The mental stack is one of the most interesting aspects of not just gaming, but life in general. It’s by far my favorite aspect of competitive games thanks to the potential impact it can have on late round split second decisions regardless of genre or title.
For those that don’t know, the mental stack is a way to understand where a person’s focus is. Humans have a limited amount of information that they can keep in mind. Go over the limit and the brain is forced to drop something. You can think of the brain as a juggler, it’s doing a bunch of different tasks and keeping them all up in the air at the same time. Try to keep too many balls in the air and something gets dropped.
If you turn to gaming, you’re looking at a medium that’s almost intentionally designed to overload the brain with information. Even casual games have so much going on that requires loads of time invested to get a cursory understanding of. If you have experience with the genre this learning curve takes less time, but for absolute beginners even simple games can be hard to understand. Have you ever seen someone play CoD for the first time? They’re just trying to remember the controls, forget shooting the guns.
Applied to esports, the games get to a point where it’s impossible to manage all the information. This is where the fun starts. Let’s look at Siege, there’s so much stuff that you have to know and understand to play the game at a competent level. Managing information, using utility, coordination with the team, communicating, shooting your gun, all of these take a certain amount of focus.
Come late round, keeping track of all the various things going on makes it hard to stay focused on everything. Remaining utility, drones, and the current location of Defenders all takes focus, so much so that you simply do not have the bandwidth to keep everything in mind at all points in the round. If the brain chooses to drop the wrong factor it can cost you the round.
So what does understanding the mental stack do for you? Well it’s literally the only reason traps work in high level play. Sure, you droned out that Kapkan trap 30 seconds ago, but you also kept droning. Then this Jaeger was spotted, so you started comming for the entry to hunt them down. The round somehow turns into a 2v3 and you get off drone to do something about it and all of a sudden that Kapkan trap slips your mind. You walk through the door and…boom.
While I’m unable to find the years old graphic, Ubisoft released data on how effective Kapkan traps and Frost mats were across the different ranks back in Year 1. Oddly enough, the most susceptible to these traps weren’t the low ranked players, but those in Diamond and Platinum. How is this the case? Well…
Trap operators abuse the mental stack to work. For beginners, operators like Kapkan and Frost serve more as knowledge checks. Did you check the door/floor before taking space? Either you check and act accordingly or face the consequences of an explosion or broken leg. On top of that, most new players don’t entirely know how to play the game yet. It’s a lot easier to drone out a trap and keep it in mind when paying attention to 3 factors in the round than when you’re juggling 15. A beginner doesn’t worry about how slow and ineffective a roam clear is and the effects that will have on the late round when they’re just glad to have gotten a kill.
For experienced players, traps abuse the mental stack at every level. Random trap that shouldn’t work? The brain assumed it was safe to clear up bandwidth to worry about the roam clear. Droned out the trap but it’s the last 15 seconds of the round in a chaotic 2v2? Wouldn’t you know that trap’s location is deemed unimportant by the brain because you need to play out this high pressure situation.
Traps aren’t the only way to take advantage of the mental stack, off angles are another way to abuse an opponent’s limited focus. Traps are just the most effective way to highlight how the mental stack works and why.