if enemy takes remaining shard it will give off a clue to their location.

Good point, I hadn't thought of that.

Floorpie would be less obvious TBH.

I'm no pro but I think it's just mainly because they're moving in such a way, they generally miss the last ones. No sense in back tracking for 5hp or 5a.

But maybe there is a reason... and that's why they're awesome... and I'm not. :'(

I think it is very often just a mistake/not giving a fuck.

On Lost World though, I think that if your opponent is waiting for you in the central area, they will not hear any of the shards except the closest one. Perhaps there are other situations like that on other maps.

Should have said mistake/not giving a fuck/being in a hurry like wormed said.

the lost world example is correct, i remember czm talking about that on some stream ages ago.

Everyone was like : O
SHIEEEEEEEEEEEET CZM

you know what man? just take it... take the extra 5 armor you cheap bitch

it's not intentional

Yes. In that video he just didn't have priority to pick up every each one of them because situation was more important

i think its mostly begin in a rush to get a better position and by consequence not giving a fuck about shards at that particular moment

but I admit I asked myself the same question once or twice because sometimes they even get by a 25hp

Taking hp or shards may both compromise how quickly you can get to where you wanna be which is often much more important, also leaving hp bubbles behind means you may later on fall back on them. Sometimes it's just a mistake though

This. Even if it sometimes only takes half a second extra to pick it up, it can make a huge difference if you need to be somewhere fast

Guys, look at tox. It looks so damn intentionall that I don't think it isn't. Look at the vod for a min until he is at the 5hp by the mega. He literally jumps over the last. If he doesn't pick it up because of the sound theory, then he is doing a bad job because his jump and landing makes "unwanted" sounds.

Maybe only tox and rapha have a true explanation, maybe they are just sloppy. It makes sense that if they were to miss a shard, leaving it behind is better than stopping your momentum in movement.

I think leaving stuff up is not to give away location and jumping over some is just sloppy.

also i always love when they damage themselves to take away health bubbles from the opponent.

Yeah, love it when big bubbles gets denied and love it even more when you get to wee the other guy desperately looking for the denied bubbles :)

when he jumps over its with the flow of his overall movement for speed and positioning, he's really not thinking about 5hp and they know each others position simply based on the flow of the game and timing of the items. the shards and bubbles are almost inconsequential.

It doesn't look terribly intentional in the video, however I _have_ seen players do this very intentionally.

I wondered about this myself. I'm not really sure of the reason. The only thing I can think of is:

A. Sound. (Cannot hear the last shard as was stated in this thread already.)

B. Appearance. (The last shard can be seen, but the others cannot, meaning that picking up the last one would indicate the enemy had been there).

Someone explained this on stream quite some time ago. If I remember correctly the idea was to leave it up, so if you return to the spot you have an indicator if they will spawn soon.

If you'd pick up all of them, you couldn't tell if they will spawn soon or if they did spawn already and the opponent picked them up just 10 seconds ago.

Naturally this theory sounds rather prone to error and stupid, so you might wanna take it with a grain of salt.

This could really be it. Its better than not having any technique for timing the shards. Thanks for sharing!

Your overanalyzing it mang. Getting to a good positiong quickly is more important than 2 shards.

They're just checking their item privilege.

The shards don't perplex me that much, but the ammo really bugs me... Sometimes I can't understand why they don't pick up extra lg or rocket ammo when they're really quite low... Really bugs me, specially the lg, you can never have too much lg ammo...

Yeah! That was what I noticed too. Sometimes it looks, that they deliberately miss the crates. And sometimes it can be punishing. I have a link on other PC to a situation, on ztn. Tox having 1 RG slug, going through midle to the RA TP. He went besides RG, ammo box, but didn't pick either. Got killed by opponent which could be hesitant to go for him if he hit ht rail. Actually I found that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V30sPL8NMY0&t=5m08s
Watch what happens at 5:10 game time, and what follows.

perhaps to make the other player think they've capped out their armour?

Tox doesn't need health, health needs tox!

This reminds me of something else:

Say a player is 83 HP / 100 armor. Many times I see pros just walk right by several 25 HP bubbles even though they'd benefit from 17 of the 25 HP in the bubble.

Then, in their next fight, they die even though their LG(or whatever) is right where it should be. Their opponent is left alive with, say, 1-15 HP and no armor. I do not understand this behavior. Are they trying to save those bubbles for the extra EIGHT HP that they'd get after the fight, should they get lucky and live? And what if their opponent sees it, mid fight?! They just walk right over it and live!

Many times, also, they put their xhair right on it, and, as they're walking towards it, just walk around it in similar hp/armor situation. But they do it while not fight. It's like they say to themselves, 'oh.. hit point?! fuck that. HIT POINTS IS LAVA, can't step on it!!'

I can see doing that with the 50 HP bubble if you want even get 20-25 hp from it, but yellow and green bubbles?!

audio cues + (more importantly) giving free cues of your last position

request:
can the player in control drop poop, so it's easier to track him sync?

Brilliant. Perhaps scent trails? maybe smell-o-vision is just the innovation ID needs to get quake back in the spotlight!

I did not check the video.

I can however imagine shards/hp bubbles are left out for sound or location clues. I don't do this in QL as the sound ques are so bad anyway. However, in Q2 this is very common tactic for higher skilled games. There are certain maps where you have to take a route and if you leave a shard/bubble there you will trigger the location of your enemy.

5/5 thread!