thinking about tilt and how I engage with competitive netrunner

16 Aug, 2023

(This post was originally posted on Cohost.)

I got a comment on my previous post on Cohost about bringing plushies to tournaments, which said:

not a bad idea, i dont even think ive considered "tilting" before playing netrunner

And it made me realise that I've not thought too much about the source of my tilting and how to combat it - so what follows is a bunch of introspection about my experiences with tilt in my long time playing Netrunner. I don't know if people will resonate with it or find it helpful, but I found writing it helpful and I thought that I may as well publish it. I hope it's useful to someone. Obviously this is all personal experience, ymmv etc etc.

When it comes to traditional Netrunner (substitute Netrunner for your favourite card game) tournaments, I think there's a split of skills¹:

1. "being good at Netrunner" - your ability to play the game, make good plays etc.
2. "knowing the meta" - what does that deck usually do, how do I counter that?
3. "surviving tournaments" - being able to play for that long without making loads of mistakes, whether due to tilt or fatigue or a secret third thing.

I can definitely do (1), and I'm okay at (2) although refuse to play the best decks, but (3) is definitely a struggle for me. This became clear when I realised that my best Netrunner placements were in leagues (where you only play one round per week or similar, so avoiding (3)), and under weird deckbuilding restrictions (so there is less meta knowledge required because nobody knows the decks to beat under these restrictions, reducing the effect of (2)) - I can play and win at Netrunner, but struggle with traditional tournaments!

It also became more obvious to me when I realised that my tilting was because I know I can play Netrunner and thus think something like "I've been playing for so long and play well, so I should be able to do better in tournaments". I still do this - even on the train home after that Nottingham tournament, when I avoided tilt due to Axi, I was unhappy with my performance. I'm expecting that decoupling (1) from (3) above should help - while I may have been playing for a long time, that doesn't mean I'm good at tournaments.

Something that resonated me was a point made Zoe Cohen, new lead designer at NSG, on a podcast (roughly 1:11:50 in):

I love organised play, but moving over to things that are community focused rather than individual achievement focused has made my life so much happier

This is difficult in a community focused around a competitive game - where the traditional route to being seen within a community is to do well in tournaments - but I definitely want to internalise that idea more. It's not about being the best player in the room, it's about having fun, meeting new people, and maybe fighting a strong player and forcing them to break a sweat. And hopefully internalising this more will make me tilt less, worry less about tournament performance and maybe even become better at tournaments as a result.

Actually, scratch that, it's about having the cutest plushie in the room and I am WINNING.

#from-cohost #netrunner