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Well, for few days I've been studying SC2 hard and trying to find all sorts of articles and quides to read. Desperately tryed to find different streams and matches to watch. Why? Most of you will ask why I'm not playing? Those are really good questions. I started to think why the heck I'm not laddering 1v1 yet? Why I feel strange need to be "better" before playing my placement matches? Why on earth I'm afraid to go ladder? The stats and win/lose ratios shouldn't mean a thing so why I'm thinking about them. We all lose games. Thats part of the learning process. I googled a bit and was a quite surprised how many topics I found about fear of laddering. I somehow understand the situation when you achieve certain spot on ladder or a league, although you still should overcome it easily.
But how to overcome that at the start? All you really need is to do is watch our beloved mentor, the mighty professor of SC2, father of all inspirations, mister Sean "day9" Plott's daily number 269 - How to get into SC2.
http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-269-newbie-tuesday-how-to-get-into-sc2-4908809
You can read my whole post from my blog http://sc2.nautti.fi/?p=115
I would also like to hear comments and storied from you guys! Were you frightened when you started playing SC2 or have you been scared of laddering. Also would be nice to hear what did you do and how you overcame your fears.
Cheers,
nautti
 
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To get in to SC2, you play. Losses are whatever.
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Oh man, the feeling when playing placements is just awesome.
I remember how happy I was when I beat my first opponent (silver) who tried a cannon rush, I scouted it too late, he pushed (but slowly and investing a lot) while i sectretly expanded and made an epic comeback while he was shouting "leave you're wasting my time" for the first 5 minutes of the game.
Enjoy it dude, don't fear it.
edit: DON'T FORGET TO SAVE YOUR FIRST GAME
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Hello fellow Finlander! (even though i'm English.. but I live here so  )
I find that when playing, watching streams, reading builds etc, I get the most knowledge and wisdom out of Losing, and then watching those losses back to see where I went wrong.
Long story short - play, lose, replays, play, lose, replays, play, win, Paradise! :D
Edit: i'm Masters EU and soon to be Masters US to validate my point.
Edit2: Also SC2gears is a good tool for replay storing/saving blah blah.
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In the wise words of White-Ra, "More GG, More Skill." You learn nothing from winning games, everything from losing.
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Pick a race.
Find a stream on TL of someone playing that race. (If they are featured it's better usually.)
Watch for a little bit to get the idea of what it's supposed to look like.
Go play the practice games so you don't have to worry about ladder points.
Just try to make your game look kind of like what you observed before.
If you lose to something, try to find out why.
Get better.
Basically when I started playing zerg I knew you were supposed to expand and build a pool and baneling nest. I never built enough drones for one base, let alone two. I never used the baneling nest. I left drones on gas but never got speed. I died to reapers a lot. I have now improved a lot, lol. Time works wonders.
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Pick a race, and play play play play play play play. Fastest way to get decent at this game.
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Pick a race, pick a stream. Enjoy  Playing is important, and so is learning builds ect but that all can happen later.
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When I first got the game I read up on the ladder before jumping in. I learned that it does a good job of matching you up against players of equal skill. I also learned that essentially everyone wins half their game and loses half their games. Once I learned that I hopped on the ladder and started playing. I used the ladder as a "find an opponent of my skill right now button". I didn't concern myself too much with winning. I mostly focused on learning the basics and the mechanics. Thanks to the awesome ladder system I quickly made it to an even record and played opponents who were on par with myself.
I think going for it and playing on the ladder is the right thing to do fairly early. You get matched up against opponents you can beat half the time. Also, by playing a lot you can improve much faster than if you had not played so much. Personally, I feel that 3 months from now "ladder you" would be a significantly better player than "non-ladder you".
I play random and have played random mostly the entire time. I made it to Masters last season by simply jumping in and focusing on basic mechanics: keeping my money low and not move commanding into siege tanks.
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whatever your learning/playing style or sense of fun, immediately skip the 50 pre-placement games with those many many destructible rocks.
Then depending on your race, choose a unit you think is cool and add a few of those in your army. Or make them your whole army! Play silly on purpose to have fun by sneaking a base or gold base. Orrrr you can go one base zerg.
I take losses more lightheartedly if I play wacky. (Actually this will be my next phase of learning-style actually in order to get to gold...maybe hahaha) Anyhow, to get unscared of laddering I made a goal to play 40 games a week and just did not falter for one month straight.
BTW i like those word by White-Ra...thanks StutteR!
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Fear for ladder? just think of ladder as something you do for fun, because it IS something you do for fun! You dont play for money or anything important.
And after all, a loss is beter then a win, if you lose there is a clear mark on what to improve on.
Also feel free to contact me ingame for some more games and i`ll help you out ;D
Basagu AKA Carapace <3
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I think that one important lesson is the one Day[9] told in his daily - get your ego out of the game.
I myself am still managing it - it is not an easy task for some...
We don't like to lose, but losing - as SlutteR and CSN_Kaelaris already pointed - is the better way to improve.
Also it has to be fun - try to make losing being part of the fun: be spirituous about it, joke about yourself and thank every time you lose - you will have a neat replay file pointing out all your mistakes.
In every learning process there is a LOT... a LOT of "losses" - the difference is that in SC2 you got to play against another guy so the win/lose factor is more visible.
I will give you an example: Lets assume you are learning to play guitar. You can read all the books and try to grasp the concepts but - at the start - you will play some wrong chords, will have some trouble holding the guitar, will feel that you yet can't move your fingers at the speed you would like to, right?
Then try to picture this: you are alone in your room and - while you are practicing - you play a wrong chord. Is there a problem? How would you feel about it? Would you be afraid to play another chord? - You gonna say "Nah... I just played a wrong chord... so what? let me play again!"
When laddering, losing in Starcraft 2 is like playing a wrong chord - it is not THAT important, is part of the process and it is natural - you actually need it.
Try to be light about it - because it IS!
At some point I felt that reading a lot of stuff and watching a lot of replays was just adding to my fear (Actually it was not because I was reading a lot of stuff... but because of how I pictured myself based on what I was reading). I will try to explain: When reading a lot of stuff and watching a lot of stuff I felt like I gathered a lot of knowledge and that I was not a simple player anymore - soooo I couldn't afford to lose... I already knew more than the "common player" and I couldn't behave like a simple newbie player and lose silly losses - so I tried to learn more so I wouldn't lose. Can you see where this is leading right?
I'm not saying that you should stop reading and watching replays - please DO IT - it is a key aspect in the learning process. What I am saying is CHANGE YOUR MINDSET, change the PERSPECTIVE. Transform "Losing" into "Playing a wrong chord", remove your ego and forget about stats, they are not who you are or how you play (as Day[9] said, it is a measure of PROGRESS) - it will be lighter, it will remove your fear and the burden put on the "loss" - in the end of the day you should be having fun.
Sorry for the big post, but overcoming this fear is something I am going through right now. So I though it would be nice to share some things that I realized and if I could help someone in the process - well, it would be great.
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Step one: set your race selection to random.
Step two: hit find match.
Step three: play until you decide that you like one race the best, and stick with it. It might take you 1 game, it might take you 100. But you'll get there.
Once you find a race that you like, find three build orders as per the three different matchups. That's all there is to it really.
Ladder rank doesn't really matter. You shouldn't be afraid of it. At all. Because nobody is going to go up to you and laugh at your ladder rank. Also, this isn't like iCCup where you'll be 0-100. You will probably be something like 5-2.
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install game
play random race
etc...
there's not much more to it. remember, it's just a game, the point is to have fun.
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EPT
