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League Challenge Rough Cut

Byjack
Like
  • Love the energy throughout
  • Love the beginning
  • Love the day title cards
Work On?
  • Maybe more music that is different
  • Try to make it more clear that it was the first game
  • Maybe make it more clear what is happened? (I’m the guy with the green highlight, screen turns dark, I’m dead)
  • Maybe explain my strategies in improving in league more? (Practice tool)
  • Maybe explain how league works more? (Explain mini games)
  • Break up the footage or shorten it more, might be slow at times.
  • Maybe explain that it was a two day challenge earlier?
Specifics
  1. 0:05 better grade
  2. 0:19 better grade, harder cutting
  3. 0:32 harder cutting, feels slow
  4. 0:53 timing feels off, out of sync with music
  5. 1:41 great energy but need something to transition better
  6. 8:30 more kinetic editing on final words
  7. 2:48 need to fade sound out from voice to cut off extra words
Thoughts
  • Need to draw inspiration from other league youtubers who post highlights (maybe Professor Akali?)
  • Take a step back, and work on something else for a bit, maybe my business idea. Need some time away to see what I want to do next clearly.
  • Get specific feedback from multiple people.
Gameplan

Overall, I feel like this is an excellent rough cut, great pacing and energy but it lacks polish.

To work on the polish I will:

  • Break down portions I need to work on and split them out to perfect them
  • Work with my brother or someone else by my side in order to make it easier

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The Valorant Challenge: From Silver 1 to Platinum 1

Byjack

I’m gonna try to do something crazy, which is to try to rise from Silver 1 to Platinum in Valorant.

For all of you who don’t know, Valorant is a competitive FPS shooter. Like all popular computer games that are competitive, it is extremely difficult to progress in rank.

When I first started Valorant I was in Iron 1 and after months of playing, I rose to Silver 1. Now I want to make a similar rise from Silver 1 to Platinum 1. But I want to do it faster this time. I want to do it within the course of 2-3 months.

I want to use this experience as a test of my speed learning skills and also how I can make videos for challenges.

I also believe that mindfulness and self-awareness can bring greater success than any brute force tactic, and I want to prove that with my progress in this game (which will be easy to measure and indisputable).

My current philosophy for speed learning:

  1. Embracement of pain
    1. Lower expectations
    2. Process emotions
    3. Try new things
  2. Self-reflection is KEY
    1. Need to see yourself
  3. Focus on fun
    1. Play when you want with things you like
  4. Small steps
    1. Don’t need to do everything in one day
    2. Do tiny steps if possible
  5. Prepare yourself
    1. Create an environment for success

Specifics:

  1. Embracement of pain
    1. Don’t set goals
    2. Assume I’m gonna do bad
    3. Slow down and process when I’m doing bad
    4. Always try new strats
  2. Self-reflection
    1. LOTS of VOD reviews
  3. Focus on fun
    1. Only play comp when you want to
    2. Other days do light practice
    3. Focus on agents you have fun with (focus on agent abilities that are fun)
  4. Small steps
    1. Find ways to practice in aimlabs, spike rush and deathmatch
  5. Prepare yourself
    1. Work on environment
    2. Work on posture

NEXT: What my plan on filming will be.

Also, got recommend How to Fight Thich Nhat Hanh by a friend on how to work on mindfulness.

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Valorant 31: Class in Session – Unit 1 Day 1

Byjack

UNIT 1: VOD Review | Day 1 – TenZ

Exercise: Imitate Tenz and imagine I am him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsgDk8ojQjg&ab_channel=ValorantDAILY

Lessons learned:

  • I’m exhausted – fell asleep for a long time after watching and imitating for a short period of time
  • Knife to gun transition – keeping knife out until dangerous angles, then switch to gun or do a jump peak while switching if no room
  • Hold for peeks – clear where they might peek, not where they might be, continue to hold it or switch to another angle they can push you from
  • Set graphics to low
  • Don’t push smokes unless with flashes or off of someone else’s contact
  • Spray with good spray control – pulling down
  • Fall after spraying to reload
  • Jiggle if holding close to an angle
  • Warm up at the start of each round by flicking onto teammate heads

In game what I did very successfully:

  • Spamming through smokes – I got many headshots through the smoke
  • Holding peekable angles – I felt I got a lot more intentional to where I was staring
  • Holding off angles when watching for the flank (specifically I utilized the place Tenz hid on Pearl in the first round to get kills
  • Being more intentional of when the knife is out, I rarely got caught out with my knife. I figured out how much time it takes to pull out the gun, and I always timed it so that I pulled out my gun before peeking anything.

What I can improve on:

  • Pulling out the knife more often when I know no one is close
  • Spam more boxes
  • Utilizing jump peeking more
  • Making sure my peeks are still tight and clean and fast
  • Being much more focused on holding specific peeks when slowly scaling up

An Absolute Puzzle

Byjack

I am completely confused and upset by how this girl that I play Valorant went from having so much fun to always getting annoyed and mad.

Facts that I know:

  1. Used to beg me to play constantly, only stopped because I was too busy with work so I said no all the time
  2. Used to laugh and think I was very funny in games
  3. At first, was resistant to smurfing, but after she was convinced, had a ton of fun trolling on smurfs including doing frenzy only challenge
  4. Used to be afraid to talk in voice chat, only talked to me
  5. Spent all her time talking to me on Valorant and ignored her relationship because of how much she liked playing with me

She used to be my favorite person to play with for several months:

  1. Was always fun and chill
  2. Could make jokes or talk about deep stuff
  3. Made me feel special because she only wanted to play with me
  4. Would actually listen to strats unlike some girls who would get defensive when given any feedback
  5. Was very smart and improved a great deal in the time we played

However, somehow, after months of having lots and lots of fun, everything has taken a dramatic turn:

  1. Gets annoyed when she isn’t doing well and takes the game very seriously
  2. Gets annoyed when I’m taking the game too seriously but also gets mad when I goof off
  3. Wants everyone to be mean and toxic yet gets upset when people are toxic back
  4. Is mad when I’m goofing off and think I’m somehow trying very hard to be funny
  5. Claims that unrated it doesn’t matter if she wins or loses but gets mad when she loses
  6. Claims smurfs don’t matter but somehow gets mad when she loses on a smurf
  7. Somehow is able to have fun with other people and refuses to play with me now
  8. Cannot seem to remember any of our happy times and insists that she never had fun

Some factors that I think may contribute:

  1. May have been taught by someone that being slow and boring is a very bad thing, seems to be overly concerned with it and projects onto other people
  2. May feel a really strong pressure to do well, seemed to take the game extremely seriously after her friend started playing on it
  3. May also feel a great deal of pressure to play well and be less toxic around me because she wants it to work out, the pressure may cause her to do worse, and be even more toxic
  4. May feel a sense of superiority or arrogance? When we first started playing, she kept telling me she was afraid I would stop playing with her because she was lower elo than me. I never did, but always wondered if she would stop playing with me if she got better than me.

Altogether I can’t really make sense of this phenomenon and it does bother me a great deal. I suppose on some level I must accept that something about Valorant and playing with me triggers her in some deep way and that I shouldn’t let that stop me from having fun. It does make me sad that things have changed so dramatically and I lost my favorite Valorant buddy.

Valorant has become significantly less fun for me now. It almost feels like work, instead of a game that I loved. There was a period of time when I was playing with her that I truly let go of the need to win and actually just had fun. I don’t know what I need to do to get that feeling back. I hope she finds a way to have fun as well, but it breaks my heart that it isn’t with me.

The Go For It Mentality

Byjack

There are many different mentalities that can offer deeper insight, faster learning and a deeper connection to the present moment. 

My favorite mentalities are:

  • Meditative/Let It Come Mentality
    • Be patient
    • Don’t do anything
    • The right answer will be clear if you keep feeling and noticing what comes up
    • Good for staying in the moment and being yourself
  • Self Reflection/Feedback Loop (learning) Mentality
    • Look for ways to observe yourself by recording yourself somehow
    • Use the objective, nonjudemental self observation to get clarity on where to improve
    • Good for rapid learning
  • Process Emotions Mentality
    • The action you focus on is feeling
    • Use breathing and physical activity to feel as strongly as possible
    • Very good for emotional growth

However, I recently found a new mentality that actually helps with areas of life that I had trouble with recently. I noticed in rapid active situations like social situations (parties), or sports, or dance or singing overthinking can be a major issue. Using the meditative mentality and or the processing emotions mentality is helpful but ultimately keeps you in your head. Staying in your head isn’t always a good thing because it can actually make it very hard for you to focus on the present moment (even though those exercises usually help you reconnect with the moment). 

I’m not entirely sure where this idea came from, but I think it came from daygaming (approaching girls irl). I started using it in gaming then dance and singing practice (all things where being in the present moment is part of the experience).

I call it the “Go For It” Mentality. Basically, you imagine what you want to do (the perfect action) and then just try going for it.

A couple of major points:

  • Everything is seen as practice (and is very useful when practicing in the moment type skills like language, singing, dance, sports etc where thinking is going to get in your way and you want to focus your instincts).
  • Repetition is the goal since it is practice, nothing is seen as the final end all be all.
  • As you keep repeating, you adjust every single time until it feels more and more right. This is one way that you can start bringing in the other tools and mindsets in order to have a really beautiful time.
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Valorant 19: The True Warmup

Byjack

In my Valorant journey right now, I’m very interested in perfecting strafe shooting and proper clearing. 

I heard that one of the elements of getting really good is about focusing on fewer things. What I’m really working on right now is getting something out of my warmups.

I usually play deathmatch until I feel like I’m hitting my shots and then jump into a match. But, now I’m thinking I need to let go of trying to push off from the confidence in a good deathmatch and instead working on making the mechanics more intuitive…meaning I need to deathmatch until I can hit shots even if I’m not match mvp, my clears, peeks and jiggles feel COMFORTABLE. Even if that means going into some deathmatches where it is really hard and everyone on taps me. The point of warmup should be when I feel like I’m not having trouble hitting shot anymore.

Video Type Footage and Elements

Byjack

I realized that I have made every single video type that I said in the last blog post (Video Poem, How To Video, Challenge Video, Conversation Video) except the How To Video.

I think the reason why, is that I tend to restrict myself with only shooting myself, when in How To Videos I would actually have a lot more fun shooting it with many more elements such as animation, and stop motion.

Going on that theme, I’m going through every video type and breaking down the types of video I’m going to try in each.

Video Poem
  • Lots of beautiful b-roll (mostly from traveling)
  • Some b-roll from video personal diary entries
  • Voice over from a written script
  • Collage of elements, textures, images, text and footage
How-to Video
  • Less is more
  • Animation
  • Stop motion
  • B-roll
  • Talking head (straight on face shot)
  • Text on screen
  • Focus on simplicity and directly to the point
Challenge Video
  • Broll of challenge
  • Diary entries from during the challenge
  • Voice overs
  • Broll for explanations
  • Focus on the journey and try to convey how it felt for real
Conversation Video
  • Little to no editing
  • Natural and interesting conversation