hi, so like.. whats the secret?
Did u change sens or fov. Buy bigger screen or new mouse or mat. Or did u beat Milton when u changed raw input to direct. When did u think. now im really getting ahead in this, the worlds hardest shooter called qw.

play alot

Got that covered, played since shareware... but still noob and div 4..
wtf is that setting ive never got right?
Maybe rollangle or mouse rate...maybe cl_predict_players?

what was that one thing that made u improve 100%

was born that way

Low Ping. (Half kidding)



I think for the majority of great players it is not about having good settings or hardware. Many elite players can play with bad equipment (laptops, bad mouse, unfamiliar machine) or bad settings (no sound by listening to music) and consistently beat lesser players. What few settings there are that offer clear advantages (fullbrightskins) are used by everyone already anyways, and anything else is just personal taste (viewheight, rollangle).



I could be considered a good player (top 4 duelmania). I've never really thought "now I'm getting ahead". Instead, the way I've thought about it over the years has been "now I'm making less mistakes". I feel what made me a better player was learning what my mistakes were, and not making them again.

There was a time where I was playing with dev and we were discussing our approaches / strategies. I stated mine as, "kill people, don't die". A week or so later, dev corrected me. He said "No, it's don't die and kill people". He was right.

You will never lose if you never die. In qw, a single death normally isn't the loss of 1 point; with spawnfrags a single death can commonly become a 1-5 point swing. A close match between even players can sometimes be won purely by a string of spawnfrags. Not dieing means employing an immense set of skills to make decisions that enable you to survive enemy attacks or even compel you to make your own attacks to earn control that helps you not die some more in the future.

Years ago I would spend time watching demos to see what I did wrong, or equivalently, what I could have done better. At this point, I no longer have to watch demos to learn my mistakes, every death is a mistake that can be analyzed. Even more fine grained, every fight I expected to win and didn't is a mistake, and every failed prediction means updating my understanding of the game or opponent. This isn't a new concept, its just another case of "learn from your mistakes / defeats".

Some thoughts that go through my head playing games, "at this spawn I always immediately go to lg and the enemy always predicts that and kills me, I should change up my pattern", "every time I turn this corner I get hit in the face with a rocket, I should wait a beat before I turn this corner", "when I jumped I made a sound that gave away my position, that was dumb", "I always shoot this long distance rocket too early and miss, I should wait a beat and then shoot", "if I stand over here I frequently get hit with splash damage, if I stand one step to the left I'm much harder to hit and take less damage, I should do that next time", "I really shouldn't have attacked from that angle, they had a much better position and beat me, next time I'll do it differently", "I should have predicted them attacking in that way, next time I will and I'll be able to punish it", "wow that worked really well, lets try that again", yada yada yada.

I had an enormous description of how I think elite players have a more refined sense of game sense / map awareness... but I removed it. Detect and eliminate your mistakes and you will be a great player.

In the duels I've had with elite players (gt, bulat, carapace, bps, locust) I feel its a dance to see who will make the first mistake, or force the first mistake in the other player.

wow nice reply... gonna be more meta when i play

I agree with Bogo, the goal is not to chase enemies for kills. In 2on2 and 4on4, I feel this is an important revelation for good teamwork. Positioning and items is more important, and the kills will follow. A couple of examples for 2on2:

1- Let's say you get Quad on ztndm3. What do you do? If the answer is to go crazy looking for a couple of extra kills, then you've wasted the opportunity (unless it's the last minute and you need the points to win). What you should be doing is maintaining or regaining control of the map by making sure you AND your teammate can get the next armors and be well positioned for the next quad. Would you be happier with 1 "impressive" quad run of many frags, or 4 or 5 consecutive quad runs that individually might seem less impressive (in terms of streak), but where you and your teammate have control the entire time? It's perfectly ok to be patient. I hate when my stacked teammate is going crazy with the quad running around useless areas, but he completely ignores that I have nothing and I need some assistance to stack up. Help me get the next RA, maybe by just being patient for 5 seconds, then we can BOTH go crazy with the frags and the next quad will be a piece of cake for us to take!

2- Always think about your teammate. Where is he, what's his stack, and what is he going to do next? Communication is critical. Let's say you're playing dm2 and you just died. You spawn at big, where do you go? The answer is it depends on where your teammate and the enemies are. If you go to low RL but the enemy is there with control, you just gave them a free kill (at least one), wasted time that could have been spent stacking up for the next quad, didn't help your teammate at all, etc. It seems obvious but I see many lower skilled players not think about which RL they are going for after a spawn. Instead, a good teammate will notice that you died and tell you that Tele is SAFE so that you can go there, get the high RL with an armor, and help for the next quad. Making a tiny wrong decision on where to go can have a cascade effect and lead to a blowout game, QW is unforgiving and everything adds up.

3- Another example on ZTN: I almost always push for the next quad even if enemy is there, but what happens if you're sure there's no chance you will take it? Hopefully the enemy is at least a bit weak because you've been flooding a couple of times, so that when they take the quad they're not fully stacked. In that case, do the next best thing and MAKE SURE you take the RA and maybe even YA while they are waiting for the Quad to spawn. Don't be shy, maybe even take the nearby health packs. That way the enemy quad is much easier to kill or can't be as aggressive. The worst is when you know the next quad is lost but you and your teammate don't bother making their life miserable. They'll take the RA for free and then it's spawnfrags and you're screwed, and there's no way you have a chance at the next quad either. Great players like Milton will magically set things up so that they're timed well (e.g. you know the RA will be up 5 seconds after you take Quad, so you can easily stack back up), but the trick is to make things difficult so that there is always something to fight for even if you're not in control.

I don't have the best aim (my lg aim is probably among the worst), and my movement is pretty average, and there are no magic settings that will fix any of that. The way you compensate for these things (and for high ping) is by focusing on the strategy. Don't think about the next frag, think about the situation and why you are doing something.

BD

P.S. There's a lot to be said about timing too. Everyone knows armors spawn every 20 seconds and weapons every 30, but you'd be surprised at how much this is ignored. Not everyone is good at keeping track of the clock, which is understandable, but it will help you a ton if you put in at least some effort. Where are you 20 seconds after the start of a map? If it's a fast-paced map like ZTN and you didn't think about taking the next RA, you might have just cost yourself control, you won't be able to get the next RA at 00:40, and that means you probably won't get the quad either. Where are you 30 seconds after the start of a dm2 4on4? Hopefully you were thinking about taking the next low RL, or if that's out of the question, maybe at around 00:35 you should be at high RL. If you're just running around big enjoying shotgun fights, you didn't help yourself and you certainly didn't help your team.

Nice, Bogo and BD, a good reminder!

yeah real nice

very good answers.
I would like to have your opinion on how ping affects your strategy.

I used to play alot back in the day, and ping did affect my strategy. Since I mostly played with >80ms, it defined me as a player. It forced me to be more careful when approaching the enemy, more defensive, which worked out pretty okay. Knowing the timings and reading the map was necessary. Where I struggled the most was on those situations where I needed change gear and be aggressive - it depended on my "qw fitness". I needed to play (practice) to play agressively in a deadly way. But thats me, an average player

Now that i'm writing this, it really sucked when I felt i was going to lose that dogfight before it started, because the enemy shot first (when it was related to ping).

My tips:
Watch a lot of demos, a lot, of course record your own and learn from mistakes.
Train on all the trick jumps per map that's needed during duels, 2v2s and 4v4s.

I spent hours and hours of just jumping around on maps alone.

Play around a lot with rollangle, m_pitch, m_yaw etc (use same on both in my opinion)
Find best in_mouse setting, everyone has their win favorite

Play around with sensitivity, especially if you feel that higher sensitivity reduces your Lighting %.
I played with a different sensitivity when LG was active.
Also find your perfect match with in_m_accel or what the cmd is, could make big difference.

Find the perfect crosshair just for you, some crosshairs really made me focus less on the map and playstyle.
Play around with different huds, some might feel that it gives you an advantage, most probably it does as well.

Test everything, eventually you will find what's most comfortable for you.

comfortable is key

There's probably more truth to this than anyone wants to admit. Do you think Milton, Rikoll etc made their biggest improvements against high ping opponents? I doubt it, but I'd be interested to hear their thoughts..

I'm definitely not an 'elite' player, but the game feels completely different with (or against) high ping, and I have no interest in practicing that way. Pair that with the North American scene being super tiny, and you've got yourself a recipe for improving very slowly! I bet if I was playing from Europe I could get away with being so picky about ping, and have more opponents

When I could FINALLY beat "goose"

I also played with high ping for quite some time and I agree with your assessment. My strategy was completely based around placing myself in favorable situations where ping would not matter as much. I believe this is what enabled me to become a proficient player.

Regarding OP's question: there is already plenty of good advice in this thread. To summarize - think about what you are doing and try to stay one step ahead of your opponent. You do not need to play with high ping in order to practise this

Positioning is the key

exactly. i tried to say that in my post, but kinda failed because of noob english skills. Positioning

Welcome back to the forum!

Btw hey griffin whats up long time no see.. miss our duels :>

Sup dude. We can play some duels for old times sake! I prefer dm2 these days though, my shaft is not really up to par

Hey griffin i would love to play some but i dont have a pc or screen atm to play with since i use my smart phone for everything and i dont have internet at home... i know hard to believe but its true :> i have smart phone internet and thats all i need atm. But i might get one of those internet sticks and a pc from a friend and we can play some games like the old days...lets just say soon ok? :>

You both should attend QHLAN

A lot of good replies here already and I agree with most of them. My two cents:

1) Playing a lot helps but it's not the be all and end all solution to become an elite player. For me the key probably has always been in analyzing and rationalizing the way I and my opponents play. If someone asks you in the middle of the game why you did something the way you did, you should have an answer, and that answer should be good. Knowing your opponent(s) helps a ton as well. Most, if not all, players have patterns in their game play that you can use against them and very few players bother changing them even if they don't work.

2) Play a variety of maps and game modes. In my books a player isn't very elite if the only thing he plays is dm2 1on1 (for example). Being varied doesn't only make you look better but actually helps your game play as well. Playing quite a few duels back in the day improved my 4on4 skills immensely and for example the furious fights in 2on2 and FFA can prepare you for those surprising and/or game-changing situations in any game mode.


While I agree that not dying is important, it's not a perfect solution for team-based mods. For example in 4on4 it can be very beneficial to just go for the quad even if you "know" that you will be killed. The damage you've dealt or the distraction you've caused could very well make all the difference for your teammate who comes in half a second later. If all players in 4on4 prioritize not-dying instead of making the (imo) necessary sacrifices, the end result isn't as good as it would be otherwise.


Again I mostly agree, but there are quite a few situations where chasing makes sense. When we were on top of our game with tVS we were somewhat famous for racking up frags very fast. This was a sum of many things but one of the most important ones was getting rid of any and all enemy weapons, and that means chasing them down. It makes things amazingly easy in 4on4 when you kill the enemy rockets and LGs before they get a chance to get stacked and/or lurk their way to important areas of the map.

Phrenic suggested playing around with almost every setting you could possibly find. I politely disagree and tend to agree with Bogo here. Use settings that aren't utterly ridiculous and stick to those. It's a matter of what you're used to. I've met quite a few players over the years who were never satisfied with the settings they had and always tuned something one way or another. I think they never got any better even after years of fine-tuning.


What do you mean by playing _against_ high ping opponents? As far as I can tell the opponents ping doesn't matter all that much, and used to matter even less in the past. Nowadays antilag can cause annoying deaths in fights against LG enemies and very high packet loss can cause players to warp but that's about it.

Playing with low ping certainly has its benefits. Most importantly the game feels a lot more fun that way. I live in Romania at the moment and already playing with 51, 64 or sometimes 77 ping doesn't feel as enjoyable as 12-38 ping does. I've gotten somewhat used to it though and I think I can now do the vast majority of the things I did with 12ms. I know many of you play with 100+ pings but as players like griffin and interceptor have shown us, it's not impossible to get very good with those pings either, and that was before antilag.

Not that my level is near Milton's, but I very much agree with this. Too often I see people afraid to die and that makes a big difference. A good example is DM2, when the quad is up and you are pretty stacked and want to make a push for it. Your teammate is nearby with a pretty useless stack, or maybe no weapon at all. It would be immensely helpful if the teammate went in the Quad room and caused a distraction, even if for 0.5 seconds, which would help me RJ up and steal (with good timing) or at least contest the Quad. But what happens is people think it's pointless because they will die, so they end up running away to try and find an armor. What happens is I will die because I didn't get help, and my teammate will also die anyway because the stacked quad will chase them down. So being too careful in this case doesn't help at all. If the enemy already has stacked Quad then of course you don't want to give up free kills, but at least fight for it before it gets to that. Maybe you won't take Quad, but you might weaken the enemy enough so that they will have to be cautious in their Quad run.


Yeah, maybe I should have clarified to mean "don't get distracted by the wrong enemies" or "don't chase useless enemies". If course flooding enemy weapons is critically important and something that doesn't happen nearly enough in mixes. I can't count the number of times I try to flood a weak enemy (coughMiltoncough) but he escapes with limited health and stacks up, only because the other teammates are too busy hiding at low and are afraid to die a couple of times with sg flooding. Makes my stats look bad with extra deaths but at least I feel like I put pressure It's amazing how many times just a couple of extra sg shots would have made the difference in regaining control. The other thing with flooding is you end up starving the enemy of health and armors, so after a couple of cycles of flooding it becomes incredibly hard to defend against (think of a weak'ish rl at dm2 tele). But if the flooding doesn't have enough sustained teammate support, all you did is give free kills and the enemy then stacks up again...

What I meant was, again using DM2 as an example, there have been so many times where Quad is up very soon, teammate and I are in better shape than enemies and we're near big or water area, and enemy SG spawns nearby. My teammate will get distracted by the free kill (or worse, even chase the enemy back to low or tele) and not help at the Quad, so it ends up being a 1on1 battle for it instead of an easy 2on1. Teammate got distracted by the shiny easy kill and didn't keep their eyes on the prize...

Yes, good point! I made my comments with only duel in mind. In duel you have the maximum control of the outcome of the game. Assuming even conditions (like ping) and commitment between two players, individual skill is arguably the only factor that determines the winner. You could claim some luck is involved with spawning, but that is known and agreed on ahead of time by both players.

In team games you can lose a game even if you individually never die. So the short foundational strategy of "don't die and kill people" must necessarily be different. Likewise, an exceptional duel player may not qualify as an exceptional team game player. I have relatively little team play experience, so I'll defer to others. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Is there a nice quip / goal that works for most team games? I'd venture something like, "always act to benefit the team".

Regardless of the game mode, a reliable road to higher skill is to learn from your mistakes and eliminate them. Revelatory tips, like BLooD_DoG's description of knowing when or when not to chase the enemy, may help you realize mistakes you didn't know you were making. Collectively we can provide a list of hundreds of these tips (when to fire or not fire, subtleties of sound, all aspects of game sense, etc) and it would be a really fun thread!



I really like this. It is nice and succinct!

I also see it as an analog to correcting mistakes; the decision making side that can lead to good or bad outcomes. There is very much a feedback loop between the two.

succinct means? never seen that word.

Maybe it also has something to do with friction physics with mouse and keyboard. hence the comfortablablish. Also sens 0.8 and crosshairsize 0.6 and not always one long story

LOL