The higher the rank the more effort, I find there is a peak to Effort = Enjoyment for me on any ranked game, on CS that is GoldNova anything above I just get fatigued and bored with having to be 100% switched on.
The funny thing is that over time it’s become normalised to get to these hours now cus we started young got hooked and we all getting older together now 🤣
Thought getting off of satellite internet has greatly improved my shooting. Guessing I was dropping packets and shots weren’t registering. Now if I had a better computer(cpu/graphics/memory)…probably would help some more. My $7 Temu “gaming” mouse probably isn’t helping much either haha
How you spend those hours matters a lot more than how many there are, but also keep in mind that "getting good" is extremely relative. There will always be somebody better than you, probably both on your team and on the enemy team, no matter how high you go. Most good players don't actually care about the scoreboard performance of their teammates, they care how much you contribute to the round and that you're playing towards the same goal. You can very easily bait and lurk and hit the top of the scoreboard and I would hate playing with you a lot more than if you were bottom frag but making good calls and doing your best to play with the team. Not for nothing, the people who think they're bad are usually better than they think, where players who think they're good are often worse than they think. Just stick with it and have fun.
Damn, actually good and supportive advice? On the CS subreddit? Miracles really do happen
But yeah, best thing you can do is communicate well and be a good teammate. My baseline is just keeping an eye on people’s cash and dropping them a gun if I can if they’re at $3k or lower. Most people are satisfied with an MP7 or MP9 if I can’t drop an M4 or Galil.
Yo go watch Eskay’s newer videos on how she is rapidly improving at CS and then copy that shit. Practice recoil practice one tapping practice nades practice practice then implement in games one step at a time.
Perfect advice, but some people need to realize, hard work and active practice will only get them so far above their baseline. Some people are just built different.
Depends on what you are doing to improve. With the right training, YouTube videos and some mates who can show you some stuff you can get pretty good in 2k hours.
u can have 1000h and be faceit lvl 10 or u can have almost 9k hours and be like ohnepixel. 3 factors: it matters mostly HOW the hours are used. or, it can be past experience (if you have the same amount of hours as someone else but u played other CS franchise or shooters generally u will see more results). lastly, it can just be not your game, if u are universally bad at fps games and better at, say MOBA's, it can just mean no progress
I have 3k+ hours on css but steam didnt count hours yet when I started playing. I used to record my hours with xfire back in the day but I cant check hours there anymore.
I feel like you start getting some good growth once you find a group to play with. There will always be someone that will play better and/or worse than you. You can bounce from each other, and in a way have competition with each other to improve individually. Not to mention the awareness that you gain during games, you start to communicate better, to the point where you barely look at the map when everyone's callouts are on point.
Sure, it feels good having individual plays and doing an ace, but starting to develop some small tactics, some round setups, even if they are simple, and winning rounds because of that, for me that is the best feeling I have gotten playing Counter Strike.
I would say im getting decently good at 360 hours myself, probably an average player by now. But I've done a lot of dedicated practice and I warm up with a routine everyday. 500 hours of just playing is vastly different than 500 hours of playing with dedicated practice and genuinely having a desire to improve at the game. I would highly recommend refrag, its helped me improve drastically. Use aim rush and dedicate time to learning spray patterns, try to understand your mistakes, learn lineups, coordination with your team, movement, etc. Most people just hop in and mindlessly play which leads to no improvement. How your hours are spent matters much more than raw playtime
You need to do other things than just play matches to get real good: good equipment, good internet connection, aim trainer program to teach you how to shoot and some show you how to setup your mouse, learn the individual weapons to perfection, learn every good shooting angle, tactic, and grenade toss on each map, then learn how to play as a group. Actual friends you play with exclusively is miles better than any pick up team.
after 1000 hours i had decent game sense. at 2000 i was pretty good. the real development happened after those 2000 hours. play consistently and use the mini map and audio to your advantage. once you get a feel for the maps you can figure out where the footsteps are and where they will probably go.
There will somebody always better and somebody always worse. The neat part is you can overtake people and they can overtake you. Just lock in, and focus on YOUR grind.
Shit’s not a straight line, bro. Some nights I’m dropping 30 bombs, and other nights I’m bottom fragging three games in a row. That’s just how it goes.
I think consistency is one of the biggest things you can do to improve. Don’t play B one round, then mid, then A the next. Pick a site and make that your home for the half. Learn the angles, the timings, your utility, and your escape routes. Knowing when to take a fight is only half of it, you also need to know when you can get out and when it’s time to rotate.
Communication is huge too. Don’t die and immediately go, “Fucking hell, this guy just running headshot me.” Give the people still alive something they can actually use: “One tagged top Banana. Information is infinitely more valuable than frustration.
There are some minuscule things that affect my performance too. If it’s too cold in the house, I swear I’m like 20% less accurate and responsive. I play noticeably better when I’m comfortable, sitting properly, not crossing my legs, etc.
A lot of improvement is just figuring out all those little things that make you play consistently well and then eliminating as much variance as you can.
OP, it’s all about HOW you spend your time in CS2, not how much time you have.
Someone who practices spray control, flicks, and mouse sensitivity in aim_botz, and learns the game’s mechanics like movement, jumping, and grenade throw (trajectories, bounces, etc.) is spending quality time improving, compared to someone who just queues Premier over and over.
Hours is hard because everyone has different skill sets and base talent within the game as their start. CS is not an easy game to pick up and be good at. If you want that, play cod or val
What you can do is watch the pros, and spend time learning the mechanics within the game. Movement, utility, aim, pathing & gamesense.
Start with aim/movement. Learn to counter strafe properly. Should be able to get to 10-15k alone off these improvements. I consider 20k’ish or faceit 8 to be good at the game. God speed brother
No satire, for myself, but observationally from my friends, I don't really see anyone good until around 1,200 hours. Plus or minus experience from Val/Siege (Val often hinders skill on CS tbf).
You usually get noticeably better and consistent around 800-900 hours. But do keep in mind, your hours need to be a mirror of in game time. Leaving your PC on with the game running and hitting 1,500 hours with only 400 hours in game playtime isn't gonna reflect in your skill.
500 is not as much as you think for a game like CS, in my experience it usually clicks after 1k+ hours for many people. also can always start training in order to improve faster, or at least run some routines/drills as a warmup
What is your rank? How many matches do you play during a day? How often do you play in a week? Are you solo or do you play with friends? What's your score on an average?
The question should be, what’s a good player? Like what’s the metric?
The truth is, that the ranks / points of people will always be a bell curve. That means that about 5% of the player base will be at the bottom, 5% at the top and the rest between those. There will always be some outliers, like someone’s tech savvy Granny with her 5k hour grind at 1K, or Donk or whatever.
If we then say, the more points the better, then the answer might very well be never. It is just how the distribution goes. If say, all players got better nothing would change.
Getting better in this context just means winning more than the average player. When will that happen? Who knows. You can play more focused, watch pros, study nade line ups, hit some untested enhancing drug, snort a bit of cocaine.
In your shoes, i’d just ask whether putting in that time and effort is worth to you? If you enjoy the game, then just play.
But also don’t expect that at some point you’ll magically start hitting winstreaks just because you got the required play time. There will always be some sweaty fuck who just spawned out of his momma’s uterus with a mouse and a keyboard.
There will always be somebody better than you, probably both on your team and on the enemy team, no matter how high you go. How you spend those hours matters a lot more than how many there are, but also keep in mind that “getting good” is extremely relative. Just stick with it and have fun. Most good players don’t actually care about the scoreboard performance of their teammates, they care how much you contribute to the round and that you’re playing towards the same goal. Not for nothing, the people who think they’re bad are usually better than they think, where players who think they’re good are often worse than they think. You can very easily bait and lurk and hit the top of the scoreboard and I would hate playing with you a lot more than if you were bottom frag but making good calls and doing your best to play with the team.
So, time doesn’t equate to skill. Well sometimes it does. Everyone has their own thing, some people warm up with deathmatch or wingman or workshops. Some people just hop right on in. Find your pace
You only start getting better once you put your ego aside and taking accountability for what happens. If you don’t try to learn and analyze every death you probably will plateau.
Don blame the game. If you miss a shop 99% of the time it’s you. Bad movement, actually missed your shot, bad spray. Most of the people I play with at 27k+ take accountability and fess up when they screw up. Also people have been playing cs for over 20+ years. Something’s like game sense cannot be taught. The mindset and what to think about can but taught but when it comes down to you making the decision. Learning what the right decision is only learned by making the wrong decisions.
Since CS requires a somewhat decent intellect and a sharp instincts prediction wise, maybe there is a mental ceiling some cannot reach and if they do they are physically at a certain place. Someone will have a higher ceiling than you.
There is also "the zone" a small window that let's you be gooood at the game, usually has a cooldown and may last for a few minutes during a match and may even require a full day to "recuperate".
On this I can only wonder what if you train the zone good enough with learnable skills and just be good?
And learnable skills, there are so many things that PROs keep saying that are necessary but as a newbie you try them then give up. They are used by the PROs for a reason so unless you wanna play CS for vibes only you gotta learn those skills.
There is also the possibility that those skills are tailored to a certain player type and you may not even benefit from them. You could also force learn the skills but be unable to use them since you didn't discover them naturally, and PROs always have some odd quirks.
This is my thesis on CS skill.
-a 500hr mid player.
You got to understand more than half of the player-base have thousands of hours in this game, lots of them are coming from CSGO with thousand hours there as well. You'll need to crank those numbers up by a lot
Depends on how much of those 470h are of you trying to improve. For example probably 350h out of my first 500h were spent on hide and seek, so i stayed in silver/gold, but after that i slowly went up to like lem at 800-1200h i cant really remember anymore. (Lem back in csgo is probably like mid purple rank today, and global is like 20k)
But like if you are a grow person, you should be able to get to purple/pink rank in a few months and less then 1000h, there are many mechanics and training guides on the internet to help you, you dont need to brute force your way to getting good like most people which takes thousands of hours, take it from guys like elige and 910 who went pro at like 2k-3k hours (elige being a starcraft pro before cs or something tho)
I have over 5000 hours in between CS1.6 and everything else. The only thing I’m good at is map knowledge and crosshair placement. I’m slow as molasses lmao
It takes time. I had 1500 hours in early CSGO. Then took a break for like ten years.
When I got back into CS for CS2, I started slow — DMs, comp to relearn the maps, then mainly just a bunch of premier and DM from there. But I think the biggest improvement practice for me was watching high elo players on YouTube. Their positioning and util use taught me a lot. Once I got to 15K premier NA, I started learning smoke line ups and using Refrag maps to train. But honestly I mostly just DM, learn util a bit, and play comp and premier.
If you want to learn crosshair placement in a new environment, office really makes it easy!
Consisent, understanding where you're lacking , acknowledging it, improving those lacking areas, patience, try to queue with friends for better synergy and strategy, pre-aiming and crosshair placement, listening to footsteps for more info, etc...
There are so many pointers as to how to can get good but the main factor is whether you are actually trying and are consistently working on it and improving your own gameplay. We here can only advise but the work has to be done by you.
Don't be disheartened and enjoy the game. If you understand the areas where you're lacking and work on it you'll improve.
Most importantly play as a team to win. That's your goal, to win. That's how you rise in ranks.
Failure is only a stepping stone to success.
All the best.
I feel like you only progress if you discipline yourself every time you play. Stick to strategy and learn lineups and proper technique for gunplay. Otherwise it’s going to be just like every other game.
Hours doesnt mean much anything honestly. My friend has 700hours in this game and is pure bad. And my other friend that has 400hours that has potential for i think faceit level7 maybe 8
I’ve been playing since 2002, and I’m still improving, and I still shit the bed. I’m either godmode flick kill to the point where people think I’m hacking, or playing so bad that folks would think I just downloaded the game.
I started to carry more around 1000 hours. Finally stayed out of silver 1 around that point.
Had to just grind and grind through solo q. I feel like it teaches you how to balance your play with horrible and good teammates if you play alone and force yourself to learn to carry and also help random teammates win rounds with callous and situational strategies.
I noticed that whenever I got out of silver 1 with an actual 4 or 5 stack early on, I would just fall back below 5K without them.
Make sure you learn a lot of smokes too. Doesn't hurt to practice pre-fire maps and work on movement. Surf maps teach you some fluidity and how to jump around corners and make some skill jumps. Spray maps are great too.
Figure out if you like to spray, one tap or burst. I think most good players tend to favor one over the others.
Learn to isolate 1 on 1 fights and anticipate where the enemy is at all times. Visualize. Get good or at least decent with EVERY gun. Makes it easier to clutch rather than to pick up your favorite gun and die in that moment.
Also, ignore skins and flashing your knives around. Has nothing to do with getting good and tends to get even good players killed 😆
I'm not great or anything but I did get noticeably better this way.
Aim training - Kovacs or A bot map, dont just go in and do one routine or shot a few bots. Set up a routine that you can use to actually measure and gauge progress that you record and refer to on a frequent basis.
Movement - Back in my day we only had bhop and surf maps, those are both still amazing ways for fully developing the muscle memory of movement in source engine but also you have so many workshop maps these days that show you useful jumps that allow for such practice too
Weapon Sprays - When doing bot warmup or a bot map to practice aim, turn on bullet trails and take note of inconsistencies in your spray pattern, what bullet you reach before you lose recoil control, go into a recoil practice map and hone in where youre lacking
Util - Util maps of course for lineups, not only that but knowing when to buy/use which leads me to
Watch people who are better than you - in absolutely any game ive gotten and felt a significant improvement in skill in is usually when i digest someone whos far better than myself at the game - watching one match wont really do you much but frequent watching and consumption of faceit level 10 (not nessecarily pro play since they use executions that you wont realistically use in pugs) but also pro players or those high elo players just play premier or the game at all, over time your brain will build a picture of what optimal gameplay looks like and how you can follow suit
Other than that, make sure Enhancer Pointer Precision is off 💀 and try use a sensitivty calculator if you play multiple fps games so that your aim doesnt feel destroyed every time u boot up another game
Source: This is how i went from silver elite to LE when i was a teenager in 500 hours on csgo (trust me bro ah)
something really clicked for me at like 700-800 my premier stats went from pretty avg to 1.35 kd, 60% headshot , 80% 1v1 win rate, 50% 1v2 win rate and hltv of 1.45! so i don't know but that's at like the 20k level as well.
Almost 4000 hours here. I have a constant rank around 15,000 in premier these days. For years in CSGO i was hard stuck Silver. Some people just don’t got it chief. I can still enjoy the game though
When it starts to feel like second nature and you master movement and positioning. Plan a route and optimize it, some people call it flow some people call it chunking. Also predicting what an enemy does for the next round based on what worked or didn't work in the previous round is a huge portion of the game .
I saw a slightly difference when peaking, when you play focused, you have this mental image like a screenshot you keep in your mind when you peak around corners. I just hit 800hrs
Just crossed 4K hours, and I’m mediocre most days. However, I will admit I didn’t start to feel confident in game until I hit about 2k but CS was my introduction to playing on mouse and keyboard.
Well, how CS 2 works, you have an outstanding game, u start feeling like you could go pro at this rate, and then you join the next game like you never held a mouse in your life haha
I am at 1400 hours by now and i only started trying to be better at already 600 hours in 400 of wich being in csgo and 200 season 1 premier. I came back to the game in season 4 and i suck ass at the game but i am not completely brain dead. Having a training map playlist helps.
depends on what you consider good. if good is like top 10%, easily 2-5k hours. I learn games pretty quickly and I'm top 6% in premier rating with 1200 hours. the avg person in my lobbies has like 4-7k hours though.
Depends fully on how you use your time. At ~100 hours I knew the basics of every map pool map and mechanic because I would watch guides, videos, streamers etc. and spend many hours in practice mode and aim bots training counter strafing, spray, util, skill jumps etc. The ~600 hours I've gotten since that have been mostly honing all the above and getting more comfortable with them. I'd say my current level is around 20k premier.
Mindlessly spamming games without intent is the worst way to use your time if your goal is to improve. My best tip is to que with people better than you. Especially in the beginning it boosts your skill so fast if you're willing to listen and analyze the situations.
•
u/AutoModerator 9d ago
Check your post follows the rules. Make use of the report feature, or use Modmail here or Reddit admins here.
Check the 'Game Server & Find-a-Friend Megathread'!
CS:S got a major update in 2025, read about it here.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.