MattyOW’s Response to “Why I hate Voltaic” - GREED-EU

https://youtu.be/9ncjwHbhWKA

The Voltaic aim benchmarks, at least in my eyes, are designed as a way to add context to scores
in aim training that indicate a player’s aiming skill. You have a score in some obscure aim
training scenario. Without leaderboards, that score is just one statistic, but you want to know how
that score compares to other players. Leaderboards add some context, but further can be added
when we split the scoring based on ranks. This way, players can have a good idea of where their
aim skill resides for each category and the improvement path ahead of them, as referenced in the
benchmarks guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cC8Auct9oSd8KlN7TxyJAV2QExbfrWL92tZt3M-2_CQ/
edit?usp=sharing
Note: Most of the evidence I use for this response comes from my personal experience in the VT
benchmarks, combined with the experience of the players I have coached and some of the VT
community.

2.0 - Score Farming

“The problem arises from the possibility of attaining higher scores without genuine improvement
. . . known as score farming.” At first hearing this, I struggle to comprehend the difference we are
expressing between genuine improvement and obtaining higher scores in the benchmarks. When
I started my journey in the Voltaic benchmarks, I noticed very strong correlations between how I
aimed overall and how I did in the benchmark rankings.

2.1 - Reset Andy’s

To begin, I must stress the fact that spam-resetting is not once encouraged in the benchmarks
guide linked above. In fact, repeatedly spam-playing the scenario is not even the intended use of
the benchmarks, as in the guide, it is stated that they should be played “at least once a week.”
Now, this is a guide– metrics that we may follow but certainly do not have to.

Especially for newer players trying to get themselves started learning aim, I agree that
spam-resetting is a particularly bad practice. New players may often suffer from falling into bad
habits, and by spam-resetting the scenario to get perfect spawns, they are arbitrarily setting
themselves up for slightly higher scores despite having bad habits or poor technique. Instead,
they should let their runs play out more often to catch their mistakes and stop bad habits from
being reinforced.

Now, I for one, do spam-reset. Why? Because at my level, I already have a firm understanding of
the technique and the baseline skills that I must apply to the scenario to get the best results.
When I upload these scores, I do not believe that the act of having reset many times for the score
does not detract from the performance being showcased. Having spam-reset to get good starting
RNG for a run does not invalidate the way that the entire run was played.

For this reason, when players see scores like that being posted and promoted, they are still able
to visually learn proper aiming techniques. It is still a valid demonstration of what needs to be
done in the aiming scenario because simply resetting does not fundamentally change the
approach that we are taking to the run.

Minecraft speedrunners reset their runs. Why? Because they know that the seed they got was
suboptimal, so they throw it out to not waste their time. All the top speedrunners do this. Does
this mean that the top Minecraft speedrunners’ runs are invalid and do not show proper
speedrunning ability? Of course not. Players who are bad at Minecraft and bad at speedrunning
will still come pretty far behind the top players in the game, even if they spam-reset for hours
looking for the perfect seed. You say we flaunt our reset-spammed aim training scores, and the
highest scoring VT players will often get undeserved praise. Once again, like speedrunners, the
top players in VT who know what they are doing reset their runs but are praised not simply for
having a high score, but for having good aiming technique.

“Retry spamming helps reduce rng. There is no reason to play every single run out with a huge
deviation of starting bots / starting rng. It'll simply mess up any sort of performance feedback.
Restarting a couple times per proper run helps dim this a lot. And yes it'll also on avg boost your
scores” - Gweria

2.2 - Score Optimizers

There is a lot packed into this part, so let’s make a list for discussing each mentioned score
optimization practice:
- “Planting in front of targets and waiting”: This is a bad practice, but in most cases it is
not score optimization. Depending on the scenario context, in speed target switching for
example, you never want to be planting ahead of targets and waiting for them to cross. It
slows you down. Players who do this here have bad technique and are not score
optimizing. In dynamic clicking as well, sometimes it may benefit taking leading shots
here and there, but you want to mix it in where opportunities arise. Doing it all the time is
also strictly bad technique.
- “Avoiding flicking and snapping in dynamic scenarios”: If we are saying this against
tracking in dynamic scenarios, then I agree. You still want to be quick enough in dynamic
tasks to be playing them properly. Strictly encouraging flicking/snapping, however, as
opposed to having some degree of smoothness in aiming, is dangerous advice. When you
make really fast flicking motions, it becomes harder to read the movements of your
targets. Raw speed lends itself to poor flick accuracy and blurred peripheral vision. Yes,
 there is a time save, but that does not really help us in games either. Widowmaker players
in Overwatch who prioritize flicking appear to have flashy aim indeed, but because of
how error-prone it is due to the aforementioned reasons, it is inconsistent. See this clip as
an example. https://twitter.com/Prophet_0w/status/1589614110790283266
- “Edge tracking to enhance reaction time”: This point I do agree on when we are
discussing translation of aim training into in-game mechanics. No one edge tracks
in-game, but the tangential benefit of doing it in aim training is learning how to
underaim. We do not use edge tracking in reactive tracking to enhance reaction time. We
do it so that we can still remain on target during the target’s direction change. While I
agree that this is mostly a score optimization tactic, underaiming, which is what you
naturally pick up from practicing this, is beneficial in game. Underaiming involves
having controlled, comparably smoother, reactions to target strafes. Try tracking a
strafing Kiriko in OW as a Soldier76 from a medium distance. You will quickly find that
the risk of overflicking on each direction change is pretty high. Instead of trying to flick
and be fast when tracking this kind of target, it is much better to be smooth and withhold
flicking motion so that you do not lose damage.
- CM/Sens Cheesing: Changing sensitivity to get better scores per scenario I do not see as
a bad practice. Changing sens is encouraged because of how it promotes adaptability and
learning how to use different parts of your arm to aim, which many players do not
understand. This only becomes an obstacle to improvement when a player goes too far
and tries to subvert the original purpose of the scenario. An example would be dropping
to 70cm/360 on a smoothness scenario. Doing this is purely for score maximization, and
players who want to actually improve their smoothness should practice playing on higher
sensitivities.
- FOV Cheesing: The reason we play on 140 FOV for target switching scenarios is so that
we can see more of the map and have more options for targets to flick to. There is nothing
wrong with raising your FOV to do this because you are not getting the best flick training
or proper feedback from switching scenarios if you are constantly taking gamble flicks all
over the map searching for targets. If this were the case, good performance on switching
scenarios would be entirely RNG-based. Meanwhile, lowering FOV below 103 OW is
forbidden in the benchmark scenarios and across pretty much all of aim training. The
only exception to this rule is going to 90 FOV for external practice on raw smoothness.

3.0 - Fraudulent Practices

This is the part of the video I personally take the most issue with. Something that players in our
community should understand is that, particularly as a member of the VT main team, my entire
job in this space is aim training. Speaking for myself, I know full well that my gameplay in OW
suffers and falls severely behind what my aim training performance displays. Why? Because I
DO NOT focus on OW. Many of the aforementioned tactics and score maximization strategies I
actively apply because I only care about my results in the aim trainer.
With that said, when I am coaching pro players under the VT Amped program, I do not
encourage them to engage in the same nature of score grinding as I do. Nowhere in all of Voltaic
do we encourage that pro players drop their deeply-rooted foundational understandings of aim in
their own games to scoremax in the aim trainer. That would go against what we stand for as
pioneers of this new path of improvement in FPS. What makes us good aim coaches is not our
ability to perfectly bring out the mappings of aim training into our own gameplay in OW, VAL,
CS, etc. as a one-to-one translation, but intsead, it is our expertise in aim training and the theories
behind it that we can share and teach pro players. By having this knowledge, they can then use
the aim trainers for bringing out their best aim in their own way.

You share clips of an unknown VT member, making a comparison between their in-game
performance and aim training performance in order to say the lack of the one-to-one translation
suggests a lack of genuine skill. I strongly disagree with this. In my eyes, being able to score
within Kovaaks, explore and understand the techniques and approaches that make good aim what
it is, and share that knowledge with pro players and all the other members in our community, is
genuine skill within itself. There are reasons why a number of us do not consider ourselves pro
players in our respective games– reasons that I can spend hours typing out. Put simply though,
weaker in-game does not discredit overall aiming skill, especially with all of the filters that exist
in the real game compared to the trainer.

As a prominent member of Voltaic, I understand where you are coming from but also take issue
with how you have presented your thoughts. Players seeking in-game improvement will often
tunnel vision on scores, and may try to undermine the purpose of the scenarios in the
benchmarks. However, the overall premise of the benchmarks is clear, and the scenarios in the
benchmarks were chosen specifically to represent and bring out the core skills required in each
aiming category. Spamming resets in aim training can be problematic for new players, but for
players that know the right approach, it saves time. Most importantly, it does not discredit the
technique being showcased, and sharing runs that came from resetting for good RNG does not
hinder the learning opportunities presented in them. Many “score optimization” methods can
simply be viewed as proper technique. Good aim does not constitute being flicky, snappy, or
purely fast. There is far more to the skill, and the benchmarks help players to realize their
weaknesses in those areas and fix them. As a player who focuses on the aim trainer, my overall
aiming skill should be measured by my performance in Kovaaks, not OW, and my ability to
share my expertise with players in our community, players in OW, and even pro players from
other games is not weakened in the slightest by the lack of a good translation.