How do I complain?

[Cometk]

alternative thread title "Etiquette", please do not take the name of this thread as facetious! i am truly, earnestly curious on this topic

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/424543937

My impetus for my creating of this thread was a game I played yesterday vs King_Ownage2nd, video above. It's a long, somewhat close Russia vs Dutch game that goes on for 37 minutes. I make a lot of mistakes (I don't need to be told, I already know) - it was a rough transition to Colonial because King got a nat treasure (he always prioritizes getting those) which caught my fb'ing vill out, and to some degree I was forced to FB in base, because sending another vill out to FB would make my aggression too slow (at least that was my rationale for my choices, which may've been ill-placed.) Still, I had a lot of opportunities to win the game, primarily because his resources were absolute dogshit. I did eventually lose, however, and gave the customary gg. Thing is, at the same time, I've been having issues with my mouse (a $15 wireless logitech, yeah I know please don't flame me). Now, don't get me wrong, I am baseline inaccurate with my mouse control, but because of the current issues with my mouse, the zoom wheel doesn't work well, I end up undershooting while scrolling and I have lower APM than usual. I've thought to myself that it's fine and I can just play through it, but playing against a better player I certainly need to have some functioning tech if I want to compete. After the game, I told King about the issues with my mouse, but by doing that I feel like I'm kind of implying that I could've given a better fight, maybe even won the game had I had better tech (basically, displacing blame away from my actual play.)

My question is, how can I be a good sportsman, acknowledging my opponent's deserved victory while also communicating my frustrations with my own performance? Is it even possible to do both at the same time? Should I reserve my frustrations for the twitch chat, while keeping my face-to-face interactions with my opponent cordial? Because to me, it seems like by making excuses for myself, even if they're somewhat justified, that I'm discrediting my opponent from his victory, which I find to be terrible sportsmanship. I want to uplift and and encourage my opponents so that we can both become better, but I also want to speak candidly about a contributing factor to why I lost (that I feel compelled to express, maybe because it's cathartic.) Is it wrong?

[Cometk]

maybe the answer is to just get a better mouse and shut the fuck up but eh what can you do

[supahons]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyIOl-s7JTU&t=3m51s

[deleted_user]

Down a 2 day old 3/4 full tall boy and shit post 1-liners on /offtopic

[BrookG]

Pray to G and you will get your peace. Jokes aside, I think it's hard to engage in any constructive discussion after a loss. It is easily assumed you are complaining and blaming something else. The lack of eye contact and body language is crucial, because your opponent can't know if you are calm and have accepted your loss.

[Thrar]

If you know your opponent well and frequently play with them I think you can bring up your tech frustrations, but otherwise I don't think it will lead anywhere.
What can they say anyway - at best they'll sympathize, at worst they feel like you're trying to play down their victory. If you are having a post-match chat with the opponent, I think it's better to point out the things they did well (e.g. the native causing you lots of trouble) and how they affected you. This way they can feel good about what they achieved, and maybe the discussion will bring up some weak points or suggest better counterplay for future games.
If the opponent does ask you about a specific situation where you had bad unit control, you can mention that you had some mouse trouble, but I wouldn't bring it up first.

Unless your game was practically unplayable, chances are there are still many of other factors that contributed to deciding the game. As a lowly 1st Lt, when I lose a game where I feel I got screwed over somehow (hunts, mines, treasures, lucky/unlucky scouting, distractions, sound bug, ...), I try to ask myself "would <insert high level player> have won this game in my place?" and of course the answer is always yes, despite whatever it was that screwed me over.
Everyone is different, but for me this helps put things into perspective and focus on the things I can change and improve, rather than the parts that are out of my control.

[amiggo1999]

Fk Sportsmanship, pull a musket after taking a loss and then create an apology thread afterwards.

[Mr_Bramboy]

Contrary to popular belief, you don't win RTS games by being the better player. You win RTS games by being the least bad player. Most games are won due to your opponent's mistakes, especially in SC2. Forgetting to send your fortress shipment while losing two villagers to a raid can lose you the game, but it doesn't have to mean your opponent's raid was fantastic by any means. One of the tips Samwise shared a while ago was to just send 2-3 cav units to hunting locations all the time. Even if your opponent's defending is perfect, there will still probably be one single moment where he makes a mistake and allows some villagers to die. Meanwhile, you didn't actively invest in this raid at all.

King won this game by making the least mistakes. Acknowledging your own mistakes does not discredit King's performance. Alternatively, vent to someone else so King doesn't get the chance to be offended.

[Lukas_L99]

Contrary to popular belief, you don't win RTS games by being the better player. You win RTS games by being the least bad player.

Doesn't that make you the better player though?

[Mr_Bramboy]

Contrary to popular belief, you don't win RTS games by being the better player. You win RTS games by being the least bad player.

Doesn't that make you the better player though?

No, it means your opponent was the worse player.

It's essentially the same, but the nuance is slightly different.

[amiggo1999]

Only applies to games where the skill level is very even though. In a game with a 5+pr difference, I would say that the game is won by the better player due to better skill (& less mistakes to some degree).

[BrookG]

Contrary to popular belief, you don't win RTS games by being the better player. You win RTS games by being the least bad player. Most games are won due to your opponent's mistakes

King won this game by making the least mistakes. Acknowledging your own mistakes does not discredit King's performance. Alternatively, vent to someone else so King doesn't get the chance to be offended.

Although I completely agree with that, unfortunately this idea isn't unequivocally accepted by the players. The winners think themselves as the better players since they played better. Any other statement that affected your performance doesn't matter any more. Winning by doing less mistakes, diminishes mistakes' impact, regardless of how well the loser reacted on them.

[Jaeger]

@Cometk I really admire you for thinking about this issue and trying to do the right thing.

This issue is a really big pet peeve of mine. Most people don't have a mouse problem, but many people say stuff like "if I only didn't do X small mistake", or "if you only didn't get lucky with X". I just want to scream in their face: "NOBODY FUCKING CARES! If the only reason you lost the game was a fluke, then the only appropriate response is to just shut up, not do the same mistake the next game, and just win; that's a much better reply than complaining to your opponent.

The reality is that due to imperfect play and inperfect information, there are many things that happen kind of randomly (including you/your opponent's mistakes); when you complain as above, you are focusing on 1-2 things which went bad for you, when in reality there could have been 5 things that went in your favor behind the scenes that you were never even aware of; maybe you made 1 mistake, but your opponent made 3.

@Aizamk is the best example of this. Especially in the past (he seems to say some stuff now a little), whatever happened in the game, he just says gg and just focuses on the next game. Isn't it nice to play vs Aizamk, where you know you won't get these condescending remarks and excuses?

[Kawapasaka]

This issue is a really big pet peeve of mine. Most people don't have a mouse problem, but many people say stuff like "if I only didn't do X small mistake", or "if you only didn't get lucky with X". I just want to scream in their face: "NOBODY FUCKING CARES! If the only reason you lost the game was a fluke, then the only appropriate response is to just shut up, not do the same mistake the next game, and just win; that's a much better reply than complaining to your opponent.

Well that all depends on how it's framed. I don't see any problem with "if only I didn't do X" as a bit of post-game analysis, accompanied by a gg wp or whatever. But if it's typed in a way where the obvious implication is "you're so bad, I just messed up", then yeah, I agree.

[Jaeger]

This issue is a really big pet peeve of mine. Most people don't have a mouse problem, but many people say stuff like "if I only didn't do X small mistake", or "if you only didn't get lucky with X". I just want to scream in their face: "NOBODY FUCKING CARES! If the only reason you lost the game was a fluke, then the only appropriate response is to just shut up, not do the same mistake the next game, and just win; that's a much better reply than complaining to your opponent.

Well that all depends on how it's framed. I don't see any problem with "if only I didn't do X" as a bit of post-game analysis, accompanied by a gg wp or whatever. But if it's typed in a way where the obvious implication is "you're so bad, I just messed up", then yeah, I agree.

Yeah I guess; but 90% of the time I see it, it's in that bad mannered way.

[aligator92]

@Cometk lovely to see that I am not alone with my opinion.
I think you can always say something like: Not that it would have changed much but... or I think I had a shot at winning this because...
This way you don't devalue your opponent's efforts but still get your frustrations off your chest.

[Sargsyan]

Aligator is the kind of gentleman who will complain instead of you if you lose vs him and will find something positive to say about your gameplay. Kudos mein mann

[pecelot]

Pray to G and you will get your peace. Jokes aside, I think it's hard to engage in any constructive discussion after a loss. It is easily assumed you are complaining and blaming something else. The lack of eye contact and body language is crucial, because your opponent can't know if you are calm and have accepted your loss.

haha good joke