Anyone who’s tried to learn a fighting game has heard it at some point.

“Don’t worry about your rank” or “don’t worry about your points.”

Included in this phrase is an important point to improving at the game, but it’s often left unexplained. As a result, many people respond with, “you’re only unworried about your points because they keep going up” or “if the goal is to increase your rank, isn’t that a bit of a contradiction?”

So why do highly-ranked players say not to worry about your rank?

It is because they know that by not worrying about your rank, your rank will improve.

In this article, I’d like to explain this phrase and its merits in detail.

First, what happens when you become prisoner to the rise and fall of your rank?

1. Overcome by negative feelings

It’s common to see posts from fighting game players on social media like, “ugh, I lost (X) points today…” or “demoted again… dammit…”

This mindset puts you at risk of turning the game, which is supposed to be fun, into something more like a punishment.

2. Focusing only on the next match

When you are worried about losing points, winning your next match becomes everything for you.

This results in you trying to fight only with the tools you have available to you at the current moment, forever.

To compare it to learning piano, this is not unlike playing “Chopsticks” only, over and over. No matter how many times you play “Chopsticks,” you’ll never learn how to play more difficult songs.

It’s the same for fighting games: you cannot get stronger only by fighting the exact same way forever.

The trick to improvement hidden in the phrase “Don’t worry about your rank”

“Don’t worry about your rank” does not mean “don’t make it your goal to rank up.” Striving for higher ranks is a great way to sustain motivation in fighting games.

As I hinted at above, getting caught up in the rise and fall of your rank causes you to lose sight of something very important: challenging yourself to try new things.

After all, what’s the fastest route to improving at fighting games? It’s to increase the amount of things that you can do as a player, but focusing only on the next match can make that difficult.

Yes, challenging yourself to try new things can lead to losses and rank downs at first. But, your winrate will gradually improve as you learn to use new tools and fight in new ways, eventually leading to your rank going up.

Those new tools and new ways of fighting can be very simple. Some example goals you could set for yourself in ranked match:

“I’m gonna try doing combos I’ve only done in training mode up to this point”

“I’m gonna try different okizeme from usual”

“I’m gonna try using different defensive options”

“I’m gonna try using moves that I haven’t used much before”

Just by focusing on one of these basic goals while you train will show you a dramatic change in your efficiency as a player. Save difficult goals like confirms or whiff punishes that even pro players can’t do consistently for later.

Again, trying new things can lead to a drop in rank or points at first. But by understanding that in advance, you’ll know not to be disheartened, reminding yourself that you’re growing stronger even if your rank goes down. This will lead to a more stable mindset in regards to rank.

Ranked Match = training match

This is an important bit of fighting game knowledge.

Remember that, at the end of the day, ranked match is just training. Think of tournament sets or exhibitions as the real deal, and ranked match as your practice for the real deal.

On LP (League Points) and true strength

By the way, there is another good reason not to worry about your rank.

In Street Fighter V, the rank system is designed in such a way that your LP (League Points) accurately reflect your skill at the game.

For example, if you give a player whose current LP is 5,000 and have them play on an account with 10,000 LP, unless that player improves, that account’s LP will eventually go down to 5,000. Conversely, if you put a player with 10,000 LP on an account with 5,000 LP, that account’s LP will grow to 10,000 quickly.

In other words, unless there is a change in a player’s personal strength, a loss or gain of 100 points doesn’t carry any real significance.

In Summary

What I mean when I say “Don’t worry about your rank”

When top players say this, they are not saying “don’t make it your goal to rank up.” On the contrary, making it your goal will help with sustaining motivation.

The meaning of the phrase, in full:
“Ranking down/losing points is a natural part of the road to getting stronger, so don’t worry about your rank.”

Of course, as a human being, iit’s natural to feel bad about losing points, and it’s very difficult not to worry about it at all. Try instead to praise yourself for being positive about your growth and challenging yourself to try new things.

I hope this article could help you improve at games and enjoy them even more than before.

Translated by discovigilante (イーサン)
March 4th, 2023
https://twitter.com/discovigilante

まとめは以上となります。

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