In my climb from Bronze 2 to Diamond 3, from top 86% to top 0.4%, and in my time devoted to this endeavor, I have had the chance to look deeper into myself, learning better my flaws and my potential.
The biggest takeaway was learning to put down my pride for a more productive mindset for reviewing mistakes and making adjustments accordingly. In life, the tendency to be wrongful is normal; all humans are guilty of some flaw, whether it is the tendency to be jealous, to be prideful, to be dishonest, or anything. There are evolutionary reasons behind each of the human flaws, but we should not misconstrue evolutionary explanations as moral righteousness. And ironically, these evolutionarily acceptable flaws stunt our growth.
This is where wisdom has to come in; wisdom is the heart to detect these flaws and commit willful overriding of them with more righteous, albeit more unnatural (assuming the wrongful tendencies are natural), directions. Playing this game has taught be how strong the natural inclination is for many people to blame their teammates and to shift responsibility, letting pride cloud their judgment. Rationally, League's matchmaking algorithms are flawless, and with enough games, people are statistically guaranteed to be placed in the tier that accurately mirrors their level of play. When pride joins the equation, however, people cannot take in their failure and turn to others, or luck, to blame. This is the average league player.
I admit -- I started at the same place as many other people who blame others for their own shortcoming. But maybe it was my desire for acquiring elite level skills, or maybe it was my intuitive grasp of righteousness that saved me. One day in Silver 5, I began to find flaws within my own plays, and with the realization that I am not as good as I think I am, I began to grow. Separating pride from myself exposed my weaknesses, and surprisingly, it felt right. It felt right because now it was consistent -- I was bad and I acknowledged that. Blaming teammates alleviates the moment's tension but leaves a taste of discomfort.
Looking up more efficient item builds, shadowing pros' mechanics, and analyzing challenger games, I found a very powerful sense of joyfulness. This process from Silver 5 to somewhere around Platinum was probably the most genuinely fun period of my playing, where I grew both as a gamer and a person. It is a very rewarding feeling when I know I actually am on a climb because I can immediate notice. Win-to-loss ratio becomes very patterned, something like losing 1 game every 3 games won. The few games I lose start not mattering because I know it can't stop the momentum. This momentum and the feeling that I cannot be stopped is a very raw, instinctual force. I can see it when Faker has it, the way he plays when he knows -- and I know -- that he cannot be stopped at that moment of unabated momentum. Of course he does it at a much higher level, but in its core, its the same raw sensation.
I went up all the way to Diamond 3. My ranking was now in four digits, meaning only few thousand people were better than me at this game. At times I was queued up with former pros and famous streamers. At this point, I could watch Korean pros play and understand the depth of their decisions and gaze in awe at the most subtle mechanical movements the average players cannot and will not ever notice. This is the blessing of being at an elite level -- it means having the privilege of delving into the most esoteric beauties that are off-limits to commoners. The 0.5 cm sidestep to position in a teamfight is a proxy to the hundreds of hours spent mastering the game, and knowing this gives an unmatched satisfaction.
Now I am done. I realized I will never be a Master (Top 500) or Challenger (Top 200), and spending time to reach upper Diamonds is not worth the amount of stress and effort I would need to invest. Playing at mid Diamond gave me a realization that for non-pro gamers, there is likely a sweet spot to stop trying harder, the ideal place of "quitting" where returns don't justify the investment. I hit my ceiling; I don't have what Faker has in himself.
I love this game and the LoL professional scene, and through playing this game and being an avid fan of e-Sports, I became a better person. I learned, on a broad level, how confronting and challenging myself leads to real tangible and mental rewards. At the end, I learned what it's like to feel human, to feel good, to feel like a diamond.
The biggest takeaway was learning to put down my pride for a more productive mindset for reviewing mistakes and making adjustments accordingly. In life, the tendency to be wrongful is normal; all humans are guilty of some flaw, whether it is the tendency to be jealous, to be prideful, to be dishonest, or anything. There are evolutionary reasons behind each of the human flaws, but we should not misconstrue evolutionary explanations as moral righteousness. And ironically, these evolutionarily acceptable flaws stunt our growth.
This is where wisdom has to come in; wisdom is the heart to detect these flaws and commit willful overriding of them with more righteous, albeit more unnatural (assuming the wrongful tendencies are natural), directions. Playing this game has taught be how strong the natural inclination is for many people to blame their teammates and to shift responsibility, letting pride cloud their judgment. Rationally, League's matchmaking algorithms are flawless, and with enough games, people are statistically guaranteed to be placed in the tier that accurately mirrors their level of play. When pride joins the equation, however, people cannot take in their failure and turn to others, or luck, to blame. This is the average league player.
I admit -- I started at the same place as many other people who blame others for their own shortcoming. But maybe it was my desire for acquiring elite level skills, or maybe it was my intuitive grasp of righteousness that saved me. One day in Silver 5, I began to find flaws within my own plays, and with the realization that I am not as good as I think I am, I began to grow. Separating pride from myself exposed my weaknesses, and surprisingly, it felt right. It felt right because now it was consistent -- I was bad and I acknowledged that. Blaming teammates alleviates the moment's tension but leaves a taste of discomfort.
Looking up more efficient item builds, shadowing pros' mechanics, and analyzing challenger games, I found a very powerful sense of joyfulness. This process from Silver 5 to somewhere around Platinum was probably the most genuinely fun period of my playing, where I grew both as a gamer and a person. It is a very rewarding feeling when I know I actually am on a climb because I can immediate notice. Win-to-loss ratio becomes very patterned, something like losing 1 game every 3 games won. The few games I lose start not mattering because I know it can't stop the momentum. This momentum and the feeling that I cannot be stopped is a very raw, instinctual force. I can see it when Faker has it, the way he plays when he knows -- and I know -- that he cannot be stopped at that moment of unabated momentum. Of course he does it at a much higher level, but in its core, its the same raw sensation.
I went up all the way to Diamond 3. My ranking was now in four digits, meaning only few thousand people were better than me at this game. At times I was queued up with former pros and famous streamers. At this point, I could watch Korean pros play and understand the depth of their decisions and gaze in awe at the most subtle mechanical movements the average players cannot and will not ever notice. This is the blessing of being at an elite level -- it means having the privilege of delving into the most esoteric beauties that are off-limits to commoners. The 0.5 cm sidestep to position in a teamfight is a proxy to the hundreds of hours spent mastering the game, and knowing this gives an unmatched satisfaction.
Now I am done. I realized I will never be a Master (Top 500) or Challenger (Top 200), and spending time to reach upper Diamonds is not worth the amount of stress and effort I would need to invest. Playing at mid Diamond gave me a realization that for non-pro gamers, there is likely a sweet spot to stop trying harder, the ideal place of "quitting" where returns don't justify the investment. I hit my ceiling; I don't have what Faker has in himself.
I love this game and the LoL professional scene, and through playing this game and being an avid fan of e-Sports, I became a better person. I learned, on a broad level, how confronting and challenging myself leads to real tangible and mental rewards. At the end, I learned what it's like to feel human, to feel good, to feel like a diamond.
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