This Guide is for
1v1 IMPROVEMENT... The person that posted this article is a well recognized DM player and with accomplishments that are outstanding.
This guide can overall improve your gameplay for all gametypes. This guide is highly useful even though you are not a dueler
My name is
Brenton Sellati (DOB 3/21/85) and I was formerly a
top Unreal Tournament 99 player named Khyron of clan High Voltage. I
competed in several 1v1 tournaments worldwide over the years, placing
3rd in the Twin Galaxies online tournament, 3rd at WCG USA 2001 LA
Qualifiers, 5-8th at WCG2001, and 1st at Ultra Unreal July 2002. I
practiced regularly with players like xs-pain and destrukt. I was
heavily into the clan scene, winning pretty much everything you could
both online and on lan for CTF / TDM and 2v2 TDM. When UT2003 came out,
it sucked, and it was my freshmen year of college, so while a lot of
people moved on to other games, I chose to move on to a social life and
school studies. I didn’t compete after UltraUnreal 2 (July 2002), and
that’s when I quit for all intents and purposes. I’ve fallen into the
background of FPS gaming over the past few years, however I still alias
on pubs every now and then, find my way into pick ups, and have been
known to still play 1v1’s on Speakeasy Q4 servers until the wee hours
of the morning recently. I have been thinking about writing an article
on EXACTLY what it takes to become a top 1v1 player, but I kept putting
it off because I had more important things to do. Really, I’ve thought
of these things because I asked them to myself when deciding whether or
not I should try to get back into the scene. CS just wasn’t my thing…my
specialty is midway-esque analysis of dueling in traditional FPS games.
Well, I wanted to take a break from a study session on this lovely
Saturday morning in a UMass Amherst library, so I thought I would write
and submit “Part I: So you want to win the CPL?” for your feedback. My
GotFrag account name is
khyr0n.
There
is a lot to write about in this article so I’m going to be as
straightforward as possible. Before you continue reading, ask yourself,
“Do I want to win a CPL?” Think about it. Really think about it. Answer
yourself honestly, or you’re just going to waste your time. One of the
biggest factors that determines whether or not you’re going to be a top
dueler is whether or not you WANT to be a top dueler more than everyone
else out there. Are you willing to LOSE often when you first start
practicing? Are you willing to play maps that you don’t like and that
don’t suit your style more than ones you’re comfortable on? Are you
willing to do strategic demo research on opponents registered for the
upcoming tournament? Are you willing to eat, sleep, and breathe dueling
whenever you have free time? If you cannot answer “Yes” to all of these
things, chances are you will never win a CPL. If you can say "Yes" to
at least some of them, what follows will still improve your dueling
but—without total dedication will not be enough to make you a top
player like Cooller or Czm—both of whom at one point or another
answered yes to all of that.
Losing is the path to winning
Before I get into the nuts and bolts of how to improve your play and
strategy in duels, your mind has to be in the right place. One of the
ideas I mentioned on the previous page is that you have to be willing
to LOSE quite a bit. How does this make sense though? How is losing a
lot going to make you a winner? Truthfully, it’s because if you’re
playing somebody who is better than you, they make you better. They
don’t forgive sloppy timing or poor item control; they don’t forgive
poor on the fly decisions which end up with you being cut off,
cornered, and fragged. Playing somebody who is so below your skill
level that you don’t need to exert much effort to beat them will in
fact make you a WORSE player, because your bad habits and tendencies
will not be punished by your opponent fragging you, and instead will be
reinforced by your ability to still win matches and therefore solidify
as a bad habit of your personal play style.
So, be prepared to
lose a lot. You have to look at every match you play as a case study in
your current progress as a player. Somebody beating you on the last map
has no bearing on whether or not you can beat them the next time
around, so ask yourself, “Exactly what went wrong?” What strategies did
your opponent use to beat you? How can you take that and make
improvements on it?
Was he seemingly coming from everywhere
all the time, just completely overwhelming you? This means you need to
work on your prediction skills—think as your opponent thinks. He’s only
human, and he can only move as fast as you. If you’ve been cornered and
escape him, how does he always know where to cut you off? He predicts
where you’re going. You must predict where he predicts you’re going. To
master this skill is for your opponent to not be able to guess with any
degree of certainty whether or not you will double back, or go to the
next spawning powerup, set a trap for him for when he goes for that
power up, etc.
What mistakes did you repeatedly make that you
need to recognize and stop? Many players, if seemingly down by an
insurmountable margin or after a series of spawn frags, will get upset
and just throw the match. They’ll rush a better armed opponent who has
a frag lead on them with whatever weapon was closest to them when they
spawned. Does that many ANY sense? You need to train yourself to give
up as few frags as you possibly can. So what if your opponent gets a
Red Armor or a Mega Health? One frag you can stop your opponent from
gaining on you is one less you have to gain back on them! You can
literally think of a successful escape in which you would have died had
you fought until the end as a frag for you against your opponent.
In
the end your losses will show you the things that others do better than
you, and while you should not like losing, you must realize it’s the
only way to improve. Losing to better players is frustrating only if
you’re not taking what they teach you in those losses and turning it
around on them. Consider it a learning experience. The only reason you
should be frustrated is if you keep on losing with no signs of
improvement and no idea how to fix things—which is why you’re reading
this right now.
Don't repeat the past
You’re not going to remember every decision you made in the heat of
battle after a match is over. All you’ll know is that you lost and all
you’ll remember is that you didn’t like it last time either. Your
memory may not be perfect, but a demo is. You need to demo every single
match you play and after every loss, go back and analyze exactly what
you did wrong. Here are some common things which you should look to
improve upon:
Item Control:Count
how many Red Armors (RA) Yellow Armors (YA) and Mega Health’s (MH) you
got, and your opponent got. Item control is not only knowing WHEN items
come up, it’s knowing how to get them. Every competitive 1v1 map puts
the person who is getting a power up in a vulnerable position in which
it’s pretty hard to defend themselves. That’s why if you know when
something spawns, you can get in and out of there without having to
wait around like a sitting duck. Notice the differences between the
ways you and your opponent picked up the power ups. Which hallways did
they come from? When you fought for a power up, how did he get it while
still killing you? How did you get it away from him? Take notes on
exactly how you’re dying and then the next time you play, make a
conscious effort to not allow yourself to get into the same situations,
or if you do, to force yourself to act differently.
Positioning:Chances
are, a lot of the frags someone gets on you come from the fact that
they are better players, not better fraggers. This means that someone
is usually attacking you with whatever weapon best fits the situation,
from a better position. If someone is on a ledge above you attacking
you with a lightning gun, and you have a rocket launcher, they can
attack you pretty much freely, ducking behind the cover of the ledge
where you can’t hit them, while you have to try to hit a highlight reel
rocket body shot to do damage to them. You must recognize the times at
which you are fighting at a disadvantage to your opponent, either
because the gun you have isn’t a good one (rail gun vs rocket launcher
in close quarters—good players avoid this situation if they have a rail
gun, it’s not an opportunity to show what a 1337 rail you have, it’s a
free frag for your opponent 90% of the time), or the physical location
on the map makes it hard for you to get cover or run away, and then
change your course of action. Run away, escape, live to fight another
day. Goad your opponent into following you—see if you can bring them
into a fight where you have the upper hand. Just don’t give them free,
easy points.
Accuracy:Most
top players don’t have a high rail gun percentage because they have
super-human aim genes which are unattainable by mere pub mortals. It’s
because they have trained themselves to become accustomed to the timing
of game movement, and the shots they do take, they are pretty sure they
can hit. Look at the shots you take with your rocket launcher, or rail
gun and ask yourself, was it a tight shot with a narrow miss or did you
just wave your cursor in the general direction of your opponent and
pray you might hit them? You need to intensely focus on every shot and
try to make it count—if you can achieve this level of concentration you
will find that you shoot only when you really think you can hit
somebody, and as a result your shots will become much more accurate. Of
course, this is also an area where only practice with live opponents
will show you improvement, but the key to gaining accuracy faster is to
try to do more with less—forcing yourself not take the shot if you
don’t think it’s going to hit.
Movement:Did
you bump into lots of ledges? Were you disoriented when you came out of
a portal? Did you get attacked from behind or surprised and had no idea
where it came from? Remember where you got attacked from, and try using
that position yourself sometime—but do it sparingly, or else it becomes
predictable. Make sure you always check that spot in the future so
you’re never surprised from there again. Create maps with no one in it
but yourself (or bots if you want, as some top players like Socrates_
do) and run around it working on movement—how to strafe jump and time
your movement so that you can move around a map smoothly. A good
exercise to do is to run around a map backwards. If you’re engaged with
an opponent and you’re trying to fight while escaping, you’re probably
going to be moving backwards. If you can’t move around a map freely
backwards while there’s no one breathing down your neck, when you’re
under the pressure of a firefight it’s definitely not going to be any
easier.
Analyze Details:Notice
ways in which your opponent was able to gain an upper hand on you. How
did you let them do this? Figure out the things your opponents do well
against you, and use and perfect those methods yourself. One on one
skill isn’t a matter of natural talent, it’s a matter of being able to
evolve and change based on what’s being thrown at you by opponents.
Watching the demos of top players will give you a huge insight into
exactly what you should be doing right. They will also give you some
insights into how even the pro’s make mistakes. Watch the Winter CPL
demo of Cooller where he uses map control to slaughter Toxic, a player
who arguably has better aim and is at least on par with Cooller in
fragging ability. But Cooller’s more efficient use of the environment
and his ability to create advantageous situations for himself where the
engagement point is in his advantage, or he has more armor and health,
and the ability to capitalize on this, are what makes him truly one of
the greatest duelers on the planet.
On the other hand, the
Winter CPL match between Socrates_ and FooKI on Galang, which is a
great match, features some incredibly sloppy play. Notice how FooKI
will show how he moves around a map to pick up power ups, dropping down
on them just as they spawn because he has them timed, Also, notice how
he will rush Socrates_ with poor weapons given the situation (like the
rail gun versus the close range shaft of Socrates_, which is known for
being deadly), or go around tricky ramp jumps which you can tell he
isn’t comfortable attempting. Notice situations where Socrates_ gives
up frags in a similar fashion. Analyze these details and recognize when
similar situations occur in your games. Keep a clear head and
experiment with your reactions to see what works best.
What's Next?
This
portion of “The Dueler's Handbook" has focused mainly on the mental
aspects of being a solid dueler, which in my opinion, is more than half
the battle. A player who makes smart choices and is efficient and
comfortable in any situation will be a seriously difficult opponent to
beat. This is the reason Fatal1ty has been so successful across so many
different games — these fundamentals of being a good dueler are
applicable to any platform. Only the nuts and bolts of game mechanics
are different from game to game. In my next article I will focus on
specific training techniques, or drills, which you can use to improve
your accuracy, reflexes, and prediction. I will discuss play strategy
for both maintaining map control and regaining map control if you’ve
lost it. And of course, a few surprises which I won’t mention here
because then you’d have nothing to look forward to! Thanks for reading,
and happy dueling.
Fn A GamingLadder Dedicated to UT3
