So let’s talk mentality once again, one of the most important aspects of Stracraft 2 and one of the most overlooked aspects. I don’t mean that it is overlooked in the sense that people don’t think mentality is important, I am sure people do think that mentality is important but they don’t really understand it enough. Here are some of the common pitfalls when it comes to mentality that prevents people from improving on it.
- A lot of people just don’t realize how complex a topic mentality is, it is not ONE thing and you just fix it, your mentality when playing and practicing is a pattern of many different things that all need to be worked at individually.
- People think that mentality is a fixed trait as if it is some unchangeable aspect of your personality that just is and you can’t change it.
- A lot of people think that their mentality is fine (this is probably the largest group) and this is a result of not understanding how many things are involved in mentality, it is usually people who don’t rage or bm at all or much and they think that since I don’t rage, I am fine. But in fact saying your mentality is solid because you don’t rage is like saying your macro is perfect because you hit 80 workers consistently in every game.
- People fail to realize that mentality is something like anything else in the game that needs to be practiced. Anyone can say out loud how you should approach the game, but good mentality takes constant practice, and to say otherwise is about as meaningful as improving macro by just saying I am going to macro really well.
The main reason I am interested in this and why I know a bit about the pitfalls is because I practiced martial arts for a long time and when you do that, structure and mentality is a huge part. All of the Japanese martial arts still carry the principles of Bushido (the warrior code) of old. The bushido was essentially a code for how to conduct yourself in swordplay and combat, not just practically but mentally as well and from that code strictly followed by the samurai class, an entire culture eventually grew. The codes of chivalry in western medieval times is also an example although they are somewhat different in that the knight codes mainly focused on how to behave honorably towards others, while the bushido has this too, it also adds in how you should practice and hone your mind to ensure victory. In ancient Japan during the days of the Samurai a duel culture dominated the lives of these warriors, when not serving their masters or being in battle they would duel each other to the death, and hone their art throughout life.
Interestingly if you look past the superficial aspect of things, Starcraft 2 is not that much different from the dueling culture of ancient Japan. Starcraft 2 just like their form of sword fighting requires infinite practice and you will never be truly perfect. You need to work as much on the smallest physical mechanics and you need to polish your mind just as much as anything else, and you are always dueling, always measuring yourself up to someone else, playing the mind games to beat them.
So why don’t we have a bushido of Stracraft? I don’t know but to improve my own mentality in playing and practicing I am going to create one. Basically a code of a number of “rules” regarding how to practice, how to think and how to compete. That might sound stupid but from my experience practicing martial arts one of the most important steps if you really want to fine tune your mentality is to have a strict structure to fall back on. Unless you have a code to measure yourself too, and to use to remind you of what you need to do you will inevitably falter and stray from it. You might be able to keep a good mindset for a few days without anything to fall back on but you will fail. It is sort of how if you start to work out at a gym or even at home, unless you have a strict schedule for yourself of when and how much you are going to work out, you will last a week or a month at best before you start to lose your discipline. This is how I have failed at improving my mindset so far, I have not done it step by step.
I am going to try and make my Starcraft code as universal as possible, while I am making it for my own benefit I will not make it personalized, anyone could follow it. I will make sure to explain the reasoning behind every part of the code and I will make it include all aspects of play, both from how to practice and from how to think. You might ask then who am I to be able to tell which way to think is the optimal? Well partly because it is not just me telling, it is going to be based on a lot of insights from the greatest minds in Starcraft 2, because all of their knowledge is already out there, but also because it is actually not that hard to just state what is optimal, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to say that it is detrimental to think about stats or win/loss ratio when you are playing ladder, and to explain why it is detrimental. The hard part is to actually improve on these aspects. But the first step is to state them out loud, which is what I am going to do. I will probably be adding on to the code day by day for some time, typing out only one rule or statement a day and working to incorporate that into my practice, rather than just typing it all out instantly.
And we are starting with the most obvious one.
Vanguard 