When I lose a game, I often hear people on my team say the following things:

- "This is your fault, here's why"
- "They were a premade"
- "Matchmaking sucks"

Sometimes they're right. I'm only human. I'm bad at judging when to tower dive, when to get baron, and when it's safe to cross river. Sometimes, it is my fault when my team loses a game.

Sometimes, the enemy team is a premade abusing the blind pick system, and you do lose at the loading screen because of a bad matchup.

Sometimes, matchmaking is bugged and puts me, a terrible player who will never make a top 500 list, with or against gods like Dan Dinh (sorry for making him my scapegoat here, I really respect the guy), who I lose to spectacularly because they are good and I suck.

However, I believe 100% that anyone who says things like the above are awful players, even if they are actually right. If your first response after a loss is to blame it on something outside of your control, you will NEVER get better. I've learned this from many Magic: The Gathering strategy writers. It's very tempting in that game to blame your losses on bad luck (after all, it's a card game), but luck is something outside of the realm of a player's control. Blaming your losses on things outside of your control is comforting, but it is also cowardice. It's far more proactive to find room for improvement in yourself when you lose.

When I lose a game, even when I know it's not my fault, I try to take responsibility. I think about what I could have done to make the game a win. Perhaps my build was wrong, or I was too aggressive early on (a very common problem I have). Maybe I was playing a hero I'm not good at, or I didn't focus on farming enough. But what I don't want to say is "It's your fault", "they were a premade" or "it's matchmaking's fault", because I have no control over those things, and I will not advance as a player by saying those things. There is always SOMETHING I could have done to play better, and the moment I stop thinking that is the moment I become a bad player.

Recently, I lost a game. I know why I lost, I fed early in my lane and didn't get farmed. After the game, a guy on my team was blaming it on me. He was correct, but I ask you, reader, who here is the player actively trying to improve? The guy who knows what he did wrong, or the guy who points it out to cover up his own very real faults? If you want to be good (or, like I wish, to at least be adequate) at this game, you have to get over yourself and take responsibility. You don't have to admit it to your bros on vent if that'll damage your ego (god knows I can never do that), but you have to be honest to yourself.

EDIT: Note that blaming other people != constructive criticism.

Hear hear. In a similar vein, complaining about your teammates to the other team over allchat is a bit of a ****py thing to do. It can be amusing if it's the other team doing it, but when it's your team, all you're doing is breaking team morale further, since this generally happens when we're losing anyway.

Hell, more than a few matches I'm in could do with a little more sportsmanship. It just turns into a drag if there's a flamewar as well as an overfed carry and poor teamwork going on. This is a game. Sure it sucks when you get steamrolled (I felt really sorry for the poor sods on the other team in one match, where they were barely hitting 11 when my Karthus was 18 and had most of his item build), sure we can all ***** at the matchmaking, and sure there are always going to be ******s, but it's still a game.

*****fests and flamewars are not, oddly, why I play this. The enemy Fiddle that I repeatedly owned as Karthus in another match didn't gripe at all when we started chatting in the postmatch screen, we just had a good discussion and then added each other. That's how it should work.

Oh, wait, this is the internet. Appeals for everyone to just play nice and have fun are a lost cause ._.

Feeding loses games.

There's a thread in general about 1-9-8 ashe vs. 0-1-1 Janna (lots of Janna bashing of late, amusingly) ... frankly anyone that's died nine times has spent a ton of time dead, which means lost farming opportunities, lost kill opportunities, etc. Only chars that should go that high are initiators (ie: tanks) ... getting gunned down solo when you're out too far, or getting into a team fight 2v2 past mid when you don't know where their other 3 are is just poor play.

Feeding loses games.

Another thing I keep trying to emphasize to new players I'm coaching... 'just don't die' ... if you're not sure you will get the kill, be patient and back off, chasing often results in a death which is downtime for you and G for them. Ugh, feeding.

Sure. There certainly are times where if your team was better, you could've won. Nobody's saying there aren't. Though, I wouldn't go so far as to say don't complain at all, but make sure you analyze how to better handle the situation you were in FIRST, and then if you still feel like your team was playing badly, maybe try to help them out. I know I appreciate when I'm a noob, and someone politely points out what I could do better.

I used to play Demigod, and once my towers fell to a certain point and the enemy just had beaten me, I would strike up a convorsation with the ENEMY team, to see what I did wrong. It's interesting, and though it's harder to do here, since comebacks are so much more likely, it's good practice when you find people who are willing to help.

I've been in a few games (on both sides) where the team getting mowed down for few kills in return has won due to picking a pushing opportunity and maximising it. Some games I have a lot of deaths, no kills and maybe one or two assists, but I've been happy, because each death meant something, usually knocking a tower down or maybe helping to drive them off one of ours.

But you could argue that that's not feeding as such. Depends a bit on how you define the word.