Everyone knows that aiming in PUBG is an essential asset of your individual performance, but when you're playing and cooperating with teammates, you need to not only rely on yourself but on your teammates as well. To make sure that you're able to rely on your teammates, you need to be able to communicate quickly, know the terms that get used to describe objects or players, and make sure that what you say is indisputable.

When it comes to professional PUBG, we've all seen that aiming doesn't make the most difference. Rather, it's how the teams work together with voice comms that we can't hear when we're watching a team play. To improve at this aspect in PUBG, we decided to talk to Gustav "GustavQQ" Blønd on bad habits that you may need to remove from your comms, how to become an in-game leader (IGL) and improving your comms overall.

How to Learn Comms and Becoming an IGL

Everyone needs to overcome this step when you're aiming to take your gameplay up to the next level. When it came to learning comms and improving your own vocabulary in English, GustavQQ told us, "Playing the game a lot, comms got way easier for me. My English wasn't that good when I first started playing PUBG, but I've played on different international teams for almost a year now, resulting in my English communication in-game becoming a lot better."

Practice is most definitely key when it comes to almost everything about PUBG. Make sure that you have teammates that remain positive even if you make mistakes. Negative teammates will definitely not help you any further unless they provide you with constructive criticism.

When it comes to becoming an IGL, this is extremely important. GustavQQ said, "The in-game leader has to be very vocal and someone who isn't afraid to make mistakes. It's also very important that the other players in the squad believe in the in-game leader and follow his calls, even when they go wrong.

3 Bad Communication Habits

GustavQQ told us that these were the first three habits that came to his mind:

• "Players often say "My marker" instead of saying the color of their marker. Then you have to look at what color marker they have and then find it, you easily lose two seconds on that."

This is a very good tip since many players don't realize that their markers are a different color every game. You have no power when it comes to choosing your own color in-game (yet) and there are no names bound to the markers when you're looking on your map.

• "A large number of players can't shoot and tell where the enemy is at the same time. This can often make you lose the fight since your teammates are running around not knowing what to do for a couple of seconds."

• "Players often have trouble explaining where the enemies are when they could very easily just open the map quickly and put a marker on the enemies."

This may be interpreted as prioritizing in-game features above voice communication but that isn't really the case. Communications, on average, are quite hectic and what everyone on your squad should hear needs to also be the most important. Marking enemies will save both time communicating and the interval between receiving the intel and engaging upon your enemy.

Tips and Examples for Communication Terms

Everyone uses different terms while communicating and it's also a large part of their strategy. Due to this GustavQQ kept it fairly short and said, "On Team Dignitas, we have a lot of different callouts for certain areas. For example, we have a compound called "Liquid compound" because Liquid used to loot it back in the days. We also have a hill called "Kinguin hill" because the old Kinguin (now WTSG) won a game in Global Loot League Season 1 Final."

The image featured above shows a large number of terms that you can use for previously unnamed territory on the Erangel map. Keep note that these terms do not reflect what Team Dignitas uses in their own games, but some of them could be. Full credit goes to Richard Simms and you can find the high-resolution download link here.

Another tip that GustavQQ gave us when it came to terms was to "try and find the same callouts for certain buildings in the game as your teammates. Sometimes saying 'The yellow house' can be very confusing for your teammates."

It could possibly be extremely confusing to hear a feature of a building when there are multiple buildings in your line of sight that fit this description. This shows that being as clear as possible when it comes to communication could save you a notable amount of time especially when you have teammates that aren't too experienced in Squads.

In-Game Tools

The Compass is probably one of the most used in all BR games currently around. You can quickly call out directions (North, East, South, West) and everything in-between by just looking at the Compass on the top of your screen. GustavQQ told us how he personally uses it to his advantage. "I use the compass to call out where the enemies are. For example, you can say 'He is behind the rock 260 from here'. This give your teammates a very clear understanding of where the enemy is."

With the 3D markers being implemented in PUBG (3D in this case meaning that you can see them in the overworld through various objects and terrain) GustavQQ put his own opinion into the mix. He said, "I really like how calling things out and trying to explain where the enemies are in the fastest way possible is a challenge every time. With the new 3D markers, you can literally just instantly mark something and your teammates will know. Yes, it will make comms much easier, but making things easier is not always the way to go. I like how having clean comms with your team can be the deciding factor why you come up on top."

In the image shown above you can see the now removed 3D marker. Full Credit goes to ANGE1K1G and FutureGameReleases.

To solidify his stance on how he calls enemies out, GustavQQ also told us how he uses the markers that have been in-game since the start. He explained,

"I use the marker the most on the team since I'm the in-game leader and I'm often marking where I want my teammates to go. Marking something makes it so much easier to understand where exactly you want to go or where the enemies are. Since the maps in PUBG are so huge, it can be very hard to have a callout for every single place on the map or every single rock."

It's definitely recommended to make use of both tools. In many cases on Erangel, the last circle is either on a field or near a large number of trees. Calling out "He's behind the tree on 180" won't help much in that situation, but if there aren't too many similar objects near the target, it's sometimes faster to solely use the compass.

Conclusion

Something that GustavQQ wants everyone to know is that practice is absolutely key when it comes to many aspects in PUBG. For him, hard work paid off in the end and that resulted in playing for various international teams over the last year and currently playing for a team like Team Dignitas.

We want to thank Gustav for sharing his insight on communication in PUBG and wish him the best of luck in his next challenge!

You can follow Gustav on his Twitter.