Written on February 23, 2008 by eklipz
Deathmatching: Effective, or non-sense?
Filed Under Community Discussion
I think everyone will agree deathmatching is entertaining. It’s always fun to deathmatch, it gives you a sense of freedom. Freedom to run guns blazing through a map without the worry of death. However, the question remains: Is deathmatching effective from the competitive gamers vantage point?
The argument stands. Will deathmatching help your aim and contribute to better gun control when firing your weapon? Many think so, I have to agree. Like anything in life, the more you do something the better you get. Why then do I see players continue to hound deathmatching, ranting about the ineffectiveness it causes in the competitive gamers mind. One point comes to mind, considering there is no “downtime” in deathmatch, it causes the player to act in a chaotic, non-tactical fashion. Of course there is the possibly this playing style will carry over in matches, or scrims.
My take on deathmatch is; restrict the amount of deathmatch you play, yet deathmatch continuously. There are many useful skills you will learn from deathmatch, just as there are un-useful ones.
Share Your Opinion - Do you think deathmatch is effective, if so, how should it be used?
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Yeah, I’d have to agree. I play it in moderation(about every other day) but when I do, I make sure that I’m there for a good 300-400 kills and I only practice one gun per session. You definitely don’t want to overplay a DM to where it becomes your new found play style, lol.
Deathmatch helps me react faster to certain situations. When it comes down to scrim time & practicing with my team, I know it’s time to get serious and the only thing I’ve pulled away from the DM is the skill and control.
There is a downside to DM if played with an improper mindset. But with a right one, it’s a GREAT tool.
The CSDM mod has become very popular within the 1.6 community, with many of the servers being filled nearly 24/7 with players. The more popular servers have developed regular players as well as long waiting lines for those without secured spots. However, the question still remains – does the deathmatch mod actually benefit competitive players?
The answer, quite simply, is yes. Now, assuming that you’re a competitive player, chances are you and your teammates don’t have completely matching schedules. Here is where deathmatch (and a combination of other things) can truly come in to benefit your own individual play. If say, you come home daily around 8 o’clock but your teammates don’t show up until 9, that’s an hour you can use to benefit your own personal skill. Surely, CSDM can be pretty boring for more than a short period of time, and also burn you out. What you may want to do is make the most of that hour of down-time using a combination of what I consider the only definite way of improving your game.
Deathmatch, as previously stated, has no down time and provides a great way to warm your aim up and/or get used to certain aspects of the game. Sound recognition, recoil, movement, and more can be fine-tuned in CSDM. However, I do not suggest playing CSDM for an hour before your practice. Using the time you have, hit up your local CSDM server for 10-20 minutes, depending on how you feel. Only use it to get warmed up, and then you can move onto the next step. Next, load up a demo of yours and watch the important gun rounds and critique your own play. If you only watch the major gun rounds, this should kill nearly 20-25 minutes, which afterwards you still have some downtime to move away from your monitor, and do your thing before sitting down for your teams practice.
Obviously, this is just a sample of what you can do to use both CSDM and your own demos to benefit your game. Endless hours of CSDM won’t do anything for your competitive game, but combining it with even a semi-serious schedule like csdm, a demo, and team practice can benefit your individual game greatly.
It basically comes down to what game you are playing, I’m a cod series player and death matching was very helpful for cod 1 and 2 where individual skill had a huge impact on the game. However in cod4 with comms and pure teamwork overtaking skill based play DMs become more of a counter to your advancement, however they do provide the opportunity for a player to practice effective walling skills. Personally I think the worst thing a player can do is pug with players he has never been on a team with, pugs teach extremely bad habits and dumb down your team skills, they make you more self dependent rather then team dependent which is a big mistake for certain games.
personally.. when i deathmatch.. it makes me run in and die in scrims.. so for ME deathmatching is bad
I use DM’s to learn how players react in a 1v1 situation to understand how they will react in certain areas of the map and to learn how to better protect myself and to aim better.