Tips and tricks for playing more consistently well, please...
Roobubba
Who you gonna call? Join Date: 2003-01-06 Member: 11930Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Who you gonna call? Join Date: 2003-01-06 Member: 11930Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Dear all,
I'm finding myself quite often failing to kill anything for whole rounds at a time, and then miraculously being back to what I optimistically consider 'normal', getting top of the server and owning. I don't quite understand why I'm getting such huge variation in how well I'm doing.
Sometimes I can be on fire, in the zone, aiming well and taking very few hits.
Sometimes, I can do no right, can't hit a thing, die horribly, make poor decisions.
These two situations can very often be on the same server just games apart. I've yet to pin down any particular reasons for it, but the purpose of this thread is to ask for any tips and tricks, setup-wise or mentality-wise, anything really, that can improve a player's consistency.
Outside the obvious few: practice, as many FPS as possible and more practice. I'm trying my best on those already, but anything else as a suggestion very gratefully received!
Cheers in advance
RooBaby/Roo-Sucking/RooBubba
I'm finding myself quite often failing to kill anything for whole rounds at a time, and then miraculously being back to what I optimistically consider 'normal', getting top of the server and owning. I don't quite understand why I'm getting such huge variation in how well I'm doing.
Sometimes I can be on fire, in the zone, aiming well and taking very few hits.
Sometimes, I can do no right, can't hit a thing, die horribly, make poor decisions.
These two situations can very often be on the same server just games apart. I've yet to pin down any particular reasons for it, but the purpose of this thread is to ask for any tips and tricks, setup-wise or mentality-wise, anything really, that can improve a player's consistency.
Outside the obvious few: practice, as many FPS as possible and more practice. I'm trying my best on those already, but anything else as a suggestion very gratefully received!
Cheers in advance
RooBaby/Roo-Sucking/RooBubba
Comments
I usually just change up when I'm doing poorly. A quick name change, a new server, put some music on and just don't care. It's an easy way to deal with the frustration. Also, try taking those off days as a good excuse to play terrible on purpose and focus on things you need to improve: Pistol aim, wall jumping as skulk, lerk pancaking. Spend your time focused on that rather than focusing on doing "good".
Getting rid of the scoreboard helps me with the frustration aspect. Typically I unbind it so I don't compulsively look at it. Score isn't indicative of good play in this game, but it is a quantifier that can frustrate you when you see where you are with your kills/deaths. Removing it will ease the frustration and help you just have fun, which will in turn, make you more consistent.
He has a few youtube tutorials that have a lot of really good stuff in them, especially for brand new NS2 players. I found them far more helpful than the ones that NS2 gives you, so perhaps that will help!
It seems like you're not a new player, but some of the things in there made some of the parts of what I was already doing 'click' like they hadn't before.
This and having a goal helps me.
If that doesn't work, then-
Don't forget to blame the devs, your hardware, and ISP.
Laziness is what I find the culprit to be for myself, sparodically replaced with over-confidence.
Do what you know you should do and dont worry about K:D, if your playing the right way it will sort itself out.
Sometimes it can be good to focus on team result rather than yourself, your death may have been what allowed your team to win. You may have damaged the marines holding the area enough for a team mate to come in and kill them all with 1 bite each.
I'd wager to say you've got decent mechanics (aim, positioning) but you're not understanding why some things worked and some didn't, I think most people call it game sense, I'd call it situational/ map awareness, the fact that when you are in the right place right time you work out fine means your mechanics are ok, the fact that you don't know when you're in the right place right time or how to check means you're not paying attention to your map and what your team is doing.
tl;dr: map/situational awareness (English)/game sense(esports speak), where are the enemy, where is my team, what are the aliens trying to do, what can I do to stop them, what is the most valuable action I can perform now possibly regardless of my KD and regardless of what worked for me in one match. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PqnAuicnfMN9hU-253q32IYWWE2qIWVimuLqK9ONYEY/edit?pli=1 by tane.
edit: http://www.ensl.org/articles/598 tane again, nearly all of it applies in NS2.
As alien, kill extractors
Doing just this, you will already be above average
Its far easier to stay consistently lucid, than consistently focused, assuming you are adequately lucid to begin with.
Thanks for the link - I'd already been through those some time ago, great vids indeed!
I shall unbind my scoreboard now
Hakenspit: good call - on those games where I'm not doing so well, I tend to be thinking about how I'm the only one on the team actually trying to recap/deny/harass etc! I'm very much a team focussed player, just usually getting 2:1 or a lot more. When I break even, or worse, it's definitely frustrating - but at all times I'm trying to work with the team, coordinate rushes, etc!
Xao: awesome stuff, thanks. Game sense is something I am probably lacking a lot of compared to comp players. I'd love to play competitively but I can only play 3 nights a week and have an 8 month old baby, so it's not going to happen! Those docs from Tane are precisely the sorts of things I need - thank you!!
I did also try lowering my sensitivity recently. I've always played FPS games with a moderately high sensitivity (like move 2cm for 360 degree rotation or even higher). I know that this is not what the top players use, and while I've found it reasonably okay to get twitch shotgun kills, I have found my tracking rather poor of late. I lowered it too far to begin with, I think I need to take baby steps and wean myself off this lazy high sensitivity, but to do it in stages so it's not one horrible shock of only turning 20 degrees to try to run away lol.
Thanks all for you input so far, very interested to hear any other ideas too if anyone else has them
True story bro.
So state of mind definitely has an impact as well. You gotta try to stay cool, be relaxed, even when it's not going your way. The more you worry about your aim/score, the more it will suffer. At least, in my case.
Haha, good one man. Made me laugh.
I know exactly how you feel OP. Last night I had that exact same problem, no matter what I did or how hard I tried, I couldn't get my cross-hair on those damn skulks and just couldn't get my skulk jumping and biting timing right. I kept moving the mouse too far or jumping the wrong way in terms of where the marine was going. So I played two whole rounds and sucked heavily. At the end of round two I was so frustrated that I disconnected. I booted up Dota 2 and bam I rocked so hard. I wonder what happened between me playing NS2 and going dota 2?
Bro let me write this down okay this strategic depth is to complex for me
My suggestion, that I keep spamming on this forum bordering spam, is quakelive.com. Gives you a reasonably stable performance due skill brackets, and the FPS itself is very, very polished. I'm not suggesting you change games, I'm suggesting you take a quick 30min and see how you do. That makes it much easier to see what level you're on today, and possibly find out where you're lacking - whether it's tracking, aim, positioning or even something as obscure as the way you're sitting. (Seriously, try sitting on a broken chair for a year and change to a new one for the biggest "duuuhhh???" experience ever...)
Hope it helps.
Main thing is to keep alert. It is easy to kinda get into that slumped over, kind of zoned out state where your mind isn't really focused on things. Sit up straight, weird as that sounds it really helps me out. If I'm slouching I end up playing terribly.
AS IF YOU AREN'T ALWAYS BAD WOLF
-Kellen Heller (best comm)
This. Definitely. I'll have games where I'm doing TERRIBLE, like 1-12 bad and I just stop caring after that then suddenly I get like 5-6 kills in one go and get more consistently after that. Your mindset is a large part of it. Yesterday I literally threw away my Onos in my first marine encounter because I thought my team was rolling the marines and my team ended up almost losing because ALL our Onos threw themselves away.
Totally. I had this terrible game where I barely went 56-2 as a lerk. I can't believe I sucked that bad. Next game though, I was back to 1,000,000-0.
When I'm axeing a harvester and I see a skulk coming I pull out my rifle. Not for the skulk, just to make sure I can bring down the harvester while dodging the skulk.
Be the guy who focus-builds the pg, succeeds and dies to the charging skulk. The guy who shoots down the carapace shell and gets mauled by a fade. The guy who welds the power as the onos charges him.
That guy wins games.
Yup I do those things - I am always thinking about the team and what we need. I play for the team to win, not to get a high KDR, but that is definitely a measure that has at least some correlation with decent play (not 100% correlation obviously), and I do suffer from focussing a bit too much on it, or getting stressed when I don't think I'm doing as well as I can.
I have a similar issue that has caused me to get quite frustrated at the game at times. My issue isn't related to making bad decisions but rather it feels like my mouse is constantly changing sensitivity between maps. I have verified that my sensitivity is in fact not changing however the input delay that I feel is more than likely fluctuating depending on what map I am playing. I have also tested this with a number of different mice from high DPI laser one to a basic dell optical with the same results.
This change in perceived input delay is causing me to overshoot or undershoot depending on the map/server. I could very easily go 10-1 in one round on Summit and then go 2-1 in Mineshaft or Refinery on the same server. This makes it extremely hard to find a consistent sensitivity when it always feels like it is changing.
This could very well be part of the issue that you are suffering with.
Interesting... I have been trying to wean myself off high sensitivity gradually over the last few days, so I've noticed more issues with this than normal, but definitely something to keep an eye on!