Playing On Tilt
Dota games can be won or lost in the first ten minutes, and it’s not always about which team is snowballing. It all depends on the team who tilts first. Go gank the midlaner, all-chat taunt them (e.g. gg, easy mid), and watch the recriminations tear apart the enemy team’s chemistry, which was already fragile to begin with, considering everyone is a stranger.
The report feature and low priority exists primarily as a deterrent to our reflexive tendencies to tilt when the game goes sour. It’s there for players who, after a poor start, resign to feeding couriers, walking their own hero into enemy towers, or spend more time flaming teammates than playing the game. Anyone who plays or watches Dota knows that it’s a game that has its peaks and valleys. Poor starts can be disadvantageous, but there are always opportunities to turn it around. So why do people give up so early?
Everyone Is A Pro
No one is the perfect Dota player, especially in a pub game, but the expectation is there. That’s the fascinating thing about esports. It’s that great play is so easily accessible, via stream, replays, or in game, and at least in Dota it seems physically feasible to do. I’ll never dunk a basketball like Lebron, but I can pull off the same juke I just watched Arteezy do.
That’s how finger pointing begins when mistakes inevitably occur over the course of a Dota game. Something happened that shouldn’t have happened, and it wouldn’t have, if you were a better player, like me. There are only a handful of players who can say that. Most of the time, it comes from people who aren’t as good as they think they are.
Playing a Dota game is a continuing battle with expectation vs reality. The expectation is that a pub MMR game somehow should emulate what a professional Dota game looks like, and yet the reality is that it is nothing like it. From the get go, it’s a game with 10 strangers who have their own ideas of how to play, which most of the time doesn’t involve picking support heroes.
A pub game instead feels more like a free for all, where each player plays their own game in a silo, each with their own ideas of what they will do throughout the game. The issue is that individual success and team success is intertwined, and when one of those fails, very rarely will players blame themselves.
Your Team Is Against You
It’s not your fault that your mid-laner is oblivious, your carry is unable to last-hit, or your support player is never in the right place in the right time. Things happen in Dota that are completely out of your control, yet it’s these situations where team chemistry completely dissolves.
Most players are amateurs, in the strict sense of the word. They don’t make a living playing Dota, nor are they playing, living, and breathing the game everyday of their lives. But when they feel like they’re the only competent person on a team with terrible players, they lose trust in their team’s ability to turn a game around. Sure, this game can still be won, but just not with this team.
Players who resign early after a disadvantageous start fail to realize that the other team is just as bad. Our teammates are just as imperfect as their teammates. Everyone makes mistakes. Instead of dwelling on them, the rational choice would be to figure out what went wrong and see what steps you and your team can make to fix it.
The Game Is Against You
Yes, Lina is essentially immortal now starting at level 10, with her -30 reduction in respawn rate. Dota has always had its share of imbalances, and the rotation of meta heroes is what has kept the game interesting over the years. Sometimes a loss in the lane can just be chalked up to a bad matchup, so it doesn’t have to be the sole reason why a game is going to be won or loss. Just thank Volvo and move on.
What pub players can take from watching professional Dota is how the most successful teams have been able to adapt. First of all, that means being humble and open enough to accept new strategies. Metas constantly change, not just from patch to patch, but even through the course of a LAN. Even the best players are able to realize there isn’t one way to play the game.
It’s frustrating, and frankly a waste of mental effort, to be constantly criticizing teammates for subpar play, when that’s actually par for the course. Pub games aren’t pro games, and they don’t have to be. Most of the time, people just want to play their favorite hero. If that’s the expectation, then we'd spend less time tilting and more time actually enjoying a game of Dota.
Good article, and I'm pleased to see an article on tilt at all. Coming from online poker, I recognize tilt at work here in the DOTA scene, but I sometimes wonder if it's a "known" thing in potato tier DOTA. Maybe it is, and I'm just not giving my teammates enough credit (and, by extension, maybe they actually do know that their inflammatory behavior is likely to tilt their teammates and possibly contribute to a loss).
I wonder if you could do a part 2 to this article? Maybe looking more directly at what tilt is, how it manifests, how it happens in DOTA, and what to do to mitigate or buffer against its impact before it's too late for a given game?
Today I had a game where my lane partner tusk was just taking all the last hits ( I was playing Luna) and you all know how in the first few minutes it's a little tricky to get last hits on Luna cz of her backswing... We were against a pudge and clinkz... It was going very bad. I asked him "why do u do this?".. "I'm trying to get a few cs and help us win the game bro, why do u do this"... Then he says I'm bad at last hitting... So I decided to go to the jungle... And while I was going there I tried to tell him that it's always a little tricky with Luna unless you skill her passive but when u do that ur lane tends to push... he flames me again and then leaves the lane to come n take my half hp jungle creeps too... He took both camps I was trying to farm. That is how cancerous SEA was... I somehow pulled my shit together and farmed and somehow won the game cz we had a riki slark n SF who got going... (Yes another typical SEA 5 core line up where I had to buy wards as Luna) ... So tilt is nothing new... Especially in the SEA server where no one picks support... I guess it's all about playing around it...
ty for all comment ^_^
I loose becaz f russians ruin my gamez (((( Russian igraite v russian serverz pozhaluista
I usually play with 2 friends that I know for more than 10 years. I started playing Dota a few months before them and tried to teach them. We used to argue during games till we decided to only say positive things or at least useful ones. After the game we discuss (sometimes not being very kind to each other).
Our win rate didn't improve very much but I can assure that we have more.fun playing with each other. Sometimes you can't control emotions but you surely can control communication.
I think that the psychological aspect of the game is harder to control than the skill. People tend to get mad at each other forgetting that the main objective of a pub game is having fun.
Lot of good tips and uplifting words in these comments! Thanks to you all! glhf
sea say.. NOOBhahahah
U ARE ALL NOOB THE ONLY WAY PLAYING DOTA IS BY TILTING HAHAH. and by the way im 23mmr xD
интересненько
I'm generally playing Winter Wyvern, which is a hero that can kill enemies that are extremely more powerful than her. So if i play badly and get insulted, i just mute my team to not get distracted and wait for the moment where i can sneak a kill.
As a support player playing in 2k SEA, tilt is life.
<I usually just mute if the tilting is just blame shifting.>
Stress ball, weed, flaming with my mic off to calm me down and so my teammates do not hear me flaming them (biggest one here), banging on my desk. All those things help me when I tilt.
Sometimes, it is just funny and entertaining to see people lose their shit.
But deep down, I know I can be an asshole too, and I do my best to not flame. This game is addicting and I hope to go pro some day xD
Mind games has been meta forever though. One thing I used to do is say something in all chat at the start of game like "gg Luna supp bought wards, retard Axe building basher" and it made the enemy drop their guard down a little and then they would end up flaming each other.
Good stuff.
When someone flames in my team, and someone else keeps responding to their negativity even after I mute the main source of toxicity. I mean, I hate to fucking mute people, but seriously, there are just some games where you slowly mute each player on your team, and then the enemy team when they try to talk smack in all chat. I have had shit games turn around and end up winning from muting 2 - 8 people. Never had I have to legitly mute all 9 players lool
Grind on, doters. Grind on.
Oh yeah. If you want to flame. Just talk to yourself and make sure your mic is not on. I flame when someone is retarded and I will say to myself "Fucking retard Axe keeps calling before blinking" etc.. But later he will do fine, and I will spam "Well played!" prechat when he preforms well, and even after the win. I mean. We won. And the fact that the Axe player did not know that I saw him as a retarded sandbag dropped on the head as a child in his mother's womb, it helps their preformance, since talking someone down can just distract people.
Tilt is real
ставь лайк есле любещ маму все плус а обэма сасет
эх щас бы думать что ММР показывает истинные навыки и в целом умение игры,про всё остальное абсолютно прав,ну почти,есть ещё всякие разнообразные нюансы,но пожалуй я промолчу.
многобукаф не читал
только трабла в том, что дома - командная игра, и если у тебя хотя бы 1 сын шлюхи на герое то все, гг
особенно в этих уебанских патчах, не то что 3 года назад можно было выйграть мид 4-0 и ты законно вел весь мидгейм...
Stupid team I am Afk
ненавижу доту
нахуй вы тут пишете чудовища
How can I promote this article for all dota players to read? This is so true!
Oh god it's so easy to get me tilted, but even if i'm tilted, i'm trying my best to win and calm myself by my own decent efficency
Wow, the right article for me. I even use the same LeBron argument when trying to explain to people that NO, YOU CAN'T DO THE SAME PLAYS PROS DO, CAUSE YOU ARE NO PRO!
Shegz #afktillsummer
There's something aui_2000 said and I quote. "Players who are in the same MMR bracket as you who you think are toxic and sour probably make up for it in the mechanical or game-knowledge aspect".
What an amazing quote, I should show it to all the people that accuse me just of that. Because what makes me tilt most of the time is that people ignore my advices, and then it is too late, and BOOM, guess what, I was right after all.
Most of the people in the 4k bracket, where I will be stuck for ages (I am getting old and indeed, not putting as much heart anymore into playing), they may have some manual skills and motivation, but they tend too much to overrate their heroes late game potential, especially the hard carry players. They think that they can just chill and farm up all 7 slots, while that is exactly what the other team hopes for, since they got more late game beef. Why can't they use the early game advantage to finish the game quicker, especially if their roamers do a good job of ruining the other teams lanes and farming? I've been playing that roaming pos. 4 a lot lately and it pisses me off so much that a freefarming core can't join me at the 20-25 min mark and can't start to finish off the enemy, using the big farm advantage that he/she has. You play AM, you have bf + manta at the 25 min mark? Your 3 enemy cores run around with 3 midases? Drop the damn AFK farming and join up with the fights and pushing, no need to leave them any space for a comeback. The current 7.xx meta is less about afk farming and more about playing than it has ever been before. Yes, you might die once or twice too, but your hard working teammates will benefit greatly from that help, so will the team as a whole.
Damn, that was a long, messy wall of tl'dr.
I wonder if Icefrog ever forced himself to play low prio, just to see what hes doing to people. Really though, this is a great article. Every now and then I need something like this to stop me from wanting to kill my dota self and bring be back again.
"Not your folt you're obviously a midlaner." Haha yeah you and 2 other guys in your team, first problem right there
This post is a full of bullshit, shut the f*ck up eggs you trash piece of sh*t player c*nt
The problem is that people have no idea how utterly shitty they are. Everyone was awarded medals and trophies as children so they all thought they were winners. DOTA is full of fucking retards and morons with no critical thinking skills. Adjusting your own behavior towards those people and trying not to flame them wont make them better players, you'll just not go to LPQ as much.
как говорится...после вин стрика жди беды))0
The game seems to be more about keeping team mates on side than about strategy. Shame really, it didn't used to be this way.
Putang Ina Mo
Ótimo artigo! Parabéns
1-2k mmr you'll get normal skill no matter how many times you play you can't get hs or vhs, 3k up mmr automatic high skill or very high skill
"...that the other team is just as bad."
Yeah, but when there are tendencies like, your invokers are god awful ( invoking 2 spell and staying with it till the end ), but the enemy invokers tend to kill you with a blink combo......
Кто это переводил на русский? *вырвитемоиглаза*
Honestly think after reading this, if you think this is the actual problem with dota 2 ranked games then for all the stats dotabuff provides - you seem to still be way off the mark with the actual problem. The game is borderline impossible to play because of team work that is entirely agreed, but you need to understand this isn't a pro game, which you clearly do. So what are people here for? Fun? That's fine too - there is the unranked matchmaking for those who just want to have fun and play their favourite heroes. Then there is ranked matchmaking - which people consciously select to play, and understand it is the more "serious" game mode. Yet time and time again, team after team, you get people who are not even TRYING to win - and that is exactly what ranked games should be, people trying to win.
It's not all about winning, but the real sense of frustration from ranked game mess ups is the fact people are not trying to win, even if there is a troll - you still try to win but this is something that is never seen, and the game is just over from the first slip up or sign of disagreement. People have fun winning, and trying to win can be even more rewarding as you can have fun trying to win, just sometimes you get beat.
I Do agree with the comment about winning mentality. If you play ranked, go with your hero pool of those you can play. I do always see people play heroes they obviously can't play. I may not be right but recently i found the drafting more crucial as every other aspect. Yes you still can win 5 core drafts etc but the thing is psychology aspects develop with those decisions. I do always try to adapt to teams needs. But every game you have people that don't care about meta. Being positive and all those things really don't help develop yourself. In my opinion the matchmaking system should be reworked. I'm a 2k player but often played with 4 or 5k friends and never found myself lost in terms of skill or knowledge. Though I'm not able to get out of 2k for 2 years. I know i make mistakes and lose lanes sometimes but I'm way better then 2 years ago still not able to climb.