KDA's influence on ego and perfomance anxiety

Posted by Steve

Monday, October 25, 2021 11:19 PM

Have you ever noticed that your favourite streamer/content creator uses TAB button way too often during Valorant match?

Several months ago I noticed that I was not having as much fun playing the game as I used to. I was grinding ranked and got pretty frustrated. In an attempt to improve my gameplay and to enchance overall expirence I decided to start streaming my games on twitch (in order to watch and analyse my own VODs).

Soon after starting watching my own gameplay I have noticed an unhealthy pattern concerning ingame stats. I was using TAB button way, way too often and it was without a doubt affecting the way I behave in game. If I was not performing very well in terms of KDA, it would hinder my descisionmaking, making me take unwarranted risks or play too safe and afraid. On the other hand, if I was performing well, I would concentrate on my team's misplays too much taking my focus away from the game.

Either option led to frustration. I've decided to disable my TAB button in order to eliminate this distraction and, well, I've been playing this way ever since. In my case, it did severely impact the game in a positive way. It is now way easier for me to concentrate on the game itself rather than my personal perfomance. And a dopamine rush from discovering that, wow, I am actually a top frag in the end of the game is pretty nice.

There is, sadly, a downside: by turning off TAB button you can no longer track enemy team economy, ult points and damage you deal during rounds. While KDA is almost entirely irrelevant as an information piece, it shares the same space with an actual vital data.

I believe firmly that there should be an option to hide kda or to move them in the whole different place altogether. Same thing goes for deathmatch: I don't play that mode to win, but to warm up or improve. I would really appreciate it if I had an option to hide the scores. Honestly, I would also get rid of enemy teams' account levels and ranked triangles as they are also absolutely irrelevant for me but may affect my mental negatively.

Now back to my opening question. The reason why I wrote this post is that I'm sure that abusing the hell out of TAB button isn't exclusive to me. Streamers, content creators and even pros do it all the time. However, effects may vary.

What is your perspective, Valorant players? Is this issue at all relevant to you? Should there be an option to hide information a player may deem irrelevant?

References

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/qfbwzp/kdas_influence_on_ego_and_perfomance_anxiety/
  • https://reddit.com/qfbwzp

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