Headshot advice?

liqvid

liqvid

DARKLY Regular
Hi all.
For the entirety of my CS career I have struggled with getting headshots. Back in the day, I did this on purpose since I had higher priority on not missing then I did on hitting them in the head. For the last few years though, I have been consciously trying to improve on this while unconsciously continuing to land most of my hits on the center of mass. Looking at the stats for myself vs others, my headshot percentage is on the low end. While I average 31% headshots, most others in the top ranks have between 40 and 60% with a handful of other people like me who have low 30's.

Basically, I think that this is the next thing that's holding me back and I'd like to work on it. With that in mind, what do you all think is the best way to practice landing headshots? My assumption is that I should grab a headshot-only mod and play vs bots or play on a server which has such a mod. I do not think that playing an aim_ type map or an accuracy practice map will help since it is often the case that only the tip of the person's head is visible (or just a circle) is visible anyway which of course will make me focus on it. I need a mode where I can see the enemy's head and stomach so that I can train myself to not aim at the center of mass.

Thoughts/suggestions? Thanks =)
 
Hinouchi

Hinouchi

TD Admin
All jokes aside. My HS per kill is currently at 41 percent, and high at 51 percent. There's 3 aspect of things you can do to improve I guess.

Aiming: For me, I only aim for the head. My motto for CS have always been "HS or GTFO". Back in CS:S, I used to play with hard bots on aim map, that helped me lots. Those hard bots have aimbot, as soon they see you, they'll just hs you on the spot. So you either have to HS them first or you die.

Monitor: Bigger screen like 24"-27" with 120-144hz that support lightboost. http://www.blurbusters.com/zero-motion-blur/lightboost/ This lightboost tool pretty much turns your LCD screen into CRT quality screen with zero motion blur.

Screen Resolution: Playing at 800*600, 1024*768 or 1280*1024. The game will looks more blurry, and not as crisp as playing at native resolution, but it stretch the whole game view, so the characters model will be bigger and wider.
 
14bux

14bux

Senior TF2 Admin
It's easier if you turn your mouse sensitivity below what you're used to using, from my experience.
 
liqvid

liqvid

DARKLY Regular
Hinouchi said:
Monitor: Bigger screen like 24"-27" with 120-144hz that support lightboost. http://www.blurbusters.com/zero-motion-blur/lightboost/ This lightboost tool pretty much turns your LCD screen into CRT quality screen with zero motion blur.

Screen Resolution: Playing at 800*600, 1024*768 or 1280*1024. The game will looks more blurry, and not as crisp as playing at native resolution, but it stretch the whole game view, so the characters model will be bigger and wider.
Click to expand...

Thanks but I am not looking for a hardware solution to this. This is about Me, not my computer. Also, I do not require all of that LCD mumbo jumbo since I am actually using a CRT. Therefore, refresh rate and ghosting is not an issue. I used to play at a 16:9 resolution for the extra FOV but lately I've been just using 4:3 (my monitor is 4:3 natively).

Moving right along then I came across the console command sv_regeneration_force_on, which is a simple way to (almost) create a headshot only server. I ran around vs some hard bots using this for a little and then ended up joining a HS only DM server. I've never seen CS played like that before lol. So many 1 on 1 engagements where people are expending their entire clips in 3 shot bursts, switching to pistols, then just running their separate ways because they can't hit one another lol.

Anyways, from my playing with the bots it looks like I am actually having trouble placing my crosshair on the heads of opponents. As in, I am often off by 1-3 pixels to the left or right. Height doesn't seem to be a big deal. Perhaps I adapted to aiming at their chest to "fix" the slightly off accuracy that I had already instead of just, you know, getting more accurate. I guess it will just take some practice on my part. So far the HS only vs bots seemed to be the most helpful for me as a first step. Going against humans right away added too many other variables that distracted me from the goal.

Further suggestions/comments are welcome by the way. Thanks for your suggestions so far (other then the aim-bot one :getout:).

Edit:
14bux said:
It's easier if you turn your mouse sensitivity below what you're used to using, from my experience.
Click to expand...
Actually, I have recently increased my sensitivity a bit because I felt that I was spending way too much time lifting my mouse and repositioning due to the sensitivity being too low. I have forever used mouse acceleration and actually like it, but understand that... it is less predictable then having no acceleration. I finally disabled it entirely a couple of weeks ago but now feel like I have to lift off very often since I can't just whip the mouse really fast to do large spins. This has also affected my ability to precisely aim since I'm used to having more control over small adjustments due to having acceleration on. This may be playing a role in my "off by 1-3px" problem I mentioned above.
 
pepper333

pepper333

DARKLY Regular
Just DM or Aim map. Gotta practice and get used to aiming at the head. Lowering your sensitivity can make it easier but if you are comfortable with your sensitivity i wouldn't change it.
 
Freak

Freak

DARKLY Regular
I've been trying a combination of learning each gun's behaviour under various stages of fire and figuring out where to place the crosshair.

I know that sounds kind of obvious, but it's not as simple as you'd think. From watching ESEA and the occasional GOTV stream of Global Elites, I noticed that they all move differently in a firefight depending on which gun they have. For example, when using an AK there's a lot of stutter-stepping and short strafing, mainly because they know the gun can do all the work and they just need to aim it at the head, and click once. However, with something like an M4A1-S, you need maybe two shots to get it right, plus the recoil isn't as great so you aim it for the general neck area and hit the head on the second shot.

How do you aim for the head? Well learning with bots would be my suggestion offline, know your own movements, corners and the map and practice that. But a large portion I feel comes down to how you read player's movements and how well you play with a gun.

Mind you, I could be dead wrong. This is just what I've witnessed and think is right. I have no clue what my HS percentage is, but it's probably pitiful. :yaoming:
 
Nick

Nick

DARKLY Regular
Cliche: Practice, practice, practice. Its the only way you will get better.

Now getting into some more serious stuff, aiming is all about muscle memory, and my muscle memory, I mean practicing daily getting 1000 hs kills on bots.

There is a great map on steam workshop, that is purposefully designed to train your muscle memory, raw aim, and mouse sense. I can't remember the name of that map, I will get back to you.

Essentially what that map does, it puts the bots on one team, you on the other, they don't have guns, but they do move like human players do (or at least they try to mimic human players).

And your task is to get as many hs as possible (or practice your spray, its up to you). Don't worry about the fact that they dont have guns, like I said, this map is intended to train your muscle memory/raw aim. I usually get 250 kills with ak, 250 kills with m4, 250 kills with glock and 250 with p2k for my daily routine. These kills are usually a mix of spray and hs. Then I hop on to a DM server and practice vs real players (I ll get to this part later).

Also on the map there is an aiming field that is intended to train your mouse sense (for the lack of a better term), doing so will get you more familiar with your crosshair placement and be in more control of your aim, know exactly where your crosshair will land after moving it and whatnot, Which effectively solves your problem of aiming to the left/right of a player's head.

Now getting into DM server. I play on a deathmatch server that is very popular among the professional players (esea invite, cevo p), playing in such a server forces me to aim at hs, because if I dont, I die to a hs first. I have found out that my aim drastically improved after playing in said server. This server is very popular and is almost always full, I paid for a reserved slot to ensure that I can join anytime. I won't be posting it here but if you need further info on this server shoot me a PM or add me on steam.

Last thing I want to get to: mouse sensitivity. I like to quote on Dazed from ibp: "If your mouse sensitivity is high, your aim will never be good. If your dpi is high, your aim will never be good". Turning down your sensitivity will enable you to be more accurate, be in more control. I personally turned down my sensitivity from 1800 dpi/4.5 sensitivity to 400 dpi/2 sensitivity, combining that with the training I mentioned above really helped me improve on my aim.

If you need some more advice, like I said, feel free to add me on steam or shoot me a PM on here.
 
kts

kts

TD Admin
I read most of that stuff, and what nick(or dickfacedickface) said is all really good stuff.

But what I do suggest is playing a lot of matchmaking, or preferably esea(if possible, fees suck)
Because the more you play in games where shit is actually at stake and against people who always aim at the head, the more you'll HAVE you hit them first in one shot.Kinda saying the same thing as that DM server with invite players.

Pubs make people lazy, and a lot of times the top players ranked in the server can have lower hs% because hitting people in the head isn't as much of a priority as just shooting them, without them hitting you(ie, through boxes, finishing kills, prefiring at body level)

oh and in css at least, there was a map maker named kozzy or something not sure if this is what nick meant, there's always good old aim_map or aim_icemap, which are nice to try and hit bots at the hs level right above the boxes. (however i have no idea if its the same names for csgomaps, sorry not much help)
Anyway good luck with getting more hs, you already have the drive to do so, and the capability to as well. :D (please dont kill me too much in server)
 
everyth1ng

everyth1ng

DARKLY Regular
I may or may not chime in with a more detailed response in the near future, but I just wanted to say that I don't think that playing MM (Valve, ESEA, etc.) is a good way to improve your individual skill. Yes, you'll probably get better game sense and strats through sheer osmosis from playing in that environment, but it's hard to improve aspects of your individual skill when you're dieing all the time to players that are better than you and then having to wait until the round is over to try again. At least in DM there are no consequences for dieing that really matter.
 
DatGuy

DatGuy

TD Member
I try to use the environment as reference, see how tall people are on walls and use reference points.

example: Office has pictures on the walls, headshot height is 1/3 of the way up the picture
 
Nick

Nick

DARKLY Regular
Sgt. Rex Power Colt said:
I may or may not chime in with a more detailed response in the near future, but I just wanted to say that I don't think that playing MM (Valve, ESEA, etc.) is a good way to improve your individual skill. Yes, you'll probably get better game sense and strats through sheer osmosis from playing in that environment, but it's hard to improve aspects of your individual skill when you're dieing all the time to players that are better than you and then having to wait until the round is over to try again. At least in DM there are no consequences for dieing that really matter.
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Which is why you combine both, esea pug is almost pure individual skill, in a sense, since most people play for stats and bait all day
 
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