i read this with the voice of memento in my head

in a sense this does make sense

Great now I just need to find a coach in the North American scene over 1800 elo. Sadly many of them don't have the patience to play matches and abort games for 30min.

I don't know anyone above 1800 elo with the patience to dedicate that much time to my skill. I can get games with them but I doubt they could be arsed to keep playing me over and over.

What's your elo and your quake name? Maybe we can help each other be noobs

My elo fluctuates from 1400ish to 1600ish, in-game name is nicknaper

im around 1850 elo and willing to do this

Added you, now we just need some1 to make us a server and give us ops

Ill do it once the move is done and my computer doesn't melt during the trip

It has to be said that this method does not only benefit the lesser player, but also the coach, as coaching/teaching includes analyzing your own game, looking at it from diffrent perspectives. I can tell from experience that it will improve both players game.

certainly a good idea to mix up your regular training with something like this once in a while.
might be worth noting that, provided you have a willing training partner, there are also other ways to train that might be more efficient than just playing game after game after game - for instance you could go ahead and actively work on spawn control/fragging, practice usual fights several times or ask your partner for his current location, weapons and stack at certain points in the game so you get more aware of those aspects etc.
however, bringing yourself to train more methodically is hard enough, good luck finding someone that is regularly up for these things ;)

THE most useful and enlightening guide/post I've ever had the pleasure to digest fully on ESR.

Every link was clicked and viewed as I went along; every thought provoking recommendation considered before I moved on.

My thanks to you Mr.Norris and my extended gratitude to Baksteen, czm & av3k (also to twister and other contributors) for this community endeavour, that for me, has been so richly received.

With guides like this, budding enthusiasts have never had it so good.

"at a certain level of play, the book does not exist anymore, and it blurs into a deep, impossible to grasp, nebula of possibilities – such is the beauty of our beloved game." - Memento_Mori <3


*edit* coming from a 1400elo duel newbie with plenty of 1400elo newbie mates to train with so this is ideal for me but prob not for ashy* Kappa

I read this with Chuck Norris' voice.

duck was 10 times better

flipcat ftw

hardcore pro player

Oh god. The cats... theyre taking over :O

[+]
Well thought (and written) idea.

I think this would be much better way to practice in a time invested/results point of view; however what puzzles me is the availabilty of these coaches: it's quite rare to find a good dueller willing to share this concept-as you put it- and "waste" his time with you.

I guess it works for you because of the people you know in QL but, for the average player like me and many others it's just plainly impossible.

nice

however: do we count medicore choices as mistakes?

situation: t7 game, you have control, mh is soon respawning, you just made the kill in mh room... your stack is sufficent [100/150]... now you can go to rg room to deny it, or pick up mh... you go for rg, and BAH, ur enemy is dumb fuck, he went for lg, and took mh :-)


is it a mistake, or not?:>

whatever DaHanG did, is not mistake in this case :]

D a H a n G
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I think you spending time considering the problem is exactly the point of this.

that wasnt the anwser i was expecting :-)

e: imo you could add a paragraph in your article about "bad good plays"

From your non understandable description, seems like dahang thought the enemy wasn't respawning on the same area, which is a 1/8 (or something) chance.

What should be done: waiting a bit there if possible, just in case.
What I would do: blame the game (silly respawn shouldn't happen), play lol.

dude, dont do drugs, you're totally out of context

Here's what I understood and why I think it is not a mistake really, just the game being awful. Note that I didn't add a thing and that this explanation is unnecessarily long:

All the info you said is the kill was somewhere in the mh room and then he headed towards the railgun area. Since it isn't on the description, with that data I assumed he used the stairs path and that the opponent respawned around that time.
I could also assume the reason why he took that path, but I don't have precise info to do so, which consists of when the RA is spawning. Doesn't matter really considering it's a fact he took the path anyway.

T7 is a map with two sides or areas: mh and ra. Respawns are also divided like that as well, so if you are on the mh area then the enemy will respawn at ra. There are some exceptions, for example from the second floor of the RA area aiming below towards the shotgun, same position but aiming to the grenade launcher, first floor RA aiming right in front (first floor hallway) and so on.

Probably the silliest exception is the MH area lg spawn (second floor), so that if you are at the said stairs (mh area to rg path) or even at the teleport exist (right near the mega) then you have clear sight of the enemy respawning at the lg hallway. Most likely the opponent will respawn at the RA area (like 7/8 or 9), which is where it was intended to do so, but there's the slight chance you can hit a rail or fuck up the match.

With all that, what I thought what happened is the enemy respawned right there, dahang didn't notice, the enemy went to the lg fast assuming he wasn't going to be able to get the mega, then immediately went back for it. Chances are it won't happen, but it does. Silly game.

From my point of view it's a mistake. You basically gave your opponent room to breathe. Maintaining control is imo. more important than denying him a weapon or getting the kill.
You already got a kill earlier and now you have a decent stack of 100/150 with the possibility to make it 200/150. I'm now assuming, that RA is spawning after the MH and you have a comfortable amount of time to get there after the pick-up.

What you should do imo. is stay in the room, pick up the MH, then approach RA from top level. If you stay at the MH chances are your opponent will spawn SG/RL in RA room or even in the RG room, what he will do after that depends on his skill-level but for most players I would say it is pretty normal to grab RL/RG and maybe the lower YA then go into the RA room and wait for it to spawn. So if you stayed at MH you now come into RA room with ~200/150 vs. his 100/50, better weaponry and better positioning (top level > bottom level).
You will be able to cripple him while entering the room then drop down comfy on the RA (he shouldn't have LG so he can't punish you that hard) take it and get a kill.
Now if he goes for LG instead or RG he will probably wander into the MH room with one or two weapons and 100/0 with you waiting for him there. Easy kill again.

If you go for the RG instead you might get a kill off it and after that get the RA pushing your stack up to 100/200 (assuming he didn't do any damage to you), but chances are he then will spawn at MH get it, get LG, get RL and even get some shards/YA so in the end you traded a kill (that he can retake in less than a minute if you are unlucky) for your position and control on the map. The other possibility was already mentioned by you in your post, in that case you even didn't get anything out of the RG move, just denied him a weapon that he can pick up later on in the game (avoiding RG fights until that point is easier than retaking control that you just casually gifted to him by your move).

At least this is my point of thinking in such a situation when I'm reading it and trying to break it down, in a real match I probably will do a complete derp-move and fuck up all of my control/grip of the game :S. Also it seems that you are referring to a decision DaHanG made in a recent game (or am I mistaken)? I didn't see the particular match and can't comment on what other factors were there at the time, I only took your description and added the assumption with the RA timing.

nice way of thinking, if RA was spawning soon after mh, which tbh i didnt precise


however, you assume he will challange the ra, with low stack and railgun, and if he doesnt you just gave him a weapon thats essential to out of control gameplay, in exchange for more stack.

point of my post was to show there are situations that cant be classified as a mistakes, because as long as you're not Jedi master, or cooller, you dont know what your opponent will do :-)


it has nothing to do with dahang, dunno why cwiru made that comment

Even if he doesn't challenge RA he still got nothing on the map for 20-30 seconds of the game (next up should be the upper YA, then MH than lower YA/RA again) so you can predict where he will be going and catch him there with an almost 200/200 stack.

I see your point though.

i'd like to listen/watch such sessions, plz record

Great article.

I've been doing this myself together with GEKKO, where we spawned a server with fraglimit 1. Our idea was initially to learn the spawns on the maps, and just learn where to go depending on your own and the opponents spawn.

However, after a while we learned how to get the most out of the spawning position, so almost even starts were had every time, and then it would become clear when you started to mess up in more of a normal matchup. Most matches lasted 30-90 seconds, and afterwards we discussed the mistakes, any initial advantages of the spawn positions, timings of where to be depending on the spawns, possibilities to close down the map and so on, .

Great way of learning maps and your own weaknesses + advantages more explicitly!

Awesome idea

A magician doesn't share his tricks ;P At least, that's the attitude of many duelers that I know - "rather guarantee my next rape than help the opponent i just raped". pretty unfortunate, as the other approach will guarantee a healthy community of duelers which will produce great games and improve overall awareness of the game. That said, great article, but I'm just thinking, why do you need two people/coaching? Why can't you just watch your own demos and contrast that to the streams/demos of the pro's that you also watch?

Why can't you just watch your own demos and contrast that to the streams/demos of the pro's that you also watch?

Because this might happen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoO-vFCJNmM

I think you can to a point. I think this post is about being efficient in practice.

You might end up in a situation after 30-60 seconds. Stop game, assess, restart. Even faster if you handle your spawn incorrectly*

In a normal game you might die. Now you have to play out of control and stack up for 1-2 minutes before being able to take the next fight. This is assuming you play out of control decently.

With ten minute time duels the initial fights until control is established is quite important.

I haven't played much FPS for a long time and started playing ql recently. Its fun. I am quite comfortable playing out of control (because I am never in control) now but when I get control I have no idea what to do. This is because I have had no practice doing it. At my level my current strategy revolves around a good start with a few kills and then consolidating the rest of the match out of control. If they are aggressive and push then I can punish them.

*I think spawns are easily addressed watching demos and would probably do this on a map by map basis before starting any training this thread suggests.

ah yeah okay that makes sense. my assumption was that, if you do make the mistake, you should practice getting out of that just as much -- but if you can improve practice efficiency by eliminating the mistake rather than practicing getting out of it, that's a key right there =)

I see jigglywiggly and rapha already on the server ;)

i hope rapha is ready and willing to learn.

rofl you deserve more plusses!

Do top duelers think of things as right and wrong or do they just adapt the best way they see fit based on the opponent and the situation? Like if doing the "right" thing makes you predictable to a top player wouldn't it? You always have to keep an element of surprise to your game.

may/may not take me as a top dueller, but anyway, I think the majority of the time there is a right move, and its the only move u can do and have it be the correct one to do. However there also comes times where u have a few options and this is where different play styles come through, ie u have a point in time where u can attack, in certain ways, trap, etc. Eventually u should realise when these times arise, and focus on not making mistakes ie the wrong moves in those other situations where there is only 1 move to do that will work out best

This is a great method. Its similar to the fraglimit 1 training I like to do with the (few) quakeworld rookies that are up to it, and the reason I developed hoonymode (from cpma, all rights to the original Hoony!)

But essentially its the same: Train the first spawn, train the first item timing sequence, train the first frag

it would be awesome if there was like an organized way of doing this. like create a channel where u can find someone willing to do this for you. other than that i dont see this happening in the na scene. too many fragile egos wanting more to be top dog than to get better.

i have a similar way of teaching. i tell people they fucked up and should l2p instantly.

on a less serious note

Tldr :)

How about these small tournaments exclude super players to start with ? There is no reason for Rapha etc.. to come in and 2-0 everybody.

ehm... wrong thread?

Hey here is my experience. I did that from the coaching perspective with my former flatmate sonigo. He went from 1200ish to 1600+ish. (and I take a little credit for that, allthough he did most of the work)...

as a coach be aware how much you say. Read the book "the mental game of tennis" and it explains to you, why you should only focus on one thing at a time. It does not help "coaching" someone and bombarding him with 30 different things he should become better in. One at a time!

As an alternative to aborting a game is to just pause it, when someone has made a mistake, discuss it, ask questions like "how much hp do you think I have now" and "who is in control now". Since analyzing the stak of your opponent becomes very important at a certain level. From my experience a lot of lower skilled players do not know that they have a bigger stack than I do and do not exploit that fact good enough.

cheers


*edit* I recomment NOT to watch demos from cypher, killsen or someone very aimheavy like fraze or strenx. Not that I don't like those players, far from that. But you will just end up trying that stuff and dying in the process because you don't have the same aim and movement. So instead watch demos of someone with a slow gamestyle like agent or pavel. And also start with a slow map since small errors tend not to have a huge impact on the game on ztn on a lower level since you don't die instantly.

I disagree about slow gameplay because the effect from errors isn't felt immediately while let's say on Aero whenever I make a mistake I know I did because I get punished almost instantly and it's a lot easier to not make the same mistake again. Just my opinion.

aero is the perfect example of how not to practice ... especially on a lower level you can compensate your mistakes by better aim, which should not be the goal

you should always watch fraze demos!

hes awesome! <3<3<3


[serious note: hes playing really abcish, just looks sick because of his aim]

<3 tbh I think im not as aim heavy as people would think... also the thing is, imagine if u were using an aim bot hitting 100 percent, to play slow and super smart would be holding u back, so naturally if u have good aim/fighting u should be taking more risks

no matter what other say, nothing can break our eternal bromance :D

<3

fraze I like you and I cheer for you in tournaments, but I would not recommend watching your demos. sorry

thanks a lot :D and no I agree with you, ive told people to stay away from cypher demos b4 :P

I disagreet about Cypher demos. You shouldn't copy his style completely because you obviously don't have the same abilities but he is the best example of an aggressive play style, even Evil has mentioned this (disregarding himself). Many players are too predictable these days. I'll give you a comparison of how Cypher plays compared to how people think Rapha plays (not saying he plays this way).

Cypher
- sometimes leaves an item up so he can attack but this can be a double edged sword as his opponent could also steal his item
- tries to be aggressive in unexpected situations but this can be a double edged sword as his opponent could predict this
- attacks in a position where he is at a disadvantage and his opponent is expecting him but is confident that his aim/dodging is better (Evil does this best)

Rapha
- never leaves an item up in control unless he knows he is not in position to take the item or if he can do some dmg/get a kill without losing the item
- only aggressive when he has better positioning/stack to get the kill

Cypher has a better play style because he has more possibilities but of course it still depends on how he approaches these possibilities. I just hate the fact that some people think Cypher is an all-aimer because he is so aggressive and Rapha never takes risks. Risks are good, you just got to use them at the right time.

This duel shit is not that complicated, if you wanna duel really well just do this:

+Fov 120 (renders all your aim strats useless as fuck)
+Play only people higher than your elo by 200 points maximum.
+Try not to die at all


When you can't aim, you can't do the usual. It heightens your alert for items, position, enemy awareness, calculating enemy health.

Trying not to die when doing all of that makes you sharp and have sick decision making skills.

Playing that way makes you lose yourself in concentrating, not on fighting but how the actual game of duel is going. The actual game feels a lot more calculated and less random.

After you get 2000+ elo, slowly bring down your fov by 2 each week. Until you are back to your normal fov and normal aim.

Now you are playing the same but you are hitting more - so your game morphs again, better traps, easier + forward rushes and so forth.

And since you have the foundations of duel already under your belt, your instincts and focus on the game and such, you can be a superstar if your sharpen your aim.

It just takes time and will to get good at duel.

(if you watch rapha from back then, you can see this style taking shape, also watch agent from now, he will be getting progressively better at aiming becoming a monster)

Sounds like you know what you're talking about - is this the technique you used to reach the top level of dueling?

perhaps

jamalz always writes insightful stuff about duel.

At this point I assume he is rapha and anhe is a girl model.

jamalz is celestial and aSmodel.

At first i thought you were trolling, but forcing you to aim bad so your decisions are better is actually a good idea.

I haven't tried what jamalz proposed, but I did bring my laptop to my girlfriend's place and played from there: sitting in her bed, back against the wall, old MS Optical Blue (<3) and paper instead of a mousepad.

I played my usual practice partner and realized that I focused on the position and timing and chose my fights much more wisely than I would normally do, because I couldn't out aim him like I can when I play from home. :p

Didn't read but +ed anyway cause MM can't be wrong.

tried that actually a lot while not being super successful on both sides, the thing that helped me the most around elo 1300-1600 (don't think qlranks was implemented back then) was watching my own demos and looking how/when I was killed too easily and listening to 2gd

but for people who are more aimbased this method might actually give them the space to reevaluate how they're playing and give them that boost to level up (position, timing mostly I assume)

Wow this seriously helped and inspired me. Thanks for the post :)

I disagree.

The problem with the given method is that you copy too much of the thinking style of the 'teacher' (and btw I wouldn't know a lot of people who are willing to teach in such a way... which is another flaw ;)).

There is no real 'teacher' able to teach you all the right moves because there simply are not only right moves.
I also disagree with Fraze above who sais that he's often forced to take 1 right option. There are always more options, you just have to understand what the opponent bases his game on.

There is just 1 advice which you need in order to improve.

Advice: Think that you are playing against yourself and come up with a way to win.

this also means that in games you try to think what your opponent is trying to do and why and how etc etc etc. Whenever you're wrong about your opponent you should think about why you're wrong and what he does differently (especially when you're losing :p).

Something like: I think that he thinks that I think that he thinks?

Something like that.

But in general the first step is the most important.
Aka the "I think that he thinks".

Because it's "common knowledge" to make decisions based upon what you know. So when you start to think about what your opponent knows.... you'll be able to predict his moves.

If for some reason he differs from that you can assume one of 3 things:
1) He knew more / less than you thought he knew (aka he knew red was up while you expected him not to know that <-- which means you can still improve on that).

2) He has different priorities than you (this can come from a different skillset than you have OR your/his priorities are crap <-- which leads to you learning something as you'll be able to "guess" his priorities etc.)

3) He made a mistake.


This is one of the reasons why I almost always instantly know if someone is cheating. Because they will make decisions based on information they do not have. Or they just hit everything with LG and thus have some "rediculous" skillset.

Also note that sometimes you can make a very fortunate mistake. So it is difficult at times to know exactly which of the 3 things happened.

It's also awesome to feed people false information such that you can predict a mistake from them.
Small example if both players fight for an item and 1 has to retreat while the other is weak.... the retreating player almost always assumes that the item is taken ASAP. So taking it after 5 secs have passed will screw up his timing ;p.

Advice: Think that you are playing against yourself and come up with a way to win.

whutya talking bro? no1 can beat me. not even myself.

exactly what I mean :)

Load up a server, set it to timelimit 3 or 5. Best imo is 3. Figure out the first 3 minutes and play loads of games with it. This will help you with your starting game.

jamalz method = more simple and less hassle for me