Rules to Play By

This is a good set of rules by Trajan from the mlg forums on using meta-gaming and decision-making to improve.

AT ALL TIMES, YOU SHOULD...

1) Build an advantageMake the kill as easy as possible. To get an advantage, you should always be trying to...

1a) Trap your opponent
This is when you want to build up the advantage by closing off his options and forcing him to react to the battle.
- At the earliest stages of a kill (still searching for a target)...You want to do this is use a power position or power weapon for the other guy to "fall into". Just wait for the other guy to wander into your awareness and then you can start the kill. Having a powerful position or weapon means when the other guy runs into you, you'll have a default advantage in getting the kill.

- In the middle stages of the kill (target acquired, shots not yet fired)...Find a way to open the battle to put as much damage on the other guy as possible while keeping yourself as safe as possible. Usually, you'll just have to go back to the same thing you always do: start jammin' that R trigger. But, if you can safely assume that he doesn't know where you are yet, maybe you should throw a nade instead of opening with shots. Be creative, there are usually a lot of different ways you can open up a battle if you've got the advantage in the opener.

- In the ending stages of the kill (he's weak, let's go for the finish)...You're not home free until he's dead! In the wild, a wounded animal is the most dangerous animal because it knows exactly what it needs to do to survive and it is gonna get desperate. This is true in Halo as well. So, if he's in a position where you don't know exactly what's going on, you still need to treat the kill with caution. This especially includes (but isn't limited to) any time when the other guy gets into cover before he dies. So, you need to close off his options by giving him something to react to, like a grenade to flush him out.

1b) Getting more info
Sometimes, you can't build up a big enough advantage to the point where going for the finish is reasonable. Or, even if you have the other guy completely trapped, maybe you don't have the resources (shields, nades, ammo) to go for the finish. So, you need to give the other guy another chance for him to fall into your awareness. Let him go for now and see what he does and in the mean time, just call it out for your teammates. Maybe they're in a position where they can do something....


2) Neutralize their advantage
Unless you're VASTLY more skilled than the other guys, you'll be in a lot of battles where you can't necessarily win by just reacting. So, you'll need to get away from that battle to force them to pull back for more info. Now there's basically two ways to do this:

2a) Find a counter for their tool
This means either neutralizing their weapon's effectiveness or their positioning advantage. Each weapon has a counter. You can out-strafe a BR, you can knock a sniper out of scope, and you can run from a mauler.
The exception is the rockets. They're a pure awareness weapon where if the other guy has some sort of awareness advantage, you are in big trouble (unless you're fighting Puckett). So you simply need to avoid the battle and engage by sneaking up. That means doing stuff like:
- Making sure to only approach the battle if you've got high ground
- Jump away from walls and floors if they see you
- Being very careful when checking Green Hall if it's Pit TS and the game is in a standoff
- Etc.

To counter their position, you usually just get tricky when using cover. Typically that means putting yourself in a spot where they can't shoot you and they have to do something else like chuck a nade or pursue a melee. But don't assume cover means that you're safe. A good player WILL find a good way to pursue, so do what you can to make your getaway as difficult to chase. Check out here at 14:30 on the game clock when Lunchbox gets trapped in a teamshot. Instead of dropping off the pillar and hiding around the corner at the bottom of the base (like everybody does), he guesses (correctly) that they might nade there and instead hides in the carbine blocks to safety. By the way, a weak Lunchbox is a VERY difficult kill to chase, even when compared with most of the other pros.

2b) Keep them guessing
Suppose you ran into the carbine block every single time you were weak. Another player would no longer nade the base corners and instead just go right for the carbine blocks. A smart enemy can figure out player tendencies and will attack them. If you don't ever use all your available options when you play, the other guy will treat the situation the same as you as not having any.

A great way to keep people guessing is to be unpredictable just for the sake of it. Sometimes doing unnecessary things - like popping back out one more time just to put on one more shot, or juking at weird moments to surprise the guy later down the line, or picking a really weird strafe - can go a long way. If a guy is weak and nades himself into a little corner, maybe just charge through the nade. He'll second guess himself next time he's weak.

Sometimes not doing something is just as important. Suppose I'm playing Onslaught CTF and I'm in the B Carbines when I get the first two shots on someone Top B. If that guy starts returning fire, maybe I should just run away into my Flag and call him out for a teammate. To him, it's a situation where I'd logically pop out to finish him so he has to wait for my attack, but I can just take the moment to start shooting at someone else while he gets ambushed by my teammate.

Pros used to say back in the H2 days that they would treat a weak Strongside completely differently than any other kill and I think they would say similar things now about a player like Pistola. Presenting yourself as one of those players will make someone much more hesitant before going for the trap on you. Of course, this doesn't mean throw your life away for the sake of unpredictability, but this means take calculated and creative risks. You want to be the one controlling the tempo, not the other guy...After you've exhausted LITERALLY everything that you can come up with for rules 1 and 2, you have only one last resort and that's to...


3) Do something crazy!
When the battle gets into the "desperation" stages for either player, the situation becomes really different. Most players play these moments by reflex and do their "go-to crazy something", like going for the ninja assassination or waiting one second behind the corner and then jumping out to "surprise" the other guy with your jump back.

You ever noticed how rarely these things work?I mean actually try your hardest to give the other guy something really weird to work with. Try to do something that you've never seen anybody do before ever. Use geometry to make your strafe weird. Or, if you're shots down, not running away and simply going into out-BR mode can really freak a guy out.

One of the best "do something crazy" moments I've seen came from Mackeo in Dallas '08. Watch from Legend's PoV with 26:10 left on the clock when Mackeo Gandhi-hops off the Flag block to get the out-BR. Notice that Soldier187 was actually teamshooting with Legend. Both of them just missed tons of shots because they had no idea what Mackeo was up to.

You don't want to go into "do something crazy" mode all the time, or else you'll just be on of those kids who gets backsmacked while going for the ninja over and over again. But, you do want to use your creativity when it comes to getting out of situations. Nothing is ever too weird....

Random things to keep in mind:

- You can get out of any situation if you spot the escape soon enough
- Use all your information, like new spawns, power-ups, or the sound of someone's gun reloading in your headphones to judge when the advantage changes
- Always respond, never react- Little things help! Things like putting your head down and making it look like you're gonna Strongside away can make a juke look much more convincing
- Don't over-estimate your opponent - anybody can be trapped if you do it properly
- Focus your efforts! Your goal is the objective of the game (kills, flag, ball-time, hill), not getting the kill
- It's okay to choke, you'll have another shot, just relax
- Don't think about trying to have a certain playstyle when you play the game. Just make the rightest choice you can think of every time. You'll learn what your strengths are and later that will affect your choices, which will create your own style
- If you have a weakness, don't hide from it, work on it...

So there you have it, my personal rules on individual skill. They may not work for you as well as they work for me, but it's what's gotten me as far as I've come. I just try to pick whether the situation calls for building my advantage, neutralizing theirs, or doing something crazy and as long as I pick right, things end up going okay.

They all sound really really simple and you probably read this and thought "this is obvious". And really, it should be. But, too many players lose sight of the bigger picture and freak out and get too focused on one thing so they stop improving. I'm just articulating this thought so you can see the bigger picture spelled out for you and have an easier time pinpointing your problem when you come up short. Whenever I fail, I just reflect and ask myself if I didn't do a good enough job of building the advantage, neutralizing the advantage, or if I could've done something crazier.