aabicus tries to CS:GO, part 4

Big milestones today! Most of what I describe in this article I recorded on video, but after recording, when I try to open said video I get this:

So RIP a little bit of aabicus’ CS:GO history. Because this included a few big milestones; my rank up to Silver 3, my very first competitive match, my purchasing of the Wildfire coin, my first game of Deathmatch, and my first time on a bunch of the new maps.

Part of me is a little glad my last Silver 2 matches weren’t saved, because they were downright abysmal. I basically did nothing but get sniped by everybody from every direction, mostly because I suspect the players were all of a higher caliber since the new maps drew them in. Cruise was an awesome map though, full of vibrant areas to explore and it brought the hostage game mode back into competitive, which I hope lasts a while because that game mode is pretty fun. But somehow I scraped enough XP to level up, whereupon I dropped an MP7 | Gunsmoke (Field-Tested) which I sold for 40 cents.

Speaking of selling, my primary motivation in getting the previously-announced Operation Wildfire was to roll the dice for some rare drops and sell them to reap my money back, since Davjo claimed that was likely to happen this early in the campaign. While originally I was quite dismayed that the game became a crash fest because the profit window of opportunity was steadily fading, someone on Reddit informed me that it was possible to play by setting all video options to low. With that, I began my first Competitive match.

I was extremely nervous going in; I’d heard plenty of things about this community, and I knew I was still incredibly green, especially since I’d used auto-sniper rifles as a massive crutch the entire way to Silver 3. My battle plan was to buy the weapons I constantly had seen others use (Deagle, P90, AK/M4A1-S), use my mic so I could prove I had one, and follow the team everywhere. This strategy worked decently well, but I made a few bad mistakes early on. For one, I was unaware that friendly fire entered the picture (I’d totally known this earlier, but I guess I forgot). The round I emptied a faceful of P90 bullets into Sneaky2G’s face instead of the counter-terrorist who killed both of us, I was sure I was done for. But Sneaky merely informed me over mic to watch my spray and then Pink Guy taught me how to crouch to improve my fire.

Just for the record, the dudes they paired me with were awesome. The two already mentioned were the strategists, and we followed their plans. Jason was the talkative one, who had a laser-focused attitude and an uncanny ability to predict what direction the enemies were coming from. Moon Trump was the silent one as the only one without a mic, and I was the noob everyone thought was cute :3

Our match took place on the new Nuke, and they kept using words I didn’t understand at first, but slowly got the hang of as I saw them used over and over. “Heaven”, “control room”, “silo”… every portion of the map had its own nickname my teammates would use to communicate, and it was also common practice to callout how much damage you dealt before dying to the enemy who was holding X weapon, in the form “AWP in garage lit for 89”. My biggest credit to team was being a weapon dispenser and constantly buying new weapons for people, a role I was happy to do since it helped the team. In the end we won 16 to 9, and I took a screenshot so at least I’ve got something to remember my first comp match:

Completed the first two Wildfire missions, apparently they’re just like TF2 contracts. Deal 10 Molotov/Incendiary damage and Get 20 kills with the pistol. First happened on accident, second I got by playing Deathmatch. The guys on the server were explaining that a new bug apparently makes you deal point-blank damage from any range, and i don’t know if they’re right, but if they are it would explain the impossible ease with which I obtained those 20 kills. I’ve got to wait 16 hours before I can do any more, I’m planning on doing the 2-player ones with Davjo when that time rolls around.

This might be the last article in the series for a while; I try to only write one when I’ve progressed enough that I feel I’ve either broken a milestone or reached a new skill tier, and I barely did enough of that to justify writing this article right now. But it was fun stuff, and being a part of Wildfire makes me feel like I’m a part of the next chapter in CS:GO history. But maaaaybe not enough of a part that I should have spent six bucks. Ah well.