Training Section [Archive] - UnrealZA Forums

|sAvAgE|

27 Mar 2005, 17:35

taken from the "Duel" thread:

by Nautilian
I would actually like to start giving tips out again so here goes:

Since I have been dueling for yonks now, I have come to realize that most players downfalls is their lack of attention in game, when I say this, I mean players never know when to attack, stay away, go defensive or go for the rape. Most players are always taking chances, getting the lucky frag, or just by shear luck getting the lucky shot in to swinging advantage their way.

I will stress this over and over again, sound is VERY important when dueling, it allows you to locate your opponent, but more importantly allows you to monitor what guns and health he is sitting on. If I could setup an example, DM-DE-Ironic, there are 2 spots where you can collect 25 HP (vials), 1x 50 shield, 1x 100 shield and 4x Health packs. Now the first mistake most players are making is in their initial start, most players have no set route for when they spawn, most players never plan ahead. When I say this, I am trying to say that knowing the armor will spawn at 14:33 (15 min game) allows you that time to gain an advantage over your opponent, collect health vials, collect the guns in your path. Also be aware of what weapons your opponent is going to have (this you can hear from the pickups of the weapon sounds). Instead of getting one gun and standing over the 100 shield waiting for it to spawn which 8/10 times your opponent will kill you as he is coming into the area ALERT, he already has an advantage over you, he also may have the height advantage too, so instead of just waiting there, collect as much as you can, TRY and push to get both vial packs and through experience will be able to know how long it should take you to get from wherever you are in the map to the 100 shield spawn.

Another thing that I would like to comment on, most players find the urge to dash for a shield as soon as it spawns, especially when taking on the enemy, you guys literally turn your back to your opponent, letting him kick the crap into you. You might get the 50 shield, but you might die straight afterwards. So think first, rather sacrifice the armor, run away, recover and try again. You as a player should carry on telling yourself that there should be no REASON why you should die, and believe you me, saying that to yourself during a game REALLY helps.

Timing is another crucial component of a well rounded dueler. If you are not that good at timing or map control or whatever it may be, at least start somewhere, start timing the 100 as that is an item that holds most control in a map. It is not that difficult to do as all that is needed is to take the time it was collected subtract 1min and 5sec. Even if you are not there to collect it or your opponent takes it. You can still hear when it was collected, record the time and know when the next spawn should be. Hell you could even try keeping your distance collecting up with 50 shield and vials and confront your opponent on the next spawn. Remember, even though your opponent might have 100 shield, there is still vials and shield to collect, and I can tell you right now having 150-199 HP with 50 shield is a greater advantage than having just 100.

More to come later…

Naut

Right next thing I want to discuss is why is there such a contrast in players and never a really in between level of skill player, there are usually the good players and the really crappy ones (NOT POINTING OUT ANYBODY).

So the first thing we need to do before we can start looking at individual parts of your game is to first take a HUGE step back and take a look at the bigger picture. You need to ask yourself what sort of game style you play. Are you aggressive, defensive, tactical or you just don’t know. 99.9% of the time if you don’t know you are probably aggressive, which we can already say is probably the reason why you are dying so much. Even though this sort of style is fun to play and it gets the blood pumping, you got to admit getting raped over and over just plain SUCKS. So the biggest turn around for your game is to change the way you play it.

Right, now as I have discussed there are different styles of playing, but this does not necessarily mean you have to follow one path of style. It is called adaptation, adjust your style to the opponent you are playing and your position in the game. So before I continue on what each style benefits you need to know what are the crucial requirements for each style are:

Aggressive: Accuracy and weapon management.
Defensive: Speed and accuracy.
Tactical: All of the above, prediction and an open mind

If you look at the list and work your way down, you should get the sense that there is a level of increasing difficulty. Now don’t say to yourself “OK I am going to be a TACTICAL player from now on” NO NO NO, that is the worst thing you could do to yourself. To get to that sort of level quickly you need practice, experience (LAN TIME) and patience (GETTING RAPED BY BETTER PLAYERS). Let’s be honest here, not many of us have time to practice. So what you need to do is allow yourself to learn all the time. What I mean by that is when you are in the dueling scene and taking on an opponent whom you would consider better than yourself. Take a look at how he is killing you, where and WHY. This is very important as you could straight away learn the following lessons, shield gun is your friend, going for open weapons when you have just died is a big no no and going after the 100 shield or attacking your opponent when you have just spawned is a bad thing (though there are the exceptions, which we will discuss later).

Now that I have set the mood here is lesson number one:

When you get killed, not where you died and try to predict which path your opponent is going to take, he obviously will try and push for the spawn rape, but you aren’t going to let him do that. Now general map spawning 101, if you get killed on one side of the map your are probably going to spawn on the opposite side (though there is more to it, which we will get onto, that is the basic principal). Now if you see your opponent charging after you. Don’t carry on in the same path, RUN away, but please for the love of all the good coffee in the world don’t turn your back to your opponent as firstly if you have the shield gun on when you spawn (which you should) and turn your back, the shield gun is only effective in the front portion meaning the front of your body. Secondly you will not know what your opponent is doing, for all you know he has picked up on your move as is strategically positioning himself to catch up to you.

Next to be discussed, “on spawn weapon pickups”.

Naut

P.S. If some of my grammar is out please forgive me, I could not be bothered in checking this.

some more taken from the "Accuracy Tips" thread (posts by some other players as well so perhaps they can be taken into account as well:

by ScrYe wrt using instagib
Instagib wont help because:

THe shock rifle does not kill with one shot in a proper game, so maybe in instagib you can get that first shot in, but can you get the followup shots afterwards in a proper game? Probably not..

You're not learning to use the LG.

by FluX
what im saying LOL is ... LG arena will get your accuracy up with just using the LG (if thats the weapon you want to improve on) then go play some insta to see if it has helped you out after a couple days of prac, if not go play more LG arena.... got it yet?

Its not what weapon you are using at the time anyway (lg or supa shock) or what you are trying to hit (bot invasion monsters or humans) it about wether you can make the shot or not, and only practice can do that for you.

also i use the same cross hair for all my weapons ... so it doesnt distract me at all when changing weapons.

by n00mz
Aim isn't all about reflexes. Good aim... for the most part... is predicting your opponents movements.

The best way to get better at anything is to just play it as it naturally... er.. plays. Playing instagib and then going back to duelling will just screw you around.

Oh and um... Don't play bots. Thanks.

I love lamp

by Nautilian
Since UT has been modified quite a bit (brightskins, custom crosshairs) it allows you to really tweak to the max. I think that one should start off looking at how their configuration is done, what I mean by this, what colour skin do you use for enemies, what model do you use? All these help boost you aim all that much, personally through all that I have tried the most popular colours are (white, green, red, pink, orange and purple). The rest IMHO are too dark. The next thing you need to look at is to make sure that your crosshair colour does not match the colour you are using, you must also make sure that you don't lose SIGH of your crosshair when trying to put it on your opponent, meaning you have to focus to regain sight of it, as this means your colour blends to well with the colour you have chosen. The next thing I would recommend it so go for the bulky skinks, by this I mean models like (Gorge, Xan, Vector... you get the flow?).

Next, try getting into the habbit of removing your weapon in view. Hide your weapon as this IMHO causes to many distractions when trying to concentrate with all the animations happening, at the end of the day, it is just EYE candy and when switching weapons with weapon view off, you still get told which weapon you are using.

The next thing I would start to push for is custom crosshairs, meaning for precision weapons use a dot and for tracking/ballistic weapons use a cross (these are just examples), you could take this further to changing the colour and size of each (Look at the crosshair packs available in previous posts - Krauzer pack with the dot is really nice).

More to come...

Naut

this is all i could find for now, i'l lsee if i can get some others.