Will Counter-Strike coaching evolve?

Recently, CS professionals STYKO and EliGE have shared the fact that they have employed the services of aim coaches. Such moves are relatively new to Counter-Strike: while aiming is considered an important aspect to Counter-Strike, professionals usually improve their skill in this venture with deathmatching, or training with Counter-Strike maps such as “aim_botz”, or full bespoke suites such as Refrag (EliGE partly owns Refrag, after acquiring it from ESEA).

CS, as is typical, is late to the party. VALORANT and Overwatch have diverse aim coaching scenes, and professionals have been already engaging the services of professionals.

But aiming is just one of many potential areas of the game where an external observer might be useful.

Let’s take a look at traditional sports

Shooting coaches are present in both football, basketball, and hockey, even if the meaning of shooting differs. Football also has coaches for each of the positions on the pitch, such as a defensive coach. Baseball has pitching, hitting and fielding coaches. Tennis has serving and footwork coaches.

In short, there are a lot of skill isolation practices embedded in traditional sports. It makes sense, when you think about it. Coaches may be fantastic at individual aspects of a sport, but not capable of putting the entire piece together for themselves: but they can impart their knowledge to those who can.

Esports are continually learning from traditional sports: it makes sense to follow in their footsteps in how we train elite individuals.

Making the unintended, deliberate

All professional players have exceptional aim: but for most, it comes without deliberate effort. The risk here is that, without extrinsically understanding what makes you great, these silent habits could disappear, and compromise your skill level.

From my amateur analysis, ZywOo is a textbook example of “calm aim”, a descriptor within aiming communities to describe players who maintain a low tension within their aim for the majority of their gameplay. This is one of the things that allows him to have the exceptional accuracy that he does. It would be inappropriate to change it, but it might be valuable for him to have the insight into that aspect of his skill.

Xyp9x, towards the end of his career, demonstrated the exact opposite. Watching him felt like seeing someone vice-grip his mouse, and it meant that during close engagements, his aim would be shaky and inaccurate. At the time I posited that his mouse was too light, but maybe his aiming technique had atrophied during his extended sick leave, and actually, what he needed was an aiming coach to help him understand what had gone wrong, and unlock the aim that he had years ago.

What else could you isolate?

As mentioned earlier, aiming has emerged as a mini-industry. Aim coaches and specialised aim training software has emerged to allow players to optimise this specific skill. Aiming has, itself become a competitive game.

But aiming is hardly the only skill present in Counter-Strike: if it were, aim coaches would be playing the game, rather than helping from the sidelines.

Take movement. The way that you navigate the map, and position your character, helps give you advantages over your opposition: whether it is getting to a location faster because you efficiently take your steps, or by making your player character as difficult as possible to hit¹. With isolation game modes for movement already existing in the form of KZ, and a plethora of talented individuals within that community, why not enlist one of them to coach you?

Taking a leaf out of football’s book, what about abstracting aspects of team play? You could translate a set-piece coach into an executes coach. Refrag already has tooling to simulate defending against executes, as well as game modes such as executes² and retakes. Attack and defence coaches translate into coaches for specific roles.

But we might be getting ahead of ourselves here.

For one, budgetary constraints mean that teams may not be able to afford all of this extra personnel. Equally, with only 5 players to coach, it may make more sense for the primary coach to take on these roles. Football teams have 20-30 people to train, and to get playing on the same page, which means that you need assistance. A 5 man team does not face this issue.

Another caveat is that with 5 players, each player has much more space to play uniquely, compared to football. Taking away that individuality might do more harm than help, if coaches are too prescriptive. It dulls their natural instinct, but also, makes them more predictable and readable. If role coaches do come into fashion, they will need to take care to manage the balance.

“If Phil Jackson came back, still no coaching me”

ZywOo is one of the all-time Counter-Strike greats. He has never been below the 2nd best player in the world throughout this professional career.

He is notable in that he doesn’t play deathmatch. He does play KZ and surf, but only for fun. His primary mode of practice is just playing the game as intended, a 5v5 game against other players.

donk is a phenom, equalling the all-time Big Event record at his debut at Katowice, at the age of 16 years old. He is the best rifler in the world right now. He too does not play deathmatch, choosing to prefer 5v5 competitive games.

You cannot ignore these two stories. Some of the best talents in the game eschew traditional wisdom, and instead rise to greatness by just playing the game as intended. If these players don’t even play the pre-requisites to employing aim coaching, how can we expect them to go that step further?

It spills cold water on the idea that aim training is necessary to be a good player.

Counter-Strike has always looked away from the latest advances in technology. ZOWIE mice, despite having been leapfrogged technically, remain stalwarts amongst top players. Aim trainers have had limited take up, with players sticking to deathmatch, and custom maps such as aim_botz³. Yet despite this, players who struggle to break through in Counter-Strike go on to light up the world in other titles: and this has led to a tradition within CS to keep things the way that they are.

More than just being exceptions, these players actively inhibit the growth of coaching in the scene. New players will always follow in the example of those ahead of them. From taking configs and gear, copying is rampant, and the routines of professionals are studied by many. EliGE is a truly elite level player, and his uptake of coaching has changed the course of it’s use in Counter-Strike, but until the once-in-a-lifetime player emerges, backed by coaches aplomb, convincing the rest of the scene will be a difficult endeavour.

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