As you march down mid, flashbang in hand, ready to get a free four-piece and open up the round for you and your team, you tell your teammate: “Hey, watch Cat for me while I flash.” They give you a faint response that serves for a yes. Before you pull the pin on the grenade to flash the entire enemy team, you suddenly take two dinks in the back of the head from a USP, dying for free to an enemy with no gun and no armor. You look for your teammate, who is currently losing the trade fight to that same USP, wondering what in the world they could have been watching. “I was watching through the window,” they mutter, as you rub your forehead in frustration.

It happens to everyone at some point in CSGO, whether it be paid FACEIT PUGs or casual MM. At some point, we have all run into a pitfall of a teammate that fails to hear the words that are coming out of your mouth. But while some days it is just plain impossible to get any productive communication out of every player, sometimes you can take steps to ensure that every teammate you play with can communicate with you in a way that helps not only you, but everyone around you.

Good Communication Defined

“Good” communication is as tricky as ever of a word to define as it is entirely subjective to what each person believes is the proper way to talk to someone. Now while this is obvious, communication is CS:GO could be defined to more specific margins if we discuss it further. In CS:GO communication is a gigantic part to helping your team win, save for a few crazy individuals that can single handedly carry a whole match without saying a word. Some players are this brainless though, and need help painting the picture of the map with the assistance of their team. It also helps in attacking or defending bombsites when you always know what your teammates are doing or looking at.

Communication in CS:GO is at its best whenever it is clear and effective, and perfect whenever the whole team is firing at all cylinders. However, it is important to know that this is a perfect situation, and sometimes good communication is impossible.

Slow Down

In the heat of a round, comms can become intense or rushed as everyone is trying to give ideas that they feel is correct. Sometimes these calls can be rushed as the rounds get insane but ultimately it is a better spot to be in then having an intense round go completely silent as no one wants to talk.

Now while lots of communication can be a good thing, it can also be really damaging to the team in a variety of situations. It is a skill to practice in your next public game, but if you find yourself communicating with your team a lot, try slowing yourself down in the heat of the moments. Sometimes the most clear decisions for your team to make can come from simply taking a moment to stop and assess the situation before everyone starts screaming things to do.

Know the Callouts

Going with the same idea we just spoke about, knowing the specific areas to callout to your teammates can also help with clearing up muddy communications in your games. For example, referring to someone coming out of A-Main on Mirage by saying “there is one there” or referring to the wagon at the top of Mid in Mirage as the “box in mid” might do nothing but confuse the person that you are playing with.

Knowing the specific area you are referring to when trying to tell your teammate something can help soothe hundreds of headaches that might emerge. It is the difference between referring to the entirety of brackets on Inferno as “Mid,” and defining those spots as Brackets, Lane, and Arch. Don’t be over specific, but don’t be general enough to leave room for confusion. It is definitely a tough line to balance.

Be Clear, Not Crystal

Clarity with communication is vital, but also dangerous. It is important to be clear to avoid confusion, but it is also necessary to not over-communicate or “over-comm.” Over-comming is a danger that every single CS:GO player must work through when they first become serious with the game. It is very, very easy to find yourself saying more than is necessary and mudding up the voice chat. To use the same metaphor from earlier, it is your job as a good teammate to help paint a picture for everyone of your teammates.

However, it is not your job to paint the entire picture for them. Not hearing anything from one of your teammates can be immensely frustrating, but on the other side of the spectrum, listening to someone telling you every single step of the round can also drive you insane. Be clear, but don’t always keep it crystal clear.

Competitive vs. Casual

Now with all of this being said, it is very important to note the large difference between how communication will work in hyper-competitive environments vs. casual PUG environments. The fact of the matter is that good communication will always help your team win, but these comms will grow farther and farther from hyper-serious and focused the more casual you get. Frankly, there is nothing wrong with this.

Not every single CS:GO player is devoted to playing perfect strategic CS:GO, and that is okay. We all play this game because we love it and making others feel shame for not knowing the exact perfect way to talk to you about how the enemy is playing is never cool. When trying to practice good communication in CS, make sure you keep this in mind as we are all here to make friends and learn.

Mistakes are Mistakes

The key word from the last paragraph for me is “learn.” Playing CS for me is all about learning and using the things you learn to get better in your following games. But at the end of the day, you need to do something wrong first in order to learn, and that goes with everything in the game, including communication. In a competitive setting, it is impossible to expect everyone to be perfect all of the time, even the most rounded CS players. This especially goes for public matches, which tend to be a sort of proving grounds for up-and-coming players to try and fail and try some more.

In order to be “good” at this skill, you first must practice how you will use it. In practicing, you will make mistakes, and in making mistakes you will learn more. It is a natural process, and because of this we shouldn’t expect everyone to crank out perfect pro comms. And we should also understand and know that every PUG isn’t going to be great, but that is how we learn.

The Reality of Communication

Now, we’ve gone through a whole guide talking about the complexities of communication and what it takes to have “good” communication, but in that, there are first a few realities that we must talk over before we can move on and call it done. Communication in public matches will never work the way you want it to, and that is part of the challenge of “good” communication. You can always be as sweaty as possible and try to call everything you need to, while trying to pull words out of all of your teammates, but sometimes that just isn’t going to happen.

The reality of having “good” communication is that it will not always happen in PUGS, and we shouldn’t expect it. It is a mindset that is really important to having fun in the game while also taking it seriously. Like I said before, we are all here to win, some of us just want to win a little more than others.

Conclusion

And so, that's it. Communication is a tough thing to nail down, and like we have talked about here, it isn’t exactly easy to perfect. However, you can dodge big negatives that tend to lead to your own teammates turning against you. Having good communication in CS:GO is like being a good stand-up communication: sometimes you just have to read the room.

Sometimes all of your ideas won’t land, and teammates don't care at all about the things you have to say, but it doesn’t hurt to try. But sometimes, nothing is going to work at all and you just have to fry your opponents and hope your teammates are roughly on the same page.

And in the worst case, you can just play with your friends.

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