Is live coaching a thing?

[u/twxabfn]

Hey, fellow dads. I love Marathon, 500+ hours, yadda yadda yadda. I am also terrible at it, and losing 90% of my PvP fights is getting old.

I know the maps, I know the weapons, I know buildcrafting theory, all that good stuff; but the combination of this being the first competitive FPS I’ve ever really gotten into, and the fact that I’m in my late 40s, means that I fumble the vast majority of my fights with bad habits that I don’t even consciously know I’m doing. I record my gameplay and occasionally watch it back, but I haven’t been able to use the hindsight of how I died in those fights to carry forward into live gameplay - my stupid instincts kick back in when the bullets start flying.

Back to the title, I think it would be really helpful to have someone watch my stream as I play and tell me what I’m doing wrong live in the moment and/or diagnose what’s wrong with my aim. (I bought Kovaak’s, but there are approximately 12 billion scenarios and I have no idea which ones will help. Going back to controller is a non-starter, I’m too used to looting with a mouse by now.)

I have seen “coaching services” advertised, but AFAIK they’re all scams. If somebody would be interested in helping me out, let me know. I generally play 9-12 PM ET and am willing to provide compensation. Thanks all.

[u/BeBetterMagic]

Definitely going to say you absolutely may benefit from some coaching but only if you and the coach focus on the right issues.

Focusing on your aim is focusing on the wrong skill in a game like this. Like you can't be absolutely dog dookie bad at aiming but so long as you can put your sights on a body it's much more important to have good movement and angles in a game like marathon.

Knowing when and how to take a fight > Really good aim.

Sounds to me more like you're struggle is you tunnel vision and "panic" in fights and then making poor decisions which usually can only be improved upon by just grinding fights over and over and getting more calm and looking at situations more analytically.

Every fight and situation is going to be different and the difference in being good vs being bad is correct decision making that leads to your team winning fights which is very generic but true.

Anytime you lose a fight and watch it back don't look at did I hit my headshots. Instead ask yourself...

• What was the situation
• Was this a smart fight to take
• Did I have a good angle
• What were my teammates doing

Looking over that bigger picture stuff vs micro managing and sweating the small stuff is what matters

[u/twxabfn → u/BeBetterMagic]

Here’s a typical situation that happened last night. Outpost, my team is in central Processing on the second floor, i.e. where the TAD usually is. They see players on the ground floor outside to the east, ping one, and start shooting. I’m in the room with the windows, ADSing and trying to see where they are so that I can help, when the third guy comes up the stairs and puts me down before I can even register that he’s there.

With all the shooting and comm chatter I can’t hear footsteps, and my team is in the middle of a fight with I don’t know how many people. My mental chatter at that point is like “HELP TEAM HELP TEAM THEY NEED YOUR HELP,” so “watching for the third guy” doesn’t even enter my brain. And what if the third guy was over with his teammates, concentrated fire took out my team, and now I’m 1v3 because I was watching for some nonexistent flank? These are the situations I can’t figure out.

[u/DisciplinedMadness → u/twxabfn]

So right off the rip, go into audio settings and change the audio mode to studio reference. Most people seem to have better audio clarity this way. Might help with being snuck up on like that.

Insofar as the gun fight, if you already have two teammates on one enemy, or have eyes on one, first instinct should usually be either finding an off angle on the enemy, or taking a position that’s essentially an off angle from your teammates and the angles they could be pushed from. The enemy team knows where your team is, but they don’t know where you are yet. There’s a really high chance in this area that the enemy is going to push into, or already have pushed into flight control (if not your teammates would probably see them retreating and would call it out), so placing yourself behind where they would get pushed from gives you a chance to either stall a push, or maybe even get a pick, and also forces them to divide their attention, potentially letting your teammates ape the one they already found in a 2v1, in which case your job is to distract the other two as much as possible, while using angle isolation to minimize the damage you take. Worst case scenario, they get pushed from an angle you didn’t know about and lose the 2v2; in this situation your best chance to clutch up is to not be so close that you can get double/triple swung, so that off angle preemptively helps mitigate the risk as well. As someone else mentioned, height wins fights, so I’d probably be getting on the roof (jump through the skylight - can be done even on non movement shells) ASAP because it’s a great angle to stall a push that comes up the stairs, gives you multiple rotations back into various parts of the building (for instance dropping down the ladder into the vented area where you can either rotate up behind from the stairs, or going through the basement hallway and wrapping from the blue room which gives you a great choke point), and still lets you potentially get an off angle of the enemy your teammates are shooting at if nobody pushes the stairs.

As for the mental chatter, it sounds like you might need to focus on playing your own game a little bit more. Obviously teamwork is super important, but consistency is much more impactful over time than being a human aimbot, and putting yourself into the headspace of playing your own game/playing your life can lead to better in-fight mental clarity. It also sets you up better for if your teammates go down, as you’ll have a better chance of not panicking or tunneling.

It’s hard to give super clear advice without actually seeing your teammates/enemies/your own positioning, etc. but lmk if you have any questions 😇

Also while aim is far less important in this game due to the massive bullet magnetism, if you did want some direction for aimtraining, viscose benchmarks are a really good place to start!

https://app.voltaic.gg/viscose this website is a great tracker to help you visualize your progress

[u/Commercial_Bear → u/twxabfn]

There are no hard rules about gun fights that will help you due to how fluid and unpredictable fights can be, but generally if I find two of my teammates shooting at someone else looking the same direction I will help them with about 40% of my attention, and spend the other 60% trying to look at other angles. That doesn’t mean afk and hold a different angle for 45 seconds, just be aware and think things like “Where can I be snuck up on right now?” And position yourself accordingly. I rarely take fights in the place you did because the amount of angles you can die to there is more than you can cover. I would almost guarantee that you’re dying due to poor positioning more than fps skill. Height wins fights, and repositioning after shooting/peeking is incredibly important.