Speaking up: a guide to communicating in CS:GO

When people mention guides to FPS games like CS:GO, most people will imagine video tutorials to smokes and flashbangs, how to spray and guides on how to take or re-take sites. Another aspect, one that is of almost equal importance, is the ability to communicate with your team. Whether you're playing on your own with strangers, or you're teamed up with four friends, communicating information is one of the key elements to success, and this article will try to clear up and help you improve your communication.

Get a microphone
While this may sound overly basic, and silly, this entire article will be written around the idea of you having a microphone – so if you don't have one, you should seriously consider getting one. Every form of communication with your team, whether it's calling out rotations or making a strategy, will be easier if you do it through voice-chat.

Start talking
I know some of you might be shy, or feel that your ability to speak English is poor at best, but if you start out by greeting your team, asking them where they want to hold or where to go during pistol round, I can assure that most of them will get vocal as well – and you'll notice that as long as you can make calls, nobody will care if you have an accent or not. Furthermore, once you actually get going, you'll feel more and more comfortable with making calls and you'll do it more often.

Learn call-outs
Knowing what to call places, and knowing it well enough that you won't stumble or hesitate when you call them out will greatly improve the accuracy and speed of your calls. The web is filled with different overviews naming locations on maps – but more or less all of them have the same names for most places. This steam community guide is a good start, and you should make sure you know most of the call-outs before you start playing a new map. If you end up forgetting a call-out, feel free to wing it and just use directions from another call-out that you do remember, such as calling elevator on dust2 ”corner-below-spot” or something along those lines.

Any information is good information
Throughout a round, you'll get a lot of information that most people tend to not call, and there's really no reason not to. If you're being smoked or flashed, let your team know that there's something going on. If you're hearing footsteps on long when you're holding short on dust2, let your teammates know that there's someone there. Constantly keeping the communication going means your team will have the upper hand, simply because each and every player on your team has more information than the players on the other team. Most importantly, if you're unable to cover your part of the map, either by getting flashed or smoked off, make sure your team knows it. There are few things more frustrating than getting shot in the back because you didn't know your teammate couldn't cover you.

Tell 'em what you're doing
If you're forced to relocate, or you decide to rotate because someone died or there's a lot going on at one part of the map – let your allies know. If you're normally holding a site with two people, one leaving means the remaining player has to position himself accordingly, so he can cover more ground. The same goes for using your grenades, let your teammates know you're smoking an area off, or that you're about to flash – keeping the informed means they can take advantage of the situation and they're far less likely to actually suffer from what should be a helpful tool.

No assumptions
I have found that this is a common mistake, making assumptions based on what little information you have. If you hear the footsteps of two people going long, tell your team about it, don't just assume that the entire enemy team will be rushing out long, nor that they are attempting to make A-site. There are a lot of tactics out there that attempt to draw the defending team away or to expose themselves, and if you exaggerate the information you have, then your teammates might end up falling for the trap and it can cost you the round (or match).

Stay calm
If there's anything you need to remember, no matter how rude your teammates are, it's that you all want the same thing. To win. This game can get frustrating, and we all know it, but by simply sticking to your goal – and using the tools you've been provided with, you'll be in a better spot. Taking a short break after a particularly frustrating game, or muting the guy that keeps telling everyone how bad they play, are two simple ways of keeping yourself calm. This obviously applies the other way around too, whenever you have a teammate that's playing poorly, being positive and telling him that he'll get it next time might prevent him from tilting even more.

Changing team behaviour
If you're in a position where you want a player to change the way he plays (i.e. Play more defensive), you should always say it in a positive fashion. So instead of saying ”don't rush” you should ask him ”could you please hold from x spot so we can get a crossfire?”. Whenever you tell someone not to do something, it suggests that whatever they're doing is wrong or bad, and it's very likely that they'll get defensive about it. If you ask him to do something else, it doesn't suggest what he's going is bad, but rather that it would be helpful for your team's success if he did something differently.

 

While this article might seem sort of easy and obvious to some, there are still a lot of players out there that fall short on the way they communicate with their team, and my hope is that some of those players can see an improvement to their competitive games by simply communicating better. One of the greatest feelings in CS:GO is knowing you defeated a team of superior players simply because your team had great communication and acted on the information you were given.

In my next article, I will take a look at defensive positioning, and how to use your position to your advantage when defending.