Some formatting now in place, sort of readable :)

General guide to improving your personal aim and gameplay

(note this is not finished and will improve drasticly over time through edits and additions, I would just like input from the community)

Introduction

As I write this I would like people to bare in mind, I myself am not a particularly good TF2 player and no one here will have heard of me, I only recently came onto TF2 after coming from a pretty successful run in CSS so my general knowledge of the game is obviously going to be alot lower than most the people on this site, so if anyone wants to correct me on matters connecting to the actual game itself, please go ahead.

(It would also be nice for people to bare in mind I’m no writer and there will be lots of mistakes all over the grammar and various things in this thread which if people realise and mention I will happily correct, I am also very likely to repeat myself in different sections of this due to the way I am writing it as I don’t have much free time on my hands currently)

The aim of this thread is quite simple, its a guide to help you improve your aim and other aspects of your gameplay in various FPS games, this is obviously more geared to TF2 as this is the ETF2L forums but alot of the points will still apply across games. I decided to write this thread after I got a pritty positive responce when I wrote a few tips in a topic about improving your individual aim, I’m going to post this here and slowly build on it, hopefully within in time it will become a pritty big guide about generaly improving your personal play within TF2 and some other fps games, though I will be mostly focusing on aim and how to improve it, including the things which will indirectly connect to your aim.

I won’t realy be touching on the more team based TF2 stuff in here bar a few various things on improving which can apply cross games, I imagine alot of the higher div teams will allready know or do most the little things I’ll touch on involving team play and improving as a team, but I don’t see any harm in giving people who are new to teams and fps games tips on how as a team they can improve (though I’ll only be touching the very basics).

To start with I’m basicly going to copy and paste what I wrote in the original thread which made me decide to write this, and I’ll add more as I go along, I’ll also add some corrections to the original peice I typed up.

Improving your pure aim

Before going into this, I would like to say it has been proven many times that in nearly every team based game aim is not everything unless you’re playing at a extremely low skill level, and even then, its still not everything, but this section of the guide is here to help you improve your aim and keep it consistent overtime, your goal is to first improve your aim from its current standard and to then keep up a routine to allow you to keep playing at that skill.

Quote from Juansource

At the Region 1 CGS Combine, each player was required to take what CGS called the “H2i test”. The H2i test was to score you on your reaction time and mouse tracking ability (aim). Now I must say that there was some controversy regarding the accuracy of the tests (due to mouseaccel and sensitivity differences on the machines used), however, some very good fraggers scored very low on the test and some not so great fraggers scored very high. The H2i tests serve as some tangible proof that the trademark of a great fragger is not primarily aim and reaction time.

If you’re just trying to improve your aim there is various ways to do it, but there is a few important things to consider, you realy need to get yourself into a routine of practicing to allow your self to learn quicker and more effeciently, you also need something which you do not find boring, if you get bored you’re probably in the wrong mindset and won’t realy be taking things into your head very well as you will just want to get the “session” over and done with which will not allow you to take things into the back of your mind (basicly what this is all about as you need to naturaly be able to aim, not have to think “I’m going to slowly aim and stop on this target” that just isn’t going to work for obvious reasons).

There is a few different ways of improving your aim by practice, I’d personaly recomend a mix of muscle memory exercises and deathmatching on top of your teams standard practice routine, if you find death matching boring and can’t take alot of it I’d recommend doing something like two fiffteenminute sessions with a break inbetween so you don’t get as bored, though I have personaly never practiced like this. If you can take deathmatching it is best to do a low to medium amount of it in a day, say 30 to 45 minutes and no more, don’t do extra and never ever do less, as you need to get yourself into a routine if you want to improve your aim at a consist rate, pick a time and stick to it, do that amount in a day, if possible even set your self a time where you will do this practice and have no distractions though I understand this could be hard for most people.

You basicly want your muscle memory as good as it can get but you also need to practice in a way which is at least slightly situational to game alot of the time (been able to aim is no good if you can’t shoot a certain target) and not just go on a map and shoot targets (This IS good for muscle memory but it would be better to be shooting players on DM and stuff most the time as your targets movement is going to be much more human and you can learn how to handle yourself against the other classes and situations, most ways of pure puscle memory practice will also have a lack of variation, and I do not recommend doing them INSTEAD of DM practice I recommend you do them AS WELL.

So, why do we use DM to practice and not a normal match, pub server or just aiming at a point to another?

The general idea is we need the most effiecent way to improve our aim which is closest to also playing in a actual match, we use DM over a normal match because we have no downtime, and get more done in our set time, more aiming = more to take in = better aiming faster.

So under this logic why do we not use muscle memory INSTEAD of deathmatching but use it ASWELL as deathmatching?

We do this because you need to be able to aim in situations close to an actual match, not just aim at one point in another, by doing both muscle memory AND deathmatching we get the best of both within constant point to point movement and situational aim.

(note from this point I have not edited the original post I made, I will do that tomorow then continue adding to it)

You can’t just expect to go on a deathmatch untill you rage or get bored to get your aim up, you need a routine and you need to remove certain factors from the game to improve effeciency (read below)

I’d personaly deathmatch, but you DON’T set yourself a goal, what you aim to do is to practice for xx amount of time then have a break, then if you wanta longer routine than a single practice do it again after your break, don’t just sit there and go “I WANT 100 FRAGS THEN IM DONE” that isn’t how you should look at it, your aim isn’t to worry about how many frags, or anything like that its to get your muscles to remember the movement your mouse needs to move xx distance naturaly so you can flick untill the sun goes down and hit where you want to.

When you’re practicing in DM you should do the following, unbind your tab or whatver your score button is bound to.

If you’re constantly looking at your score your doing your job entirely wrong as you are focusing on the goal of a good kd, or topping the server rather than improving your aim by shooting things and this will slow down the proccess and cause you to get more aggravated (if you’re doing badly, or someone is doing better) so unbind tab simples.

Turn off death notices, you do this for various reasons, if you have them on you know whos killing you or who you’re killing, if you’re worried about this you are again, doing your practice scheme wrong, you should have them turned off so you don’t know who you’re killing constantly and more importantly you don’t know who’s killing you, as this can cause you to get aggravated if someone kills you repeatedly, and been aggravated is the worst thing you can do in this situation and it will slow you down massively in improving aim.

Another reason to turn them off is you don’t need to know if you got the kill by looking up, your aim should be to shoot the target you’re aiming for and do as much damage as you can even if someone else is going to finish it off, this will also to an extent help you get a feel for how fast you can kill certain classes in certain situations. (I think I missed something out here but I’ll edit it if I remember)

Turn your ingame sound off, if your ONLY aiming to improve your aim turning sound off can help this matter, as it stops you preempting targets and prejudging where things are meaning longer and more precise movements may be needed (more movement = more your brain gets used to the distance in relation to your hand and your crosshair following it), I’d personaly just stick a playlist on for the time I planed on practicing, and just get in a nice mindset.

Disabling the features described above

unbind tab

hud_saytext_time 0

hud_deathnotice_time 0

Enabling the features described above

bind tab +showscores

hud_saytext_time 12

hud_deathnotice_time 6

edit: Just tried this and crashed my game straight off, the commands work sepperatly though, no idea why.

most importanly *ROUTINE ROUTINE ROUTINE ROUTINE* set aside say 30 minutes of time for when you’re on your computer to practice, make your music playlist this long, or put a timer on, and only practice for this length of time but do it each day, this helps you as you’re in the right mindset for your brain to take the things in (obviously if you choose to you can DM just before matches ASWELL just for warmup and a bit of practice).

Muscle Memory

So lets start with a bit of information about Muscle memory, what it is, and why we need it in a game like this

Quote from Wikipedia

Muscle memory, also known as motor learning, is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task; eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems.

So what does this mean?

What the quote above says is that Muscle memory basicly involves getting a action into your head so its subconsciously completed without you actually having to think about it (Motor Learning), and we do this by learning with repetition allowing our mind to get used to what movements are required in certain situations. For us this involves moving the mouse certain distances, directions, and speeds in certain situations, the idea is your hand moves natuaraly how you want it to, and you’re not having to concentrate on actually aiming (And obviously actually hit things instead of just flying around missing).

Here is another quote from wikipedia involving Motor learning for those interested

Motor learning is the process of improving the motor skills, the smoothness and accuracy of movements. It is obviously necessary for complicated movements such as speaking, playing the piano, climbing trees and eating bananas but it is also important for calibrating simple movements like reflexes.

So why do we need this?

To aim naturauly without effecting our concentration on other aspects of the game which are happening around you basicly.

So whats the best way to improve muscle memory efficently?

Above I talked alot about DM’ing to improve our aim but the reason we DM isn’t to directly improve muscle memory, all though it does improve it is not the best way we can improve JUST our muscle memory, the best way to improve muscle memory to my knowledge is simple, we need to repeatedlycomplete the actions we want to learn (in this situation mouse movement) which is where MM maps come in, these maps are generaly made with set points to help you get used to distances, following certain targets and getting used to various aspects of the game involving MM.

Two muscle memory maps, one for css (I’m not sure if it converts directly) and one for TF2 (I haven’t used this yet)

CSS one

TF2 one (posted in the thread by someone)

Quoted from Fanva

Visualising

(prepare for some writing that isn’t going to make sense, i’m tired)

It’s been proven in many ways (those other than e-sports included) that visualising somethin can help improve your play in your respective sport or activity, thinking about it while relaxed can allow things to stick in your sub concious memory, various sportsmen have done tests showing that if someone visualise something from there sport over and over again they can even improve there physical fitness.

Its said you can think about lifting weights and actually gain muscle from it, or a golfer can imagine his perfect swing and help it get lodged into his muscle memory, a footballer imagining the perfect movement or kick, etcetc, you get the point.

There is different types of visualisation though they are only different scientifcly your still visualising in your head what you want to happen. We will be using “Creative Visualization”

Creative visualization (sports visualization) refers to the practice of seeking to affect the outer world via changing one’s thoughts.[1] Creative Visualization is the basic technique underlying positive thinking[2] and is frequently used by athletes to enhance their performance

(One noted person who can be seen doing this is Sebastian Vettel a driver for the Formula 1 team Red bull, in qualifying before his lap he can be seen visualising “his perfect lap” and playing it through in his head before going out and doing the lap itsself)

Obviously everyone knows how to visualise something, its just what to visualise. As a player running around in TF2 there is multiple things we could choose to visualise, we could try and mentally improve muscle memory by repeatedly imagining the perfect shot in your head but I believe the best way to visualise is to play something out in your head. If you play a match through in your head you want to be imagining whats happening all the way through, pay attention to details, realy think about whats happening. What we should be doing is thinking about every possible exploit and how we can exploit to our advantage and keep the opponent at a disadvantage our aim is to watch kills unfold in our head as we imagine what we are doing to get them, you want to be looking out for everylittle thing to keep the advantage on your “opponent”, the idea is you’ll begin to use these things in game and realy allow yourself to analyze what to do in certain situations alot easier if they’ve been played through in your head, all though in game mistakes are obviously going to be made and its not going to go how it was planned in your head this is still a proven way to improve your play, but obviously not as much as general experience

Experience

Experience of a game is quite simply the most important thing in most games, you can read as many guides as you want, but its just not the same as actually having experience of the game.

Most “proffesional” players with in E-sports will have mass amounts of experience with the game, some playing it since release competetivly and some even playing the versions before it, generaly “proffesional” players tend to be older than you’re average pub player.

Why is this? All though maturity WILL play a big role in this, I’d like to believe that most the time its experience and the fact that I believe as we get older we can accept crtisicm and build on mistakes alot more than we are younger.

If we look at most players in top organisations on CSS they are generaly between the range of 17-25, this is because of a few reasons, the most obvious one been experience, if you look at most top CSS players theyve generaly been playing for a very long time, some from cs 1.4 and things like that, this gives them time to experience alot in the game, in this time you learn how to handle your self in many different situations, which is why we need experience, knowing how to handle your self in every situation is how we win games, this can link back to the visualising section before because when we visualise we are in part earning experience in the game by thinking about what is possible within it.

All though alot of the time experience in one game can help ALOT in another it does not directly convert due to various obvious differences in games for example.

I have a particular friend who has played Quake in his time, while I myself have never played it, now I believe due to my experience through playing other games in the past few years my aim is on par, if not slightly better than his in most situations BUT could I beat him on quake? No way in hell, I could get my crosshair onto him faster than he will me but he has a feel for the movement and more importantly, he knows whats better in xx situation while I have no idea, I can outaim him all I want, but he’s still going to win through experience, he knows how his guns will react, he knows how range will affect what he’s going to do, he can move around much more smoothly and will generaly have a feel for the engine, the game and various things unique to that game while all I can do is move my crosshair onto him faster than he can on me, this shows him winning from experience because all though I can (could) aim better than him his experience in the game allows him to counter this greatly.