A Guide To Help You Improve Your Teamplay
Numerous different factors account for the skill level of your team, find out how to improve them here!
So, you’ve most likely found out that you and a bunch of friends work well together as a team. Everything's going great with the idea and hopes are high but sadly these hopes can be shut down because of a lack of understanding of how a team works, and people enter competitive play with unrealistic expectations. Inside this guide, I’m going to explain to you what you need to improve on, how to identify your role, and also some things that people over-stress that you might want to even relax a bit with!
Identifying Your Role
When you watch competitive play, every player has their separate role, a little bit similar to how games like League of Legends or Heroes of The Storm play out. Think of player roles this way, you have a support player (who’s most commonly known as a rifler) who takes trade kills and partakes in executes on sites. You have an IGL for deciding what the team is going to do, you have a lurker to shut down anyone rotating onto the site, and you have an AWPer to take out the enemy from a long range effectively and to gather information now and then. Oh, and the entry fragger too, don’t forget them!
Unfortunately there's no any secret to this. Finding your role takes time (and more than one game) and will most likely mean you might fail a few PUGs or scrims, but once you find your comfortable role, you’ll most likely never have to search for one again. Professionals in the scene have very rarely switched roles. AWPers and IGL’s are the most common to be switched up however, and have done in the past, whilst other players like GeT_RiGhT have been playing the lurk position for years now.
Current Team Dignitas CS:GO Lineup for example.
Don’t be afraid to experiment, between you guys (or girls!) make sure to try around with different people playing different roles. If someone feels like picking up the AWP, why shouldn’t they? Your IGL doesn’t want to IGL for a game but someone else does, why not let them try? You could find that one of your teammates could be even playing your role better than you, and it’s time to swap around and try some new things in your team.
Understanding Communication
This section will split into two parts because communication in Counter Strike is slightly different. You have the in game communication with things such as callouts, your IGL explaining on the fire strats, or explaining things before the round, etc. You also have the synergy within the team, and this is something most people are going to overlook when it comes to communicating, it’s not all completely serious during a match, there can be fun and games too! Take the “hostage situation” by TSM shown below for example!
Carrying on with synergy, as I said it’s an overlooked part of a team. Whilst you can execute things well, arguing with other teammates over petty things and having barriers to fluid communication can really slow down anything you’re trying to do when playing, and can be a real downer to not only you, but to all five members of your team. It’s distracting, and really puts people off from even wanting to play with you, leaving you with a bad reputation, a loss, and even a loss of motivation from the rest of your teammates.
Part of that includes being able to identify when someone is becoming slightly toxic, and a bit of a downer with things during communication. If you can do this, try to come across to other people in your team nicely, explaining why what they said was either abusive, insulting or whichever reason it might be, and see if you can work together to overcome that. Is it that your entry fragger isn’t getting enough popflashes / flashes out when he’s going to push a site? No trade kills? Or is it that the team isn’t paying attention to the lurker's calls? Whatever it might be, try to work together to identify these issues and work to resolve them peacefully, quickly and effectively.
The second part of this section is callouts. Some people call different parts of different maps different things, and that’s ok. But when it comes to a league tier play where you need to step up your communication and you’re still fumbling around a little bit, you’re most likely going to end up causing a lot of deaths, or being the death because of poor communication. Run over places that you’re confused about with your teammates.
Say we’re going back to the de_nuke times. Are you guys calling it Silo? Or is it Marshmallow? Or take a map on current active duty for example. Do you guys want to call it underpass or connector? Knowing these vital things and getting used to them being called what they are can be a life saver from unwanted confusion between teammates. Remember, 2 minutes in a round isn’t that much, and you can’t waste any time in that round with debates about callouts on a map!
Understanding Your Strategies
Working together is great. Calling together and being fluid is even better. But to top it off, all of you understanding the grenades and plays you need to make individually to complete a team strategy is something that puts the cherry on top. Do all of you remember the smoke onto Xbox for the short push? Can you remember how to get some smokes down on mid for a quick push into vents? When everyone knows all of the strategies of the team, it can lead to more fluid rounds, with solid executes and the only problem being you have to waste your ammo on the enemy players. Go over these strategies with your teammates with the resources that are provided all over the internet.
Online you can find tons of videos on how to learn new spots or tricks, and there’s websites like Watch2Gether for you to all watch the video in sync. This is useful for listening to say a POV and / or analysing your enemy team's demo if it’s uploaded to YouTube. But what else can you use? If you need to plan out a strategy as an IGL or just want to experiment with some new ideas, you can put it all on paper with Stratuga. Albeit, it’s… virtual paper, but you get the gist. This allows you to create plans with all the different icons to represent what your teammates will need to know. It also allows you to edit these strategies with your teammates live for clearer communication. Try both of these sites out, or any other variations you find and like, and try using them with your teammates, it can enhance your understanding of current strategies and teach new ones extremely easily. You can view my example a Dust 2 strategy here!
Conclusion
These are the basics of improving your teamplay, and over time you're going to find that these things will just naturally improve, communicating especially. If you've got the opportunity, go out with some of your teammates in person and socialize, improve your relations with the people in your team as much as you can, and some of these things will eventually come as second nature. Remember to practice your strategies, smokes and aim in your own time to not let your team down too, and that should keep you all solid.
Have fun and make use of the tips in this guide so you can improve in your league play or scrims, and good luck!
