Tips for dueling from Khryon

Khryon was a former dueler in UT99, Quake , and somewhat involved in UT2k3/2k4.
PLEASE NOTE: The article was written intended for quake players. But in this case, it can be easily related to UT...

This following article was taken from gotfrag.com
Following this original link: http://www.gotfrag.com/q4/story/31362/?spage=1



My name is Brenton Sellati (DOB 3/21/85) and I was formerly a top Unreal Tournament 99 player named Khyron of clan High Voltage. I competed in several 1v1 tournaments worldwide over the years, placing 3rd in the Twin Galaxies online tournament, 3rd at WCG USA 2001 LA Qualifiers, 5-8th at WCG2001, and 1st at Ultra Unreal July 2002. I practiced regularly with players like xs-pain and destrukt. I was heavily into the clan scene, winning pretty much everything you could both online and on lan for CTF / TDM and 2v2 TDM. When UT2003 came out, it sucked, and it was my freshmen year of college, so while a lot of people moved on to other games, I chose to move on to a social life and school studies. I didn’t compete after UltraUnreal 2 (July 2002), and that’s when I quit for all intents and purposes. I’ve fallen into the background of FPS gaming over the past few years, however I still alias on pubs every now and then, find my way into pick ups, and have been known to still play 1v1’s on Speakeasy Q4 servers until the wee hours of the morning recently. I have been thinking about writing an article on EXACTLY what it takes to become a top 1v1 player, but I kept putting it off because I had more important things to do. Really, I’ve thought of these things because I asked them to myself when deciding whether or not I should try to get back into the scene. CS just wasn’t my thing…my specialty is midway-esque analysis of dueling in traditional FPS games. Well, I wanted to take a break from a study session on this lovely Saturday morning in a UMass Amherst library, so I thought I would write and submit “Part I: So you want to win the CPL?” for your feedback. My GotFrag account name is khyr0n.

There is a lot to write about in this article so I’m going to be as straightforward as possible. Before you continue reading, ask yourself, “Do I want to win a CPL?” Think about it. Really think about it. Answer yourself honestly, or you’re just going to waste your time. One of the biggest factors that determines whether or not you’re going to be a top dueler is whether or not you WANT to be a top dueler more than everyone else out there. Are you willing to LOSE often when you first start practicing? Are you willing to play maps that you don’t like and that don’t suit your style more than ones you’re comfortable on? Are you willing to do strategic demo research on opponents registered for the upcoming tournament? Are you willing to eat, sleep, and breathe dueling whenever you have free time? If you cannot answer “Yes” to all of these things, chances are you will never win a CPL. If you can say "Yes" to at least some of them, what follows will still improve your dueling but—without total dedication will not be enough to make you a top player like Cooller or Czm—both of whom at one point or another answered yes to all of that.


Losing is the path to winning

Before I get into the nuts and bolts of how to improve your play and strategy in duels, your mind has to be in the right place. One of the ideas I mentioned on the previous page is that you have to be willing to LOSE quite a bit. How does this make sense though? How is losing a lot going to make you a winner? Truthfully, it’s because if you’re playing somebody who is better than you, they make you better. They don’t forgive sloppy timing or poor item control; they don’t forgive poor on the fly decisions which end up with you being cut off, cornered, and fragged. Playing somebody who is so below your skill level that you don’t need to exert much effort to beat them will in fact make you a WORSE player, because your bad habits and tendencies will not be punished by your opponent fragging you, and instead will be reinforced by your ability to still win matches and therefore solidify as a bad habit of your personal play style.

So, be prepared to lose a lot. You have to look at every match you play as a case study in your current progress as a player. Somebody beating you on the last map has no bearing on whether or not you can beat them the next time around, so ask yourself, “Exactly what went wrong?” What strategies did your opponent use to beat you? How can you take that and make improvements on it?

Was he seemingly coming from everywhere all the time, just completely overwhelming you? This means you need to work on your prediction skills—think as your opponent thinks. He’s only human, and he can only move as fast as you. If you’ve been cornered and escape him, how does he always know where to cut you off? He predicts where you’re going. You must predict where he predicts you’re going. To master this skill is for your opponent to not be able to guess with any degree of certainty whether or not you will double back, or go to the next spawning powerup, set a trap for him for when he goes for that power up, etc.

What mistakes did you repeatedly make that you need to recognize and stop? Many players, if seemingly down by an insurmountable margin or after a series of spawn frags, will get upset and just throw the match. They’ll rush a better armed opponent who has a frag lead on them with whatever weapon was closest to them when they spawned. Does that many ANY sense? You need to train yourself to give up as few frags as you possibly can. So what if your opponent gets a Red Armor or a Mega Health? One frag you can stop your opponent from gaining on you is one less you have to gain back on them! You can literally think of a successful escape in which you would have died had you fought until the end as a frag for you against your opponent.

In the end your losses will show you the things that others do better than you, and while you should not like losing, you must realize it’s the only way to improve. Losing to better players is frustrating only if you’re not taking what they teach you in those losses and turning it around on them. Consider it a learning experience. The only reason you should be frustrated is if you keep on losing with no signs of improvement and no idea how to fix things—which is why you’re reading this right now.


Don't repeat the past

You’re not going to remember every decision you made in the heat of battle after a match is over. All you’ll know is that you lost and all you’ll remember is that you didn’t like it last time either. Your memory may not be perfect, but a demo is. You need to demo every single match you play and after every loss, go back and analyze exactly what you did wrong. Here are some common things which you should look to improve upon:

Item Control:

Count how many Red Armors (RA) Yellow Armors (YA) and Mega Health’s (MH) you got, and your opponent got. Item control is not only knowing WHEN items come up, it’s knowing how to get them. Every competitive 1v1 map puts the person who is getting a power up in a vulnerable position in which it’s pretty hard to defend themselves. That’s why if you know when something spawns, you can get in and out of there without having to wait around like a sitting duck. Notice the differences between the ways you and your opponent picked up the power ups. Which hallways did they come from? When you fought for a power up, how did he get it while still killing you? How did you get it away from him? Take notes on exactly how you’re dying and then the next time you play, make a conscious effort to not allow yourself to get into the same situations, or if you do, to force yourself to act differently.

Positioning:

Chances are, a lot of the frags someone gets on you come from the fact that they are better players, not better fraggers. This means that someone is usually attacking you with whatever weapon best fits the situation, from a better position. If someone is on a ledge above you attacking you with a lightning gun, and you have a rocket launcher, they can attack you pretty much freely, ducking behind the cover of the ledge where you can’t hit them, while you have to try to hit a highlight reel rocket body shot to do damage to them. You must recognize the times at which you are fighting at a disadvantage to your opponent, either because the gun you have isn’t a good one (rail gun vs rocket launcher in close quarters—good players avoid this situation if they have a rail gun, it’s not an opportunity to show what a 1337 rail you have, it’s a free frag for your opponent 90% of the time), or the physical location on the map makes it hard for you to get cover or run away, and then change your course of action. Run away, escape, live to fight another day. Goad your opponent into following you—see if you can bring them into a fight where you have the upper hand. Just don’t give them free, easy points.

Accuracy:

Most top players don’t have a high rail gun percentage because they have super-human aim genes which are unattainable by mere pub mortals. It’s because they have trained themselves to become accustomed to the timing of game movement, and the shots they do take, they are pretty sure they can hit. Look at the shots you take with your rocket launcher, or rail gun and ask yourself, was it a tight shot with a narrow miss or did you just wave your cursor in the general direction of your opponent and pray you might hit them? You need to intensely focus on every shot and try to make it count—if you can achieve this level of concentration you will find that you shoot only when you really think you can hit somebody, and as a result your shots will become much more accurate. Of course, this is also an area where only practice with live opponents will show you improvement, but the key to gaining accuracy faster is to try to do more with less—forcing yourself not take the shot if you don’t think it’s going to hit.

Movement:

Did you bump into lots of ledges? Were you disoriented when you came out of a portal? Did you get attacked from behind or surprised and had no idea where it came from? Remember where you got attacked from, and try using that position yourself sometime—but do it sparingly, or else it becomes predictable. Make sure you always check that spot in the future so you’re never surprised from there again. Create maps with no one in it but yourself (or bots if you want, as some top players like Socrates_ do) and run around it working on movement—how to strafe jump and time your movement so that you can move around a map smoothly. A good exercise to do is to run around a map backwards. If you’re engaged with an opponent and you’re trying to fight while escaping, you’re probably going to be moving backwards. If you can’t move around a map freely backwards while there’s no one breathing down your neck, when you’re under the pressure of a firefight it’s definitely not going to be any easier.

Analyze Details:

Notice ways in which your opponent was able to gain an upper hand on you. How did you let them do this? Figure out the things your opponents do well against you, and use and perfect those methods yourself. One on one skill isn’t a matter of natural talent, it’s a matter of being able to evolve and change based on what’s being thrown at you by opponents. Watching the demos of top players will give you a huge insight into exactly what you should be doing right. They will also give you some insights into how even the pro’s make mistakes. Watch the Winter CPL demo of Cooller where he uses map control to slaughter Toxic, a player who arguably has better aim and is at least on par with Cooller in fragging ability. But Cooller’s more efficient use of the environment and his ability to create advantageous situations for himself where the engagement point is in his advantage, or he has more armor and health, and the ability to capitalize on this, are what makes him truly one of the greatest duelers on the planet.

On the other hand, the Winter CPL match between Socrates_ and FooKI on Galang, which is a great match, features some incredibly sloppy play. Notice how FooKI will show how he moves around a map to pick up power ups, dropping down on them just as they spawn because he has them timed, Also, notice how he will rush Socrates_ with poor weapons given the situation (like the rail gun versus the close range shaft of Socrates_, which is known for being deadly), or go around tricky ramp jumps which you can tell he isn’t comfortable attempting. Notice situations where Socrates_ gives up frags in a similar fashion. Analyze these details and recognize when similar situations occur in your games. Keep a clear head and experiment with your reactions to see what works best.

What's Next?

This portion of “The Dueler's Handbook" has focused mainly on the mental aspects of being a solid dueler, which in my opinion, is more than half the battle. A player who makes smart choices and is efficient and comfortable in any situation will be a seriously difficult opponent to beat. This is the reason Fatal1ty has been so successful across so many different games — these fundamentals of being a good dueler are applicable to any platform. Only the nuts and bolts of game mechanics are different from game to game. In my next article I will focus on specific training techniques, or drills, which you can use to improve your accuracy, reflexes, and prediction. I will discuss play strategy for both maintaining map control and regaining map control if you’ve lost it. And of course, a few surprises which I won’t mention here because then you’d have nothing to look forward to! Thanks for reading, and happy dueling.


RED ARMOR / RA  =  SHIELD BELT

YELLOW ARMOR / YA  =  50/ ARMOR VEST

Discuss!!!!

You wont learn anything untill you learn what your doing wrong and finding ways to fix them. :]

its funny cuz i remember that guy from HV (high voltage) ut99. great player, ut99 was just so awesome and the community was like 15x bigger.

Wow I remember seeing this article ages ago on fnagaming.com

This is a great article.  I first read this only a few months ago when I really started dueling a lot more...and really for someone starting out dueling you can't get much better than this write up.

u gonna post the next part?

when i started duelin i learned most by just spectatin n playin(gettin beat) by the best players i could find, its true if u keep playin players worse than u u WILL get worse urself

I was taught by xellos. :P