Improving in Of Guards and Thieves

A guide to improving your overall skill and, more importantly, intelligence as a player in OGAT. This is recommended for those who know what all of the maps look like, played most of the classes at least once, and do moderately well in public dedicated servers. In a nutshell, this is (approximately) for players between levels 1 and 15 - however even if you are at a higher level this is something you should read anyways.

I've put over 2000 hours into this game; you can contact me on the OGAT discord for tips and stuff. My username is jonny#5367.

Being a more intelligent player

So one of the things that make a good player, especially in a game like OGAT where the camera is top-down and the thief/guard asymmetricality exists, is being spatially aware of your surroundings. Knowing the state of your team and the enemy team (positioning, class picks, health) as well as their intents will help you improve your skill greatly. Raw mechanical skills such as aiming and dodging only bring you so far (and can be trained just by practicing over and over), and if you play stupidly or hyper-aggressive you're going to find that you'll end up doing a lot worse in terms of KD, score, and objective-playing than your teammates and the enemies.

As a general tip, the scoreboard (viewed by pressed tab during a match) will give you a ton of information about what you're up against. At the start of a match you can use it to see your team's class picks as well as the enemy, so you know what to expect. For example, if there are several cobras, be more cautious around doors. If there's a juggernaut, they might take advantage of its high damage/tankiness and they'll play more aggressively (that means they might peek more and take more 1v1s) than if, say, they went shadow. This is extremely important; I use it a ton to help me decide what type of mentality I should play with (conservative, aggressive, passive) and how the enemy will play (whether there's a medic and stuff like that).

The other thing that a lot of mid-level and even "advanced" players do is that they take unfeasable fights. A lot of the time, if you wear down their patience, players will give up their advantageous/stalemated position and attempt to take the aim battle against you in a disadvantaged position. A really common example is juggernauts at the door up at Office A1 (on Office, of course). In a situation where you both are at the same health and out of grenades where you're holding at the top of wall (by the tall crate), the juggernaut player might make some peeks over at door at first to try and bait you into taking a fight. If you take that fight, he'll lead you into the door at Office A1 and 1v1 you in room where he'll have the advantage, since you're the aggressor and he's the one behind the defensive cover as well as thief side darkness advantage - this is something that I would not do as an assault if I were playing against someone of similar or lesser skill, because there's honestly no point in giving up that advantage. Unless the gamemode is TDM or CTF and you're down by kills/flags and the timer is running out or they're escaping with an item, why challenge them? You'll be giving up a huge positioning advantage. Guards are naturally more powerful in the light and you have a crate/wall to play and peek off of. However, for the thieves, if they want to win, they're going to have to push past you to get the objective. If they don't, they will lose from not having enough time. So let them come and challenge you in a position where they don't have any cover to play off of and you do, so you'll have a much higher chance of beating them in the 1v1. Unless they are so much better than you skillwise, chances are that you'll come out victorious. This applies to every other scenario as well. Before you take a 1v1 or a 2v1 or anything (on any side, thief or guard) - just think. Is challenging him head on really going to be beneficial to securing the objective (or, for the thieves, is challenging him going to help me reach the objective)? Will you be giving up an advantageous position by rushing in and fighting him in a place where he has the cover/darkness/defenders advantage? What will happen if I rush him and lose (what areas/objectives will I lose to the enemy)? Can you use a grenade or a gadget to force an enemy out of cover first rather than dueling them headon? Note that I'm not telling you to be a passive coward, but I'm saying that you have to weigh your decisions and know when to pull back/attack. You'll do a lot better if all of these parameters are satisfied before you take a duel. A lot of evenly matched players (in terms of mechanical skill like aiming and dodging) will complain that they keep on losing the 1v1 fights against a particular enemy player because they are just way more skilled in aim. But if you examine the details, maybe they are just playing smarter then you. Did you rush them head on and try to fight them from a disadvantaged position? If so, how could you have done it differently? Aim, map tricks, and other mechanical things only take you so far. The real difference is in playing smarter. If you take into account everything here (and you're suitably skilled in aim/other mechanical skills), I guarantee your play will start improving.

The other main mistake is that players don't think ahead. Before they position themselves or make a play, they don't think about what an enemy/multiple enemies could potentially do to them from their current positions. By this, I'm referring to being tactically aware (this is really important when you play against a coordinated, high-level team). If a juggernaut continually peeks in and out from Break room (Office) and you're at Bathroom Doors, he might be baiting you to keep your attention on him and then his teammate will challenge you at the Storage A Male Bathroom (by pushing through vents). Then, you're stuck in a crossfire. The juggernaut will push you from Main Hall and his teammate will attack from Bathrooms. You'll end up having no cover and get double-teamed. So you need to be constantly aware of potential threats and what the enemy can do to you from their positions, as well as plays that specific players/a type of player will favour over others. When will players overextend because they think they can take a fight? How can you exploit their mentalities (aggressive playing vs conservative playing) to your advantage (baiting an aggressive player out into the open; forcing passive players to fall back/give up positions)? If you position yourself somewhere, how can the enemy avoid/attack you using their tools and weapons (if there is a juggernaut, he might try to grenade; if there is a saboteur he might molotov you at close range), and how can you avoid these situations? Is following in on an escaping enemy causing you to overextend? These are all questions that I ask myself before I make any play. Understanding potential threats and noticing what plays people tend to make when they are in a certain situation will allow you to position/react better beforehand, and thus allow you to outsmart rather than trying to take the same aim battle over and over again.

Mechanical skills

Focusing on playing intelligently is the most important part of improving as an OGAT player. However, there are definitely some mechanical skills that you want to learn and train in order have enough raw skill to support the execution of your strategies and plays.

1) Aim. If you want to improve in aim, then the only thing you can do is just train it over and over. Obviously just by playing the game everyday for a few hours will immediately start to improve your cursor control, but there are also some things you can do to supplement your training. In training mode, you can pick a gun of your choice and quickly one-tap or burstfire a target and then try swapping as fast as you can to another target. Learning the recoil patterns will help you a lot as well; players complain about the AZ being extremely inaccurate, but you can easily avoid this by only holding down the trigger for three shots (these three shots will be 95% accurate) and then resetting your spray. Try figuring out how big the recoil threshold is for each weapon. You can also train your target tracking by playing a game like osu![www.osu.pyy.sh]. Theres also the concept of crosshair placement, but it's not nearly as big as it is in CS:GO. Keep your crosshair on the door or vent or wallcorner that you know an enemy is going to peek/push out of and it will help you do less flicking and adjusting that if you kept it in the middle of the screen (and FFS don't get infected with any of the spinning ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I did when I started off; it's just a taunt not an actual thing that helps aim).

2) Dodging. After a while, you'll start to notice that players who are standing still or moving in one direction while firing are easier to track with your cursor, and that some advanced players will juke around/dodge while they are firing. This is incredibly important thing to learn. Dodging while in a gunfight will greatly increase the amount of aiming the enemy is going to have to do in order to kill you. Experiment with some of the common dodging patterns in a closed server or on the training map. You can zig-zag parallel to your enemy (to go horizontally, spam W and S while pressing down D or S; to go vertically spam A and D while pressing down W or S), move in a figure eight, or even just move in circles. Either way, find and learn the dodging patterns and use them. You'll find that when you do need to make a direct confrontation, you'll perform much better than if you stood still.

3) Right hand advantage (RHA). This is something that a lot of higher level players don't know about. Observing your player model (all classes work the same in this regard), you can see that they hold their gun on the right side. This means that when you peekfire or play off of the right hand side of any type of cover, you can expose less of your body for your gun to be out. In certain angles, this will give you a huge advantage. In some places on certain maps, a player with the RHA on an angle will be able to hit an attacking enemy before they can even shoot or peek, just because their gun is sticking out more than theirs. It's a good idea to find spots on maps where you can exploit RHA advantage, so you know that if you ever need to take a duel, this spot will give you the advantage/disadvantage.

If you are able to master all three of these mechanical skills and use them in tandem, and then use these skills intelligently in gameplay, I can guarantee that your performance will start skyrocketing.

Tricks and tips

- Grenades can go through yellow vents. Stand backwards a few meters and then if throw your grenade, it will go through cleanly and into the other side. Play around with angles a bit; you can get your grenades to bounce off the side of the vent as it goes through so that it lands somewhere else.

[Burger Beers]

what you need to do is play zombie and pick fat, practice your fatty touch and you will reach 50000 years into the future

[keyplr]

can u help me with my aim?

[Captain]

Good

[SCORILO]

Guys, this guide is obviously useless! In Racing you don`t need these things. Only hold W until you hit a wall and repeat not like AIM, POSITION, CLASSES, and so on.

[Reny]

big niggle

[OgatNeverDie]

mention me on the ogat discord, my tag is "big niggle#2390"

[the_pepi]

WOW! Im already level 19, but this is really interesting and thoughtful. Depending on when you play, it would be interesting if you did a 1v1 with crazy ravioli or confident afro, who are pretty great.

[Dirt]

liked the guide man

[SolarFlare1234]

a good thing I picked up for thieves: Saboteur is underrated as shit, it cuts like butter.

[OgatNeverDie]

They'll become available soon as a DLC or in the ingame shop.