EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/ladderfear/ladderdfear.jpg)
It's a term that's thrown about these forums more often that we would like. To some of us it's a foreign concept - 'lol who could get scared by laddering' - but to many members it's a real issue. I'm not a psychologist, I don't know why it's such a common issue to many gamers. But what I will say is that the cause is most likely varied across those experiencing it. As such, 'treatment' of this issue will likely be very personal.
Now I'm sure there are those of you reading this going 'lol Plexa that's bullshit, the 'treatment' for this is simply mass gaming' and well, you're half right. Mass gaming will cure people of this issue. However, by that point half the battle is already won. My guess is that people know that mass gaming will fix it, but they can't get themselves to mass game. Which, in my opinion, is fair enough. With this post I will share two things - my own struggle against ladder fear and the causes behind it and some things that people can use to try and overcome this problem.
My Encounter with Ladder Fear
Actually getting the courage to log onto battle.net for the first time was actually quite a struggle for me. When I first got Starcraft 1 there was the ominous "Multiplayer" satellite glaring at me every time I opened the game. Whatever, I was only interested in playing single player with all the cheat codes and occasionally LAN'ing with my brother via IPX (cmon, I was like 9 or something at the time). Occasionally I would accidentally hit the "log onto battle.net" button and the cold heartless wall of grey and orange looked into my soul.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/ladderfear/logonscreen.jpg)
Yeah, I was scared shitless by this screen.
So obviously, eventually I got over that and begun playing SC1. Over time I got better just by playing against friends and other people in Brood War NZL-1. I was even privileged to be taught by one of NZ's best players. There was a never ending stream of practice just via the people I met in channels, there was never any need to ladder to train at all.
After a few years I eventually got on to one of the ladder servers - namely PGTour. PGT was an awesome server and yeah, it was a little bit daunting seeing a channel full of little red D icons next to everyones name and a chat spammed full of "D LUNA MSG". I felt rather confident in my abilities but every season I could only muster 13-15 games. Every time I would game I would play far worst than when I did against my friends (sound familiar) and my heart would race everytime I played someone.
Looking back, it's easy to identify what was causing me to feel this way. It was expectation. The expectation I put on myself to perform and illustrate to people that I really was pretty good. For me it wasn't a fear of losing, I happily would lose 17+ games in a row against my teacher, but it was losing to inferior (or so I thought) players which caused it.
This issue struck me even when I didn't lose on the ladder. For instance, in the early seasons of iCCup I would go 10-1 in D and get into D+ and then stop playing. Why? Because my record was pretty good. Can't argue with a 90% winrate! If I played anymore I might ruin my record and consequently look bad. Irrational, I know, after all who is going to go and look up Plexa on the ladder see that I have a 40% winrate and then come and message me telling me I suck. But still, I felt that my friends/rivals would look at it and compare themselves to it and feel good about themselves.
For many seasons I sat there content in knowing that my friends got to C/C+/B- and hey, I could go toe to toe with them and get by on that. "Yeah, Im D+ but I'm evenly matched against C+ ranked players." Pretty pathetic, to be honest.
I don't know what exactly happened, but one day I decided that I wanted to mass game. Knowing my past perils, I decided not to do this on my main account. What I did was used my smurf to ladder. Why do this? It meant that I was no one. I wasn't Plexa, I was someone else. If someone looked me up they wouldn't know who I was. No one would care about this account and its performance because I was an unknown.
This got me past the first hurdle, I got to D+ relatively easily. But then some of my past fears crept back into my psyche. I forced myself to start spamming the channel trying to find a game as quick as possible after ending the next one. That way I could keep those voices to a minimum. Soon, the anxiety lessened and before long I was playing at the level that I expected of myself. With that, my true ladder rank came through. I was a C/C+ Protoss depending on whether it was during Korean hours or not!
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/ladderfear/iccup.jpg)
Fuck yeah!
Shortly after SC2 came out. And with ladder anxiety more of less under wraps, I got reasonably good. Not progamer good, but good enough. At shortly after release I was top 50 SEA and so on - I'm sure you don't want to hear more of that
. But yes, there are still times when I feel like I'm going backwards and I get all anxious and stop playing. But I've learned to overcome this now, because I have a smurf account on EU with no friends (except Naruto <3) which is used purely for gaming and getting myself back into the right mindset.I was too proud to ladder properly and that is the root of any ladder anxiety I encounter. This may or may not be true for you, but I think I've learned a thing or two about ways to combat this.
Ways to get over Ladder Fear
There was one massive thing that I had to accept before I could mass game and hence get over my ladder fear. That is...
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/ladderfear/gmna.jpg)
You are not like these people. You are going to lose, and you are going to lose a lot. You are not going to have a sick win/loss ratio and if you do, it is only temporary.
Yeah, it sounds like you already know that. But have you accepted it? Simply acknowledging it isn't enough. Without accepting it your heart will still desire it, but once you resign yourself to the fact that these winrates are impossible then you are on the road to overcoming ladder anxiety.
With that truth accepted, you should know that the only cure for ladder anxiety is to mass game. I believe it's called exposure therapy or something like that. The best way to cure this is by experiencing it first hand, if even only by small increments. Set yourself small goals - say to yourself that you will play 5 games today and then gradually increase the number (say by 3-4 games a week). This is a simple way to increase your tolerance to laddering.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/ladderfear/findmatch.jpg)
One tip that I picked up that isn't often mentioned, is that after you finish a game don't look at the score screen. Hit the button that takes you away from it (forgot what it is called T_T) and then hit "find match" as quickly as possible. This way the system has trapped you into your next game thereby forcing another game out of your. It doesn't give you any chance to over analyse or think about the next game which could psyche yourself out of playing the next match.
Perhaps this isn't enough, well then I would suggest that you purchase a smurf account. Don't add any friends and just use it to game. Maybe, like me, you are too proud to want to ladder on your main - so use a smurf to hide away from the rest of the world. When you feel that your skills are better then go back to ladder on your main. In my experience this is quite useful (I have 3 accounts!).
As a last resort, I would find one of my friends who is capable of mass gaming and see if they are interested in playing 2v2 with me. Don't treat this as an excuse to fuck around, but instead take it seriously. Try to become as competitive as you can with your team mate. If your friend is the party leader, then they will be able to make the next game happen removing the choice from you and allowing you to play more games.
Maybe these things don't/didn't work for you. Maybe you're reading this and have overcome ladder fear through another method - I encourage you to share your findings in this thread.
But remember this, there is only one way to truly relieve this condition - mass gaming. The problem is working out an effective method for you to begin mass gaming. Once you are able to devise a method to enable this, the anxiety will go away with time. And even if it resurfaces, then you will have ways to deal with it. I hope you got something out of this!
PlexaOn October 27 2011 19:24 Umpteen wrote:
I went through a patch of terrible ladder fear a while back. I would sit down with every intention of playing, and end up browsing TL, writing long posts or watching streams. It reached the point where I actually couldn't look Raynor in the face as the game booted without getting tense and anxious.
Unfortunately, mass gaming wasn't a viable solution. I only have time to play 2-3 games per day, 5-6 on rare occasions, not enough for brute-force desensitization. Instead, I had to sit myself down and devise a mental attitude that would enable me to Find those Games. I began by asking myself:
What am I getting out of pressing the button?
Why was I doing it? What was I trying to achieve?
As this was the first time I'd ever properly analysed my relationship with competitive games, it was a combined epiphany and facepalm to realise that I was doing what I always did, which was to unconsciously cast myself in the fantasy role of:
Ordinary Guy Who Turns Out To Be Amazing!
You know the deal. The Last Starfighter. Star Wars. Ender's Game. Obviously I wasn't literally imagining myself hitting 400apm in my first match, or in fact doing any of the things it actually takes to be good. But I was definitely imagining myself being gifted, a fast learner - quite the cosy little fantasy to put on the line when I hit that button.
I realised that if that were the only reason I could find to play, I might as well stop. The only way that could end was - I could see with hindsight - how my other abortive forays into games and sports had ended: frustration, resentment, and a lot of brooding where I would waste hours cooking up reasons why it wasn't my fault.
So I came up with a different reason to play:
SC2 was going to be the game that changed my relationship with games.
I was going to train myself to enjoy the process of learning, and to value improvment rather than attaining any particular ranking.
Next I considered the reactions I had to winning and losing:
When I won, I'd often stop playing, or watch the replay instead of queuing up another match.
This was easy to understand: I'd been anxious before the game and now it was over, and had ended well. I'd bet on black and it had come up - and now I was going to leave with my winnings rather than risk another spin. On the other hand:
When I lost, my instinctive urge would be to deliberately throw a string of games.
This confounded me at first. But then I saw echoes of it in posts by other people here on TL. They advised those experiencing ladder fear to 'play some 2v2s' or 'just mess about' or 'do crazy strats', because:
It's all about taking control.
Nobody can stop you insta-quitting, just as a strategy you expect to fail can only surprise you pleasantly. Fear of the Find Game button was plain old Fear of the Unknown, and I finally appreciated something else:
The ladder always does its best to maximise uncertainty.
That's what funneling you towards a 50/50 ratio means. Even if you're awful, like me, there's no escape, no emotional refuge to be found in fatalism, or mentally casting yourself as the underdog. The outcome of the next game will, for the majority of players, always be a coinflip. The only way out, I decided, was:
Take the outcome out of the equation and focus solely on self-improvement within each game.
There are plenty of guides here on TL telling you to pick some aspect of your play and practice it - maybe it's creep spread, or injections, or constantly building SCVs, or using your chronoboost. These guides are spot on; that's exactly the right way to improve. But for me, overcoming ladder fear meant making that improvement an end in itself.
Don't practice your creep spread because it'll help you win more games. Practice it because being better at spreading creep is cool. Practice constantly building SCVs and keeping your money low because it's a fun, challenging minigame, and it's great to have a massive army earlier than you used to. Scout and take watchtowers because, at the very least, knowing what's going to be killing you and when is more satisfying than having it arrive unannounced. And when that scouting knowledge allows you to make it a less thoroughly crushing defeat, or better yet a close-run thing, pat yourself on the back for a job well done.
Over the next few weeks, I was gradually able to train myself, both while playing and between sessions, to think about what I'm going to try and do better rather than brooding over what coulda/woulda/shoulda happened in individual games. I still like to watch winning replays rather more than I should, but to congratulate myself on a nice bit of scouting, well-saturated bases, timely upgrades and so on, rather than the outcome. And I still get the occasional twinge when I lose, the ghost of that urge to deliberately put my MMR in the toilet, but I'm able to greet it with a wry and knowing smile, like a childhood enemy whom I no longer fear.
I went through a patch of terrible ladder fear a while back. I would sit down with every intention of playing, and end up browsing TL, writing long posts or watching streams. It reached the point where I actually couldn't look Raynor in the face as the game booted without getting tense and anxious.
Unfortunately, mass gaming wasn't a viable solution. I only have time to play 2-3 games per day, 5-6 on rare occasions, not enough for brute-force desensitization. Instead, I had to sit myself down and devise a mental attitude that would enable me to Find those Games. I began by asking myself:
What am I getting out of pressing the button?
Why was I doing it? What was I trying to achieve?
As this was the first time I'd ever properly analysed my relationship with competitive games, it was a combined epiphany and facepalm to realise that I was doing what I always did, which was to unconsciously cast myself in the fantasy role of:
Ordinary Guy Who Turns Out To Be Amazing!
You know the deal. The Last Starfighter. Star Wars. Ender's Game. Obviously I wasn't literally imagining myself hitting 400apm in my first match, or in fact doing any of the things it actually takes to be good. But I was definitely imagining myself being gifted, a fast learner - quite the cosy little fantasy to put on the line when I hit that button.
I realised that if that were the only reason I could find to play, I might as well stop. The only way that could end was - I could see with hindsight - how my other abortive forays into games and sports had ended: frustration, resentment, and a lot of brooding where I would waste hours cooking up reasons why it wasn't my fault.
So I came up with a different reason to play:
SC2 was going to be the game that changed my relationship with games.
I was going to train myself to enjoy the process of learning, and to value improvment rather than attaining any particular ranking.
Next I considered the reactions I had to winning and losing:
When I won, I'd often stop playing, or watch the replay instead of queuing up another match.
This was easy to understand: I'd been anxious before the game and now it was over, and had ended well. I'd bet on black and it had come up - and now I was going to leave with my winnings rather than risk another spin. On the other hand:
When I lost, my instinctive urge would be to deliberately throw a string of games.
This confounded me at first. But then I saw echoes of it in posts by other people here on TL. They advised those experiencing ladder fear to 'play some 2v2s' or 'just mess about' or 'do crazy strats', because:
It's all about taking control.
Nobody can stop you insta-quitting, just as a strategy you expect to fail can only surprise you pleasantly. Fear of the Find Game button was plain old Fear of the Unknown, and I finally appreciated something else:
The ladder always does its best to maximise uncertainty.
That's what funneling you towards a 50/50 ratio means. Even if you're awful, like me, there's no escape, no emotional refuge to be found in fatalism, or mentally casting yourself as the underdog. The outcome of the next game will, for the majority of players, always be a coinflip. The only way out, I decided, was:
Take the outcome out of the equation and focus solely on self-improvement within each game.
There are plenty of guides here on TL telling you to pick some aspect of your play and practice it - maybe it's creep spread, or injections, or constantly building SCVs, or using your chronoboost. These guides are spot on; that's exactly the right way to improve. But for me, overcoming ladder fear meant making that improvement an end in itself.
Don't practice your creep spread because it'll help you win more games. Practice it because being better at spreading creep is cool. Practice constantly building SCVs and keeping your money low because it's a fun, challenging minigame, and it's great to have a massive army earlier than you used to. Scout and take watchtowers because, at the very least, knowing what's going to be killing you and when is more satisfying than having it arrive unannounced. And when that scouting knowledge allows you to make it a less thoroughly crushing defeat, or better yet a close-run thing, pat yourself on the back for a job well done.
Over the next few weeks, I was gradually able to train myself, both while playing and between sessions, to think about what I'm going to try and do better rather than brooding over what coulda/woulda/shoulda happened in individual games. I still like to watch winning replays rather more than I should, but to congratulate myself on a nice bit of scouting, well-saturated bases, timely upgrades and so on, rather than the outcome. And I still get the occasional twinge when I lose, the ghost of that urge to deliberately put my MMR in the toilet, but I'm able to greet it with a wry and knowing smile, like a childhood enemy whom I no longer fear.
I was lucky it only lasted about a week though after that I become a person that would talk for ten minutes between games to every person around and people would have to ask a few times before I would finally shut up and get in a game lol.
