Playing Pox and Emotional Fatigue

As long as we keep anything goes mode I can't see any issues with it.

 

I agree with this. @Agirgis1 , the thing with positioning skills is that it quickly reaches a point where practicing it becomes almost pointless(when you don't have enough skilled opponents to justify improvement), as it's dictated by how much information a person needs to process in a specific situation in a match.

Although it's a kind of streamlined thought process, there are people who clearly think differently( I like to point @devilsrath 's way of playing as pretty different from the rest(because he wins, there are other people but I think you get my statement)), and you can easily notice these "unique" cases after you see hundreds of players doing the same thing over and over; so even when I can't exactly exemplify everything that Devils does that is different(I do try to emulate the very basics of how he plans AP usage according to the enemy's position and optimize damage by being as aggressive as he can while giving very few chances of counterattack(that's a huge factor in his victories, specially with ranged champions).

It may sound generic, but trust me, most of us manage AP usage very loosely. It's like a puzzle; some people see the pieces that fit very quickly, others take a while, many(*raises hand*) only do it with help, and even with help some "connections"really can't be taught. Being able to gauge every opportunity of AP usage and using it at the right time, on the right abilities and in the right spot is far from being trivial to me.

Again, it might be simple for you because you've reached a comfort zone where you can take on most enemy strategies with your own, but most players still have to constantly struggle with their own brains to change their thought patterns in order to adapt to the more skilled players' positioning.

 

I think your title says it all "emotional fatigue". Emotion is heavily draining on ones stamina. It's also a fickle and untrustworthy thing in any strategic environment/discussion.

I've seen men throw away millions of dollars in some of the deals I've been a part of all because of emotion. Emotion takes over in a situation where you have some sort of deficit or divide you are trying to make up for but cannot, for whatever reason. In Pox, I think that reason is often because people are not capable of holding all/many/alot/few scenarios and contingencies in their head, and even if they are, they cannot play them out multiple turns ahead.

Like chess, it's about how much you can process, and as long as you can process all of it/enough of it, you can continue to make best-case decisions, regardless of their actual chance of success, and move on.

Once you start losing control and start guessing, doubt and anxiety start to creep in.

But that's a good thing. The brain needs this exercise.

 

A better title would be "ego fatigue", which would the more accurate psychological term, but could also be easily (and not unreasonably) misinterpreted to mean the more colloquial form of "ego".

 

I like the way you have described my play-style, eloquently put . I've played so much pox, for so many years that my play-style is almost on auto-pilot but is based on my idea of an "optimal" play-style. So making a judgement on both your own and your opponents champions and what they're capable of e.g. if i leave my dude here- how many attacks will he take from the enemy champions? is he in double tap range for no reason? is he kill-able with attacks + a spell? will my champ be in a position to be useful next turn? etc etc.

I'm not as emotionally bothered by wins or losses these days. Go back several years and I would see every loss as out of my control "I lost! that MUST be OP?!". When I lose now I question where I went wrong- what could I have done to prevent that? Sometimes nothing. However i'd say 95% of my losses are due to underestimating my opponent or mistakes/ poor decision making on my part that could have been avoided.

With that being said, in regards to the thread- I feel that with experience comes both improved play style and a better thought process, therefore in the long term less "ego fatigue" and more wins.

 

Whats happened to me right now is a perfect example of why poxnora is difficult on the emotions to play competitively. I set a goal of 1200 XP for myself, which i reached, since then i have lost 6 40+ minute ranked games in a row losing massive chunks of XP with each loss and now im fairly far away from 1200 again. At this point in time i am now finding it difficult to convince myself to get back into playing cause i just feel beyond Bane Shift about having lost all of that.

 

actually i accept that the losses i lost in were from being outplayed (except for jimdar, Firk jimdar). Though i think that's why losing hits me so much harder than a lot of other people. i know this isn't directed exactly towards me as it's pretty true for most of the community however. Hence the countless nerf threads we see on here.

 

Man, Overwatch always lags.

(Which has a basis in reality considering the way it is made (for performance reawsons), but it probably doesn't lag quite as often as I mess up my ice block/wraith form/whatever. Yeah, it certainly is a release.)

 

i swear 50% of xbox one are defective, the controllers randomly disconnect. I guess that's why they put pox on ps4 lol.

I shoulda stayed with 360 and fallout new vegas. the graphics are too realistic in fallout 4 and the monsters(and mines...) are too strong.

 

This is something i take really seriously. You cannot possibly improve from a flaw if you do not identify and accept it as a flaw. Everytime i hit a losing streak i rage but when it passes i spend a long time thinking about what i could have done better and i always improve because of it. You don't get better by rolling scrubs every game.

 

Things is that the autocritic only works if the person is autocritic, how could pox "force" an autocritic on players? how can they show how many mistakes a player made at the end of the match?

In the exp rewards screen?

 

I don't think it's something you can force on a player. It's a life lesson in my opinion and can be applied to much more than just video games.

 

I also don't think it would be a good thing. I keep quitting Overwatch games before the POTG because I want to get out of a losing match A S A P. No delays. Also, sometimes I surrender in Hearthstone, then restart the game so I don't have to watch the incredibly overlong and horribly annoying defeat animation.

I hate being reminded of losing.

 

I disagree, there must be a way to show some info in a not painful way so a player can make its own understanding and reasonning about their technique.

The expensive way would be so that the replay is upload somewhere and the community can comment on the replay, players would learn from the comments, even get rewards for commenting and helping out. That would be the most expensive resourse and money wise and not even Big company games have that.

 

Ok i didn't find any Extracredits video with an idea for this but i came up with something that @Sokolov might like.
Did you see when in a tactical turn based game you hit something and a "CRITICAL!" pops above the target? well what about a "ONE ROUNDED!" above a champ that is killed in a single turn, new players might start to understand that they need to avoid being onerounded and start figuring stuff out from there.

Same thing for other effects that restrict a champ (those which are the most frustrating to figure out for new players) like:
STUNNED
PARALIZED
CONFUSED (doesnt have sprite)
STATIONARY (from clamp doesnt have sprite)

 

Having played pox for 7+ years now I gotta say it's been without a doubt my fav game in this time period.
Absolutely agree with the emotional draining part and the stress that comes with it but to me that's what makes pox incredible. I've read the suggestions about damage estimators and fixed champ upgrades but I think this will only take away part of the fun in pox. And concerning ranks etc. Having been a pox player for a fairly long time, I truly believe there is a skill cap as in players like tinydragon, devilsrath, bballer, theravager and others will always have a better approach at the game so personally to anyone reading this I don't think you should get stressed out about not being top 10 etc. (To quote Moles1990 rank means nothing in pox). However the above doesn't mean you can't get better at the game and it damn sure doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. Lastly to sokolov the core of this game has stayed the same for many years now so I think if it's not broken let's not try to fix it and take away from it.

 

I just can't stand the amount of bugs in the game. It's really infuriating when runes react differently than how they are worded.