Maynarde’s guide to Ladder Anxiety

On March 07 2020 05:39 MockHamill wrote:
I never understood ladder anxiety.
What is there to be afraid of?
You will lose about 50% of your games no matter if you are good or bad. Improving does not change that, you will just lose 50% of your games against better opponents.

If you lose MMR nothing happens. You will not get more or less money, it will have no impact on you health or well being.

I can understand being nervous in a tournament when lots of money is on the line. But nothing in you life changes if you win or lose more on the ladder.

On March 07 2020 05:39 MockHamill wrote:
I never understood ladder anxiety.
What is there to be afraid of?
You will lose about 50% of your games no matter if you are good or bad. Improving does not change that, you will just lose 50% of your games against better opponents.

If you lose MMR nothing happens. You will not get more or less money, it will have no impact on you health or well being.

I can understand being nervous in a tournament when lots of money is on the line. But nothing in you life changes if you win or lose more on the ladder.

Why do we get ladder anxiety?

In psychology, emotions (anxiety) are thought to come from automatic evaluations of consequences, called “appraisals”.

The problem with appraisals is just that - they are automatic. So - when evaluating the concept of ladder play, if the consequences of a "ladder loss" is uncertain in your brain, the appraisals are forced to make something up. For survival reasons, appraisals usually want to be on the safe side. This can result in an "appraisal of doom" - for instance when you think about a ladder loss as a potential disaster. It works the same way with public speeches or exams.

Secondly, we not only expect negative consequences of laddering, but also positive effects (winning and glory) and “cost” effects like exhaustion. All these expectations can combine to create high adrenaline activation before games - especially when you play rarely.

A final irrational factor affecting us, is misunderstanding what emotion you are experiencing - something humans do surprisingly often, especially in combination with adrenaline. We will address this below.

For most people, the combination of doom appraisals and adrenaline activation is probably what constitutes "ladder anxiety". The good news is that these effects are quite normal and quite fixable.

5.Meditate on your plan. Take thirty seconds before the game and close your eyes. Are you cannon rushing this game? Are you going to do early pressure or early defense? Make each decision before the game has begun and before the loading screen appears. If you have the game in your mind and your opponent doesn't you will own the playing field.

6.Imagine the game as a long term war. If you lose this battle that doesn't mean you've lost the war. The war is ongoing and your units are only meaningful in the way they contribute to that war, not in how they contribute to this battle. If they all die then they died for the cause. Think of the 'Surrender' button in the menu as a 'Retreat' button. You live on to fight another day. You can come back to this battlefield and win the day in the future.

Trap 3.I hate losing so much!- Get on the ladder today and lose 10 games. Do it on purpose. Throw endless waves of units away. Let the enemy straight into your base. Don't build defenses. Let them stomp you and have the win. Then, when they win, go and tell them they're the best player you've ever fought. If they make fun of you or call you names all the better. Tell them they're right. LOSE HARD. If they say 'You suck, faggot' say 'I sucked ten dicks today. Thank you sir, may I have another?'.

Crush Your Ego. You don't deserve to win until you can win without defining yourself based on how much you win.

On March 07 2020 23:29 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
The idea of ladder anxiety is pretty strange phenomenon that isn't experienced widespread anywhere else, whether in gaming or real life. There used to be loads of pseudo psychology posts about this phenomenon. It seems unique to SC2 for some reason. Other 1v1 sports like tennis or chess or other online games don't suffer this phenomenon. Is it simply a fear of losing when you should always have a 50% chance of losing? Or fear of losing MMR when you think you have been playing above your usual capabilties? But why would you care about your MMR instead of the skills to gain that MMR in the first place? In the first place for much of SC2, MMR was hidden anyways.

Perhaps that is what it is. The original ladder system of SC2 may have inadvertedly created ladder anxiety from being such a strange system that was supposedly created to psychologically motivate people to play with their system of bonus points. But instead did the opposite and created this odd phenomenon of ladder anxiety.

Or it may have been that there was only 6 leagues, whilst most games have a multiple of three or four as many, so the natural idea of constantly shifting leagues were never gained. Gaining or losing a league were viewed to be drastic changes in skill and selfworth perhaps. Adding to this was introduced that once a rank was gained it could then not be lost, which seemed to do nothing to combat ladder anxiety. As it is, SC2 eventually went to a more normal open system, and ladder anxiety seemed to be consigned to the past as a strange phenomenon.

Or perhaps it was that people who experienced ladder anxiety simply did not enjoy playing the game at all, but their ego, or online boasting does not allow them to lose MMR/league. And so they play 1 game every season, just to keep up appearances. In a way, that exactly what playing with targets do. It fools people who don't enjoy playing the game to force themselves to play by bypassing their concern of essentially doing another activity.

On March 07 2020 03:56 capacityex wrote:
sit ur self down and imagine sitting in a group and the guy/gal next to you says , ye i stopped playing due to ladder anxiety. Then realise these kinds of people may have a job looking after you, teaching you or may have some direct control over your life. christ.

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