Nerd Rage, a number of questions.

[Pirian]

The only time that I can think of that I truly nerdraged is when playing FFX and trying to get one of the items to unlock Tidus's ultimate weapon. I just could not for the life of me get that perfect 0:00:00 Chocobo racing score, but every time I got 0:00:01, which happened many times, I wanted to destroy that game. Frustration in my inability to perform is what drove my nerdrage but it did just make it all the more satisfying when I did finally get it.

I'm a pretty in-control person, though. It really takes days of being unable to get past something for me to get to that point

[Demetrius*]

refusing to acknowledge that my opponent was just plain better than me is why i nerd rage

[Jakson]

Two things, really.

1. I'm playing Halo mp, there's a doorway. If I go out and look left, it's practically guaranteed there will be no one there, and someone is coming from the right. If I look left, then they're coming from the right.

2. I'm not saying I'm some pro, but it just stands to reason that in not every game there isn't someone having a good day while everyone else is having a bad one. I say this because while I haven't progressed that much in Reach (Hero? Legend? its been a while), it doesn't make sense to me when my friends (who are all pretty similar in skill) go into a game and just get raped. I understand there are going to be people better than me and my friends, but not 50-2X better on a regular occasion. There should never be one person getting something like 27 kills in a slayer game while everyone else gets single digit kills. I just fail to believe that Ogre twins-type pro players really are that much better than people that have put thousands of hours into a game.

[Omnipotent]

Elitism and e-peening.

Also lagging and losing internet randomly.

[Kais]

i aint never mad

[Churchill]

Two things, really.

1. I'm playing Halo mp, there's a doorway. If I go out and look left, it's practically guaranteed there will be no one there, and someone is coming from the right. If I look left, then they're coming from the right.

2. I'm not saying I'm some pro, but it just stands to reason that in not every game there isn't someone having a good day while everyone else is having a bad one. I say this because while I haven't progressed that much in Reach (Hero? Legend? its been a while), it doesn't make sense to me when my friends (who are all pretty similar in skill) go into a game and just get raped. I understand there are going to be people better than me and my friends, but not 50-2X better on a regular occasion. There should never be one person getting something like 27 kills in a slayer game while everyone else gets single digit kills. I just fail to believe that Ogre twins-type pro players really are that much better than people that have put thousands of hours into a game.

FPS games are really about 3 things
1. Hardware (Video card, sound card, Headphones, CPU, RAM, connection)
2. Experience + Analytic capability/logic
3. Reaction times

On XBOX, one of those is generally equal, though having a nice set of XBOX gaming headphones and a better connection do come into play. Analytic capability/logic is weighted more heavily than any other factor though. When presented with a problem (enemies) you have to make decisions (ways to go). When killing enemies, you can continue on (ways to go) or anticipate the reaction to your last action (ways to go, enemies) and be a step ahead. This is what people who go 50/0 do, outside of abusing a glitch or spawn rape, etc. The guys who you face that seemingly always end up in the optimal place to kill you are just plain out thinking you.

[Silenka]

What gets me in single player games is not knowing where to go next and having to check a guide (especially if I've been playing the game actively and not just picking it up after ages). It doesn't have to be completely retardedly obvious where to go to advance the game, but it doesn't have to be FFXI levels of obscure, either. Another thing is if I get stuck on something I just can't beat, especially in games that have scaling difficulty (like Katamari Damacy for instance). When my skills aren't leveling up with the game means it's time to quit and do something else.

What pisses me off in fighting games is if the opponent is a. just so good I can't even touch them or b. spams a certain exploitable move over and over or c. just goes for the corner rape every time. So basically if my opponent does something dumb where I have absolutely no chance against them, or if they're just so good I can't compare at all.

What makes me ragequit in multiplayer games/MMOs - (out of my control): choppy connection or lots of lag. (in my control): associating with dumbasses and having no way to get out of it without looking like a huge douche, for example, back in my FFXI days, committing to a linkshell that looked promising at first but turned out to be full of moronic douchebags who can't play, leading to nothing but a TON of wasted time.

[Demosthenes11]

There are a few things I rage over, though it's getting more rare as time goes on

1) A single teammate tanks the entire operation. I get that people make mistakes and not everyone is the same play level, but it's really disheartening when your entire team is smashing another team except for one dude who actually ends up losing the game they are so bad. I'm not even sure if this qualifies as rage, because I'm not /angry/, just annoyed.

2) An opponent/teammate won't shut up. I think we all like to talk smack here and there, and sometimes we go overboard. But being a nonstop annoying prick gets you on ignore/mute list pretty quickly. All of the people that apparently have had sex with my mother or think I am African-American fall in this category.

3) Biggest one for me. Teammates that will not accept their mistakes. Nothing will send me into a rage than after a teamfight or whatever, and someone blames me for something they very obviously did wrong themselves. Degree is important here - if I do something amazing and a teammate doesnt have my back and then blames me for his mess-up, the rage is very large.

I think a lot of people get rage-y when they think they may have fucked up and someone points it out. People can be very terse online, and sometimes when you are disappointed in yourself for doing something stupid, it just takes a tiny dick (not literal) comment to put you over the edge. Most of the time for me, anymore, I just get upset and stop talking. I really hate being the blame for something so I try and channel that into additional concentration.

[Tagus]

Rage quitting is actually a biological phenomenon. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger proposed that everyday tools, including computer programs and parts, become a part of ourselves. There was a recent study done using a computer mouse that was rigged to malfunction. It was found that the resulting disruption in attention during the malfunction was not superficial... rather it was tied to the very root of cognition.

In the study, scientists tracked the hand movements of people using a mouse to guide a cursor during a series of motor tests. Part way through the tests, the cursor lagged behind the mouse. After a few seconds, it worked again. When the scientific team analyzed how people moved the mouse, they found profound differences between brain patterns produced during mouse function and malfunction.

When the mouse worked, hand motions followed a mathematical form known as “one over frequency,” or pink noise. It’s a pattern that pops up repeatedly in the natural world, from universal electromagnetic wave fluctuations to tidal flows to DNA sequences. Scientists don’t fully understand pink noise, but there’s evidence that our cognitive processes are naturally attuned to it.

But when the researchers’ mouse malfunctioned, the pink noise vanished. Computer malfunction made test subjects aware of it — what Heidegger called “unreadiness-at-hand” — and the computer was no longer part of their cognition. Only when the mouse started working again did cognition return to normal. (One assumes, though the researchers didn’t test the proposition, that cognition would also have returned to normal had test subjects stood up and stopped using the computer.)

The results demonstrate how people fuse with their tools, and suggest that rage-quitting is a result of this disconnect between the tools we use and our brain's expectations of them.

[Qalbert]

Oh, rage quitting frequently has something to do with tools all right.

[RKenshin]

I updated twice in the last month, and I post news articles daily

The only time that I can think of that I truly nerdraged is when playing FFX and trying to get one of the items to unlock Tidus's ultimate weapon. I just could not for the life of me get that perfect 0:00:00 Chocobo racing score, but every time I got 0:00:01, which happened many times, I wanted to destroy that game. Frustration in my inability to perform is what drove my nerdrage but it did just make it all the more satisfying when I did finally get it.

I'm a pretty in-control person, though. It really takes days of being unable to get past something for me to get to that point

Oh god, Lulu's lightning-dodge-whatever.

Getting hit on #99 is the definition of nerd rage.

[Demosthenes11]

I have shit reflexes and never could get that ultimate weapon

I think I was never able to get hers or khimari's (fuck butterfly chasing bullshit)

[Kerberoz]

Learned to just stop caring, by now, but:
* being killed by lag compensation mechanics (opponent gets credit for hitting where you were 300ms ago)
* being juggled or otherwise locked out of control for several seconds while you watch yourself die to a thousand papercuts
* ESFJs on the mic

[Ryko]

This is all particularly helpful, and I encourage you all to keep going. I get angry at games all the time, and this is no secret. It can be for any number of reasons. If a mechanic is either stupid or employed poorly, I get mad from a game design perspective. If I lose in a competitive setting, I can either be pissed because I was capable of winning and blew it or because I had no chance and am frustrated at my own lack of improvement. That can apply in a single player setting as well. If I don't perform up to my own standard, or am still not good enough to perform at that level, it turns inward very quickly.

I'm going to take the most common basic responses and expand on them. When I finish my article and it gets posted, I'll bump the topic.

[Xantavia]

I rage for quite a few of the reasons others have already posted (but never enough to actually rage quit in a multiplayer situation. I'll take my loss):

1) In single player games where my death feels like it is beyond my control. Like the speeder level on Battletoads. I couldn't possibly react fast enough to what was appearing on screen, and IMO the perspective was horrible when it came to trying to line up with a floating ramp. On the other hand, I died many, many times on Gradius 5 but kept playing because when I got killed, I knew exactly what happened. That motivated me to try again and get better (finally beat the game before having like 30+ hours of playtime when they give you unlimited continues)

2) A computer that doesn't follow the same rules as you do to make up for AI (or so the rumor went). Nothing like the original Civ game where the computer can sail a trireme all the way across the ocean on multiple turns without sinking, somehow landing exactly where you set up a colony to take it over and steal your tech.

3) Online where people can't follow instructions. Trying to beat the Promyvian fights in FFXI and your SMN does something like use Ifrit when the boss has a fire core. Or more recently, doing the final limit break. It took me about 5 hours to get the 3 items for the rabbit tail. We plan an order to use going in the fight. I'm to use mine first, and let the party know right before I use. I use it, then see 4 other people use theirs about 5 seconds later. One of the few times like I feel I wasted my entire night for an absolutely stupid reason.

4) Completely unmatched skill in a fighting game. I'm the type of person who would rather lose a close match than dominate my opponent. I started with vanilla SF2, and used to be good enough where I would dumb down my playstyle to keep the match interesting. First time I tried MvC online, I couldn't even touch my opponent, getting nailed by Wesker shooting his gun at me while I'm stuck on the ground in the corner over and over again. Haven't touched the game more than 10 times since then because it left such a bad taste in my mouth.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Anything that strikes me as particularly stupid and easy to fix pisses me off hardcore. For example: Bungie's retarded matchmaking playlists. Boardwalk is not a Big Team map. Snipers should be in the Sniper playlist. Objective games should be in the objective playlists. Not very difficult to ORGANIZE THE WAY YOU ALREADY CLAIM TO.

Really raging right now, because my friend and I (Group of two, largest group on our team) got matched up against a group of 7 and the assholes voted for TU BTB Snipers on Boardwalk. That shouldn't even exist. They have Team Slayer and Team Objective playlists. They have a Team Snipers playlist. Not hard to fucking sort Big Team too, especially since Big Team is the ONLY way you can drive anything other than a mongoose, ghost, or warthog while doing slayer.

[altwight]

When I don't hold position and that zergling runs up my ramp and scouts my dts, I punch my monitor and alt f4.

[Karbuncle]

Why i nerd rage? Lets see...


1) Rage-Quit: Raen made me remember one. RNG. When i played Fire Emblem back in the day, and was about to win a battle, and the boss or whatever critical hits me (1% chance!) with 30% Accuracy, and manages to kill me... I want to punch a baby... Cause i like that character! so i have to restart cause deaths are final...

2) Rage-Quit: Making content for the sake of drawing a games life out. CastleVania 2. Low drop rates in a single player(FF12), so on. When I'm playing a single player game, i certainly don't want everything handed to me, but 1% Drop rates don't belong in games i'm suppose to enjoy... some reason as i type this i want to go back to my RPGMaker project , I need to get the new one...

3) Rage-Quit: Online FPS. Any of them. I'm pretty decent at FPS's, But sometimes you just get that MLG-tier team who comes and humbles your ass real quick, and frankly, that makes me rage. I hate being owned hardcore. But that's just me. I don't hate losing, losing I can handle... But I hate getting shut-out entirely by someone who lives and breathes the game.

4) Nerd-Rage:Terrible game design and/or ruining a series because the Director is a terrible. Feel a lot of games miss potential due to laziness or cutting corners.

5) Nerd-rage: Capcom cancelling MML3, Happened months ago, I'm still pissed. I hate that company with a passion for cancelling what was my most wanted and anticipated game in over a decade. I just keep playing MML1/2 and hate every GD Megaman Fanboy who faps to 2D Platformers that caused this game to be a "Failure" in their eyes, when it was an exciting and fun game (That could use some control tweaks...). - See? Nerdraging just thinking about it


as a bonus, I broke the screen on my Gameboy Color when i was little cause those fucking Ghosts in the Graveyard level of Mario Land 2 kept killing me. So i guess being killed 30 times in a row cause I suck makes me rage too.

[Aksannyi]

When people can't follow simple instructions that will benefit the group. Playing with other people can be the most frustrating goddamn thing ever. People don't listen to the instructions, die, then blame the healer (which was usually me, at least in FFXI days) when they were too stupid to listen.

I also would get particularly mad when UI and/or lag issues would cause me to fuck up, because everyone just sees that as an excuse when, in my case, it was legitimately the case. I end up feeling like a tool. My old laptop used to crash FFXI on the regular back in the day and I would get so fucking mad at it; no matter what I was doing in the game.

Coming back from any disconnect in any game to a corpse would piss me the fuck off, as well. Not fucking fair.

Really I tend to get super angry over shit I can't control, but I am like this in real life, too. Traffic? RAAAAAAGE.

[Elona]

Ive never raged on MMO's, its kinda laid back compared to fighting games and sports games where I rage frequently. If someone uses glitch tactics or I lose due making stupid mistakes makes me rage and break stuff.