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What simple calls do you think are worth making in solo queue MM?
I find myself calling strats most of the time now, which is laughable given my level of knowledge so far (but someone has to do it, otherwise it's just headless chickens running around) and it's hard to get the team to follow anything more complicated than a CT-side 2-1-2 or a very simple T-side call, like "rush a/b", "2 long, 3 short", or whatever.
But I'm thinking it's really not that hard to confuse teams at my level, so surely I could use that to my advantage? Using fake site pushes and stuff that are not hard to explain, but can force the enemy team to over/under-react.
I know sometimes you're lucky to get anyone to follow any type of call, but on occasion I get a team that's willing to listen.
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Depends on your lvl. On DMG lvl, I usually wait till someone else starts leading or I do it myself. The biggest problem with calling in solo MM is, that you dont know what tools you have. I love to send 4 people on the B site of Cobble and Overwatch during the pistole round, but if you dont know how much game sense the A player has, you will get trainwrecked without chance of a retake. So as CT I go for rather defensive calls, call my team to not peak, not find risky information and stay at close angles. As soon as I am confident in the skill of my team, I can push them for riskier and thus more rewarding positions and build ups. For example, if I have 2 players I am confident in, I send 3 players on A, 1 on B and 1 in mid. For T it is the same, I start with rather simple tactics like rushes and 5 man build ups. As soon as I know what they can do, I will try that the team builds up very wide spread, peaking for entries and taking advantage of the individual skill of my team mates.
I would also recommend, that when you are confident in your play, you should allways take the hardest rule your team has, for example as CT on cobble in the dropper or as T as a entry fragger and call your team what they should do.
I found out, that simple calls allways help. Force your team to stay in position instead of taking risks early as CTs can give you alot of rounds early, call for rotations / or not to rotate early helps also.
But every call stands and falls with your teammates, so start with soft, easy to work out calls, analyse what worked and what not and build more complicated tactics with the tools your team gives you.
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France9034 Posts
I don't really know your level, but I would recommend NOT calling for rushes more than once or twice, because people aren't disciplined enough to keep running forward, avoid flashbang, and get picks, and I think it's easier to defend correctly a rush than to execute one (disclaimer: at LE, I've seen full team, even friends' stacks, failing at that, even myself, so I'm even more scared of actually doing it. Then, you have to practice it also, so that's up to you).
My default way to go usually in these case is to call for picks if I don't have an idea that I can simply put. Default hold, waiting for potential CT aggression, and then trying to see how it goes and what to do based on the evolution of the round. I like to vary mid-round calls, for example a mix of pressuring even more the site we just opened, or to go completely on the opposite side of the map after opening with a kill.
Regarding fakes, you can do that with a single teammate. 2 smokes, a flashbang and a molotov can sell quite well a site take. Then, it requires your teammates to be disciplined about noise. If there's a lot of footsteps, or T are spotted towards B when smokes and nades land on A, that won't work at all... So I'm not really confident about doing that usually...
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I usually find that when solo queueing, the worst thing to happen is when someone decides he's the leader and starts calling out strats. Either one of two things happen. The team follows him and becomes incapable of adjusting to situations where everything doesn't go right, or everyone ignores him and he starts raging and you have to mute him. For T, it's usually far more effective to play it slow and see what opportunity occurs and for CT, it's best to simply ask people to stick to positions and don't rush. Afterall, in the end, you aren't in a team playing in a tournament. No one is under any obligation to follow your orders and vice versa, and you must keep this in mind.
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Canada4481 Posts
On first gun round, I'd typically go with a "default" setup, and then just work from there with mid round calls. "Where did someone die, where do I hear ct's rotating, only 1 on this site, let's go there, smoke here pls, I'll smoke this, someone smoke this", etc. If you're able to chain a round or two successfully, people will continue to listen to you, and you can mix it up a bit with a few more detailed strats. Although it only gets about as detailed as, let's split A, let's split B.
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OK thanks very much for the advice guys. It's very helpful as always.
And I agree with your point, Dangermousecatdog, about someone deciding he's 'the leader'. I definitely don't want to be that guy and annoy everyone, so usually if chat is quiet but my team is competent, then I keep the chatter to a minimum and just let them do their thing. But the times I usually feel like I have to step up is when there's someone on the team making horrible calls like rushing over and over or just flaming the team a lot. Other times it's when there are people on my team asking "where do we go now guys? A or B? Should we rush?". Then usually I'll just offer a suggestion and if people follow it I'll keep calling in subsequent rounds.
I like the point you made about mid-round calls Nagisama. I think that's something that would be very helpful to work on. Keeping in mind where everyone is and what they're doing/seeing and asking people to smoke certain areas can really help the team feel a bit more cohesive. I'll definitely think about that too (while keeping in mind Dangermousecatdog's point, of course).
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Once upon a time I had a team (everyone was soloqueue on Ak levels) where we had perfect rotations on dust2 ct side not only if the terrorists attacked but also if one of us got picked off by an apw or single guy. Noone was talking the whole game. That shit was unreal.
Usually I'm happy with calls about enemy positions and enemy nades. Except for eco rounds CTs dont need that much strategy talk on my level (DMG). On T side the best strategies evolve or change with scouting information.
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France9034 Posts
That can happen. The worst case though, if it is not the case and no one is stepping in the role. That's why if I feel it, I'll do it, because I prefer that the team try something collectively, even if that fails (because there'll be better teams/people, heh), rather than playing deathmatch against a coordinated team, which does not bode well at all..
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I was looking at this article on configuring your radar, which is something I've been wanting to do since I started playing, and I was wondering if this is one of those things that experienced players just know. If so, what other things (like settings and such) do you think should be something that all players consider when starting CSGO?
I mean, there's more basic/obvious things like:
- Try out different non-default, non-dynamic crosshairs. - Try playing with a lower mouse-sensitivity than you might be used to from other games. - Turn off mouse acceleration (unless you like that custom-curve acceleration that a few people use and is a pain to set up). - Enable the console. Learn some console commands, like joining an offline map quickly or setting keybinds, etc. - Set keybinds for each nade type.
But I'm thinking that there might be other things (like changing the radar settings) that get overlooked. I don't just mean overlooked by newcomers, but also by people who write guides or tips for newcomers too. Things like, are there optimal graphics settings for the game? In Quake you could force enemy models to be easier to recognize and stand out more, for example. Also, in many competitive games players prefer to play with low graphics settings generally, but sometimes specific settings would be helpful to set as high (like models, shadows, textures, effects, etc.).
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On November 07 2015 18:31 jtype wrote:I was looking at this article on configuring your radar, which is something I've been wanting to do since I started playing, and I was wondering if this is one of those things that experienced players just know. If so, what other things (like settings and such) do you think should be something that all players consider when starting CSGO? I mean, there's more basic/obvious things like: - Try out different non-default, non-dynamic crosshairs. - Try playing with a lower mouse-sensitivity than you might be used to from other games. - Turn off mouse acceleration (unless you like that custom-curve acceleration that a few people use and is a pain to set up). - Enable the console. Learn some console commands, like joining an offline map quickly or setting keybinds, etc. - Set keybinds for each nade type. But I'm thinking that there might be other things (like changing the radar settings) that get overlooked. I don't just mean overlooked by newcomers, but also by people who write guides or tips for newcomers too. Things like, are there optimal graphics settings for the game? In Quake you could force enemy models to be easier to recognize and stand out more, for example. Also, in many competitive games players prefer to play with low graphics settings generally, but sometimes specific settings would be helpful to set as high (like models, shadows, textures, effects, etc.). I've reached Global and I have never messed with my radar. Yes its something nice that you can do but its not really mandatory either.
The two things I did that I would also recommend is to have some launch options on steam. For example I have "-novid -freq 144 -nod3d9ex -high -threads 4". More informations here steamcommunity.com.
The other is the config.cfg file located in "...Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo\cfg\". This file has a few crucial network informations and you will have to set it to read-only after your changes because csgo likes to override the file (this also means that you will have to take read-only on and off each time you want to make changes in the options ingame if you want them to persist). You can add something like this : fps_max 240 rate "128000" cl_cmdrate "128" cl_updaterate "127" cl_interp "0.0"
at the end of your file. You can find more information about these commands online but I guess a good starting point is this www.pcgamer.com. Note that I have cl_updaterate at 127. This was because recently a patch fucked up community server and you would not hit anything with 128. Dont know if it is mandatory anymore. I also have my fps_max at 240 because I read somewhere on reddit that someone did the calculations and it was one of the better value (better than higher values for some reasons). Also, stable fps is always better than high, unstable fps. You can also mess with cl_interp_ratio if you feel like it but be careful. The default value is "2" and is the safe value, but you can put "1" if you have a good, stable connection and good ping.
You can also make more complex autoexec.cfg (What is an autoexec) if you want different custom bindings, advanced graphical settings optimisations etc.. Something like this : gist.github.com
As for graphical settings optimisations, some people like to mess with the resolutions and model qualities, but to be honest, csgo (and other source engine games) is extremely cpu-heavy, meaning that your gpu will have no problem drawing everything it needs to draw without much of a performance hit. This means that in practice, changes to the resolution, quality etc.. have very little impact on your fps (they can have some, especially for low-end computers, but not dramatic either). In the end, play with what you are comfortable with.
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On November 07 2015 20:07 Roggay wrote: The two things I did that I would also recommend is to have some launch options on steam. For example I have "-novid -freq 144 -nod3d9ex -high -threads 4". . -high, -threads and -nod3d9ex don't do anything. And you should've said that -freq144 just makes sense if you have a 144Hz Monitor.
Great post nonetheless.
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On November 07 2015 20:45 iXphobos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2015 20:07 Roggay wrote: The two things I did that I would also recommend is to have some launch options on steam. For example I have "-novid -freq 144 -nod3d9ex -high -threads 4". . -high, -threads and -nod3d9ex don't do anything. And you should've said that -freq144 just makes sense if you have a 144Hz Monitor. Great post nonetheless. No idea if they do what they are supposed to do (refer to the steam community link), but they can't hurt either way. Well actually, to be precise, I had to mess with the value of -threads and found out what worked best for me which is not 8 (I have 4 cores = 8 threads). The source engine is weird sometimes and you might have to test things out. Also, the performance you will get is sometimes incredibly random for your cpu. And yes I have a 144hz monitor. Benq ftw.
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On November 05 2015 00:33 Ragnarork wrote: I don't really know your level, but I would recommend NOT calling for rushes more than once or twice, because people aren't disciplined enough to keep running forward, avoid flashbang, and get picks, and I think it's easier to defend correctly a rush than to execute one (disclaimer: at LE, I've seen full team, even friends' stacks, failing at that, even myself, so I'm even more scared of actually doing it. Then, you have to practice it also, so that's up to you). .
Rushes are really tricky in match making. You have to call them early and check how the people in the team are playing the rush. A good rush consists of pop flashes from the 1st or 2nd guy and maybe a smoke or two. If people are just trying to run in you are asking to get slauthered considering the opponents are kinda decent at the game. If your team is good at rushing, it's a very powerfull tool to destroy teams completely early on and make them give up on the game, especially since players in match making are usually not good at adapting if something is not working.
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I have witnessed some very effective 5 stack CT eco rushes where the Ts lost 2-3 players before they knew whats coming their way. This does only work if you play a few passive rounds and dont get spotted early on.
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Well, i'm happy everytime when i get teammates that call out when they are leaving their position to go somewhere else on ct side.
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On November 07 2015 23:10 CrimeCat wrote: Well, i'm happy everytime when i get teammates that call out when they are leaving their position to go somewhere else on ct side.
I'm happy every time someone doesn't go absolutely apeshit on ct because he saw one guy and is yelling for everyone to rotate. I'm equally happy every time people doesn't rotate the second someone is spotted on the other side of the map
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On November 07 2015 23:42 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2015 23:10 CrimeCat wrote: Well, i'm happy everytime when i get teammates that call out when they are leaving their position to go somewhere else on ct side. I'm happy every time someone doesn't go absolutely apeshit on ct because he saw one guy and is yelling for everyone to rotate. I'm equally happy every time people doesn't rotate the second someone is spotted on the other side of the map
And besides the "safe call, safe call"-yelling it's a joy when your ct mates don't switch their default position every round or at least tell you that they want to go elsewhere.
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On November 07 2015 22:15 Sianos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2015 00:33 Ragnarork wrote: I don't really know your level, but I would recommend NOT calling for rushes more than once or twice, because people aren't disciplined enough to keep running forward, avoid flashbang, and get picks, and I think it's easier to defend correctly a rush than to execute one (disclaimer: at LE, I've seen full team, even friends' stacks, failing at that, even myself, so I'm even more scared of actually doing it. Then, you have to practice it also, so that's up to you). . Rushes are really tricky in match making. You have to call them early and check how the people in the team are playing the rush. A good rush consists of pop flashes from the 1st or 2nd guy and maybe a smoke or two. If people are just trying to run in you are asking to get slauthered considering the opponents are kinda decent at the game. If your team is good at rushing, it's a very powerfull tool to destroy teams completely early on and make them give up on the game, especially since players in match making are usually not good at adapting if something is not working. In matchmaking, you should only ever call T-side rushes based on your spawns. (Have a great B spawn on dust2? rush B. Have a good mid spawn? fast cat with a split, etc) As someone mentioned above, getting 4 random players to listen to you is nearly impossible. In a PUG, one person will nearly always not listen, or "lurk", or "watch lower" (which is really them saying they don't want to run in first and die). Getting 4 people to agree to do anything on the internet is so difficult, especially cs players, many of whom don't understand personal sacrifice for team gain in a video game environment.
From my experience (cevo main, GE, 3 smurfs in SMFC) there are three ways to get people to listen to you "calling strats" in a pug
1. single out their worst player, figure out the bomb site he holds, and call "____ plays at B and he's shit, let's go there"---- this works best, most players will agree and rush their worst player. 2. Be the substantial top frag ----- if you drop a 3k on pistol round, or have 8~ kills by the first gun round, your teammates will listen to you. They'll either think you're smurfing and listen, or recognize you are better and listen. Cs players will sheep-out to anyone better than them, by and large. 3. Make a mid round call out once and be right. ---- if you recognize mid round that your team needs to adjust (say as an example you were going cat, get a mid pick, and decide to go mid to B), and you guys are successful, your team will likely listen.
TLDR don't anoint yourself strat caller, it's a waste of your time.
As an addition, most players SMFC and below (or dare I say ESEA and below) have no idea what they need to do to accomplish anything near an "Execute". They don't know how to watch flanks, coordinate grenades, clear corners, pop-flash, the timing of hitting the flanks, call-outs, etc... And these are all integral to an execute (I consider an execute an attack on a bombsite without all 5 players involved). More often that not, having one less gun in the initial attack on a bomb site is enough to lose you the round.
As a rule, I strictly rush in matchmaking on T side (I wouldn't on inferno only, but fuck MM inferno to begin with). Allowing pugs to set up a healthy CT side is a recipe for failure. Putting pressure on them is much better. They may have players without mics, someone tilting, a dumb setup, etc... All of which is put into focus if you keep the pressure up.
Relentless T-side rushing works in 5 man pugs all the way up to GE. Seriously. Worked out strategies require decent map and radar awareness, which doesn't work in 5 man pugs outside of ESEA and CEVO (maybe).
Don't mean to rain on your parade, but quite simply you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.
THE REAL TLDR: If your real life friends don't play counterstrike, make some steam friends who do. 5 man coordinated cs is really a different game entirely than solo-q PUGs, which in my opinion is a general waste of your time.
On October 29 2015 01:33 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2015 01:29 Epoxide wrote:On October 29 2015 00:33 Yrr wrote: Yes because if you win you keep the armor for the next rounds. This has nothing to do with helm. I never buy helm if I know they all have AK/AWP. Like I stated on last page, you absolutely should have helmet if you can afford it. If its between a mp7 and full armor, or a famas and only body armor, absolutely go for the famas. But fights in this game tends to be messy, and pistols are involved regularly, even if the enemy has AKs and awps. Not having head armor limits your effectiveness in those situations greatly. It also lowers the damage you take vs HE nades.
The situations to not buy a helmet: CT side round 4/5 (after losing pistol and rounds 2/3 are saves) - almost every T will be on awp/ak, and your helmet is mostly useless. If you killed most of the Ts on rounds 2-3 and won round 4, you need your helmet round 5 as they will be on eco/forcing.
A force up round (if we are forcing with 3400 dollars on T side, I will almost ALWAYS buy an AK/body armor, as opposed to galil head armor and nades even. I'll take the opportunity to 1-tap at the risk of being able to be one-tapped almost any day. It's the exact same as playing CT-side with an AK, against an AK.
That's it. Buy a helmet if you can afford it, don't if you can justify spending the money elsewhere.
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Like mentioned earlier, if you take damage in a round you only bought kevlar, you will have to rebuy the entire thing for $1000 if you want to add a helmet to it later. Buying a helmet can be an investment into the next round if you know the enemy have to eco if they lose. So generally I would have to be very tight on money before I decided to skip it.
On T side, you should always buy it. Galil and full armor is ten times more valuable than AK and only bodyarmor. Tactically, staying alive in this game is key to victory, not necessarily getting a kill. Trade 1 for 1 and the enemy will have one less person to worry about as they retake the bomb site, alive you are a threat that they are forced to pay attention to. That's not even mentioning the extra $350 you will have, which is an extra smoke. Smokes also wins games, running out naked hoping for that onetap will not.
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On November 04 2015 22:20 jtype wrote: What simple calls do you think are worth making in solo queue MM?
I find myself calling strats most of the time now, which is laughable given my level of knowledge so far (but someone has to do it, otherwise it's just headless chickens running around) and it's hard to get the team to follow anything more complicated than a CT-side 2-1-2 or a very simple T-side call, like "rush a/b", "2 long, 3 short", or whatever.
But I'm thinking it's really not that hard to confuse teams at my level, so surely I could use that to my advantage? Using fake site pushes and stuff that are not hard to explain, but can force the enemy team to over/under-react.
I know sometimes you're lucky to get anyone to follow any type of call, but on occasion I get a team that's willing to listen.
I've been making calls and trying to IGL since SEM level and right now I'm MGE and knocking on the door of DMG. And I don't think I've ever had anyone ever getting angry over it.
Communication is always, always crucially important. But its more important to know how to communicate and what to say and when to say it.
I open every single game by saying "hey guys, so where are we all going?" That usually gets people talking. If you're T side it lets you decide on a strategy. If you're CT it lets people pick out their spots. Assuming you have other people with comms (in my experience there's usually at least one or two others) then you have to make sure communications are going back and forth; if the comms go dead for a long time quickly asking what's going on at the other site can get people talking again. Obviously don't be talking ALL the time and try to keep it concise (or you might be talking over footsteps) but its important that everyone knows what's going on.
Also crucially important is to make sure people know how to execute the strategy properly with some encouragement. If you're T side rushing B site on Dust 2 then I've found it helpful as you're moving off spawn to say something like "don't block the tunnel, if you do we're dead, just rush onto site, one person (<colour>) go right to check lower tunnel, alright?". And sometimes when actually making the rush just repeatedly encouraging them forward onto the site prevents bottlenecks. It doesn't always work but I've found that just making that effort and being polite and trying to keep everyone talking to each other works wonders in preventing the pub pile-ups that happen in that doorway, as an example.
And finally with respect to strategy...don't bother trying to order people, instead discuss things and encourage others to call stuff. A lot of the time I don't suggest a plan myself, I ask what everyone thinks we should do and that gets people talking and coming to a consensus. Getting people marching to your tune is totally unnecessary and serves only to annoy, typically. What you want instead is people talking with each other and the team working as smoothly as can be expected. In general most of 'leadership-type' communication is troubleshooting and resolving disputes (such as one person saying to rush A and another to say B). You don't need to order people around, you just need to try to head off problems by drawing attention to them.
Basically if you can control the flow of communication, this applies to both strategy and simple information, on your team it helps massively. If someone starts going "LONG LONG LONG" then you'll sometimes get the entire team panicking and rushing over for one lurker; so you should take it on yourself to calmly ask them how many, positions and weapons seen. Make a point of doing the same to people who died, ask them what killed them, where and how; and always, always report the same information when you die. Setting a good example yourself is useful too. When I'm under attack I'm usually constantly talking, its usually something like "flash came in...two long...three...one dropped pit with an AWP...I'm down, one pit with AWP and one lurking corner with a rifle, I killed the third, didn't see anyone else or the bomb". Voice calm and quiet so as not to blast the ears of your allies and make sure what you're saying is clear. Learning to fight whilst talking with a clear head is invaluable. If you start to do that consistently yourself then I find that often your team will fall into the same habit and you'll get a ton more information out of them which can be game-winning.
It can also be useful to report what you THINK is happening, but make it absolutely clear that you're not sure. If you're lurking A site on Cache and decide to push squeaky and nobody is there and you can't hear anything from A main then it can be useful to say "I think they're going B" to get your B site ready to be hit and prepare your mid player to rotate fast that way. But make it absolutely clear that you're not sure; in a game I played earlier today I had someone say that the last enemy was on B site; I rushed through the mid doorway to get ready to help attack and retake B and cut their last one off from behind, only to immediately got shot in the head from the side by their last player who was lurking near mid.
Sorry, kind of drifted off into random talking there. X-D
Edit: After typing this I did a bit of googling and found this which is rather cleaner than what I said above but hits upon many of the things I was trying to get across: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=391081788
On November 13 2015 08:25 Excludos wrote: Like mentioned earlier, if you take damage in a round you only bought kevlar, you will have to rebuy the entire thing for $1000 if you want to add a helmet to it later. Buying a helmet can be an investment into the next round if you know the enemy have to eco if they lose. So generally I would have to be very tight on money before I decided to skip it.
On T side, you should always buy it. Galil and full armor is ten times more valuable than AK and only bodyarmor. Tactically, staying alive in this game is key to victory, not necessarily getting a kill. Trade 1 for 1 and the enemy will have one less person to worry about as they retake the bomb site, alive you are a threat that they are forced to pay attention to. That's not even mentioning the extra $350 you will have, which is an extra smoke. Smokes also wins games, running out naked hoping for that onetap will not.
Maybe a bit controversial here but I go even further than that with weapon selection vs items selection. I will nearly always take a hit to my weapon choice if it means getting some utility in the form of grenades or a defuse kit; and I will always buy a full Kevlar/Helmet set as my absolute first item in a buy round and then buying up with what I have left. There are limits, of course, but if I'm faced with a choice between getting an M4 or getting a P90 or FAMAS and a bunch of nades then I take the second option probably 90% of the time.
On a related note I'm buying UMP roughly ten thousand times more than I used to and its a very, very serviceable gun.
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