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'Sup mah favorite gamers<3
I recently (semi-recently, beginning of season five) experienced a demotion in StarCraft II from Master league to Diamond. It's affecting me pretty strongly, and I'm wondering what my fellow TLers think about this little issue I'm having. Lemme explain:
I first bought StarCraft II back in January of 2011. Before that, I had only scarcely even heard of StarCraft: Brood War and certainly never played it. The furthest extent of my RTS experience was casual Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings when I was a wee young'un, and toying around with Sins of a Solar Empire (if that can even be counted.) So, since I chose Zerg right off the bat, of course I was placed in Bronze league. I didn't mind that much, seeing as during one of my placement matches I actually learned that mutalisks can target ground units, and other such basic facts, so it felt right to be at the bottom of the ladder.
Through the passion I quickly developed for the game, and in no small part through the aid of Day[9], HDStarCraft, and Husky, I managed to claw my way up to Gold league by the end of season one. The improvement process was challenging and fun, but I had no idea what was ahead of me still.
Each season thereafter, I managed to grow one league. It was steady improvement, and by Summer 2011, I managed to hit Diamond league. "One more to go..." I would tell myself, fully aware that I would likely never make Grand Master, and frankly not disappointed by that fact. My goal, which I had set for myself a while back, was simply to become "competent." Not to go off and win MLG, but to, if I so chose, be able to sign up for the open bracket and have no one be too extremely shocked if I made it through to Pool Play.
So I set off for it. During this time I was in Diamond, I was shipped off to college and a lot of things in my life started changing -- and almost all of them for the better. That's not to say that I was unhappy at home, but anyone who's done it knows how much fun the transition can be -- especially when it means going from playing StarCraft on a laptop literally resting in your lap to using a proper, well-lit desk!
This isn't me, but seriously, just TRY and have more than 20 APM like this.
A little before the end of my first semester, it happened. It wasn't a slow, little build up. It was like a torrential wave of perfection. I felt like an absolute god while laddering, I was untouchable. I would catch drops as they arrived with ease, pull off perfect surrounds on massive armies, attack with dat Ee Han timing. My inject rate, according to SC2 gears, soared from a workable 60% to a solid 85% in a matter of days. When I was behind due to some slight error in my otherwise flawless play, I would think to myself, analyzing, looking for the solution, and in one clutch symphony of action I would be back on top.
I won 14 ladder games in a row, interrupted by one mid-master Terran in close spawns, and I proceeded to play with a solid 60-70% win rate at mid-master level for a good week. I would play ladder matches, watch the replays from my own camera view, and just sit back wondering if that really was me playing. No mistakes. The only thing I could work on was strategy, timings, the good stuff. I secured a promotion the day before the season four to season five ladder lock, and was not surprised when it happened, not even surprised to learn that my division -- Raynor Omega -- was that season's "GM Graveyard," where the top players who didn't quite make Grand Master that season went to stay, or when I noticed that ROOTDdoro's name was just a single entry above mine, or when I found the letters Oov just a few ranks above that. No, not surprised. Just satisfied. "Now," I thought, "I get to REALLY play StarCraft II." I was in such a good mood that week that I apparently decided to ace all of my finals and get A's in all my classes. Life was good.
And then, I don't know. I can't tell you what happened, because to this day it remains unexplained. I just stopped playing well. By the time the ladder unlocked for season five, I had lost it. It, whatever it truly was, had left me and I saw a dramatic decline in my ability to play. My injections found a trough of 50% in macro games and my ability to simply play the game vanished. I grew foggy and unable to think during matches, my fingers grew stiff and became unwilling to comply as they had before. I placed in season five at diamond league, and to this day I haven't gotten particularly close to even low master again.
Now, here's my real trouble: I can't seem to operate like I had before. Before my demotion, I had nowhere to go but up. I would analyze my play, attempt to fix it, and if I was intelligent enough about it, I would improve. But I haven't changed WHAT I'm doing since I peaked at that now-elusive Master league heaven. My strategies are the same. Clearly, I identify, it must be HOW I'm doing it that has grown flawed. I can't analyze strategies anymore, because my strategies are all workable at the level I want to be at.
Analysis on a game-by-game basis proves unfruitful, too. This game I lost because of this, another due to that, the third because of something else totally unrelated. My mistakes are inconsistent, and my problem is just that: inconsistency. I no longer understand how to improve, and I'm stagnating hard. In the light of my inability to come out of Diamond once more, even after recovering from my apparent slump that resulted in my demotion (a massive losing streak,) I'm considering quitting SC2. It's just not fun anymore, being so much worse than I know I could be, losing to things I know I would've wiped the floor with earlier and not knowing how to wipe the floor with them in the future.
I'm lost. I wonder if anyone else has similar stories or can offer some advice to a disillusioned gamer 
I know that this post was extraordinarily long, and honestly I don't think anyone is going to read the whole thing through. I'm simply not entertaining enough to keep someone motivated to read for that long, especially in the age of the internet and when my target audience is a bunch of people who don't even know me at all. To that end, I'll do a short TL;DR, though I really would prefer if you had read the whole thing.
TL;DR: I grew extremely good at SC2 (at least by my standards) in a short amount of time, playing solidly, and now I've fallen significantly from where I was for no apparent reason, and have lost my drive to improve because of it.
Thanks for your time, whoever you are.
 
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I've been there often. :/ It sucks to not play well, and when you lose games for different reasons every time. I've also come back and hit great strides (like what I'm in right now, but after reading your thing I'm nervous I'll lose it LOL).
There's a few things I've done to recover and play better. One which I've been mocked for a lot is off racing, but I think it's fantastic. Also practicing with some buddies and looking at some things is great as well.
Hit me up too if you want some games; you seem like a chill guy and I don't have many zergs to practice with. :D
EDIT: I actually reskimmed your post and had a small story:
Your beginnings are exactly like mine. I started as a bronze zerg with little to know knowledge of how the game actually worekd or what the units were. Worked my way very very slowly up to diamond, then demoted down to plat. I offraced for a while, then switched to Terran and worked my way up from gold to diamond. I then hit another slump and played protoss for a while (you can sense the pattern here lol), made it back up to diamond, then said "hey i bet i should just random" and hit another rut. I finally chose Terran again, and anytime I feel like I'm at a wall in my play, I either offrace (if I'm just playing bad for no reason) or pull up a friend to practice with.
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"I felt like an absolute god while laddering..." "elusive Master league heaven."
The beginning of your downfall right there. League rankings are fairly superficial, Masters does not equal mastery. Watch pros and be humble, take moderate joy in your victories and laugh at your defeats.
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Don't get sad, get your revenge.
You probably aren;t playing as bad as you think either, it could just be that everyone else is playing better (which happens, the whole community is trying to get better at this game). Big deal. Adapt, make yourself harder, better, faster, stronger. Analyze every game and every little thing in eveyr game, from the worker counts to injects to map control. EVERY. LITTLE. THING. And you will get better, you will start pwning noobs again like a happy little masters zerg.
Terrans are predictable, tossers are rigid, but zergs.... Zergs are adaptable. You are adaptable.
It's time for you to adapt.
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On January 27 2012 08:55 Mothra wrote:
"I felt like an absolute god while laddering..." "elusive Master league heaven."
The beginning of your downfall right there. League rankings are fairly superficial, Masters does not equal mastery. Watch pros and be humble, take moderate joy in your victories and laugh at your defeats.
I have to disagree. My self-confidence while playing well I believe strongly influenced my ability to maintain my success. I know Master league players aren't necessarily all that good, and that even at my peak I was utter shit in the grand scheme of things, I just mean that it was by far the most I've ever enjoyed StarCraft II.
On January 27 2012 09:01 Selendis wrote:
Don't get sad, get your revenge.
You probably aren;t playing as bad as you think either, it could just be that everyone else is playing better (which happens, the whole community is trying to get better at this game). Big deal. Adapt, make yourself harder, better, faster, stronger. Analyze every game and every little thing in eveyr game, from the worker counts to injects to map control. EVERY. LITTLE. THING. And you will get better, you will start pwning noobs again like a happy little masters zerg.
Terrans are predictable, tossers are rigid, but zergs.... Zergs are adaptable. You are adaptable.
It's time for you to adapt.
This is somewhat helpful, thank you. I do know that the community is improving around me, but in order for me to fall from mid-Master to mid-Diamond in a matter of days certainly implies that I was getting worse, since it's MUCH less likely that the entire rest of the community just suddenly got dramatically better.
I do analyze games and I do find mistakes that contribute to individual losses, but it's just never the same problem twice. I dunno, maybe my pattern recognition skills just aren't up to snuff and there's some thread tying my failures together that I can actually fix. I just don't know.
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On January 27 2012 09:19 UmiNotsuki wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2012 08:55 Mothra wrote:
"I felt like an absolute god while laddering..." "elusive Master league heaven."
The beginning of your downfall right there. League rankings are fairly superficial, Masters does not equal mastery. Watch pros and be humble, take moderate joy in your victories and laugh at your defeats. I have to disagree. My self-confidence while playing well I believe strongly influenced my ability to maintain my success. I know Master league players aren't necessarily all that good, and that even at my peak I was utter shit in the grand scheme of things, I just mean that it was by far the most I've ever enjoyed StarCraft II. Show nested quote +On January 27 2012 09:01 Selendis wrote:
Don't get sad, get your revenge.
You probably aren;t playing as bad as you think either, it could just be that everyone else is playing better (which happens, the whole community is trying to get better at this game). Big deal. Adapt, make yourself harder, better, faster, stronger. Analyze every game and every little thing in eveyr game, from the worker counts to injects to map control. EVERY. LITTLE. THING. And you will get better, you will start pwning noobs again like a happy little masters zerg.
Terrans are predictable, tossers are rigid, but zergs.... Zergs are adaptable. You are adaptable.
It's time for you to adapt.
This is somewhat helpful, thank you. I do know that the community is improving around me, but in order for me to fall from mid-Master to mid-Diamond in a matter of days certainly implies that I was getting worse, since it's MUCH less likely that the entire rest of the community just suddenly got dramatically better. I do analyze games and I do find mistakes that contribute to individual losses, but it's just never the same problem twice. I dunno, maybe my pattern recognition skills just aren't up to snuff and there's some thread tying my failures together that I can actually fix. I just don't know.
In that case I have two possible solutions for you if you think they are any good:
1. Take your existing mistakes and make a conscious attempt not to make them in your laddering or with your practice partners. Just work on one mistake at a time.
2. Play a ton of games, until patterns DO start to form.
...or you can do what I do and just develop some new and creative all ins for the unsuspecting metagame (I am a diamond tosspot as you may guess). >:D
I hope this helps.
GL HF
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lol just lost to mass carriers.
I'm done, it was nice knowing you TL. I'll probably still lurk a bit and watch the good matches. Thanks for the memories!
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You weren't demoted, you were "reclassified." Quit being so negative! Everyone's a winner on the ladder.
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On January 27 2012 10:24 UmiNotsuki wrote:
lol just lost to mass carriers.
I'm done, it was nice knowing you TL. I'll probably still lurk a bit and watch the good matches. Thanks for the memories!
Don't do that. It is so tempting to just drop the game after a loss like that, but don't. You're only robbing yourself of something you love. Just take a day or two off.
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On January 27 2012 09:19 UmiNotsuki wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2012 08:55 Mothra wrote:
"I felt like an absolute god while laddering..." "elusive Master league heaven."
The beginning of your downfall right there. League rankings are fairly superficial, Masters does not equal mastery. Watch pros and be humble, take moderate joy in your victories and laugh at your defeats. I have to disagree. My self-confidence while playing well I believe strongly influenced my ability to maintain my success. I know Master league players aren't necessarily all that good, and that even at my peak I was utter shit in the grand scheme of things, I just mean that it was by far the most I've ever enjoyed StarCraft II. Show nested quote +On January 27 2012 09:01 Selendis wrote:
Don't get sad, get your revenge.
You probably aren;t playing as bad as you think either, it could just be that everyone else is playing better (which happens, the whole community is trying to get better at this game). Big deal. Adapt, make yourself harder, better, faster, stronger. Analyze every game and every little thing in eveyr game, from the worker counts to injects to map control. EVERY. LITTLE. THING. And you will get better, you will start pwning noobs again like a happy little masters zerg.
Terrans are predictable, tossers are rigid, but zergs.... Zergs are adaptable. You are adaptable.
It's time for you to adapt.
This is somewhat helpful, thank you. I do know that the community is improving around me, but in order for me to fall from mid-Master to mid-Diamond in a matter of days certainly implies that I was getting worse, since it's MUCH less likely that the entire rest of the community just suddenly got dramatically better. I do analyze games and I do find mistakes that contribute to individual losses, but it's just never the same problem twice. I dunno, maybe my pattern recognition skills just aren't up to snuff and there's some thread tying my failures together that I can actually fix. I just don't know.
i dont think you were getting worse your overall score was just equalizing, there's variance for everything that involves stats like this
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It's not such a big problem. Everybody has down times all the time.
Now pick yourself up and start pwning again!
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On January 27 2012 10:48 ClysmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2012 10:24 UmiNotsuki wrote:
lol just lost to mass carriers.
I'm done, it was nice knowing you TL. I'll probably still lurk a bit and watch the good matches. Thanks for the memories! Don't do that. It is so tempting to just drop the game after a loss like that, but don't. You're only robbing yourself of something you love. Just take a day or two off.
This isn't the first time I've wanted to do it. It's becoming painful for me; I play because I play. When I don't play StarCraft 2, I don't know what I'm doing. It's become who I am over the past year, and frankly it's not enjoyable enough anymore to devote myself to it so strongly.
The only thing that's kept me playing now-a-days, is that when I'm not focusing on StarCraft 2 I am bored out of my MIND. It's not healthy to only have one hobby when it's one that isn't very fulfilling. Either I'll find another game to spend all my time on or I'll go... *shudders*... read a book...
Speaking of which, any suggestions for a new game?
On January 27 2012 12:46 Keyboard Warrior wrote:
It's not such a big problem. Everybody has down times all the time.
Now pick yourself up and start pwning again!
So much easier said than done. That's like telling someone with clinical depression to cheer up. Yeah, that'd work, if it was possible. Even when I get excited about the game and am totally in the right head space, I play terribly.
I don't even enjoy winning anymore because it's always due to an obvious mistake on my opponent's part. Before I died to mass carriers earlier today, I beat a Terran player who went mech, and... didn't make tanks to counter my mass roach. Yeah, okay. I managed to win even though he killed a hundred something drones with hellions because my opponent didn't make arguably the most important unit in his army. I feel so great about that.
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I usually try to quit like twice a week, always happens after tilting and fatigue. Being tired, stubborn
and just pressing that quick match key over and over is not how to improve at sc2.
But if you aren't enjoying the game then quit. I know many friends who enjoy watching
sc2 but hardly play aside from the occasional team games like once every 2 months.
I've come to figure out for myself that BM, bad play, complaining, and not enjoying sc2 always
comes down to playing while tired. I love the competitive aspect of the game and always
will but at the moment after months of working on my sleep patterns im not quite there
yet.
As for inconsistency, I can't see this as a great reason for your ranking etc because it happens to
me and pretty much all non-pros and even pros more often than you would think. Most NA players
do not have set bo's, don't play enough etc to be consistent in pretty much any respect.
All I can say is it's very weird to not improve if you're putting into practice most of the methods you
put forth in your op. How much would you say you play on average a week of actual ladder games
(not surfing TL, not watching streams etc).
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I know sc2 is just a game and it's supposed to be fun, but I wouldn't recommend quitting just because you've hit your first real wall against improvement. I've just picked up sc2 so I can't really help you there, but when it comes to life skills in general "other people" (i.e. rankings) shouldn't be an end-all measurement in terms of understanding your own progress and play. It's a decent benchmark, but so long as you've got a strong mindset and take away a lesson from each win/loss, you should put a bit more confidence in yourself that you're actually improving. Now if you've been stagnant for a long time, then something may be wrong but you've only had this problem since the start of the season. Quitting is no good imo if you're only doing it because you've finally hit that wall and are finding it a bit difficult to overcome. It'd be different if you just found the game boring, but that doesn't really seem to be the case since it sounds like you'd hop right back on the train if you started playing good games again.
Anyhow, here's a quote from good 'ol Bruce Lee: “Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles - big or small - and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself.”
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On January 27 2012 13:41 KingDime wrote:
I usually try to quit like twice a week, always happens after tilting and fatigue. Being tired, stubborn
and just pressing that quick match key over and over is not how to improve at sc2.
But if you aren't enjoying the game then quit. I know many friends who enjoy watching
sc2 but hardly play aside from the occasional team games like once every 2 months.
I've come to figure out for myself that BM, bad play, complaining, and not enjoying sc2 always
comes down to playing while tired. I love the competitive aspect of the game and always
will but at the moment after months of working on my sleep patterns im not quite there
yet.
As for inconsistency, I can't see this as a great reason for your ranking etc because it happens to
me and pretty much all non-pros and even pros more often than you would think. Most NA players
do not have set bo's, don't play enough etc to be consistent in pretty much any respect.
All I can say is it's very weird to not improve if you're putting into practice most of the methods you
put forth in your op. How much would you say you play on average a week of actual ladder games
(not surfing TL, not watching streams etc).
Getting to Master league by now seems about right based on how much effort I put in and how much effort I know friends of mine have put in for the same result. I estimate that on average one week contains 4-5 hours of time actually spent in a ladder game, but it fluctuates significantly. Some weeks, just a couple hours, others I'd say as many as 7 or 8. After a year of play that should be *more than enough to solidly make master league.
On January 27 2012 14:03 coffecup wrote:
I know sc2 is just a game and it's supposed to be fun, but I wouldn't recommend quitting just because you've hit your first real wall against improvement. I've just picked up sc2 so I can't really help you there, but when it comes to life skills in general "other people" (i.e. rankings) shouldn't be an end-all measurement in terms of understanding your own progress and play. It's a decent benchmark, but so long as you've got a strong mindset and take away a lesson from each win/loss, you should put a bit more confidence in yourself that you're actually improving. Now if you've been stagnant for a long time, then something may be wrong but you've only had this problem since the start of the season. Quitting is no good imo if you're only doing it because you've finally hit that wall and are finding it a bit difficult to overcome. It'd be different if you just found the game boring, but that doesn't really seem to be the case since it sounds like you'd hop right back on the train if you started playing good games again.
Anyhow, here's a quote from good 'ol Bruce Lee: “Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles - big or small - and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself.”
This is *not my first obstical, really; I had trouble breaking from bronze to silver and then from platinum to diamond. I hit walls there and I worked through them. The problem here isn't a wall, it's that I fell back significantly in skill and can't even begin to get back to where I was. There's no "I have to work on X to improve" here, just "everything I do is absolute shit for some reason." I can't play like I used to.
If I was never in Master league this wouldn't be a problem, because then I would obviously have something to work on to get there. But I was there. Now I just can't get back because I'm playing the same way, just waaaay worse.
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On January 27 2012 10:47 Gheed wrote:
You weren't demoted, you were "reclassified." Quit being so negative! Everyone's a winner on the ladder.
Hahaha exactly
I'd treat your losses like a down-swing in poker. Either take a break and find something relaxing or keep at it knowing that even if you weren't playing your best and ran into a string of super competent players, if you persevere you'll get past it.
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You are now at a point where character shines through. Are you going to chicken out and give up just because you're going through a rough patch right now, or are you gonna man up and get your act together? The choice is yours.
However, if you are getting really frustrated and don't have fun anymore (which is the entire reason you play a game in the first place), take a break from the game and come back fresh.
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On January 27 2012 18:13 bartus88 wrote:
You are now at a point where character shines through. Are you going to chicken out and give up just because you're going through a rough patch right now, or are you gonna man up and get your act together? The choice is yours.
However, if you are getting really frustrated and don't have fun anymore (which is the entire reason you play a game in the first place), take a break from the game and come back fresh.
We'll see if I do manage to come back this time. It's just so disheartening. My ego is what it is, of course, and it's getting in my way because every other time I've taken a break, then gotten back to the game I manage to bring myself right up against low Master league, getting matched with a few stagnating Masters, but I never do well enough to just get that damn star and feel like I can finally improve without this stupid "you're terrible" icon on my multiplayer page.
I can't really get past it.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jonbruner/files/2011/01/Wednesday-172.jpg)
