I recently read a lot of posts of people complaining about things in the game which took away the fun for them. It made me thinking about how people get frustrated by a game and how they cope with it. In my opinion, you can impact very strongly how much fun you have with things / how much fun you lose by things that you dislike. It's not like you have to be annoyed by everything that does annoy you in the first place. Experiencing fun in a game is very much affected by how we think about the game and that is ultimately something that you can control.

Soooo, I just tried to reflect on how frustration arises from the game, what types of frustration there are and how to deal with it. All of it just my own thoughts and opinions, I am no psychology expert or anything, but maybe it's useful for someone? Let's go:

Frustration with certain units or strategies

One of the most "popular" sources of frustration is probably the "I hate playing against walls"-"I hate playing against Knights"-"I hate playing against a Tower Rush"-category of being pissed. You don't only know it from yourself. Also your opponent's have that with you: Remember those guys who come at you like "you're such a noob, you only do [blahblah anything that is a core part of the game blahblah]" in the chat after you beat them? They just experienced the same but they struggle to deal with the frustration from it.

The main thing to do here is, I think, to remind yourself that this is a strategy game. The purpose is to find the best strategy, the best approach to win the game in the end. The purpose is not "build a nice economy", it's not "fight a lot in Feudal Age" and it's certainly not "do something that your opponent likes". It is: "what can you do to win". When you get hit hard, when you end up in a bad situation, when your own approach fails, then your opponent didn't cheat or betray you or behaved wrongly. He just played well.

Often you would get frustrated for an opponent applying a strategy that you consider dumb or bad. If it wins the game, it is probably not that bad. You are basically frustrated with yourself misjudging it. More rational would it be to be impressed that your opponent found a way to play (and win) the game which you considered impossible. And that you learned something new about the game.

Other times the frustration would come from knowing just how good a certain unit is. Full Knights can be annoying. Defending Conqs on Arena can be just terrible. Then keep in mind that it's logical and it's good for the game that there are strong offensive (and also strong defensive) options. There is nothing which is unbeatable when it's not applied by a top-level-player. Your opponent gave you a problem there. Your task is to find the solution. It's a big problem? Well, cool, your opponent is not an idiot. Find the big solution.

Frustration with what you consider griefing

It's a bit different though when things happen that you consider unfair play. Basically anything which you wouldn't do yourself, not because you think it is bad for winning, but because you think it is not in the spirit of the game, it basically shouldn't be in the game or shouldn't be exploited.

There are people who would argue that there should be no limitations of what's allowed and not, because anything that the game gives you can be used and it's about winning. I don't agree with this point of view, I heavily advocate against laming for example, because I think it reduces the overall quality of the game and it makes everyone's experience worse. I also think that people should stick to a convention like that, with a "Gentlemen's Agreement" because it's important for a healthy community.

Still, I think it's clear that there is no objective way to make rules like that, there is no way that these rules are objectively enforced and there is always a small chance that someone doesn't even know that certain things are regarded bad manners. Also, with laming for example, there are people who enjoy it, there are tournaments which allow it and therefore it must be seen as an "optional" part of the game at least.

(And there is also a chance that you have a conviction of something being griefing which would the majority consider normal play. Like, some would probably be pissed about fatslob, but then again, that's just his playstyle, his strat. Maybe we will widely accept laming in the future too because it feels balanced and exciting, who knows.)

So, when you happen to run into something like that, you have some ways to deal with it:

• be super pissed, play bad, lose, then insult your opponent (doesn't sound great, does it?)
• accept that this is part of the game for that certain match, go with it, make the best out of it
• stick to your convictions and try to beat the opponent nonetheless, make it a bit of a good-vs-evil-thing in your head: if you win, it's double as good, if you lose, well, whatever, wasn't a fair game, let's move on
• leave the game, tell him why, move on (one way to enforce unwritten rules)

It's up to your choice how to handle that. Make the choice that makes you feel best, not what makes you feel worst.

PS: Don't use these circumstances as justification to do the same and ruin games of others. The "I lame because everyone lames". It backfires. It's not a good way to approach things.

Frustration from losing

All of the mentioned types of frustration are amplified by and combined with the frustration of losing the game, usually. That's the most obvious one, the most elementary one, the most universal one.

As a competitive person, I would say: This one alone is fine. You play the game to win. You don't win. It's annoying. I wouldn't say it's really necessary to get rid of that as long as you enjoy being competitive.

You can make it less frustrating though by reminding yourself to respect your opponent. It's not only that you lost, that you failed, it's also that they succeeded. And they're probably a decent person who deserves to win as much as you.

You can also turn that frustration into motivation if you focus yourself on the "how could I have won". Every loss has a learning experience in it and if you can dig for that, you make it something positive too.

Most importantly for the losing-frustration though: Don't let it disturb your thinking. Many of the other types of frustration are coping-mechanisms to deal with your losing-frustrations. "It's not my fault, it's the civ's fault, the opponent's fault, the game's fault, the whatever's fault." Losing is noones "fault", it is an undeniable part of competition. We can't get rid of it, it will always be there, so it is dumb to blame things or people for it.

Understand the defeat, improve, move on. Appreciate the loss as a part of winning. You can be frustrated about it, but don't become destructive.

Frustration with certain civs or civ-matchups

There is no matchup in the game which is unwinable, there is no Civ which has nothing going for them. There are matchups which are almost unwinable in certain situation but you can always avoid the situation by mixing up the game a bit.

If you have an idea of how to play the game, and you think this idea will lose the game for you, come up with a new idea. If you can't find anything, then try something out of the box, see how it goes. It's an interesting challenge. You have to be creative, you will learn something.

When you consistently struggle to beat Franks, check how others do it. Check what you could have done better. Come up with a new idea.

You always know that, in fact, civs are not unbeatable. If you tell yourself that they are unbeatable, you frustrate yourself. You tell yourself that you couldn't win to protect yourself from seeing your mistakes. But it's good to know your mistakes, to watch your failure. It enables you to improve, it puts you in the driver's seat. Telling yourself that it was about the civs makes you the victim of an external force and that's what's frustrating.

Frustration with badluck (e.g. bad maps)

Things are not fair. Not in life, not in games. It is a skill to accept randomness as part of the circumstances, part of the environment and just do your best nevertheless. I often say about football: You don't just have to beat the opponent team; you have to beat the opponent, the referee and the chance conversion (which is very luck based).

If a small bit of badluck cost you the win, it was a very, very tight win. When you're really good, you will win even when you are unlucky.

In the long-term, luck always evens out ("regression to the mean"). You don't tell yourself that you won games just by luck, so then also don't tell yourself that you lost only because of badluck.

You remember the old meme of Viper's "map hacks", that he always got good maps in tournaments? I am 100% sure that was a perception mistake because he won so much. When he had a bad map, when the opponent had a good map, he still went on to win it nonetheless. Nobody highlights the map then. Noone talks about the guy who lost 4-2 and says "well, his maps were really lucky, otherwise he would have lost 4-0". When someone appears to be always lucky, he is probably just skilled. When someone appears to be always unlucky, it's the opposite.

Frustration from not being allowed to play what you wanted to play

That's maybe game modes or civs or strats or so, but of course in AoE2 it is mostly maps. Many people are vocal about the lack of map bans, there is the Alt-F4, there is constant complaining about many maps.

I want to say one thing ahead of my main point: If you play a ranked system that is designed to have a variety of maps and then you complain about the variety of maps, maybe just don't play this ranked system. You can specify very well what to play when you open a lobby. (Oh, you don't find people who want to play with you? It's almost as if there are not soooo many Age players and it would be needed to compromise a bit in order to play fair games...)

Whatever.

What I honestly think is that many people dislike many maps simply because they judge too quickly, they are closed minded and they blame maps for losses. If you lose a game on Arabia, you can't say "it was because of Arabia" (let's ignore the current state of Arabia at this point). When you lose on a map that's new for you, you will always be quick to blame the map for it, even then when you would have lost in the same situation on Arabia too. Maybe you just need 2-3 games more on the map too, just to figure out how it works, how it's fun.

That doesn't apply to all cases of course. If you enjoy to boom up in Black Forest because you enjoy mass fights and nothing else, who am I to judge. Also, you might just not enjoy to figure out new maps. Nothing wrong about that.

Still, you may find fun in other maps and playing styles if you gave them a shot. If you go into a map with the mindset of "I hate this map, I don't want to play it", then you will most probably end up with that exact same judgement too. If you go in with a mindset of "I didn't enjoy the map so far, but let's see what it offers, let's see what I can do", maybe you will actually find something that you like about it. I think, it's always a win for you, if you at least go in with a positive attitude. You can still be pissed off by the map afterwards, if it's really that bad.

I can't get rid of the feeling that there is a lot of "I never tried Sushi but I hate Sushi" in these conversations.

Frustration with your teammates

Being angry about your teammates is in my eyes a severe lack of maturity. Your teammates usually do their best. You make mistakes as well. Why would you ever blame them? (Not talking about trolls obviously.)

It's absolutely normal that they fail with things, that they fail to help you, that they lack knowledge or what not. You have to expect that. Especially when you're the better player, you have to expect that and you have to go into the game with the expectation that you'll need to carry. (If you're not the better player, it should be obvious why it'd be dumb to criticise your teammates.) Don't focus your mind on a lack of support, rather enjoy your own skill level.

Also, if you put shit on your teammates, they usually start to play worse. And you ruin their experience. So, to communicate in a frustrated way is a full lose-lose-situation. (Only exception is when they do something fundamentally wrong to make them aware of it, but you can make them aware without being a dick.)

If you're on the receiving end of that, I don't have a great case for tolerating behavior like that. I think it's appropriate that you don't want to play with people who behave like assholes. Only thing to mention is probably that there's a good chance (tbf, it might be an overwhelmingly high chance) that people who behave like assholes in a moment are not bad people in general. AoE is fast and stressful, getting destroyed is frustrating. Also it's not too easy to fully realise that other people are actual real people when you just communicate online through short chat messages.

Good chance that they had a bad day, a bad moment and said something they're not proud of. Also good chance that they are able to learn better behaviour. What I usually do is to say "don't insult your teammates" or "calm down" or so and then I just play on. Not going to let my day ruined by someone's bad manners, right?

Frustration with unfair matchmaking

Again, this makes sense to some degree. You want to play a fair game.

Still, if I run into a very unbalanced match, it doesn't bother me too much. It's probably easier for me to say that as it doesn't happen aaaaall too often when you're 1600+ Elo, but I actually can appreciate it to play against much better players, because I get a feeling of what's possible and of what I'm missing. I can test myself to see how close I can get.

And I have absolutely no pressure as I am supposed to lose anyway. It's still the same game, you do the same things, just try and when you start to get smashed, move on to the next match. (But I would be probably much more negative about that if that happened to me all the time. Which should not happen in a ranked system but ours is a bit broken.)

Frustration from playing bad / not improving (in some aspect)

That's maybe the toughest because it's basically frustration with yourself. You play games to get a feeling of succeeding and of being competent and to experience improvement. If you experience all the opposites, that is very hard.

Good thing with Age is that it's so complex that it gives you 100 things to improve on. If you don't improve automatically, help yourself out manually:

• Train specific things (certain build-orders or civs) to make it easier to feel your improvement.
• Analyse your games (watch recs) so that you understand better what/how to improve. Don't fall into the trap of blind frustration where you avoid to understand your failure because you hate your failure: Your failure tells you how you can improve. It's your friend.
• If you struggle with one aspect (army control, macro, decisions?), focus on that.
• Take measures to force yourself into focusing on the things you want to improve if you fail to do it during the stress of a match. Put a paper with notes on the table or so.
• Consistently reflect about your game control habits and settings: How efficient are your hotkeys, how well do you use control groups, etc? If you can tweak something to be a slight bit more efficient, you will feel better already.

Also it helps to have realistic expectations of yourself. AoE is an extremely difficult game. You are competent with many things, you are also incompetent with a lot of stuff. Being aware of that beforehand, you will expect mistakes which makes it easier to deal with them.

Also, don't measure your performance by your peak performances but rather with your average "base" performance. Your Peak-Elo is not your real level. But it demonstrates you where you can develop to. Take it as motivation, not as expectation.

Frustration with game mechanics

That's my personal "favorite" source of frustration because it is something which you can't directly influence and it can be something, to some degree, which creates an actual argument of stop playing. If the game is just not designed well, why bother playing?

If you feel that you enjoy the game generally though, it can be helpful to force your mind into the bigger picture: Don't zoom in on "villager pathing sucks", zoom out on "I am 3 vils behind and try to make a comeback happen". Because the overall game is what you enjoy.

Also be aware of the things that frustrates you in the game, expect them to happen and play around them. If villager pathing or a bad hill puts you in danger of failing quickwalls, wall preemptively. If you get frustrated all the time by long queues and Alt-F4, then make sure that you do something fun while waiting for the game. If you hate how Cav Archers don't shoot if you click them away too quickly, put extra focus on the timing and learn to control them better or maybe just run further away before you shoot.

If you don't accept the mechanics and react on them, you are deemed to keep being frustrated by them. I for myself really, really hate how melee units on attack stance stop targeting a certain unit when they get attacked on their way there. If you want to snipe a Treb or a Spear in a group of M@A, you have to use stand ground first, then put attack stance afterwards. That sucks. But it's doable. The other day, I lost a game where I took a disgusting engagement with 6-7 upgraded Scouts against 1 Spear, some M@A and 2 Archers. I knew before that they will struggle to snipe the Spear. I even zoomed in to click the Spearman properly. But I was already so tilted by that mechanic that I forgot to use stand ground even though I did have the thought that I should do that but I just wasn't emotionally clear enough to actually apply it. Lost the fight, left the game frustrated.

What did I learn? Frustration leads to more frustration. Break the circle by sticking to constructive behavior.

Zooming out: Can you use the game to learn controling your mind and emotions?

While writing this I realised how most of these techniques can be also used in everyday life and how it all comes down to pretty much the same:

• Have realistic expectations. (If your expectations are not met, don't hate reality but update your expectations.)
• Accept problems and try to solve them. (Don't just give up if you fail, but analyse the problem and try harder.)
• Find the constructive side of what feels destructive to you. (Don't respond on feeling negative with acting and thinking negative. Make the negative feeling trigger a positive thought and a constructive action.)

Applying that is obviously harder than just naming it. Being able to control your mind, to force certain thoughts, to regulate your emotions is difficult for most people. I am convinced though that this is a trainable skill too and it's surely a very valuable one.

Aaaand now I feel good for making myself more aware of these factors and approaches.

gl hf