Psychology behind the game

Suddenly you start playing. You have 10 games to prove yourself – to prove that you are better than the elo you are at. Now some Summoners recieve the blessing of Lady Luck and manage to win all those games, leaving the bitter part of the player base and trying to learn more and more on their path to victory.

However, many of these players become proud of themselves to fast. They remain stuck in either their thinking or the way they play. They enter a phase of what i shall call here the „ego hell“, where judgement clouds their mind. It would be a good thing, if that judgement wasn't full of prejudices. They assume everyone around them is bad, that every mistake that happens is gamebreaking and they report everyone for everything.

With time they might drop in elo, or simply never improve. Some manage to grow a high value of elo – even with this mindset – however remain there as non-teamplaying players. I have met several high elo rated players just to realize how actually bad they truly are. In other words, some players happen to get carried – way to many games – including enemy disconnects, afks, trolls or their very own amazing team-m8's.

One way or the other everyone experiences this „ego hell“ phase. Some recognize it sooner, some later, and some never. Those that never really get to understand it are mostly the same people who keep the term „elo hell“ themselves alive as well. But we'll leave that term for another article. Let us focus on the mindset of becoming the „good guy“ here.

First of all lets get rid of the elo assumption here – we are talking about the mindset of the good player – elo in its essence has a lot to do with luck. We all know several good, some even pro players who do not have an „uber-high“ value of elo but can still turn you into pieces of dust. LoL is a teamgame, a moba game.

Moba games were never meant to be played as a solo player – this is just for attracting people, getting them to understand the game mechanics and testing out stuff. In LoL we know this as „Normal“ games. Ranked games however, are those that make you competitive, get you addicted and force you to become better.

Some people never get to ask themselves – do i just like playing this game or do i want to set the records in it, create valuable moments? Pretty much everyone drives the bicycle– however not every one of them wants to get competitive or be on ladders about them driving it. Yet, with games it seems to be different.

The main reason is that noone sees you actually playing it, noone knows that you're playing good or bad, trolling or being a teamplayer. The only thing that is being kept track of is your nickname. Maybe we'd have an overall better community and player base if this wasn't the case. But then again, we all love those crazy nicknames we represent, don't we? However, some seem to see it as an easy way to be immature.

So, with such a crazy high value of players playing the ranked, „competitive“ version of the solo player setting, it can get hard to raise elo and get recognized. I agree that indeed a certain value of elo can represent certain skills you can assume about someone – however thinking that only 2300 elo is the „good“ one is a sad state of mind. Look at me again, talking about elo – as said, this will be the topic of another article, but it's kinda difficult to talk about the player mindset without mentioning it.

Ok, let us then assume that we are willing to become a good player, get competitive and find eventually a team to play with. How high do we value solo queue playing then? In other words, when do we stop trying to get better at solo queue and actually start becoming good in teamplaying?

You will notice that there is a huge difference between following certain patterns while playing solo queue and doing them well – and playing the game on a teambased way with mutual adjustments and a collective awareness. This is again the main reason why there aren't as many teams as one would imagine with the statistical numbers being shown at the end of each season. Or at least – there aren't as many good ones as one would imagine.

Everyone seems to be busy achieving stuff at solo queue. It kind of a gets to be the same as graduating and trying to get a job without working experience. Congrats, you graduated the solo queue of a moba game but have no idea what to do in a team. This is a very tricky thing to grasp. The mindset is different here for the player who wants to achieve good solo queue status and the one who wants to experience the real thing of a teamgame. The solo queue guy will eventually, if he is really dedicated, get to a high elo – he will learn the best patterns to win a game, get to know the mechanics and excel in them. However, our teamgame guy might even experience a significant drop in elo since he is trying to think to much as a team, while everyone else seems to be playing for various other reasons.

Following this thought one can now easier understand why the solo queue guy will call for a lost game after minor mistakes as his win-pattern-mindset is broken, while the teamgame guy will try to look for opportunities to balance the game out.

Now, where to find the balance between these two? Because, that is the guy we want to become – a recognized solo queue player with a teamgame mindset. A little less elo, but a lot more skill. Sounds like a fair trade, not only on paper but for your nerves as well. The ironic thing here is, once there are enough balanced players like these at a certain elo-range (whichever that may be), every single one of them will start raising elo. So, eventually you will be helping each other becoming a better gamer.

Let us see then what we can do for ourselves to become this guy. In RTS games you'd create your own tactics, test them out on public matchmakings and eventually join up ladders or tournaments. Meanwhile ranked matchmaking here really proves your own skill – it is only you, yourself that manages to make the plays and bring about good games. This is the case for any solo ranked competitive game – from 1v1 arena FPS games to 1v1 RTS games.

However, let us not drop the idea of creating our own tactics here so fast. You will soon realize that you need to understand every role in LoL, each phase of the game, the damage output currently availible, the most crucial ward spots at a given time, counterpicks and so on. Now, here comes the most difficult part – tell yourself that you have no idea about these things on the level you would like to. Learn. Read. Discover. Write it down, look it up, make it happen.

Make sure that the teamgame guy in you is leading the solo queue one. With this being the case you will always have an active mind and analyze things not only before playing a game, but in the actual game. You will think more about calls, engages, damage output and simply start to look for opportunities. Suddenly winning seems to be a side-effect of your playstyle – doing everything right gets to be the most important thing. Once you live this mindset you will have more time to share your experience with the other solo queue players.

This being said, you will try to help them more than ever and understand that not everything within a game can be going on perfect. And if your teammates are bad and you understand that to be true, don't worry about them. You didn't play bad, they did. You learned something, they didn't. Maybe you thought of ways they all could have played better? Maybe you thought of ways that you could have influenced the game more? Or maybe you just realized that you are actually better than everyone else that was in the game – even while loosing it.

One of the important things about getting your mind ready to play is doing a warmup. Yes, a warmup. Sitting down and going into ranked means nothing. You are wasting time. Let us not forget – we are here still talking about the stage of becoming the good guy, the good gamer. There is no shame in admitting it. So warm up, play a normal game, play a dominion game using the champion you'd like to play next in your ranked game.

Warm up the skill shots, spell combinations, your reflexes and muscles. Warm up your mind. Take it serious. Write down your mistakes after a game or write down what you'd like to achieve during a game or with a certain champion. Get your games recorded, watch replays of you both playing good and bad and compare it to livestreams and other material. Learn picks and counterpicks, but not only for the sole purpose of a winning pattern - grow as a complete process.

So, what gets to be important here? Your attitude. Either choose to play LoL for fun and remain in the normal games, or get dedicated, competitive and achieve this „good guy“ state of mind. I have never understood the act of trolling in ranked games – thats the mind of the solo queue guy we have been talking here about – however the rotten and failed version of it. It couldn't grow into the good guy without understanding the balancing value of teamplay.

Hope to see more of you, good gamers, out there on the fields of justice.