RTS skill is a complex phenomenon. There exists great distance between world champions and casual enthusiasts--but everyone has their great days, average days and their worst days. Consider skill as a range from best [A game] to average [B game] to worst [C game].
Come! Let us seek to understand human performance, how to identify which level of performance we are representing in a given session. We will delve into comparisons of the ranges of skill between players and how rank does not always accurately represent the skill of a given live performance. We endeavor to make peace with our down days and appreciate our main weaknesses that we may better bolster them!
A game: You're on fire. Macro progression is crisp, you know how to spend you gas cleanly, quickly, efficiently. You remember to scout and fill vision. You read the opponent. You understand what the read means. You exploit the opponent, defending their aggression or using aggression to deal damage to them. Your plans work. Your match history is mostly green...but this doesn't happen every day.
A game performances occupy the top ~15% of your performances. Your A game now is better than your A game 1 year ago but could be made even stronger with expansion of game knowledge and refinement of mechanics. Enjoy A game when it manifests and slay many foes. Crush them underfoot and hear the lamentations of their armies. Fire mightly lasers upon thy enemy, o Protoss! Rend their flesh and metal with tooth and claw, dear Swarm! Reign flame and bomb in, on and around their house, mighty Terran! Obliterate! Decimate! Annihilate!
B game: You're awake and feeling fine, though not especially alert. You feel warmed up and engaged but miss some of your less practiced techniques. You might forget a scouting read yet still sustain worker production. Perhaps a slight supply block and resource float delays your progression. Derp--forgot to sieze watchtower vision but your army is of a decent size. Your ladder sessions are close to break-even, with similar amounts of wins and losses: the grind which puts our rank near where it started.
B game performances constitute the middle ~70% of your performances. You make a fair number of identifiable errors but few unusual silly blunders. You feel neither great nor terrible about how you are doing and it can be difficult to see immediate progress. Appreciate the small victories over the course of the session--the satisfaction of defending a huge attack or minimizing losses when faced with aggression. Spreading creep, taking expansions, spending chronoboost, hitting scans and mules, running upgrades, teching up. An hour spent playing RTS is great cognitive exercise. Think of finding a nice training pace when on your B game as a marathon runner finds their stride: progress faster than walking but slower than full sprint--just enough to cover ground quickly and efficiently. Get games in, know what you're actively working on, let the ladder reveal which strategies are killing you.
C game: You're off balance within minutes of the start of the game. Your gas timing is late. Your face itches and your housemates are making lots of noise. A cat jumps on the desk and blocks your view of the minimap. Lag spike and you realize you're hungry. Maybe eat the cat? No, eat the opponent. It's a cheese! You can hold this one. Wow--amazing misclick! You've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory...to an opponent 2 leagues below you. You go on a 5 game losing streak. ...6, 7, 8...12, 13, 14 consecutive losses. Nothing seems to be working out for you. Opponents set you off balance and by the time you regain balance their big push has arrived. The maps seem unfamiliar, dark, dangerous. You doubt whether you are improving at all.
C game performances with their fat stinky butts occupy the bottom 15% of your performances. You can hardly believe that they're YOUR performances because they reek of failure and mishap. You wish you could play better but just aren't strategically and emotionally focused on the game. Have courage, fellow strategists! Each of us experiences C game on a frequent basis. Some nights we don't sleep well, our meal schedule is off, we didn't get coffee, we're tired from real world obligations or just generally in a pissy mood. Life happens, bad days happen, bad RTS sessions happen. Make peace with C game, and identify it quickly when it rears its stinky rear. Simplify your goals! Just try and do one or two things each game independent of taking victories. Hit 1 overlord scout or scan or hallucinated phoenix scout and call it a moral victory. 'If I don't get supply blocked in the first 6 minutes, I win' is a reasonable, productive criteria for moral victory in a given session on the longer path of mastery. 'I will spread as much creep as possible' is another simple, achievable goal even on C game. Expect a slight dip in rank if you play ladder on your main server and account, or maybe play on a different server for slightly easier opponents, or teamgames. Endure! Pay attention to the errors unique to C game, for they represent the least trained aspects of your play. Maybe spend a couple minutes browsing some losses you weren't totally sure about to get a better feel for what you're up against and what you're doing wrong. Make a deliberate effort to articulate your personal errors but do not get down on yourself. Stay calm, stay collected, keep it classy. Let the opponents savor their victories, you'll get yours in time.
Comparing Ranges of Skill
Now consider comparisons between two players who each have distributions of skill.
Take 2 players whose distributions do not overlap--a WCS Champion and a top 25 Master player. Even when the WCS Champion plays their C- game, it will be stronger than the Master league performer's A+ game. This is primarily a reflection of the Champion's much larger training volume.
Take 2 players whose distributions overlap--the top 25 Master player and a top 8 diamond player Let the top 25 Master player put on a top 8 master performance on their A game and a top diamond performance on their C game and The top 8 diamond player puts on a mid masters performance on their A game and a low diamond performance on their C game
Based on the relationship between these two players, if the top 8 diamond player puts on an A game performance and the top 25 master player puts on a C game performance, the diamond player is representing better performance. Should the top 25 master player get upset about losing to a player with a diamond portrait border? Absolutely not! They should rush to articulate their main errors which allowed the opponent to take the victory, know the necessary adjustments or corrections, and move on to the next game.
Consider the presence and prevalence of smurfs (players stronger than their rank suggests) and boosts (players weaker than their rank suggests). While the top 25 master player could play a series of placement matches on another server and represent a platinum portrait border, they would still be representing the top diamond->top master skill range. If the top 8 diamond player was boosted to Grandmaster and played ladder games, they would still be representing the low diamond->mid masters skill range.
So how should we think about skill? Given that it seems to manifest as a distribution from our best to our worst and the spectrum of permutations between, we cannot make hard assumptions about how well a player will perform in a given match or tournament. We cannot strictly plan ahead for when we want to leverage A or B game, we can only take care of our health to reduce the frequency and duration of C game performances, but some C game sessions are unavoidable and part of the journey. No two players have precisely equal distributions of skill--we are all unique in what we have learned and trained. Teach those with less game knowledge, learn from those with more game knowledge, don't get too fixated on rank and embrace the swings of winning and losing. See the daily value of exercising human cognition in the space of RTS. See the longer path of mastery and be curious as to where it leads. Express your skill, study your losses, refine your methods, expand your understanding and keep fighting!
This is something that I found out to be really important to know when dealing with ladder anxiety. We tend to think of our skill based on the A game performance, but forget that 90% of the time we aren't able to reach the focused state of mind it needs to play that well, which leads to thinking "I should be in X league even though I'm not"
What if your skill lies in different aspect of the game: ie marco vs. micro, builds vs. initiation, p vs. z vs. t, that's like 8 more variables to add to the skill equation!
On February 26 2015 18:49 My_Fake_Plastic_Luv wrote: What if your skill lies in different aspect of the game: ie marco vs. micro, builds vs. initiation, p vs. z vs. t, that's like 8 more variables to add to the skill equation!
Also map, game length, crisis management, split second decision making... I think the list is far longer.
On February 26 2015 18:23 ShulamD wrote: This is something that I found out to be really important to know when dealing with ladder anxiety. We tend to think of our skill based on the A game performance, but forget that 90% of the time we aren't able to reach the focused state of mind it needs to play that well, which leads to thinking "I should be in X league even though I'm not"
I have this problem -.-. 1000000times I was 100supply ahead in midgame and losing because I dont scout midgame and thinking that my opponent play like A Game as me. ZvZ is the exception, basically zero difference between master and silver at macro. a silver player can reach 130/200 at 10min and 200/200 roaches at 12:30min. Z players where dont have great macro, tend to go muta play.
for me I have always C game performance when I haven't played for a few days and then start a ladder game, but after playing a few hours straight I can reach my A performance most of the time. .
LOL my A game is more like 5% of the time, B game at 75%, and C game at the 20%.
During WoL I was hovering between the silver/gold league (promotions and demotions can be horrible for your game state) and most games against gold leaguers would be at a 30% win rate. One game I was stacked against a platinum player (the first time ever) and I told myself to focus as much as possible to win.
It was the most gruelling game I have ever played. I had single units lying idle across the entire map; harassment squads left unattended that eventually got thwarted; and dreaded idle workers after a completely mined out base.
It was also the best game I have ever played. I picked up idle army and regrouped as fast as possible; harassed non-stop even if it failed; and managed to never be supply blocked even though my workers were idle.
I eeked out a win on that game because I forced myself into the A game. I have never ever gotten to that level again, but it was the greatest feeling ever.
The only difference between anyone playing at their A, B, and C is their mindset.
When I was really focused on SC2, I'd say I played my A game 80% of the time. Anything less than that meant a loss with my playstyle and against my opponents. If your not playing at the top of your game most of the time, then you need to work on your mindset. You should spend more time training your mind more than playing SC2. That is the heart of sports psychology.
If you think you are beaten, you are If you think you dare not, you don't, If you'd like to win, but you think you can't It is almost certain you won't.
If you think you'll lose, you've lost For out of the world you'll find, Success begins with a fellow's will It's all in the state of mind.
Life's battles don't always go To the stronger or faster man, But sooner or later the man who wins Is the man who thinks he can.
The only difference between anyone playing at their A, B, and C is their mindset.
Absolutely not the case, in my experience.
If you assert that it is mindset, and that you can improve that and get that Agame performance - I'm all ears if you can explain it in detail
If you have confidence and want to win, you will most likely play at your A game performance - the max that you at your current skill level can play at. If you have no confidence, you'll be pushed around and most likely lose. Like Soulkey for example.\
Before I got my Plat promotion, I lost to every single Plat player I went up against through supply blocks, bad injects, and generally terrible play because I felt inferior. My "C game" you could call it. But once I reached Plat, I started to believe I was meant to be in the league and won ~65% of my matches afterwards.
On February 26 2015 18:23 ShulamD wrote: This is something that I found out to be really important to know when dealing with ladder anxiety. We tend to think of our skill based on the A game performance, but forget that 90% of the time we aren't able to reach the focused state of mind it needs to play that well, which leads to thinking "I should be in X league even though I'm not"
Tons of people will assume they are only their A and B game sometimes only their A game in severe ego cases. Any C game performance will get shrugged of as bad luck or "could have played better".
Your primary focus should be on making your C game as strong as possible. This is common poker knowledge. You will lose shit tons of money/elo if your C game is weak even if your A game is the best in the world.
These phases are dead on. I've felt all of them at one point or another.
I remember one game where I macroed perfectly from muta-ling to 3-5 ultras and completely crushed a guy a league above me. That was back in WOL and for some reason I still remember that game.
I also recall another time I went on a 19 game losing streak. I'm trying to purge that from my memory.
Your primary focus should be on making your C game as strong as possible. This is common poker knowledge. You will lose shit tons of money/elo if your C game is weak even if your A game is the best in the world.
Wait, why should this be your focus? I can understand in poker from a loss-aversion point of view, but I don't fully understand.
The only difference between anyone playing at their A, B, and C is their mindset.
Absolutely not the case, in my experience.
If you assert that it is mindset, and that you can improve that and get that Agame performance - I'm all ears if you can explain it in detail
Just think about the times you played your best, envision it. Then think about the times you played your worst. What was the difference? Unless you were obviously physically tired or physically ill when you played your worst, it was all in your head.
This a great quote from NaDa: "Whether you make it or not depends mostly on the personal battle within yourself."
Do you believe in yourself? Do you actually believe you can beat a grandmaster? There is a huge difference between thinking you might win, and knowing you can win. There is a difference between being in the zone, and being distracted.
You have to control these things. You have to control yourself, you've got to win that personal battle within yourself. That's the only way you'll know you'll be on your A-game. And that will be the difference between winning and losing when it matters.
You become a champion in your own mind long before you do in reality. Now not everyone with that mindset becomes a champion, but no one without that mindset has ever become a champion. No one becomes one by accident. That's why you see fighters step into the ring with the attitude that they are the champion already. And those are the guys who become champions.
Conor McGregor has good advice, and is fighting Jose Aldo for the title in July:
But to explain this in more detail? Read Mind Gym.
I mostly find myself playing my B game as real life and other responsibilities get in the way of me putting in the time and focus to improve my game. A year ago I had time to play 5 hours every day and I was well on my way to Masters, now I have plateaued in Platinum and without more practice I doubt I would be able to reach my "then" A game again. My point is that my B game now is actually my A game, I can't compare my play a year ago to my average play now. It is a mental state absolutely, knowing you're limits and what you are capable of also takes away allot of that ladder anxiety.
If you have confidence and want to win, you will most likely play at your A game performance - the max that you at your current skill level can play at.
That isn't possible. You can not be at peak physical and mental alertness and have the required energy and focus to play at your highest level every time you sit down. What we want to do though - as players and as competitive people by nature is to identify what sort of behaviors in our lives can help facilitate this A game frame of mind and body. I play better when I frequently take breaks to calm down, don't play hungry, drink a lot of water, walk around, and fulfill other necessary chores. I play MUCH better when I accept a loss quickly and understand why it happened, rather than calling it "bullshit."