Whether you’re new to the first-person shooter genre or have been grinding games like Call of Duty, Apex, or Battlefield for years, you’ve probably wanted to improve and get better at the game. You’ve watched countless videos on how to improve your aim, the best setups and loadouts, and you always watch your favorite streamers trying to learn something new. But like most things in life, eventually you hit a plateau and struggle to break through. Now, I can’t promise you the silver bullet that will instantly make you a top-level pro gamer, but what I can do is show you a simple method I always go back to, that has always helped me break through my plateau.
When it comes to improving at first-person shooter games, it’s actually pretty simple. Now, remember, simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy, but once you understand what you need to focus on, it does get a little easier because you know exactly where you need to focus your time and attention. Sometimes it can feel impossible and slow, so something I always remind myself is to go into every game or play session focusing on improving one specific skill. You can’t do everything all at once. And remember, if you improve just 1 percent every day, in 3 months’ time that’s a 100 percent improvement and over the course of a year, that’s a 400 percent improvement.
There are really only three core parts of this strategy, but first, we’re going to need a notepad and something to write with. Ok, now that you’ve got that, you’re going to write down these three categories: Aim, Positioning & Decision Making.
Improvement typically only happens when you start figuring out what you’re doing wrong. So what we need to do is analyze each one of our deaths in-game and sort the reason into one of these three buckets. Your aim, position, and decision-making are really the only reasons you lost a gunfight or died. Now, there are a few exceptions to this rule like maybe you rounded a corner to someone camping with a shotgun or walked out of your spawn to a grenade that was perfectly timed and exploded instantly. Or worst of all, there’s a player that’s just blatantly cheating. But in 99 percent of situations, you lose the fight because of one of the three categories I just mentioned. It’s easy to complain about the game, your internet connection, and to make excuses, which is fine if you’re happy doing that. But you likely clicked on this to get better so from here on out, you’ve got to take 100 percent responsibility and learn from your mistakes to get better.
Later, i'll show you what I do to improve in each category and break them down into smaller sections. But before we do that, I want to jump into a gameplay of mine and go through the process with you to show you guys where I’m struggling myself. I’m going to be using a recorded gameplay so I can keep talking to you guys and explain as we go along, but when I use this method outside of recording a YouTube video, I just keep my notepad and pencil next to me and mark a tally every time I die under the appropriate category. I’ll also be explaining why I put it in that category and what I could have done differently to either win that gunfight or stay alive. I find it helpful to keep track of this over the course of a few games instead of just one to help smooth out the differences between my performance on different maps and against a variety of enemies.
To keep it short and to the point, I’m just going to go through one gameplay in Xdefiant.
For me, it’s looking like my aim is the main issue I’m having here. Now, I'm on Mouse and Keyboard and this happens to me from time to time and I have to catch myself getting lazy with my aim mechanics.
When it comes to the topic of improving your aim, there’s a lot of information out there, tons of drills, and experts to help you with all the small mechanical parts of aiming but I want to keep it simple and manageable. There are really only two main parts of aiming: how fast and accurately you acquire or flick to a target and the second part is tracking that target. When it comes to flicking, you want to pay attention and notice if you’re not able to get on target fast enough or if you’re over-flicking. If you find yourself over-flicking and end up going back and forth tracing the outline of the enemy, here are a few things you can try. Try lowering your sensitivity to see if that helps, or if you don’t want to touch your sense, you can consciously practice making smaller adjustments to stay on target. Or you may want to give both a try to see which one feels better for you. To actually practice this, I like to use some very simple drills in Aim Labs, which used to be PC exclusive. But they just launched on the Xbox platform as well. If you’re on PlayStation, don’t worry, we’re getting there. Now, if you don’t have access to Aim Labs or want another method, I typically go into whatever game I’m grinding at the time and load up some private lobbies with bots. If you’re on a controller, it really helps to practice without aim assist so you can see your raw input and get a more accurate understanding of just where you’re struggling. Of course, you always want to turn it back on after unless you want to do the entire mouse and keyboard community a favor and leave it off… So for me, what is happening is that I’m struggling with tracking a target while it changes directions. So I like to load up a very simple drill in the Voltaic Fundamentals Iron, bronze or silver playlist. There are three variations of it called Pill Track Far long Strafes, Close Long Strafes, and Kinda Close Fast Strafes. And I intentionally focus on acquiring a target when it’s switching directions. And as you can see on screen, I struggle by trying to predict the movement too much and also over-flicking with my wrist when the target changes direction. Now, for you, you have to really figure out if you're struggling with getting on target or staying on target and practice that one simple thing often. Even when you go into the game, you have to tell yourself that you’re there to focus on one specific task and build on it over time.
Now that we’ve covered aiming, let's jump into the next category of positioning. Again, this can be a complex topic, but I want to keep it simple and actionable for you. Majority of the time, if you’re out of position, you’re out in the open without any cover or a way to get safely back to cover. To fix this, you need to consciously pay attention when you’re moving through the map and always be working from cover to cover. It can be a wall, a box, or a car. Literally anything that you can cover some part of your character with. We want to always be the one with an advantage in a gunfight. Now, obviously, there will be times where you aren’t on cover, but by consciously focusing on moving from cover to cover, you will decrease the number of times you get caught out in the open. The other main part of positioning is the high ground. If you have the opportunity, you always want to have the high ground because it gives YOU complete control over the fight for two reasons. One, almost your entire body is covered because of the angle on the high ground. If you do this properly, they should only be able to see your head. And two, it gives you control over the pacing of the fight. If you take too much damage, you can always back up to heal or reload and the enemy won’t be able to shoot you at all. Now, obviously, high ground is a bit more of a factor in games like Apex Legends or Warzone—really any larger scale map—as 6v6 arcade shooters are typically smaller maps and don’t offer too much when it comes to different levels.
And the last thing we have to talk about is decision making. There are so many times I catch myself getting overconfident, overaggressive, and I end up ego-challenging when I probably shouldn’t. So for this section, I want to highlight a few examples in my gameplay and explain what I did versus what I should have done.
The first example I have here is sprinting into a gunfight. If you know there is one or more enemies around the corner, instead of full sending into the fight, survey the scene and see if there’s a better way to engage. Collect information by looking at your minimap and kill feed. There might be a nice head glitch for you or a way that you can flank them or catch them by surprise.
Next, let’s look at what happens when you walk into multiple enemies. Now, your first reaction may be to try and take out one of them before you inevitably die. But in most cases, you’re actually better off backing out of the fight to create space or reposition. You may be able to break off one enemy at a time and get a fair 1v1 each time or get some back up from teammates instead of just facing the group of enemies alone. Now, you can get away with staying in the fight if you have insane aim and you’re playing a game that has a short time to kill like some Call of Duty games, but in games like Xdefiant, Warzone, or Apex Legends, it’s going to be rare that you take out two enemies that are both shooting at you. Unless their little brother is playing on their account.
Next, let’s talk about ego challenging. Now, there are a couple different versions of this. The first and most common one is swinging an enemy that either has cover and you don’t or trying to catch them off guard by re-peaking when you’re low health. Again, sometimes this can work, but in most cases, you’re better off repositioning, staying alive to heal up, or taking the fight from a better angle. Now, the other less common ego challenge that people rarely talk about is trying to force a gunfight at a range that your weapon is not built for. For example, if you’re running an SMG and you stand there and try to fight someone at longer ranges who has an AR, LMG, or sniper rifle, you’re probably not going to win. Now, we all have that voice in the back of our head that whispers “but what if I hit every shot and they miss.” But the chances that you’re going to consistently win that fight are very low. Now sure, you may be able to pull it off 2 or 3 times out of ten. But again, we’re trying to improve and be more consistent and it’s much more important to play your life and find a better way to take that fight. In this example, if you see a person at a distance, it’s a much better idea to find a way to close that gap where YOU have the advantage with the SMG. This could be running a flank route, using your abilities, sliding to cover. Literally anything but stand there and ego challenge that fight. Now on the flip side, if you’re running a more long-range weapon, you want to avoid getting too close or point-blank with people that are running shotguns and SMGs.
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