187<>Ceasar~
27 Mar 2005, 20:50
How to Make People Go Boom
I was asked, somewhat recently, to write a guide on proper weapon usage. This baffled me, as it never really hit me to actually sit down and think about it. Throughout my gaming career, instinct has been the determining factor in weapon use, and most everything else. But, not one to disappoint my many fans (ah!), I did sit down, and thought about this issue. So, boys and girls, sit down, grab a cup'a'joe, and listen well to Uncle Sean and his tale of woe...
Orientation, and How it Saved my Life
Before we get all into this like kids on christmas morning, I think it's important for me to mention a few things. For one, there are a few words that might not be familiar to everyone, and I'll detail these. On another note, I'd like to mention I won't be covering the Super Weapons (Redeemer, Ion Painter, etc), because, well, they're pretty easy to use. Finally, I find it most ironic that I'm writing this guide, as I have little doubt that once a player learns how to effectively use each weapon, he'll quickly forget the "thinking" part of it and adopt an instinctual approach, much as I have, and be baffled by.... You know, it's a circle, man, and it's like, round. Woah.
Big Words for Little People
spam ( P ) (spm)
n.
1. Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.
2. Random projectiles being thrown about in an offensive or defensive manner.
tr.v. spammed, spam·ming, spams
1. To send unsolicited e-mail to.
2. To send (a message) indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups.
3. To fire projectiles in a continuous manner, blanketing an area and damaging enemy infantry.
Splash Damage
splash ( P ) (splsh)
v. splashed, splash·ing, splash·es
v. tr.
1. To propel or scatter (a fluid and/or explosion) about in flying masses.
dam·age ( P ) (dmj)
n.
1. Harm or injury to property or a person, resulting in loss of value or the impairment of usefulness.
hit·scan ( P ) (htscn)
n.
1. The quality of hitting a target instantly.
The Big Book of Weapon Names
As a general rule, every weapon falls into a category. However, since UT2K4 features two firing modes, some weapons overlap.
Hitscan: Shock Rifle primary, Minigun, Lightning Gun, Link Gun secondary (limited by range), Assault Rifle, Shield Gun primary (very limited by range).
Splash Damage: Flak Cannon secondary, Rocket Launcher, Shock Rifle secondary, Shock Rifle Combo, Bio Rifle (once the glob has fallen).
Travel: Link Gun primary, Bio Rifle.
Defensive: Shield Gun secondary.
For most of it's existence, the UT series has been largely dominated by the hitscan type of weapon, and UT2K4 is no exception. The logic behind it is actually quite simple: if you keep your enemies at bay, the chances of them hitting and killing you decrease dramatically. Of course, this isn't an invariable rule, as sometimes it's best to get up close and personal. Generally, however, far = good, close = bad.
There are a few styles a player can adopt, basically falling into either an aggressive position or a defensive stance. The aggressor will opt mainly for the close-range weapons, like the Flak Cannon and the Rocket Launcher, since he'll always try to get up in your face, either by being sneaky or balls-out insane. Both work, but depend on the player. The defender will mainly rely on hitscan weapons, to keep the opponents at bay. Rarely will he charge blindly, and most often everything he does is very calculated. 45 hp there, 70 here, He's taken all the Health on that site, I can charge with little fear. Stuff like that.
The exception to the above rule is the minigun. By design, it's meant as a hitscan weapon, but in practice, it winds up losing much of it's usefulness beyond medium ranges. Typically, the weapon becomes a much more personal affair, and your best bet when using the Minigun is to get sufficiently close that the random bullet spread is negated, but far enough away that hitting you with Splash Damage weapons is difficult.
The Rules of the Game
There's no set way to play, of course, but there are a few things players would do well to keep in mind. For one, close range weapons work better at close ranges, and vice versa. Yes, this does seem very basic, but often times you'll see players spamming flak balls at a long range target. It just won't work, people.
A variety of "opening moves" exist, but for the most part, these consist of one of two things: a long-range hitscan shot, pulling the player closer, or a sneaky splash damage attack. Both work nicely, they just depend on the situation. The sneaky splash tactic does have an advantage, however, in that once you attack, you don't have to change weapons, whereas with the hitscan idea, you do, losing precious milliseconds.
Once the opening move is closed (ah!), you'll need to either keep the same weapon (all depends on range) or switch to a more appropriate one (range, again). During the fight, you'll want to mentally add up the damage you're dealing. The general idea is to switch to a "finishing" weapon once your opponent's healt dips below 40 or so. The finishing weapon can be anything, really, as long as you're comfortable with it. Minigun works awfully well, though. If your opponent is running away, and you're positive he has less than 45 health, don't pull out the lightning gun! Use the Shock Rifle. For one, it's rate of fire is much faster, allowing you to quickly take another shot if you miss, and it's also got that nifty combo thing going for it, if ever your opponent decides to kamikaze into you.
And that, friends, is the ultimate truth: You'll only ever be as good as your Shock Rifle abilities let you be. It is the most dominant weapon in UT2K4, both in versatility, damage output and usefulness. You can defend with it, you can attack with it, you can go long range, you can go close range, the only limiting factor is your ability. Mastering the Shock Rifle really is the only thing I can encourage you all to do.
Most of the other weapons progress on their own, through ordinary everyday play, but the Shock Rifle requires real effort on your part. Don't neglect it!
Final Words for Bigger People
In closing, I can't really deliver the key to weapon use, because it doesn't exist. Often times, a player pulling out the "wrong" weapon, on paper, will get the kill anyway. It really depends on the situation and your comfort level, and no amount of me talking about what works and what doesn't will alter that.
Learn to assess and evaluate the situation, think about what should've worked, and if you died, what would've kept you alive. If you killed the guy but lost alot of Health, ask yourself if there was a better way. Once you've thought about it enough, and once you've learned to work it into your play, it'll quickly become second nature and evolve on it's own.
But, as I said, the Shock Rifle goes a long way.
A Lesson In Practice
One of the big changes when one moves from a casual player to a competitive player is, of course, the amount of practice one puts in. Being the best you can be isn't an easy task, and being better than that to slap your opponents silly is alot harder. How to go about it, then? While there's no such thing as a definite, ultimate "way" to practice, there certainly are a few basic ideas I can relate to you.
The Philosophy of Time Travel
First and foremost, one must consider the implications of the change. The philosophies of each camp - casual and competitive - are different in such a drastic manner that many might be very displeased once, as any epiphany does, the realisation hits them on some idle tuesday. The best course of action is to ask yourself not if you want to be the best, but if the philosophy associated with it is right for you, as an individual.
The most apt comparison I can think of - it actually amazes me how accurate it is - is of public schools vs private schools. The basic goal of each, to educate themselves and acquire knowledge, is similar, if not identical. The difference, however, is in the details. Whereas the public system generally fosters a more cohesive community (albeit suffering from a certain hierarchy), the private system fosters one more focused on competition, on outdoing one another to impress the various higher ups (better colleges, parents, teachers, etc). Whereas the public system typically creates various cliques and, although judgemental, mostly allows it, the private system obeys much stricter guidelines. Dress codes arn't the half of it. Elitism is common in the latter, while indifference and (limited) acceptance is common in the former.
As a whole, the casual community can best be compared to the public school system, whereas the competitive community makes up the private school system.
Now, you might ask, why did I go to such lengths to define these communities? To warn people thinking of moving up. Those first few months, when you've just passed into our competitive world, can be very, very harsh. Typically, gamers have not yet gathered the required maturity to welcome "new blood", they've not yet learned modesty and acceptance, and elitism is not only common, it is a plague. On the flipside, if you are passionate about what you do, if competition fuels every bone in your body, you'll quickly gloss over these... drawbacks. In the long run, it is not only worth it, it's an experience I'd do over again if I had the chance.
Therein, however, lies the problem. Philosophy. Ask yourself, before taking that step, what you're looking for when you play. Simple, ordinary, everyday fun? Perhaps, then, is it best to stick to casual play. If, however, you're looking for competition, if the very notion of competing makes you wet yourself, perhaps it is time to take said step.
The Most Powerful Weapon in the Universe
Now that you've all been warned, and you've still decided to venture forth into our most lavish lands, comes practice. What, pray tell, would be the best course of action? How much practice is optimal, how much is too much?
To answer your questions, allow me to - virutally - point to the moon in broad daylight. There are no answers. Not universal answers, anyway.
The idea, however, is that practice is your one and only weapon agaisnt the elitist masses and the stubborn cream of the crop, who will not relinquish their top spots without a fight. Quite possibly, bitching too.
Perhaps a story is in order: Long ago, in a time of dwindling twilights and virtual prowess, a man of great strength came forth, a mystery of sorts. Out of nowhere, this man took third place in a major international event. Dissatisfied, he took it upon himself to train, and train he did. The next event, the first of it's kind, the man took great pride in vanquishing his foes. He didn't lose a single game. In fact, he won the finals easily. Later, in the myriad of interviews that followed, the man revealed he practiced somewhere along the lines of 8 hours a day. That man was John "fatal1ty" Wendel. Superstar, I know.
The point of that story, however, is that practice can certainly bring about nice results. Winning these large tournaments is quite the bonus to one's day to day budget, especially when in your twenties. To be the best, time is required, such is the rule of all things.
However, and this is where it's very important to read carefully: fatal1ty's answer is not foolproof. Case in point, fatal1ty's lost many major tournaments to people who practiced less. There truly is a panoply of variables that can affect one's play, and while practice schedule is one of them, perhaps the most powerful weapon, it isn't the only one that needs to be taken into account. Natural talent, ability to handle pressure, all those kinds of things.
Time, perhaps, for another story: zulg, a UT player, participated in last year's ESWC event. This tournament gathered all the great players, who represented their country, and pit them agaisnt each other. For most of the week, zulg lost most of his practice games. Most at the venue shrugged him off. Yet, when it came down to it, zulg proved to be a most fearsome opponent. He finished in second place, losing only to GitzZz, perhaps the most famous - and most talented - UT player ever.
All this to say that while practice certainly means alot, it can't accurately prepare you for the actual thing.
Back to the Future
Juggling our social life, school, job, etc, and on top of that a practice schedule is not an easy task. Many unpredictable variables come into play, and often compromises will have to be made. However, through all my years, I've found a most forgiving and agreeable number: 2. Two hours of practice every day, taking breaks when things of various sorts come up.
If you enjoy what you're doing, those two hours will fly by. Most often, you'll wind up playing more without noticing it, and you won't actually care. It's alot like getting a 3 page assignment on a subject you enjoy, a task that can seem daunting at first, but ultimately winds up funny when you're up to 6 pages.
And that, friends, is why practice is not foolproof. If you do not enjoy what you're doing, no amount of practice will get you what you seek. Not only will you screw up your "outward" life by practicing too much, you'll also wind up screwing up your inner balance. For every fatal1ty, there are ten failed ones. Don't sacrifice everything from some obscure dream that is, in this day and age, far from feasible.
The Key to the Universe is Inside You
That, friends, is the truest truth. Even my 2 hours can seem exaggerated to many of you, and there really is no problem with that. Practice isn't some static issue everyone adopts, it's a fluid notion. Practice as much or as little as you feel is necessary. Some people very much enjoy competition, but being the best is not their priority. Ergo, they'll practice less, and will typically be more fun to play. Others will practice more, and that too is fine.
In the end, it falls on your shoulders. Practicing, and it's consequences, are immaterial things until you give them substance.
The Quality of your Friends Reflects on You
The final, iron rule. Practicing as much or as little as one does is irrelevant if the quality of your practice partners is too high for you, or too low. Perhaps the best idea is to find someone of your level, and practice agaisnt each other every few nights. Then, when you're not playing each other, play someone of a higher level. When you return to playing each other, you'll hopefully have learned a few new tricks, and both of you will improve faster. This is, of course, for duels, but it also applies for every other mode, albeit a tad harder to organise when more people are involved.
Another option is to seek out like-minded invididuals (or teams) and create a sort of practice circle. Most likely, you'll improve at about the same rate and before you know it, you'll be taking games from the top players.
The Final Word
The general idea, as far as practice is concerned, is to follow your needs and ideals and associate yourself with people of the same mindset. Remember, kids:
- Quality
- Quantity
- Fun factor
This is the criteria for practice, and if even one is lacking (according to your own ideals, of course), then you're not helping yourself.
I do apologize if this wasn't what some of you had imagined, as far as Lessons in Practice go, but I do feel I've covered everything. Practice is yours, not mine to dictate.
Improving Your Aim
Aim improvement is something every player strives to do. Whether they take a hardcore, militant approach in doing so, or simply only use hitscan weapons, they are improving their aim in the process.
There are a few major factors on how one can improve his/her aim. Sensitivity, Comfort Level, Practice Medium and Player Prediction are all very important in the process of improving a player’s aim.
Sensitivity
This has a few variables involved in it, including game mode preference. I for one, don’t play too many 1v1’s right now, I’m more of a goofy FFA pubber. Because of this, I don’t have to rely as heavily on hitscan weapons as 1v1 does Instead I can use my rockets as often as I want without players dodging backwards to hit me w/ a lit gun or a shock combo. So I use a higher sensitivity while playing FFA, but if I decided to play 1v1 competitively, I may lower it to compensate with the change of weapon usage to a more hitscan dominated game mode.
So depending on what kind of player you are, your sensitivity should be higher if you intend to use Rockets or Flak rather then Lit or Shock. Sometimes Rocket shooting requires a quick 180 and a higher sensitivity allows this to happen very smoothly. However a lower sensitivity will keep your crosshair on the target much more consistently when using the Lit gun from a far distance.
One thing that every competitive gamer does at least once, they’ll lower their sensitivity to an insanely low amount to better their aim with hitscan weapons. They’ll play for a period of a few days with total satisfaction that they can now hit 20% more accurately with the hitscan weapons. However, they always switch back after a little while when they get used to the sensitivity, and start getting as inaccurate as they used to be before the switch.
Comfort Level
Playing comfortable is the only way to play. Some players have an extremely hard time doing this, and others are so laid back you have to check their pulse to see if they’re still alive.
Some people refer to the Zone, as in ‘I was in the Zone!’ quite a bit. What this is referring to is when you are playing at a heightened skill level, and you were also extremely comfortable when doing so. Comfortable + Heighten Skill Level = The Zone! There’s a little formula for you, write that down, and put it on the fridge. Perhaps overlapping your son’s drawing of the dog that looks so bad.
When you are comfortable, you make better decisions. You also increase the accuracy of your aim because you don’t feel desperate or excited enough to persuade your hand to move so slightly off target.
A good rule of thumb in a game to achieve your maximum comfort level (which is something I still have problems with after 8 years of competitive gaming), is to stop what you’re doing and simply calm down. Though it may sound corny, I take my hand off the mouse and keyboard and sigh once, to get my head in the right place when I’m frustrated that my teammate just caused me to suicide with a rocket. This is more or less my reset button that allows me to slip back into my comfort mode quickly and start hitting my shots again.
The best players in the world live in a comfort mode. That’s why you rarely see a competitive game where one gamer just gets mad and starts charger at the opponent with the shield gun. This is because every kill in the game is played like it’s the turning point in the game. If you’re down 0-20 and you have 5 minutes to go, and you’re still trying to make that one kill that could change the flow of the game while you’re still in the right mindset, then you have hit a comfort level. However, in this case, your opponent hit it a earlier in the game then you did.
Practice Medium
If you’re going to be a competitive gamer, you need to bring your aim up to par with that of any other superstar player. To do this, you’ll want to isolate your aim, and the best way to go about doing this is taking up 1v1.
When you play 1v1 you have one target. That means only one target to focus on, one target to worry about, one target to shoot as he jumps past that door frame. While this may seem trivial in the Aim sense of things, you will start to judge movement and dodging better, as well as player prediction. In 1v1, a player’s only choice is to move well and make smart decisions. If not, he could very easily lose the game with the next kill, as opposed to a FFA where it doesn’t even hinder the player if he dies. You get more performance out of your opponent when you raise the important of staying alive. The better your opponent performs, the better your aim will have to be to keep up with him.
In another big plus, 1v1 limits the game to 2 players. That means, the server is performing at its best since it doesn’t have so many players to track. If the server is performing optimally, your Aim won’t have any hang up on Lag or FPS problems that otherwise may occur with 20 people present on the server.
Player Prediction
Sometimes it’s simply not possible to constantly keep your crosshair on the other player, so you must use your innate ability of player prediction to hit that shot. For example, let’s say a player is jumping off a ledge, and as opposed to you shooting at him while he’s falling, you train your crosshair on a point that he will hit through the trajectory of his jump. When he’s about to get there, you shoot and score a hit.
That’s a very easy way to do predict our player’s movement and with a good player, that will never work. They simply don’t make jumps like that would allow vulnerability to such an attack. So you will have to rely on other means of making your aim work for you.
UT brings into aspect dodging. For player prediction while playing a person that dodges well, I really have to hit my comfort level and pay attention to his movements. I’ll only shoot my shot when he’s reached the end of his dodge, or when he’s about to. This highly raises my chances of a direct hit. However, if you’re not at your comfort level, your player prediction will be sloppy at best.
In summary
I’ve known people who were so good with aim that they had to have been detached socially to play at such a comfort level. However, aim is only part of the puzzle that makes you a professional gamer. Without a sense of strategy, your aim won’t get you very far.
A lot of the players who I would consider to have the best aim, could never win many 1v1’s against good players. Simply because they rely so much on aim and slack so heavy on strategy that they have no true understanding of how things need to be played. Aim only gives you an option to play competitive games, strategy is what wins them.
On a final note, your aim will unfortunately, eventually plateau. You will reach a point where you simply can’t aim any better, no matter how many opinions you read or how many times you step back and analyze how to fix it. When that time comes, you’ve gotta start thinking past increasing your aim, and focusing on the elements of the game that you can still improve upon.
Improving 1v1 Spawn Raping
As I played a few games of 1v1 today, I started using an old trick I used to when learning a new level. I figured I'd share it in the tip library.
After dueling a little while on a level, you get to a point where you need a little more information about the level to effectively tweak your strategy. Mainly, widening the margin of victory or closing the margin of defeat. Luckily, its usually the former for me, and I wanna spawn rape as much as possible. So how do we get better at that? We learn the spawns.
There's a neat trick you can use in usually any FPS game to learn the spawns in any level. Simply type in your suicide command in the console (in ut2k4's case its ironically 'suicide') and respawn at a new spawn point. Just keep typing it until you've re-spawned about 30 times. If you were paying attention where you spawned, it should give you a good understanding on the chances of a player coming back to life in a any given area.
After doing this trick and playing 2 more duels, it made a difference. I got at least 2-3 more spawn kills in a game, simply because I ran to one area with the most spawn points directly after killing my opponent.
More Spawn Raping
Having experienced first-hand nogame's strategy of spawn raping, I thought I would add something else to that same point.
I have some experience using UnRealEd and found that opening the maps and taking a look around, noting the spawn points displayed as a small joystick, was also another effective way to find out all the nice places your enemy may pop up next. Some maps have far more than others, but they are usually grouped together depending on the map. After looking over the map and doing what nogame has recommended, you should be raping a few more frags the next time someone decides to spawn!!
Armour Numbers
It's a little confusing figuring out the ratio of how much damage you take to how much armor health you will have remaining after the attack. Having a better understanding of these numbers could give you a better idea of when to engage an enemy, and when to run away.
I did a few tests with various health/armor combinations using both a Rocket and a Shock to the direct floor. The rocket did a consistent 80 damage and the shock did a consistent 42 damage. Here is the data:
(Health/Armor)
Rocket (80 damage)
100/0 + 80d = 20/00
100/50 + 80d = 60/10 (-40%,-80%)
100/100 + 80d = 80/40 (-20%,-60%)
100/150 + 80d = 93/77 (-7%,-51.3%)
Shock (42 damage)
100/0 + 42d = 58/0
100/50 + 42d = 80/29 (-20%, -58%)
100/100 + 42d = 90/68 (-10%, -42%)
100/150 + 42d = 100/108 (-0%, -28%)
After I had finished doing the Rocket test, I figured the health and armor subtracted was linear for any amount of damage taken. However, this proved wrong when comparing with the data of the Shock Rifle.
If you total up the amount of health subtracted with the armor subtracted for each instance, you usually get the amount of damage that was done. This only proved inconsistent with the Shock Rifle and 50 armor, which I can’t really account for. But basically:
Damage = health subtracted + armor subtracted
Unfortunately, I’m not the greatest with math and formulas so I can’t quite figure out what the exact formula is for health or armor percentage loss on a given amount of damage. I’ll leave that to any of you to figure out.
What seems to be obvious though, if you have 100/150 and you get hit by something 50 damage or less, you will maintain 100 health, so it would be safe to assume that it absorbs 100% of your damage if you are taking less than 50 damage. However, in the rocket’s case, if you are taking more than 50 damage, you start to see a loss of health, even at 150 armor.
The degradation of the combination of health/armor is somewhat linear though, and can be assumed pretty quickly in most scenarios, which gives you an upper hand in combat situations.
If you can quickly calculate how much damage you’ll be taking if that rocket hits you in the face, and compare it to your current health / armor, you’ll have a better idea of your chances of survival against an opponent of a certain skill level.
Pickup Spawn Times
Knowing when the major powerups respawn is important for good map control. Here are the spawn times for all of the pickups:
27.5 seconds: 50 shield, weapons, ammo, health pack, health vial, and adrenaline
55 seconds: 100 shield and keg-o-health
82.5 seconds: double damage
110 seconds: super weapon
The shields, keg-o-health, double damage, and super weapon will not spawn until 27 seconds after the game begins. The double damage lasts 30 seconds once someone picks it up. Once you hear it run out, you know that it will respawn in about 52 seconds.
Learning Maps
If you're having trouble learning a given map, here's my tip to you, gentle reader.
First and foremost, find the appropriate Power Ups. In DM, that would be the armors and the Double Damage, in CTF the flags are added to this, etc.
Once that's done, try and get from one Power Up to another. Use a single route until you become familiar, then branch out until you're able to navigate effortlessly.
Sure, it'll take time, but it's worth it, and alot simpler than learning during an actual game
Master The Art Of Compromise
Once you reach a certain level in dueling, you'll realise that there are many situations where a player will have to compromise between two or three various goals in order to reach victory.
It might be as simple as letting your opponent take hold of a large armor in an effort to trap him, or grab the double damage, and it might be as strange as letting a weak opponent escape in order to force him to a location where killing him will result in a direct advantage to you - yes, even greater than an additional point.
But remember, not all situations are alike, and while one compromise might work here or there, it won't necessarily work all the time.
Knowing Your Opponents Position
Knowing your opponent's postion can be pretty important in a duel.
Here are some pointers.
1. Use headphones
2. Turn off all music including the unreal music. (Supposely there is a way to turn off background sounds in ini but it might turn off hte important sounds so I'm still looking into that).
3. Listen for weapon pickups, and health pickups and try to predict where your enemy is coming from. If you can surprise him with a LG shot or a combo in his face, it can mean a kill.
Always Keep Moving
Possibly the simplest element of any and all fast-paced competitive FPS games, it still takes a few gamers some time to figure this out. The idea is that a moving target is much harder to hit than one who stands still. Now, that's really basic. However, once you reach this mindset of perpetual movement during combat, you begin to learn to expand upon it and, as a result, branch out further in the maps. As you progress, you'll begin to develop not only a very vivid sense of the map, but also a semblance of control. The first step to competitive gaming is bridging that initial gap.
Having A Hard Time Timing ?
There are lots of ways to learn how to improve one's timing skills, and most often this proves a somewhat daunting task for inexperienced players. Here's a good trick: start a server, by yourself, and pick up the powerups in any order you choose. Take note of the times. Do this for a full 15 minutes. Now, memorize these times by doing the same route one or two more times, on the same map. NOTE: Do not wait at the spawn location of the powerup, this ruins the purpose of the exercise. Attempt to get there as it spawns. At this point, you're ready for the hard part. Remove the HUD clock, and try to do the same route while making sure you arrive at the exact time the powerup spawns. Do this as long as you need until you feel comfortable, then try it again while taking a completely different route. Before long, you'll have developped a strong intuition of how long it takes for powerups to spawn. Couple this with basic mathematical skills - a large armor picked up at 19:33 will spawn again at 18:38 - and you'll be well on your way to timing like a superstar.
Getting Better With The Shock
Since I come from a Quake background the Shock Rifle is not the most comfortable weapon in the game for me. Unfortunatly, it is the best weapon.
Though my teammates had given me suggestions about 'only use shock for 3 months, no other weapons', I just didn't have the patience to do so without getting extremely competitive again. So that solution was out the window.
After thinking about working on my shock aim, out of game, or wherever, I couldn't come up with a way to practice it without flat out disregarding other weapons. However, I was not ready to make this commitment, cause I do love that Rocket Launcher dearly.
Ironically, all it took was some time on an empty server for me to feel much more comfortable with the Shock. Everytime I needed to config the GameAmp UT Server I took a few minutes to just shoot shock combos in the warmup mode of UT Comp.
As silly as this may sound, it isolated my aim a bit and made me feel much more comfortable using the weapon as a primary, as opposed to a secondary. Usually, the biggest help on how to use a weapon is comfort with it, not so much a different way of using it.
After doing a bit of warmup w/ the Shock I joined a pub server and went through my loops and routines. I had never really integrated shock into my loops on levels, though if it was there, I'd pick it up. Suffice to say I started using it more often and getting at least 3-10 more kills a game. I'd noticed my deaths decreased dramatically as well. The game definatly got a lot more interesting when I could hit my combos w/ that shock.
Powerups
Collecting these items wont make u god, but will give u the edge over ur opponent. Don't be over confident once u have these items, play your own game and be smart. Think about your next move, having 100/150 does'nt mean u have to go into kamikaze mode by chasing your oppenent.
As long as your timing and collecting the star items (keg, shields) your in control, your opponent is not. Your not going to get killed easily if ur stacked and ur opponent is not, play the odds.
General gameplay
Think about how and where u could possibly combat your enemy, being forced into a fight is never a good thing.
Think about what weapons u have in your arsenal and the most effective way to use them. For example, if you have only shock or lightning, try to keep distance between your enemy.
Change your gameplay to suit ur opponents. If they're aggressive, spam your tracks. If they spam and run, dont chase, camp with long range weapons. Know when to explode aggressively and when to hit and run.
Once you have managed to kill your opponent, realise that they now start with 1 weapon and 100 health, whilst your still have an array of weapons that you've collected already.
Shield stacking
Shield(50) does NOT stack with another Shield(50). This means that if you already have 50 in armor from taking a Shield(50), you wont be able to pick up another Shield(50). If you have taken Shield(50) and taken some damage so that for example only 30 armor is left, you can pick up a new Shield(50) but it will only give 19 in armor for a total of 49 (rounding error?). Shield(50) stacks with Shield(100) though, so one Shield(50) and one Shield(100) will give 150 in armor.
Shield(100) stacks with everything.
Shield vs health
Armor does not protect you completely, so some damage is drawn from health and some from armor. With 50 in armor, 50% is drawn from health and 50 from armor. For example, if you have 100 in health and 50 in armor and take 30 in damage, you will take 15 in damage to the shield and 15 to health leaving you with 85 in health and 35 in armor.
With 100 in armor, 75% of the damage is drawn from the armor and 25% from health.
With 150 in armor, everything is taken from the armor.
The percentages is scaled between, so with 80 in armor roughly 65% is drawn from armor and 35% from health.
Spawn times
At start, all powerups have a 27 second delayed spawn, which means that shields, double damage and keg spawns at 19:33 on a 20 minute game.
The individual spawntimes:
- Shield(50), weapons, ammo, vials, adrenaline and health have a 27.5 second spawn time
- Shield(100) have a 55 second spawn time
- Double damage have a 82.5 second spawn time
Tip: Notice the relation between these times, 27.5x2=55, 27.5x3=82.5, which means for every 2 shield(50), a shield(100) will spawn and for every 3 shield(50), an Double damage will spawn, etc.
Weapon switch time
Fire weapon A, switch to B and fire B always takes 1 second no matter what weapons A and B represents. For example, fire LG, switch to RL and fire RL takes 1 second.
As a comparison, fire a weapon, switching to a new one and fire that always take 0.55 seconds in UT2003. In other words, the switch time has increased with 180%.
Now with the sniper, an additional 0.4 seconds seems to be added, so if you fire sniper, switch to RL and fire RL it takes 1.4 seconds.
It does not matter what order you fire and switch, so fire LG, switch to shock and fire shock takes the same time (1 second) as fire shock, switch to LG and fire LG.
Switching from a weapon that has not been recently fired takes something like 0.4 seconds, but this also depends a little on the weapons. Sniper is also an exception here, but there seems to be slightly different times for different weapons (but they are all in the range 0.25-0.40 seconds). My guess is that the switch-sound is stalling here. Bug?
I havent checked the special weapons like grenade, mines or the super weapons. It didn't seem very interesting.
Learn spawn points
Know all the spawn points of players on the maps. Spawn points don’t only have a location they also have a direction. Keep this direction in mind as well. The benefits of being very very familiar with all the spawn points are very important.
Picture your opponent’s perspective
Remember what you thought the odds of hitting someone in your position from theirs was when you were there. Think of how you look as a target. How easy are you to hit with the weapons they are trying to use? It’s like being able to glance over at someone else’s screen while playing them. Play the odds.
Know your enemy
Remembering how different opponents play is helpful. The things to remember are: dodging patterns they've used, accuracies with different weapons, how good they are at certain key shots, what weapons they like to use more, how fast they are at switching weapons, which of them are playing the best, etc. Most other things about them aren't important. Taking extra considerations into mind will have you playing their style of UT and therefore losing. You need to keep your mind on your own goals so you don't forget how you plan to win. Concentrate too much on figuring them out and you'll lose.
Know when pu's run out
Know what time Double damage will run out so you can stop retreating at that instant. Just take 27 seconds from your timer when you hear someone pick it up. Once you play more you can even get good at adding seconds to that time when someone dies with Double damage and it’s laying there on the ground. The more precise you time it the better.
Visualising the shot
Aiming before you round a few certain corners of a map is a skill to develop. This is not keeping your aim on someone as if you can see them through the wall with a wall hack. This is aiming so that when you move your feet sideways around the corner, THEN you will then be pointing at them. This simply requires memorization of what the map looks like. This is like firing blind except you don’t even look the first time, you already have memorized the place(s) that people usually are, in the upcoming room. This kind of aiming is useful in just a few places on each map.
Run backwards through maps
Do your best not to get stuck on anything. Your main concern is how fast you can flee while shooting at the enemy. Can you pick up items without looking at them? Can you strafe jump sideways and backwards through the level? Can you stay far enough away from the walls to avoid some splash damage from them (without looking at the walls)?
Shoot the map
This is another low-stress way to improve your game. So many people get too nervous and shaky when playing UT. This will help you get a sense for pacing yourself so you can build up the speed of your play as you feel more comfortable. Just run through the map collecting armors while picking points on the map to shoot. Note the difference between your shot and your intended target and move on.
Shadow play
It’s like shadow boxing. Play an empty map making sure to time the armors perfectly. Shoot at an invisible enemy along the way. Play whole matches this way.
Play Instagib servers
This is probably the best way to improve your aim. I'd do this after you can comfortably rail bots on your own computer. Even after your lg aim is great, Instagib servers are great to practice on every few days to keep your aim warmed up. Especially good for the day before a match you want to win.
Play various skilled players
Improve to the next level you can't keep playing similar skilled players. You get better when you have many weapons in your arsenal to choose from. You get better when you get to pursue long battles. To do that you need other players that aren’t going to get the armors every time. You get better when you have time to relax and think about the parts of the game that aren’t immediately confronting you. If you want to learn the tactics of the great players then just watch demos of them. Good players will find you eventually, don’t torture yourself by thinking the more I play with them the more I’ll play like them. Play lesser skilled players to practice spawn rapes, etc. Player similar skilled players to practice map control. Play greater skilled players to practice stealing items without being killed. and so on.
As you can see, in most of these practice methods the emphasis is on what you are doing and not about adjusting to what an opponent is doing. Adjusting to an opponent should come after a whole lot of experience playing and shouldn’t be relied on. Once you get better than I am you may want to seek out servers that the top players play on. Once you’re that good, playing people who aren’t as good as you won’t help your game. You may want to start playing for the challenge of winning. But even if you become the best UT player, you’re still going to lack motivation for UT some days and will be beaten fairly. UT takes a lot of concentration and energy if you play to win. It’s alright not to play to win if that’s what you enjoy.
All this seems so trivial to some people. Why go all out and try to be so competitive at a game? Are all these tiny tedious things worth it? Don’t they make the game less enjoyable? You don’t have to do it to be competitive and win all the time. Knowing when certain events are going to happen enhances the fun of the game. For example, knowing exactly when someone’s double damge is going to run out while watching them fight someone else, let’s you do some crazy stuff.
It’s all about prediction. I’m not just saying this because I’ve heard it before. I’m saying this because I’ve experienced how important it is to winning games. People don’t realize how much you can predict. Most of that is due to people not realizing that prediction doesn’t always have to be a certainty. And a lot of it is also due to people not realizing that prediction isn’t always arriving at one answer. If you can just narrow down some of the possibilities, then you’ve gotten better.
You must think longer and longer in advance to time items well and truly play UT. What details can you fill in? Will you have enough health to make an attempt at the Double damage the next time it spawns? The sooner you answer these questions the better prepared you will be. Think about how much damage you will have to absorb yourself to kill someone. Think about how much damage you can give and still achieve the win of the match. Think about which items you will be able to pick up while you flee from an enemy. Test yourself, try to predict exactly when someone will die so you don’t waste ammo and time. The best UT players predict these things better than their competition.
Aiming
Once ur aim is locked around your enemies area, its much easier to hit if you let the enemy cross your x-hair, rather than chasing the enemy over fractions of the screen trying to pin them in your x-hair sight.
Don't fire as soon as you can. Pause briefly before firing to give the opponent a chance to make his last-second change in direction.
Stairs make people lose their footing. It is much harder to dodge while on stairs because the player is losing contact with the ground in between the steps. It is also harder to aim on the stairs since you can’t know exactly when your feet will be touching the ground. If your opponent is on stairs you’ve probably got the dominant position. Slopes don’t have any loss of footing and no disadvantages.
Dodging
Reactive dodging is dodging a projectile you can see coming towards u, but the true art of dodging is predictive dodging - predict where opponent thinks you're gonna be and do the opposite. Be unpredictable.
Vary the width of your strafe patterns and dodges - don't consistently do jitter strafing, and don't consistently do long slides left and right - mix it up.
Think of it like hockey, soccer, american football, or bastketball - when u wanna get past ur opponent, you wanna confuse him and do a series of quick feints and deke in and out left and right so he loses track of you - same thing in UT.
Also - if u ever study martial arts, a big thing is telegraphing - never telegraph ur moves - if u telegraph a punch to the upper body, your opponent is gonna be ready to block/dodge it
Wall pin
Aiming a rocket so as to bounce an opponent into a wall where they can't dodge in as many directions and you have a wall to splash damage them if you miss their body directly on the next shot.
Sucker punching
Waiting on the outside of a teleporter with your shield charged. The opponent has absolutely no way to avoid the hit if he goes through.
Tilting your head
Turning your view horizontally solely for the purpose of hearing which side of you a person is on. This amplifies the difference of the stereo sound in your headphones. A special case is when someone is either directly behind you or in front of you. The sound is exactly the same so you must tilt your head to determine which side of you they are on.
Scattering
Shield jumping to evade being hit. This is best done to get over the opponent’s head.
Land mines
Grenades laid where someone may teleport to.
Mugging
Waiting around a corner with the shield ready. This is usually done while fleeing from an opponent.
Near lead
Aiming a rocket so as to bounce someone away from you.
Far lead
Aiming a rocket so as to bring an opponent closer to you or to bring them in past a narrow point on the map.
Throw lead
Aim rockets or grenades to miss intentionally a little bit so an opponent falls over a ledge.
Corner lead
Shoot to one side of a person several times so that they will have to dodge in the opposite direction and corner themselves or be forced to eat the shots. For their best interest they should have eaten a shot instead. A more general term for this is herding.
Bounce lead
Aim rockets or grenades to miss intentionally a little to an opponent’s left or right so their aim is stunned in the opposite direction. This is done when you don't know exactly where they will be so you need to stun them quick to save your health and then go for more damage on the your next shot. It’s a shot you let off very quickly and don’t worry if it hits far from them because you know it will jolt their view anyway. Bounce leads are usually done when an opponent drops down on top of you and you don’t know which side of you they’re going to fall off onto. They are also done frequently in rocket versus rocket battles when you have been “out-synced.”
Aggressor’s advantage
Fighting someone before they are ready to fight you. The advantage is also having more than 100 health and 100 armor because you haven’t waited for it to count down. This can be the advantage of surprise as well.
Ambushing
Waiting quietly behind a corner for someone to come past the corner. You sacrifice item control for a little while to possibly get a surprise shot at an opponent’s back. In 1on1 this can slow the pace of the game down considerably if your opponent finds out you like to ambush.
Baiting
Letting someone have the item so you can hit them when they get it. This is deliberately choosing to not pick up the item when you can and waiting for them to come and get it.
Dancing aka hanging around- staying in a battle for one of two reasons even though you will not win the battle in terms of damage inflicted. 1) wasting their ammo or 2) wasting their time so you can re-spawn and have some items to pick up or so that you can flee and get to an item that you are closer to when it spawns soon.
Denial- shooting yourself with splash damage so you can pick up more shards or healths to keep them from your opponent(s). This is actually a very good tactic to use most of the time.
Disabling
99 percent exclusive to CTF mode, this is only taking some damage off an opponent and letting them proceed (into your own base 90 percent of the time). This way you don’t waste your time, ammo, and armor on killing them since you know they are not a threat. You get to continue onward with your own task.
Faking distraction
Hurting yourself in FFA so someone will come closer to attack you. Done with shield, rocket launcher, or shock secondary. You can also miss shots as well to sound like being in a battle with someone else. The point is to sound occupied with someone else.
Forcing the issue aka pressuring someone
Making a person rise to the occasion at your discretion. Trying to win by choosing the EXACT time of a key battle. This is the "aggressor's advantage." In games where there are many possible outcomes during the match that take effort to predict, the aggressor's advantage is best.
It has become popular to continuously force the issue for an entire match to tire out an opponent. Regulation matches are quite a long time to maintain intense concentration, so some people try to pack as much action into the match as they can. This tactic is done by people who think they are the better player and don’t want the match to be a lucky upset.
Hider's advantage
Choosing the place of a key battle but not the time. The opponent doesn't have much certainty about where to find you. The hider relies on already having planned out their own actions in detail and well into the future. The aggressor can’t plan to such an extent since the location of the battle is not definite.
Keeping the upper hand
Playing more defensively and not taking risks in order to use the pressure of having the lead in a match. This is not stalling, but is close. The difference in scores is typically small. Keeping the upper hand takes on added meaning in 1 on 1 play. It can be staying at one part of a map that has armor and ammo and not leaving; just defending when other valuable items aren’t spawning. If keeping the upper hand works for more than about a couple minutes, the map is considered stallable and therefore a poor choice for competitive matches.
Pacing one’s self
Not forcing yourself to make difficult plays in quick succession. 1) Resting in between so that you can retain/regain your composure, or 2) Giving yourself time to preview by visualizing what winning the next battle will entail. This way you have a plan and maybe a contingency plan, and your opponent may not have had the time to prepare for the battle. Rest times may vary between 1 second and several minutes in the most extreme case. The median rest time is about 10 seconds. The time is lowest in FFA, higher in team play, highest in 1 on 1. With fewer people the time is higher. Pacing comes into play when you are exerting yourself absolutely as much as possible.
Playing possum
Voluntarily taking some of the splash damage from an opponent’s spam rockets and grenades so that your opponent will think you have less life than you do and decide to attack you. The trick is to just barely get within the splash radius of these weapons so you only take about 5 health off. If they don’t see how far away you were when the shot explodes they will usually assume it hit closer to you than it really did.
Pre-spawn raping
Firing at vacant spawn points in case someone spawns there.
Reactor's advantage
Choosing the place of a key battle but not the time. Awareness must somehow remain heightened and fatigue dealt with. The opponent knows where you are. In games that are slower than UT there is no disadvantage to being a reactor. The only challenge is to be calm and aware before every match.
Recon shot
A spam shot done to see if someone is there. The beep lets you know if they are there. These are most often long shots that you don’t watch and don’t even stay around for.
Reverse lead
To shoot where someone will be if they reverse their velocity. It's a counter move of a counter move. You look like a real dummy when you use this on someone who is playing UT for the first time and never even thinks to dodge because then you completely miss. At long range you can clearly see when someone tries this tactic.
Road blocks
Spam that is to block a passageway from being traversed.
Scanning
Rushing into a room that has more than a screen’s worth of places where an opponent could be. A very quick look around the room is necessary. There are several ways to scan depending on the situation. You can do a quick flick to aim at the exact place where you think the opponent probably is. You can do a flick all the way to the right or left extreme where he could be to check the side you think they probably are. Follow this with a slide of your aim around to the other side. It’s tougher when you enter into a room where someone could be anywhere around you, 360 degrees. Some people scan left then slide around to their right and then check their back third. Another option is to delay a millisecond and aim at the first sound you hear. People don’t scan only left or only right for a complete 360 degrees, since the sound of someone will be heard before a full 360 degrees can be looked at. You can note someone’s scanning pattern and adjust to it later in the game. Don’t rely on taking advantage of someone’s scanning pattern and don’t put much energy into it since it doesn’t always pay off. Just try to note it a few times in a row, and if they get really predictable with it, take advantage of it.
Screening
Using the shock, link gun, rocket launcher, or any other weapon more to reduce the opponents vision than to inflict damage.
Sneaker's advantage
Walking instead of running when rounding corners that the opponent may be around so that you retain full aggressor's advantage. The difference is the lack of footstep sounds.
Stalling
Wasting time when you have the lead. There are very complicated stalling techniques for each map and various situations on each map. Near the end of close matches, this is done frequently in 1 on 1 and occasionally done in team death match but never done in FFA.
Standing someone up
Intentionally waiting next to a spawned valuable item instead of picking it up so that you can pick it up later than your opponent thinks you will. This is done when the opponent is too far away to hear when you pick the item up. If your opponent tries to get the item next time around, they will have to wait at the item for the extra time that you delayed. This can give you time to spam grenades at them or walk to set up an ambush around a corner. They are pretty much in the hot seat while they are waiting for that item to spawn. You’ll be able to try to hit them with more shots while they dodge around the place where the item spawns.
Suckering
Using a less appropriate weapon to get the opponent to come to you. Maybe they don't know you have a better weapon. Maybe they know but don't think you can switch weapons fast enough.
Syncing items
Delaying getting an item to sync it with the next spawn times of other items. Example: you don’t want to “dodge jump” from one armor to another armor because you’ll have to “dodge jump” the next time too. Another example: delaying an important item so it will spawn at the same time as another important item so your opponent will be forced to choose between which one he wants to get next time they spawn. This is a way to “keep the upper hand.” This latter example is called “un-syncing items” (even though you are actually giving the items the same future spawn time).
Syncing shots
Timing your shots so that they are immediately before your opponent will shoot so they either miss their shot or have to delay their shot. Syncing shots can cause them to miss either because of the explosion moving their character perpendicular to the direction they are aiming (like a bounce lead does) or because of the artificial movement of their view programmed into UT when they are hit. The artificial movement portion doesn't actually move where they are really aiming but does move their crosshair and whole view. Good players deliberately ignore this artificial movement when they can foresee you are employing this tactic. They’ll shoot despite where their crosshair appears to be pointing. Syncing shots dramatically increases the chances of winning seemingly equal battles especially when the syncing person is using the rocket launcher. People who aren't experts don't know how you can win so many battles in a row and tend to complain that they are off their game when you do this to them a lot. Syncing shots deals both with reload times of weapons and with weapon switching times.
Time giver
Spam that an opponent will hear and have to refrain from coming through a narrow place on the map. This is usually done more to slow someone down rather than to stop them entirely.
Trading places
Picking a fight when you probably will lose in terms of damage in order to flee toward a valuable item that will spawn soon. If you damage them more than you get hurt or even kill them that’s a bonus.
Turtle
Shoot a little and break off contact as if to go a different route but stay just out of view. The opponent doesn’t know if you stayed or left. One or two jumps can add to their indecision. Either that or some footstep sounds may help.
Using dominant position
Picking to fight when the geometry of the map favors you. THIS DEPENDS ON THE WEAPON YOU AND YOUR OPPONENT HAVE SELECTED and even on the other weapons you and your opponent have in your arsenals as well. Your position is dominant typically when you have the higher ground, but this is the simplest case. If you have the lightning gun and the other person has the link gun, you have dominant position when far away. This is one of the most complicated things in UT.
Winning the station game
Varying your location in rooms and near the outsides of teleporters. Rooms and the outside ends of teleporters I call stations. You don’t want to be found on the same side of the teleporter every time someone sees you. The goal is to locate yourself as randomly as possible. But also to pick where they won’t think you are. At the same time you must remember that going to a different position than last time they saw you at that station has an advantage: they haven’t responded to you in that place before so they will be less accurate because that response is not as “warmed up” for them. Scanning versus stationing is like a miniature game within UT.
Knowing When To Run From A Fight
Probably one of the hardest concepts for an average player to grasp is knowing the right time to run away from a fight. Usually overlooked, knowing when to run from a fight is one of the most influential elements in a player’s success. Since this specific skill is easily overlooked, it may be a bitch of a thing to improve upon, but let’s see what we can do.
Why Run?
Redeemer-wielding noobies? Sure, that too, but there are quite a few reasons for running from an opponent, some of which don’t involve immediate danger of death. While I won’t be covering all of them in this article, you can find more reasons on your favorite pub server from personal experience.
Players usually develop their running ability after considerable experience in competitive game play. The reason for this development is competitive gamers usually have a lot more going on in their heads. Competitive gamers are able to prioritize certain elements of the game very well and sometimes fighting or even dying, rate much lower on the importance scale in an FPS game.
Since experience is the key here, I’ll try to introduce reasons why I usually run from opponents during games and maybe that will allow you to see where I’m coming from. Perhaps getting a glimpse of something you didn’t feel was nearly as important is a good way to bypass the necessary experience requirement just long enough to ponder the urgency of these items.
Someone say Power-up?
This is a pretty quick and painless reason to run from a fight. If the fight has been prolonged from a quick 1-2 rocket kill to a duel with lightning guns and the Amp is about to spawn, its pretty obvious that grabbing that Amp is more important than killing that player. The Amp can account for multiple kills, not just one. Not to mention you defiantly don’t want the other team, or another player picking up your precious Amp. Not only will you lose your Amp run, but you may also lose the timing of the Amp’s respawn, which is very crucial.
The 100 armor works in a similar way but respawns more often then the amp, and once again, picking up the 100 armor should still rate higher on your priority list then killing a player and receiving one frag. Not to mention if you do get that kill before you go and grab the 100 armor (or Amp), there’s a good chance he may spawn closer to that power-up, and now you’ve given him a quick setup to control the map.
Positioning
Have you ever watched a demo of a professional player and you wonder why he didn’t simply charge into that room and kill the obviously ill-armed opponent, but instead he ran away to another room? Most likely positioning was on the opponent’s side, and the risk of death (or loss of armor) was too great had he ran into the room to engage. Knowing your positioning and its advantages / disadvantages comes with experience but the main thing to remember is, there are times when the surroundings give the opponent the upper hand, and while you may have more health or armor, you may be at a disadvantage and you should walk away.
Let’s site an example here, just so everyone feels more comfortable with the concept. We’re on DM-Rankin with 19 other players, you’ve got 100 health and 150 armor and are moving towards the lightning gun. A player runs past and you tag them w/ your Lightning Gun and you know he has around 30 health left then he jumps down to the Shock Rifle area where there are 5 or 6 players fighting. Now if you don’t have a shot on that player, do you drop down and chase after him to get that kill? No… because positioning would no longer be on your side. With 5 or 6 players going at it down there, you certainly don’t want to get in the middle of it just to get one kill. Since you’re already armored up to 150, you should be good to go for at least 7 frags, but if you drop down you run the risk of death and losing those potential 7 frags. However, if you stayed up above, there would be a chance that if you let that person go with his 30 health, you could simply spam the other 5 or 6 players and rack up some quick kills.
It’s simply prioritizing and positioning. You want to play everything to your advantage and keeping better position accounts for a lot. In this case, a handful of frags and maintaining control of the level.
Loss of Weapons
This is honestly my biggest motivator for staying alive in a Free For All. Most people think that death really doesn’t affect them too much in a Free For All. Well they’re wrong. Every time you die in an FFA you sacrifice all the weapons and armor you once had. If you have 7 weapons, and you die, you just lost a helluva lot of fire power and versatility of weapon selection. This should motivate you heavily on picking a good fight and running from the bad ones. The more weapons you have, the more powerful you are, and therefore the more frags you should get. Every time you jump into that fight with 5 guys with Rocket Launchers, you’re sacrificing the time it takes you to find those weapons again, and the potential frags you may have got if you didn’t choose to engage or if you had the option to run in the first place.
Loss of a Kill
Honestly… WHO CARES!??! Unless the score is 6-6 and I’m in a championship match in China, one death? Whooopty doo! Oddly enough this is mainly what people tend to think is the only real drawback to dying. So they just fight to the death and never entertain the option of running away.
I don’t particularly fear giving the other team one point, but I do fear giving them my weapons, the control of the map, and just the confidence booster that they get from taking me down once. If you’re worried about the scoreboard when you die, you should dig a little deeper for motivation on staying alive.
So when do you run?
Well since we all weren’t blessed with godly aim, we simply won’t win every fight. Confidence is one thing, but knowing your limitations is something completely different. But, you do have an option, you can run! You can run you’re little ass off and pick a better fight.
When I’m fighting I always know when I should walk away because I just think to myself ‘Will anything that this guy shoots at me kill me with one shot?’ If so, I’m gone. With better players I may get extra defensive and use a 2 shot maximum. With Shock Combos and Multi-Rockets in UT2K4 there is a fine-line of course, but with that mentality, you should still come out a lot safer more often then not.
Hell, I’ve ran from people yielding shield guns before, even though I had a shock and a lightning gun. One dumb hit could kill me or ruin all that armor I had worked so hard on getting. I’d rather look like a wimp in one situation and go 50-0 then risk the chance of going 40-1 because I lost all my weapons and have to start stocking up on power-ups again.
Conclusion
Keep in mind, the people who know me in a competitive sense would call me a very defensive player. Aggressive player’s styles will heavily differ, but unless their aim isn’t top notch, they won’t be staying alive very long.
If you don’t like the concept of running from a fight, the trick is not to get in one in the first place. If you are unsure that you’ll be able to kill that player after taking into account your positioning, his positioning, your health / armor, his level of skill and a few other things, then you simply don’t engage in the first place. At least that gives you one more option.
Good Luck and Run like Hell.
I was asked, somewhat recently, to write a guide on proper weapon usage. This baffled me, as it never really hit me to actually sit down and think about it. Throughout my gaming career, instinct has been the determining factor in weapon use, and most everything else. But, not one to disappoint my many fans (ah!), I did sit down, and thought about this issue. So, boys and girls, sit down, grab a cup'a'joe, and listen well to Uncle Sean and his tale of woe...
Orientation, and How it Saved my Life
Before we get all into this like kids on christmas morning, I think it's important for me to mention a few things. For one, there are a few words that might not be familiar to everyone, and I'll detail these. On another note, I'd like to mention I won't be covering the Super Weapons (Redeemer, Ion Painter, etc), because, well, they're pretty easy to use. Finally, I find it most ironic that I'm writing this guide, as I have little doubt that once a player learns how to effectively use each weapon, he'll quickly forget the "thinking" part of it and adopt an instinctual approach, much as I have, and be baffled by.... You know, it's a circle, man, and it's like, round. Woah.
Big Words for Little People
spam ( P ) (spm)
n.
1. Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.
2. Random projectiles being thrown about in an offensive or defensive manner.
tr.v. spammed, spam·ming, spams
1. To send unsolicited e-mail to.
2. To send (a message) indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups.
3. To fire projectiles in a continuous manner, blanketing an area and damaging enemy infantry.
Splash Damage
splash ( P ) (splsh)
v. splashed, splash·ing, splash·es
v. tr.
1. To propel or scatter (a fluid and/or explosion) about in flying masses.
dam·age ( P ) (dmj)
n.
1. Harm or injury to property or a person, resulting in loss of value or the impairment of usefulness.
hit·scan ( P ) (htscn)
n.
1. The quality of hitting a target instantly.
The Big Book of Weapon Names
As a general rule, every weapon falls into a category. However, since UT2K4 features two firing modes, some weapons overlap.
Hitscan: Shock Rifle primary, Minigun, Lightning Gun, Link Gun secondary (limited by range), Assault Rifle, Shield Gun primary (very limited by range).
Splash Damage: Flak Cannon secondary, Rocket Launcher, Shock Rifle secondary, Shock Rifle Combo, Bio Rifle (once the glob has fallen).
Travel: Link Gun primary, Bio Rifle.
Defensive: Shield Gun secondary.
For most of it's existence, the UT series has been largely dominated by the hitscan type of weapon, and UT2K4 is no exception. The logic behind it is actually quite simple: if you keep your enemies at bay, the chances of them hitting and killing you decrease dramatically. Of course, this isn't an invariable rule, as sometimes it's best to get up close and personal. Generally, however, far = good, close = bad.
There are a few styles a player can adopt, basically falling into either an aggressive position or a defensive stance. The aggressor will opt mainly for the close-range weapons, like the Flak Cannon and the Rocket Launcher, since he'll always try to get up in your face, either by being sneaky or balls-out insane. Both work, but depend on the player. The defender will mainly rely on hitscan weapons, to keep the opponents at bay. Rarely will he charge blindly, and most often everything he does is very calculated. 45 hp there, 70 here, He's taken all the Health on that site, I can charge with little fear. Stuff like that.
The exception to the above rule is the minigun. By design, it's meant as a hitscan weapon, but in practice, it winds up losing much of it's usefulness beyond medium ranges. Typically, the weapon becomes a much more personal affair, and your best bet when using the Minigun is to get sufficiently close that the random bullet spread is negated, but far enough away that hitting you with Splash Damage weapons is difficult.
The Rules of the Game
There's no set way to play, of course, but there are a few things players would do well to keep in mind. For one, close range weapons work better at close ranges, and vice versa. Yes, this does seem very basic, but often times you'll see players spamming flak balls at a long range target. It just won't work, people.
A variety of "opening moves" exist, but for the most part, these consist of one of two things: a long-range hitscan shot, pulling the player closer, or a sneaky splash damage attack. Both work nicely, they just depend on the situation. The sneaky splash tactic does have an advantage, however, in that once you attack, you don't have to change weapons, whereas with the hitscan idea, you do, losing precious milliseconds.
Once the opening move is closed (ah!), you'll need to either keep the same weapon (all depends on range) or switch to a more appropriate one (range, again). During the fight, you'll want to mentally add up the damage you're dealing. The general idea is to switch to a "finishing" weapon once your opponent's healt dips below 40 or so. The finishing weapon can be anything, really, as long as you're comfortable with it. Minigun works awfully well, though. If your opponent is running away, and you're positive he has less than 45 health, don't pull out the lightning gun! Use the Shock Rifle. For one, it's rate of fire is much faster, allowing you to quickly take another shot if you miss, and it's also got that nifty combo thing going for it, if ever your opponent decides to kamikaze into you.
And that, friends, is the ultimate truth: You'll only ever be as good as your Shock Rifle abilities let you be. It is the most dominant weapon in UT2K4, both in versatility, damage output and usefulness. You can defend with it, you can attack with it, you can go long range, you can go close range, the only limiting factor is your ability. Mastering the Shock Rifle really is the only thing I can encourage you all to do.
Most of the other weapons progress on their own, through ordinary everyday play, but the Shock Rifle requires real effort on your part. Don't neglect it!
Final Words for Bigger People
In closing, I can't really deliver the key to weapon use, because it doesn't exist. Often times, a player pulling out the "wrong" weapon, on paper, will get the kill anyway. It really depends on the situation and your comfort level, and no amount of me talking about what works and what doesn't will alter that.
Learn to assess and evaluate the situation, think about what should've worked, and if you died, what would've kept you alive. If you killed the guy but lost alot of Health, ask yourself if there was a better way. Once you've thought about it enough, and once you've learned to work it into your play, it'll quickly become second nature and evolve on it's own.
But, as I said, the Shock Rifle goes a long way.
A Lesson In Practice
One of the big changes when one moves from a casual player to a competitive player is, of course, the amount of practice one puts in. Being the best you can be isn't an easy task, and being better than that to slap your opponents silly is alot harder. How to go about it, then? While there's no such thing as a definite, ultimate "way" to practice, there certainly are a few basic ideas I can relate to you.
The Philosophy of Time Travel
First and foremost, one must consider the implications of the change. The philosophies of each camp - casual and competitive - are different in such a drastic manner that many might be very displeased once, as any epiphany does, the realisation hits them on some idle tuesday. The best course of action is to ask yourself not if you want to be the best, but if the philosophy associated with it is right for you, as an individual.
The most apt comparison I can think of - it actually amazes me how accurate it is - is of public schools vs private schools. The basic goal of each, to educate themselves and acquire knowledge, is similar, if not identical. The difference, however, is in the details. Whereas the public system generally fosters a more cohesive community (albeit suffering from a certain hierarchy), the private system fosters one more focused on competition, on outdoing one another to impress the various higher ups (better colleges, parents, teachers, etc). Whereas the public system typically creates various cliques and, although judgemental, mostly allows it, the private system obeys much stricter guidelines. Dress codes arn't the half of it. Elitism is common in the latter, while indifference and (limited) acceptance is common in the former.
As a whole, the casual community can best be compared to the public school system, whereas the competitive community makes up the private school system.
Now, you might ask, why did I go to such lengths to define these communities? To warn people thinking of moving up. Those first few months, when you've just passed into our competitive world, can be very, very harsh. Typically, gamers have not yet gathered the required maturity to welcome "new blood", they've not yet learned modesty and acceptance, and elitism is not only common, it is a plague. On the flipside, if you are passionate about what you do, if competition fuels every bone in your body, you'll quickly gloss over these... drawbacks. In the long run, it is not only worth it, it's an experience I'd do over again if I had the chance.
Therein, however, lies the problem. Philosophy. Ask yourself, before taking that step, what you're looking for when you play. Simple, ordinary, everyday fun? Perhaps, then, is it best to stick to casual play. If, however, you're looking for competition, if the very notion of competing makes you wet yourself, perhaps it is time to take said step.
The Most Powerful Weapon in the Universe
Now that you've all been warned, and you've still decided to venture forth into our most lavish lands, comes practice. What, pray tell, would be the best course of action? How much practice is optimal, how much is too much?
To answer your questions, allow me to - virutally - point to the moon in broad daylight. There are no answers. Not universal answers, anyway.
The idea, however, is that practice is your one and only weapon agaisnt the elitist masses and the stubborn cream of the crop, who will not relinquish their top spots without a fight. Quite possibly, bitching too.
Perhaps a story is in order: Long ago, in a time of dwindling twilights and virtual prowess, a man of great strength came forth, a mystery of sorts. Out of nowhere, this man took third place in a major international event. Dissatisfied, he took it upon himself to train, and train he did. The next event, the first of it's kind, the man took great pride in vanquishing his foes. He didn't lose a single game. In fact, he won the finals easily. Later, in the myriad of interviews that followed, the man revealed he practiced somewhere along the lines of 8 hours a day. That man was John "fatal1ty" Wendel. Superstar, I know.
The point of that story, however, is that practice can certainly bring about nice results. Winning these large tournaments is quite the bonus to one's day to day budget, especially when in your twenties. To be the best, time is required, such is the rule of all things.
However, and this is where it's very important to read carefully: fatal1ty's answer is not foolproof. Case in point, fatal1ty's lost many major tournaments to people who practiced less. There truly is a panoply of variables that can affect one's play, and while practice schedule is one of them, perhaps the most powerful weapon, it isn't the only one that needs to be taken into account. Natural talent, ability to handle pressure, all those kinds of things.
Time, perhaps, for another story: zulg, a UT player, participated in last year's ESWC event. This tournament gathered all the great players, who represented their country, and pit them agaisnt each other. For most of the week, zulg lost most of his practice games. Most at the venue shrugged him off. Yet, when it came down to it, zulg proved to be a most fearsome opponent. He finished in second place, losing only to GitzZz, perhaps the most famous - and most talented - UT player ever.
All this to say that while practice certainly means alot, it can't accurately prepare you for the actual thing.
Back to the Future
Juggling our social life, school, job, etc, and on top of that a practice schedule is not an easy task. Many unpredictable variables come into play, and often compromises will have to be made. However, through all my years, I've found a most forgiving and agreeable number: 2. Two hours of practice every day, taking breaks when things of various sorts come up.
If you enjoy what you're doing, those two hours will fly by. Most often, you'll wind up playing more without noticing it, and you won't actually care. It's alot like getting a 3 page assignment on a subject you enjoy, a task that can seem daunting at first, but ultimately winds up funny when you're up to 6 pages.
And that, friends, is why practice is not foolproof. If you do not enjoy what you're doing, no amount of practice will get you what you seek. Not only will you screw up your "outward" life by practicing too much, you'll also wind up screwing up your inner balance. For every fatal1ty, there are ten failed ones. Don't sacrifice everything from some obscure dream that is, in this day and age, far from feasible.
The Key to the Universe is Inside You
That, friends, is the truest truth. Even my 2 hours can seem exaggerated to many of you, and there really is no problem with that. Practice isn't some static issue everyone adopts, it's a fluid notion. Practice as much or as little as you feel is necessary. Some people very much enjoy competition, but being the best is not their priority. Ergo, they'll practice less, and will typically be more fun to play. Others will practice more, and that too is fine.
In the end, it falls on your shoulders. Practicing, and it's consequences, are immaterial things until you give them substance.
The Quality of your Friends Reflects on You
The final, iron rule. Practicing as much or as little as one does is irrelevant if the quality of your practice partners is too high for you, or too low. Perhaps the best idea is to find someone of your level, and practice agaisnt each other every few nights. Then, when you're not playing each other, play someone of a higher level. When you return to playing each other, you'll hopefully have learned a few new tricks, and both of you will improve faster. This is, of course, for duels, but it also applies for every other mode, albeit a tad harder to organise when more people are involved.
Another option is to seek out like-minded invididuals (or teams) and create a sort of practice circle. Most likely, you'll improve at about the same rate and before you know it, you'll be taking games from the top players.
The Final Word
The general idea, as far as practice is concerned, is to follow your needs and ideals and associate yourself with people of the same mindset. Remember, kids:
- Quality
- Quantity
- Fun factor
This is the criteria for practice, and if even one is lacking (according to your own ideals, of course), then you're not helping yourself.
I do apologize if this wasn't what some of you had imagined, as far as Lessons in Practice go, but I do feel I've covered everything. Practice is yours, not mine to dictate.
Improving Your Aim
Aim improvement is something every player strives to do. Whether they take a hardcore, militant approach in doing so, or simply only use hitscan weapons, they are improving their aim in the process.
There are a few major factors on how one can improve his/her aim. Sensitivity, Comfort Level, Practice Medium and Player Prediction are all very important in the process of improving a player’s aim.
Sensitivity
This has a few variables involved in it, including game mode preference. I for one, don’t play too many 1v1’s right now, I’m more of a goofy FFA pubber. Because of this, I don’t have to rely as heavily on hitscan weapons as 1v1 does Instead I can use my rockets as often as I want without players dodging backwards to hit me w/ a lit gun or a shock combo. So I use a higher sensitivity while playing FFA, but if I decided to play 1v1 competitively, I may lower it to compensate with the change of weapon usage to a more hitscan dominated game mode.
So depending on what kind of player you are, your sensitivity should be higher if you intend to use Rockets or Flak rather then Lit or Shock. Sometimes Rocket shooting requires a quick 180 and a higher sensitivity allows this to happen very smoothly. However a lower sensitivity will keep your crosshair on the target much more consistently when using the Lit gun from a far distance.
One thing that every competitive gamer does at least once, they’ll lower their sensitivity to an insanely low amount to better their aim with hitscan weapons. They’ll play for a period of a few days with total satisfaction that they can now hit 20% more accurately with the hitscan weapons. However, they always switch back after a little while when they get used to the sensitivity, and start getting as inaccurate as they used to be before the switch.
Comfort Level
Playing comfortable is the only way to play. Some players have an extremely hard time doing this, and others are so laid back you have to check their pulse to see if they’re still alive.
Some people refer to the Zone, as in ‘I was in the Zone!’ quite a bit. What this is referring to is when you are playing at a heightened skill level, and you were also extremely comfortable when doing so. Comfortable + Heighten Skill Level = The Zone! There’s a little formula for you, write that down, and put it on the fridge. Perhaps overlapping your son’s drawing of the dog that looks so bad.
When you are comfortable, you make better decisions. You also increase the accuracy of your aim because you don’t feel desperate or excited enough to persuade your hand to move so slightly off target.
A good rule of thumb in a game to achieve your maximum comfort level (which is something I still have problems with after 8 years of competitive gaming), is to stop what you’re doing and simply calm down. Though it may sound corny, I take my hand off the mouse and keyboard and sigh once, to get my head in the right place when I’m frustrated that my teammate just caused me to suicide with a rocket. This is more or less my reset button that allows me to slip back into my comfort mode quickly and start hitting my shots again.
The best players in the world live in a comfort mode. That’s why you rarely see a competitive game where one gamer just gets mad and starts charger at the opponent with the shield gun. This is because every kill in the game is played like it’s the turning point in the game. If you’re down 0-20 and you have 5 minutes to go, and you’re still trying to make that one kill that could change the flow of the game while you’re still in the right mindset, then you have hit a comfort level. However, in this case, your opponent hit it a earlier in the game then you did.
Practice Medium
If you’re going to be a competitive gamer, you need to bring your aim up to par with that of any other superstar player. To do this, you’ll want to isolate your aim, and the best way to go about doing this is taking up 1v1.
When you play 1v1 you have one target. That means only one target to focus on, one target to worry about, one target to shoot as he jumps past that door frame. While this may seem trivial in the Aim sense of things, you will start to judge movement and dodging better, as well as player prediction. In 1v1, a player’s only choice is to move well and make smart decisions. If not, he could very easily lose the game with the next kill, as opposed to a FFA where it doesn’t even hinder the player if he dies. You get more performance out of your opponent when you raise the important of staying alive. The better your opponent performs, the better your aim will have to be to keep up with him.
In another big plus, 1v1 limits the game to 2 players. That means, the server is performing at its best since it doesn’t have so many players to track. If the server is performing optimally, your Aim won’t have any hang up on Lag or FPS problems that otherwise may occur with 20 people present on the server.
Player Prediction
Sometimes it’s simply not possible to constantly keep your crosshair on the other player, so you must use your innate ability of player prediction to hit that shot. For example, let’s say a player is jumping off a ledge, and as opposed to you shooting at him while he’s falling, you train your crosshair on a point that he will hit through the trajectory of his jump. When he’s about to get there, you shoot and score a hit.
That’s a very easy way to do predict our player’s movement and with a good player, that will never work. They simply don’t make jumps like that would allow vulnerability to such an attack. So you will have to rely on other means of making your aim work for you.
UT brings into aspect dodging. For player prediction while playing a person that dodges well, I really have to hit my comfort level and pay attention to his movements. I’ll only shoot my shot when he’s reached the end of his dodge, or when he’s about to. This highly raises my chances of a direct hit. However, if you’re not at your comfort level, your player prediction will be sloppy at best.
In summary
I’ve known people who were so good with aim that they had to have been detached socially to play at such a comfort level. However, aim is only part of the puzzle that makes you a professional gamer. Without a sense of strategy, your aim won’t get you very far.
A lot of the players who I would consider to have the best aim, could never win many 1v1’s against good players. Simply because they rely so much on aim and slack so heavy on strategy that they have no true understanding of how things need to be played. Aim only gives you an option to play competitive games, strategy is what wins them.
On a final note, your aim will unfortunately, eventually plateau. You will reach a point where you simply can’t aim any better, no matter how many opinions you read or how many times you step back and analyze how to fix it. When that time comes, you’ve gotta start thinking past increasing your aim, and focusing on the elements of the game that you can still improve upon.
Improving 1v1 Spawn Raping
As I played a few games of 1v1 today, I started using an old trick I used to when learning a new level. I figured I'd share it in the tip library.
After dueling a little while on a level, you get to a point where you need a little more information about the level to effectively tweak your strategy. Mainly, widening the margin of victory or closing the margin of defeat. Luckily, its usually the former for me, and I wanna spawn rape as much as possible. So how do we get better at that? We learn the spawns.
There's a neat trick you can use in usually any FPS game to learn the spawns in any level. Simply type in your suicide command in the console (in ut2k4's case its ironically 'suicide') and respawn at a new spawn point. Just keep typing it until you've re-spawned about 30 times. If you were paying attention where you spawned, it should give you a good understanding on the chances of a player coming back to life in a any given area.
After doing this trick and playing 2 more duels, it made a difference. I got at least 2-3 more spawn kills in a game, simply because I ran to one area with the most spawn points directly after killing my opponent.
More Spawn Raping
Having experienced first-hand nogame's strategy of spawn raping, I thought I would add something else to that same point.
I have some experience using UnRealEd and found that opening the maps and taking a look around, noting the spawn points displayed as a small joystick, was also another effective way to find out all the nice places your enemy may pop up next. Some maps have far more than others, but they are usually grouped together depending on the map. After looking over the map and doing what nogame has recommended, you should be raping a few more frags the next time someone decides to spawn!!
Armour Numbers
It's a little confusing figuring out the ratio of how much damage you take to how much armor health you will have remaining after the attack. Having a better understanding of these numbers could give you a better idea of when to engage an enemy, and when to run away.
I did a few tests with various health/armor combinations using both a Rocket and a Shock to the direct floor. The rocket did a consistent 80 damage and the shock did a consistent 42 damage. Here is the data:
(Health/Armor)
Rocket (80 damage)
100/0 + 80d = 20/00
100/50 + 80d = 60/10 (-40%,-80%)
100/100 + 80d = 80/40 (-20%,-60%)
100/150 + 80d = 93/77 (-7%,-51.3%)
Shock (42 damage)
100/0 + 42d = 58/0
100/50 + 42d = 80/29 (-20%, -58%)
100/100 + 42d = 90/68 (-10%, -42%)
100/150 + 42d = 100/108 (-0%, -28%)
After I had finished doing the Rocket test, I figured the health and armor subtracted was linear for any amount of damage taken. However, this proved wrong when comparing with the data of the Shock Rifle.
If you total up the amount of health subtracted with the armor subtracted for each instance, you usually get the amount of damage that was done. This only proved inconsistent with the Shock Rifle and 50 armor, which I can’t really account for. But basically:
Damage = health subtracted + armor subtracted
Unfortunately, I’m not the greatest with math and formulas so I can’t quite figure out what the exact formula is for health or armor percentage loss on a given amount of damage. I’ll leave that to any of you to figure out.
What seems to be obvious though, if you have 100/150 and you get hit by something 50 damage or less, you will maintain 100 health, so it would be safe to assume that it absorbs 100% of your damage if you are taking less than 50 damage. However, in the rocket’s case, if you are taking more than 50 damage, you start to see a loss of health, even at 150 armor.
The degradation of the combination of health/armor is somewhat linear though, and can be assumed pretty quickly in most scenarios, which gives you an upper hand in combat situations.
If you can quickly calculate how much damage you’ll be taking if that rocket hits you in the face, and compare it to your current health / armor, you’ll have a better idea of your chances of survival against an opponent of a certain skill level.
Pickup Spawn Times
Knowing when the major powerups respawn is important for good map control. Here are the spawn times for all of the pickups:
27.5 seconds: 50 shield, weapons, ammo, health pack, health vial, and adrenaline
55 seconds: 100 shield and keg-o-health
82.5 seconds: double damage
110 seconds: super weapon
The shields, keg-o-health, double damage, and super weapon will not spawn until 27 seconds after the game begins. The double damage lasts 30 seconds once someone picks it up. Once you hear it run out, you know that it will respawn in about 52 seconds.
Learning Maps
If you're having trouble learning a given map, here's my tip to you, gentle reader.
First and foremost, find the appropriate Power Ups. In DM, that would be the armors and the Double Damage, in CTF the flags are added to this, etc.
Once that's done, try and get from one Power Up to another. Use a single route until you become familiar, then branch out until you're able to navigate effortlessly.
Sure, it'll take time, but it's worth it, and alot simpler than learning during an actual game
Master The Art Of Compromise
Once you reach a certain level in dueling, you'll realise that there are many situations where a player will have to compromise between two or three various goals in order to reach victory.
It might be as simple as letting your opponent take hold of a large armor in an effort to trap him, or grab the double damage, and it might be as strange as letting a weak opponent escape in order to force him to a location where killing him will result in a direct advantage to you - yes, even greater than an additional point.
But remember, not all situations are alike, and while one compromise might work here or there, it won't necessarily work all the time.
Knowing Your Opponents Position
Knowing your opponent's postion can be pretty important in a duel.
Here are some pointers.
1. Use headphones
2. Turn off all music including the unreal music. (Supposely there is a way to turn off background sounds in ini but it might turn off hte important sounds so I'm still looking into that).
3. Listen for weapon pickups, and health pickups and try to predict where your enemy is coming from. If you can surprise him with a LG shot or a combo in his face, it can mean a kill.
Always Keep Moving
Possibly the simplest element of any and all fast-paced competitive FPS games, it still takes a few gamers some time to figure this out. The idea is that a moving target is much harder to hit than one who stands still. Now, that's really basic. However, once you reach this mindset of perpetual movement during combat, you begin to learn to expand upon it and, as a result, branch out further in the maps. As you progress, you'll begin to develop not only a very vivid sense of the map, but also a semblance of control. The first step to competitive gaming is bridging that initial gap.
Having A Hard Time Timing ?
There are lots of ways to learn how to improve one's timing skills, and most often this proves a somewhat daunting task for inexperienced players. Here's a good trick: start a server, by yourself, and pick up the powerups in any order you choose. Take note of the times. Do this for a full 15 minutes. Now, memorize these times by doing the same route one or two more times, on the same map. NOTE: Do not wait at the spawn location of the powerup, this ruins the purpose of the exercise. Attempt to get there as it spawns. At this point, you're ready for the hard part. Remove the HUD clock, and try to do the same route while making sure you arrive at the exact time the powerup spawns. Do this as long as you need until you feel comfortable, then try it again while taking a completely different route. Before long, you'll have developped a strong intuition of how long it takes for powerups to spawn. Couple this with basic mathematical skills - a large armor picked up at 19:33 will spawn again at 18:38 - and you'll be well on your way to timing like a superstar.
Getting Better With The Shock
Since I come from a Quake background the Shock Rifle is not the most comfortable weapon in the game for me. Unfortunatly, it is the best weapon.
Though my teammates had given me suggestions about 'only use shock for 3 months, no other weapons', I just didn't have the patience to do so without getting extremely competitive again. So that solution was out the window.
After thinking about working on my shock aim, out of game, or wherever, I couldn't come up with a way to practice it without flat out disregarding other weapons. However, I was not ready to make this commitment, cause I do love that Rocket Launcher dearly.
Ironically, all it took was some time on an empty server for me to feel much more comfortable with the Shock. Everytime I needed to config the GameAmp UT Server I took a few minutes to just shoot shock combos in the warmup mode of UT Comp.
As silly as this may sound, it isolated my aim a bit and made me feel much more comfortable using the weapon as a primary, as opposed to a secondary. Usually, the biggest help on how to use a weapon is comfort with it, not so much a different way of using it.
After doing a bit of warmup w/ the Shock I joined a pub server and went through my loops and routines. I had never really integrated shock into my loops on levels, though if it was there, I'd pick it up. Suffice to say I started using it more often and getting at least 3-10 more kills a game. I'd noticed my deaths decreased dramatically as well. The game definatly got a lot more interesting when I could hit my combos w/ that shock.
Powerups
Collecting these items wont make u god, but will give u the edge over ur opponent. Don't be over confident once u have these items, play your own game and be smart. Think about your next move, having 100/150 does'nt mean u have to go into kamikaze mode by chasing your oppenent.
As long as your timing and collecting the star items (keg, shields) your in control, your opponent is not. Your not going to get killed easily if ur stacked and ur opponent is not, play the odds.
General gameplay
Think about how and where u could possibly combat your enemy, being forced into a fight is never a good thing.
Think about what weapons u have in your arsenal and the most effective way to use them. For example, if you have only shock or lightning, try to keep distance between your enemy.
Change your gameplay to suit ur opponents. If they're aggressive, spam your tracks. If they spam and run, dont chase, camp with long range weapons. Know when to explode aggressively and when to hit and run.
Once you have managed to kill your opponent, realise that they now start with 1 weapon and 100 health, whilst your still have an array of weapons that you've collected already.
Shield stacking
Shield(50) does NOT stack with another Shield(50). This means that if you already have 50 in armor from taking a Shield(50), you wont be able to pick up another Shield(50). If you have taken Shield(50) and taken some damage so that for example only 30 armor is left, you can pick up a new Shield(50) but it will only give 19 in armor for a total of 49 (rounding error?). Shield(50) stacks with Shield(100) though, so one Shield(50) and one Shield(100) will give 150 in armor.
Shield(100) stacks with everything.
Shield vs health
Armor does not protect you completely, so some damage is drawn from health and some from armor. With 50 in armor, 50% is drawn from health and 50 from armor. For example, if you have 100 in health and 50 in armor and take 30 in damage, you will take 15 in damage to the shield and 15 to health leaving you with 85 in health and 35 in armor.
With 100 in armor, 75% of the damage is drawn from the armor and 25% from health.
With 150 in armor, everything is taken from the armor.
The percentages is scaled between, so with 80 in armor roughly 65% is drawn from armor and 35% from health.
Spawn times
At start, all powerups have a 27 second delayed spawn, which means that shields, double damage and keg spawns at 19:33 on a 20 minute game.
The individual spawntimes:
- Shield(50), weapons, ammo, vials, adrenaline and health have a 27.5 second spawn time
- Shield(100) have a 55 second spawn time
- Double damage have a 82.5 second spawn time
Tip: Notice the relation between these times, 27.5x2=55, 27.5x3=82.5, which means for every 2 shield(50), a shield(100) will spawn and for every 3 shield(50), an Double damage will spawn, etc.
Weapon switch time
Fire weapon A, switch to B and fire B always takes 1 second no matter what weapons A and B represents. For example, fire LG, switch to RL and fire RL takes 1 second.
As a comparison, fire a weapon, switching to a new one and fire that always take 0.55 seconds in UT2003. In other words, the switch time has increased with 180%.
Now with the sniper, an additional 0.4 seconds seems to be added, so if you fire sniper, switch to RL and fire RL it takes 1.4 seconds.
It does not matter what order you fire and switch, so fire LG, switch to shock and fire shock takes the same time (1 second) as fire shock, switch to LG and fire LG.
Switching from a weapon that has not been recently fired takes something like 0.4 seconds, but this also depends a little on the weapons. Sniper is also an exception here, but there seems to be slightly different times for different weapons (but they are all in the range 0.25-0.40 seconds). My guess is that the switch-sound is stalling here. Bug?
I havent checked the special weapons like grenade, mines or the super weapons. It didn't seem very interesting.
Learn spawn points
Know all the spawn points of players on the maps. Spawn points don’t only have a location they also have a direction. Keep this direction in mind as well. The benefits of being very very familiar with all the spawn points are very important.
Picture your opponent’s perspective
Remember what you thought the odds of hitting someone in your position from theirs was when you were there. Think of how you look as a target. How easy are you to hit with the weapons they are trying to use? It’s like being able to glance over at someone else’s screen while playing them. Play the odds.
Know your enemy
Remembering how different opponents play is helpful. The things to remember are: dodging patterns they've used, accuracies with different weapons, how good they are at certain key shots, what weapons they like to use more, how fast they are at switching weapons, which of them are playing the best, etc. Most other things about them aren't important. Taking extra considerations into mind will have you playing their style of UT and therefore losing. You need to keep your mind on your own goals so you don't forget how you plan to win. Concentrate too much on figuring them out and you'll lose.
Know when pu's run out
Know what time Double damage will run out so you can stop retreating at that instant. Just take 27 seconds from your timer when you hear someone pick it up. Once you play more you can even get good at adding seconds to that time when someone dies with Double damage and it’s laying there on the ground. The more precise you time it the better.
Visualising the shot
Aiming before you round a few certain corners of a map is a skill to develop. This is not keeping your aim on someone as if you can see them through the wall with a wall hack. This is aiming so that when you move your feet sideways around the corner, THEN you will then be pointing at them. This simply requires memorization of what the map looks like. This is like firing blind except you don’t even look the first time, you already have memorized the place(s) that people usually are, in the upcoming room. This kind of aiming is useful in just a few places on each map.
Run backwards through maps
Do your best not to get stuck on anything. Your main concern is how fast you can flee while shooting at the enemy. Can you pick up items without looking at them? Can you strafe jump sideways and backwards through the level? Can you stay far enough away from the walls to avoid some splash damage from them (without looking at the walls)?
Shoot the map
This is another low-stress way to improve your game. So many people get too nervous and shaky when playing UT. This will help you get a sense for pacing yourself so you can build up the speed of your play as you feel more comfortable. Just run through the map collecting armors while picking points on the map to shoot. Note the difference between your shot and your intended target and move on.
Shadow play
It’s like shadow boxing. Play an empty map making sure to time the armors perfectly. Shoot at an invisible enemy along the way. Play whole matches this way.
Play Instagib servers
This is probably the best way to improve your aim. I'd do this after you can comfortably rail bots on your own computer. Even after your lg aim is great, Instagib servers are great to practice on every few days to keep your aim warmed up. Especially good for the day before a match you want to win.
Play various skilled players
Improve to the next level you can't keep playing similar skilled players. You get better when you have many weapons in your arsenal to choose from. You get better when you get to pursue long battles. To do that you need other players that aren’t going to get the armors every time. You get better when you have time to relax and think about the parts of the game that aren’t immediately confronting you. If you want to learn the tactics of the great players then just watch demos of them. Good players will find you eventually, don’t torture yourself by thinking the more I play with them the more I’ll play like them. Play lesser skilled players to practice spawn rapes, etc. Player similar skilled players to practice map control. Play greater skilled players to practice stealing items without being killed. and so on.
As you can see, in most of these practice methods the emphasis is on what you are doing and not about adjusting to what an opponent is doing. Adjusting to an opponent should come after a whole lot of experience playing and shouldn’t be relied on. Once you get better than I am you may want to seek out servers that the top players play on. Once you’re that good, playing people who aren’t as good as you won’t help your game. You may want to start playing for the challenge of winning. But even if you become the best UT player, you’re still going to lack motivation for UT some days and will be beaten fairly. UT takes a lot of concentration and energy if you play to win. It’s alright not to play to win if that’s what you enjoy.
All this seems so trivial to some people. Why go all out and try to be so competitive at a game? Are all these tiny tedious things worth it? Don’t they make the game less enjoyable? You don’t have to do it to be competitive and win all the time. Knowing when certain events are going to happen enhances the fun of the game. For example, knowing exactly when someone’s double damge is going to run out while watching them fight someone else, let’s you do some crazy stuff.
It’s all about prediction. I’m not just saying this because I’ve heard it before. I’m saying this because I’ve experienced how important it is to winning games. People don’t realize how much you can predict. Most of that is due to people not realizing that prediction doesn’t always have to be a certainty. And a lot of it is also due to people not realizing that prediction isn’t always arriving at one answer. If you can just narrow down some of the possibilities, then you’ve gotten better.
You must think longer and longer in advance to time items well and truly play UT. What details can you fill in? Will you have enough health to make an attempt at the Double damage the next time it spawns? The sooner you answer these questions the better prepared you will be. Think about how much damage you will have to absorb yourself to kill someone. Think about how much damage you can give and still achieve the win of the match. Think about which items you will be able to pick up while you flee from an enemy. Test yourself, try to predict exactly when someone will die so you don’t waste ammo and time. The best UT players predict these things better than their competition.
Aiming
Once ur aim is locked around your enemies area, its much easier to hit if you let the enemy cross your x-hair, rather than chasing the enemy over fractions of the screen trying to pin them in your x-hair sight.
Don't fire as soon as you can. Pause briefly before firing to give the opponent a chance to make his last-second change in direction.
Stairs make people lose their footing. It is much harder to dodge while on stairs because the player is losing contact with the ground in between the steps. It is also harder to aim on the stairs since you can’t know exactly when your feet will be touching the ground. If your opponent is on stairs you’ve probably got the dominant position. Slopes don’t have any loss of footing and no disadvantages.
Dodging
Reactive dodging is dodging a projectile you can see coming towards u, but the true art of dodging is predictive dodging - predict where opponent thinks you're gonna be and do the opposite. Be unpredictable.
Vary the width of your strafe patterns and dodges - don't consistently do jitter strafing, and don't consistently do long slides left and right - mix it up.
Think of it like hockey, soccer, american football, or bastketball - when u wanna get past ur opponent, you wanna confuse him and do a series of quick feints and deke in and out left and right so he loses track of you - same thing in UT.
Also - if u ever study martial arts, a big thing is telegraphing - never telegraph ur moves - if u telegraph a punch to the upper body, your opponent is gonna be ready to block/dodge it
Wall pin
Aiming a rocket so as to bounce an opponent into a wall where they can't dodge in as many directions and you have a wall to splash damage them if you miss their body directly on the next shot.
Sucker punching
Waiting on the outside of a teleporter with your shield charged. The opponent has absolutely no way to avoid the hit if he goes through.
Tilting your head
Turning your view horizontally solely for the purpose of hearing which side of you a person is on. This amplifies the difference of the stereo sound in your headphones. A special case is when someone is either directly behind you or in front of you. The sound is exactly the same so you must tilt your head to determine which side of you they are on.
Scattering
Shield jumping to evade being hit. This is best done to get over the opponent’s head.
Land mines
Grenades laid where someone may teleport to.
Mugging
Waiting around a corner with the shield ready. This is usually done while fleeing from an opponent.
Near lead
Aiming a rocket so as to bounce someone away from you.
Far lead
Aiming a rocket so as to bring an opponent closer to you or to bring them in past a narrow point on the map.
Throw lead
Aim rockets or grenades to miss intentionally a little bit so an opponent falls over a ledge.
Corner lead
Shoot to one side of a person several times so that they will have to dodge in the opposite direction and corner themselves or be forced to eat the shots. For their best interest they should have eaten a shot instead. A more general term for this is herding.
Bounce lead
Aim rockets or grenades to miss intentionally a little to an opponent’s left or right so their aim is stunned in the opposite direction. This is done when you don't know exactly where they will be so you need to stun them quick to save your health and then go for more damage on the your next shot. It’s a shot you let off very quickly and don’t worry if it hits far from them because you know it will jolt their view anyway. Bounce leads are usually done when an opponent drops down on top of you and you don’t know which side of you they’re going to fall off onto. They are also done frequently in rocket versus rocket battles when you have been “out-synced.”
Aggressor’s advantage
Fighting someone before they are ready to fight you. The advantage is also having more than 100 health and 100 armor because you haven’t waited for it to count down. This can be the advantage of surprise as well.
Ambushing
Waiting quietly behind a corner for someone to come past the corner. You sacrifice item control for a little while to possibly get a surprise shot at an opponent’s back. In 1on1 this can slow the pace of the game down considerably if your opponent finds out you like to ambush.
Baiting
Letting someone have the item so you can hit them when they get it. This is deliberately choosing to not pick up the item when you can and waiting for them to come and get it.
Dancing aka hanging around- staying in a battle for one of two reasons even though you will not win the battle in terms of damage inflicted. 1) wasting their ammo or 2) wasting their time so you can re-spawn and have some items to pick up or so that you can flee and get to an item that you are closer to when it spawns soon.
Denial- shooting yourself with splash damage so you can pick up more shards or healths to keep them from your opponent(s). This is actually a very good tactic to use most of the time.
Disabling
99 percent exclusive to CTF mode, this is only taking some damage off an opponent and letting them proceed (into your own base 90 percent of the time). This way you don’t waste your time, ammo, and armor on killing them since you know they are not a threat. You get to continue onward with your own task.
Faking distraction
Hurting yourself in FFA so someone will come closer to attack you. Done with shield, rocket launcher, or shock secondary. You can also miss shots as well to sound like being in a battle with someone else. The point is to sound occupied with someone else.
Forcing the issue aka pressuring someone
Making a person rise to the occasion at your discretion. Trying to win by choosing the EXACT time of a key battle. This is the "aggressor's advantage." In games where there are many possible outcomes during the match that take effort to predict, the aggressor's advantage is best.
It has become popular to continuously force the issue for an entire match to tire out an opponent. Regulation matches are quite a long time to maintain intense concentration, so some people try to pack as much action into the match as they can. This tactic is done by people who think they are the better player and don’t want the match to be a lucky upset.
Hider's advantage
Choosing the place of a key battle but not the time. The opponent doesn't have much certainty about where to find you. The hider relies on already having planned out their own actions in detail and well into the future. The aggressor can’t plan to such an extent since the location of the battle is not definite.
Keeping the upper hand
Playing more defensively and not taking risks in order to use the pressure of having the lead in a match. This is not stalling, but is close. The difference in scores is typically small. Keeping the upper hand takes on added meaning in 1 on 1 play. It can be staying at one part of a map that has armor and ammo and not leaving; just defending when other valuable items aren’t spawning. If keeping the upper hand works for more than about a couple minutes, the map is considered stallable and therefore a poor choice for competitive matches.
Pacing one’s self
Not forcing yourself to make difficult plays in quick succession. 1) Resting in between so that you can retain/regain your composure, or 2) Giving yourself time to preview by visualizing what winning the next battle will entail. This way you have a plan and maybe a contingency plan, and your opponent may not have had the time to prepare for the battle. Rest times may vary between 1 second and several minutes in the most extreme case. The median rest time is about 10 seconds. The time is lowest in FFA, higher in team play, highest in 1 on 1. With fewer people the time is higher. Pacing comes into play when you are exerting yourself absolutely as much as possible.
Playing possum
Voluntarily taking some of the splash damage from an opponent’s spam rockets and grenades so that your opponent will think you have less life than you do and decide to attack you. The trick is to just barely get within the splash radius of these weapons so you only take about 5 health off. If they don’t see how far away you were when the shot explodes they will usually assume it hit closer to you than it really did.
Pre-spawn raping
Firing at vacant spawn points in case someone spawns there.
Reactor's advantage
Choosing the place of a key battle but not the time. Awareness must somehow remain heightened and fatigue dealt with. The opponent knows where you are. In games that are slower than UT there is no disadvantage to being a reactor. The only challenge is to be calm and aware before every match.
Recon shot
A spam shot done to see if someone is there. The beep lets you know if they are there. These are most often long shots that you don’t watch and don’t even stay around for.
Reverse lead
To shoot where someone will be if they reverse their velocity. It's a counter move of a counter move. You look like a real dummy when you use this on someone who is playing UT for the first time and never even thinks to dodge because then you completely miss. At long range you can clearly see when someone tries this tactic.
Road blocks
Spam that is to block a passageway from being traversed.
Scanning
Rushing into a room that has more than a screen’s worth of places where an opponent could be. A very quick look around the room is necessary. There are several ways to scan depending on the situation. You can do a quick flick to aim at the exact place where you think the opponent probably is. You can do a flick all the way to the right or left extreme where he could be to check the side you think they probably are. Follow this with a slide of your aim around to the other side. It’s tougher when you enter into a room where someone could be anywhere around you, 360 degrees. Some people scan left then slide around to their right and then check their back third. Another option is to delay a millisecond and aim at the first sound you hear. People don’t scan only left or only right for a complete 360 degrees, since the sound of someone will be heard before a full 360 degrees can be looked at. You can note someone’s scanning pattern and adjust to it later in the game. Don’t rely on taking advantage of someone’s scanning pattern and don’t put much energy into it since it doesn’t always pay off. Just try to note it a few times in a row, and if they get really predictable with it, take advantage of it.
Screening
Using the shock, link gun, rocket launcher, or any other weapon more to reduce the opponents vision than to inflict damage.
Sneaker's advantage
Walking instead of running when rounding corners that the opponent may be around so that you retain full aggressor's advantage. The difference is the lack of footstep sounds.
Stalling
Wasting time when you have the lead. There are very complicated stalling techniques for each map and various situations on each map. Near the end of close matches, this is done frequently in 1 on 1 and occasionally done in team death match but never done in FFA.
Standing someone up
Intentionally waiting next to a spawned valuable item instead of picking it up so that you can pick it up later than your opponent thinks you will. This is done when the opponent is too far away to hear when you pick the item up. If your opponent tries to get the item next time around, they will have to wait at the item for the extra time that you delayed. This can give you time to spam grenades at them or walk to set up an ambush around a corner. They are pretty much in the hot seat while they are waiting for that item to spawn. You’ll be able to try to hit them with more shots while they dodge around the place where the item spawns.
Suckering
Using a less appropriate weapon to get the opponent to come to you. Maybe they don't know you have a better weapon. Maybe they know but don't think you can switch weapons fast enough.
Syncing items
Delaying getting an item to sync it with the next spawn times of other items. Example: you don’t want to “dodge jump” from one armor to another armor because you’ll have to “dodge jump” the next time too. Another example: delaying an important item so it will spawn at the same time as another important item so your opponent will be forced to choose between which one he wants to get next time they spawn. This is a way to “keep the upper hand.” This latter example is called “un-syncing items” (even though you are actually giving the items the same future spawn time).
Syncing shots
Timing your shots so that they are immediately before your opponent will shoot so they either miss their shot or have to delay their shot. Syncing shots can cause them to miss either because of the explosion moving their character perpendicular to the direction they are aiming (like a bounce lead does) or because of the artificial movement of their view programmed into UT when they are hit. The artificial movement portion doesn't actually move where they are really aiming but does move their crosshair and whole view. Good players deliberately ignore this artificial movement when they can foresee you are employing this tactic. They’ll shoot despite where their crosshair appears to be pointing. Syncing shots dramatically increases the chances of winning seemingly equal battles especially when the syncing person is using the rocket launcher. People who aren't experts don't know how you can win so many battles in a row and tend to complain that they are off their game when you do this to them a lot. Syncing shots deals both with reload times of weapons and with weapon switching times.
Time giver
Spam that an opponent will hear and have to refrain from coming through a narrow place on the map. This is usually done more to slow someone down rather than to stop them entirely.
Trading places
Picking a fight when you probably will lose in terms of damage in order to flee toward a valuable item that will spawn soon. If you damage them more than you get hurt or even kill them that’s a bonus.
Turtle
Shoot a little and break off contact as if to go a different route but stay just out of view. The opponent doesn’t know if you stayed or left. One or two jumps can add to their indecision. Either that or some footstep sounds may help.
Using dominant position
Picking to fight when the geometry of the map favors you. THIS DEPENDS ON THE WEAPON YOU AND YOUR OPPONENT HAVE SELECTED and even on the other weapons you and your opponent have in your arsenals as well. Your position is dominant typically when you have the higher ground, but this is the simplest case. If you have the lightning gun and the other person has the link gun, you have dominant position when far away. This is one of the most complicated things in UT.
Winning the station game
Varying your location in rooms and near the outsides of teleporters. Rooms and the outside ends of teleporters I call stations. You don’t want to be found on the same side of the teleporter every time someone sees you. The goal is to locate yourself as randomly as possible. But also to pick where they won’t think you are. At the same time you must remember that going to a different position than last time they saw you at that station has an advantage: they haven’t responded to you in that place before so they will be less accurate because that response is not as “warmed up” for them. Scanning versus stationing is like a miniature game within UT.
Knowing When To Run From A Fight
Probably one of the hardest concepts for an average player to grasp is knowing the right time to run away from a fight. Usually overlooked, knowing when to run from a fight is one of the most influential elements in a player’s success. Since this specific skill is easily overlooked, it may be a bitch of a thing to improve upon, but let’s see what we can do.
Why Run?
Redeemer-wielding noobies? Sure, that too, but there are quite a few reasons for running from an opponent, some of which don’t involve immediate danger of death. While I won’t be covering all of them in this article, you can find more reasons on your favorite pub server from personal experience.
Players usually develop their running ability after considerable experience in competitive game play. The reason for this development is competitive gamers usually have a lot more going on in their heads. Competitive gamers are able to prioritize certain elements of the game very well and sometimes fighting or even dying, rate much lower on the importance scale in an FPS game.
Since experience is the key here, I’ll try to introduce reasons why I usually run from opponents during games and maybe that will allow you to see where I’m coming from. Perhaps getting a glimpse of something you didn’t feel was nearly as important is a good way to bypass the necessary experience requirement just long enough to ponder the urgency of these items.
Someone say Power-up?
This is a pretty quick and painless reason to run from a fight. If the fight has been prolonged from a quick 1-2 rocket kill to a duel with lightning guns and the Amp is about to spawn, its pretty obvious that grabbing that Amp is more important than killing that player. The Amp can account for multiple kills, not just one. Not to mention you defiantly don’t want the other team, or another player picking up your precious Amp. Not only will you lose your Amp run, but you may also lose the timing of the Amp’s respawn, which is very crucial.
The 100 armor works in a similar way but respawns more often then the amp, and once again, picking up the 100 armor should still rate higher on your priority list then killing a player and receiving one frag. Not to mention if you do get that kill before you go and grab the 100 armor (or Amp), there’s a good chance he may spawn closer to that power-up, and now you’ve given him a quick setup to control the map.
Positioning
Have you ever watched a demo of a professional player and you wonder why he didn’t simply charge into that room and kill the obviously ill-armed opponent, but instead he ran away to another room? Most likely positioning was on the opponent’s side, and the risk of death (or loss of armor) was too great had he ran into the room to engage. Knowing your positioning and its advantages / disadvantages comes with experience but the main thing to remember is, there are times when the surroundings give the opponent the upper hand, and while you may have more health or armor, you may be at a disadvantage and you should walk away.
Let’s site an example here, just so everyone feels more comfortable with the concept. We’re on DM-Rankin with 19 other players, you’ve got 100 health and 150 armor and are moving towards the lightning gun. A player runs past and you tag them w/ your Lightning Gun and you know he has around 30 health left then he jumps down to the Shock Rifle area where there are 5 or 6 players fighting. Now if you don’t have a shot on that player, do you drop down and chase after him to get that kill? No… because positioning would no longer be on your side. With 5 or 6 players going at it down there, you certainly don’t want to get in the middle of it just to get one kill. Since you’re already armored up to 150, you should be good to go for at least 7 frags, but if you drop down you run the risk of death and losing those potential 7 frags. However, if you stayed up above, there would be a chance that if you let that person go with his 30 health, you could simply spam the other 5 or 6 players and rack up some quick kills.
It’s simply prioritizing and positioning. You want to play everything to your advantage and keeping better position accounts for a lot. In this case, a handful of frags and maintaining control of the level.
Loss of Weapons
This is honestly my biggest motivator for staying alive in a Free For All. Most people think that death really doesn’t affect them too much in a Free For All. Well they’re wrong. Every time you die in an FFA you sacrifice all the weapons and armor you once had. If you have 7 weapons, and you die, you just lost a helluva lot of fire power and versatility of weapon selection. This should motivate you heavily on picking a good fight and running from the bad ones. The more weapons you have, the more powerful you are, and therefore the more frags you should get. Every time you jump into that fight with 5 guys with Rocket Launchers, you’re sacrificing the time it takes you to find those weapons again, and the potential frags you may have got if you didn’t choose to engage or if you had the option to run in the first place.
Loss of a Kill
Honestly… WHO CARES!??! Unless the score is 6-6 and I’m in a championship match in China, one death? Whooopty doo! Oddly enough this is mainly what people tend to think is the only real drawback to dying. So they just fight to the death and never entertain the option of running away.
I don’t particularly fear giving the other team one point, but I do fear giving them my weapons, the control of the map, and just the confidence booster that they get from taking me down once. If you’re worried about the scoreboard when you die, you should dig a little deeper for motivation on staying alive.
So when do you run?
Well since we all weren’t blessed with godly aim, we simply won’t win every fight. Confidence is one thing, but knowing your limitations is something completely different. But, you do have an option, you can run! You can run you’re little ass off and pick a better fight.
When I’m fighting I always know when I should walk away because I just think to myself ‘Will anything that this guy shoots at me kill me with one shot?’ If so, I’m gone. With better players I may get extra defensive and use a 2 shot maximum. With Shock Combos and Multi-Rockets in UT2K4 there is a fine-line of course, but with that mentality, you should still come out a lot safer more often then not.
Hell, I’ve ran from people yielding shield guns before, even though I had a shock and a lightning gun. One dumb hit could kill me or ruin all that armor I had worked so hard on getting. I’d rather look like a wimp in one situation and go 50-0 then risk the chance of going 40-1 because I lost all my weapons and have to start stocking up on power-ups again.
Conclusion
Keep in mind, the people who know me in a competitive sense would call me a very defensive player. Aggressive player’s styles will heavily differ, but unless their aim isn’t top notch, they won’t be staying alive very long.
If you don’t like the concept of running from a fight, the trick is not to get in one in the first place. If you are unsure that you’ll be able to kill that player after taking into account your positioning, his positioning, your health / armor, his level of skill and a few other things, then you simply don’t engage in the first place. At least that gives you one more option.
Good Luck and Run like Hell.