How your team’s morale can change a game

“GG my team sucks” One of the most common phrases you will see in a game when someone on your team dies, or makes a mistake. “Just surrender at 20, we don’t have a chance” Another common phrase to see when you are down 2-9 and a dragon only 12 minutes in. Although these phrases may be commonplace, they really shouldn’t be.

Ask yourself, when you see a teammate in chat claiming the game is over, or complaining about your other teammates, how does it make you feel? The answer 99% of the time: Discouraged. When you or a teammate claim it’s “GG” or “Game’s over” what you are doing is not only giving up, but announcing to the rest of the team that you have given up, making them place less faith in you as a teammate and a player.

When you call another person out on a mistake and say “GG, Blitz getting caught” you are effectively saying “The game is over because you make mistakes, so you should just stop trying”. Using this terminology is not only not effective, but it can lose the game for your team. I have had many games that were “Comebacks” but in reality, they were just games where we started off at a disadvantage, and didn’t complain about it and played smart. A key downfall to the current “Snowball Meta” is that a majority of players don’t fully understand how it works.

At its simplest the meta is to gain an advantage, and once you have the advantage press it so you can gain an even larger advantage. A huge majority of players simply give up when the other team has started to gain this advantage, because they have been taught that once someone is fed, or the other team has X many objectives over you, the odds of winning are just too heavily stacked in the other teams favor.

Now here is where attitude and morale come into play. How many games have you been in where either you or a teammate got beat in lane, and instead of your team trying to help you or that teammate, it was a ragefest in chat? The answer, at least for me, is way too high.

When you start arguing with your teammates, you have now caused a hostile atmosphere within the team where you all do not want to work with each other to win, your new goal is to just get out of the game and start a new game with new teammates. Once you stop wanting to play with your teammates, you are at a huge disadvantage. When you argue, tell a teammate they are bad, claim the game is over, or ask your team to surrender, you are doing the single most hurtful thing you can do in a team game, lowering your team’s morale.

Morale is defined as; the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time. So let’s break down what all of these negative factors do to your team’s morale.

Arguing- Arguing most affects confidence, and enthusiasm. Example; the enemy team is going down mid, their Ashe is out of position, you are playing Warwick. You take the opportunity while Ashe is out of position to jump on her, hoping to pick up a kill and put your team in the advantage. Well, you use your ultimate on Ashe, but your team doesn’t follow behind you, now the other team sees you out alone, and ends up killing you instead. So now, chat comes into play. You have a few options here. Bad option; “Are you guys retarded? Ashe was out there alone, free kill.

Now we are probably going to lose. You guys suck”. The main problem there is that you come off as hostile, insulting your team and making yourself seem against them rather than with them. Once you have separated yourself from them, the chat log is more prone to be filled with arguing and name-calling. A huge thing to remember in Solo Queue is that you want to avoid arguments at all costs, think about it, you will most likely never have to talk to this person on your team again after this game, what will winning an argument prove?

The best thing to do is just suck up your pride, and either stop talking when an argument arises, or try to tell the other person that “Yeah I guess you’re right” Once arguing start, you have already started to lower everyone’s confidence because you are effectively telling people they are wrong and that the ideas and strategies they had are useless, making them feel less confident in decisions to be make later on in the game.

Now, let’s look at a better option; “Man, Ashe was out there all alone, we probably could have picked up a kill if we all went in” people on your team might agree, or they may point out that possibly you were the one to make a mistake with something like “Their team is really strong right now, if we had gone in on Ashe they probably would have gotten to her before we killed her, and if we got in a fight with them they would most likely win”.

Now, even if you disagree with this, you don’t want to start a heated argument with your team. The best way to reply would be with “Hmm, I don’t know, but next time I won’t go in like that if you guys don’t think we can win the fight”. This right here is a key example of how even though doing what you want to do might be best, if the team doesn’t think it’s best, you can’t do it, and arguing your case a lot of the time, may not be worth it if you are on a team where the other members will get angry and start a heated battle in chat. Remember that you want to stay a team, you want to play with these people, and you don’t want to be against them.

Telling a Teammate they are Bad- This is a pretty simple one. You can point out someone’s mistakes, and let them know how to fix them, but make your criticism constructive. Some people can’t take criticism at all, but the majority of players will take your criticism into consideration if it is constructive and helpful, in fact, a lot of people will be thankful that someone is helping them out.

So when your Soraka isn’t buying words, and is auto attacking minions, don’t just say “Soraka wtf you suck” actually help her out and say “Hey, when you’re playing a support it’s really helpful to buy more wards, the vision in river will help us know if the jungler is coming” or “Try not to auto attack the minions, if they wave pushes to the other side we are more vulnerable to ganks”. Just be polite in your criticism and the person is more likely to fix what they are doing wrong. If you yell at them, they are going to not want to play with you, and will most likely not take your advice because you are being so hostile about it.

Claiming the Game is over, or Asking your Team to Surrender- This is the probably the worst thing that you can do to your team’s morale. When you say the game is over, or ask the team to surrender, you are essentially telling your team “I do not want to play this game anymore, and you shouldn’t either”. The entire team’s enthusiasm to play, confidence in winning, and the discipline to not make mistakes, is going to go down, and fast.

If your team is losing, you need to be working on raising the morale, not lowering it. If bot lane is getting out farmed, you need to be saying “It’s okay, just keep trying, we know you are losing but it’s not a big deal we can make up for it”. Saying something like this will make that lane feel better, they know the team isn’t mad at them, so they can focus completely on just trying their hardest.

Simple things like this can make or break a game, if someone is getting beat, not only are you frustrated with them, the person is probably also frustrated with themselves. Letting them know that the team is with them, not against them, can make a world of difference in your game and I guarantee it can turn a game around.

To conclude, always be positive. If the team morale is high, a comeback is always possible, but if you and your team have to play against the other team, while fighting your own team in chat, your chances of winning are dropping every time you hit enter. Be polite, make your criticism constructive, be supportive, and you can expect to see more victories in your match history in no time!