How To Thoroughly Improve Your Online Play
The gaming space is an interesting one. Most of us, even if we play single player games, have some kind of online profile. That might be through Xbox, PC, Playstation, Switch, or perhaps a handheld device that supports these features. On the PC in particular, many storefronts exist, and seem to be growing, as exclusivity deals seem to jump from one place to the other. Our options have never been greater. Even when offline, we have our achievements broadcast, our connectivity visible, and new gaming infrastructure is often developed surrounding that.
But there also exists another side to this gaming paradigm. Online play. Some of us fear it. Some of us base our entire gaming presence around it. And others stream it, day and night, showcasing their skills and make a full financial living from doing so. If we engage with this ourselves, once in a while we might wonder how to improve our skills without banging our head against the wall.
Not matter if it’s Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch, another Battle Royale variant, Rocket League, or CS:GO, there are some steps you can take to improve your online prowess. We would like to help you achieve that. It’s likely more possible than you think. Let us see what that might mean for you:
Practice
Often, simple practice can help you achieve much more than you thought you could. It’s very easy to obsess over the smaller matters related to online play. And some of those smaller matters do actually make a difference. But for the most part, taking the time to get familiar with whatever in-game tools you have can help you get to the next level. For example, it might be that you wish to race to better results in a game like Forza Horizon 4. Learning racing lines, understanding how to tune your car more appropriately, figuring out how to corner with care and how to handle your vehicle around a drift are universal tools, tools that could help you in most situations. Racing against harder and harder bots can help you increase the challenge, to the point where online play then feels like something you can achieve thoroughly.
Some games have a true meta that’s worth experiencing. For example, take a game like Rainbow Six: Siege. This is a game with many operators, many counters, many map exploits you can use. If you have little idea of how your character can function in many situations, you’ll just make it up as you go along. This is opposite to making informed opinions. But at the same time, practicing your quick-snap shooting can help you dramatically. You might find that looking on Reddit, watching the pro’s play through Twitch, or simply continuing to get your ranked placements through online practice can help you achieve much more than you thought. Sometimes, you have to get involved in the meta. But practice is always the fundamental key.
Consider Your Apparatus
It can be very worthwhile to consider how your console or computing apparatus can influence your game-playing ability. For example, it might be that your miniature mouse-mat is forcing you to play with your mouse at an extremely high DPI, which is akin to very high sensitivity. This might mean you needn’t move your mouse much to snap to those on the opposite team, but at the same time, it could lessen accurate shooting. Consider how your apparatus informs or detracts from your play, and how you might change that.
For example, it can often be that having a wired connection to your computer through the use of an ethernet cable is much more reliable and less throttled than a WiFi connection. Running a long cord to your PC could help with those speed needs. This is especially true if playing on international servers. It’s also true for games such as Mortal Kombat 11 or other fighting games that require frame-accurate synchronicity of an online connection between you and your opponent.
The refresh rate of your monitor, the mouse that forces your hand into a particular grip, an old controller with less-sensitive buttons you have to hit harder, all of this can potentially harm or help your online play. We would recommend looking at your apparatus and seeing just what you could potentially achieve to fix those issues.
Fix Your Communication
Part of playing online is functioning within a team. For example, playing a match of Rainbow Six: Siege will be significantly tougher if the enemy team is communicating and yours isn’t. The first measure of fixing your communication is finding those you can communicate with. Random public matches aren’t always the most reliable for this. Finding those you can play in a squad with, perhaps communicating over Discord, can be a great idea. That’s the first victory you’ll gain.
Second, is how you actually communicate. We’re sure you have the right apparatus, mic and headset to do that, so you’re likely sorted on that front. But it’s important to learn how to take direct action and communicate thoroughly. It’s important to learn how to remain calm, and try to relax when losing. On top of that, taking leadership into your stride can be important when others seem to be at a loss of how to behave in a situation. Making call outs could potentially help your team out of a bad scenario, as is often the case with popular Battle Royale games. It might even be worth taking a leadership degree online to familiarize yourself with the philosophy of taking charge, especially if you hope to focus on becoming the captain of an esports team.
Fix your communication. It might be the last issue standing in the way of you and gaming greatness.
Relax
Online toxicity is a real problem. Of course, we are in no way accusing you of contributing to it. But if you do partake in it, you’ll notice that a weird energy surrounds you. After all, gaming is supposed to be fun. There’s no reason to experience an extremely high blood pressure due to it. It’s important to stay informed and comfortable, and to consider how you might proceed with patience.
If you’re usually the person who gets quietly annoyed (most of us do) when losing a match, consider the resolution. It could be that learning a few breathing exercises, how to meditate, and how to take loss in your stride can help you enjoy your matches more. Remember, every loss is a lesson. On top of that, learning that it’s fine to walk away from the game, even if you’re close to achieving that next level, can help you move forward. On top of that, you needn’t only be focused on improving your ranked score. There are many online games that sport a sense of cooperation. For example, raiding with a guild in the Final Fantasy XIV MMO can help you feel a sense of connection to your team, and not fall out with them if someone fails to function as well as you wanted them to. Games such as The Division 2 are more about the grind and finding cool loot than making an artificial ranking increase.
This is perhaps the most important advice in this entire post. Just imagine how much better the online gaming space would be if everyone could enact those steps. But it all starts with you setting an example.
Play The Games You Want To
Improving your online play is something you need to build skill towards, no doubt about it. But it’s worthless doing this if you’re not having fun. A video game is not real life, no matter how hard we might want it to be sometimes. If you’re not having fun, move onto the next thing. A video gaming experience should help you feel good, it should make you feel excited, it shouldn’t take away elements of your mental health.
To feel okay in yourself is the main thing. It might be that you absolutely love playing Counter Strike, but others in your friendship group hate it. That’s fine. It might be that you much prefer the mutual building environment of Minecraft and running your own server there. That’s fantastic.
Sometimes, the best way to improve your online play is not to get the most kills, or score the most points, or come first in the race. It’s simply to have the most fun. To us, that sounds like a substantial victory all on its own, even if you come bottom of the leaderboard time after time after time.
Mix It Up
It can sometimes be worthwhile to mix things up when gaming. Perhaps you love playing online competitively. Don’t solely limit yourself to that. Play a walking simulator, or a strategy game, or something else outside of your comfort zone. It’s when we do this that we learn how to think outside of the box.
With this advice, we hope you’re much more able to thoroughly improve your online play, in more ways than one.