Mind of a Very Mad Man (And an Analysis of Learning)

In the last twenty minutes or so I’ve ragequit four separate servers, died a grand total of four times and, to top it all off, closed TF2 once (thus far.)

It’s probably apparent that I do not deal well with anger, even more so without an outlet. It’s probably why each death resulted in a ragequit, culminating in closing the game, while the last fifteen minutes during which I’ve written about three sentences of this draft have been me running 11 headshots to 6 deaths on Borneo defense, which while mediocre at best by most standards (especially for a Valve server), is leaving me only feeling a little bit upset.

There’s this mindset I fall into when I feel like I’m doing badly. The feeling of my “doing badly” could emerge after going 0/20 and suddenly realizing I’m doing badly after the 20th death. Or it could be me going 10/1 in 150 seconds and being MVP right from the get-go and still feeling like I did badly because I missed a headshot once or twice, or my only death was dying in a 1v1 with another sniper and being outmatched, or backstabbed by a Spy and feeling like I’m not aware of what’s around me, etc.

There are probably legitimate justifications in at least some of these situations for why I’m not actually doing badly, but I don’t care in these kinds of moments. For the most case it is safe to assume I am doing badly, but honestly, that’s ok. I haven’t played TF2 regularly for more than a year. I haven’t practiced nor played Sniper regularly pretty much ever. I’ve played maybe four hours with the current sensitivity I’m using, and it’s lower than any sens I’ve used since early 2013 (5.0 for melee/secondary, 3.0 for rifle, with a bind to toggle 1.8/3.0. My standard during Spy days ranged from perhaps 4.5 at the lowest to 8 or 9 for the highest).

Alas. It doesn’t matter when I’m mad. The feeling of being killed by a Pyro three seconds after going through a tele is infuriating. And make no mistake, I don’t feel angry towards the Pyro for using a “cheap” tactic, nor my team for not telling anybody about him camping, but instead at myself for doing that. Why go through the tele, I ask myself. Why could you not have used Jarate and gotten away, even killed him? You have a Bushwacka too, a suicide attack was possible.

Still doesn’t matter. And it runs deeper than that, too. The mindset of “I’m doing badly” makes me do worse. I focus on trying to do well, which usually results in moments like what I just did then – let a Soldier divebomb me in the cocksure hopes he’d fall into my scope and I’d get dat sweet midi bruh. I’m running 3/7 after two rounds of Badwater, what happened to that 11/6 from Borneo?

About that 11/6 – it never did feel like I was doing well. Everything I do in the wake of a “I’m doing badly” realization is based on that thought. Everything I do is to “make up for” doing badly earlier, it’s not “doing well now,” I can’t do well until I make up for doing badly. Even when I’m doing fine and I forget exactly how badly I was doing before and have surely made up for it by now, doesn’t matter, the mindset’s still eating away at me. You’re doing badly, fix it now, this 5/9 is pathetic, you only have 4 headshots because you missed and bodyshot that demo which, despite being utterly acceptable because he had <50 hp anyway, is nonetheless fuel to the fire of “you’re doing badly” in my mind.

It really is a self-perpetuating cycle, and it’s torturous. I cannot break out of it once it’s started, as well as I do, I could run 100/0 and feel like I’m still doing badly. The only real way to solve it is quit, cool down for a few hours, do other things, form some sort of tangible mental gap between that “bad” session and the next one, so it feels like a clean slate rather than a “round two” of sorts. It makes playing incredibly difficult.

Sniper is particularly challenging for this. Back when I mained Spy it was easier. I was less self-critical, it was more “yeah that was good, I’m alright at this class” and less “you missed a shot. you missed that too. yeah took you three shots to get the kill, try harder next time. God, why are you so bad.” Also in my experience, Spy has a lot more tangible “good” moments, a lot more memorable ones. Backstabs feel more rewarding. In my early days of playing him every time I got that slam animation, the crit sound and heard the scream it gave me a rush. Felt like I’d really accomplished something.

I remember very clearly the first time I performed a real aerial stab on this heavy who was spun up outside the base doors on Turbine, I just fell on his head and killed him. Felt incredible, but very sloppy by my own standards even two, three months down the line. I also remember my first stab from below another player, I actually jumped on SPUF and made a thread asking how I’d done it since I hadn’t actively thought out “ok i’m going to look up and hit the left mouse button if he is over my head.” I remember recording and editing a replay into a 20-30 second slow motion clip with my oh so amazing 2013 video editing skills when I stairstabbed a Pyro on that one medieval custom map. In hindsight all these things are incredibly embarrassing. But at the time it was empowering and exciting, these humble moments are what drove me to play more and love the class.

Sniper, in contrast, to my much more experienced self, is a more clinical class. Spy has crazy moments you end up jumping, crouching, winding round corners, all kinds of weird strafing until you get that stupid-looking stab. With sniper it’s scope in, look at the head, hit the button. You hear the crit, get the damage number, you have your kill. Unscope, reload, repeat. And this isn’t bad. It’s the nature of the class, it’s efficient and there is definitely satisfaction to each kill, but it’s not even close to comparable to the feeling I got when I was first learning Spy in late 2012.

This contributes to my “mad,” I think. Of course my mindsets back then and now are utterly different. I didn’t really get mad, not nearly as I do now. Back then I would be angry at the guy who killed me, maybe kill him later, be happy about it all. That revenge mixed in with the rush of learning the class would be more than enough to provide an enjoyable experience no matter how bad I did (Well. To a point.) But now I desire a lot more when it comes to that. As I said, I can do as well as I like but it doesn’t make up for how “bad I was doing earlier”. A Soldier might divebomb me and kill me, and I could set up a perfect midair quickscope headshot on him the moment I come out of spawn next life, complete with Shred Alert in the aftermath and everyone on the server screaming about how I’m the best sniper to have ever lived and Robin Walker adding me to friends.

But I probably wouldn’t be content, because the root of the problem is that I’m a stubborn idiot when I’m angry about minor occurrences in video games.