Counter Strike: Global Offensive

[3agle.ps]

Yes, watching demos are helpful. I'm scared sometimes at myself when I'm looking at the kill cam, my aim and my crosshair are awful, It's not a surprise that I'm dying so much. But, well, we don't learn and play CSGo without dying. And it's awful as well when I'm looking at some other players' kill cams.

Do you have also up and downs? Like for a game or two , you're the best of the world by top scoring 360noscope-ezpz-cykablyat and for the next following game , you can't hit someone at 2 meters. Or are you kinda stable in your performance ?

I may be wrong with this assumption, since I have barely played casual mode, but I would imagine that it is very difficult to have consistent performance on casual mode. Especially if you judge your performance on kills/assists (which is a bad habit that games have conditioned us into thinking is the only important stat). People play in very erratic and unpredictable ways in casual which does not help with playing in a consistent manner.

At one point I was very inconsistent, though I did change a few things that made me an awful lot more consistent. I want to state right now that this might not help you in your situation whatsoever, this is simply what helped me. This is not a recommendation. First step was changing sensitivity, I used to play with high sens, then made a big switch to 800dpi at 1.3 sensitivity (1040 eDPI). This helped a huge amount in being consistent, especially with crosshair placement and aim, albeit a difficult thing to adjust to. The next thing was actually getting a 144Hz monitor. Now, I can't say this necessarily improved my game, but it really did help me stay consistent with the performance I could achieve each game. (CSGO also looks incredible in high framerate )

If you can look at your own performance and see where you aren't at your best (you mention aim and crosshair placement), then you are halfway there. Most of the time those things are fixed by practice, lots of practice. Though actively thinking about what you are doing can help sometimes.

There are lots of videos on the crosshair placement topic, essentially keep it at a height where the enemies heads are likely to appear at, and try to factor in how far away they might be. Do this at all times, not just when holding angles, but pushing areas, clearing sites, everything. If there is ever a point where your crosshair is not pointing at a potential enemy head, you are gifting an opportunity to your opponent.

Aim is more tricky, this really does come down to practice, so much practice. There are so many suggestions I could make, though honestly it's down to how much time you want to put in to improve, and how enjoyable you would find that process. There are very extreme methods, like muscle memory training, reflex training etc, which are very effective, but take lots of time and aren't very exciting.
Other methods would be play aim maps vs bots, practicing just hitting headshots, or find a headshot only deathmatch server. There are tons of custom maps on the workshop that can help with that too. At the end of the day it's going to come down to time spent learning to get better.

Watch the pros play, learn from them, not the crazy shit they do, but the basics, where they stand, where are they aiming, are they using audio cues etc to change what they focus on etc. When you watch a pro match, choose 1 player to spectate and follow them for the whole match, see how they work, not just the killing shots as the broadcasts show you.

Honestly though, the best way to improve is to play competitive. It will give you a more consistent opponent (at least slightly more), which will help you more easily judge how well you are doing. If that isn't your thing and you just fancy having fun in casual, I can't blame you at all, but all I would suggest is don't worry about the assists so much. Casual servers are places to have fun, not necessarily take things seriously.

[Seric.ps]

360noscope-ezpz-cykablyat

Huehuehuehue, now with added Franco-vowels

[cspflo]

No worries, I'm not taking it too seriously. I just find it awkward to have such a ratio in a game like CSGO.

It's more normal to have such a ratio in TF2 playing Pyro or another game playing Heal/support character than in a FPS with "basic" rules like CSgo.

I've got so much things to learn in CSGo ( grenades and stuff, aim, crosshair placement, economy, map and sightlines, clutch plays, audio coms, etc...) that I can't take this game seriously.

Tbh, I'm watching pro plays since 2 or 3 weeks and it's surprisingly fun to watch ( more than a booooooooring football game). I'm still a bit lost by the acronyms and the vocabulary of the casters though.

For my specs, don't laugh, but well, it's kinda "simple". A Hyundai 19" 1280*1024 res with a 10yo MX518 mouse and a Dell KB212 keyboard. I can't blame my lack of skills on that though. And yes, I'm currently trying to find a good sensitivity for my mouse, and It's true that my performance is drastically fluctuating with the setting.

Thanks for all of your advices.

[cspflo]

Huehuehuehue, now with added Franco-vowels

We are dealing with way more accents.

360nöscopé-ëzpz-cykàblyât

[Post Script.ps]

I may be wrong with this assumption, since I have barely played casual mode, but I would imagine that it is very difficult to have consistent performance on casual mode. Especially if you judge your performance on kills/assists (which is a bad habit that games have conditioned us into thinking is the only important stat). People play in very erratic and unpredictable ways in casual which does not help with playing in a consistent manner.

If you want a higher KD in casual mode you have 2 options:
1) If you think you are outskilling the vast majority of the opponents and have a good spawn you can rush and catch a lot of people off-guard. You'll want to know about entry flashes in the majority of cases though. You have to be pretty hot shit to pull it off consistently though, and even then someone running to a site late can catch you off-guard.
2) If your 'weapon handling' skills are a bit shaky and/or your spawn is not suited to a rush (~80% of spawns), you are much more likely to do well with a reserved and cautious approach i.e. holding back as people get bored with longer round timers and push chokes without flashing or checking corners etc... Once the herd is thinned then you have more chance to push a site successfully.

This is all assuming T side. For CT side you just pick a site and hold it and try to pay as much attention to where your team has a hole in their defence. Time might come where you have a high risk of being flanked in which case you might be forced to go aggressive (think pushing into B tunnels if you lose mid control on dust_2)

Other than that all the mechanical stuff Bagel mentioned above is where you might want to focus your attention

[AngryPotato]

We are dealing with way more accents.

360nöscopé-ëzpz-cykàblyât

Le tréma! L'accent aigu! L’accent circonflexe! L'accent grave!

[cspflo]

The second option is generally my choice. Throwing some stuff to hide some linesights, spraying randomly and letting AWP players killing eachothers, and after that, I'm trying to move smartly to the bomb sites or into apts or corridors.

One more thing, I'm generally doing better on Nuke than on other maps. Does this map have a particularity ?

[Sloth.ps]

One more thing, I'm generally doing better on Nuke than on other maps. Does this map have a particularity ?

Nuke is a very vertical map, and the audio cues on it are less helpful as a result. This means that the ability to respond to what's happening on screen plays a relatively larger role in determining your overall performance.

[Seric.ps]

Thinking about it...Relatively shorter lines of sight as well I guess?

[Myaumix]

There's 3 key areas to *gitgud:

Aim -

This goes without saying, though you can be a really helpful asset to the team by knowing smokes, popflashes, and being tactically sound, eventually you're gonna need to pop some caps in a few asses.
Train this like Bagel has already said, reflex and aim training maps. It's not the most interesting thing to do but you will get a lot better very quickly, start with reflex stuff to find a sensitivity you like, I recommend this one (you might have to type "god" in console so you don't get knifed), don't worry about getting all the kills, just practice going from 1 head to another and try hitting those dank af headshots. After about 10 minutes of that you can go to a spray control map, this is designed to train your muscle memory into getting your spray patterns down, do this for 10 or so minutes also.

Here's a really good overview of aiming that shows it's not all about twitching and reflexes.

Movement -

Often overlooked, but if you've ever seen how players at the top level move around the map on a micro level (and macro, with regards to rotations) compared to yourself or your teammates, you'll probably notice a huge difference. Aiming and movement go hand in hand, you have to be in control of everything you're doing. You need to move right into cover? Well I hope you're gonna be moving your crosshair left to compensate for that, and then when you need to shoot you need to counter strafe back to the left and click at the same time. There's a whole bunch of stuff regarding movement since it's such a broad term, but the essence is explained in this video - you need to be in control of your space.
Practice this with KZ maps and surfing, there's a lot of servers dedicated to this with their own communities and if you ask for help on an established community server someone will probably be willing to show you how something is done.

Game sense -

Here's something you can't train on your own and the biggest and hardest thing to get good at, you need to ditch casual and get in competitive games to have a play around. First I'd recommend watching steel's "WTF IS?!" series to get an overview of the game and what's possible.
At first you're going have to consciously think about a lot of things such as: "Am I making good use of my utility?" (looking at you Post), "am I exposing myself to too many angles at once?", "where the fuck can the enemy be right now?" some of these things are going to be hard to think about all at once but don't let it discourage you - eventually some stuff will be second nature and you'll find yourself doing it naturally without hesitation - you just have to keep at it and play regularly.

*gitgud not guaranteed

[hazo.ps]

counter strafe

Was playing some deathmatches the other day, had my ass handed to me walking about the map. Next map I thought "i'll have a go at that strafe... alternate... counter... thingy, do I do just tap against the direction i'm moving?" And that was it, kicked ass that next map, I'm pretty confident with my aim already, but I'm a lot more used to moving and shooting from the other arena shooters I play, but the extra speed I had popping around corners catches most people by surprise and puts you in an better position than slowly walking around the corner with your barrel sticking out. I don't think I walked the entire match I was just running around popping headshots, it works so so well and was easy to pick up.

Having started playing CS a bit more regularly since the other week, the main focus I've been trying to give myself is to not go into a fight unless I have the advantage. You can see how to game is constructed that way. CT usually have the advantageous position defending. They could be anywhere on the objective, and can keep silent, and have a full team watching all the flanks. I assume this is why CT get the M4 which can't one-shot headshot, and T side get a commonly preferred rifle. But yeah, make sure you have the element of surprise, that flash, that flank, that extra team mate, the extra weapon, etc. in every fight to push it into you favour, especially when you are T side.

[cspflo]

Not CSGO related but talking about weapons for noobs and such, Ahoy just released a video about the P90:

[Sloth.ps]

the main focus I've been trying to give myself is to not go into a fight unless I have the advantage

The professionals do this extremely well (most of the time), ensuring that when they take a fight they have someone there to counter-kill if they lose it. Trading 1:1 to take a bombsite is fine for the Ts because once the bomb goes down all the pressue is on the CTs to retake, often from poor angles and under time pressure. A key equaliser for the CTs in those scenarios is utility (smokes/flashes/incendaries) and that's why Ts often try to bait out utility from CTs guarding the site they don't want to take. Get the CTs to low utility and even numbers and they'll often give up the round after you get the first kill on the retake attempt.

My disclaimer is that I've watched and played CS for years and I'm still awful

[cspflo]

http://www.counter-strike.net/operationhydra/

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http://www.counter-strike.net/operationhydra/

[Seric.ps]

[Post Script.ps]

Ahhhhhhhhh yesssssss

[3agle.ps]

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