[High Level Gameplay] - Laying a Solid Foundation & Increasing Consistency

[kolni 69,670,872]

This'll probably be the last thread I make regarding improvement, the game is about as milked out in content it can be. I decided to do it now because EU tier 10 is 3 arties every game so I don't really feel like I'm missing out by writing this up instead of playing. I'll also start off by saying that any question you might have (to me specifically) about anything game related when it comes to improvement, preventing tilt, getting out of a rut and so on all the way to tank/map specific things (opening positions, counters, timings, you name it) are things I will do my best to answer in this thread, if it isn't then ask it here and I'll answer to the best of my ability. It's also very little concrete advice here as the meta game gets trickier the higher you go, if you have any concrete questions to give the bones some meat then please do so.

I play this game with absolutely no regard for the outside economy as the account I'm using has 450million credits with almost as much in consumables and there is nothing to grind on the account, it's simply missing some premiums and rewards. I also have acceptable crews for almost everything, and if I don't I switch them out. I don't take outside factors into consideration in the game. I won't keep firing AP instead of APCR for some extra credits at the cost of performance. I give myself the best chance of having as good of a game possible before loading into battle, and if you care about performance then you should too. I am not in the normal position of a WoT player here, as these things really matter early on. A playstyle like this is sustained either through spending money on the game, or a heavy amount of skrims before hitting random battles to keep your economy positive throughout. 

This has very little to do with direct game performance but the economy in WoT is a foundation you should build solid as it'll help prevent the most basic problems for a tryhard mentality. Running out of credits has happened to many, many players before strongholds were a thing. Stronghold skirmishes also solves some of the issues for a good service record, if you want a good overall service record on a tank the crew needs to be good, all modules researched and the best ones mounted before loading into randoms altogether. Radios are debatable but to me it's a matter of principle, if it's better I will run it even if the cost/benefit of researching is incredibly low. 

Making purchases on sale, stocking up on rations and big kits and so on to the point where it will last you until the next opportunity to do the same is where you'll want to be at or further in your economy. If you can sustain buying all your consumables up front for the entire period when it's on sale and holding off on tanks if they'll be discounted in the foreseeable future, your monetary problems in the game go down by so much. It is a long road to set your economy up that way, as it requires a lot of grinding. You're going from being a customer of consumables and equipment to owning your own depot. If it didn't require a lot of work then everyone would be doing this in the real world too, but it really is the most sensible way of not running into monetary problems as it is one of the biggest issues regarding performance. Not in the performance today, but in your ability to perform in the future. 

I'm lucky enough to not have to play skirmishes or spend money on the game now. Premium time, clan boosts and personal reserves make for break even or better with discounted consumables in even the most credit hungry tanks (50B, SConq, E 50 etc) with acceptable performance on them. This is probably where the real thread starts but I felt like making note of how much your outside economy matters and how setting it up to supplement you in the future really makes a difference. I am at the end with no problems at all, all tanks bought, equipped and credits are in overflow to the point where I have my next 15k games already paid in advance. Not having problem with credits ever again is a really big thing. For most players seeking to improve however this'd translate to playing a lot of skirmishes, or buying it with real money. Regardless of what you choose, taking steps towards a more sound economic structure along the way is something I really recommend. Eliminating one of the core problems of having an outside economy (unsustainable costs) while still being able to reap the benefits (other people also have unsustainable costs, and as a result they will ultimately perform worse because of it). 

I think about my game in two ways. The battle I just loaded in to play on its own, and then all the battles I played and will play for the session. For the first, economy doesn't matter. For the second one it does. I'll go more into separating your gameplay into these two later, but it's important to remember through out. 

Time to start the topic for real:

I'll be answering the most commonly asked questions I get regarding improvement, consistency and on keeping an emotional distance and a professional mindset towards the game. I cannot stress this enough: Having a worker-attitude towards the game fixes a lot of anger management issues the game presents you with, but in doing so you'll start sucking out the fun as well. I enjoy the game enough (although in periods) that I still get enjoyment out of playing with a pro-active mindset to improve. This is where a lot of people fall short and it's totally understandable. An improving mindset is a really boring one. You are playing with an improving purpose, and not an enjoyment purpose. I'd say that I enjoy myself the most in a game where I just play and zone out until the game is over. Back in reality, basically a small escape from the real world for a while until you're forced to do whatever the real world requires of you. Thinking of your game in a similar way takes a lot of fun out of it, as being emotionally invested is an obstacle to overcome to reliable results. Luckily I am a competitive person, so I get my enjoyment out of good results, and many people are similar.

This means that you treat the game as you would an assignment from a school, employer or whatever. It already sounds a lot less fun. You are playing to improve. This means that every rambo-like feeling you get out of casually playing goes out the window just as fast as the aggressive emotions that many people already struggle with fighting off. You can't be emotionally invested either way, as your emotions will influence your decision making that you want to be as pure in logic and reason as they can.

Because of this, you'll want to distance yourself emotionally from the game just like a bad habit in real life. The boss forcing you on overtime means you suck it up even though you're pissed. You are mad because things aren't going the way you wanted and there's no easy fix for that. A worker mindset of adapting to it to the best of your ability and getting better at accepting whatever comes your way to get over it as soon as possible is the best way of dealing with it. This means that everything in the game that is out of your control is something not worth investing into emotionally. This includes everything from being XVM-yoloed, arty-whored or RNG putting a consecutive 4 shots at the edge of reticle. What exactly does an emotional investment get you here? Only fuel to a fire you already want to put out, your emotions are counterproductive right from the get go. This means that you have to let things like these go. They do nothing for improving your current game and only raise the tension for the games to come. 

Bad experiences from your current game should be left there, with anything positive to take from it should be at least considered. When sporting a working mindset you'll simply structure your gameplay in a way that you keep refining and re-evaluating your decisions and replace your bad tendencies with good ones. This is how I do it:

• Step 1. This is almost always initial deployment. Make up and decide where to go on the map on the spot after you've read the line-up and estimated the general deployment. Step 1 should at least have some benefits of going there, if it doesn't your step 1 is not good enough. This is everything from favourable terrain, free crossing shots, vision, tank advantage on flank and so on.
• How much damage is there going to be at step 1? - Try to answer. If you were right, focus on step 2. If you were wrong, think about why. Sometimes this is not taking slow mobility into account, or trading poorly too early etc. Personal misplay is an answer you are going to have to admit a lot of times here, 
• Step 2. What to do after the initial deployment period and the damage it gave. Step 2 and onward is more difficult to give advice on, as they differ much more from step 1 which will remain fairly similar until you decide on a different opening position. Something to consider here however is how aggressive it should be. I base my aggression on urgency. If there is plenty of damage to farm, there's no need to throw your own HP into the mix until you will start losing out on better situations without it or a better position.
• I think about step 2 as I'm doing step 1. Unlike step 1 it will vary a lot more depending on what is happening on the map, information is scarce early on so step 2 changes often. Having step 2 in place however makes for a pretermined decision to fall back on without any time loss. If step 1 yielded much then step 2 doesn't have to be as aggressive as I'm ahead of pace in my target damage zone. If step 1 yielded little then it'll have to be more aggressive as I now have to compensate. Overcompensating is easy however, and when doing so you need to recognise it as just that, and not teammates being bad. You don't get anything to learn out of your mistake if you blame it on somebody else.
• Step 3. Step 2 becomes the new step 1, and you think about step 3 the same way you did step 2. The only real difference is that more time has passed in game between them, so the urgency gets higher to hit your target game the longer you go. As you go further into the game the gameplay either ramps up in tempo or massively slows down depending on how the engagements went. A close game slows down, and recognising it as so will let you put the brakes and conserve your HP for enemy mistakes until the game is decided. A steamroll only ramps up in speed, so if you recognise it your need of staying ahead gets higher and higher with time so you adjust your aggression accordingly. 
• Step 4. Use your remaining HP to get as good of a game as possible. I wait with step 4 until the game is noticeably won or lost. Good micromanagement skills net you better games during steamrolls against you with an extra shot or two. When the game is decided, you don't spare any expenses. Survival rate is arbitrary, and I can't recall the last time I saw a good player wish he had a 10% higher survival rate instead of a full shot extra in DPG. If you have a lot of HP to use at this stage then using it to outdamage your teammates is a good idea. When the game is decided, your own HP isn't more valuable than the damage anymore. If the game is won/lost in a seemingly decisive manner, the damage is all that you can get out of it. So squeeze the last drops of it instead of throwing a Hail Mary for the win that virtually never happens anyway. From personal experience I've found that the risky play to win the game is less beneficial to actually winning than playing for the damage. The amount of times you're able to farm your way back into an even HP pool safely are more frequent than winning a lost game off of a Rambo mission.

A spot on the map generally takes 10-15 games for me to gauge if they're worthwhile or not, so this is quite a bit more of testing the waters than what people assume. The meta changes, so you can't have a fixed handbook for what to do on every map even if the initial deployment is similar. With it you find many solutions to the situation you're in right now, one you will be in later and eventually you come up with a solid enough answer to everything on that area of the map that you'll start consistently having good games throughout. The more the better honestly, but I generally play tanks with little to no armour, so my focus has is around having a good damage dealt/taken ratio. For people more seasoned in slower and armoured tanks this focus would be more on micromanagement and perfecting your initial deployment. Lower mobility means less ability to rotate, so getting better at prediction and foresight hold more value the lower mobility you have. 

I talked a bit about emotion and how it's an obstacle for improvement, but there's still more to it to add. Shifting blame. I do this myself and almost every streamer I watch do it too, because accepting blame is difficult. You won't get anything out of a mistake if you blame it on anyone but yourself. It really is a lot of excusing misplay with platitudes in WoT. Arty, XVM and so on screwed your game over for taking an aggressive position. A lot of people write these things off as arty just being arty when in reality they were overreaching. I had this problem a lot when translating from the 3k to 4k barrier. You need to take a breath, get some perspective and look at the situation again. Did you really die because of some BS or were you actually misplaying? If it's BS you can let go of it as those things really are out of your control sometimes, but you're doing yourself a disservice if you let a mistake to learn from go by unnoticed. It's important to hold yourself accountable for your gameplay and if you really do want to improve this is a barrier that is a must to get over or it'll hinder all learning past this point in a fairly cerebral game that requires an understanding of the game that is too complex to put into proper words. There's a fairly good reason most people plateau at some point, and while that plateau is lower in general I can say with certainty that close to every (already) unicum hit a wall because of this. You are fairly confident in considering yourself decent at the game at this point, and your ego is in your way of improvement more than anything else.

Tilting's also very common and I envy the very few who seem to be totally unaffected by it. A good mindset really helps here, as you'll see some of the few people who can live off of WoT content that have to keep playing for their income learnt this too. Most people do have the ability to quit whenever their anger gets the better of them, but when you are literally doing your job while playing you don't. Tilting ruins the rest of the session unless you untilt which is easier said than done, so you do whatever you can from preventing tilt from happening from the start. As I said earlier you really have to give up your emotional investment in both performance and outcome. It just doesn't yield anything positive from a performance perspective. Finding a way to un-tilt is good though if you insist on keeping the session going. For me the session ends whenever I notice myself being emotionally invested, both good and bad. If I load up, have a killer game and felt like I really enjoyed that game then that game is it. I had fun, although for a very short time, and then this session won't be a pro-active one forward if I decide to keep on playing anyway. It's important to separate the two, especially when they're so closely linked together for elitists (performance and fun go very hand in hand for me). If you want to learn then emotions can't get the better of you. If you are having fun while playing that's great, but you're also zoning in and going autopilot which is the biggest single detriment to improvement there is. Unlearning auto-pilot is something that would do every online PC gamer a favour in their gameplay by forcing them to re-learn actively (and onward) instead of only learning periodically and then sticking to what they know. You can obviously enjoy yourself while being a productive learner, but it's much, much harder than it looks. If you want to become better at the game you have to learn, and "having to do" something generally makes it a lot less fun even if it's with your goal in mind.

My ways of keeping my head straight when I had a bad game, am dead and waiting for my tank that are pretty simple and easy to do. They do the trick for me most of the time, and when they don't I simply quit the session and come back at it with fresh eyes later. I generally only play 1 tank at a time, so this works well for me since I have a game to wait out before my next one. I generally try and watch all my games until they are completed because there's more to take from them after dying.

• Timestamping - Track rotations and how long they take for other players. If you know how long a rotation takes you can estimate how much will happen in that timespan and how a situation will look when you get there. Just look at the timer at the start and then again when you have what you're looking for. If a rotation is 40-ish seconds, it is for example a perfect rotation for a BC25t after a clip. It matters more on autoloaders since you have a longer string of dead time without being able to deal damage. Knowing this in autoloaders make for much better predictability and an increase in effeciency. If your BC just went on reload and you see a rotation to make that could be good, you have the information on hand that you will be reloaded when getting there. You can deal damage right away. The time spent reloading was spent being useful because you rotated in a situation where you wouldn't deal any damage anyway. Track trading patterns too if you can. Some tanks are tricky to trade against because of their reload timers are off-sync compared to yours. Russian mediums for example can shoot 3 times at a Type 5 on reload before he's reloaded again. If you know this you know how hard you can pressure without risking taking HP back. If you are against a 5A in a russian medium however the reload is off-sync, as you'll be halfway through your third shell when he reloads his second. If he fires and pulls back there, you end up losing the trade at 980 to 640. This means that you don't really have a way to use your RoF as a means of engaging that 5A when there's cover involved. Find a different way or take the bad trade if there's no other way. This is where playing a single tank at a time starts benefitting as these things are much easier to keep track of comparing against the 1 gun (yours) than all tanks. You can do this for pretty much everything, but when playing tanks with higher alpha it matters as single shot trades get more beneficial. A JGPZ wins almost every 1 for 1 trade, so for it to take them makes more sense than a russian medium that will get outtraded.
• Backseat gaming. I do this to both streamers I watch and to team mates when I'm post mortem. It probably goes without saying that I don't actually tell them what I think, I just try to backseat them in my head to keep my thought process going to learn. You start noticing how big the gap is and how much skill expression there is in the game by doing this, as methodical decision making is so much easier to spot than someone auto-piloting. It's tricky because things don't play out like you want them to to check if you were right, but you can easily mess with ideas and try to emulate a reasonable outcome out of it. I've gotten everything from good openings (mostly from streamers though), to good counters and responses from random pubbies this way that I didn't think of. They probably didn't think of it either, but I saw it work out so I can make use of it. The biggest use of it is probably that I've identified a lot of bad choices and having been attentive during it you will end up avoiding a lot of mistakes you haven't made yet.
•  

WoT is a PvP game but I found that treating it as PvE makes more sense. One player and 14 bots against 15 bots make for a more sensible way of looking at performance which shifts the focus from a team effort to win, to a player effort in a numbers game. You are alone and your teammates are no good, now do your best anyway. 

Consistency needs a solid foundation to build on. and for me this is the general thought process of how I did it. It takes long, but eventually it adds up to being important. The step from 4k to 5k and above was the biggest leap in gameplay for me, and easily the most difficult to approach. The difference between it and the previous level of gameplay was mostly consistency. I'd say that an easy way to put it was that now my median and average game are similar. This wasn't true before, were my median game was almost always higher than my average because of a game here and there going pretty bad. What working through this did for me was raising my average game up to my median, simply having less bad games while the ratio of acceptable to great games stayed the same. 

This change isn't much more than 500 damage in tier 10s, but it still matters. For me it was the last bit to focus on in the game, and having experience with it - the improvement never ends. I see so many mistakes in my own play in hindsight that I'll keep working on to remove. To me the game isn't at its most competitive state right now, as a constant 3 arties make for much worse experiences in tier 10 where I generally reside so right now I can't say that my improvement has yielded very much recently, but it did lay the ground work for a better time to come. Consistency for example is the only reason I was able to 3mark the ISU-130. The tank on the EU server has 20 or so owners, with none of them playing actively. In attempting the mark over a year ago I just couldn't break past the 90 mark reliably. The damage requirement of a 3500 combined average was simply too high for me to keep with tank tank. I was the only one playing it until skill4ltu got his as well, so the EMA of the ISU-130 mark was set almost entirely by myself until then. We both wound up just waiting it out. The issue I had was with consistency yet again, as I was struggling with finding a way to get reliable damage out when your penetration is worst in tier. (It's a high DPM/alpha TD with okay gun handling and mobility, while having a non-existent gun arc and very low penetration for those of you who don't know of it). I eventually wound up getting it done, but after taking a very long break from it. Just like all of the challenging gun marks this game has to offer with their reward tanks the consistency is what breaks most players. Having to pressure the game for so much damage so reliably makes single mistakes ruin several hours of work, so you can't make mistakes at this level. A lot of players have been bashing their wall against the Chieftain mark lately, and it's because of the same thing. Consistency matters so much when you are basically forced to either have a good game or re-play your last 10 games getting back to where you were. That's what it did for me in the ISU at least, being more aware, having learned more and approaching the game from a PoV based in logic and reason rather than using your gut and autopilot made the push. 

There's plenty of small pointers here and there to improve your game, but IMO this is the big one that sets you up well. If you have the work ethic to keep learning, you'll become more consistent. Eventually more consistent starts meaning better.

 

 

[H4NI 138]

talking about streamers, who do you watch?

[kolni 69,670,872]

24 minutes ago, H4NI said:

talking about streamers, who do you watch?

Stanlock (RU), jaeckefa (EU), swift_m0ti0n aka barry (EU), Valheru (SEA) and Decha (EU) for good gameplay, jaeckefa plays with an aids aspect ratio but otherwise most of the streams are chill, i tend to mute and run my own music since i don't need mic commentary but Stanlock is VERY loud to watch, goddamn russians man

short of daki during his tryhards i don't watch or like the bigger wot streamers at all

[Haswell 2,399]

@Never Potential front page article here.

Do pardon me while I actually read this, even if I don't play the game anymore.

[zbran 51]

Fuck me that was long. But that is some seriously good content, thanks Kolni, excellent article. I'm with Haswell, someone needs to sticky this. I will probably read it a hundred times

[Enroh 293]

Nice read friend. 

[robosapieo 142]

Fun read even though I've been WoT-free for over a year. +1

[Xen 805]

Jesus Christ Kolni get a life

[_Steve 226]

Literally better written than all my papers

[kolni 69,670,872]

6 minutes ago, Xen said:

Jesus Christ Kolni get a life

i did, it was boring so i asked for a refund

[DirtyACE7 514]

5 hours ago, Kolni said:

Stanlock (RU), jaeckefa (EU), swift_m0ti0n aka barry (EU), Valheru (SEA) and Decha (EU) for good gameplay, jaeckefa plays with an aids aspect ratio but otherwise most of the streams are chill, i tend to mute and run my own music since i don't need mic commentary but Stanlock is VERY loud to watch, goddamn russians man

short of daki during his tryhards i don't watch or like the bigger wot streamers at all

I watch Stanlock too (native Russian speaker) but he is usually pretty calm and just plays his own music, although at times he'll go a bit ape-shit about something. I'd also suggest giving Geksi a watch, another RU streamer. He is someone who is more recent on the streamer scene and many don't know him but he is essentially going head-to-head with Stanlock for highest WN8 on RU server. Just an extremely talented player although can be a bit whiny at times when things are getting to him.

Overall, thank you so much for making this thread. Puts things into a bit more perspective for me and my own approach to playing. A fantastic read!

Also, as far as my own play. I notice a stark contrast between days when I’m totally even keel and days when something is just off. On those "even keel" days it's like I’m on neutral as far as emotions go. Neither positive nor negative. Almost like indifference but not quite. I guess this is what being “in the zone” feels like for me. Things come most naturally and effortlessly when I’m in that state and so I react logically and instinctively. My only issue to be able to re-create this kind of feeling every time I sit down to play. It’s my biggest downfall as a player.

[flare_phoenix 369]

Thanks for the read. 

[kolni 69,670,872]

4 hours ago, _Steve said:

Literally better written than all my papers

u dinshorobru ur legacy

[TheChang 186]

+1, thanks for the read. I miss this constructive and beneficial wotlabs, though I suppose it is as you wrote, practically everything to be said has been said. 

[WhatTheSkara 345]

Etnie also streams good gameplay (imo) and he doesn't say a word, only music.

Awesome read, worth an article imo.

[Never 7,711]

I added this as a featured article on WoTLabs. The link to it will appear pinned at the top of every page. Great article!

[DirtyACE7 514]

@Kolni how do you deal with continuous turbo loses? I’m currently going through this while grinding the tier 9 Chinese light. It’s really not happening on any other tank, just this one. Every time I sit down to play, I simply start getting crazy land-slide loses game after game. I can’t even break past 45% win rate (usually I win 60%+ of my games). It’s just so demoralizing playing this thing and trying your best but getting constantly crapped on by the teams. It’s like, I cannot be everywhere at once, I can only influence the one area where I’m at, one engagement. I can’t make the idiot heavies do more than one shot of damage or get that T95 to actually push instead of camping on the red line. How do you deal with this kind of stuff? Do you simply keep going and only focus on your own gameplay, regardless what the end result of the match is going to be?

[kolni 69,670,872]

2 hours ago, DirtyACE7 said:

@Kolni how do you deal with continuous turbo loses? I’m currently going through this while grinding the tier 9 Chinese light. It’s really not happening on any other tank, just this one. Every time I sit down to play, I simply start getting crazy land-slide loses game after game. I can’t even break past 45% win rate (usually I win 60%+ of my games). It’s just so demoralizing playing this thing and trying your best but getting constantly crapped on by the teams. It’s like, I cannot be everywhere at once, I can only influence the one area where I’m at, one engagement. I can’t make the idiot heavies do more than one shot of damage or get that T95 to actually push instead of camping on the red line. How do you deal with this kind of stuff? Do you simply keep going and only focus on your own gameplay, regardless what the end result of the match is going to be?

Short answer is that I don't. Every game is its own and I really stopped caring about winning/losing as a whole. It matters because winning/losing mean different things in the games state but short of that I really don't mind losing anymore. A winning mentality forces you onto meta tank picks that I personally don't enjoy. I'll play what I want to play, and I'll do my best playing it. If I wanted to win above all else right now I'd be playing nothing but Chieftain and T55, but since I don't I just came to terms with giving wins up to not have to be a meta slave. I like playing my E 50M, never stopped liking it and likely never will so I'll just roll with it. 

Map selection, tank selection and arty frequency has made it basically impossible to reliably carry games anymore though. More than ever are you at the mercy of your team when it comes to winning so looking at the bigger picture instead of your single string of games is a much better reflection of both you and the state of the game. 

Trying to win every game will cause you more frustration than doing your best every game. There's a distinct difference between them and I don't like saying it but winrate is a large coinflip at tier 9 and 10 these days. I have 4K DPG+ tier 9s sitting at 55% winrates with other arguably flat out worse tanks performing worse in every single other stat than winrate, but still are close to mid 80s. Winrate is getting less and less valuable as data regarding skill with every new patch that hits. That said you will almost always see 70s winrates on meta tanks from good players, it seems to be where winrate starts to heavily fall off if you'd look at the Chieftain Hall of Fame where most players lie somewhere between 68-72 around the top. So clearly you still have the ability to carry games, but with map and tank selection being a bigger factor than ever you won't be able to win as reliably unless you stick to OP of the month. I personally just said fuck it, a good game is where I played well and not one I won to me. Needless to say that I haven't captured the enemy base without the sole intention of either completing a campaign mission or the damage left not being available for me to farm. Sometimes I value a win over 300 damage, but most of the time I honestly don't.

When it comes to teammates you really have to understand that nobody will ever listen, do what you ask or even give the slightest nod in the right direction of what to do. They're all mouthbreathers. All 29 other players in your game are always mouthbreathers. Treat them as such and you'll stop expecting reasonable things like following up, shooting what you spot, advancing to the next engagement and so on from them. This is the most retarded and stubborn horse in history you've led to water but it's going to take more than sedating it and submerging its head to get it to drink. So don't bother. Adapt to your teammates and recognise what they are doing, capitalise on the good and adapt to the bad. If you can't push without them, and they aren't reacting then you can't push. Don't push. It's important not to overreach when the fighting settles and nothing is happening. The game state doesn't change if nothing happens, someone's going to get bored and do something eventually. Once they do the situation changes and you re-evaluate the situation with its new conditions. The exception here is when the game will end without anything happening, but then you have nothing to lose anyway so it's a sound idea even if it doesn't pan out.

[Haswell 2,399]

37 minutes ago, Kolni said:

When it comes to teammates you really have to understand that nobody will ever listen, do what you ask or even give the slightest nod in the right direction of what to do. They're all mouthbreathers. All 29 other players in your game are always mouthbreathers. Treat them as such and you'll stop expecting reasonable things like following up, shooting what you spot, advancing to the next engagement and so on from them.

Part of the reason why platoons tend to inflate win rates (but drag down DPG because damage is now shared) is not because you and your two buddies are unicum, but rather you'll only have to carry 12-13 shitters with the workload divided across your platoon instead of having to carry 14 other pubshit all by yourself.

Platoons win more by reducing the number of shitters on your team.

[kolni 69,670,872]

3 minutes ago, Haswell said:

Part of the reason why platoons tend to inflate win rates (but drag down DPG because damage is now shared) is not because you and your two buddies are unicum, but rather you'll only have to carry 12-13 shitters with the workload divided across your platoon instead of having to carry 14 other pubshit all by yourself.

Platoons win more by reducing the number of shitters on your team.

Platooning is like lowering a single player game difficulty to me. Sure, it gets more enjoyable from a casual experience but you are missing out from what the game has to offer. You wanna become better, not make things easier. Similar to smurfing in League there really isn't any value in it outside of enjoying having an easier time even if you aren't improving. 

Platoonerds suck  but actually noKappa

[DirtyACE7 514]

54 minutes ago, Kolni said:

Trying to win every game will cause you more frustration than doing your best every game. There's a distinct difference between them and I don't like saying it but winrate is a large coinflip at tier 9 and 10 these days.

That is definitely one of the causes of my frustration. A lot of times even if I personally have a good game but lose, I'm really unhappy because it feels like I put in all this effort and got nothing out of it because the other 14 neanderthals can't tell their asses from their elbows.

[Haswell 2,399]

6 hours ago, Kolni said:

Platooning is like lowering a single player game difficulty to me. Sure, it gets more enjoyable from a casual experience but you are missing out from what the game has to offer. You wanna become better, not make things easier. Similar to smurfing in League there really isn't any value in it outside of enjoying having an easier time even if you aren't improving. 

Platoonerds suck  but actually noKappa

Ah yes, I forgot you transcended beyond seeking pleasure in winning, but instead in self improvement instead.

Followup question: clearly you don't care about winning/losing anymore as long as you can improve yourself, but are there times where you miss the satisfaction of just winning? How do you resolve to completely ignore such pleasures?

[kolni 69,670,872]

50 minutes ago, Haswell said:

Ah yes, I forgot you transcended beyond seeking pleasure in winning, but instead in self improvement instead.

Followup question: clearly you don't care about winning/losing anymore as long as you can improve yourself, but are there times where you miss the satisfaction of just winning? How do you resolve to completely ignore such pleasures?

Short answer:

Yes. It was really easy to get satisfaction out of WoT in the beginning, but it got harder and harder. Winning ESL games and playing WoT in a proper competitive setting with casting scratched that same itch pretty well when there was some real life consequences of your performance. The pressure wasn't all good though, just as you got those same highs from winning organised games, as the losses beat you up worse than normal. After a bit of much needed insight I realised I wasn't really enjoying winning anymore, I was just addicted to it. I've always been. It wasn't actually WoT I liked either after a while, I just liked being good which is why I struggled so much with quitting. 

I don't get anywhere near as much fun out of anything competitive as I used to, as WoT's kinda done a number on me there. It's still very engaging though. I enjoy pushing myself instead because that's a source of feel-good that'll never run out as I really do enjoy noticing myself improve. The click moments are my pleasures. 

Long answer: (read short answer first though)

It's where you'll end up eventually after bashing your head trying to break a nuclear bunker wall that is WoT teammates. If you can focus on you rather than your team a lot of the frustration simply goes away. I'd still say I'm in the exact same boat as before though, just a healthier PoV on it. My wins are my games where I performed exceeded my expectations, and my losses where I didn't live up to my own standards. It's basically just a shift in perception on improvement. Shifting the focus onto you instead of the team as a whole makes it a lot easier to keep focus on what matters. If you really want to win above all else then you need to improve to get to that point. I personally don't think I will ever be satisfied in my own play however and that the grind only stops when I quit playing the game for good. It's a bit like working out in general, most people don't stop after they've achieved their goals but simply keep raising the bar to have something to strive towards.

I've spent way too much time playing WoT for a win to really give any real pleasure. I think I have around 60K games total which is a bit shy of 40 000 victory screens. Just like beer number 40 000, the intoxication it'll give you is a fraction of what it used to be.  I found that I got more pleasure out of a loss played well than a win handed to me, and I sort of reverse engineered into this type of thinking. I searched around and found that very many pros in basically any competitive setting were having the same way of thinking. League pros seem to care more about their week of practice than their stage games, and while it's ultimately not the final endgame (as world finals would be that), those are still very high stake games where your practice is supposed to get you a win because there winning is seemingly everything. It's not though. They still value good practice over winning.

If we'd look into chess too it'd be similar. If I was to play chess against a GM, that GM would be wasting his time. He gets nothing out of beating me, it's a win on his record but in reality it's a waste of time because there is absolutely nothing that he's going to take with him from our game. That's how a lot of champions eventually end up losing their throne, when the proactive development stops and the winning mentality comes back. Either you become washed up or you get back into it to take that throne back. Others will eventually catch up, and for some (lucky) people development comes naturally. If we'd look at my side of the board though, for every game we'd play I'll have something to take from them. If i want to become the best I'd have to. I could obviously just play someone my own level for a less one-sided game, and at first it'll seem easier to grasp the game from there. Kewei talked about throwing yourself straight into tier 10 and spamming games until you got good, and he's absolutely right in my opinion. My chess games with someone equal to my skill level would be more engaging, and someone below would be easier to win. But the games against the GM is where there's the most to learn.

My WoT process involved just as much unlearning as it did learning, as my habits from before past a certain point stopped being useful and just started getting in the way instead. Giving a flying fuck about how my teammates were performing was certainly one of them and the hardest to unlearn. In the beginning it' was probably minimap attention and taking the wrong things from it. It's a great way to increase your awareness to what's actually going on, but as you do you also start to notice everything else that isn't important too. At first it's all good as the side effects hasn't really shown themselves early on or even been noticed at all, until the side effects poses a bigger problem than the original rise in awareness was able to solve. I've been hammering away at this type of mindset in other games and IRL too, and while it's probably not something that works everyone it really does for me. The challenge of becoming the best WoT player was more attractive to me than any win would give me. Single good games giving you euphoric feelings and adrenaline rushes eventually turned into needing killer sessions to reach the same way of satisfaction from playing a game. Eventually those sessions got more common and so you kept upping the bar to keep chasing the dragon. It really isn't the same anymore though as winning stops being fun, at least for me, when you didn't challenge yourself or grew on the way there. The challenge is the only thing that really matters to me. The objective (winning) is just a hint in the right direction.

[WhatTheSkara 345]

So, I have a small but relevant (at least for me) question.

Let's suppose you're in a mid/top tier autoloading heavy like a Emil 2, fairly armoured and the gun is scary at close ranges, and no matter the map or mm nobody goes to fight for key positions (C1 on serene coast, middle on glacier, 0 line on steppes just to name a couple), you have top/mid tier mediums trying to brawl lower tier superheavies and systematically lose, leaving you and your team with little to nothing to work with.

What would you do?

 

Because that's what has happened to me in the past 3 days, all in said tank.

[mati_14 129]

21 hours ago, Kolni said:

Short answer:

Yes. It was really easy to get satisfaction out of WoT in the beginning, but it got harder and harder. Winning ESL games and playing WoT in a proper competitive setting with casting scratched that same itch pretty well when there was some real life consequences of your performance. The pressure wasn't all good though, just as you got those same highs from winning organised games, as the losses beat you up worse than normal. After a bit of much needed insight I realised I wasn't really enjoying winning anymore, I was just addicted to it. I've always been. It wasn't actually WoT I liked either after a while, I just liked being good which is why I struggled so much with quitting. 

I don't get anywhere near as much fun out of anything competitive as I used to, as WoT's kinda done a number on me there. It's still very engaging though. I enjoy pushing myself instead because that's a source of feel-good that'll never run out as I really do enjoy noticing myself improve. The click moments are my pleasures. 

Long answer: (read short answer first though)

 

  Hide contents

It's where you'll end up eventually after bashing your head trying to break a nuclear bunker wall that is WoT teammates. If you can focus on you rather than your team a lot of the frustration simply goes away. I'd still say I'm in the exact same boat as before though, just a healthier PoV on it. My wins are my games where I performed exceeded my expectations, and my losses where I didn't live up to my own standards. It's basically just a shift in perception on improvement. Shifting the focus onto you instead of the team as a whole makes it a lot easier to keep focus on what matters. If you really want to win above all else then you need to improve to get to that point. I personally don't think I will ever be satisfied in my own play however and that the grind only stops when I quit playing the game for good. It's a bit like working out in general, most people don't stop after they've achieved their goals but simply keep raising the bar to have something to strive towards.

I've spent way too much time playing WoT for a win to really give any real pleasure. I think I have around 60K games total which is a bit shy of 40 000 victory screens. Just like beer number 40 000, the intoxication it'll give you is a fraction of what it used to be.  I found that I got more pleasure out of a loss played well than a win handed to me, and I sort of reverse engineered into this type of thinking. I searched around and found that very many pros in basically any competitive setting were having the same way of thinking. League pros seem to care more about their week of practice than their stage games, and while it's ultimately not the final endgame (as world finals would be that), those are still very high stake games where your practice is supposed to get you a win because there winning is seemingly everything. It's not though. They still value good practice over winning.

If we'd look into chess too it'd be similar. If I was to play chess against a GM, that GM would be wasting his time. He gets nothing out of beating me, it's a win on his record but in reality it's a waste of time because there is absolutely nothing that he's going to take with him from our game. That's how a lot of champions eventually end up losing their throne, when the proactive development stops and the winning mentality comes back. Either you become washed up or you get back into it to take that throne back. Others will eventually catch up, and for some (lucky) people development comes naturally. If we'd look at my side of the board though, for every game we'd play I'll have something to take from them. If i want to become the best I'd have to. I could obviously just play someone my own level for a less one-sided game, and at first it'll seem easier to grasp the game from there. Kewei talked about throwing yourself straight into tier 10 and spamming games until you got good, and he's absolutely right in my opinion. My chess games with someone equal to my skill level would be more engaging, and someone below would be easier to win. But the games against the GM is where there's the most to learn.

My WoT process involved just as much unlearning as it did learning, as my habits from before past a certain point stopped being useful and just started getting in the way instead. Giving a flying fuck about how my teammates were performing was certainly one of them and the hardest to unlearn. In the beginning it' was probably minimap attention and taking the wrong things from it. It's a great way to increase your awareness to what's actually going on, but as you do you also start to notice everything else that isn't important too. At first it's all good as the side effects hasn't really shown themselves early on or even been noticed at all, until the side effects poses a bigger problem than the original rise in awareness was able to solve. I've been hammering away at this type of mindset in other games and IRL too, and while it's probably not something that works everyone it really does for me. The challenge of becoming the best WoT player was more attractive to me than any win would give me. Single good games giving you euphoric feelings and adrenaline rushes eventually turned into needing killer sessions to reach the same way of satisfaction from playing a game. Eventually those sessions got more common and so you kept upping the bar to keep chasing the dragon. It really isn't the same anymore though as winning stops being fun, at least for me, when you didn't challenge yourself or grew on the way there. The challenge is the only thing that really matters to me. The objective (winning) is just a hint in the right direction.

 

Holy fuck, reading your posts feels like somebody it's been digging inside my mind. I kinda get that feeling too, but in way where I can push myself really  far over the average as soon as I enjoy or have fun with something. It's been weird, particularly for uni, my career it's kinda small when it comes to the amount of people studying it. And most teachers have a really good impression of me but I haven't been able to keep up with consistent results when it comes to marks. I failed to approve some classes in my first years because I couldn't find the class interesting at all, and of them told me he was completely dissapointed about my results. At the same time another teacher told me to check out for opportunities to study in a foreign country(never did this lol) , because I was the kind of student a world class uni would be interested in.

When it comes to games/sports, I've always liked to pushed myself as far as I could when I really enjoyed something, I had this competitive mentality of trying to play against the best even if meant getting shit on a couple of times. Kolni completely has a point here. If you care about the things you can't control, you'll only get frustrated more and more over those things. I've even taken this into IRL stuff, and it seems to work out well for me most of the time. Maybe it's the reason behind why I can't care enough about politics, trends or social movements. Particularly in WoT, I even broke a phone because I got pissed off by arty. As I grew up, I realized I was getting better results when I was focusing on myself and myself only. When I had fun, when I wasn't pissed were the times where I managed to play as well as I was able to. Making mistakes never made mad, because I could get something from those mistakes.

Now I just play WoT when I feel I want to, and it feels much much better. Winning games became irrelevant for me too, even though I still get annoyed when I lose a game for not killing one tank because of a low roll or getting set on fire xd. I've been playing some other games too(LoL, HS, OW, HotS), and I've noticed a similar pattern. When I have more fun, I get better personal results because I can think clearly, without the tilting factor. The only thing that makes me sad when it comes to WoT, it's the feeling that if I would have played any other game, like CS:GO or LoL for this amount of years, I'd probably be around the top and maybe in a competetive scene. Obviously I've never put numbers as good as Kolni numbers in WoT, but good enough to be around the top 100-200 players overall in NA (being from Chile xd).

Now, what I'm looking into, it's taking this mentally to my important IRL stuff, even if I don't enjoy certaing stuff too much. Right now, I have to memorize a shitton of fossils, all of them with similar characteristics and small differences to identify one from another. I absolutely HATE memorizing things because you have to do it. It's not gonna have any other use than what I'll answer in my upcoming test(at least, not in a short period of time), and I can't help with this feeling of doing what I feel it's a waste of time and effort.

It feels kinda shocking to see the psychological implications behind climbing from mid to high level gameplay, and also how one single game has influenced my way of looking at things while I grew up.

EDIT: Sorry if I'm driving away from WoT but I feel like high performance in games or sports are strictly related to how flexible your personality and thought process is to the different situations you get put on.