Daniel KapadiaVerified account

When we talk about "game sense" or "awareness", we can build this intuitive sense through trial and error by simply putting in the hours; this approach is less efficient than if we were to apply active rational thinking in our approach in conjunction with our training. 2/14

We can start by recognising/identifying principles. These are laws that everything else ties back into. In anything competitive, the most crucial principle to understand is advantage and disadvantage. Given a specific context, at any time, you are in one of these two states. 3/14

2 big modifiers in assessing advantage and disadvantage in tac fps. Timing & Positioning. These both serve to strengthen or weaken engagements or modify the number of options. Timing can buy you position. Position can buy you timing. Timing + Position = Rotation. 4/14

A rotation timing functions to create a better / worse position than your opponent with more / less options. This is why delaying as the defenders is so important. Buying time for rotations for defenders creates better position / more options and lessens them for attackers. 5/14

Being out of position is also an important concept to think about. What constitutes being "in position"? It's about knowing what comes next and setting yourself up to have an advantage against that. Being out of position is the opposite. 6/14

As we build out, we can break things down into smaller parts, but remember, it all ties into advantage or disadvantage. Engagements follow their own rules of advantage: mechanics/aim, reactions, angle distance, tactical, macro, psychology/meta, teamplay/setups etc. 7/14

Options: In anything competitive, having a large number of options allows you more strategical and tactical diversity, more ways to find advantage, less predictability. It also allows you more opportunity to react or to control the way your opponent reads the game state. 8/14

Instead of following this with more and more breakdowns of each idea, I wanted to offer another way to look at analysing gameplay to improve. How do we know why something is good, or bad? Being outcome oriented is extremely foolish, as is hindsight analysis. 9/14

Instead we need to strive to understand the principles at play, how they relate to each other, and how they bring us to our ultimate goal that our framework exists around: creating advantage. 10/14

Poker is most analogous because there's no perfect answer. We have to understand as much as we can and then play the perceived percentages. We have to understand enough to be able to put a play on a "range" so we can create consistency. 11/14

Especially in a game like @PlayVALORANT, it's vital to have these core analytical skills as a player. This game will change constantly and you will need to be able to understand it and read it to keep up and have longevity. 12/14

The mechanical ceiling is also lower than CS. This means that, again, it's the smart and dedicated players that will have the longest careers. You have to be honest with yourself, as a competitor: are you doing the right work? Are you open to finding out what that work is? 13/14