How to improve in FPS (Written about TF2) WiP 2013
Okay so why are you here? You want to improve, right? First off I’m gonna say what you’ve probably heard a million times and are absolutely sick of hearing. You have to practice. You don’t necessarily have to play every day for hours and hours to be good, but it would certainly help if you did that if you were looking to be great. If you want to be one of the best when it comes to literally anything you have to put effort into actually improving. There are a lot of people I notice in MGE (1v1 mode) trying really really hard to win against everyone they play, and they even resort to doing things they would never ever do in a real game. Things like counter jumping after a soldier jumps you on spire, or waiting until the guy hits the floor so you can shoot that instead of him. These things would arguably never be useful in actual matches because they would put you at a disadvantage. Damaging yourself or allowing someone to damage you for any length of time before trying to kill them is obviously not going to work if you don’t get your health back after killing that person if you manage to do so. Before I continue I must also explain that I am by no means the authority on this subject, or the games I play. I’m just writing down what I have learnt over the years and what I think could be helpful or encouraging to some people!
There is no cheat code or trick to make yourself way better than other people. When it comes to aim you can get good anywhere. All you’re doing when practicing to aim is teaching your brain things like where the person you’re aiming at will move, how much your hand has to move if it wants to flick and shoot that person etcetera etcetera you get the idea. That’s the easiest way to think of it anyway. If you’re practicing playing vs public players that have never had to deal with someone with good aim or movement before every day your brain is going to be able to aim and move vs those people. If you then go up against someone with movement you’ve never seen before, or aim that you can’t manage to dodge then you’re going to lose way harder than you’d expect even if you’ve been absolutely destroying the other people you’ve played against. I’m kind of babbling here so I’ll get get to the (fairly obvious) point. If you want to get the most out of practicing you should play against people you have problems beating. Stomping on a load of people that have barely any idea how to eat food on their own probably won’t help you too much.
So yeah, “great thanks konr you told us that playing vs better players means better practice. As if we didn’t know that!” — Bear with me here, I’m going to now go onto another subject that I had a lot of issues with when I was newer. My issue was the obstacle of getting mad or upset. I still do this quite a lot but I’ve learnt to deal with it a lot better than I was able to at the start.
The way I see it is if you aren’t comfortable playing and you are under no obligation to do so, don’t play. Don’t force yourself to play DM (Deathmatch mode) for hours and hours while raging at your screen because of you missing shots, hit registration fucking you over or any other list of excuses. Even if they’re a genuine issue that actually isn’t just an excuse, don’t subject yourself to not having fun just for the sake of improvement. The best way to practice or do well in anything is to be comfortable doing it. If you’re getting mad or not doing so well just come back later and do it after you’ve cooled down a bit. If you’re in pcws/scrims and there are people on their team that are spamming binds or just trolling in general then turn your chat off and focus on how you can do better. If you aren’t hitting your shots so much, tell your team that and try to go for more backcaps and things that don’t need you to win 1v1 fights as often. Ideally you won’t want to be taking 1v1s anyway, so you should try to kick that habit early on. Just try to be in your comfort zone in every single situation. This isn’t just about you getting mad or upset with yourself or others either. If you can fight people on your terms every single time you do it, you are already one step ahead of those people. Consider this scenario: You’re in house and it’s just you and a scout up after a mid fight that went very evenly to both teams. The only difference is you have a health pack spawning and this guy is on the slope outside house waiting for you still with 80 hp. Either you wait for him to walk into you for a few seconds, take the health pack and fight on your terms ready for his arrival or you run out there like a headless chicken and walk right into where he expects you to appear. That scout would absolutely adore it if you ran in front of him because that’s pretty much the only chance he has of killing you and winning the mid for his team, but if you are patient and wait and he walks into you, he’s just asking to be meatshot the second he runs around the corner. This is a very specific scenario and it could actually go either way on a lot of mids depending on some things but my point is if you fight on your terms you will always have a 1up on their team. Unless your terms are completely retarded of course but you could argue that if you expect them to come through all at once you still have a better hand than if you fought on their terms in the same stupid position.
The best way to improve is to diagnose what problems you have in actual pcws/scrims/matches. Because of the wonderful logs.tf this is a lot easier than it was before. If you find you’re dying to soldiers all the time ask yourself why. An example could be that you’re walking into their roamer too much on your own and you need to stop overextending, or it could be that you stand around the combo a little bit too much when the medic doesn’t actually want you there. It could be any number of things but the point is that if you can diagnose what your biggest issues are it’s much easier to improve on them. When I was around div 4/3 my biggest problems were as follows:
1. Going sniper way too much
2. Taking scout 1v1s when I didn’t need to
3. Losing vs scouts most of the time I fought them
So there we go we have a short list. Personally I nerded really really hard and watched demos after every serious game I played. I had an actual notepad in front of me and I noted down mistakes I made when I died or when we lost rounds and things like that. I worked out if things would have gone better if I did something differently, and if they would then that would go on the list. The list started as about a page and a half of very broad things, some being huge problems of mine and some being occasional ones. Over the months I was doing this and trying to implement these improvements in my games, I was seeing a lot of improvement. In fact the improvement was insane. Considering that when I started this stuff I was barely being considered div 4 by most people and some people would even say I was lower than that. My aim was extremely inconsistent, I was unable to take criticism from anyone I thought was lower or at the same level as me and generally I was just shit. I put in the effort with this method and it really did show.
Okay so the first problem was me sniping too much. Easy right? Stop going sniper and try to win stuff as scout instead. I did exactly that. In situations where I would find myself thinking “oh a med pick here would be nice” instead of thinking “ohh an excuse to go sniper” I would just stay scout unless I was asked to snipe and would try my best to stay alive and do my job as a scout. At first I got frustrated because of losing some rounds where a snipe on the medic would have saved it, but then one thing I realised also was that I was far more valued as a player because of it. If we lost a round it was rarely ended with my team saying “oh fucking come on konr go scout for once” and instead it was a problem elsewhere. If it was still my fault then I could actually agree with it and it was much easier to improve on scout with that genuine criticism that was more than just saying not to snipe.
The second problem was easy too. When I was in a game whenever I felt like I could take a scout I thought “do I actually NEED to get this pick, and would my team be that better off if I got it?” and if the answer was no then I would stay back. This went back to the fighting on your terms thing too, because in light of this I had a lot more success fighting scouts that were making a mistake instead of jumping into a fully ready scout that was completely prepared to shoot me down. Instead the tables were turned a lot of the time and that made improvement much easier. Staying alive also meant that I could be much more useful to my team (obviously) and in times where I would have got one pick (maybe) and died, I was there ready to get a backcap or clean up a few players that my team was having trouble with.
I say my third is my last but these are basically just some problems that I remember and I actually had a lot of small problems as well as these. Thirdly, my deathmatching was especially bad when playing vs scouts. I never ever ever fought on my terms and always just ran in like a retard if I got baited in. This was helped immensely when fixing my second issue, and over time I learnt to fight scouts. Of course I did play DM a fair bit too but I think the pcws/scrims helped much more than you’d expect.
So that was only three problems fixed but you get the idea I think. The best part about this is that if you do this with some big issues of yours, it will likely almost entirely fix other problems you’re having ingame too. Now I’ll quickly touch on how to improve your aim in general and why being healthy in general will help you wayyyy more than you’d think. I won’t touch too much on that last part though because I’m not a doctor or a life guru so I have no idea what the details are. Be happy! That’s the best advice I can give anyone. If you’re uncomfortable in any way shape or form then you’re already at a disadvantage. Let’s say your sleeping pattern is fucked and when you play your pcws/scrims you’re really really tired. If that’s the case then you’re probably going to have terrible reactions, feel shit in general and most aspects of your game will be dumbed down. If you haven’t eaten properly or at all in a while your body is going to think about food and be like SHIT I’M DYING (not literally) and so you’re gonna just feel shit. If you’re angry because you’re missing shots or some shit has happened in your real life that you can’t control then take a little bit to chill. As long as it takes to get yourself in a good mood again. If you like walking your dog do that, or if you like a nice cup of tea go make one. Whatever helps you. Once you’re happy then you come back and you try again. Try not to go my route and rage in chat at people you think are playing gay or whatever, that doesn’t help anyone even if it is sometimes true ;)
tl;dr: Watch your demos, write down what you did wrong when you die/lose rounds and if stuff was your fault. If it was your fault and you can fix those things, consciously try to in the next games you play. Rinse and repeat. As for aim try to be calm and happy. Eat well and feel good before playing.
WiP
