Hello guys, in a very spontaneous way, Kevin Strenx Baéza asked me if we could do a Lost World lesson together. We did a very simple setup with Teamspeak and Fraps, and some basic editing. The goal was to keep this production lightweight, so that more of these could be made with a sustainable effort. The lesson is mainly a discussion, and went over three topics:
1 - Starting spawns
2 - How to catch your opponent
3 - Dealing with "the opponent is everywhere!" problem.
nice job, it's interesting that what a quaker has to think in a couple of seconds needs lot of time to be explained
the tactical level of the game is insane :)
i'd like to see a "spawn raping" part where you explain where you want to be in the map when getting a frag and then how to catch the opponent after he respawns
Thank you very much for your work strenx! I really liked the kind words you spoke at the beginning of your video. I am happy for you! Wonderful to see that your life is filled with joy, allowing you to give out positivity to others.
Just a suggestion.. maybe I havent noticed, but It would be nice to upload your .cfgs for ql and shitmania while at it, like k1llsen did.Keep up the info about your mouse settings etc.
wow, i just discovered your new website.
very nice appearance, clean navigation, etc.. very good that you added the relevant educational content from your streams to have it all in one place. aerowalk lesson #1 is awesome, pure strenx. i also already watched the session with Memento_Mori, it is perfect to investigate initial spawns and i like the concept of having a second opinion to discuss. i am pretty impressed.
since you get lags/fps-drops when you are playing and recording at the same time, you could make demo analysis with ddk in his play-stop-discuss-play fashion, when you one day will run out of maps for lessons.
i think a website of a pro-player should have information about his hardware (mouse, dpi, etc.) and a download of his cfg.
thx for all the effort you put into the community to share your experience (wtf: a 47 min video means multiple hours of recording, rendering and uploading).
i hope to see you playing at dreamhack and wish you success with this project.
I've been watching the first 10 minutes of the lesson where you're discussing the possibilities that you have on ONE set of initial spawns. I think that's going everywhere and for a good reason, there's not one best way to work on certain spawns. It's all dependant on what your opponent is going to do.
Another problem I saw (or atleast thats my opinion) is that when memento makes a remark it's usually spot on and I understand his point of view and when strenx comments on those remarks he's usually right aswell. But sometimes it feels like strenx does not really get what memento mori is going at and memento doesn't seem to want to correct strenx when it does happen.
Well those are my impressions, they're what they are. I appreciate that you're taking your time doing that but I think it goes way too wide and you should keep it simple.
You have this spawn. OK. Here are your options depending on where your opponent spawned/might spawn and what are your options.
Actually while writing I think a better thing to have done might have been to actually both play out the first 20-25 seconds as if in a real match, actually firing at eachother if needed. Then after the first few moments have passed, stop and theorize on what happend, why one did this, why he should have done otherwise, etc.
I agree. First things first, there's plenty of material on the abstract stuff made by other people, explaining the rules of the game, but very little on situational play and concrete advices that go beyond that. What strenx is doing is the latter, which is good, but was done better in the aerowalk video than in lost world (at least the 15mins I saw).
The problem with the execution in lost world is that it seemed like it wasn't planned in advance, whereas in aerowalk it was clear there were specific points planned ahead. In aerowalk he explained what to do in three precise spawns, analyzing them in order and considering about 50% of where the opponent could have spawned, but in lost world there was no order and in the end he covered very little. Lets say in aero he talked about 33% of initial spawn play (especially missing rail, top rocket and shotgun), but in lost world it was 10% and it took 5 times more time. And this is acknowledging lost world is a bigger challenge because there's so many spawns.
I prefer strenx doing tutorials on his own and planning in advance what to say. Condense that experience.
The amount of planning here was minimal. At 5:30 we agreed on doing something, at 6:30 we were home and spawed a server, and a couple of hours later strenx started compressing the final video. Could not have been faster.
Indeed, MM needs to question strenx and correct him when he doesn't understand the question.
Also, discussing spawns. Strenx didn't recognize that mementos would not know where strenx spawned. Spawning at plasma, you don't know if rl is safe to take, which strenx just assumed since he himself spawned at mid level. Very poor deductive skills, but I guess its just lack of pedagogy and english skills rather than strenx not being able too deduct this.
Demons idea of playing out the start is better as well. Quite common as practise method we used in the q3 days.
Thank you for you remark, I will take this into account =p.
The main problem was not about deduction, lack of english or whatsoever, I reckon that I was just too excited explaining every situations. Due to that, I've forgotten the most important.
During the session, I have told to Memento Mori to correct myself if he did not agree with me, maybe he was too shy haha.
Anyways, your standpoint will help me a lot and I really appreciate.
"Actually while writing I think a better thing to have done might have been to actually both play out the first 20-25 seconds as if in a real match, actually firing at each other if needed. Then after the first few moments have passed, stop and theorize on what happened, why one did this, why he should have done otherwise, etc."
From what I have seen of training exercises this is exactly what is done but usually in private or with only a few select people.
I really don't get how people can "learn how to play" by showing some examples and going through what happens.
You simply end up with people that copy your actions but have hardly any clue as to why they do that... and they will fail on all other maps. (actually you'll fail in all non discussed / non remembered situations you come across)
It's (imo) much better to teach people how they can get information and how they should use that in order to come up with solutions to ingame problems themselves.
There are sooo many obvious things in quake that most players never think about.
There is no "correct way of playing" without understanding what your opponent is doing / will be doing.
For instance a player who tries to control a lot of items is very limited in his movement around the map. Usually you can pretty much hit direct rockets based on the pickup sounds of items.
Or a player that want to constantly pressure you, has to do so while staying in between you and the major items. Which also limits his options (Ofcourse he tries to limit your options a lot as well by constantly pressuring you). For instance if we take agents playstyle as described by strenx/momento he is unable to take the red armor because he is always at other places on the map.
You have to understand and use those limitations in your advantage. And those things are very subtle but they come from a deeper understanding of the game then just: "in this situation on this map it is better if I do this and that".
Strenx did a really good job with this. His website and the information he was sharing during the lesson could really help an aspiring player out.
It's ashamed someone like fatal1ty doesn't set up some instructional videos/tutorials for aspiring new players. It is no secret that he was one of the best Quake players, and the best FPS player of all time. Even though he hasn't been active within the Quake scene in some time I believe he is the sort of role-model aspiring quake players could look up to and learn a lot from. If he explained his thought process during some of his old duel demos (or practiced a little bit and played some new ones, which he would surely do very well at) I think it could motivate a lot of new players to try and become better. It is no secret he does a ton to give back to the community through hosting small tournaments, providing equipment for larger ones and being outspoken for the genre, this is something that would be nice to see.
As far as i can tell the whole conversation in the second part arose after MM tried to question strenx' logic in his desision to surprise/wait for opponent leaving RA unprotected. This worked out perfectly because opponent was obviously no match for strenx.
anyway this is a good start. very usefull for players who want to step up...
1. i suggest for strenx to try to get for a show match a stronger player. Who won't be too predictable because he is less skilled.
2. And another suggestion for strenx.tv - to analyse demos from several difficult matches from the past (like they did with rapha in ESL).