Have a plus

why would anyone want to improve at quake.

ego

Self improvement is masturbation, and it feels pretty good.

It does feel good, even the improvement part.

lol

That's a disgusting comparison

So you are feeling disgust while masturbating? This explains a lot...

I find mastrubation repulsive in general.

Self-stimulation of a loose appendage dangling to your knees that basically expels pleasure... there's just something not right about it all. Why can't I rub my arm and get anything out of it? I mean I understand anatomy and the whole corpuscles and touch sensors but it just seems so fake and artificial to me then again, I'm not attracted to anything. You could almost say I have no sexual orientation.

"a loose appendage dangling to your knees"

How mutilated is your body? :S

It's called a penis. Everyone has one.

Is your penis loose? If it is also dangling while you masturbate, I believe you are doing it wrong somehow :P

And not everyone has one. Most males do however :>

Have you ever seen a women? Like, naked woman?

Not in real life.

You fella's fell for the ol' TROLLSKITRON!

self destruction is the answer

very helpful

Do a game analysis about me and phil. I think we have some decent close games. If interested pm/chat.

(Im serious :P)

I've already chosen the game for my next analysis. Afterwards I actually have a nice idea on how to pick the next demos which might also involved some lower skilled players but you're gonna have to wait a bit :p

which might also involved some lower skilled players

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!

Nah understandable :D but I would appreciate it.

pleasent voice and well structured .

i liked it a lot

Nice man!
You mentioned that people will play defensive because they don't want to lose etc. I think the biggest hurdle to overcome if you want to get better is not care about winning losing or elo. You just playing and trying different thinks like you said.

Also, thanks to QLRanks people have to play defensive even more ;D

Nice video, i agree that some people are too defensive all the time so they never improve their aim, but I guess it would help if a big tournament is coming up and you want to refine your defensive skills. Also a rule that i follow is that i don't get angry at myself if i keep missing shots against the opponent, as long as the shots go where i intended it too, and if im still missing too much shots it just means i need to improve my prediction/delaying.

Actually, last night I came home from work tired as shit and my aim wasn't on at all. I played someone on Campgrounds who is fairly new to duel (though he has a lot of quake 3 experience I believe) which I should of raped him like 20-0. But had a very unfortunate start and his rockets were always well placed so I just timed everything all game waiting till he made a mistake like miss timing a MH or grabbing a major item when they both spawn at the same time.
Played hell defensive game and tried to minimise damage and capitialise on his mistakes.

Felt like I was playing like rapha :3 I was surprised how well you can play with 9pecent rockets and 19 percent lg and rail if you use your head :P

EDIT: I guess I should mention i kept it 0-0 forever until I got control and racked up frags pretty quickly.

id really like to see a video on how to overcome nerves when dueling

there are so many people held back by rage that just kicks in within two minutes that makes them not want to duel ever again even though they were winning

most everyone feels that rage, but some people are just different: they will ignore that simply to become the best.

or some might actually enjoy duel.

drugs :)

join low tier servers, everyone does it nowadays.

What I have found is that my rage never actually solved anything. If you take it from a very logical view its easy to see that rage is pretty darn stupid. Also there is so much going on in QL that it is not always clear cut as to why you lost a game. If there is a game that made you rage I suggest watching it 3 times. First time look for how well you are timing and what are the consequences from losing the times. Second look at your positioning in depth. Third study the opponent and all his little quirks about him. Having wolfcam or any software that allows you to pause is essential. If you just finished a fight in the duel pause the demo and go through your head what you could of done and you may find lots of things that were never in your sight.

I think when you understand why you lost it can take the rage away for good.

I plan to start watching my own demos and professional demos each week now. I'll see how it goes. I do want to mention one thing. I know many of the high ELO players and high tier players time but a very sufficient amount of people like me who play duel constantly still time by feel. I can't say I get EVERY mega time right in the game, but I'm usually at the right place at the right time and cycling the armors is pretty easy though it can be tricky and I do find myself waiting for more than fifteen seconds sometimes for a yellow at PG room that was taken sixteen seconds ago, haha. I'm a very very aggressive player. I like to rush newly spawned people with 10 hp and an lg so I think it's my style of play that frustrates me, the trigger happy, constantly rjing even with 30 hp CA player.

But if I play the game slow, I GET ZERO ENJOYMENT out of it.

I think the only way for me to possibly enjoy this is to start timing by clock but that is actually something I'd expect to annoy me for a month or two, or forever. I know... I'm such a whining bitch.

If you like rushing and speed, you should start play CTF, TDM, because dueling on pro level is mostly camp+back, not much fun realy.Just a very little amount of ppl who are enough skilled can play aggressive on tourney, like Cypher for example.

Great job done man. I like the tips you give ;)

This is great :)
thank you, Twister. Dont stop making such videos!

I enjoyed it

Great initiative.

Typical german approach : wie kann ich mich bessern ? Logical and cold.
ze french approach : be cocky and proud. whine a lot.

also russian :x

Vodka and be drunk?

Yes. If you see double its easier to hit any one of your two opponents. You can't miss.

=)))

And you shoot twice the shots, it's awesome.

nice vid, nothing new for me eventho im shit, but i guess it can actually help some guys...

if only there was a way to put all these video tutorials on quakelive.com, so ppl who are not as much in quake as esr users would profit aswell...


ps. someone make "how to play out of control" tutorial, cause av3ks "lets frugzz even if i dont have stack" works only 50% times for me :<

See how far that got him in zotac and 2gds duel comp.

well... its av3k... his gamestyle is suited for 15 minutes timelimit...

he rushes, dies, reapets till he makes frag and gets control -> he wins... 10 minutes is sometimes too less for him to make comeback...

im aggresive person, and i like to play agressive, so hes my idol :D

I love playing aggressive but I found out when I slow my game down or play calmer I suddenly hit way more, but it's soooo boring.

exactly man :D

I want fast games, not 10 minutes of camping and +b spam... +fwd, some nice rockets and red armour is ours :D

One thing I noticed about avek is that I think he has a hard time forcing himself to play seriously. Whenever he seems to feel that he is better than whoever he is playing against he plays loose, rushes a lot and just tries reply on his skill. Then again when he plays someone like strenx and really looks at it as a challenge you will see he plays very defensive and definitly knows how to do that. Check the zotac finals from 1-2 months ago.

u mean the final when he was at every major item dealing dmg to strenx? :D

ofc he knows how to play defensive, you cant be world champion if u cant :-| but its av3k, imo the most creative of all top players, who will push you with plasma gun, having no armour... and it will work for him... if not - hes screwed :D

Are half beat strafes useful in duels at all?

I'd say yes, I catch myself doing them sometimes, but the overall extent of their usefulness is probably negligible :p

2 complicated. How to improve in quake? Play as much as you can and spec / watch demos of pros as much as you can. This is the way u will get better and better, After many games played / speced games of pros you will start to realize what do you do wrong and what u need to improve. I am playing a lot and believe me I will get much stronger soon only because of a lot of practice.
Some say, ''this player is very talented'' its not true. He just played long time and a lot.

Shortly, only what matters by improving is the practice and time u put in quake.

i know ppl playing 24/7 since 2000 and still SUCK A LOT
you can play wrong all day and u learn nothing
if you dont know whats wrong on your gameplay and what u have to change,ull never improve

after playing a lot you also learn a lot! I think u will start to realize soon what are you doing wrong. And ppl who plays a lot also have their own fav player. They want to be as good as him in the future! So those ppl for sure will improve. Like some of players did in quake live and now they face top class of quake live.

I was the same in Quake2 for far best player for me was purri. I was always specing him, watched his demos. In the end I came so far in Q2 that I was able to face with top class and to beat them (won purri, damiah...). I was doing exactly what I said in previous post. So I told something from my experience.

some ppl never get that "self awareness" and just gothru the motions.

so even if u get to the same exact goal ("higher skill") with these two approaches, u have to addmit that taking the time to figure out "whats wrong" is a more efficient way of getting there.

*disclaimer: only fast-forwarded thru the video

Congratulations, you're talented!

lol exactly, probably a slow learner, but with very high ceiling

in the end its just the question: HOW you become aware of yourself.

what you do wrong what you could do better.

different things work for different people. and there are some smart solution that might suit somebody,

The easiest way of becoming more aware of yourself is to watch demos of yourself.

i generally agree, but its also important to actually see ur mistakes, instead of: "omg lucker" or similar behaviour

Like I said in the video, you will definitly improve just from playing a lot. The question is if you improve as fast as you would if you also analysed your game? I don't think so.

agreed

in other words you won't improve much without thinking about what you are doing wrong or what you aren't doing. Careem actually contradicted himself by first saying it's all about experience, but in the end he got better by thinking about the game and watching demos. It's not all about putting time into something but rather what are you doing with it, otherwise lots of 24/7 CA players would stomp cypher and rapha.

IMHO, since besides twister not even a mid-high tier player has posted yet so every piece of advice has to be taken with a grain of salt, nowadays it's faster and easier to take the fast track and just get trained a bit first, and after that you can start playing against players that are a bit better than you on a certain map (hopefully not ragers or tryhards in a dead videogame). Then keep asking for advice on what to do (or rather why you keep losing by a 2 frag margin), where to position yourself and what to do under shitty situations, constantly beat that guy and repeat.
After progressing a bit more you'll be able to actually think about the game itself, such as knowing exactly where the opponent is respawning without using Memento Mori's tool, and finally about your game, which is were I haven't got myself in QL duel after I started playing it about 3 months ago. I think I need some more "classes".

That "I don't care about the game" method won't get you to beat decent players that have been doing the same for 10 years, but it should be enough to surpass 1646 elo (careem) without having to watch demos and put massive amounts of time and energy into it. Besides you can always ban ztn and have a slight chance of defeating them lol.

in other words you won't improve much without thinking about what you are doing wrong or what you aren't doing.

this :)
back when i was serious about improving at quake i spent atleast twice the time watching demos than i spent playing. i literally watched every clan game i played, practice or not, interrupted only by the fox/desp/stelam/zyz/etc. demos i watched to compare myself to inbetween.

from what i've gathered over the years of competing (in sports) is, if it looks fugly and unlike what the best are doing, you are doing it wrong. unless of course you are some sort of alien out there to redefine how the game is played, but chances are you are not.

it's pretty incredible to realize the amount of mistakes and missteps one does during the 10 to 20 minutes of a game of quake :p if you are unable to even see or admit this to yourself, you have even more catching up to do.

nice accent

this was indeed very interesting
thanks a lot

This is something I've thought about as well and I think that what you presented here is more or less the way to go. This is because no matter what you do, practicing always follows the same basic form.

For example, if you want to learn a musical piece on the guitar, piano, drums, whatever, how would you go about it? You wouldn't start by playing the whole piece in the correct tempo, making 10000s of mistakes in every beat until you've played it for so long that you don't make any mistakes at all, right? Probably it is possible, but very inefficient.

You start by taking a couple of beats and playing them 16x slower until you can play them perfectly at that tempo without any mistakes. Then speed it up by 2, then when you're good again and again until you can play them at the original tempo without mistakes. Then take the next couple of beats and so on until you can play the whole piece. The same goes for drawing, design, programming, basically every skill based profession out there.

However, this is inherently difficult in Quake since you can't practice alone, you need a partner. It's not easy to find someone who is willing to practice a given situation with you 200 times until you have it down perfectly. So every given game situation is spread across a number of games until you encounter it again and this is something that immensely slows down the learning process (you also mentioned this briefly when you talked about maps, but at a greater scale). I really think this is one of the reasons why it takes so long to get good at Quake, because you don't have good "situation locality" or however you wanna call it. I guess if you had a cold systematic approach and a good sparring partner (basically what the norm is everywhere else when it comes to learning) people could speed up the learning process by a factor of at least 10.

Back when I played Quake 2 I took this idea and made a small mod (http://youtu.be/lFtCiLUNZEQ) that let you record your movements and then made a bot replay them, so that you could practice a lot of standard situations that come up during a game. So basically you would play a game, watch the demo, see where you failed to react adequately, rerecord the setting and practice it a 100 times, then make slight adjustments, go back and practice and so on.

This is of course of no use when it comes to decisions that affect the game for the next 2 minutes, metagames, strategy and so on, but it is a fundamental aspect everything else builds upon imo; I guess every midskill player has a good grip on timing, control, out-of-control play etc, but there are still basic situations that they fail to handle well, just because of inadequate practice regime.

That's a great analogy! I'm not sure how much sense it makes to play against bots because they are going to do the same thing all the time while in reality most players dodge differently. Also while it might be more efficient to just pracise every situation 200 times in succession until you have it down to perfection I also feel like there is a point where that gets too boring. Playing the situation when they happen to occur ingame is just more fun in the end ;)

I think it was toxjq who said in an interview he practices some situations repeatedly. If I remember correctly he said he plays in warm-up and practices one situation over and over against a decent opponent.
E.g. attacking and defending the second RA on t7.

Yep, he does exactly that. Definitly an upgrade from playing a bot as long as you can find someone likeminded who will play warmup with you x)

the bot isnt practical for everything, but a few things come to mind:
ra jump on ztn, mh grab on furiousheights.
also several situation where you want to practice timing a good rocket by enemy jump sounds.

Find your own way of improving I would say. Guides and tutorials never gave me much in way of thinking differently about the game.

Think of Quake as a part of a greater system. Work on your personality and improvements in Quake will come. Try to understand human behavior in general. Gaming improvement will follow. Stay fit and make sure you sleep properly. Gaming will improve. Do things outside of Quake that you enjoy. Gaming experience will improve. Improving in a game is just way too complex to break down into step by step guides imo.

If you are truly stuck and feel as if you have reached your maximum potential, take some time off. Not just a day or a week but a few months, maybe even a year.

Guides are great but only if you are in the right frame of mind to take in what is being said and analyzing it for yourself.

/My two cents.

Did you watch the video? This is basically what he was saying with a little something added.

Good video, I learned some stuff of it !
Would be nice to go more in depth on specific maps, so im waiting on the next game analysis.

very nice vid!

I think ive accepted ill always be shit in duel, I just get too frustrated with myself and start raging so hard, its not good for me : D

Great tutorial! Enjoyed it ^___^

Would like to see more situation analysis like the aerowalk-railgun-grenadelauncher-thing!

Good video. I think things like this is much needed, theres a lot of tutorial about technical stuff both for starters (strafing etc) and "intermediate" (like when to go where, which weapon to use), but nothing on behind the curtain stuff like mentality, psychology, approach etc, which in my opinion at least that important if not more than the technical stuff.
What im really sad about is this guide going to fade away in weeks wth a few thousand viewers at best and who really could benefit a lot from it (i.e. beginners) probably wont see it either. ESR should open a moderated strategy forum with stickies made from posts like this.

not sure if twister_ is into basketball or just blacks...

haha basketball :D
wondering if you can somehow turn off that other people can see what you liked?

Yeah, they are off. :) Just wanted someone as dumb as CAREEM for example to hate just because he does not get it.
Anyways - props for the effort and keep going!

[-]

haha seriously! I like you twister, and great improving movie/tips
but fuck i'm tired of getting your basketball shit on my you tube..!!

zzzz who doesn't tick "only show uploads" deserves it :p

aaaaaaa! that's what that option is for!! aight!!! :D

Nice analyze, was interesting to watch

I'm sorry i called you a lowsens fag Twister.

But you are :D

The makeup of this reminded me in part of those "minutephysics" videos. Very worth watching eventho I don't at all plan to improve my quake ;) Well done!

I wish I was as good as those guys :p
Nice videos, thx for the hint and the nice words.

No problem my friend! =)

it would have been easier just to put a link to the cooller/strenx interview, where the russian says 'you have to analyze your game'
Most people don't care anyway, they won't watch tutorials, demos, or read about quake strategies, combat situations, cfgs etc. It's not like you'll achieve much if you get good in quake.
Doomed to always be a small community.

It's not about gaining fame/money but rather about having the possibility to play on a higher level. Duel becomes much more interesting when you reach a certain level because only then you are able to appreciate the finesse of it.
But hey someone who struggles to brake the 1200 elo range without hacks doesn't understand it ;)

clueless

says the cheater... how would you know anything about improving at quake?

nothing, since I don't need to improve anything since I'm awesome and own all pros. P-P-P-WNED!

i make fun of pros all night every night, without cheats. WIN!

get help fast

very nice video, thanks for your dedication.

on an almost related sidenote, could you please share a link to the capablanca-lasker game (which, despite my obsession for the game and the hundreds of books I've read I've never heard of)?

I guess I could just pause the video and replay the moves, but I don't know if it's complete and frankly I'd use that as the last resort.

Perhaps a link with analysis as well? That would be awesome.
Thanks again for your video: despite being a bit vague (which I guess it can't really be helped) it really gives food for new thoughts.

on an almost related sidenote, could you please share a link to the capablanca-lasker game (which, despite my obsession for the game and the hundreds of books I've read I've never heard of)?

It's a chess anecdote. As far as I can tell the game was never recorded.

The moves listed were the first 12 moves of Kasparov - Topalov Wijk aan Zee 1999

Exactly!

It doesnt matter what you learn if you wont hit oponnent, its much more simple than you think, more talent(mousecontrol) means less practice, if you have good mouse control, you dont need to focus on aiming and you can improve in you mind strategy, less mousecontrol means more focus on aiming and strategy which cost you more energy, so i just want to say that in a first step you should find ideal mouse/hardware to be sure your mouse is doing exactly what you want to and then you will improve faster when playing because you wouldnt need to focus on aiming that much

bububububububullshit....


aim is the only aspect of quake that you can actually be bad at, and still be great player... you just have to relise ur shit aimer, so u wont waste ur time to play CA hoping it will improve ur lg to stable 30%

How long you play fps?

dunno, 7 years?

CoD was all about reaction time, RtCW&ET about being usefull to team, QL is mostly about positioning, timing, and being aware of ur enemy stack

Me 12y, yes i agree timing is same important, but again, if you wont hit enemy whats your stack for?

>CoD was all about reaction time, RtCW&ET about being usefull to team, QL is mostly about positioning, timing, and being aware of ur enemy stack

good game descriptions from ozy. but this is a very experienced view.

example, i think to do headshots in ET like the good players do you must have much gametime on the clock. and most players do pubs with chaotic teamplay, not having a stable team, so in this case aim is maybe more important on pubs.

the thing is it gives frustration when a fps veteran says to a new player that better aim shows up automaticly with more game time, but its true.

@ozy how would you describe battlefield 3, wanna know

i did not play any battlefield, so i cant really say :-)

also, i think its not the aim that improves with gametime, its just ur reaction to different situations, that makes ur decisions better - thus kinda improving ur aim :-)

not hitting ur enemy is what for stack is :-)

having stack advantage, and traping your enemy [position&timing] at right moment means kill... even if u dont hit half of acc your opponent does

you cant be pro with just average mousecotrol and godlike timing, because its combination of both, simple as fuck..

no you cant, cause theres much more behind it: like positioning, predicting your enemy moves and stuff...

as always: rapha as example

I think people take as granted that you have to push all aspects of your game, aim/dodging included.

Whether you first focus on fighting skills and later on the brain game, or you try to improve on all aspects at the same time, it is up to you, and I don't think there is much evidence for one way being better than the other.

Personally I like to cycle among the various skills and try to improve what needs to be improved.

Some time ago I was focusing on spawn-raping as I did not know the spawns, then on timing because I felt I was slow and consumed too much energy for it, then I realized my lg sucked, so I focused on that. I just jump to whatever I feel is holding me back and focus-train that part. Since none of the skills are at the top, I return to each of them, and try and build up.

+'d :)

This was really good and your voice made me calm. Thank you twister!

awesome as usual twister. wish i could double +.

"yes, i played with this twister, nothing to shows. he must go away to home and analyzing as he analysed before, must be he thinking that its helping to him." © qlr

"I'm butthurt much" cooller

And yes, for fucks sake, using copyright sign is inappropriate for quotes.

And yes, for fucks sake, using copyright sign is inappropriate for quotes. © kK_Storm

No quotation marks and copyright sign -> AAARRRGH

I really appreciated this video, as I felt all the content applies to me. I think the most important aspect is the process you described really well with the aero cuts:

1) Getting raped in a situation (railed when trying to get rail)
2) Turning the table, and see what the opponent is doing.
3) See how that is countered (with nades)
4) Go back to the original side, and try to apply the counter.

This is inspiring and puts the basis for the long awaited "map analysis videos", where given a map, the most common situations are discussed in such a way. The assumption would be that the viewer knows what brings one to a certain situation (i.e. the general dueling theory is known). I would then try to discuss:

Major Items:
- how to spam them / take them under opponent's spam
- how to set / avoid a trap

Major Choke Points
- Where to position to deal damage / where to look for the opponent
- How to block with spamming / how to avoid it

Spawn Control
- How to do it efficiently / what to do against it.

Also, I've found that now that I'm getting pretty good at duel I'm thinking more about the opponent's weapon choices more than mine. So I'll use a weapon that might not do as much damage in a situation but I take minimal damage in return.

cant follow you :(

it's called adapting.

Twister I finally watched the whole video through with sound.

First of all, you have a pleasant voice haha.

Second of all, I, as a sub 1190 ELO dueler (im usually right under 1200 or barely over it, im that bad), I really enjoyed the advice you gave and the tips you put in your guide.

I think learning all the situations on each map, even though there are many is really important but as a noob, it's still a bitch slap to the face. You kind of expect some great secret formula for success. Some formula, do this if this happens. Do this if that happens. Here's a good place to spam nades, etc. People like being spoonfed. I like being spoonfed. The reality of it is however is that the game is much more complicated than that and all the little details, even if you spoonfeed them don't matter. But my point is, it's kind of intimidating and there's no other way around it to just be told "LEARN THE SITUATIONS! LEARN THEM! VIEW YOUR DEMOS! LEARN THEM! VIEW PROS! LEARN THEM!"

I liked the way Zhu made his video on Aerowalk and I liked the couple of tips you gave on Aerowalk too. But just saying, it's all about learning the situations is tough to swallow. I think there's a lot of mechanics at work. Knowing the situations is important. Timing is important. Positioning, map knowledge, yada, yada, yada.

Give us something MORE. I don't know what it is myself. But if you could just give me some random specific thing to do, I'd probably remember it forever. Zhu said don't jump for the rail. I was doing that for such a long time and hugging the wall has become a generally better thing for me and a rule of thumb. Give us something else (;

sorry for the long winding post, I love what you did, don't get me wrong, I'm just never satisfied with what i have

Good video, nice job!

How to improve at quake ?

Stop playing one of those games where there's a rail on fucking aerowalk.

great stuff!