Xonotic Talk Through Duels w/kojn

So this is a little something that I wanted to keep doing in the future. Big thanks to Thimo for streaming these games and cutting them up onto Youtube.

The goal isn't really to win, lose or draw, but to give a better breakdown of how I duel and my thought processes, talking about important areas of maps, where to go off initial spawns as well as map positioning and reasoning for taking certain items, delaying items etc etc.

The goal for me is to play the higher ELO players. The more better the opponent, the more interesting situations I will get myself in and out of and it will also be easier to see what I am explaining put into action. No disrespect is meant to lower ELO players ofcourse, however it is easier to get away with so much that you can't get away with when you play players around or on your level ability, so this applies to everyone in a sense.

Anyway enough blabber.

First video's to watch are some against Dodger, in these I just talk about positioning and some basic mistakes lower ELO players tend to make whilst during. It's also a good basis to see how I evade shot's and I talk about a few tricks. The aerowalk demo is good because at the end I explain how you can both force the 'annoying' spawn, and also how you can potentially survive it, along with some positonal play.

These matches are very relaxed for me, so I am able to take time out whilst fighting dodger to explain things which I think helps.

Vs Dodger - Stormkeep



Vs Dodger - Aerowalk




The next set of videos were against machine..I actually recorded these before I played dodger and it was a good test to see how well I could explain..Not very well it turned out being my first time playing and talking for some time! I was a bit rusty in these jumping right into the fold having not played for some days, but it was still very good to do and the matches really helped to get me to focus quickly for the next batch of games vs him (coming soon!) - I also think Machine played much better in these, more patience. However you should see some elements from the two videos above, again positioning on the maps.

The aerowalk demo has some more in-depth explanation and you'll be able to hear me talk about my thoughts and reasoning.

Vs Machine - Aerowalk



Vs Machine - Stormkeep




There are two more games (stormkeep/final_rage), where all the elements combine together (as well as me talking through the game) which allows me to give a really good talk through of the match..since I had experience a few games before hand.

These will be up hopefully tomorrow once Thimo has cut them, both matches are against machine.

So this is a brand new series, a lot to be learned and improved on, but hopefully it'll be something to help out players who want to try improve there duel ability (hopefully it'll cross over into other game modes too!).

Any constructive feedback welcome. Improvements over the quality and production, clearness in my voice etc will come as more are done.

I will try do these sessions whenever I play, hopefully at least once a week.

AWESOME! Thanks for sharing kojn!

This is awesome! Now I can learn how to proper duel.

I watched the first video and the in game sound is pretty loud compared to you. Hard to understand in fights. :/

Oh, one more thing. Could you please enable captions?
You're a true british, with a true british accent, it's sometimes very hard to understand (for me at least).

Very nice!

Yes Mirio Thino mentioned that, thats an issue on his side he will sort out for the future.

C.Brutail - I understand, it might be better in the future for me to record myself speaking then to record the demo and match both up and upload. It will male the audio quality much much clearer to hear and I can also turn down the in-game sounds myself also.

For streaming games, I'm sure Thimo can also work on the sound quality in the future to give a better viewing experience

Nice videos ! I just learned some tricks, especially on Stormkeep

Kojn, great job on these videos!

I made a quick transcript with the dodger match on stormkeep, I couldn't understand some words because of odd audio quality, and game sounds are a bit too loud.

But I put a transcript file in the attachments here, it should work with youtube afaik

You should also be able to edit the file with any text editor to change stuff inside the "[]" as those are just comments.

If you'd like I could transcribe your other videos too when I find the time.

Lots of stream settings was experimental, it was my first time ever i do this kind of thing with it! =) next ones will hopefully be a bit better. I'am definitely going to lower xonotic volume and i will try to pump up the audioquality, if twitch.tv just allows me to do that

Bare with my bad knowledge about settings, im getting there slowly =) even i can learn!

Thanks kojn by doing this, also i learnt lots by watching and streaming and listening you ;D

Also, what I'd like to ask is to render the demos into videos with vanilla Xonotic sounds, because currently these videos are what introduce Xonotic to a large audience (I regularly link them to Facebook), and it might confuse people if they hear sound effects that are not in the game (also, if the sounds are from another game, they might think we steal those).

ah, ok! i will do that next time

Kojn, great job on these videos!

I made a quick transcript with the dodger match on stormkeep, I couldn't understand some words because of odd audio quality, and game sounds are a bit too loud.

But I put a transcript file in the attachments here, it should work with youtube afaik

You should also be able to edit the file with any text editor to change stuff inside the "[]" as those are just comments.

If you'd like I could transcribe your other videos too when I find the time.

Yep that would be good if you could do the others whenever you have time Kammy! I will take a look at this when I get a chance, thanks very much!

That spawnpoint prediction on hub is very mean! I didn't know you could predict the spawnpoints. Just tried it on dark_place minsta duel, worked fine. Great videos, a lot to learn!

Hmm.. now that you're making these nice videos, is there any chance you could make a video on how to dodge rocket launcher shots, or crylink? Whenever I play duel, I find it completely impossible to dodge rocket shots, the projectile is very hard to see, and the blast radius is huge... Usually everyone manages to hit 2000+ damage on me with rockets, and no matter how much health/armour I have, I get dropped down instantly

Well Kammy maybe if you stop aiming with your nex for a couple of seconds until a rocket passes by

Most effective way to avoid crylink and rockets is to move in patterns which are hard for the opponent to anticipate. Experienced players tend to predict which direction you're going to evade their projectiles. Say you're walking alongside a wall, it comes by instinct to some to shoot to the spot you would be walking off from the wall, because you can't evade by going through the wall and the opponent thinks you're not dumb enough to just simply.. not evade at all. Or if you're in tight corridors with limited space, the enemy will by instinct shoot in advance to the nearest potential escape route, for instance in front of a doorway. If in these situations you move to the least natural direction, keep walking alongside the wall or don't take the escape route, you may have fooled the opponent to shoot a stray projectile. It's a gamble sometimes, but some people get fooled by this easily.

Another way to avoid rockets, crylink or even nex is that some people make the mistake of rapid firing the weapon as fast as it can (in Finnish: nänni pohjassa = nipple caved in, referring to holding trigger on bottom).

If the weapon in question has a fire rate humanly possible to react to and memorize (fuck machine gun and LG), you can predict when the next projectile/beam is coming. For example after the opponent misses you once, walk left and when he's ready to shoot again, change direction to right in advance.

This video demonstrates this common mistake a little bit :

Nice video btw., had a good smile watching it.

Smilecythe brings up some very good points and I use both examples when I play.

I will try do a few videos solely focussing on that kind of thing but first of all I want to try get more videos done.

Should have a few more coming soon, as I have agreed practice with both Mossepo and ZeRoQL. Hopefully also get a good selection of different maps in the next bunch

If the weapon in question has a fire rate humanly possible to react to and memorize (fuck machine gun and LG)

funny enough... but I find it significantly easier to evade/win lg and mg fights both here and in quake live... I think I'm broken

@kammy - when we had our bloodrun duels, one thing that you helped to drill into my brain: ALWAYS have an escape plan! Getting caught in an open area w/ mg means either death or taking an inordinate amount of damage.