This is all false. Valve wants to fuck you over and make you lose by giving you shitty teammates every match. If Dota was a good game, it would have the option of letting you buy MMR and buy the right to have good teammates.

Teammates are worse than enemies, because Dota is a single player game, and all other players but you are AIs.

Took me a second to realize first comment was a troll. wp.

Good article too.

the fact that players can't leave games without being punished is a huge part of raging in all ARTS communities. A player that rages in dota would most likely just leave the server if playing an FPS game or GG out of a RTS game.

12/10 post would laugh again mr Shack.
And I can't but agree with this article

Nice blog post! Explains my every day behaviour in pubs :P

I have definitely seen the "performance/attitude" in action, and I know I have fallen victim to it as well. I think it's also self-perpetuating. If you aren't paying attention then your game will suffer, and sometimes when things aren't going well we grasp for a reason for our team's shortcomings. It's often difficult to point out exactly how your team got outplayed or outpicked because there is so much going on at once, but it's really easy to see your Mirana miss an arrow and chalk the whole game up to the crap players on your team.

Nearly every part of the first study linked can be attributed to some aspect of the game and matchmaking. I seem to see a lot more rage (and sometimes rage more myself) when player parties are involved. I'm not sure whether it is knowing you have someone to back you up/agree with you or trying to look "cool" in front of your friends, but I don't see quite as much rage coming from solo queued people. Captain's draft/mode is also a perfect example of altered responsibility. I see more team blame in that mode than ever - when the game ends badly, the captain is often the first one thrown under the bus, and usually by the players who had nothing to say before and during the draft. Having a captain is a great way to shift the responsibility and blame to an anonymous target.

I'm really enjoying the articles like this - well written and with relevant outside sources. Thanks and keep it up!

Thank you for this article.
Sometimes it is very hard for me to not rage and beeing mad. I try my best, but I am a guy, who just can't shut his mouth xD

What I read will may help me to just stop raging, and to be friendly. Because I am usualy a polite and nice person :3

A great article, but there is no point in giving inspirational speeches to your teammates when they can't understand an ounce of english, I'm afraid.

100% agree with everything you wrote. This article reminds me of how a few psychology aspects of dota can relate to poker and vice versa.

Raging at a fish (Let's say he gets lucky on you, one outer etc.) = Bad. You want him sitting comfortable or tilted at your table as long as possible because he will lose eventually. You have the edge, so play to win rather than letting him know how bad he played that hand etc.

Raging at teammates = Bad. Why distract them? Are they miraculously going to gain 5k+ mmr experience and become pro after your rage? I don't really have to go in depth here, this article pretty much covers it all.

Basically, when you're playing ranked or to win, no matter the mmr, leave your ego and emotions at the door when you begin a match. At least this helped me win a lot more.

What a coincidence! There are two friends of mine who I always avoid playing with because they are often raging/abusing. Only an hour ago, I somehow accepted their request to play with them in pub after weeks of refusing. And as expected, one of them started raging and we lost the match heavily. My mood also became very sour after enjoying each and every match for weeks regardless of win/loss. I simply removed him from friends since I didn't know a better way to deal with him.

Whenever your team does badly just ask yourself what would BurNIng do.
The answer is hit the goddamn creeps and try not to die then proceed to win.

I played with a guy who screamed the entire game into a microphone. By screaming I mean some random "aaaah" and roars. He stopped for a second only to take breath. I think some drugs were involved, maybe venomancer looked completely real for him. And that was one of my very first games, so I had no idea how to mute other players (actually, this must be explained in first tutorial mission, lol). I could not turn all sound off, because I wanted to track important events announcements.

How do you rate my patience for listening this guy for about 30 minutes without saying anything harsh to him?

I found solution. Since then I played more games with bots than with real persons. Btw, I hope Valve will improve bot's AI.

Kinda agree with the 1st comment though, my teammates just keep getting worse, no couriers, no wards, not even blocking creeps in mid lane anymore?
You should be able to request MMR boost at least once.

@Spike What is a troll?

@Article

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

I'm not sure you can separate people into those two categories. Everyone in DotA suffers from rage, even if you rage yourself; and I'd probably guess that 99% of the DotA community has raged at some point during the game. People are multifaceted inwards but outwards the constant audience of the real world forces most people to play their role in their daily lives and stick to a persona. That all goes out the window online through the medium of anonymity. Inhibitions are lowered. The same person who raged at you one game may be a supportive teammate in another. It's an extremely common mistake to group everyone into starkly different categories like this. People are much more similar to each other than they are different, and their actions reflect it. That's the entire basis of psychology.

TL:DR Please don't tell me the great KawaiiSocks has never raged at someone before. :)

But what should you do if raging people report you and you wind up getting punished even though you did nothing wrong?

It's hard to tell your teammates what to do and not get angry at them when they speak spanish when you've opted only portuguese language games.
Also, it's hard to report trolls when you get 2 reports/week and play with more than 2 trolls in that week.
Nice text, though.

"And the fact, that most of the trolling/abuse happens in the all-chat, rather that in team chat, makes this sound rather legitimate."

That is not true at all. Sometimes players are chatting to the opponents in order to lower their guard. Of course, there are those players that will be abusive to opponents, but that's contrary to your line of thought. And yes, we must be using the mute button on the scoreboard. Unfortunately we cannot carry over our list of ignored users to another account to try to reset our rankings. Not that we have evidence it would help, but there isn't much of a point to even try at this point.

"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!"

In the face of the abuse the matchmaking deals to its players, it is expected that players will lose their cool and at times, 'do anything to win' and I have been known to win games partially through trash talking that I might not have won otherwise. I even got globally muted after winning 4 games in a row. Of course, it varies from one game to another whether any rage will help, and most times it doesn't. When you have a cooperative and loyal team at your side, it's much easier to be well-mannered to your opponents and to Valve themselves since you're not currently subjected to their horribly designed matchmaking system.

Furthermore, I believe you don't know what you're going on about as you appear to play the majority of your games while not solo going by the information available. This means that you are idling at ~4100 ever since they introduced ranked and removed the fountain farming = higher ranking and other performance based ranking problems. In other words, your ranking has become worse over time and you're trying to claim to be a successful solo player when you have very little experience in actually playing solo. You probably started out over 4500 in both solo and party ranking and simply dropped down to about 4100 since then, and even less for party ranking. All because you are a dirty fountain farmer.

No one really sees Na'Vi, [A]lliance or DK players rage on each other in the game, because there is no anonymity in this case.

@SanKakU
I was wondering, why I have about the same winrate as KawaiiSocks, but he has 4100+MMR while I'm sitting at 3300-3400? So you saying he uses some dirty tricks... huh...

Lmao at the troll in the first comment, also this post is kinda pointless everyone knows this yet no one cares.

hi upgrade to plus page keeps showing not found, plz fix.

kinda hard to help people who tell you to suck a dick when you tell them that you believe they shouldn't get vanguard on ranged heroes or when you tell them that they are not supposed to start 1v5 fights they reply ''my hero wach ur hero nub fk u''

@Chuck
What do you think about Skadi+Satanic on Viper?

"Directly following the outgroup competition, men on winning teams had much higher testosterone levels than the members of the losing teams. This effect was especially strong for the players who had contributed the most to the team’s victory. In animals, a similar hormonal pattern occurs: testosterone levels increase in all competitors to increase aggression and enhance competitive ability, but the most successful males often experience strong post-contest testosterone surges."

tldr: author actively choosing to leave out contradictory information

'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' is untrue, since the game is a team vs team environment. The best players would evidently have the higher levels of testosterone and would as a result be more inclined to flame/troll/rage

quotes from link in post

no one likes whiney little bitches in their games. but becoming easily infuriated/'having a bad attitude' in a team vs team game does not constitute being a bad player or performing worse in any way. But some of the arguments i agree with. especially your main point about people who are actively shooting themself in the foot by raging at their team. which is normally why the flaming takes place once the game has been essentially decided, but not finished

great text, contrite

nice blog post KawaiiSocks! explains why almost every game i'm raged at. :(

Awaiting for russian version of this blog post. Can you do it please?

@CrazyDiamond - will certainly do it as soon as possible. I am currently in the process of moving from one country to another, and that takes some time. But will try to have the translation up in the next 3-4 days. Sorry about the inconvenience.

as major rager and game thrower that ruined over 300games on purpose with over 120days in lpq and few muted months I can tell u that major thing behind rage at least for me is overplaying=> BEING TIRED if i play above 12h even the least retarded and meanigless thing piss me of tremendously Its like all normal patience and understanding is gone and theres that approach where i focus more on others than myself
then when I had days w 3/4hours of dota 2 most stuff didnt bother me at all I even played with dudes feeeding couriers on my team from start and my reaction was yeh shit happens and focused on my game while on huge hour game streaks even supports that buy too many trenches piss me off as fuck

+ hopefully i can find documentary i ve seen on subject of frutration followed by rage in indivudals that are 2 tired and dont sleep/rest enough

@God among peasants
You pick Nature's Prophet, tp to their fountain and buy/release courier there, right? Funny, looks like no matter if you in "try hard" or "ruin" mode, you do it in most efficient way. =)

Last night I came home after a being at a bar and started playing with some friends :)
The game went horribly not only because I didn't do as well as usual but due to other people also picking heroes they are not that experienced with. Needless to say the game was a disaster but we knew that from the 3rd minute after :D
So we played for fun and actually almost managed a turnaround as they kept overextending on our fountain :)
It was one of the most fun games I had, as we had accepted the loss a lot earlier and played for funzies with my friends :)
end result was like 50:20 (where it was 20:1), and our carry even managed to almost outfarm them without ever leaving our base :D

So be positive and have fun :)

Such a great article, mate. That topic had to be considered, since mental condition of players is an essential part of good game.
As for me, sadly, I observed few changes in my own behaviour in last few month. I played in 4-5 man stack a lot, but then was forced to play alone for a short period of time with randomly chosen guys, who often made me go outrageous with words they said and things they did. Always calm before, I started to argue with them and even got some satisfaction from this at the beginning. But then dota became a kind of thing, which gives satisfaction by its idea, but is torture in fact. Till now I'm still afraid of playing solo. Sounds funny, but it is true.
Encouraging teammates is truly effective thing, which we commonly use within our stack (not all of us are always in good mood). It DOES work, there is nothing to argue with.
And 2-3 month ago (even thought I play dota2 since 08.2012) I started using mute button, and now consider it as one of the awesome things in that game.
Huh, Comment became kind of confession :)

Whatever, thanks for the article. Hope ones can grow up as good players after reading this.

Btw, it was really great to know, that your fellow countryman works for dotabuff. Good luck for ya, keep it going :)

I do not in any way agree with this article. You are completely basing it on what you feel society has done to peoples behavior and how they react to video games or anything competitive. What you have stated maybe the case for some thing and some instances but it is never this black and white. Then you turn into forgetting about the rage part and lectured on how you can better yourself by talking to your teammates. Not a bad article but quite over seeing and pretentious.

There are lot of people like to discuss this topic but when u got 5 or more loses at row (and you played well in each!) u will rage, toxic and shittalking.

the way i see it, yelling at your teammates doesnt mean you're better, since you are matched up with their mmr. so just shut up and git gud, get better teammates if you can earn it.

2 1200 micrograms, at last i didn't keep that shit inside of me. They earn such behavior so they got it.

As I read the headline, I was expecting you to mention Versuta. Now it's time to start reading it.

This blog post is wrong !!!!! LAG MAKES US RAGE

This blog post is wrong !!!!! LAG MAKES US RAGE

MY INTERNET IS AT IT AGAIN!!!!!!! :)

up chick pls

Very well put. Typing to your teammates gets you killed too when people are raging at each other. You're busy typing, and then you're all alone then get killed.

I had to do an "inspirational" speech as well last night when I was doing terribad with pudge against OD. Afterwards it all came together and the rage stopped, people were in a better mood, and instead of typing, they were following group orders.

Not the case every time but... its a game folks! Have fun please! :)

Hint: if you don't speak the same language, that's what the chat wheel is for.

But what should you do if raging people report you and you wind up getting punished even though you did nothing wrong?

you should learn from Hayao Miyazaki films, namely Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke, and Nausicca in The Valley of Winds

KOTOL GIFF ME MANA

u just made it look like the whole article meant nothing and did nothing to your exact mentality and problem

HǣL

he's a stack player, and has +50% winrate, what can you expect

once the game has been essentially decided, but not finished

which is why this article is in a way SHIT, cus the author, yes, YOU, kawaiisocks, you never for once touched on the real issue as if you are a white guy judging what's right or wrong in cambodia or somalia.

The real issue is the difference in people's understanding in the game. As long as it's not the same, and it will NEVER be the same all the time like the sun will NEVER be the same as the MOON or any other stars, no matter how much they are just the same fucking balls, we fucking humans will never agree with each other no matter how much we are just the same fucking chimpanzee-superiora.

you have a problem with raging? stack, or fucking deal with it.

Nothing you said is wrong, except you need to accept the truth you either ignore or don't understand:

raging has everything to do with THE DISPARITY between player's understanding of the target/hidden situation in the game,
raging or not has nothing to do with someone's individual understanding of the game and what to do, how to play what not to do how not to play----And in my opinion that's what solo pub dota is really about, not so much with raging or being nice.

NEITHER did you go more than skin deep on the fact you can't change one's understanding NOR mention a bit about the fact that you simply can't change the disparity between the players' understanding at all.
And what about after that? How leaders need to be made in a pub game ON the fucking GO so the "team" can really function? How the mechanics of leadership in a pub actually works? You think dota is that simple, you get a bunch of real life friends, or pub stars, you practice together, mingle, you win some games stomps some noobs and expect to win like this to TI? How far can you go?

And you showing off your commendation numbers and % that you have no proof of NOT forging by friends nor from trading with persuaded strangers, not to mention they don't mean much in this context--I mean what are you even trying to prove? That we are supposed to believe you didn't rage a single bit ALL YOUR LIFE and then you are a law abiding citizen and we should all give you flowers and THEN buy into what you come up with? of what raging is, how it's performed, why it's performed, and how it should not exist, and how to cope with it?

You even claim this though you obviously have a shit ton of friends to stack with. I mean, yeah, like I said, you either don't know about solo pub games, or you make yourself miserable by playing with shitty dota friends and call that your proof of experience in "pub" as in you are 5 man vs pub players. It's still a lot better and potentially more workable than playing with 9 fucking strangers, which a lot of people still do in this day, mind you.

See, you stack players, you don't know the first thing about pub games, so DON'T lecture people what to or not to do.