What's new

How to handle losing

I think I'm a decent player but when I play in Kombat League/Ranked I become a bad player, I miss all my inputs, I leave some moves like Lao's spin or Sub's slide unpunished, and when I succesfully punish I drop my combos 3 out of 4 times. And when I lose to players that I think I should be able to beat easily, then I get really angry at myself. And of course when you're getting angry, it becomes worse everytime you hit "find a new opponent". I think I lose my cool when I play Ranked or Kombat League because I deeply wanna become a better player but when I see the word "Ranked" or "Competitive Season", I just put too much pressure on myself. I know I should take a break when I am angry, but there is always the mindset of "I just lost a game, I need to make up for it" and pressing the next match button.

I had difficulties to stay calm when MKX was released, then a few months later I managed to accept defeat with calm and trying to learn from it, but here I have the exact same problem with MK11 (at least I'm aware of it sooner than before).
 

stokedAF

casual kahnage
99% of people in this thread = humble and calm
Reality = I receive hate messages like every day, no matter if I win or lose, or the character I use. I don't tbag, I don't even fatality.
Make it so only your friends can send you messages. That way when they type out some long, ignorant message and hit send it will say failed to send and they will rage even more. That’s what I did.
 

LawAbidingCitizen

Bomb Setups & Ball Rolls(Mileena/Cyrax)
Kabal really can't punish death spin.
You may not know this but every character can punish death spin. I labbed up how because I hated that move during first weak.
The easiest universal way is to jump the last hit. Stay out of death spin range and jump last hit, full combo punish with entire cast.

In response to your OP:
I believe everyone struggles with this to some degree. Learning how to calm down and turn loses into wins is probably the hardest thing for growing competitive players.
Personally I have a hard time with lag(Online). I play at local events and tourney's so I'm accustomed to tight links and perfect reversals.
The Netcode is supposed to run off Rollback with static 3 frame lag. The game takes connections of 10f lag or less and turns that into 3f lag constant by rolling back in time and recreating what happened during the lag. If it goes beyond what it can handle it freezes it or Dsyncs both players.
Well this is not the case when playing against WiFi or Unstable connections because they fluctuate too much for the system to handle the rollback.
So naturally nearly everyone online has lag because they are on WiFi or everyone in their house is using their internet at the same time.
So I practice alot because I enter tournaments regularly. Anti airs, punishers, 3f links, tight counters, Flawless Block, counter poking and more only to go online where none of that works. It turns reaction into read. I get why so many online players are mad about mix and jumpins and mashed D1's. Offline all of that is easily countered.
With that said I do my best to utilize the record match feature and analyze what beat me:
was it myself?
Did I play the matchup wrong?
Often enough I find it was me. I used to make excuses like no one can react to 50/50's or its the lag. But the truth is if I space my opponent correctly they can't put me in the blender in the first place.
When I lose I usually say GG and if I thought the opponent was better than me I ask for sets to learn the MU.
 

Enexemander

A Hitbox Pirate - YARRR -


I just start from being humble and work my way up. I've been bad or mediocre at a lot of stuff that I'm really good at now. It's a process.
And losses are great learning experiences. Am I going to go to the lab and look for absolutely EVERYTHING about EVERY character? No. I don't have time for that.
But if I get bopped by a string you can be sure I'll check out what I should have done differently.
 
I come from a household with below average income, so I've never thrown a controller at the fucking wall because that meant that I wouldn't be able to play anymore.
People who treat gifts and items like that disgust me.

I've also never written hatemail online or raged at people offline.
I've never started playing a game and expected to never lose or even win a lot because I know that every skill takes dedication to aquire and losing just means the other guy put more dedication into it, or I didn't put enough of myself into countering something.

Honestly I don't even know how you can enjoy and human vs human competition if you get mad to the point of being destructive towards your equipment or abusive towards other people.
If your self-reflection skills are so fucking poor that you can't even tell yourself "Guess I gotta hit the lab. I sucked, next time I'll try to do better." You probably have other bigger problems than not being good at a fucking video game.

People who can't deal with failure can never succeed.
 

Invincible Salads

Seeker of knowledge
At one point I actually punched my tv and broke it abt a year and a half ago after I got bodied by starfire in I2 in an online tourney (seriously tho fuck the aquaman starfire MU) it was kinda like I had enough of this shit. I ended up not playing for abt at least a good year before I had another tv screen to replace it. I was able to find peace from not playing the game as if ur raging constantly from the game u rlly shouldn't be playing it. Since MK11 came out I still play a good bit it's just I don't get as pissed anymore besides connection being actual shit. U just gotta slow down and think things through is what I'm saying pretty much.
i ended up breaking my copy of injustice 2 before, lol, i still have a pic of it on my phone xD.

i just leave matches now, haters can say what they want but it stops me from breaking stuff, so thats the way it gonna be >___>