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Starcraft 2 is seriously the only game that's ever given me performance anxiety. There were days when I'd sit down to play and I'd already have nerves and just nope right out and watch GSL VODs of pro players instead. Seeing your rating and all that, Platinum to Diamond, then Diamond to Master, that game was rough and you were always at risk of cheese and basically getting harassed to death playing a traditional build order
On the other hand I enjoyed that game for years without ever touching multiplayer....
It's always weird because everyone talks about how stressful it was, but it never was to me because I could just pause/save and walk away.
Up towards Masters people would get really creative and it was a shitshow, like you'd scout and see 1 rax and think you're getting rushed but they actually went two rax expo and tucked the rax and base in some corner, so you lost the macro game anticipating an early attack (or you'd do that same thing to them). It was just weird mindfuck stuff like that left and right lol. Basically hyper aggressive deception every other game and you'd have to play like that in order to survive
Everybody talking about lucid dreaming in this thread while this person figured out how to play lucid Starcraft.
Personally i didn't really have performance anxiety, but I would get really pumped every match with my pulse racing and sometimes even my hands shaking afterwards. I always had to take breaks in between ladder games, only after an hour or two it would normalize enough to queue repeatedly.
The cheese didnt bother me much, I always loved macro and did that every game behind good scouting, often leading to some timing attack I built up to like a stim bio timing or tank marine drop.
I can't really put my finger on it but it's almost like the game gave me imposter syndrome, as if by some fluke I was where I was at, and everyone was probably much more knowledgable about timings and map awareness. Felt a little more risky than it should have, trying risky things, that kinda thing.
There wasn't any sort of MMR-based practice mode where I could just fuck around and not be a tryhard against similarly-rated players and I think that kind of fed into that, like if you want an even matchup it's gonna be on the book so you gotta play to win at all times.
At some point I just felt committed to trying to win every match, eventual weird vibes from it
I had that in WoW PvP. A buddy and I were in the top 50 of the second largest server and it was work. Even solo, we'd often wait for each other to come online before hitting ranked PvP so there was at least someone to talk to. It made losing not seem so bad, and if you started flunking, the other would say to stop and pick it up later.
Otherwise, pressure as hell. And for no reason other than trying to be the top rank of my class which was some pointless goal I put on myself.