#types of learner

Humans are passionate creatures; it is one of the things that separates us from beasts.  There is a fire that grows to the point of volcanic eruptions while gaming.  When you have put your effort and time into a game only to be cut short by mistakes it is hard to control your temper.  

The first thing about controlling your rage is recognizing it is there.  If you deny it and say you are just a little upset then scream at the game, you most definitely are having issues recognizing your rage.  

The ways you can recognize rage:

1.       Your breathing has changed.  Either quicker or slow and deliberate, you have become conscious of your breathing pattern.

2.       Your jaw or shoulders are tense.  The jaw being tense can be felt in your temple, while your shoulders can pinch at the side of your neck.  You may not be a violent type, but this physical tension can be toxic to your own health.

3.       The game has drained you of joy.  You are doing a “hail Mary” attempt to reconcile a score, a point, a match.  Point is you aren’t having fun and more likely to be upset.

4.       You are screaming.  Whether you are in a call with the people in game or not, if you are screaming you are raging.

5.       You feel the need to type to justify your actions. You don’t need to explain anything. It is a game.  You aren’t their teacher.  If you mess up, then learn from it.  If someone else messed up, then you typing messages at them won’t fix it. Regardless of the information you present, it will not change anything.

Now that you can recognize it, you need to control it. First and foremost you need to understand video games are for leisure.  The esports scene is competitive and pays. You may be a streamer making income off of your content, but if you lose your cool then you can lose sponsors.  If you take the game seriously that is great!  Everyone loves a great teammate who will do anything to win a game.  Your motivation can dictate how your rage comes up.

In example: You love playing ranked games of Hearthstone.  You are on a 6 win streak but get cut short.  You proceed to lose the next 8 games.  You are upset by this.  The beauty of the system is you can’t type to people, just spam emotes and those can be squelched.  Consider getting something to review your games to watch where you could improve. Sometimes you get a bad draw, other times there are ways to play something better.  It is your ability to remain objective to get better that can help with this kind of rage.  Always take a loss as an opportunity to grow as a player.  

Another example: you are in a dungeon run for Guild Wars 2 with an inexperienced player and a single friend.  You need the group to get through the dungeon but none of your other friends are available.  The new players will die repeatedly and may not be privy to your experience.  Get off your high horse to explain before the dungeon run in chat.  Let them know how the run is supposed to go and set them up for success.  If you are mean to an inexperienced player, just remember you used to be that player to someone else.  Be a mentor that the community wants.

Final example: You are in a ranked game of League of Legends.  You are in your final game of your series.  If you win, then you are promoted.  You are with a group that made some questionable bans and picks.  You chose not to speak in a polite manner to get a great team comp and you also didn’t dodge the game.  Now you are 17 minutes into the game.  Mid has died 3 times and lost their tower.  The jungle is far behind and unable to help anyone. You won your lane by not feeding the enemy team, but you haven’t roamed and aren’t fed.  Your mid wants to surrender and you are livid that nobody wants to try to win.  This is a very real scenario.  Sometimes you just need to understand that there are things out of your control and play the game “law of averages”.  Play more games. You will lose, but you will also win.  Not every game is critical.  You aren’t going to die from losing.  Complaining will only ruin your mood for the next game.  Breathe.  Make sure you have eaten and drank.  Take a break from the game if you haven’t.  You can be just as much of the problem as your “feeding noob team”.  Think of different ways to win or rotations.  Don’t get hung up on mistakes. You are human and will make a lot of them in your lifetime.

Communication and gaming go hand in hand, yet gamers are always perceived as flawed in the communication department.  If you have ever played a game with friends, you know communicating in the game is critical.  For how important it is to communicate there are a lot of gamers who ignore it or over-communicate.  

When to Communicate

Letting teammates know when your skills are on/off cooldown and that you are waiting to engage based on that.  This will improve your gameplay and help others understand why you are playing the way you are. If you are really aggressive when you have all your skills and an escape let your team know so they can plan accordingly. If you are really passive and run away easily in fights let them know so they can recommend things to work on to help you feel confident to fight.

When you are building items that help the team, this is so you don’t stack them to allow for more dynamic fights.  In League of Legends having 3 Randuin’s Omens on your team probably won’t work in your favor in a team fight unless you coordinate them really well.  At the same time if you stack banners in Guild Wars 2 it helps everyone defeat a giant foe more quickly.  Know how the game functions to help your team as best you can.

If you need to do something that requires you to walk away from the game.  i.e. telling teammates to turtle while you have to take out the trash.  This is pretty critical.  If your team is expecting you to commit to a 30-minute dungeon run or for an entire ranked game of League of Legends they need to know if you are around to actually play the game.  It’s a bummer to have to leave but your team will be more understanding if you tell them first.  

Reminding teammates to check their set up in the game before going into a dungeon or a game is pivotal to winning.  Spells, specializations, masteries, runes, build path.  This will help them be set up for success and you will be able to depend on them to do what they intend to do.  If you play a character or class that is expected to be tanky and then build damage and you were the only ‘tank’ for the team, you may have just screwed up for your team.  Make sure they know how you plan to build so they can play accordingly.  

You need to understand the limitations of what their character can do as well as yours.  Sometimes fights don’t go well if we don’t understand the fundamentals of how our character functions in that setting.  For example,  you may be an Attack Damage Carry in League of Legends which means you are squishy but have a lot of damage while attacking from a safe place.  You can also be hard focused by the enemy team which will allow you to kite around your team.  You may die in the process but set your team up to get all the kills and push to win the game.  Know how your role can change in a game if you are ahead of behind.

Sometimes we just can’t avoid the tilt of being upset. Let your teammates know so they can guide your focus back to the game; do the same for your teammates.  I usually focus on giving positive feedback.  A carry position may have just died in League of Legends, but map control may have been gained.  Macro and micro are both things to be positive about.  You may be a tank that has died, but really strong in cs mechanics which has allowed you to maintain being tanky to help your team in the late game even if you didn’t win your lane.

When Not to Communicate

You are already tilted before the game even starts and hate everyone.  Leave your emotions at the door.  You have a new team and new enemy.  The past can’t be changed and dwelling on it will ruin your own mood.  Rise above that.  At the end of the day, it is just a game.  It doesn’t affect you eating, drinking, breathing, or sleeping.

That you are muting ______.  They don’t need to know and you don’t need to tell them this. This invites them to continue talking to you.  If you don’t mute them after typing that you are tilting yourself and probably need a break from the game.  Commit to the game and your word.  In the words of Sejuani from League of Legends, “Deeds not words.”

Insults: They never help and most likely will make your team play worse.  This is different than constructive criticism.  If you are calling them names and not offering feedback to help them improve you are just as bad as them.  Your game-play is probably suffering because you are busy typing instead of playing, even if you type really fast. This is your chance to show off your knowledge and skill to help them improve as a player.  If you really are a high skill cap player then raise the community around you.

Sarcasm: unless you are with a group of friends who understands, don’t do it.  People will take it as an insult.  I did a social test in some 20+ games where a friend of mine would type a question mark into all chat after they killed an enemy player; it literally had no connotation at all but the players became infuriated and it affected their game-play. Remember your teammate could be a 9-year-old or 45-year old dad.  Both react differently to sarcasm.  Internet culture is not always understood by everyone.  If you can joke like that with your friends then keep it with your friends, not randoms from games that you don’t know.

Economics is usually lumped in with government which is further lumped into history classes but I believe there is a distinct separation here.  Economics is about supply and demand which is controlled in and out of game depending on the game you play.  

In Guild War 2 if you do the ascalonian catacombs dungeon and are already level 80, the items you will get will be less valuable to you, however you can farm this easy dungeon to sell items to get more gold.  Keep in mind you are causing an excess supply, which if demand doesn’t keep up for those items you will get less if you sell them within the Trading Post; Same if somebody doesn’t really find these items and they are rarely in the Trading Post.  There are players who make a living from farming things like this in game to get IRL money.  Specifically in World of Warcraft players can farm items in game to then convert into a currency that can pay for the subscription to the game.  You no longer need to buy things outside the game but for those who can’t commit time they aren’t able to do these methods but can pay someone else to do it.  This is simple supply and demand.  If the demand is there for an item then the supply will be readily made available.

In League of Legends however players don’t control the value of items in game directly.  There are people who analyze the game to see how the cost of an item in game rewards or punishes players.  Most players criticize the lack of balance on these things but there are simply too many factors to put your foot down and see something as a permanent solution.  What will help assassins in a heavy meta will suddenly be rendered useless when tanks are buffed to counter that.

In analyzing game play Riot has specifically tweaked the jungle in XP and gold given.  Junglers were taking too much damage without being able to make their rotations so the previous two small monsters at blue and red buff were taken out, but to counter that the main monster was given more health and gives more gold. Jungle is a very temperamental role because it is dependent on how laners perform.  If AD Carry becomes very strong then junglers need to be able to clear quickly or gain extra XP for ganking and helping them get kills without being punished for lack of farm in the jungle.  If a jungle requires a harder leash to start the game it in turn can punish the laner by denying them experience of being in lane to kill minions so they have to look at when minions spawn in game and the most common damage on a carry to give a leash as well as a reasonable amount of time to get to lane.  The problem is never a simple fix.  Besides the addition of new champions which causes changes for effectiveness of previous champions, patches and items there have been updates with new items which have to be factored in when nerfing/buffing a champion.  

All of these taken into account is how Riot adjusts the cost of items in game and if they recommend them to be built. Trinity Force used to be standard first item on a bruiser, but now due to cost it is more like a mid to late game item.  The times that blue build Ezreal became very popular but in the current meta now punishes if a player gets too developed into it.  Pay attention to the next patch notes about the cost of items going up or down; that is a direct economic structure of players are “demanding” an early access to an item or abusing it which will effect it’s cost “supply”.

Gamers are not the people you go to when you want to work on your grammar or spelling because you will most likely come out speaking like LolCats, however within the game itself you can adopt the style of writing like those who write for the game.  This can be:

 the press releases for the game

the social media accounts officially published for the game

stories in the game

dialogue from characters

Very loosely you could also use chatting with other players in game, along with chat boards like Reddit and the ones moderated for the game to improve your writing skills.  Again you are more likely to be trolled and come out worse than where you started, but you can try.  

If you read through story lore it can help with developing tone for a back story that you can utilize in your own writing. League of Legends has thought out lore whenever a new champion comes out. [Not blaming you Rito for having the change things and how sometimes it can be lacking…..Sivir] A great example of well-developed voice is looking at the most recent Demaca updates.  http://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/   This develops bios with more personality of the champions as well as capturing the spirit of Demacia.  

Within releases on Surrender@20 you also hear the tone of those who publish updates.  This is for the most part informative update style writing.  There is comparison of previous information and updates for the new.  Occasionally you will see some gamer-ish speech but it is meant to relate to those who are reading the information.  Understanding the purpose of your writing and your audience makes a huge difference in how we communicate.  

For example fans of the game also get into role-play on the boards and develop their own back stories for champions which develop creative writing skills. This is obviously regulated by board moderators but there is other after-dark type writing that fans have written on platforms like tumblr.  A writing exercise you could do it writing an encounter between Garen and Darius.  Both have different ways of addressing a problem and tone in their voice, and they carry themselves differently. The more detail you can use in creative writing the better it will be for the reader.

There are plenty of people who question the semantics of story points, especially after a lore update, this can help you with academic writing in terms of continuity/consistency.  Within academic writing you need to explain where your source came from and why it is relevant as a source.  Ex. 3 different sources about a team roster update.  Look at how the writers address the update and their date of publication relative to when the roster update went through.  If you examine a lore update for a champion overhaul you can see where skills and quotes can become relevant due to context.  [I am still waiting for that Soraka update since Warwick had a new story update]

Within gaming we are all scientists.  Science is about learning about the world around you and experimenting with it.  At some point in time we have all tried a junk build in game or had a terrible set up until someone told us that isn’t how it is supposed to work.  Within Guild Wars 2 you some-what learn about the earth sciences in mining for ore, harvesting vegetables, and generally with items transitioning to land or water weapons.

Even if players aren’t thinking in terms of where iron or copper ore naturally occur they are thinking about it and can experiment in crafting to make items.  [That is also a waste of material, time and effort if you don’t know what you are doing but you can always do it.] Understanding the world you are in also can help you in understanding what kind of items you are likely to find; for example being in mountain areas is likely to lead you to ore while being in heavy forested areas will giving you logging material which is like learning about biomes.

Physics is probably the biggest one that gamers’ complain about.  Game engines have come quite a long way in graphics and pixilation to be able to do a jump puzzle or dodge a skill shot.  Within League of Legends knowing the hit box of your skill as well as its range makes the difference between a good player and a great one.  Whenever you are screaming that “that totally should have hit” or “Why did that even hit?!” you are expecting a certain level of physics in game than what you are getting.  With the new training mode that came out about a month ago in the client you can learn these hit boxes by practice so people will stop calling you a noob.  Physics is also about timing. In real life you measure how fast something is moving for purposes of study or to control an experiment; the same can be applied to video games in how long it takes for an attack animation to go off as well as the reliability of your own physical capabilities.