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I'll admit it.
I'm afraid to ladder.
It's not that I don't enjoy laddering, but rather when it comes to laddering there is always some sort of pressure and anxiety that comes with it. When you sit down to play in front of your computer and you click on "Multiplayer 1v1" two things come to mind:
1.You are playing against a real, flesh and blood person.
2. You might lose.
Whenever I plop myself down before my screen and grip my mouse and keyboard, and I click that button on the sceen, my heart starts pounding, my hands start shaking slightly. The game goes on, you say your "GL HF" and then you duke it out.
The next 20 or so minutes you are frantically trying to micromanage EVERYTHING that comes across your screen. You keep reminding yourself "Build more probes, use that MULE, don't forget you supply depot, oh my! Do I build spawn drones or zerglings? My SCV just saw that the Toss has no gateways and is double gassing, what could that mean? Better check my base!
Then you either win, or you either lose. Sometimes you lose due to getting cheesed and not seeing it, or perhaps you fought a good fight against a good player and you respectfully GG to this worthy opponent. Who knows, but win or lose, when the game ends you are back to the main screen, your heart is still pumping and you feel your body just about to burst with adrenaline. Now its on to the next game, or I go and play DOTA.
See this everything that goes on in my mind and my body when I play. It sounds pretty scary. There are just so many nerves involved in the process of playing Starcraft 2! I'm being truthful here, forcing myself to play that first game is the hardest part. Once I'm in the groove, nothing can stop me and I'll end up playing for a few hours. But initially I have a fear of the ladder, I fear my opponent and it sometimes breaks my concentration.
So my discussion question is how do I break that? Leave me some comments, let me know what you guys do to get yourself to play if you have the same problem, or perhaps you view things differently than me. Thanks everyone!
-Archaleus
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I have a pretty similar issue as well, my heart starts to pump like mad and I get some crazy adrenaline rushes that make me jittery.
I like to 'break in' by first playing a couple multiplayer games with friends. You're still playing against strangers, but you have some familiar faces on your team to make the situation a bit more calming. After that, hop into 1v1 ladder!
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Play more ladder and you will get used to it.
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yeah, you can intentionally dick around on ladder a bit too just to get past that feeling. Do some rushes or off-race, whatever you want to loosen up.
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On April 05 2011 13:02 aidnai wrote:
yeah, you can intentionally dick around on ladder a bit too just to get past that feeling. Do some rushes or off-race, whatever you want to loosen up.
The only problem I have with that is that I don't want my record to be worse than it already is  I actually care about the game and want to get better, but I realize if I don't ladder enough I'll never learn how to play well enough. I play a lot of 3v3 with friends which is fun, but I began to realize that they were better players than me because they had a lot of experience playing. I watch a lot of games and gather a lot of knowledge about SC2, but when it comes to playing its hard to apply that knowledge. Dorking around the ladder won't help me with that. 
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There has to be a reason behind your being scared of laddering, which is most likely that you're afraid to lose. I'm assuming that you're afraid to lose because you want to become better; I have a few friends that are the same way. The thing you have to realize is that everyone loses games, everyone has those terrible 5+ loss streaks, or maybe a silly loss due to a really simple mistake. You won't get better by debating on if you should ladder or not, and the most important thing is you certainly won't get worse by losing.
There is nothing to be afraid of. Play to improve and the wins/promotions will come to you if you deserve them. Good luck!
EDIT: Also, what rating/race are you? You seem like a nice guy and I'd be willing to help you out with builds/strategies a bit if you're in the lower leagues. I'm a masters terran player.
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Try playing some custom melee games. There's no pressure to win, and it doesn't affect your ladder record. I play a lot of them when I just have a really short time to play a game or two, because I can leave whenever, and also practice fun strats. The only thing is that you might get matched up against people who aren't your skill. In that case, I would also suggest looking for some people to play customs against. Try joining some chat channels if you want to look for people to play/practice with.
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I always use YABOT to help with this. I will probably spend around an hour blasting electronic music through my headphones and practice build orders/harassing before I do my first match. I find that if I just load up Starcraft 2 and que up a match I feel unprepared, and I get anxious. After I warm up a bit on YABOT I still feel a little nervous, but I have a 'Let's do this, I know EXACTLY what build I'm gonna do!" attitude.
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I was afraid of playing ladder in the start of WC3 too, because I liked pretty records and wanted to improve. A loss would somehow be an illustration that I wasn't improving. I did kinda get over that. I'd like to tell you that there were some mind tricks for me to do so. There wasn't. It only got better as I played more games, despite the nervousness. Tough it out, if you can and want, and good luck & HF!
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Once you start playing a lot of ladder for fun, you'll get used to it, and it will just be another game ^.^
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United States4796 Posts
On April 05 2011 13:40 Grubby wrote:
I was afraid of playing ladder in the start of WC3 too, because I liked pretty records and wanted to improve. A loss would somehow be an illustration that I wasn't improving. I did kinda get over that. I'd like to tell you that there were some mind tricks for me to do so. There wasn't. It only got better as I played more games, despite the nervousness. Tough it out, if you can and want, and good luck & HF!
You heard it from the man himself. Play ladder! :D
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All anxiety comes from the fear of losing, period. You need to drop that mindset and don't care whether you win or lose. Go play some 4v4s for a while and work on your mechanics, when you lose don't worry about it. Then go into a 1v1 game and work on a specific build and try improving your macro. If you win, that should be considered a bonus. You will not improve at all if you only want to win, don't worry about that until your mechanics are down. When you reach a high level, then you can care about winning, but by that point the anxiety will have gone away guaranteed.
If you keep winning you will not learn anything and will eventually hit a brick wall, you learn from your mistakes.
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Wow thanks guys. I'll keep these things in mind. Can't wait to play! 
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the loses dont even show on your record anymore theres nothing to be scared of
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Meh it's not the fact that I have losses. It's kinda just the whole pressure of playing someone else. Actually, I'd rather see my losses, my W/L ratio was about 60/40. No I won't know what it is. I may win 50 games, but what if I've lost 250? Seeing my W/L ratio shows me I'm improving.
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I have the same problem, especially since my win ratio is currently more around 40% since i seem to fail at anything recently.
Last season it got better after i intentionally lost 30 matches in a row with "6-pool into kill-my-own-hatch", "kill all automaton 2000 on scrap with the first drones and then drone rush the opponent" or "all drones kill each other until the strongest is left and then 1-pool". After that i knew i couldn't mess up my stats any more, so the fear of laddering wasn't that bad - eventhough i was demoted to platinum for a while and had to work my way back up.
Now in season 2 it's back to panic-mode.
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My advice: Buy a second account and use that for training purposes only. The mindset of solely wanting to improve and disregarding the ladder score completely will remove your ladder fear entirely. You'll be too focused on the specific things you did wrong to be scared of playing another game. That's literally how it goes. You lose the game, see your queens both have 100 mana, and you sigh and just search for another game while thinking about focusing on your queens the next game.
This will make you a lot better, and after you've improved you can go back to your main account, play 3-4 ladder games there in order to improve your rating, and then go back to your new account and practice some more.
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Yeah i know what you are talking about.
The Mainproblem here is, that you´re constantly being told that you can be like the pros.
just forget this , and play the game only for fun. You wont be a Pro ever in this game. NEVER EVER.
You got no alternative either....in custom games everyone just tries sth. out or just leaves in the middle of the game...or lags like hell.
So....just get your mind right....forget about training or sth. like that...play the frickin´ game for fun. Dont pressure yourself with a few laddergames which just means, that you can play Vs people in your skill range. Nothing more to it.
now - gl hf.
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On April 05 2011 15:18 heishe wrote:
My advice: Buy a second account and use that for training purposes only. The mindset of solely wanting to improve and disregarding the ladder score completely will remove your ladder fear entirely. You'll be too focused on the specific things you did wrong to be scared of playing another game. That's literally how it goes. You lose the game, see your queens both have 100 mana, and you sigh and just search for another game while thinking about focusing on your queens the next game.
This will make you a lot better, and after you've improved you can go back to your main account, play 3-4 ladder games there in order to improve your rating, and then go back to your new account and practice some more.
I can't see the need to actually go ahead and buy a second account, rather I suggest playing the game on your current account to its fullest potential. What I mean by this is disregard the fact that ladder, and the losses that comes from it is nothing but a learning curve. Eventually, after playing so much you will lose that fear, and will instead gain some knowledge and skills from playing it so much.
I only suggest buying a new copy after actually reaching masters on your practice account, it will probably have some ridiculous record once you see it when you reach masters, but knowing you already have the skill, you can do it again on another account.
Disregard the fear, and accept the fact that you will not always win. The MMR on SC2 at the moment is volatile, but it's one accurate piece of work that will pit you against similar skilled opponents.
GL and HF, that's what the game is all about isn't it?
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EPT
