practice makes perfect, if you realise your mistakes you'll start learning to apply them and thats how you improve. rome wasn't built in a day. just keep playing and doing what you're doing and you'll learn even more overtime.

barring all else, you should do demo reviews with higher level players, as you may not know what to look for reviewing your own demos. i used to review my own demos and i had no idea what i was doing wrong because i had no frame of reference and i had no idea what i should be doing instead.

I think the period of time i've improved the most is this season is demo reviewing with a handful of invite players, IM players, and doing demo reviews with my own team.

As for making the same mistakes repeatedly, just get out of the mindless playstyle. I had the same problem where I would just play without thinking and it's really easy to do so. All you should do is take what people tell you to do differently to heart (so long as it's not like, "you're retarded, stop feeding," etc.) and think about it. Blaze told me I rushed my rockets, so I thought in every fight to be more patient. Delete told me i had poor ammo management, so I stopped spamming all 4 rockets.

It just takes time, and a little bit of practice, and you'll get much better in no time.

Hope this helps, best of luck!

That's kind of frustrating advice, regardless of how true it is

everytime you feed in game take a shot, i've heard first hand this is how most of prem play

Bren do you have to take a shot if your mum makes you feed too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I_NEBiHOhc

my mums a saint leave her out of this

Did you have to explain what feeding was to your mom after that?

Mechanics are also a part of playing medic. Make sure you practice dodging, aiming, surfing, and more obvious stuff like flashing players correctly.

But don't get too bogged down on mechanics. Gamesense (ie positioning, counting ubers, who to heal, etc) is probably way more important.

If you're having trouble applying what you learn to matches, try to come up with simple heuristics. eg "I should play passively if X, Y or Z. I should play further forward if these other conditions." "I should use uber to save my pocket if condition A, B, and C, but not D. Otherwise I should let him die."

And then as you're playing, try to keep track of all those conditions. If you think beforehand about what to do in each situation, you can focus all your attention on keeping track of what's going on around you and then make decisions based on your preset heuristics, instead of trying to figure out what you should be doing and missing details because your attention is divided.

Obviously you can't make a rule for everything, but start with the most basic things you're struggling with. Those will become instinct over time, and then you can make new rules for more specific situations. Then those will become instinct, and so on.

Not gonna lie i've never reviewed my own demo and i know a lot of good players who have never watched their own demos either, i've watched other players demos to see how they deal with certain situations but that's it. I recommend doing this if you know that you're making a mistake consistently but you aren't sure with how to deal with that.

Focus on one thing at a time, fix that mistake and move onto the next one. Change doesn't happen overnight. The truth that a lot of people don't want to admit is that tf2 is VERY mechancially dependent, so work on them. All the gamesense in the world won't save you if you just miss all of your shots or munch two directs because your movement is dogshit.

I really don't like this way of thinking, there isn't a prem decision making flowchart that if you follow will instantly make you a good player. A lot of this game is based on gut feeling (outside of wider team decisions i.e. where/when/how we will execute)

I never watched my own demos but I've watch a few demos of prem players when I was in high and it helped me a lot. Honestly you just have to play lol there's no magic to it

That's fair. But I do think that a lot of the basics and even a lot of stuff past the basics can be reduced to flowchart type thinking. Whether my advice is terrible or not will probably depend on what level OP is at.

Also, gut feeling is based on knowledge. It's a shortcut more than anything, and it draws on concepts you already have. IMO the best way to develop *better* gut feeling is to work on acquiring and simplifying more concepts. After all, what OP seems to be asking boils down to "how can I make the right decision faster, given that I'll always come up with the right decision if there's no pressure and lots of time?"

I'd say watching an STV demo of a close match is probably the best way to improve other than just playing the game. Watching your own POV demos can give you some insight into mechanical things like 'oh my movement was shit there i could have easily dodged that rocket and lived' but not being able to see your teammate's or opponent's health, numbers or ubercharge (unless you're medic and even still you can't be sure of the enemy uber) means there is a lot of information missing.

It can be helpful to get somebody better than you to mentor you and point out mistakes and give tips/suggestions of how to change your playstyle for the better, bud imo a lot of newer players have a mindset that relies to heavily on some invite player spoon feeding them info and holding their hand all the way through. At the end of the day the only person who was control over how you play and improve is your self, so at a certain point you have to start recognizing your mistakes and taking responsibility for your play.

Another thing is that I feel like doing a demo review with your team can be a lot more telling than simply doing it alone or with a mentor because you get to gain insight into what is going through your teammate's heads and their decision making and are able to, as a team, decide what you did wrong and which decisions were right but didn't pan out because of people missing shots or lack of coordination, etc. If nobody on your team is at the level that they can confidently recognize mistakes and errors in your play overall as a team then it's probably useful to get input from somebody with more experience. A lot of the time though, just knowing what your flank (or your combo if you play flank) was doing in a given push can help you figure out where the disconnects and miscommunications are in the way your team plays. Also, no matter how revealing your personal demo reviews may be, if you aren't talking together as a team, odds are the more general flaws in your teamwork will remain even if you personally feel like you're playing better or more optimally.

That said though, it can definitely be helpful when starting out or to look more specifically at the mechanics of the game to do personal demo reviews, I just find it more helpful to assess the overall team play and decision making (probably because I main medic and there isn't much to the mechanics other than dodging/hitting arrows and the occasional surf whereas on scout or other DM classes it's a lot more important and complex)

i guess it depends what level ur playing at.. if ur in open a lot of it comes down to game sense afaik

Its actually the opposite, in lower divs you can get away purely off aim/good dm but in higher divs everyone has good deathmatch ability so gamesense becomes more important

.

I appreciate the feedback from all of you. One question I have is what is the mindset I need to be in in order to try to get better? Every time I go into a game saying "I'm gonna try my best", I end up not really going anywhere.

Just a general note on improving: You're going to have more success if you break down 'I want to become a better player' into partial goals like 'I want to position myself better', 'I want to take smarter fights', 'I want to be more aware of where my team is and what they're doing' and similar stuff. Then when you go into games, you can focus on one or two of those in particular, which will make it far easier to keep track of how you're doing and eyeball your progress. Over time, those building blocks of good play will crystalize and become a habit, making it easier to improve other aspects of your game.

It really boils down to practice vs deliberate practice - sure, you get better by just playing, but it's not the fastest or most reliable way, even though it's more fun. Deliberate practice can lack the excitement of just going nuts and enjoying yourself; you are the one who has to know whether achieving a higher standard of play is worth doing a bunch of boring exercises.

There's a lot of different ways to model your decision making in TF2 - you can do it very methodically and like a complicated flowchart and this will lead to consistent play, or you can maintain good fundamentals and try to read your opponents and play around that. Personally I like a mix of the two, but what style you play really depends on the role you play within your team.
That being said, kos is 100% right in that decision making is only one part of getting good. Mechanics are super important and if you don't work on them and regularly maintain them they will drop off, and that will hinder your impact on the game.
The approach that worked best for me was to work on my mechanics outside of proper games, and to focus on decision making when I'm actually playing them. Mechanics became second nature, so I could focus on trying to do the right thing all the time in-game.
At the end of the day, its on you. Think about why you didn't hit that shot, why you overextended, why you backed out when you should've committed - and think about what you can do differently in each case. But if you do feel stuck - ask someone for advice, an outside perspective often really helps.

The mindset you should have if you want to improve is "I'm gonna stop fucking up in that one way I always do". e.g. popping uber too early on badlands last. it can be something seemingly insignificant, but the aim is to cross items out on the list of things that you are doing wrong, one by one. When you stop making mistakes you can do things better. i don't know if any of this makes sense, i'm just trying to explain my mindset when i was really trying to improve aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Key thing, practise != playing

How do I get good players to help me review my demo or mentor me?
I have a hard time finding errors in what I do because I just don't know any better. I've watched top players play but sometimes they do things that I don't realize I am missing in my gameplay, so I think I need someone to help point that out to me.

(I know this thread is about snack but I wanted to ask here instead of starting a new thread)

Friends would be an obvious one, but if you don't have any high level friends, either ask on tftv and someone might help, or pay one of the streamers that does demo reviews for subs (I know that shade does that rn, idk about any others)

I don't really know anyone personally. I'm looking for help with scout and I also don't know any high level scout streamers that do that sorta stuff.

Like Yz50 said 5 hrs of Dm/mge everyday

this is the answer but unfortunately i can only do 3 hrs of dm/day so i am very bad :((((

That's not really answering my question though. I know I have to practice my DM but surely that's not the only thing I'm lacking, I must be making mistakes in positioning and things

Dm can carry you, brains cant

While this may be true, the question was about brains.

Yea except I'd rather have brains AND decent aim than being a zombie +forward scout that hits a few good shots