Content archived from the OG Vainglory Forums - originally posted by Allex-14 on the 25th of September, 2016 archived by @DragonBuster
Welcome to the rating farm my lads,
Disclaimer: I am NOT a professional psychologist and I do NOT have any factual evidence or data to back up my argument. Everything I explain are be based on my personal experience and opinion. I do not mean to offend anyone who read this thread. This post is NOT a rant.
Introduction
Today, I will try my best to dissect the important mental aspects of Vainglory. Unlike the other threads you are used to see in the forums, this thread is not a how-to-do list, but instead a why-to-do list. The purpose of this post depends on how carefully you read it and how much of it you can bring to your actual game-play. For myself, it’s just fun to write stuff like these once in awhile. Also, before I begin, I just want to quickly introduce myself. I go by many names and titles. In Vainglory, my name is Allex-14. I am more or less a veteran player for I have played the game since Nov. 2014. Enough time has passed that I can confidently say I have gone through pretty much all the ups and downs of a player’s mentality.
I. Why does mentality matter?
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It’s biology guys
I might sound like Captain Obvious for saying this, but the very fact that your body is controlled by your brain makes mentality an essential part of a Vainglory player. Vainglory is not a physical game, it is a mental one. Whoever comes out on top in a match is depended on that person’s analytic skills, knowledge, experience, reflex, and healthy mentality to keep the player motivated (and fps and device CPU, but we don’t talk about that). I will explain what I mean by healthy mentality as we go along. -
It can affect your play, drastically
It’s not hard to see why players tend to ignore the importance of mentality or push it aside as an useless concept: you never notice how mentality changes your matches. The symptom I think everyone are familiar with would be “tilt”. But a bad mentality is not just about tilt, there are many many things about the way a player thinks of a certain teamfight/situation/play that can be game-changing. In other words, different mentalities make players look at Vainglory in different “views”. To a certain extend, mentality is the most important factor for victory because it decides how you execute your knowledge and reflex in actual gameplay. -
Positive mentality = More fun
This one applies to anything in life really. It is perhaps more significant in Vainglory because it is game designed for people to have fun. Where is the fun if you go into a match thinking “I hate everybody in solo queue they are all garbage”? For someone who once quit Vainglory for three whole months because of tilt, I can say I do not appreciate anything more than I appreciate a positive outlook at the game. Whether you are a competitive player or not, you should never corner yourself into a position where Vainglory doesn’t feel fun anymore. To do that, you must harbor a positive mentality to deal with inevitable frustration. After all, it is unreasonable to expect every match to go in your way. -
Real-life benefits
I will talk a little about this even though it has nothing to do with Vainglory. Healthy mentality can change you into a better person in real-life. You might ask, how exactly? Well, you will become more tolerant for the unfortunate things in life and learn how to properly move on. You will be less likely to give up on something you care about, and you will definitely be a more likable/popular person. When facing a challenging situation in life, the person with a positive mentality might only take a day to get his/her way around, while the person with a negative mentality feels defeated for an entire month.
II. The “Wall”
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Don’t just admit it
Make America Great Again. Have you ever heard someone say “I’m stuck at xxx tier” or “I can’t get better”? This symptom is what I call the “Wall”. It’s basically the loss of the will/confidence to improve at the game. The Wall could be the result of a lose streak or just an inward personality. Regardless, it is definitely not a good place to be. To me personally, the majority of the satisfaction and fun in Vainglory comes from seeing myself improve overtime. So if you feel the same way, then don’t just admit you are bad. Maybe you are bad, but you need to tell yourself “I can get better”. This is not some fantasy optimism: as long as you believe and work hard, you will eventually improve. -
Why you can always improve
It’s called a wall because you can get over it. Vainglory doesn’t require superior muscle or education to excel; it is a MOBA game with an extremely fair stage. There is no such thing as a player skill cap, you can become as good as BestChuckNA if you work hard as you can. When you feel like you are stuck under the Wall, look for ways to climb over it. There are tons of options: go watch pro streams, ask for advices in the forums, or simply be mindful of the little things that your teammates/opponents does well in a match. Once your CS/minute goes up from 7 to 8 or you are able to reflex block a Phinn ult that you couldn’t block before, you will automatically feel compensated and want to go a step further. -
Be patient
Climbing the Wall can be a slow and painful process. Tell me all about it: you have to shuffle through bad teammates, try out new mechanics you aren’t comfortable with, and sometimes change your principle on how to play the game. However, don’t be discouraged by the amount of the time it takes. Instead, try to enjoy the process while you are at it. There will be one day when everything clicks for you and your skill will be elevated to higher level. Believe, and fight!
III. Self-improvement > Complaints
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YOU are the reason
Fix yourself before you try to fix the ranking system, goddamit. In a perfect world where your teammates have psychic ability and are mechanical gods, this problem would not have existed. Sadly, we live in no such world. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. However, you should never completely blame your teammates for a loss, even if it’s clearly their fault (unless they are AFK or trolling, of course). In fact, you should drill into your head the idea that every match you lose is because of YOU. I know it sounds ridiculous, but in a sense it’s true. You lost because you weren’t playing like the best player in the world. There are always things you could’ve done better, and you should remember those things so that you can do them next time. -
Pushing limits
Don’t waste your death timer on question mark pings; think about what you did wrong that caused your death. And no, don’t think something like “my Ardan didn’t pop fountain”, think “I could’ve done something else”. The best way to push your limits is to pick the flaws in your own play. Replay a play over and over again in your mind until you find the perfect solution. Once you’ve realize your problem, you will be less focused on what your teammates does wrong. -
Expect everything out of yourself
One does not improve by bitching about how badly someone else plays. Unless you are playing with a team, you should always set your expectation for your teammates as low as possible so you can be pleasantly surprised. No matter how much you ping or how loud you yell at your screen, you are not going to make your teammates better. Don’t expect anyone to outright carry you to a win even when you are the support. The question at hand is not “why didn’t my teammates carry me?” It’s “why didn’t I carry my teammates?"