I had the same experience when I was competing in eSports. I played a very fast paced and unique first person shooter that required complex and perfectly timed button sequences to dodge and attack at the same time. The game sent packets p2p so you had to predict where your opponent was about to be based on your ping to them, the shot was a hit based on where the character was when the packet was received. I played at the highest level and while I was normally not as good as my opponents, I would go into a zen state like what you described where time seemed to slow, I could predict my opponents movement easily and land shot after shot. I would either be the mvp of my team if I could get into the zone or be a non factor if I couldn’t. I never could figure out how that worked but I do feel like “flow” when coding is similar.
I think what you're describing with your eSports experience _is_ 'flow' -- the same as you get when coding. It's a state of focus and immersion you can get into with many different activities, not just coding.
two types of flow. One is called absorbed flow and the other is
called panoramic flow. Absorbed flow is when you're doing a task,
like, minute tasks like taking apart a watch or something. And
you're so focused that you enter the world, and then you look up
and time has flown. All of a sudden, how did an hour go by?
Martial arts has a little of both, but in some ways, to do it, you
actually have to go into panoramic flow. You have to let go of
your mind. You have to trust that the training, the implicit
memories available of the actions, and the physical actions, and
then you have to trust that there's this way of organizing
information that's faster than thought. And by doing that, you
enter into a flow. And that's being done from this awake
consciousness. That's the functional feeling of that. And there in
itself, just like Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book on flow,
and gives these qualities of flow as that activity is in itself a
pleasure, that there's a loss of a sense of ego or self, sense of
timelessness, sense of connection to everything. And so that
state, you're doing that activity to find something that I'm
saying you can find anytime you want. […] Who, what level of mind
is it that can do martial arts at that level? That you that does
that, that's the awake consciousness.
There is also the feeling of being ahead of the flow and showboating like a tourist taking pictures with many "third eyes" on your model of the world as experienced from every angle at once. Kind of like Usain Bolt at one of the Olympics when he broke the world record the first time. Kind of like a window manager with many viewports open on the model.
It’s when we train our subconscious mind to simulate reality so well that it accurately stays ahead of what’s happening in real time.
A smaller example of this is reactively catching something that was knocked off a table and realising what you are doing in the moment without having triggering the reaction consciously.
I’ve had some noticeable success applying the ideas of The Inner Game of Tennis to Rocket League. If I’m in a decent mindset to begin with, I can usually get in the zone within a few rounds, and keep it going for a while. Problem is, I usually keep playing well past that point because it’s just fun, so I keep loosing any gains in rank.
It's interesting that Rocket League was brought up. I used to play RL a lot and every once in a while I physically felt like I was one with the car on the screen. Like my mind became the car. Everything felt more fluid. The jumps were precise and timely. The shots were accurate. It was an insane difference between my regular gameplay. I always wondered if professional gamers somehow end up mastering how to recall this behavior when competing.
Rocket League is one of my all time favorite games because of this feeling. Also echo your feelings on the rank grind. After awhile I made a rule for myself that I would quit playing ranked after a total of two losses in a session.
> curious to which fps this is? painkiller? ut? quake? reflex? diabotical?
Hah, that description kind of reminds me of Gunz, where some bugs in the game lead to players being able to climb walls, basically fly around and attack rapidly while moving.
Not that painkiller but eSport as pain killer worked for me. Can't sleep because of a teeth and no pain killer drug at home? Lap for an hour at some circuit on my PS and fall asleep at least a little bit. Then pay a visit to the dentist :-)
Maybe this is somewhat related to the subject of the post: detach consciousness from what I am doing and the pain gets a little detached too. However I doubt it would work with serious levels of pain.
It does, there is some very promessing studies on patient that suffer massive body burn ( most of their skin is gone )
The traditional approch is pain killers and some meditation.
VR helps a lot.
On two front : it distract your brain and it can teach you how to reach that distracted from the pain state by yourself.
My understanding is that a large pourcentage of the neurons are specialized in image processing. And that keeping those busy with exploring a VR world avoid to have those neurons re-assign to ponder about pain.
strafe jumping in quake is far from trivial also various weapon aided jumps are required to play at the highest level, ut also has its own dodge jump mechanics and shield jumps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1MJPMl8B5Y
being unable to execute this during a match like a duel means being at a massive disadvantage.
example of good strafe jumping coupled with a plasma jump to secure map/item control and pressure the opponent on the back-foot.
https://youtu.be/GFTmYD95-cQ?t=1592
Compared to an RTS, yes. Compared to tactical shooters like CS, no. Once you reach a certain level of aim, movement and the associated mechanics become the main distinguishing factor along with using the sounds in the game to track your opponents position and conceal yours.
And I'm 95% confident that surf maps were one of the inspirations behind Titanfall. Here's a completely broken tool-assisted speedrun of the obstacle course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXtggqe6oo0
