|
I'm Wolfie and I'm trying to get over my ladder fright.Read the first blog post to see what started all this. I'm a silver protoss on EU: Wolfie.756.
I've deceived myself. After writing my previous blog post, I thought I would've had daily VODs up here, as I had before. But I haven't done that.
I have, however, played some ladder. And it has felt great! I think the most important paradigm shift has been the fact that I think I start understanding the game better. The feeling of helplessness and unfairness have subsided. I have started to understand what's going on, and the feeling of helplessness is probably starting to fade away. I think my ladder anxiety is starting to give way to the pleasure of gaming.
But laddering is still far from being a no-brainer. I really need to get into the mentality of it, and decide to play. And I still can't play more than a few games in a row, because of my nerves. I get all shaky from all the adrenaline, and it's not something that I enjoy. I think my ladder anxiety is starting to transform from something psychological into something physical.
I'll try to put up some VODs of my games, with proper analyzing and stuff, like before. But, unfortunately (or fortunately, however you want to put it), I no longer feel a force from TL, so the games aren't popping in with the speed as I hoped. But, all games I've played on ladder thus far have been recorded and commented. Some are still on my HDD. You're very welcome to follow me at http://justin.tv/wolfiestarcraft to get an email whenever I start streaming. If you happen to catch me, I'll more than love to take feedback, and take the moment to chat with you. A few have already taken me up on the opportunity.
Anyways. For all the people who have said "pfft, just fucking ladder", I have only one thing to say to you all: Fuck, you're right. And for all the people without any ladder anxiety: I envy you guys.
 
|
EVERYBODY loses. Even extremely good players are still 50/50. You learn more from losses than from wins.
|
I used to have the same sort of nervousness. Here's my advice/what worked for me.
Come up with a solid opener/build for each matchup, steal them from pro replays or whatever. Just builds you consider to be well-rounded and safe. This is less for the nerves and more just to give you a preset 'plan' for what you're going to do.
Once you have 1 solid build for each matchup, just queue a lot of games. Maybe don't stare at that "searching" animation on the screen if you get anxious, alt-tab for a few seconds. After you just simply play a bunch of games you should be fine.
|
I got rid of performance anxiety in music by massing performances. At best one christmas season I had 13 gigs a day (15min sets each) - I just simply had no time to get nervous before playing.
Getting rid of ladder anxiety was the same. After 500 games, I just stopped feeling it. Just mass games. Through the pain 
|
Yeah my head used to get hot and I would get horrible headaches after 3-4 games due to the concentration. Keep in there and eventually it will go away. My only problem now is stagnating and ladder rage, but instead of getting over it, I've stopped altogether unfortunately.
|
Thanks for the encouraging words, guys! I surely will continue, or even accelerate, my laddering. Your replies, in fact, will only motivate me to play more and more. Sincerely: thank you.
To Nexic:
Fortunately, my ladder anxiety doesn't have anything to do with what's found inside the game. I don't fear any of the "searching" sounds or anything like that. I think I fear more about "wasting" my time for a game I play for 30 minutes, and lose for something stupid, and perhaps even more importantly the helpless feeling when I think I've done everything right, but still lose, and can't find anything I could've done to salvage the situation. Some players might start yelling about imbalance in those cases. Also, as I already mentioned, if I play a few games, my adrenaline makes my hands shake, and I find that feeling uncomfortable. So, my psyche must've associated SC2 with this uncomfortable feeling. If I manage to get rid of the excess adrenaline, I'm sure my ladder anxiety is further alleviated!
|
Demonace:
I hope you find a way to get back to the game. Stagnating is something I fear too. I honestly believe that coaching would be a good way to get over that. Well, that's what I plan to do when I really feel that I stagnate and plateau.
If you allow me to play a couch-psychologist, I feel ladder rage is just simply one of the manifestations of the same things I've gone or going through. I think I'm in no position of suggesting anything to anybody, but try the following exercise for me, please: the next time you rage to someone, and realize that you probably should not do that, alt-tab out of the game, get some food, or something. Once you're back into the game and if he's still online, just message the following text "I'm sorry about the rage previously. I got upset." and leave it at that. If he replies, don't feel forced to reply back, if you don't feel like it. Just copypaste that text for the sole reason that I said you to.
If you feel like doing that, could you tell me what happened or you thought about it, once you did it?
|
On July 23 2011 09:42 hpaul wrote:
Thanks for the encouraging words, guys! I surely will continue, or even accelerate, my laddering. Your replies, in fact, will only motivate me to play more and more. Sincerely: thank you.
To Nexic:
Fortunately, my ladder anxiety doesn't have anything to do with what's found inside the game. I don't fear any of the "searching" sounds or anything like that. I think I fear more about "wasting" my time for a game I play for 30 minutes, and lose for something stupid, and perhaps even more importantly the helpless feeling when I think I've done everything right, but still lose, and can't find anything I could've done to salvage the situation. Some players might start yelling about imbalance in those cases. Also, as I already mentioned, if I play a few games, my adrenaline makes my hands shake, and I find that feeling uncomfortable. So, my psyche must've associated SC2 with this uncomfortable feeling. If I manage to get rid of the excess adrenaline, I'm sure my ladder anxiety is further alleviated! Hm, that is not a good mindset to have if you want to improve. I would suggest you try and rectify it. I could see how this could be detrimental to your laddering, since you aren't considering every loss as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes.
If you cannot find anything wrong with your play, I recommend you watch some replays or VODs of professional players to identify how their play is different than yours. Until you can identify the things you are doing wrong (and you are doing many things wrong if you are in silver league), you can't get better. As for the adrenaline, I think many people experience that as well, and it should tone down the more games you play.
The same ideas I mentioned here can be found in CecilSunkure's guide to improving at 1v1, it's incredibly helpful and you should definitely check it out.
|
know you wont lose. problem solved.
|
I had this anxiety for a while. The way I got over it was by telling myself:
"who cares what my ladder ranking is, If I ever get good I will just buy a new account, but for now, who cares if I lose 20 times in a row, people cant even see your losses anyways haha"
|
After losing game watch replay and ask yourself: Did minerals go over 500? Did I stop making workers? How many times did I get supply blocked?
Surely these things must have occurred if you're in silver, and then you know exactly what to work on and need not feel helpless. If you truly "did everything right" you wouldn't have lost.
|
Nexic: thanks for the link, I'll definitely take a look. And, yeah, as of late, I've really understood (even though I've been aware of it all the time) that there is no way that my game is perfect and still lose. If I play a literally perfect game, I would be on my way to playing GSL. Since obviously that's not happening, there's no reason for me to believe that my play was acceptable. And I really understand this now. Thus, this part of my anxiety is fading away at a good rate.
Leucifer: Hm, I think that "Know I won't win" would be a mindset that would work better for me, honestly. I would never be disappointed of my performance, only could outdo myself.
Equity: I'm very glad that you've come over your anxiety. Good job, man! Sadly (or not?), my anxiety doesn't have to do with the win/loss record either per se. I don't mind if everyone would search through my play history, and see all the wins/losses. It's just the losses at the very moment that feel frustrating.
Mothra: You're absolutely right, and all of the things you mentioned do occur. I must've been unclear in my wordings. I don't really believe that I did everything right. Maybe a better way of putting it would be "I don't know what I could've done better", but that feeling is always in the game, in the moment. Once I took the habit of watching those losses again in a replay, there's always something that I can point to. So I'm not as concerned about that anymore. "If I lost, I must've deserved it somehow."
|
I've some of the exact same anxieties man, it's tough. Helps me to remember the matchmaking system is designed to make it so, ideally, you lose half the time. I think for me the biggest thing is losing in what I feel wasn't a fair test, because then even as a loss it can be no more valuable than 'there is a place a cannon rusher puts a pylon, check it'. I played 4 games last night and lost three, 1 to a cannon rusher, 1 to a proxy 3 gate, and one to a zerg who could replenish his units faster than I could. Really feels like I only learned anything from the last loss, but still plan on trying to get 3 games played every time I sit down to play, regardless of the outcomes.
|
You're speaking my language, man. Brothers in fear.
|
On July 23 2011 09:55 hpaul wrote:
Demonace:
I hope you find a way to get back to the game. Stagnating is something I fear too. I honestly believe that coaching would be a good way to get over that. Well, that's what I plan to do when I really feel that I stagnate and plateau.
If you allow me to play a couch-psychologist, I feel ladder rage is just simply one of the manifestations of the same things I've gone or going through. I think I'm in no position of suggesting anything to anybody, but try the following exercise for me, please: the next time you rage to someone, and realize that you probably should not do that, alt-tab out of the game, get some food, or something. Once you're back into the game and if he's still online, just message the following text "I'm sorry about the rage previously. I got upset." and leave it at that. If he replies, don't feel forced to reply back, if you don't feel like it. Just copypaste that text for the sole reason that I said you to.
If you feel like doing that, could you tell me what happened or you thought about it, once you did it?
Thanks for the response. I just know I have too much of my ego in the game and that is what is hurting me. I don't actually rage at other people, i just throw shit across my room and feel sick that I got lazy after getting ahead...etc.
Last ladder games I played were 4 or 5 weeks ago... been playing micro challenges and customs with my lower level friends offrace to help them out. I might just need a new account with a name I don't care about to play on. Gl on your ladder games.
|
Something I did that really helped was to buy a second sc2 account to play on. No one knows about my second account so i can ladder without fear of losing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
