Brain dump.

I thought I'd offload my tired ramblings on some unsuspecting internet travellers, enjoy!


There are some skills which are innate to humanity: the ability to move ones limbs, to create sound or animate the face; and some which are learned, acquired or taught: reading, writing, walking, cycling, etc. The latter are much more numerous than the former, but of less importance when one considers base functioning: if we could not move our limbs or control our vocal chords, we could neither learn to walk or talk. These base skills then, which we are born with, form the basis of our ability to function, they are the foundations upon which our lives are built; once the foundations are acquired, we may build upon them, and for the purposes of this article, gaming may be considered an augmentation of such base properties.

Our base skills, when thought of in terms of gaming, are not accessible - Our reaction times, intelligence and

How do we learn? There are many methods through which the human mind acquires knowledge, imprinting, conditioning, observation, etc, but for our ends there exists one main method, one process through which all skills can be both acquired and augmented, indeed, it is self evident in most persuit that this method is preffered. I am talking of habituation: external stimuli are encountered, processed, reacted to, and the results analysed, the outcome of which dictates whether we perform that action again. Once sufficient habituation has occured, this process become almost instantaneous, requiring no conscious thought from the agent. One can readily find evidence for this sort of learning in top level sports: "The Zone", as it is oft described, is a result of the non-thought executed by top level athletes. The learned processes of rules, reactions and stimuli, take over the athlete, he becomes an empty agent through which his experience acts - There is little to no new thought which occurs when an athlete is in the zone, it is simply the extrapolation of old, conscious thoughts, enacted in the sub conscious.

For those who wish to reach a high level in gaming, there are 2 options:

1 - Choose your parents wisely. Be born with enhanced problem solving skills specific to your game of choice, enhanced reaction times and superior hand eye co-ordination. Then, practise, not as hard as your peers, but still one must practise.

2 - Practise. Lots.

This may seem obvious, that to become good at something, one must practise; but why then, do some still claim that they will never be good, that their genes conspire to thwart any attempt at greatness? Why do so many cry to the heavens that their reactions are not fast enough, or that their mouse has not enough Hertz? It is a mystery, but one that I hope to make redundant.

One must take issue now with the idea of aiming. There are 2 main forms of aiming to which most are not familiar, atleast in definition:

1 - Reactive, unfamiliar aim. This is such that the obect being tracked moves in an unfamiliar way. To experience this, have your friend sprint strafe whilst not shooting back, i.e, their focus is entirely on evasion. Be amazed as your once forty percent accuracy drops to twenty or twenty five.

2 - Habituated aim. This type of aiming is much more familiar: when you are locked into a shoot out, you and your opponent both try to match strafe patterns, or atleast to find a strafe pattern which is familiar; you have learned, through hours and hours of habituation, that matching your strafe pattern makes it easier to kill the enemy. Circle strafing is an example of this - It is much easier to kill an enemy who is relatively still, and so your subconsciously learn positions and strategies to make it so that your enemy remains still.


Reactive aiming is common when one first starts gaming: every event is new, and so one must rely on ones reactions. As time passes, however, and the agent spends more time playing, the habituation process begins to take hold, and the more common actions become locked into memory - They become easy. There is a problem here, however, in that we humans much prefer to perform actions which are easy: the feeling of success is pleasurable, making us wish to repeat it, which we prompty do. The danger of this, of course, is that we will become accustomed to only one form of aiming, or multiple forms, but never all forms! There will always be, and more of than not these will occur reguarly, certain situations where we have no muscle memory or habituation to fall back on, and our aiming will be erratic - One can readily experience this by trying to aim vertically after never having tried to do so in et before. It is, quite often, comical how bad our supposed aim really is.

The solution, then, seems simple. Challenge yourself. Do not simply practise the areas in which you have become proficient, but deliberately seek out new situations in which you have never been: take a hlistic approach. Again, this may seem obvious, but it is odd how many people avoid wall leaners, or run away, grenade in hand, from 2 on 1 battles. Putting yourself in situations where you are at a disadvantage, is perhaps the fastest route to aiming habituation.

Aiming, however, is only the smallest segment of ET gaming. It seems almost sacreligious to have devoted so many words to it. Moving on from mere aiming, we find a whole wealth of other skills which are integral to the agent: timing, map knowledge, team work, and a property which I will hitherto call "game sense" - The latter is, perhaps, not an independant property at all, but the culmination, and habituation, of all previous properties - It is, in effect, the aim of all those who seek to achieve greater skill. Game sense is not an innate skill, no one is born a master of ET; no, it is acquired, through a complex process of trial, error, and habituation - This process, however, does not occur over a fixed period in all individuals, and in the same sense does not require the same effort; there are some who will play for less time and with less effort, and achieve similar levels to those who played for longer and with more effort. This variation can be attributed mainly to natural variations in learning capability, intelligence as it were, although it's debateable as to whether IQ would have any bearing, reaction times, hand eye co-ordination, and other factors of which the player has no control - It would make little sense then, to discuss these issues further. What, then, can be controlled? There is one main area to which the player can exert full control, the type of gaming which is enacted: the old addage "Work smart, not hard" is applicable.

In an article that has garnered reverance and fame within the ET community, raziel advocated watching, reviewing and critquing your own demos - To this, I add one addition, that during gameplay one should consciously scrutinize and think of every moment. If you are about to prime a grenade, you should ask your self why you are priming it, and afterwards, what effect it achieved - This process will not only quicken your habituation, but also help you better identify errors in behavior, week spots in your game: it will help you faster achieve a greater level of skill. There are other things one can do to facilitate faster skill acquisition, and I will dicuss them in depth throughout this article, but for now, let us focus on the idea that reviewing ourselves is one of the best methods to improvement.

Now, there are thing which many players fuss over, in a fashion which almost smacks of religious zealotry: that is, of course, sensitivity, hz, frame rates, mouse pads, mouse glides, etc ad nauseum. These are, for all intents and purposes, sub function of aiming, that dirty psychosis to which almost all players succumb - The danger is quite real, that you become so obsessed with aim, so utterly transfixed, that you forgot the myriad other areas that constitute the true high skill player. To address these issues, there is but one phrase, that one can commonly hear uttered in forums and other places of community discourse "Personal prefference!". This is about all I have to say on the matter - I have previously written a lengthy article about the only poignant issue, that of high, mid and low sense, and the effect which that has upon how one moves the mouse, and thus the end result on accuracy - But even this, while relevant, is hardly necessary when one considers the other improvements that can be made.

Moving back to one of the original issues, and one of great importance with regards to skill improvement: how to quicken the process of habituation?

1. Review your gaming sessions.
2. Be at a disadvantage.
3. Enter situations which are unfamiliar or foreign.
4. Study players of a higher skill.
5. Put yourself in the mind of the opponent.

The first issue has already been addresed, and is quite possibly the most important of the 5. The second issue has also been touched upon: all that needs to be said is that one must seek challenge rather than comfort. The third issue is linked to the second, but differs in that one may not neccesarily be at a numerical disadvantage; the idea here is that one must not sit in a comfortable position in games where one is trying to achieve a higher skill, save this for important league matches: when practising in games which are not important, it makes sense to put yourself in awkward positions that may occur during an important match, this way, you are prepared, and have a much greater chance of pulling off that clutch play. The fourth issue is an almost obvious one: other players have already done what you seek to, and a speedy and efficient route is to study what they do. I do not just mean, by study, that one should simply watch demo's, as if one were watching a movie, it is NOT entertainment: you should be actively trying to enter the mind of the player, to think as he is thinking, asking "Why did he do that?" "Why is he standing there?" "Why is he looking over there?", etc - And with that, I have already addressed the fifth.