I think I know what "tilt" means... but I still don't understand it.

Siyanor·10/21/2016, 12:29:09 AM·1 votes·468 views

Every time I see someone with obviously amazing mechanical ability make incredibly stupid decisions, I assume that person is trolling. Last game though, this person said he was "on tilt" because he lost lane. Is that an actual symptom of tilt -- poor decision making despite good mechanics? And does losing lane actually do that for some people? Can it ever be that severe? Does it depend on the person --- the causes, symptoms, or the severity?

I have been tilted before (at least, I think I have) but simply losing lane absolutely has never tilted me, and the worst it's been is that my awareness of things that weren't visible, but were discernible from prior knowledge, was not very good that game. My decisions were still just fine given the information I thought I had -- I just wasn't using information that was not clearly present even if it could be inferred.

5 Comments

Weathered10/21/2016, 12:59:59 AM1 votes

Tilting is actually a poker term. I'm not sure if the original meaning is different, but for LoL it means making a mistake or going through a frustrating situation that makes you angry/frustrated and causes you to play worse.

Just losing lane usually isn't an excuse for tilt, but two or three very close fights that resulted in deaths where you could have won the trade/all in are definitely "tilting". The closeness and frustration makes you want to try to make up that loss and just ends up in more loss.

Bandle City10/21/2016, 1:08:14 AM1 votes

Yes, losing lane can do that however it depends on the factors as many go into what causes a person to tilt and how they act and play when they are tilted. Tilting is a psychological response to the state of the game at it's core and it usually causes players to play worse which then in turn tilts them more and so on and so on.

Sometimes it's not even that a person is easily tilted too as some players use tactics specifically designed to make that person go on tilt. These tactics can involve things like the enemy jungler choosing to camp your lane specifically because they saw on op.gg that you're on a major losing streak. With this strategy all they want to to is frustrate and irritate you as much as possible and if they can bring you to the point of raging then their plan has succeeded. Other people will use passive aggressive taunting in the all chat such as the infamous context-less "?" after you have a bad trade with them, make a mistake, or die to them. Other strategies to tilt your opponents include things like spamming an emote or a mastery icon after every kill they get, if they steal a buff, dragon, or Baron, or even every time they make you waste your flash or other escape ability. (I hate to admit this but I myself am not above the mastery spamming unless it looks like someone might rage quit... then I stop doing it because I want a reaction from them sure not a rage quit.)

In the instances that it's not the opponent intentionally trying to tilt a person though then other factors come in to play. Sometimes it might be the case of someone just had a bad day at work only to come home and lose lane in a game they were hoping to win. Perhaps they just got in an argument with someone only to now be going 0/6 against the top lane Darius. Perhaps the person is an emotionally in-touch individual who's emotions are more heavily influenced by things around them than what other people may experience. Hell it could just be that he's sick of losing 3 games in a row and just wants to win one for a change. With that last one, a person could argue that he could just let his team carry him then and just play passively and as true as that may be, when you're frustrated about a losing streak that frustration leads most people to effectively tunnel vision on the negatives of the game instead of the positives which in turn makes it all feel hopeless to them. So let's look at a remotely common pessimistic remark that someone on tilt might say...

"Enemy ADC just got a double kill and I'm 0/6... Our mid laner is the only one with any kills and this damn jungler never ganks... gg"

When you see that while you're in game it can look like this person is raging or that they've otherwise just simply given up, but now I want you to consider that maybe that remark is a description of how the game looks to them right now. They only see a mid laner with 2 kill instead of seeing that Zed midlaner with 2 kills who's about to gank bot and get another 2 kills. They are now seeing the game through a filter of negativity because they are on tilt; the positives are no longer obvious to them. They don't even realize that their 6 deaths were all to an enemy tank and not a carry but if they did realize that then they might feel less threatened because... well... a tank soaks damage they don't really deal damage though.

So now that we understand a small number of things that can make a person tilt, let's not look at how being tilted can affect a person starting with their decision making since you mostly asked about that. When a person is tilted, they are no longer thinking 100% clearly, their angry, frustrated, or are otherwise generally unhappy and the reason is because either they are embarrassed at their laning phase and though they won't admit it they likely feel that you and the rest of the team are mad at them for losing and are silently preparing to report him for feeding OR they feel like they are in severe danger of losing. When this happens there's a part of the brain which is also responsible for the "Fight or Flight" instinct takes over as it has observed the psychological symptoms of a perceived threat. When this happens rational thought gets thrown out the window and replaced with pure impulsiveness which in a strategy game like LoL obviously is not beneficial. Because of this some players will start to play significantly worse and everyone being different of course means that everyone has different tolerance levels for things and they also experience symptoms differently.

I hope this helps you to understand a bit better and if you want something that explains it even better I must recommend Scrap Computer's Youtube video about the psychology of tilting in league of legends.