EPTMaynarde’s guide to Ladder Anxiety
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feardragon
United States973 Posts
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Nakajin
Canada8989 Posts
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kinsky
Germany368 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
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ZugzwangSC
87 Posts
Fear Dragon, when will you stop with the self-deprecation in your sig-line, dude! You da man, man. | ||
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capacityex
27 Posts
User was warned for this post | ||
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Akio
Finland1838 Posts
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Durnuu
13322 Posts
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. Jesus, imagine being so dense | ||
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MockHamill
Sweden1798 Posts
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. | ||
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ThunderJunk
United States726 Posts
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. Exactly. Can't be Thanos if you don't know what it's like to lose. | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12129 Posts
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. Jeez, I never understood fear of spiders. you just go near them, pick them up and throw them out of the window! Or fear of hights. Ladder anxiety isn't rational. People have irrational fears, anxiety, w/e. Imagine some people have anxiety to talk to living people! Imagine that! So, back to the topic. Yes, they will lose MMR, they will lose points and generally speaking they will lose the will to play the game. Because of the "super uber pro" UI from WoL we lost to ladder anxiety pretty good number of players, that's the reason why w/r is so far hidden and why unranked was added. | ||
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sertman
United States540 Posts
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. Because losing sucks and feels really bad for some people and those with anxiety issues have their anxiety protecting them from those negative feelings (and eventually, the anxiety itself is avoided by not playing). You can't reason with anxiety so spelling it out logically isn't going to help. | ||
NonY
8751 Posts
In training for sports, there is usually a pattern of hard days and easy days. In running, for example, you need to get psyched up for a major workout only twice a week or so. The other 5 days are fairly easy running and low stress. But in esports, there's an expectation that you can be "on" all day, day after day, and it's a little ridiculous. Sure, you can practice all the time, and maybe a few very talented people can be very consistent during all that practice. But what happens for most people who practice a lot every day is a natural cycle of peak play followed by some periods of recuperation when performance dips. Learn to embrace that cycle, not get stressed out about it. Ride the peak as long as you can, but when you finally have an off-day, just grind it out and don't worry about it. Think of it positively, in the sense that once you're recovered you will be ready to play at your highest level again and your MMR has just dropped, so you will get to smash some games soon. If you think of it negatively, then your mind doesn't recover, it's too stressed, and you can have a long slump. But you do have to play through it, otherwise you will go from being overtrained to being rusty. So play through that slump but allow your mind to relax and not stress about it. It is a vital part of training. If you actually relax enough, you could get back to a state of flow in that same session and start playing your best! | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
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. partysnatcher's Psycho approach to ladder anxiety 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. chessiecat's Creating the Starcraft 2 Head-Space | ||
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Saechiis
Netherlands4989 Posts
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
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. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On March 07 2020 19:29 Saechiis wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmOXIG2pLCg Hahahahahaha | ||
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Jan1997
Norway671 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
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. that isn't experienced widespread anywhere else, whether in gaming or real life. Are you sure about that or are you just making an assertion? Personally I don’t have an issue with ladder anxiety, something different entirely, but it seems a pretty common issue. | ||
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tskarzyn
United States516 Posts
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. User was warned for this post haha this 1000%. How do they function in society. What economic and/or social cost do we pay for their lack of emotional control in their daily life. User was warned for this post. | ||
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Maynarde
Australia1286 Posts
Sick posts from NonY and Danglars for some good anxiety fighting tips. I see some people say they don't get what there is to be anxious about, unfortunately fear / anxiety is rarely rational and is incredibly hard to control. You can't just "logic" away the problem without fighting through that initial barrier and (hopefully through exposure to said fear) eventually overcome it. It's never simple. I find ladder anxiety a really cool topic for discussion and was more than happy to make a video on it. What concepts would you guys suggest for another one? Looking to make more, similar if not better quality. SC2 has a stigma of being too complicated and scary to play for regular modern PC gamers, even ones that play high level in other esports, and I'm looking to make more content that helps people try out ladder. Hopefully even only a small percentage become regular ladder grinders I see that as a mission success! | ||
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Ej_
47656 Posts
On March 08 2020 12:01 tskarzyn wrote: haha this 1000%. How do they function in society. What economic and/or social cost do we pay for their lack of emotional control in their daily life. Well I know I pay the cost of having to read comments like this, because TL still doesn't have ignore button | ||
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Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
On March 08 2020 05:44 Wombat_NI wrote: that isn't experienced widespread anywhere else, whether in gaming or real life. Are you sure about that or are you just making an assertion? Personally I don’t have an issue with ladder anxiety, something different entirely, but it seems a pretty common issue. I suspect Dota 2 has an even bigger problem with ladder anxiety than SC, and, as Danglars' post points out, the problem has a lot to do with uncertainty. Though SC is intense, I only have to worry about myself. Most of the anxiety from Dota 2 comes from your teammates. A huge percentage of your games can be ruined from the outset because you didn't get the position you wanted or your teammate didn't and feeds. You can learn from every loss in SC2, but you can win in Dota 2 and learn nothing. Also, I eat jalapenos straight out of the jar. I don't get why anybody finds them spicy. | ||
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RhumbaRonny
10 Posts
On March 07 2020 19:29 Saechiis wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmOXIG2pLCg This is great! haha | ||
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dbRic1203
Germany2655 Posts
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Mverdo
24 Posts
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. Ever heared of stage fright? | ||
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virpi
Germany3599 Posts
I overcame my ladder anxiety back in the day with the method Nony described. There'll always be good and bad days. Playing through the bad stretches is stressful in the beginning, but once your brain accepts that there can't be that great adrenaline rush of a win every time, it's time to tackle the game with a mindful attitude. For some people that's easier said than done. Some people get REALLY upset after some losses, because they're thinking that they are just plain bad and won't ever improve at the game, which leads into a downward spiral. They actually like playing, but the fear of facing adversity gets bigger than the will to actually just play the damn game. What also helped me was setting specific gameplay goals for each ladder session, like not getting supply blocked or having good creep spread. Focusing on specific builds also helps, because it becomes less random if you lose a game. 10000 games later, I'm way beyond ladder anxiety. I just play when I feel like playing. But overall, it's about that little voice in our heads. Taking a step back and evualating the shit this voice says can be very helpful in real life situations. Irrationality is a part of humans, as is anxiety. Some deal with it easily, others don't. Maynarde's video is a great contribution. You're the man. | ||
Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37066 Posts
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Nakajin
Canada8989 Posts
Hahahahaha Poor Artosis On the ladder anxiety thing, I think part of the oddness of the vocabulary come from the fact that psychologic language is a pretty novel thing, before we had people just saying the weren't competitive people, or that they choked under pressure, now it's phrase in a spychological way. But SC2 is particularly stressfull compare to other competitive game, the fact that it makes your particularly aware that you suck every 30 seconds probably dosen't help | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
What about it? There's a difference between an event important to your livelihood and career and playing a game. People feel anxious when they have to perform to an audience that can decide the fate of their career, and every performance is like an job interview in front of a massive audience. Feeling anxious for a job interview is not ladder anxiety. When I say real life I am talking about real life sports. Does football experience widespread fear of playing the game? Does this occur in tennis, table tennis, badminton, squash, various ,martial arts, or any number of sports that can be said to encampass 1v1? People feel anxious, but they aren't fearful of playing the game and don't resist playing the game for practice or recreation. There could be andrenaline effects and similar effects when competing, but there isn't the odd phenomenon of "ladder anxiety" where there is fear to play another game, to resist the urge of playing something fun with no consequences. Where videos and pages are written on tl on the idea that one can be fearful of playing SC2 a game with utterly no consequences and this phenomenon seems somewhat widespread among the hobbyist population. This idea is really strange if any of you play any other sports or games. No other game/sport seems to encounter the idea that one can be fearful of playing the game/sport itself. Perhaps it was that SC2 was hyped as the "first big esports" so people who didn't enjoy the game played it and rationalised not enjoying the game and so not wanting to play as ladder anxiety. Perhaps it was the initial lack of socialisation in SC2 with it the lack of chat rooms that borne ladder anxiety. I think it was the bizarre league and points based system that finally got removed sometime in LotV, because after that nobody really talked about ladder anxiety anymore. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On March 09 2020 21:48 Dangermousecatdog wrote: What about it? There's a difference between an event important to your livelihood and career and playing a game. People feel anxious when they have to perform to an audience that can decide the fate of their career, and every performance is like an job interview in front of a massive audience. Feeling anxious for a job interview is not ladder anxiety. When I say real life I am talking about real life sports. Does football experience widespread fear of playing the game? Does this occur in tennis, table tennis, badminton, squash, various ,martial arts, or any number of sports that can be said to encampass 1v1? People feel anxious, but they aren't fearful of playing the game and don't resist playing the game for practice or recreation. There could be andrenaline effects and similar effects when competing, but there isn't the odd phenomenon of "ladder anxiety" where there is fear to play another game, to resist the urge of playing something fun with no consequences. Where videos and pages are written on tl on the idea that one can be fearful of playing SC2 a game with utterly no consequences and this phenomenon seems somewhat widespread among the hobbyist population. This idea is really strange if any of you play any other sports or games. No other game/sport seems to encounter the idea that one can be fearful of playing the game/sport itself. Perhaps it was that SC2 was hyped as the "first big esports" so people who didn't enjoy the game played it and rationalised not enjoying the game and so not wanting to play as ladder anxiety. Perhaps it was the initial lack of socialisation in SC2 with it the lack of chat rooms that borne ladder anxiety. I think it was the bizarre league and points based system that finally got removed sometime in LotV, because after that nobody really talked about ladder anxiety anymore. Most people don’t experience stage fright, or anxiety over public speaking in any situation that actually has real long-term life consequences, it’s usually stuff that’s as meaningless as queuing that ladder. I can’t recruit my friend to expand from my current one-man band setup despite her having a music degree and being objectively better than me because she’s too anxious to play with people. From my days playing field hockey seriously there was a member of our club (and a much better player than I) who would routinely skip training because he didn’t like people watching him doing shooting drills. He was fine in a game environment for whatever reason, but didn’t like being scrutinised for his technique. I don’t see how this is particularly at all unique to SC2 in any way, maybe the difference is that the community actually talks about it. There’s probably innumerable people out there who were decent at chess in their youth but don’t play online for the exact kind of anxiety reasons we hear about here, we just don’t hear about them . | ||
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Mverdo
24 Posts
On March 09 2020 21:48 Dangermousecatdog wrote: What about it? There's a difference between an event important to your livelihood and career and playing a game. People feel anxious when they have to perform to an audience that can decide the fate of their career, and every performance is like an job interview in front of a massive audience. Feeling anxious for a job interview is not ladder anxiety. When I say real life I am talking about real life sports. Does football experience widespread fear of playing the game? Does this occur in tennis, table tennis, badminton, squash, various ,martial arts, or any number of sports that can be said to encampass 1v1? People feel anxious, but they aren't fearful of playing the game and don't resist playing the game for practice or recreation. There could be andrenaline effects and similar effects when competing, but there isn't the odd phenomenon of "ladder anxiety" where there is fear to play another game, to resist the urge of playing something fun with no consequences. Where videos and pages are written on tl on the idea that one can be fearful of playing SC2 a game with utterly no consequences and this phenomenon seems somewhat widespread among the hobbyist population. This idea is really strange if any of you play any other sports or games. No other game/sport seems to encounter the idea that one can be fearful of playing the game/sport itself. Perhaps it was that SC2 was hyped as the "first big esports" so people who didn't enjoy the game played it and rationalised not enjoying the game and so not wanting to play as ladder anxiety. Perhaps it was the initial lack of socialisation in SC2 with it the lack of chat rooms that borne ladder anxiety. I think it was the bizarre league and points based system that finally got removed sometime in LotV, because after that nobody really talked about ladder anxiety anymore. An example from tennis: http://www.globaltenniscoaching.com/public/Tennis_Psychology__How_Does_Anxiety_Negatively_Impact_Your_Tennis_Performance.cfm An example from chess: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/i-cant-play-chess-due-to-anxiety I found these in 30seconds by typing "tennis anxiety" and "chess anxiety" in google. From this I am inclined to conclude that it is a widespread phenomenon and not in any way restricted to Starcraft. | ||
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Maynarde
Australia1286 Posts
On March 10 2020 01:31 Mverdo wrote: An example from tennis: http://www.globaltenniscoaching.com/public/Tennis_Psychology__How_Does_Anxiety_Negatively_Impact_Your_Tennis_Performance.cfm An example from chess: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/i-cant-play-chess-due-to-anxiety I found these in 30seconds by typing "tennis anxiety" and "chess anxiety" in google. From this I am inclined to conclude that it is a widespread phenomenon and not in any way restricted to Starcraft. Definitely agree with you, this kind of anxiety is everywhere not just in SC / competitive games. Some people have it and some don't simple as that but they're the same KIND of anxiety and dealt with in a similar way. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
Reading the links, the Tennis is for transfering "their high performance levels from the practice field to the competitive arena", and the Chess one is for a guy who gets anxious during tournaments but has no problem practicing. Most people in the chess thread identifies it not as what we SC2 players would call ladder anxiety, but a different emotion altogether. In essence SC2 ladder is pure practice. None of those are the mindblowing fear that resists people from laddering. The idea that people could fear practicing is not widespread in their communities. For example the Chess forum seems baffled at the poster and most of the advice is simple platitudes about don't worry and play for the love of the game or identify it as social anxiety, whilst in SC2 writing that would be angrily told that it isn't that simple, the response would be to write pages to go through a thousand hoops to psychologically tricking yourself into something you don't want to do. | ||
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Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
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