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Greetings TL!
When Wings of Library first came out I was so active with the game. It was my first RTS (didn't play SC or WC3 or any other top down strategy game) and I knew that it would be something I would enjoy. I played 13 games on the first day the game came out, placing in Bronze league, where I belonged. I played about 4-5 games everyday for about 2 months, watching pro streams but never learning an official build order. I just sorta winged it every time using my best judgement to help make decisions making mental notes along the way. At the end of the season I placed gold.
Seasons 2 and 3 still had high play rates as I stumbled my way into Platinum league. I started to notice particular builds and strategies, but I still never established a build order. I sometimes would have an overarching strategy involving a unit composition, but I still never had a grand scheme or plan for what I wanted to do.
Seasons 4 and on lead to me playing significantly less. During almost all of 2012 I played about 40 games total with the first season of 2013 ending with a wonderful 3 games played. I had started to become afraid of myself. I was not afraid of losing like what most people with ladder anxiety claim. I was afraid of not playing to my best ability. I was afraid that I was limiting myself in what I could do. I would excuse myself from playing because "oh well if the game takes longer than 40 minutes I'll have to leave and I don't want that" or "it's already late and I'm tired so I shouldn't play" or my favorite "let's see if anyone is streaming. oops it has been 4 hours, guess I can't play today".
I'm okay with losing because I know that losing is part of the game. If I never lost then I would never get better and I would continue to make the same mistakes over and over like getting supply blocked, missing gas, not teching, over teching, or poor response to engagements. I never knew when I was ahead so that kept me from really understanding the game but at the same time the only way to know that is to play.
Now with HotS out, they have added more justifiable AI opponents that give me a little bit of breathing room between what I'm doing and what the opponent is doing. Sure the AI existed before but I never felt threatened by the AI that had a timing attack at X time every time. I've started to learn to scout more, and look for hints of expansions or air timings. I've started to get into a rhythm of having a standard build up to about 40 supply for every matchup. I'm more happy playing even when I make mistakes. I am more comfortable going through replays and seeing patterns of mistakes (ex: oh I always miss my 4th overlord, I'm going to try my hardest these next 5 games to not miss that overlord).
I've started to play a little bit more, and I'm trying to play everyday. I got placed back into Gold which is fine by me. I know that I can get back up to Platinum easily if I just play. That is my goal for this season. 
Thanks for reading! <3
 
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I had a real problem with not playing when not feeling absolutely 100%, but then I remembered reading something, and had a realisation. To shorten the idea:
There were two pottery classes which were each graded on different criteria. The first class was graded based purely on quantity of material produced, regardless of quality. The second class was graded purely on quality: They only had to make a single pot during the entire class's duration.
The best pots inevitably came from the FIRST class, not the second one. Turns out that just grinding out a fuckton of pots did more for their skill than constantly tweaking a single pot, even when they didn't give two shits about quality.
The parallel to SC2 is stunning. It's better for your skills to just play a fuckton of games, regardless of how you're feeling. So if you want to play when tired, play when tired. If you have to surrender at 40 minutes, do some all-ins or just be willing to surrender at 40. You'll do better by playing a lot in all conditions then trying to play a few games in perfect condition. Your rank will actually improve faster by taking this on as a habit.
You're afraid of not playing to your ability? Declining the ability to practice when you feel like playing is much worse than playing when tired.
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On March 30 2013 00:51 Salivanth wrote:
I had a real problem with not playing when not feeling absolutely 100%, but then I remembered reading something, and had a realisation. To shorten the idea:
There were two pottery classes which were each graded on different criteria. The first class was graded based purely on quantity of material produced, regardless of quality. The second class was graded purely on quality: They only had to make a single pot during the entire class's duration.
The best pots inevitably came from the FIRST class, not the second one. Turns out that just grinding out a fuckton of pots did more for their skill than constantly tweaking a single pot, even when they didn't give two shits about quality.
The parallel to SC2 is stunning. It's better for your skills to just play a fuckton of games, regardless of how you're feeling. So if you want to play when tired, play when tired. If you have to surrender at 40 minutes, do some all-ins or just be willing to surrender at 40. You'll do better by playing a lot in all conditions then trying to play a few games in perfect condition. Your rank will actually improve faster by taking this on as a habit.
You're afraid of not playing to your ability? Declining the ability to practice when you feel like playing is much worse than playing when tired.
This is really well put. I'm glad I stumbled into this blog. Been dead afraid of laddering since I got into Masters for the first time with HotS. Gonna grind out at least 10 games when I get off work tonight!
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I think HOTS is helping me too. I get that same syndrome, mostly when I'm really high I don't feel comfortable playing. Problem is I spend most of my days REALLY high....so I wouldn't play anywhere near as much. I would be like "ok I'm going to watch GSL", then when GSL over "watch stream", then "study my replays from yesterday"...by that point im super stoned so I would just be like "fuck it team games or I'm going to bust some Xbox"....
add that to the fact that whenever my roommate is around I didn't ladder until he went to sleep usually as I don't want to be antisocial about it(and the fact he will come in and watch me, then I try to explain what's happenening, get impatient to end it and lose), so I would end up playing a lot less than I really wanted.
With HOTS out, if i'm too stoned I will just play unranked, I won't care about my roommate coming home and interrupting me because if he wants to hang out I have nothing to lose by just f10-N'inng. I can even let him take over because it doesn't count for anything. Also because of the new way BP works, I feel more confident laddering alot when I have BP because I am losing an imaginary number that has no effect on rank rather than losing rank(i know ladder points are imaginary too)
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On March 30 2013 00:51 Salivanth wrote:
I had a real problem with not playing when not feeling absolutely 100%, but then I remembered reading something, and had a realisation. To shorten the idea:
There were two pottery classes which were each graded on different criteria. The first class was graded based purely on quantity of material produced, regardless of quality. The second class was graded purely on quality: They only had to make a single pot during the entire class's duration.
The best pots inevitably came from the FIRST class, not the second one. Turns out that just grinding out a fuckton of pots did more for their skill than constantly tweaking a single pot, even when they didn't give two shits about quality.
The parallel to SC2 is stunning. It's better for your skills to just play a fuckton of games, regardless of how you're feeling. So if you want to play when tired, play when tired. If you have to surrender at 40 minutes, do some all-ins or just be willing to surrender at 40. You'll do better by playing a lot in all conditions then trying to play a few games in perfect condition. Your rank will actually improve faster by taking this on as a habit.
You're afraid of not playing to your ability? Declining the ability to practice when you feel like playing is much worse than playing when tired.
That is actually... very well put. Until you get to high masters or GM, grinding out games while constantly trying to be better is the number one way to improve, IMO. Sure, there are many, many other factors, but hey, something has to differentiate top GM and pro players from the rest 
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I find that HOTS has helped with my ladder anxiety too. Probably because I can blame it on the fact that I don't really know or understand uses for all the new units, and that I am still figuring things out.
But after multiple seasons in WoL you can't use that excuse and your losses come from not being able to execute your builds, or responding incorrectly. By this logic, my ladder anxiety will inevitably return with more time playing HOTS.
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Although I think whatever ladder anxiety I might have suffered from was fairly minor, I will say that the unranked ladder has caused me to play significantly more. The unranked ladder allows you to try out fun stuff or straight up fool around without jeopardizing your mmr which is pretty important if you want to be able to play serious games and mess around. You can say custom games existed in WoL, but the opponent quality was always unpredictable.
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On March 30 2013 10:21 BearStorm wrote:
Although I think whatever ladder anxiety I might have suffered from was fairly minor, I will say that the unranked ladder has caused me to play significantly more. The unranked ladder allows you to try out fun stuff or straight up fool around without jeopardizing your mmr which is pretty important if you want to be able to play serious games and mess around. You can say custom games existed in WoL, but the opponent quality was always unpredictable.
Is there an MMR on unranked ladder?
And to respond to OP, I completely feel ya man. For some reason I've always had MAJOR ladder anxiety when it comes to 1v1. I'll do 2v2 and 3v3s all day and let myself get held back by other players AND subject myself to cheese in those team games, yet the reality is my 1v1 is always at least a league higher than my RT brackets...but idk, I get major anxiety doing 1v1 and that's something that doesn't happen to me in any other game. I did like that pottery analogy the other dude gave, makes a good point, but I think my biggest problem is just not liking to lose. I'm sort of a sore loser and the reality is until you're top GM you lose 45-50% of your games...
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Yes, unranked ladder has an MMR. In fact, it's pretty much exactly the same as ranked, except without a visible indication of how you're doing.
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EPT
