Yamikazexz

yami · @Yamikazexz

13th Jun 2021 from TwitLonger

Korea Bootcamp & Mental Health


Hi. I'm in Korea atm to stream league. I'm heading back early, so figured I'd write about my experience. Read if you're interested :3.

Korean Soloq:

I'm sure this has all been said a million times from prev KR bootcamps, but I'll write my thoughts. First, everyone above gold/plat has insane mechanics (I played through smurf q so not completely sure where this starts). 40% of the plat players I played with had better mechanics than the average NA masters/GM player. Especially the ADCs. Every game is ADC gap. Every kaisa/jinx/ezreal 1v9s, even if they don't main adc. Every mage has undodgeable skillshots. It was much harder to rely on sheer mechanics to climb like you can in a lot of lower elo NA games.

Imo, korea soloq has a fundamental culture difference from NA. Players (generally) tend to play more as a team. If someone wants to limit test and int, the rest of the team will always follow. If I ping my jungle to try a mid gank. They'll always come and attempt a gank, regardless of how it fks their path. It's not uncommon to see laners walk to your lane to hold a wave for you. Junglers will always give blue if you ask. One jungler got mad at me for not taking blue. Generally, players play more for the team than for individual leads. NA is an ego cringefest.

All of this makes soloq a much better experience, generally, up until ~D4-D1. This elo range is pretty famous for being "elo hell" in Korea. All the inters, nolifes, item sellers, etc. who play 20 games a day are all in this elo. It's a rly miserable experience. Games are 90% coinflip regardless of how well you play. Small leads from better vision control, etc. don't really matter. 60% of your teammates will go 20-0 or 0-20. People play through 10-20 loss streaks, sell items in base at 10 min, first time champs in ranked, etc. Autofill and opgg stalking decides most games. Imo, Diamond is similar in other regions, where it's much harder to carry Diamond games than it is to carry GM+ games. But, in my experience on NA, it's really so much worse on KR. Players absolutely refuse to be carried and you can easily tell that 10-20% of the players in a game don't care about winning. Sooo many games start with enemy player randomly running it down level 1, troll support picks that either go 20-0 or 0-20, or just decided in champ select in general. I really think individual skill matters very little in this elo range. All that matters is your mental and willingness to dodge as many lobbies as it takes to get games without griefers or hard int autofill. Then, you will climb automatically through the sheer amount of players on the enemy team who will be selling items or hard griefing autofill.

I can't speak for higher elos than this as I peaked D1 ~20 lp. I don't think I played well for reasons I'll explain in a bit. I also think I'm washed up from ~1.5 yrs of streaming in NA ~dia and playing for content. I could barely end chall last season while getting duo boosted. The previous paragraph isn't meant as an excuse for why I couldn't climb higher, it's just to explain how D4-D1 here is. Anyone who's bootcamped here would probably agree.

Korea bootcamp:

Atm, Korea has a 2 week mandatory quarantine at a hotel. To avoid this, you need a long term visa or citizenship. The only ways to get a long term visa are through an esports team or marriage. Obviously I didn't have either. My plan was to live in an apartment near PolyPuff. There was some miscommunication and we assumed that I was allowed to quarantine in the apartment. However, this is NOT POSSIBLE without a long term visa or citizenship (the ironic thing is, people with these cannot get a hotel even if they want one). If you're thinking about coming to korea, don't make this mistake. I had to pay ~2k for a 14 night quarantine on the spot (which is fine). They loaded us up into a bus and drove us to a quarantine hotel, which had no ethernet and 2 bars of wifi (not fine). I was literally trapped in a small studio hotel for 2 weeks with the most dogshit internet since spectrum. The ethernet port in my room was disabled due to "possible fire hazard" (idk how the fk this works so I won't comment on it but xD). Didn't see or speak to a single person during this time.

After quarantine, I arrived at my apartment. Took a few days to get everything set up. Then, I grinded league for 12h a day and didn't talk to anyone irl for 1.5 months straight aside from meeting some streamers for a few hours. Everyone who comes to Korea talks about the mental toll of grinding league and isolation. Tbh, I really underestimated how fast my mental would decline here. Traveling alone to a foreign country, not seeing anyone and playing soloq for 12h a day for almost 2 months is quite brutal. I really would not recommend coming here without a group of friends. I knew a lot of people here + met a lot of rly nice ppl but, even then, people are busy and a lot of people in Korea are pretty hesitant to meet up irl.

Riot KR gave me a creator account, meaning it had base mmr in ~silver 4. I got instantly put in smurf q after one game. Took around 60-80 games to get out. Riot really outdid themselves with smurf q. That shit is completely fking unplayable and I'll never willingly climb a smurf ever again. Most of you know, but every game is legit random matchmaking between silver-dia level players and complete rng on whether any individual player cares about winning or not. By the time I was out, I had already fked my mental and built a lot of really bad habits from smurf q (I took ~3 week break from league before starting here. 1 week in NA, 2 weeks in quarantine).

When I got kicked out of smurf queue, I was in ~d2-d1 mmr. Things seemed pretty good, but I made the mistake of streaming games in the diamond elo range. Streaming in general just makes it so hard to climb. I have a lot of respect for streamers who are able to maintain high ranks on stream (especially with mic/cam). Again, the thing about Korea Diamond is, I really think that skill doesn't matter as much as mental and willingness to dodge. Streaming and reading chat ingame + reluctance to dodge target bans, item sellers, hard offrole, etc. and having a general mentality of grinding games instead of keeping mental and dodging made climbing very difficult. I know it sounds like hard COPIUM (and it prob is, to an extent), but I really didn't feel outclassed by any players in the elo range. D1 KR felt like GM NA at best. I just didn't have the discipline to play off stream and spam dodge games to climb out.

I realized, of course, that I had to climb off stream pretty quickly. It's pretty fked though, as a streamer, coming to Korea to climb off stream. So I'd climb a day or two off stream, make good progress, then grief it all by chaining games on stream (even with no mic/cam, chaining games and reluctance to dodge really fks korea diamond climb). Plus, having nothing but soloq to do here, I played for 12-16h a day regardless of my alertness. I gave up after losing 1-2 weeks of off stream progress in a buncha 15 ffs in a stream. My mental too weak. Copium.

I came to Korea to experience KR soloq and have a nice little vacation from NA. Honestly, experiencing the Korean "culture" of griefing has really helped me appreciate the great NA streamer server. A lot of koreans don't see selling items at 10 min after going 0-20 as "griefing." They see themselves as participants of the Korean soloq culture of selling items at 10 minutes (kekw). Obviously this isn't true for everyone, but I've been told that this is how a lot of griefers think. The worst game I had here was when I pinged my jg off a 2v2 vs gragas yasuo (with ult advantage on us). He proceeded to fight 1v2, die, then follow me around the rest of the game last hitting all my minions and spamming emotes. My bad, I guess.

I think what really sealed the deal was when I realized that it really didn't matter what rank I hit here. Days of grinding off stream don't mean anything, as even if I hit GM+, I'd have to no cam/mic all of my games, if I were to even stream at all. As a streamer, it's just so pointless to play to win and climb and the stress of taking so much time off stream + isolation + kr soloq just really fked me up.

So, I'll be heading back within 1-2 weeks. Might take some time and explore around a little. Probably won't be playing any more league. Probably won't be streaming.

I should have prepared more for Korea. Brought some more friends along, improved more off stream while in NA, etc. But, Korea was a spontaneous decision for me. I was on the verge of quitting league / twitch because I really hated NA soloq and Korea was just something I've always wanted to do and wanted to experience and get out of the way. And I'm okay with that.

I'm not disappointed in myself, as I had a feeling something like this would happen. I'm very thankful for all the people who've helped me here & all the people I've met. I don't regret the trip at all. Thank you for watching me here, if you have. Not sure what I'll do when I go back. Might go back to college and take a step away from league / streaming. Hope this helps some of you considering a Korea trip. Feel free to DM if you have questions. See you all around :3

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