CSGO: How to improve your game

CS:GO has one of the steepest learning curves in the FPS genre. It requires skill, which means it requires time and dedication to get better at. Typically, “skill” in CS:GO is split into two main sections, aim and gamesense and in this guide we will walk you through both. Much like every sport, the more you do of something and the more you practise, the better you will become. However, just playing a lot of matchmaking will not 100% guarantee an improvement, you have to refine several areas by yourself, the first of which is aim.

Aim

Aim is made up of three parts - crosshair placement, spray control and strafe shooting. We’ll start with crosshair placement. Your crosshair should be placed at head-level height at spots where the enemy is most likely to appear, your crosshair must always be stuck at head-height, it will give you a better chance to kill someone, due to shots to the head doing a much higher amount of damage compared to the rest of the body. This is a technique which requires a bit of getting used to, but after learning where to correctly place your crosshair, you will greatly benefit in the long run.

The best way to learn this is to do deathmatch, never walk around aiming straight down at the ground, it will take you more time to snap up to the enemies’ head, since the distance will be longer, and you will be killed. However, if you are already pre-aiming where the enemy head is expected to pop up, you have more of a chance to win the aim duel, since your mouse will need to travel a smaller distance. Apart from deathmatch, another good way to practise your aim and reactions/reflexes is the workshop map, Fast Aim/Reflex Training Map. You can learn easily where head-level height is and how to easily snap to enemy heads and get the headshot. There are also many community servers which are headshot only, which will force you to go for headshots initially.

Where to place your crosshair

Following on, all guns in CS:GO have recoil, also known as the kickback from a gun when shooting, this means that when continuously shooting your gun, holding onto left-click, the bullets won’t all be directly on the crosshair, they will be shot in a pattern seen below. For most guns, the first bullet will be 100% accurate on where your crosshair is when standing still, then after that the next shots follow a spray pattern, with some inaccuracy each time you spray. Spray-control is a must if you want your bullets to hit on target, otherwise you will completely miss!

There are several places where spray is useful, for example when spamming a smoke or a penetrable object, even when trying to kill an enemy fairly close to you, spray-control is necessary so you get the kill as quick as possible if you miss the initial headshot. The best way to learn how to control the recoil of all the guns is through another workshop map called Recoil Master. It shows you the pattern of each gun you’re holding on the wall opposite you, and includes a dot you follow to teach you how to fully control it. After you get the gist of the recoil, test it out on real players in deathmatch and you will memorise it after enough time, so it will be something you just do naturally without thinking.

AK47 Recoil Pattern

Finally, the last part of how to improve your aim, is strafe-shooting; a way of being able to shoot accurately while moving, while at the same time making it harder for enemies to kill you. The basics of strafe-shooting is to sync your movement up with your tapping (if you spray your bullets wouldn’t be accurate, so you must tap). Movement is usually done with the A and D keys, so you move left and right, however your aim still isn’t precise. To combat this, each time you change keys (e.g. from A to D), you stop moving while you change direction for a short amount of time. It is in this time period where you want to shoot your gun, as it is the period where you have the highest amount of precision. To practise this you won’t need any special maps, just a private server with bots will do, along with a dynamic crosshair, which will show you the area where the bullets will hit. You will notice that when you change direction, the crosshair will have a small area shortly, this is when you shoot.

Gamesense

Gamesense is natural awareness of the game itself, how you and your teammates are playing.  For example you may notice that the CTs are playing the exact same setup each time, and you use this to your advantage and counteract it. Gamesense allows you to make a decision about your opponents, such as where they could be, what they bought and so on all from the information you have gathered. By having a good gamesense, you will become a better player as a result of better positioning, rotation and entries into bomb sites etc. 

Gamesense consists of many things, the main points being: map knowledge, good utility use - grenades, flashes, molotovs, smokes, economic knowledge. Having great gamesense or being very game-smart doesn’t come easily, it isn’t something you can pick up quickly. This is developed through simply playing the game, from your own experienceand the situations you are placed in, and how you execute your strategy in said situation; a good example would be clutch situations. Do you save? Or do you try to clutch it? Having good gamesense gives you the answer to those questions, using information from your teammates and your own judgement, you decide the answer. In terms of economic knowledge, you have to think about your own economy and the enemy team's economy at the same time, deciding whether or not you should force or save, and what the enemy team bought and whether they lost or won the round. For example, the enemy team lost two rounds in a row, and you notice they only had pistols, you would know for sure that the next round would be a full buy, so your gamesense has made you aware and allowed you to prepare before the next round has begun, e.g. ditching any SMGs you had and buying rifles. 

Picture coutesy of Clutchround.com

Map knowledge isn’t gained as easily as economic knowledge because of the vast number of maps to learn in the current map pool, and including the fact that you have to learn call outs, smokes, flashes for each of these maps can leave you feeling quite overwhelmed. Map knowledge also involves choosing which bomb site to attack to plant the bomb, using everything you have learnt during the round (for example, the number of CTs on your chosen site), or as a CT, listening and deciding when to push an area that would usually be occupied by the T side in order to gain more information and find out which site is going to be attacked.

These can be learned by watching tutorials on YouTube, watching professionals play on Twitch streams or during professional matches, and using interactive websites to learn all of the map callouts to be able to give vital information. Furthermore, using utility becomes very important and the basis of most rounds the higher the level of play is, and learning how to use them can give you an advantage over others (e.g. pop-flashes leaving enemies blinded, molotovs to clear out areas, smokes to block off enemy players or reduce their visibility), a necessary skill in order to improve. You can learn more on how to use utility here. Good luck out there and try your best!

Callouts for de_dust2