The mental game

[DirtyACE7 514]

Dear unicums,

I desperately need your help.

WoT, as we all know, is a very mental game more than anything else and that aspect of my game is suffering. I seem to go on roller coaster streaks of being on and off. One day it's all good and I'm doing great and the next day I will have no idea what to do or where to go and essentially end up doing very little to a point that I end up playing like a player with yellow/green WN8. Then the day after that it will be all good again, my thoughts and decisions will be clear and I'll be playing like a purple no problem.

I currently have purple recents but this lack of day-to-day consistency just drives me crazy and I feel lucky to even have these stats.

Like this morning I sat down to play a bit on my newly acquired E50 and I just couldn't make the ends meet at all. It's like I haven't played in weeks or months. I don't know what to do at this point. I really hate myself for being on this almost constant roller coaster. I want to be more consistent and continue to grow as a player.

Have any of you experienced this sort of situation? Do you have any suggestions or tips/tricks to deal with lack of consistency and days when you feel like you're just banging your head against the wall?

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

Play mindfully, or not at all. Glib,  incomplete,  truth. 

[Strigonx 442]

my recents went down 800 points in between Dec 16 - Dec 31, sometimes you just need to take a break from all of the autism, pubbies will be pubbies and there is nothing you can do about it, either play strongholds with your clan or just take a long break, i stopped playing about a couple of weeks.

 

Sure some may say git gud carry harder, but does it really worth getting mad at the game?

[Rspctd 296]

I used to have days where nothing would work for me at all. Like you have a good streak on Tuesday and come Wednesday its just utter ass. I just stopped playing on certain days and took a little hiatus. Too much playing can cause you to either tilt or just get fatigued even if you don't "feel" like it. I suggest you take a break and play something else when that happens. 

Everything in mediation, don't try and force it. 

[DirtyACE7 514]

49 minutes ago, CraBeatOff said:

Play mindfully, or not at all. Glib,  incomplete,  truth.

 

Can you expand on this a bit?

[Super_Rybak 40]

Everyone has these days where he can't focus and doesn't play well. The best advice is, as CraBeatOff mentioned, to simply not play when you're in a bad mood.

It's the best to play for fun, not to get this third mark, not to grind the new tank, but just for fun. And if it isn't fun you should stop.

Alternatively you can try to relax and cheer yourself up by platooning, listening to your favorite music or drinking a beer. 

Good luck  

[Steel_Butt 4]

Hi mate,

I understand where you are coming from as I too find myself in this situation. I think a lot of players do, though perhaps some are not aware of it or will not readily admit to it. I personally think there are a number factors involved, typically:

• Overconfidence from your previous session, which in my case leads to overextending - a definite flaw of mine
• Tiredness, leading to poor decisions
• Lack of planning prior to battle commencement
• Your general mindset, which in my case can vary day to day, due to external factors 
• Idiot teams which leads to frustration in your gameplay so you become reactive not proactive
• And a lack of objective thinking

Basically, I have a number of approaches to dealing with this:

• Walk away for an hour or two, play another game, clean the house, whatever. You'll recommence with a different mindset.
• Clarify why I'm playing, establish my objectives.
• If I choose to stay and persevere, I will choose my favourite tanks only, and play with a definite goal in mind, say to grind credits or
• I'll stick to certain types of tanks for a few hours, say TD's for example, keeping my distance or
• Maybe just heavies, so I don't have to plan too much
• Or just stick to a certain tier

I think you need to clarify your goals every time you play, have clear absolute objectives and plan accordingly to achieve those objectives at every battle outset. Ask yourself, 'why am I playing?' and 'what do I want to achieve?'.

Works for me.

Regards

[DirtyACE7 514]

I completely understand your advice @Steel_Butt and that is essentially the blueprint I also try to use when I play but lately it's like I've been degenerating into a worse player because but can't maintain the same performances that I was capable of a couple weeks ago. I'm somehow off in a way. Even playing my favorite tanks doesn't allow me to play well. My objectives are always to do as well as possible which means put out as much damage as possible and win. To me that's a clear objective. No matter what tank I play I always strive to win but it feels like the harder I try, the worse I seem to do lately. It's like my mind is a blank when I play. I'm given the information but I don't know what to do with it.

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

On 1/4/2017 at 8:30 PM, DirtyACE7 said:

Can you expand on this a bit?

You just want to make sure you have a plan, a goal, for each session, and that your actions and your goals align. You don't want to become a Battle! button spamming monkey. You don't want to rage tilt trying to get a 3rd mark, you don't want to piss off platoonmates because you're suicide because you didn't read the tank line up. Engage your mind and senses fully and work on your game. 

[sr360 4,988]

1 minute ago, CraBeatOff said:

You just want to make sure you have a plan, a goal, for each session, and that your actions and your goals align. You don't want to become a Battle! button spamming monkey. You don't want to rage tilt trying to get a 3rd mark, you don't want to piss off platoonmates because you're suicide because you didn't read the tank line up. Engage your mind and senses fully and work on your game. 

Or just be zen.

[dualmaster333 3,324]

5 hours ago, CraBeatOff said:

You just want to make sure you have a plan, a goal, for each session, and that your actions and your goals align. You don't want to become a Battle! button spamming monkey. You don't want to rage tilt trying to get a 3rd mark, you don't want to piss off platoonmates because you're suicide because you didn't read the tank line up. Engage your mind and senses fully and work on your game. 

Hey that was me last week!

To give an example of what Crab is talking about: I recently spammed about 1k+ battles which were brain-off-grind-fast types of games. This came after a month or two of minimal play. So last week I decided to start being good at the game again. But when I started playing I was actually pretty garbage. I was doing retarded things, making pubbie-level moves, and generally being a bad player.

The first thing was to think about what specific stupid things I was doing. For example, I was poking at dumb times and taking completely unnecessary damage. So I focused on not poking stupidly for a series of games (not getting upset at the other dumb things I was doing). My brain fairly quickly retrained itself to get rid of that bad habit. Next I focused on paying attention to the minimap and the tanks around me. If I made it through a game and didn't tunnel vision while getting flanked, it was a successful game.

Pick something specific to work on and work on it until it becomes a habit. Then move on to the next thing. I find replay reviews to be particularly helpful for this. I can take my time going through the battle and ask "where did it go wrong? What dumb thing am I doing now?" Over time if I see a repeated pattern of stupidity then I can play a set of games focusing on eliminating that problem.

[Fulcrous 2,073]

On 2017-01-04 at 4:39 PM, CraBeatOff said:

Play mindfully, or not at all. Glib,  incomplete,  truth. 

Be shapeless, formless, like water.

[ANIALLATOR 81]

Basically what you are looking for is consistency. Unfortunately this can be a very inconsistent game a lot of the time no matter how good you are.

The number 1 rule is keep a cool head. This can be difficult when some arty shitlord ruins your streak at 94.92% on a gunmark (happened about 3234635424 times to me) but you need to understand and control the situation. If you get 3 total ebola games in a row stop playing if you really care about the results. Simply avoid those bad days and you problem is solved then and there. But if you really must carry on playing there are things you can do to help. If you usually listen to music while you play turn if off for a game or two. Tryharding over long periods is very difficult but if you try to be as focused and aware of everything for a battle or two the next ones will feel better when you are relaxing a bit with your fav music. 

Dont keep rapidly swapping between tanks after suicide in a game. Make yourself wait out the battle and be sure you understand exactly why you died. Was it an over extension? A bad prediction? Lack of info? 

Most of these shitty sessions can be boiled down to suicide by over playing and go fast to the next battle to repeat it. It doesnt get better the more you play.
Play smarter dont play harder. 
^ Learned that myself recently in something else^ 

[DirtyACE7 514]

8 hours ago, CraBeatOff said:

You just want to make sure you have a plan, a goal, for each session, and that your actions and your goals align. You don't want to become a Battle! button spamming monkey. You don't want to rage tilt trying to get a 3rd mark, you don't want to piss off platoonmates because you're suicide because you didn't read the tank line up. Engage your mind and senses fully and work on your game. 

Yes! I totally understand you. Quality over quantity. Approach each battle with substance instead of just going in brain dead and go through the motions. And I'm afraid this is kind of what I have been doing the last few days. I've become so frustrated that I would just keep going and going like a retarded energizer bunny.

2 hours ago, dualmaster333 said:

Hey that was me last week!

To give an example of what Crab is talking about: I recently spammed about 1k+ battles which were brain-off-grind-fast types of games. This came after a month or two of minimal play. So last week I decided to start being good at the game again. But when I started playing I was actually pretty garbage. I was doing retarded things, making pubbie-level moves, and generally being a bad player.

The first thing was to think about what specific stupid things I was doing. For example, I was poking at dumb times and taking completely unnecessary damage. So I focused on not poking stupidly for a series of games (not getting upset at the other dumb things I was doing). My brain fairly quickly retrained itself to get rid of that bad habit. Next I focused on paying attention to the minimap and the tanks around me. If I made it through a game and didn't tunnel vision while getting flanked, it was a successful game.

Pick something specific to work on and work on it until it becomes a habit. Then move on to the next thing. I find replay reviews to be particularly helpful for this. I can take my time going through the battle and ask "where did it go wrong? What dumb thing am I doing now?" Over time if I see a repeated pattern of stupidity then I can play a set of games focusing on eliminating that problem.

That's exactly what has been happening to me. Just making almost text-book mistakes, ones that I know not to make but still did, over and over and so for example I would often be the first tank to lose lots of hp and then having to play very conservatively the rest of the battle which just made it even more frustrating.

I found that I also have to retrain/re-educate myself and be more conscious of what I'm doing. It's amazing though how this game just forces you to always be on your toes. You really can't let up.

40 minutes ago, ANIALLATOR said:

Basically what you are looking for is consistency. Unfortunately this can be a very inconsistent game a lot of the time no matter how good you are.

The number 1 rule is keep a cool head. This can be difficult when some arty shitlord ruins your streak at 94.92% on a gunmark (happened about 3234635424 times to me) but you need to understand and control the situation. If you get 3 total ebola games in a row stop playing if you really care about the results. Simply avoid those bad days and you problem is solved then and there. But if you really must carry on playing there are things you can do to help. If you usually listen to music while you play turn if off for a game or two. Tryharding over long periods is very difficult but if you try to be as focused and aware of everything for a battle or two the next ones will feel better when you are relaxing a bit with your fav music. 

Dont keep rapidly swapping between tanks after suicide in a game. Make yourself wait out the battle and be sure you understand exactly why you died. Was it an over extension? A bad prediction? Lack of info? 

Most of these shitty sessions can be boiled down to suicide by over playing and go fast to the next battle to repeat it. It doesnt get better the more you play.
Play smarter dont play harder. 
^ Learned that myself recently in something else^ 

Yes! Consistency is exactly what I'm seeking! But as you have pointed out, it's something very difficult to find some days.

My biggest problem the last few days is that I often was not keeping a cool head which caused me not to think very clearly or thoroughly about my actions in battle. I would overextend or poke at the wrong time and of course after I would die I would instantly know that I shouldn't have done that and just made me more frustrated with myself. The other thing, like you pointed out, I have been jumping around too much from tank to tank. The weeks prior when I was doing well I would really focus on specific tank per session and my results were pretty consistent just from that alone. And again, it's quality of quantity. Better to have 10 really good games than 100 average/bad ones.

Thank you all for letting me hear your thoughts. I'm always striving to improve as a player and have done so pretty successfully over the rather small number of games. In all honesty I never thought that I would have been a purple recent at 6k games but now it is also so tempting to maintain this level that sometimes I really lose sight of what actually needs to be done to make it a reality.

It is extremely helpful to have an outside perspective on all this and that's exactly what I was looking for when I started this thread. Thank you guys

[Steel_Butt 4]

Ace, 

I looked at yr recent stats and the only thing that's slightly down is yr damage and as a consequence, yr WN8. I wonder what yr hit rate and pen rate has been lately? Other than that yr stats are on an upward trend.

So I believe it could be down to your perspective as much as anything. You're clearly getting better, as yr stats show. 

I agree with Dualmaster's wise words. Remember, there's no such thing as failure, only feedback!!

Over Xmas I noticed that a lot of games I played were hugely unpredictable, due to masses of noobs at all tiers. I couldn't do some of the things I normally would as the crazy noobs weren't behaving as I expected. My fault, obviously. I had to readjust my play to accommodate the wackiness. I also went back to basics as Dualmaster suggested.

Result? I felt more in control and my stats went up. I think consistent play is out of my control to a large degree. What I want and try to achieve is for myself to be consistent. Me, not my play style. 

Therefore, by being consistent in myself, having a flexible approach to my play style, remembering my basics, results should always improve. 

Well, that's the plan...... 

Cheers