The sacrifice of mastery.

[Aera]

Do you know that feeling of discovering a new skill or activity and you just know it's gonna be something you can sink a lot of time into? It's something you don't just want be good at, it's something you want to master.
You enjoyed learning all the outs and ins, all the secrets, all the highest level knowledge, and now, you no longer enjoy it.

Is it because you no longer have an overwhelming amount to learn, or is it because you have no one to enjoy it with?
Perhaps both. Probably more.

Does this feeling have a name?

 

[Hadoblado]

Hello and welcome.

I'm not sure if it has a name, but it corresponds to the notion that people enjoy learning, and play is itself about learning. As you run out of things to learn about something (or things in reach anyhow), there's less enjoyment and you become bored. It's proof of development.

 

[Aera]

Thanks.
Proof of development is a good way of wording it. I agree, but I also believe there's more reasons too, like not having someone to share the process of learning/mastery with.
Congratualtions, you mastered chess, now you can no longer casually play with your beginner level family and friends, you must either play normally, or hold back, either way, you lose.

 

[dr froyd]

i have pondered that question recently. My vocation is something i've worked daily with for almost 10 years now. At some point i started to feel that whatever challenge or problem i encountered, i had a good idea of how to solve it, if not already have the solution in my mind. There were times where i thought i'm bored with it, that it is time to look for new things. But that is, of course, just because of lack of inspiration and creativity. Because that's the point where real creativity can begin, where you step outside the box of conventional solutions and conventional problems. You have now reached the level where there are few sources of inspiration but yourself

oh and regarding the social question, that's obvious; if you are approaching mastery in some difficult thing, you will be spending a lot of time alone in that thing

 

[Hadoblado]

I think there's some ambiguity regarding what is meant by mastery.

I would say chess is effectively unmasterable. Yes you will be better than the people around you but there is a strong community online that's only ever a few clicks away. This is the folly of competitive gaming, the difficulty adapts to your mastery by placing you against stronger opponents.

I made the mistake of becoming addicted to a multiplayer game with a relatively small community. There are people who can challenge me (plenty in fact), but there's no guarantee those people are around when I am. But for any game with a robust community I don't see this ever being a problem.

With independent masteries I think it's about redefining what success looks like. I've started playing a waffle in the morning as I wake up. The aim is to complete it in 15 moves, but it's achievable in 10. My housemates who have been playing it longer were only aiming to complete it, but I was dissatisfied with that and so aim to complete it without any mistakes at all. If I'm successful every single game I might start timing myself.

 

[threeStepfourStep]

At the end of mastery I feel like most of it is just mental weight lifting. It tends to be the case that the psychological aspect of working with the mastery you have with others is the end point of that skill.

I completely understand the mastery on a multiplayer game that has a small community. The level of depression or toxicity you face on such platforms is pretty emmense. I found that I had to keep my mental health in check, and also the mental health or condition of others to really lead the game into a winning end. Having to deal with griefers or trolls who wanted so bad to break this dynamic also was a huge challenge for me. I left the multiplayer game after I was rank 2 in my category. I don't think anyone else has a higher MMR than me in that certain race.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Does this feeling have a name?

Yeah - its called curiosity. Self imposed self driven curiosity.
If you have that youll be in no mans land in about 20 minutes of studying any subject.
If you study lets say myrmecology for 20 minutes you will officially know more about ants than most people on this planet.

Chance of meeting anyone who knows anything about this and wants to talk to you about it are near zero.

 

[Aera]

You have now reached the level where there are few sources of inspiration but yourself

And how about now? Are you still bored?

 

[dr froyd]

You have now reached the level where there are few sources of inspiration but yourself

And how about now? Are you still bored?

quite the contrary. A new realm of possibilities opened up. It's like a fish that realizes he had been exploring just his aquarium all along, and then jumped out, into the ocean

 

[Aera]

True mastery of multplayer games is quitting them for single player games haha.

I wish people realized that in multiplayer games the biggest opponent you're playing against is the human aspect. Their emotions, ego, thoughts, adaptability. Whole ass human being you have to outthink while they try to do the same to you. It's gonna weigh a lot too.

I remember playing this one multiplayer game a lot when I was younger, and I remember being stuck at the same rank for 2 years, despite desperately trying to improve.
I stopped playing for a year. When I returned, I thought I was going to be completely awful at it. I thought it was gonna take me a while to get back to where I was before.
To my surprise however, it didn't take long at all, and it took even less time to surpass it. I wasn't convinced I was playing better than before, being all rusty and forgetting a lot of important small details. But I was doing better mentally, I was in a much better headspace and due to that, I was able to win more.
The classic "take a break" tactic. Just gotta remember to come back.

 

[Aera]

You have now reached the level where there are few sources of inspiration but yourself

And how about now? Are you still bored?

quite the contrary. A new realm of possibilities opened up. It's like a fish that realizes he had been exploring just his aquarium all along, and then jumped out, into the ocean

Awesome. You must love what you do more than ever now.