I would advice you to practice the details with repetition and the big picture with alternation. This way you will achieve best "skill locality" while still being able to combine different bigger, more complicated approaches, i.e. "connecting the dots".

What I mean by this is that you should start at the bottom and work your way up. You have problems with the bridge to rail jump; well practice it exclusively for 1 hour. If you only try it 10 times and then go on practicing different things, you won't remember what you did wrong and what you did right; you won't be able to train your muscle memory etc etc.

Then go to the next level. Pick a map and play it exclusively for a couple of days; Switching maps like crazy has the same effect as switching moves practice: you won't remember your mistakes, it is inefficient. After you've practiced enough, switch map.

Then still go one level up and start practicing the metagame. Start timing one item; try to time it the whole 10 minutes. Try to show up whenever it spawns; get a feeling for how long you need from the various parts of the map to that item's location, i.e. the latest point in time you can fuck around in other parts of the map before having to run to the item in order to show up in time.

Then start timing two items, to the second.

Then start trying things that worked well in one map on other maps, this is where you transpose your knowledge of one thing on top of your knowledge of another; this step needs creativity but also results in new things you haven't thought about.

Basically, start at the bottom, repeat, repeat, repeat (hint hint). Alternate (change practiced skill), repeat, repeat, repeat. Then go one level up and do it again.

This is the recommended way for learning every new skill btw; it applies equally well to Quake.

well said 2pak . also i would advice you to pay attention to what you do. you should ALWAYS know why you are going there or why you are doing this. dont run around randomly.
ive tought some absolute beginners and there are quite the same misstakes every time.

-dont take fights you cant win! enemy has a good stack you just spawned (mg and 100hp) run! cause u cant win that fight

-positioning is so important. you are in control of the map stay high or on the keypoints of the map. you are in a fight with yourself in a bad position? run!

-consider duel consisting of 2 games, defensive mod and offence mod.when the enemy has control play your defense play, when u shifted control switch to your offence play.

this is all very general and basic but i asume you are looking for elementary advice

good luck mate

And never PEEK to the MH from the front left side of the mega-room on QZDM13. : DDD

Man, I'm still laughing. :' D

that was fucking hilarious bro xD

XD

If I were to give myself advice about maps, I'd tell myself to practice all the maps right away. But then play them more then a few times before going on for the next map. It will change things up for you and always keep you on your toes, to give you new angles and ways of fighting.

I guess just practicing a couple of maps all the time works as well, but it sounds very dull. Then you'd have to start all the way from the beginning with the new maps. Maybe you can find tips and tricks yourself by playing different maps and see how those are played :: O.

Although you won't pick up much about the reasons for the overall decision making as a beginner, you can still learn the best weapon choices and combat decisions by watching demos of professional players, and also watching your own demos to see where you made mistakes.

I agree. When I watch my demos I'm constantly facepalming; it's like I'm watching a complete retard play :D

I don't have to watch demos for that. : D

watch memento mori's introduction videos, and then watch twister's introduction video's (twister's are more advanced)

link to mm's videos
http://www.esreality.com/index.php?a=post&id=2121334

very nice guides. I guess the main thing to improve my play will come with practice and it's something that memento_mori said in his guide number 3: knowing what to do in different situations, and knowing what things you should never do in certain situations.

You can always try to play vs. better opponents, but you should mix the oppponents skill level, so that you play vs. ppl at your own level, ppl, who are better, but it is also good to play ppl who are worse, because you can train different things this way. F.E.: playing vs. opponents who are worse than you, is good because you can train spawn control.
Also: know at which level you are and try to improve your own game and try to play at y o u r best level, rather than focusing on beating your opponent. Or as rapha once said (I'm rephrasing): Try to play at your best, so that, when you lose, it is because your opponent played extremely well, but not because you made some silly mistakes.
Btw:: Are you a sc2player (because of your nick)?

yes i play sc2: eu diamond terran ranamudjan#524 add me if you want customs or smth

i think the ideal opponent is someone slightly better . u know beatable but better. if u manage to switch control u play extra careful to not fuck it up again cause it took a lot of work to get the fucker outta control :) at least thats my experience with those opponents

about 200 ELO points above imo

Try watching better players' demos and notice why they are doing the things they do. I think that watching games is the most "un-punishing", if you will (I'm really tired but you understand what I mean) way of improving because you won't get killed or given negative feedback. Also its probably worth trying to play in control before you learn how to play out of control. At least try to learn both ways equally, because if you just play without confidence you'll never get control against a good player.

If you practise certain things like aim, movement, item timing and positioning, always remember that they go together and aren't totally separate things. These skills cross over and help eachother. Try to make sure your setup with hardware and config is set up nicely as well.

As ani said, it's good to practise the same map a few times in a row (3-5) to get a good feeling of it. There's a lot of things to consider though, like how your opponent is moving and playing, which can differ from one opponent to the next.

And when you think you've got the hang of duel...

GET UR ASS ON DEM TDM SERVERS

DM6 is super hard to play out of control on. A player with really good timing can pretty easily run all three items at least half the time against low-skill opponents. I'm not very good myself, but I would recommend focusing on maps that are more forgiving (ztn, t7 come to mind) at first. Aerowalk is fun, but if you're not playing an evenly matched opponent you will get completely run over and hate it. You need to have good aim and know the spawns.

Practice the fuck out of bridge to rail. If you just sit down and do it over and over again for an hour or two you'll have it down. In the meantime, you can do a pretty minor rocket-jump (like 20hp) from bridge if you really have to get to it and can't afford to fuck up. I personally get nervous and fuck up that jump all the time in matches, so I either rj to it or take the jump pad when I know for sure that my opponent is somewhere over by the yellow.

Are you in NA or EU? If it's NA I'll practice with you. I used to be pretty average, but I have never played very seriously for more than a week or two at a time.

i am EU=(

wow, thanks for responses guys, i didn't expect that much feedback. I think a lot of really good advices were given here, but i think the main thing is i should just practice more.
Here's another question about practice:
How should i practice being in control (offensive play)? My opponents are generally better than me, should i try playing with bot? I sometimes run around empty map trying to pick items in time without the timer - that's probably useful too, but then i don't learn spawn patterns in that way.

for offensive play and a generally good idea is to find ppl on ur skill level and add them to friends.

you could also ask better players to use handicap (50-70 could help a lot). If they don't play with their main account, they probably won't mind and would be better even for them (more challenging).

dont play with bots that doesnt help u at all! for learning offensive play u will need equally or weaker skilled players. always question yourself "how did i give away control?" and u will see the misstakes

playing the nightmare xaero in q3 isnt actually that bad (that one hit like every rail + 70 mg), helps a lot to develop awareness for sound and item timing / control (as its basically no chance to frag him without 200/200).
dunno how the bot are in ql

they have their flaws but overall they control the items a lot better than in q3 I think

I second that. You will get many-many bad habits, which will be a pain in the neck when you try to get rid of them laters.
Experience...

practising offensive play is a very hard thing, and you shouldnt worry about that, if you are a newbie.

you have to get the basics down first. on your skill level, getting items IS offensive play, because the opponent won't be that good at +backing(defensive play).

i would recommend to you start timing RedArmor on the maps you play:
- cg_drawitempickups "5" displays the time you picked up an item for a few seconds, not really needed, but it helps a little.

- add 25 seconds to that time to get the new spawn time (pickup 01:23 -> respawn 01:48). There are several methods that supposedly make the calculation easier. i suggest you just add 25 seconds, in the beginning it will take a while, but just like the b2r-jump, after 1 or 2 weeks you will know all the times automatically, and will not need to calculate anymore.

-one more tip for timing 2 or more items easily:
if you time RA and use a route to get to the other armors, and you manage to pick them up right away, use that same route after the next RA pickup and they will spawn when you get there aswell.

- if it's no problem timing 1 item(maybe after 2 or 3 weeks), you can try timing 2 armors. and after that is ok, try one armor, and megahealth(35s).

- To repeat what i said above:
at your "beginner" level of play, getting more items is offensive play enough, and you should concentrate on that.

Playing with bots a lot helped me learn timing very quickly, but I would advise against doing it very often. They are stupid and predictable, and they will not punish you for being stupid and predictable, so you start to develop bad habits. They're almost useless for aim training, since they barely dodge at all. They also all favor one weapon pretty much exclusively, which is yet another thing that makes them pretty useless.

If you are on irc ask if Relativizor wants to duel, he is a nice guy and around your skilllevel. Wanting to improve as well :>

what channel on irc should i check him at?

#quakelive.dk

or just write /query Relativizor it wil open a new chatwindow :>

practice all maps at the same time u can trust me it will be really hard to force yourself start everything again from scratch once u got good on a particular map (hence the high amount of ztn-dm6 only players, myself being one aswell).

for the dm6 question as a beginner id forget about that map. for first even if theres a somewhat small skill difference between players, one player will get rolled almost always. secondly it is not a competition map anymore and learning it at the cost of sweating blood probably just doesnt worth it.

play the maps you like... except you are dreaming of becoming a pro gamer... skip it. There arent any tourneys anyway so play as you like. Getting on a skill level like rapha need some years of practise and experience.

I still think duel is no fun except you win vs decent opponents. Ca (with aircontrol, instant weapon switch and so on) is fun.

Practise movement on the movement map from QL. THere is a bridge 2 rail part.
btw playing defrag helps for movement and its quite fun to reach 20.000ups

i tried defrag.. well only train map with jump pads. I don't think i can finish any real level with rocketjumps and stuff. Btw it's much easier to perform a b2r jump in VQ3.

no its actually easier in ql since ql jumps are slightly higher