You're in the Right League

I should really be in Diamond, but...

Have you ever found yourself thinking this?  Or have you ever heard another low-level player say this?

Sometimes people find themselves in the Top 8 of their league and wonder why it is that they haven't been promoted.  They look at their rank and think that they're so close to getting to that "next level" that they basically "are" at that next level.  If only 11/11s, deathballs, and Zerg remaxing weren't so OP...

It's an easy trap to fall into.  After all, it's only natural to look at your ladder ranking, see that you're in the top 8% of your league, and assume that you're close to promotion.  Just a few more points and you'll make it, right?

The problem with slipping into this mindset is that it takes your focus off of improving and puts it on the "reward" you get for improving: league membership.  Once you fall into this trap of thinking that you should be in league X, your progress becomes stagnant.  You'll start grinding out games, thinking that since you're so close, all you need is just a few more wins and you'll get there.  You'll stop watching replays, you'll stop focusing on fixing your failures, you'll lose to the same things you always do, you'll start to rage, and you'll start blaming broken game mechanics, imbalance, and overpowered units for your failures instead of the thing that's really failing: you.

Your league and rank are indicators of your win percentage weighed against the rest of the Starcraft player base.  If you're not moving up in your league, it's because you aren't winning as often as you need to be in order to get promoted.  As I've discussed before, you can get to Masters and beyond just by cheesing.  If your goal is just to get to Masters, then you can certainly change your map settings to cheese friendly maps and 11-11/sixpool/proxy gate all day.  However, a lot of players might not define someone who can only cheese as being good at the game, and just getting to Masters isn't a good enough goal for you (I'm assuming, since you're reading this blog :P)

At the end of the day, if you actively focus on improvement and then improve as a result, you will win more games.  If you win more games, you will ultimately move up through the Starcraft leagues.  If you focus on moving up through the leagues, rather than improvement, then you run a good chance of staying exactly where you are - or even getting worse as you get lost in the frustration of going nowhere.  So if you find yourself thinking that you're "owed" a promotion, just remember this: You are in the correct league based on your win percentage.  If your win percentage was higher than it is now, you'd already be in the league above your current one.  If you were constantly improving, your win percentage would be going up.  Ladder points are ultimately meaningless - you can have a 50% win percentage and be at the top of your league, but a 50% win percentage isn't going to push you any higher than you are now :)  Bottom line: You belong where you are, and you are where you belong.  Get better, and you will move up.

There is an (admittedly) cheesy quote from Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon that encapsulates this a bit.  "It is like a finger pointing away to the moon.  Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of that heavenly glory!"  The ladder leagues (Bronze, Silver, etc.) are fingers, pointing to the moon (being good at the game).  Focusing on the pointers will cause you to ignore what you need to get to the moon - constant improvement - and cause you to miss out on what you actually want - which is to get better at Starcraft.

A Quick Test and a Look at Emotions

When you get that pop-up in the middle of a game saying that your opponent is having connection issues, what goes through your head?

Do you take the moment to recalibrate, calculating your next few moves?  Are you bored?  Do you enter a zenlike calm?  Are you annoyed that your opponent's poor network connectivity is wasting your time?

Or do you sit anxiously with your mouse hovering over the "Kick" button, waiting for the counter to reach zero so that you can claim those sweet, sweet ladder points for yourself?

If you get excited when you see the "Waiting for Opponent" screen in the middle of your game, it's likely that you care more about winning than improving.  Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to win - after all, it's probably the driving force that makes you want to get better at Starcraft - but if you're getting more excited about gaining ladder points than correcting your play, you might find harder to improve as efficiently as you want.

I wrote before about changing your win conditions, which is about adopting your mentality to one where you psychologically reward yourself for succeeding at specific in-game goals rather than for obtaining a VICTORY! splash screen.  But in talking about classical win/loss conditions, you need to keep the following in mind:

You win the game if your in-game actions force the opponent to surrender.

Not if your opponent disconnects due to network issues.  Not if your opponent leaves mid-game.  And not if your opponent beats you, but decides to give you the ladder points by GGing out before you do.  It might feel good to see that green text and ++ points in your match history, but it isn't a real win and it isn't proof of improvement.

The proper response to a disconnecting opponent should be no different than any other game.  Evaluate how you performed against your win conditions, watch the replay, take notes, and approach the next game with a plan and a desire to do better.  It's hard to not get excited when you think you might get an easy "win", and at the end of the day it's okay to feel good about them so long as you continue to work towards improvement.  But you always need to keep an eye on your emotions at the end of each game.  Anger at a loss will keep you from being curious as to why you lost.  Elation at a win makes it easier to gloss over your errors.  It's possible that you'll never feel entirely neutral from  wins/losses, and again, that's fine - so long as you're able to look past your emotions in order to do the work that you need to do in order to get better.  If you can build up the willpower to do what you need to do regardless of how you feel, then you have a good shot at efficient improvement and more wins overall.

Your Opponents Make Mistakes

Watch your replays.  That's one of the most common pieces of advice that people give to those who want to improve at Starcraft.

And guess what?  It's really, really, really good advice.  It's very hard to determine the scope of your mistakes in the middle of the game - and often, especially at the lower levels, you might not even recognize that you've made a mistake until you're able to review the footage with a clear head.  Sure, you hear the voice telling you to construct/spawn/build additional pylons/overlords/supply depots, but how do you know when in your build you should have invested in additional supply?  How do you know how long you went without guys on gas, or injecting larva, or missing a chronoboost, or leaving a command center or production building naked?  Mistakes in scouting, resource management, supply management, build execution, all of these things become apparent under the magnifying glass that is the replay.

But an additional benefit to the replay is that you get to see the game through the eyes of your opponent as well!  Which means that in addition to every mistake that you made, you get to see every mistake that they made.  Sure, checking out what your opponents did right is important as far as teaching you how to scout for certain builds and timing attacks.  But seeing what your opponents did wrong, I think, provides you with several very important mental benefits.

Firstly, it puts your gameplay into the perspective of your opponents' mistakes.  Did you pull ahead because your opponent kept getting supply blocked?  Was your opponent not mining gas when he thought he was?  Did he move his army into a bad location, did he mess up his build, did he screw up with composition or a bad tech switch?

Once you identify your opponents' mistakes, you then need to ask yourself these two big questions:

1. Why didn't you know your opponent had screwed up?
2. Why didn't you capitalize on your opponent's mistake?

Now, it's possible that you didn't have a way of seeing the mistake in real-time.  Fog of war and a focus on your own game can make spotting those errors difficult.  But you need to at least *try* to spot them.  A lot of lower-level players have difficulties with scouting and map presence.  Scouting just means sending out an early worker to poke around the opponent's base until it's killed, followed by almost *nothing* for the rest of the game.

But...that's not to say that you couldn't have seen *any* evidence of a mistake.  If you scout the front of his base and his army is smaller than it should be, or if you scout his third and find that his CC/Nexus/Hatch is landing later than it should be, then you can recognize that it's a mistake and capitalize on it.  The problem is that you have to *actually scout it* in order to take advantage of it.  And reviewing your opponent's mistakes during replays can help you figure out not only what sorts of screw-ups are common, but what you can do in the future to actively detect those errors and duly punish them for it.

The second good reason to watch for your opponents' mistakes in replays is because it humanizes them.

The Internet has done incredible things for multiplayer gaming.  But think back to those days on the couch or at a LAN party where you got to hear and see your opponents regret a mistake in real-time.  Seeing that let you know that you weren't playing against robots or unstoppable killing machines ready to squash your every move.  No, you're playing against real people, guys and girls who are going to mess up just as many times as you are.  Yeah, that two-base all-in or strong timing attack might seem perfectly executed and impossible to beat...but if you look at your opponent's view while they were working up to it, you're going to find errors in their play.  It's because they're human, they're playing a difficult game, and there's the very real possibility that you're going to steamroll them before they can assemble their crushing attack.  They're facing the same agitations that you are, and are prone to the same mistakes...it's your job to not only minimize your own errors, but to pick apart your opponents' and capitalize on them.  And until you know how your opponents are messing up, you can't respond to them as appropriately and as efficiently as necessary.

And one final note - the exercise is not to rage about how OP a specific race or build is because they were able to win "even with all those mistakes".  It's to learn about how to spot your opponent's weaknesses and turn them against them.  Abandon winning for learning, and you will win.  Abandon rage for curiosity and you will find peace.  Or something like that ;)

Changing Your Win Conditions

So far, I've mostly been talking about how to figure out where you want to be as a player and what it means for you to be "good" at Starcraft.  Today, I want to discuss something a little bit different: how to (and why you should) change your "win condition" in order to improve.

Right now, your win condition is probably pretty simple.  If your opponent GGs out, or if you destroy all of his buildings, you win.  If you GG out, or if you lose all of your buildings, you lose.  Easy to understand and remember - after all, we've been learning about winning and losing since before grade school :)

Funnily enough, the thing that makes us want to improve - the feeling that we get when winning or knowing that we're good at something - can often get in the way of actually improving.  We get so focused on chasing that sensation, both in game and out of it, that when we fail to achieve it we tend to feel pretty miserable.  In something like Starcraft, that feeling tends to materialize as frustration, anger, or even rage, especially when expending a great effort just to lose or be completely steamrolled by an unexpected build or tactic.  The Enter-->gg-->Enter-->F10-->n combo is one of the bitterest pills to swallow, especially when you feel like you're working so hard to get better but not seeing any results.

At the end of the day, you can roughly assume that winning more often means that you're getting better at Starcraft.  But if you really want to improve certain aspects of your play and therefore get better and therefore win more games, then you need to make improving your win condition instead of your opponent's "gg".

As an example of what I mean, let me supply a comment I made on a Reddit thread a while back:

Make winning your goal, but make something else your focus.

For instance - right now, my focus is not getting supply blocked. Not because I think that's the biggest problem with my game, not because I think that it on its own is going to take me to the next league, but because getting supply blocked is the most stressful in-game thing that happens to me. Right now, not getting supply blocked is more interesting to me than winning or losing.

As a result, this is what happens to me at the end of my games:

"Wow, tough loss. Had him on the ropes multiple times, but made stupid decisions and...oh holy shit, only a 0:19 supply block! For a 45 minute game! Awwwww yissssss."

or

"Sniping thirds, sniping thirds, sniping thirds, big engage and...yeah that's right you GG out! Now let's...oh God, I spent 2:13 blocked? That's terrible, I really need to pay more attention to that."

Winning and losing have emotional components. Those emotional components drive the desire to be better. They also get in the way of improvement. The glow of victory keeps you from identifying and correcting your mistakes. The agony of defeat makes you miserable, bitter, and ruins your fun and your focus. Pick something that you have total control over - not getting supply blocked, a particular timing attack, scouting and appropriate reaction, etc. - and make that your victory/loss condition and see what happens.

By changing my win condition in my head to "not getting supply blocked", I'm able to focus on a specific, tangible thing that will make me a better player.  And because I'm so focused on me doing that one particular thing correctly, losing a game matters less to me than making sure I build supply depots when I need them (Not entirely, of course, but for the most part that holds true).

As a result of this change, I now spend less time supply blocked, which means I can put more units on the field, which means I'm in a much better position when either defending or attacking, which means I'm winning more games, which means I'm getting better.  In the meantime, I'm less frustrated about losses because 1) losing an individual game is less important than playing "correctly", and 2) I know exactly what I need to do in the next game (address supply block issue) to at least feel like I've done something better than I have been doing in the past.

Suggestion:  Pick a part of your gameplay that could use improvement.  Not getting supply blocked, constant worker/unit production, recognizing and reacting to your opponent's build while scouting, macroing during battles, etc.  Now, spend a few games focusing on that thing and only that thing.  If you win the game, great, doesn't matter.  If you lose the game, great, doesn't matter.  What matters is whether or not you met your new win condition, whatever it is.  After a while, "winning" becomes second nature, automatic, even, and you can pick a new win condition to improve upon.  But just so you know - there is no end to this cycle of improvement.  Even Boxer still has things to work on.

Does Being in Masters Make You Good?

In the last post, I mentioned that you need to define what "good" is before you can start pursuing it.  Now, when it comes to Starcraft, a lot of people might define "good" as being a Master League player, and it's not difficult to understand why.  Master League members are in the top ~2% of all Starcraft players, and the competition to get there is fierce.  Getting to Masters means that you have a very good innate understanding of how to consistently win against the other 98% of the Starcraft 2 playing population.  Builds are crisp, supply blocks are rare, scouting is clutch, micro is tight, and timing attacks are...well...timely.  Basically, the biggest fundamental errors that most Starcraft players will make are either non-existent, immediately corrected, or otherwise strongly mitigated in Master-level play.

For the most part, that all holds true.  What some people forget is that being in Masters literally means that you've won enough games (i.e. have a high enough MMR) for Battle.net to place you into the Master League.  Theoretically, you could be placed in the Master League if all of your opponents coincidentally surrender in the first five seconds of the game.  And let's not forget that players have been able to break into Masters (and beyond?) by cheesing and nothing else.  That's not to say that only bad players cheese.  It's not even to say that cheesing is bad (in fact, it helps make the game that much more dynamic and interesting to play).  What it does mean is that someone can place into Masters without necessarily having all of the breadth and depth of knowledge that most people would expect of them.

So why bring this up?  Well, because defining "good" as being in the Master League might not be the best way to drive your self-improvement.  Cheese and strong all-ins can push you up into the top tiers of 1v1, but they're a fairly one-dimensional approach to the game.  Conversely, being someone who never cheeses or all-ins can also be said to be taking a singleminded approach to Starcraft.  And at the end of the day, being in the Master League only means that you've won enough games to get there.  Focusing on the title of "Master" and the placement into the respective league is a good way to distract yourself from real improvement at the game, and can lead to things like ladder anxiety, league frustration, and misplaced focus - things which just make the game miserable to play.

In the future, I'll talk more about how focusing on a title as a signal for being "good" can get in the way of your improvement.  But for now, go back to your definition of good and try to see whether or not you're explicit about your goal.  Try to see if there's a way to technically achieve your goal in a way that you wouldn't define as a success (cheesing to Masters when you want to be a macro player, for instance) and then refine what you mean by "good".  It's a lot easier to get better at something if you know exactly what you want.

Defining "Good"

Starcraft is not a game for everyone.  It has a steep learning curve, it requires a ton of focus, and there's a strong emphasis on 1v1 play.  Because of this, losses can feel deeply personal and even rage-inducingly humiliating - to the point where it makes people just not want to play the game.  I even took a year off after losing to one too many Protoss deathballs/4gates.  But in the end, I just couldn't stay away.

A lot of the people who stick around - or who leave and come back - want to get better at the game.  They reach out to friends, clanmates, pros, YouTube, TeamLiquid, /r/starcraft, IMBABuilds, and as many resources as they can find to help them to be "good" at Starcraft.  And since you are currently reading a post on a site about the mental side of Starcraft and personal improvement, I think it's safe to say that you are one of those people.

The first step on this path, however, is not to learn some fancy build that you saw in the GSL, it's not to increase your APM, and it's not to track your MMR so that you know when to expect your next league promotion.  Heck, the first step doesn't even require you to open your game client or even be anywhere near a computer!

The first thing that you need to do in order to be "good" at Starcraft is to define what "good" means for you.  

Every player has a different definition of what it means to be good at Starcraft.  It's the reason that a Gold League player might look at a Master League player in awe, while the same Master League player feels like they're still "terrible".  It's the reason that you hear people arguing over whether consistency, tournament wins, or league rankings determine who the best players are.  It's why someone will accuse a player of being bad for cheesing, while someone else will accuse a player of being bad for losing to cheese.

If you want to be "good" at this game - and if you want to get better as efficiently as possible - you need to know what good means to you.  Different definitions lead to different approaches and foci.  Defining "good" leads to fewer distractions and periods of stagnation.  Knowing what your "good" is must be the first step on the path to getting there!

There's a lot more to be said about this topic in the future.  In fact, tomorrow's post will focus on the problem with defining "good" as being in the Master League or above.  But for today - think about what it means to you to be good at Starcraft and whether the way you approach the game is helping or hurting your progress towards your goal.

GET GOOD...at MINDCRAFT!

Welcome to Mindcraft, the first blog in the Get Good at Gaming series!

This site is devoted to exploring the mental side of improving at Starcraft 2, the real-time strategy sensation from Blizzard Entertainment!

In the upcoming entries, you'll find hints, tips, tricks, tactics, strategies, and thinking points to help you to take your game to the next level.  I'll be presenting advice from both professional and highly-ranked Starcraft players as well as research from learning, performance, and expertise psychology in order to help you improve your mental approach to the game.

Enjoy, leave questions and comments, and as always, GLHF!