your rudeness, or file a legitimate complaint that will result in something more than a "mute" for a couple of days.

As Penny Arcade neatly puts it: Penny Arcade

While I have already explained the anonymity part, the "audience" one remains unclear - unless you are professional player, the only people observing your behaviour are your team mates and enemies.

In fact, the work I have linked in the subtitle has referenced an interesting research on a somewhat similar topic from 1970's. It has studied the behaviour of kids that collect candy during the Halloween with the "provider" of the candy leaving the scene, to observe how kids will react under what appeared to be a "no observation" condition and how much candy would they take - the "provider" clearly stated that it is one candy per person.

The findings were astonishing - kids, that came in groups actually took more candy! Even more so, if one of them (usually the youngest one) was to overlook and be responsible for the whole process.

A couple of possible conclusions can be derived from the information presented above - while anonymity provides the necessary safety from the consequences of the decadent behaviour, it is the audience that really fosters "toxicity". And the fact, that most of the trolling/abuse happens in the all-chat, rather that in team chat, makes this sound rather legitimate.

Competitiveness

see also: (Shaw, K., 2010)

Ah, yes. A typical excuse to rage in a game - "I really want to win and my team-mates are failing, hence I have all the rights to verbally abuse them" (Hole, A. et. al, 2003, p.322).

Do you, really?

The article I have linked in the beginning of the section studies the hormonal responses of people in Unreal Tournament 2004 - a very popular game at some point. The sample was divided into several groups, and groups would compete with each other. It is completely understandable, that at this point, with a high degree of competitiveness, the Testosterone levels rose - it is a normal response to an activity of that kind.

Naturally, there were people who were good at the game, and there were ones who were relatively bad. There might be a variety of reasons for the difference in performance, including the attitude and dexterity of players.

What remained constant, however, that when the formed "teams" were asked to compete within their circle in a free-for-all, the best players identified in the team vs. team matches were the ones to have the lowest rise in testosterone when competing with their former team-mates!

So what it tells us, is that the performance in a game, related to attitude, scales inversely with the higher probability of raging on your team-mates - after all, one cannot deny the influence of Hormones on our behaviour. The better your attitude towards the game is, the better you will do in it, as I have discussed previously. And the better you do in it, the lower the chance of raging on your team-mates is.

It is impossible to prove mathematically that the opposite relationship is also true. But it certainly makes sense from the logical standpoint. After all no one really sees Na'Vi, [A]lliance or DK players rage on each other in the game - there is no time for it - your focus has to be singular on the activity at hand - playing and winning Dota!

Moreover, when there is very little at stake, rudeness can not only provoke counter rudeness and disperse the attention, but can also make a person very offended. To a point, when he decides to throw a game, creating a 4 vs 6 situation. So, think for a bit - do you really want to rage, if you want to win the game so much?

And here comes my main point - if one is rude to his team mates in a game, one is not playing to win, because it does not take a lot of intelligence to deduce that his chances of winning are decreasing for every piece of bile they spit at their team mates.

Logic then dictates, that one has other reasons to play the game. The reason might be looking good and awesome, it might be sheer boredom - just to kill some time or to have some fun. But ultimately, it is not to win - hence these people are not really competitive. They are just immature. (It does not apply to well-mannered causal players - only to people who are claiming to be competitive and failing, before they even begin).

That means that no matter how high one's MMR is, if he keeps raging, it will never depict his full potential - one is limiting himself with a bad attitude, while making someone's day a little less sunny.

Another possible explanation for decadent behaviour expressed by some people would be the lack of that minimal intelligence required to deduce the simplest of things. But... let's just leave them be... Their life is complicated as it is.

And as a rotten cherry on top of a spinach pie - while one is engaged in typing/using microphone for the purpose of raging, one is not fully engaged in the game. And not being engaged in a game is a first step to losing. Use chat to help you coordinate the team or commend someone on a good activity (a boost to one's self esteem and moral is a valuable factor) - don't use it to create distractions for everyone.

Dealing and Coping with Rage

see also: MIT lecture on On-line Behaviour

We have identified and explained two main problems that result in rage - Anonymity, with the Audience part of it being crucial, and Competitiveness, with the false perception of it.

I think with my Economics and Politics education I could not possibly provide more insights on the matter, than certified Psychologists and Sociologists, but will try my best. So here are some basic things each of us can do:

Do not rage yourself - this is the the simplest thing one can possibly do. What people don't realise in the ego-centric communities and a whole generation of spoiled kids and bad parenting, is that their actions affect others. And one person raging in one game creates a chain effect of decadent behaviour - the subject of rage is going to enter his next game with a really bad mood and possibly rage himself. Also, if you are a subject of verbal/chat abuse - mute the offender and have a nice cup of tea after the game. It certainly helps.

Communicate with your team-mates - I had a game with several very casual friends - Ranked 5 vs 5. By the 20 min mark all of our defences were gone and we were bunkered down on our high ground. And it wasn't on my responsibility - I played relatively well for my party skill rating (3.8k). But all my team mates fed, and they fed hard (to be fair, all of them are around 2.3-2.8 and were not prepared to face a proper ~3.3k stack). And it is somewhat hard to snowball with Rubick Rubick.

The difference in score was ridiculous. I could have raged and blamed them all game, but being a try hard I really wanted to win. So instead I gave a speech about how we have a better late game and that we can win and started coordinating every single aspect of the game - from where to farm, to what items to get. 45 (!!) minutes of reinforcing morals of my friends and heavy coordination later we won.

There are two parts to the story - never give up and boost the self-esteem of your team-mates - they will start performing better. And if you are not in a 5-stack, you know for sure, that the people you are playing with are not that far from your skill - they might be having a bad day after encountering a troll, or just be new to a hero. So, instead of blaming them, reinforce their attitude to win and possibly provide some friendly advice.

Listening to advice is another thing to do with communication. If someone is being nice in explaining some of the things to you, it doesn't take much effort to at least read/listen to it, instead of going mental. I have encountered this behaviour a lot and will do my best helping to eradicate it. Eradicate it by being nice and friendly, no matter how hard it can be sometimes.

And if you don't believe me, you could always add me in steam and see for yourself - I have 194 commendations out of 1777 matches. Almost 11% commendation rate and not a single mute. (Was in LPQ once due to the internet issues). And I am very competitive, but I know what it means and how to properly use it.

Moreover, I am pretty sure if I wasn't that nice and friendly, I would never reach 4.1k Solo. Especially considering that while my theoretical knowledge might be vast, my personal skill is somewhat low.

Use Commend/Report Buttons - I would like to start by saying that I am fan of Valve. Not only have they released Half-Life 1 and 2 (something that made my childhood a lot better), but they have also given us an awesome and a completely free game of Dota 2. At the same time, their commend/report system could possibly do a lot more to promote better behaviour.

Nonetheless, I still urge you to use both aspects - we will never know whether there will be changes to it. (What I have in mind, is that apart from usual Mute/LPQ, they could introduce a % change to the amount of battle points one gains based on the Report/Commend Ratio. Just a thought.)

Do not feed the trolls - the mute buttons are there for a reason. As well as the "disable help" option in-game. If reasoning with a person fails, just ignore them. Without the "Audience" they will have less incentive to rage. It will work out a lot better for you, since you will be able to concentrate on the game, and for the community - starving trolls is a laughable thing. I usually imagine them as 5-year old spoiled kids shaking hands at the computer that has suddenly stopped showing them their favourite cartoon. Let their parents deal with them.

Closing comments

This article was aimed at two categories of people - the ones who rage and the ones who suffer from it.

For the first group I have tried my best to explain that their negative attitude and decadent behaviour does not only make everyone around them feel bad, but also directly results in them losing more games than they should. And that they deserve every single loss.

For the second group I have tried to explain how to counter/cope with rage. I would also like to say that you are the reason why I will never stop claiming that I love Dota 2 and Dota 2 community. And don't take the insults too seriously or let them ruin your game or your day. You wouldn't be cross with a child trying to abuse you, would you?

Thank you for Reading

More from The Dotabuff Blog
92 კომენტარი
StayHigh

    Nice article but pretty useless imo, i bet the gameruiners arent reading this blog. Playing solo ranked its a lottery atm, you can know the result after max 5 minutes.

    "And if you are not in a 5-stack, you know for sure, that the people you are playing with are not that far from your skill" - this is so false. Im sure that those 3 russians i`ve played with recently, terribly bads, feeding and rofling on microphone couldnt be at 3.5k mmr.
    In over 700 matches i can say i`ve played max, but maximum 30 games with cool guys, same skill as me, and using microphone for coordonating and nothing else (raging in rusian, peruvian, listening bad music, etc), wich is to damn low ...

    Once again, a nice article ..

    Soultrap

      @抱歉你们都是2b
      "raging has everything to do with THE DISPARITY between player's understanding of the target/hidden situation in the game,"
      "you stack a lot, and then you have a problem with raging? then LEAVE fucking SOLO QUEUE, u glass hearted spoiled brat."

      So true!

      Gustaphos

        I liked the closing comments. Mute buttons, and commend/report function is a classy edition.

        Everyone please use the mute buttons don't interact with these people. It does you no good!

        Fun fact:

        People were mad at a guy for jungling for 40 minutes.... the jungler kept calling the team names, I calmly muted the guy 5 min in but could hear the rest of the team yelling at him... I told them to just mute them and click on his character and follow him around while jungling.

        Result:

        We lost. Still fun to run a Final Fantasy type line of people making a train of sorts and just let the troll drive the hate train. I periodically unmuted him to listen to him yell at us for fun for being "stupid". Made my lost game more bearable.

        P.S. 40 minute jungling on a lycan with a bkb and basher only means you spent 40 minutes of your life attacking AI that isn't very heavy on the "I" part in this game. Please don't jungle for 40 minutes people! :) So silly!

        BoJack

          good reading.

          Average Joe

            To cut things short, maybe it would be nice to keep calm, respect and understand your team mates (they might be new), share ideas instead of raging and win the game.

            Soultrap

              @-hg- Cpt. Caveman
              More like 4 trolls following only 1 good player in a team.

              mwsqz

                im totally part of the group 2, every game ppl flame me cuz im failing ig, i dont understand such ppl :(

                𝖍𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖆𝖗𝖉

                  Автор, я так понимаю блог нацелен на англоязычную аудиторию? ясно понятно.

                  Shimizu

                    " After all no one really sees Na'Vi, [A]lliance or DK players rage on each other in the game"

                    I bet you never saw RotK playing live.

                    Gustaphos

                      @ Soultrap

                      IDK its glass half full or glass half empty kind of thing? Troll the troller? IDK :( I just thought melee fighting neutrals for 40 minutes was quite enough and the cursing from the guy was enough also. I couldn't tell if he was good or not, he kept getting ganked in the jungle. I'm guessing not!

                      Final Fantasy

                        A SAD STORY

                        I won few games in a row, [ after game i checked ally/enemy status, my teammembrs won few in a row too, Enemy team, lost few in a row ]

                        its a 3 man stack in my team, 3 true russians on winning streak, enemy is like, 3 koreans on lossing streak, I ask for middle, i ask for hardline, i am denied , i am forsed to suport them [ Happens often ], min 10 score is like 1-15 , 1 frag is my solo kill, I am wondering ,what did VALVE espected me to do in this game ? pick another carry and by 10 minit mark get 10 frags minimum ? and funny facts, i didn raged or trolled much, it was clear i am in wrong team, and wrong game, [ like 75% of the time, i get carried by team mb 1/2% of the time, tryharding like a boss 23% , 1 mistake i make and we losse game,play not perfecltly and i losse] How u want me NOT to rage and troll, when ally tinny tosses me into enemy , and sudenly winning game is lost. or something similar. 2 suports perma farming somewhere and then feed and feed and feed again. [ god bless we at least got chick and suports]

                        How can u calmly play game, with gameruiners in the team, A GUUD GAME< u make me laught, didn saw that in ages... where others 9 people would be similar skill, or highher.[ I see sometimes people with higher or similar skill in enemy team, 5 of them sometimes, but i get 3 monkeys minimum in my team, forsed to suport, or getting HARDlined to hard while our safe feeds ]

                        i get people with 150 wins in team, stacked, all 4 same skilled, just started dota, won 5 games in a row againts same opponents, sudenly valve trows me in theyr 4 stack team, HAVE FUN valve says , try to win the game VALVE says, Enemy is just 5 Rox.kis members , ? ? ? ? ? Its all about valve and broken mm system, give me guud game and i will say in the end, GG WP etc, give me rubish firstimers vs guud opponents , ofcourse i will blame them, its theyr fault, [ ofcourse shit happens, sometimes its your fault and u get flamed, or trolled by nabs, saying how u did bad, when u did 3x times better than they ]

                        Sad story of 5k+ mmr , i will continue flaming and trolling, after lost game [Werry badly lost one, that one where u go hardline, win it againts 3 tryharders, but sudenly score is 3-10 , your safe and middle feeds like np, u cant do anything, u get denied by team 5 while your team afk ] i nedd to focus for next one, cuzz most likely it will be the same. u cant hold everything inside for 5 games in a row. [ once i tried, lost 11 in a row, cuzz i was in the mood, i dont care, lets just play peasefully , no tryharding no wins for me ]

                        Ever tried tryharding and play seriuos ? where every mistakes matters ? and teammembrs forse u to fail ?

                        MD15

                          We have a tough fight early game against a timber and we kill him. Our Omniknight survives with 20HP and what does he do? Goes into creeps to heal to maybe get some lasthits and DIES and the kill is given to Timber. ANd you expect me to fucking be nice to retarded morons like that!? Fuck no! This game is filled to the brim with braindead scum that just wastes oxygen and need to be dealt with appropriately

                          Gustaphos

                            ^ You're part of the problem being aggressive like that. He made a mistake, it happens.

                            BossOfThisIBRAGAy

                              I agree with everything, and i always try to be like that! Cheering people up and stuff. But i guess im not Sylvestor Stallone, my speeches work not often (when they do it is usually just amazing and it really helps). But i dont know, dota 2 community just LOVES GIVING UP! It dissapoints me.

                              I recently stopped playing with a friend of mine, because i just cant make him understand that his raging and mocking dont work! He thinks that if he'll mock players and tell them how terrible they are, and all that, he thinks they will become better. Wich is wrong, cuz who will listen to a raging guy, right?

                              კომენტარი შეიცვალა
                              MD15

                                Also anonymity doesn't have to have anything to do with it, when i play with friends if they do stupid shit i often yell on teamspeak. Like this one time i had a friend go SUPPORT alchemist but went on maxing greed first... He was convinced he's a support and defended his choice of spells and this is a person with 1000+ games.... And in reply to -hg- Cpt. Caveman, i understand newbies and the fact that people can be bad at dota since it's a hard game to fully understand but if after 1000 (one THOUSAND) games you die to creeps because u are a greedy support then you need to quit the game forever so you don't ruin it for everyone else

                                GUTS&GLORY

                                  Great article - I don't entirely agree with the scientific backing of it, but there is definitely a link between enjoyment of the game and performance.

                                  Funny enough, a handful of people posted very angry comments to this and if you take a look at their profiles, you'll notice that they generally have over a thousand games played, yet their KDAs are fairly low. Funny how it works!

                                  Gustaphos

                                    @ TSK.QuaSaR

                                    Guilty as charged. I have been a greedy support but I've been getting better with communicating saying to my hard carry "hey let me farm 2 or 3 creeps so I can get brown boots" or something to that effect. So far communicating in this fashion instead of just taking the farm so we aren't competing for last hits seems to help.

                                    Not familiar with alch support. I've seen that seems to be the new meta from people but maybe since it's kind of newer after the patch, the skill selection should of been gone over first with him? It's kind of new from the past month right?

                                    unDzor

                                      Very nice article. It kindda makes me want to play with you. I think it is easaier to win TI then not raging in matches. I can do that when I have friends on party, but not because I'll see them personally. But because I accepted to party with them. Some random pubbers make such mistakes that one will do nothing but rage.

                                      Gustaphos

                                        http://dotabuff.com/matches/518240676

                                        Winning mid doesn't = winning game!

                                        Didn't get mad but had a nerd battle royale between the sand king and the timbersaw typing to each other which in turn... got them killed!

                                        No need to mute this time, but I kept encouraging them not to focus on each other and focus on the task at hand. Didn't work but worth the effort.

                                        (°⌂°)!!?

                                          If only teammates would listen when you say something and not start blaming people.

                                          Plus teaching while playing is not something I'd like to do in a pub game, every match.

                                          Final Fantasy

                                            So after reading comments, i desided, if u have manny games, u will be like natural angry person. cuzz even the Mother terresa would start ragging after 3k games with morrons idiots and russians,

                                            gues those who dont rage, are just nubs ussualy, that doezt care about game itself, or its outcome, they just want to have fun and play, WITHOUT EMOTIONS.

                                            biggest problem ofcourse is broken MMR, like i droped playing sc2 just because of that, i have total 30 games, i get enemy thats total games is 4000, fair and squaire , i am new to the game i am learning, he already playd 4k games, and well, after pllaying 4k games u will learn something .... [ ofcourse some people are not destined to play games, cuzz i won few times ]
                                            Back to broken MMR, now i have 6 lost in a row, why is that ? I did guud in most games, considering what situation i was forsed to have, all others failed misserably. i cant win a game when i am forsed to go woods with lenaya, when lastpick drow IN MID have 30cs min 20, he waznt ganged once, wolf fails easy line greatly to, timber just feeds and goes afk early.
                                            MORAL = If i started flaming ,wtf nab why u pick drow , u wont get mid, i think that would won us the game, [ but i was "guud"person and desided to let him try.... ussualy thats the mistake u dont want to take 2or3 times in a row, hopping for miracle]

                                            Кошеня

                                              best article ever

                                              ill definitely read this

                                              stressedsqrl

                                                OP is a raging faggot with too much time on his hands. Go get laid bro. You just typed a 4 page essay on rage for dotabuff.

                                                Luxalpa, Tail of Devastation

                                                  "Do not feed the trolls" is wrong.
                                                  If you mute the flamer, it won't remove the audiance like you claim. The other 8 people can still listen to you. It's basically useless.

                                                  Gustaphos

                                                    ^ I think your overall experience in that particular situation would best to just mute everyone if the audience is abusing you afterwards still with the flamer muted.

                                                    IDK... I've only been in 1 or 2 games out of ~1800 ish where the antagonist grasped the audience to focus me down. In that case I did what I said above. Best just to mute them and focus on your gameplay even though the game may be lost to achieve the best outcome of a lost game. That's all you can really do!

                                                    镜花水月

                                                      Shitass article by a 3.8k shitface scrub

                                                      N1K

                                                        Please find below THE BEST article about dota 2 and team play. Don't tell me OMG "russian article" use google translate try to understand it because it worth it.
                                                        http://ru.iccup.com/all/content/blogs/Povishaem_vinreyt_na_ikkape_.html
                                                        Regards,
                                                        -=Serafim=-

                                                        Etaro-

                                                          In my case, I have the tendency to TT someone who's really getting into my nerves in the lane. (when my enemy is denying too much or harassing to much) They really get into my nerves lol. I think this also falls to competitiveness?

                                                          KawaiiSocks

                                                            Muted a couple of people for 3 days. Comment section is for discussion of the article, rather than my boring persona.)

                                                            Thx for feedback - will try to get better at writing more serious stuff.
                                                            Also, I have to somewhat agree with -=Serafim=- - the article he has linked is really good and can be useful. Could translate it, if there is a demand for it - tell me if you would be interested.

                                                            .
                                                            .

                                                              Here's my opinion on the matter:

                                                              1.) You rage when you feel that you "don't deserve" the bad things that happen to you. This is why lag is annoying.

                                                              2.) Rage is amplified by "unexpected" bad things. Many people don't expect a teammate to be feeding so fast so early.

                                                              3.) It's not the rage, it's what you do with it. Trashtalking can actually be good when you're trying to pipe down an overconfident guy. As players, we know when someone is overconfident by experience. Diving too much (usually bara), buying dagon on lifestealer, clashing too much against high ground, etc. But if you know a person is doing his best (but is clearly russian... I mean noob), trashtalking will not work 99.99% of the time.

                                                              4.) Everyone has raged!. Sometimes that rage can make you concentrate, fear the right things (stop pushing lanes on "all-miss"), trashtalk a hard-headed teammates into staying with the team instead of charging alone and looking at the cooldowns of your allies.

                                                              5.) Rage can only make a person concentrate if he reviews the replays of games that made him rage out-of-control. The feeling of hopelessness at the time will give way to the comfort that you have something "you could have done"... again rage is feed by the emotions "I don't deserve this" and "There was nothing I could have done!". This is a personal thing and is sure to be different for other people.

                                                              6.) Get comfortable with the decision "I don't want to know, so I may respect" and press the mute button. Let's face it, it's our pride that's keeping us from pressing that button knowing full well that nothing good will come out of the chat/microphone of that russian... I mean troll.

                                                              7.) People are more forgiving of themselves than of other's mistakes... in dota 2. Hoping to "group up" and say "it's not my fault, everyone else is having the same problems" simply doesn't work. The rage will continue exist and will persist for everyone noob/russian found. The trick is to convince yourself that you are part of the problem (even though a very small part). This is the inverse of non-competitive real life.

                                                              8.) Here's a dirty little secret: most russians will respond to "cyka" in russian. Type it in the beginning of the game during the loading stage (not the picking stage). If they do, exit dota 2 for your own good. Wait 2 minutes to find another match.

                                                              BearlyCivil

                                                                I do have friends (most of them I think) that still have the mentality of 'it's only a game'. To me, it is a game, but the problem is that this is COMPETITIVE game, and in order to enjoy it, each team needs to be very competitive towards each other. I wouldn't mind if I'm losing in a decent game, but if I won/lost in at least unbalanced match up I won't enjoy it.

                                                                Sometimes I do rage, but nowadays I'm trying to reduce it. Whether I'm playing with friends/random people, usually I won't speak much unless needed, and most of the time I will explain to them what makes us failed instead of raging.

                                                                "You won't learn anything by winning"

                                                                Cosmo

                                                                  My personal take on this article is that there are many aspects of playing Dota. Let's take a look shall we?

                                                                  Dota is a team based game. The first step to playing any team based game is teamwork. A team that isn't well coordinated will fall apart. This entails flaming, raging, etc. Such a cause for this is that people look beyond thier own mistakes. Some people who have lost countless games will start to lose sense of thier manners, etc. This has happened to me before. Any problem which could have been solved with a simple "My bad, sorry" then escalates into tension between two players, which then leads to all-chat wars. Following that, the enemy team will usually reply with, "Keep it in your own chat" instead of helping the situation. An appropriate response would be to look clearly at the situation and to calm the troublemaker down. Remember, if the base of a tower is shaking, the whole structure shakes. Eliminating the rage from the problem helps stop the team falling apart. If you're the enemy team, helping them solve thier problems provides a better match experience for you and reduces the likelyhood of a ragequit. Also, it's a nice thing to do.

                                                                  Secondly, many people have different aims when playing Dota. There are three main categories. The tryhard, the casual gamer, and thr competetive player. The competetive players play Dota for a living. Thus, they have the most incentive to win competetive games, as money is on stake. Most of the time when a prize is involved, people work a lot harder to win the game. Such a problem is created when valve awards battle points to all players. This causes aa lack of incentive for players. Also, in ranked matchmaking, when a team loses, they lose mmr. This causes people to have a negative takeaaway from the game instead of analysing the game and seeing what went wrong. Just like training an animal, you need incentives. Hitting a dog for not obeying will result in a disobidient dog. Simple as that. The next two categories of the tryhard and the casual gamer are just like religious people and aethiests. The aethiests, or the tryhards, strive to win a game using cleaar-headed logic. However, there are extremists, who criticise the religious for not trying hard enough to win the game. The religious people then get offended and see all aethiests as extremist assholes, which in turn produces religious extremists. This cycle never ends. The casual gamers hate tryhards, and the tryhards hate casuaal gamers. Such is the case.

                                                                  Thanks for listening or reading, I hope I cleared some points up.

                                                                  flights

                                                                    lol - i was the kotl in that match, it was a very fun game but none of us were taking it seriously, we didnt realise that our party leader had queued ranked, dazzle got an abandon because he went to the loo when we needed to push high ground. If we had taken it seriously I feel there was no come back for you guys, its a nice lesson in not raging but I'm not sure our game is an appropriate example. Also - if I hadnt built battlefury i think we still might have done it, I insta-gibbed you a couple of times with some big crits XD
                                                                    Edit: I read the article when it was trending on reddit and didnt check the link to see i was mentioned XD

                                                                    კომენტარი შეიცვალა
                                                                    Peddie

                                                                      I wonder what the deal is with all the casual racism in the comments here. Believe it or not, there's nice and friendly Russian players, you probably won't notice them though, especially if they don't use a microphone. But a raging Russian is easy to notice due to, well, strings of Cyrillic writing. Just keep in mind that you're no better if you hate back on him. And keep in mind that you probably encountered at least three other ragers who do use English, who're no better than the Russian rager. So cut the prejudiced crap, please.

                                                                      Personally, I don't think flaming is ever justified, if you're frustrated after three straight losses, don't play that fourth game. If you've got a guy on your team who criticises your every move and broadcasts your every little mistake, mute them, any sensible player will know that 95% of the time players who criticise their teammates the most are often the worst themselves and are trying to, consciously or otherwise, deflect attention away from themselves. So don't worry about your reputation getting damaged. Besides, with over seven million monthly players your odds of ever meeting any stranger you played with again are slim, so don't even worry about it. Basically, if someone's doing something that's report-worthy, don't be an idiot and do something back that's equally report-worthy.

                                                                      Besides, some times there's just nothing that can be done about a game. If you're stuck with four people who clearly have no idea how Dota works, don't rage at them, try to educate them. If they're four people who have no idea how Dota works but think they're experts, just shrug and let the waves of defeat wash over you. They won't matter in the next game. And no point in getting mad about the inevitable. If you see a Kunkka and PA barrel down the easy lane together because they're buddies, and both refuse to rotate, just accept the fact that 95% likely you're not going to see the enemy ancient explode that game and try to make the most of it. Maybe you'll catch a lucky break or the enemy manages to be even more incompetent. If not, oh well. Not like a single defeat ruins your Dota career.

                                                                      Edit: And don't forget, time spent raging is time spent not playing Dota.

                                                                      კომენტარი შეიცვალა
                                                                      Yatchzi

                                                                        I respect the message of this posting, but I'm afraid it's a little too idealistic. I consider myself a friendly, constructive, and supportive player. (Over 20% commendation rate). I also have played DotA since long before there was a courier and I feel I have an excellent ability to read inter-player dynamics and I am a strong team leader. However, it is incredibly demanding to take an entirely positive leadership position in your average pub game and what really leads me to rage is when my teammates DO NOT LISTEN / DO NOT COMMUNICATE. No matter how good/friendly your advice is, when your teammates do not listen, it doesn't matter. Additionally, no matter how talented your teammate is, when they engage by themselves to make their "game-changing" play without communicating their intent, this also leads to failure. Perhaps I have played too much DotA at this point, but it's exhausting to put forth the optimistic leadership attitude when it hasn't been delivering results lately.

                                                                        Lord Sadoron

                                                                          We should be thanking you for the article. Not the other way around.

                                                                          I am much of a rager in my games. As we all think we play well and we are good players i often rage when some one dose stupid things in the games.

                                                                          Reading this helps me a lot. I just read it, but as soon as i get home i will play some DotA and i will do my best to not rage and be cool and helpful with people :)

                                                                          10x man. Please post more articles.

                                                                          nitroglicerīns

                                                                            In other words ... Good luck and have fun!

                                                                            An Infinite Regression

                                                                              I hope every player reads this at some point

                                                                              Lexir [UA]

                                                                                On the other hand, there are people with weak nerves, who get their shair of bearing it all IRL, and than all team goes feeding mid even though you asked them to push bot as 5. I mean like it is a nice post and all but try understand ppl who rage, they are actually poor too. I don't think they feel pleasure from raging.

                                                                                კომენტარი შეიცვალა
                                                                                Nortrom

                                                                                  fak all noooooooooooooooooooooooooobs mother fakerssssssssssssssssssssssss russiansssssssssss i sleep with all of your sisterssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

                                                                                  paduko kayo

                                                                                    See mid or meepo : The Ranked Adventure part 2 Toxic Player

                                                                                    Youll se next level rage and toxic