Warning: wall of text and positive thinking ******** ahead

Lately I've been noticing a large increase in the amount of salty players in the world of tanks community. Lot's of rage, lot's of frustration and not that much fun. I've seen people have anxiety/panic attacks about their stats and people who just EXPLODE In ts/chat with rage.

To me that's ******* hilarious.

I can honestly say that I've raged a total of TWICE in the 17,500 games I've played. I''ve been one shot by arty countless times, and I've never raged at that, I've had retards refuse to reset cap costing a game... still no rage.

Sure you can attribute it the liberal amounts of that dank herb, ascending you to the prototypical "don't worry be happy mode", but honestly most of my superb anger management/laxness can be attributed to the fact that I realized at a young age vidya gaems r 4 funz, not rage.

Intro:

You are better than your stats. Why? Because your stats are the AVERAGE of every game you played. Some games you play worse, some games you play better. If you put your mind to it and play at your best, you are better than your average. This is a very common truthism in league/dota 2. A simple realization that you are better than your stats can change your mentality immensely.

I was giving this advice on the league subreddit and it helped me jump from 50th percentile in skill to 99th in a matter of 3 months in league. Instead of being bogged down at where your stats are now, just make the effort to play at your highest and ignore what your average is/what you want your average to be. Some psychological feel good ********, but the change in mentality works.

1. Stat Anxiety:

Stat anxiety is real and it affects everyone, whether they are purple or not. For some reason people put a ton of emphasis towards e-jerking stats in this game when they are very arbitrary in the first place. I've long stopped giving a **** about my stats ever since I got unicum stats, but there are still certain tanks where I care about the dpg of (whereas they are competitive for top in the world and it becomes a race to see how long you can maintain a high dpg). All it does is create frustration and it stops you from playing some of the funnest tanks in the game. Games become a race to get your damage quota, or else your oh so holy dpg drops.

Everyone is guilty of that and it's fine, you just have to accept that instead of aiming for a dpg that will impress the world (guess what unless you are pulling russian god status of like 6.4k dpg in a waifutrager, no one will give a ****). Instead aim for a dpg that impresses you and don't fuss about it. Set personal goals instead of gloating about how you can't compare to the best of the best. My leo 1 gameplay is quite cancerous, I honestly don't give a **** about winning in it, all I want is to maintain 3600 dpg in it. I've come to realized that's ******* so stupid, who cares if I can't beat posnik something something from ru server (he has 4900 dpg in 600 games!!!!). If I can keep my goal of 3600 dpg in check that's good enough for me. No reason to moan about every game where I do "only" 3k damage

The most common issue of stat anxiety is everyone feels the need to compare themselves to others, rather if you are seeking to improve your stats, don't compare yourself to others. The rush of doing well (you know what I mean when you pull something like 90% w/r over 20 battles, or having a high wn8 over a long stretch), shouldn't be coming from having to compare yourself, but rather what makes you feel gud. Seriously, change your mentality of saying I HAVE to get X wn8 or X w/r for the night, rather try your hardest and see what you get. Once you shift your focus from pure stat focus to just trying to do well without specific goals, you shall find a lot of "stress" is gone.

Some players don't want to play because they feel like they won't do well, and any competitive player will tell you that's ********. You don't get better unless you put in the time. IMO I don't think the "ranked anxiety" is as bad in tanks as it is in per say DOTA2/League/Cs/Sc2, where individual games have more effect on your stats, but the problem is still real in tanks. Every single pro league/dota/cs/sc2 player can tell you the best way to improve is to just play a lot, after all the principle is that you are better than your stats as explained in the intro.

2. Confirmation Bias and Self Reflection:

Rng is in this game and it's here to stay. Everyone has been one shot by arty, and everyone has bounced off some 20mm light tank before. It's human instinct to selectively pick out the outliers. When you count the massive amounts of shells you hit and receive the amount of pens/bounces/one shot by arty/ not being one shot by arty should actually come very close to standard deviation. And there is nothing you can do about it, **** happens. You can spend the entire game whining about rng/arty but it still won't change rng. Wasting your time raging about it won't change the fact you got ****** by rng/shitters in arty. Just move on and learn.

Speaking about learning, it's pretty important in my opinion to reflect instead of rage. After every loss, I take a small mental note to see where the match went wrong and how I would I go about differently next time. Now I have a bank of experience where I can do some unusual **** in matches to turn them around. As toxic arty is to gameplay, most of the time you get artied is because you got lazy. I played in arty heyday, where every tier 10 match had 4+ arty each side. I would be paranoid of getting shot and that paranoia has lost it's effect over time. Most of the time I get smacked by xvm-whoring arty I just got lazy or too greedy. That's something I"m really trying to change right now, getting my arty dodging mojo back. (basically if you are purple and you are light, expect to get shot).

Some players just rage non-stop about MM/Arty/RNG, but really what can you do? Your rage has no impact on the future of the game, so there's no need to explode at every instance of you personally getting ******. (still arty is disgusting and needs to be changed)

3. Playing on Tilt/Knowing when to quit

Tilt is real, and everyone is guilty of having played on tilt before. The trick is not to ******* play on tilt (oh wait thats hard). So the nights not going good, you've been 1 shot by arty 3 times and you have a 33% win ratio. Just stop, don't try to salvage your w/r or wn8 for the night. Just put all your willpower into stopping.

When you tilt you play worse, that's it and you are more likely to get frustrated.

Most of my super bad wn8 games come from either being super tired or coming home @ 3am ******* wasted and deciding to play 30 games of arty while ****** up. I'm pretty sure that's the case with most people, so just learn when to not play. Most of my nights have been, doing fantastic for the first 20 games (80-90% w/r in tier 10), then getting tired and continuing to play and losing because I can't think. If you are serious about doing well, play when you are concentrated, go take a jog/shower some **** and get refreshed instead of slogging games after games half asleep.

4. Raging and your teammates.

No one likes a rager, unless they are the extremely rare "funny rager", it brings down the atmosphere of the platoon whilst being unhealthy imo. Some people use video games as a outlet to rant, which is fine, but if you have issues where you ******* explode every single game, then you need to put yourself in check and stop playing.

Everyone knows of locker room cancer, aka "that player" who brings down a sports team because all he creates a toxic environment. When he starts to vent in the locker room, everyone else usually shuts up and teamwork breaks down. I've seen it happen multiple times in real life when I played varsity soccer. Kid starts raging, everyone gets tense and we get smashed even harder.

Same thing happens in vidya games, I've had tourney teams where 1 rager loses the tourney for everyone by sending virtually everyone on the team on tilt. Platoons where everyone starts doing bad because somebody won't shut up and stop criticizing his own platoonmates. If you think people tolerate you as a rager, unless they genuinely like you as a person they probably don't. I've seen PLENTY of **** talk about how someone rages too much and has issues.

Don't vent your frustration on your own platoonmates, vent it on arty/rng/pubs w/e. Raging at your "friends" won't help them play better. I'm completely immune to this because I've dealt with mega ******** irl sports, but others really get triggered when you call someone out for their every mistake.

5. Conclustion TLDR:

worst's principles for less rage/salt and more fun

1. You are better than you think you are, if you try
2. Set goals not to impress others (chasing the impossible unless you are god @ tanks), but satisfy your own craving for improvement/accomplishing goals.
3. Raging over **** that happened won't reverse it, just get over it.
4. Don't play on tilt, just stop if you are having a bad string of games and you're getting frustrated. Don't try to salvage the night, just take a break and come back later.
5. Don't rage at your own platoonmates ( you can joke around, but when you actually start getting salty.. oh boy)
6. If you are finding yourself getting mad moreso than actually having fun just stop playing the game.
7. If you really have problems with raging, just block chat in the game options, play your favourite/best tanks and just go for it. If you find yourself still getting mad, maybe it's just time to quit.

Say wha

References