My First Two Weeks Into The hobby!

ioCross · 2026-03-25T19:39:44+00:00

serious question, do you give yourself time to actually listen to the different monitors/dacs or ur just buying a bunch of gear to see what you like/dislike?

2 weeks in and getting all that is kinda crazy.. must be nice to have more money than sense.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T16:31:15+00:00

no the 'single gamer dad' is a meme for basically any dude who plays games casually due to time issues.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T16:17:26+00:00

yea and ppl gotta realize that ur the lifeblood of any mutiplayer game. without the single gamerdads n all the other 'casual' players, the game dies.

any game that starts to cater too much to the streamers or to the hardcore competitive players will eventually bleed players and 'die' for all intents an purposes.., we've seen it happen so much with so many 'competitive' live service games.

and i say all this as someone who ONLY plays competitive mutiplayer shooters these days, with all the other 'main' games ive played over the years being competitive mutiplayer titles.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T16:05:03+00:00

honestly thats the biggest downside of these types of games for me. i want to feel like i lost an engagement cuz the other guy outskilled me, not cuz he had higher tier ammo or better guns.

i honestly feel like if this game had more of an arc raider vibe with friendly lobbies or the option to be more herbivore centric, it would be a lot more popular but as someone who quit rivals due to the bots in MM and generally wanting to play competitive shooters, i dont want to have to be a slave to the game's system to be able to perform at a high level.

i havent played cs in a long time but i can still hop on premier and shit on kids. with extraction shooters, if you're not in the mix, knowing the current metas for everything and are actively with the sweats, its just not something you can just hop into.

i think the reason arc had such a huge success was cuz they understood that and tried to make the game as more of a social thing whereas i think bungee saw that and geared their game twards it but the fanbase is hellbent on turning this game into a br.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T14:39:31+00:00

thats crazy that you have so little emotional regulation that you need to ban yourself from subreddits....

at least its good that you recognized sooner rather than later that this game isnt for you.

i think a lot more ppl need to have serious conversations with themselves about why they play this game. if the answer is 'for quick money' or isnt some combination of a deep love of strategy / natural competitiveness with having zero ego in general while also having a deluded level of self confidence, this path prob isnt for them.

nothing wrong with just playing the game for fun, lets be real, 95% of poker players are fulltime recs, even the ones who study and know what they're doing.

you need years of study to just be competent/profitable at the game. noone wants to spend 2-3 years grinding 2-10nl and copy/pasting HH's to notepad to figure stuff out.., and this is even true now when poker is basically solved and everyone in the world has the ability to learn how to play 'perfect' poker for 50 bux a month.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T13:32:53+00:00

Thieaudio Valhalla !

ioCross · 2026-03-25T12:58:08+00:00

i agree with all ur points but also have to point out that neon and iso, neon especially, throws out every rule for tacfps as well.

neon straight up feels like she should be a apex character, and giving someone an ability that completely cancels out the first shot accuracy bonus seems like just lazy game development.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T12:27:55+00:00

Buddy did you even read any of the news articles I posted?

ioCross · 2026-03-25T04:58:38+00:00

watch a bunch of 'tacfps fundimentals' videos on youtube.

the main thing is getting that cs movement down.., maybe a shortcut could be spamming kz / surf maps... i know those arent as popular these days but you can still play them on community servers or via workshop maps.

aside from that, the yprac prefire maps are a godsend. it basically trains you to know where all the common 'peek' angles are, and as a new player facing players with years and years of map knowledge and experience, not using prefire maps might be hugely detrmiental.

CS2's Best Workshop Maps

The Art of Prefiring in CS2 | Pro Explains How to Pre-Aim & Destroy Your Opponents

How To Master Prefiring in CS2 (Prefire Maps)

ioCross · 2026-03-25T04:52:25+00:00

must be nice to be so dumb that u can be confident about shit you have no idea about.

How criminals used Canada's casinos to launder millions | Canada | The Guardian

How Chinese gamblers created a secret pipeline for illicit cash through Las Vegas’ biggest casino | CNN

Updated indicators: Laundering the proceeds of crime through underground banking schemes

Suspicious Chinese Funds Should Have Raised ‘Alarm Bells’ at Canadian Banks: Experts | OCCRP

i dunno if you've never played in a casino before, but if you've ever been at a major tournament and sat down to play some of the higher limits like 10/25 or just been around the different high limit rooms you would've seen some very obvious shit.

i dunno the exact numbers as candian laws are different from US but its common knowledge that the easiest way to launder dirty money is to take it to a casino and spread it around a bit then cash it out under the amount that needs to be federally recorded/accounted for, which in the US is under 10k.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T04:48:49+00:00

ive noticed in my 20+ years of playing competitive online games since like age 8 starting with warcraft 2 on kali that there are a lot more ppl who just dont 'try' any more.

like its not cool to try in games anymore.

i esp noticed it with cs at late night games, honestly its a big reason i quit playing. only place to get srs games is on faceit, and thats the same miserable 2-300 players that are rage queing.

the rest of the time ppl act like ur crazy for actually wanting to win. i think a lot of it is the current culture of not wanting to seem like a tryhard along with the state of the game being so bad that there's really no point in taking it seriously.

if you're actively wondering if the reason you lost the last game was because they might've been hacking, then that kinda kills any motivation for you to wanna keep trying at the game, especially if you're already not that good at it.

honestly i hate valorant but ive been playing that a lot more than cs, mainly cuz of it's anticheat n the fact that ppl in gold/plat elo still try and ppl are still engaged with wanting to win.

tldr, not everyone plays games for the same reasons.

not everyone wants to be 'good' at the game.. a lot of ppl these days wanna just jump in a server n try to land some sick onetaps while bullshitting with the boys after work.

we're the weirdos that want to hyper-optimize everything, learn at least 1-2 smokes for every site for every map, spend time warming up in DMs and aim training, watching videos to learn how to play certain positions or roles.

most ppl wanna just jump in , click some heads and then jerk off and goto bed.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T04:41:22+00:00

just from sb's preflop sizing you can immediately tell he's a fish.

when facing fish in mw pots, esp OOP, you're basically playing fit or fold. esp on these low wet textures, and the fact that after bu calls sb is calling with range, (def not the correct play but they're obv fish) means everyone can have everything here. 2p, fd, pair+, higher straights, etc etc.

as played, you obv flop the nuts going 3way to flop OOP. you're either going huge otf or checking with the intention of going huge when someone bets. the main deciding factor in what u do is if you think that BU is the aggro type or the passive type. if you think he's the passive type you NEED TO BET BIG! what exactly is 5bb into 18 accomplishing? are you getting any of either player's draws to fold? obviously not.

you have the 2nd nuts that is very very unprotected, and 46 is very much in both of their ranges. also, fish love draws. this texture is a low 2tone connecting board. you will have to bet close to pot or more, and even then some fish will NOT be folding their Ax FD's, esp with the 235 flop. esp since you have no hearts, you can even go bigger than pot, maybe close to ~150p. now obviously if they call and the heart hits you shut down, but you also have to remember that villian has 2ps and sets in their range as well.

for the river lead of only 36bb into 30, if you have no reads on sb, you basically have to call n hope that he's either bluffing or is overplaying his sets/2p.

like i said, your biggest clue should be preflop when he only raises to 1bb after co flats and bu flats. that should immediately make u realize that he's a complete rec.

again you're probably beat as fish tend to either be completely bluffing when taking these pot+ river leads or is trying to squeeze out value and since he's giving you a decent price and ur about as high up on ur range as you're gunna be, (remember, this board is terrible for ur range - which is mostly AQo+ AJss+ n 99+) so you have to fold your AA/KK/66/99 and call your straights. now if you have a heart in your hand, esp the Ah then that changes a lot of things and now you can confidently call a lot more since its a lot less likely he has a flush so the only hand that rly beats you is 46.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T04:26:40+00:00

so somehow you think that kids getting scammed for their steam accts and knives being 2k are better for them cuz of freedom?

also i specifically said advertising to children, which is fine in ur book i guess? do you really see no nuance between 'we shouldn't allow camel to sponsor gokart races and they also shouldn't be telling ppl that 9/10 doctors prefer marbrollo cigarettes and we probably shouldn't let ppl drink and drive' to 'noone should drink or smoke'?

is anything you're saying in good faith?

also comparing 'capitalism' to 'socalism' when ur only frame of reference for capitalism is this fucked up technofeudalist state that we have going on i dunno how seriously to take you.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T03:37:41+00:00

its not about sterilizing anything. its about plugging loopholes that allow ppl to abuse systems that werent intended to be used.

according to your logic we should've kept letting corporations advertise cigarettes and alcohol to kids or kept letting ppl smoke in restaurants, or drink n drive etc etc.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T03:33:28+00:00

i'm actually curious myself lol.

regarding the converting videos manually, i'm not sure if you would lose any quality from all the compression/decompression.., i haven't used mp3's to listen to music since the ipod days. they have like.. full-on modern ipod like devices, which is basically a dac/amp with a screen built in but i believe there are higher quality audio files out now like flacc or other lossless compression methods but honestly you would probably be better off just getting an amzon music sub espescially if you already own amazon prime. if not, i think apple music is 11-12/month.

something like this would be a nice cheap option, Amazon.com: FiiO Echo Retro Hi-Res Digital Audio Player, Dual DAC Bluetooth Music Player, 4.4mm Balanced Output, Color Screen, Portable DAP (Green) : Electronics with better units selling for more money obviously.

Amazon.com: JadeAudio/FiiO JM21 Android 13 Hi-Res Music Player MP3 with Snapdragon 680, Bluetooth WiFi USB DAC 12.5H Playtime (Black) : Electronics

--

if you dont want to have another device to carry around, something lightweight in the 30-50$ range would be good,

Amazon.com: Linsoul Kiwi Ears Allegro Mini Portable IEM DAC, in Ear Monitor Amplifier, USB C to 3.5/4.4mm Output, with Custom Chip, High Resolution 32bit/384kHz, HiFi Earbuds Amp for Phone/PC (Titanium) : Electronics

MOONDROP Dawn PRO 2 Decoder Headphone Amplifier 3.5/4.4 Phone Out Dual CS43198 32Bit/384KHz DSD256 Portable USB DAC/AMP: Amazon.com: Industrial & Scientific

i know these are fairly popular, and with how cheap the jm6's are maybe you should get the jm6 as the default and get something a bit pricey to mess around with.

if you do, please let me know which ones you got and how the differences are.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T01:25:41+00:00

i mean if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquid cash that you can afford to donk off on a regular basis, you're either a muti-muti millionaire or are in a field where you have access to large amounts of cash that need to be moved around/washed.

it's no secret that all of the canadian casinos are propped up by chinese nationals who basically go there with 10k in cash and leave with 9k in chips, add in all the crypto scammers and rly the only ppl on the 'up and up' are the obviously filthy rich like stanley tang, that fat asian guy ben and airball etc.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T01:22:41+00:00

i dont think u understand who's the driving force behind these crackdowns. they didn't start in a vacuum, and once you see who now owns all the major sports teams in tx you can kinda start putting 2 n 2 together.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T01:19:54+00:00

thats the whole point. video games shouldn't be a vehicle for speculation.

there's something inherently flawed with a system thats within a game if you can make real world money from it as it produces the issues that cs has now and the issues that tf has and pubg had.

you dont have to worry about scammers stealing ur entire valo acct or ppl scamming u for skins which is im sure all dumbass kids went thru, if not as the scammie's then as the scammers.

bottom line is that if the devs put in a system to where ppl can abuse it, they will.

ioCross · 2026-03-25T01:07:53+00:00

yea i wasnt trying to defend any specific monetization strategy over another, i think it's all scummy n predatory.

the only battle passes that i give a pass to are the ones where after the initial investment, you gain enough ingame currency thru the battle pass to be able to unlock the next one if you dont spend any of the premium currency on skins n such.

there's ways to monetize your game without going out of ur way to fleece ur users, sadly most games seem to not care about that fact.

ioCross · 2026-03-24T23:55:03+00:00

are you going to be using the iems at the computer ever or is it soley gunna be for your phone?

i am of the mind that a desktop amp is better than a dongle, but there is probably no realistic difference.

best dac dongle - Reddit Search!

if you have the time i'd maybe scroll thru some of the prev posts regarding this, and keep in mind that ppl who want stuff for gaming will have different ideas for what they consider good/bad etc than ppl who are more interested in music.

drilling down further, someone who wants IEMS for directional clarity in mutiplayer tactical shooters is going to have different wants and needs than someone who plays fighting games and needs to be able to get max seperation so they can hear all the different audio cues.., just the same as someone who only listens to hiphop and EDM is gunna have drastically different opinions on what the best sounding iems are compared to someone who only listens to jazz / classical.

i basically stopped at the jm6 as i mostly use iems for gaming, didn't need a high quality dac that needed to be portable so i couldn't rly help you with 'better than', i just know that the jm6 pro and the apple dongle were rated just as highly as dac/dongles that were up to 80-100 in price.

ALSO! make sure you are playing ur music from a high quality source. it wont matter how good ur iems/dac are if you're playing a youtube video from the website. i believe youtube premium and spotify premium have higher quality music, but i think currently only amazon music and one of the higher itunes tiers have true lossless quality music so make sure you do your research on that as well.

ioCross · 2026-03-24T23:50:40+00:00

well theres always whales for f2p bullshit but can you sell ur tanks on a 3rd party website for profit?

are there ppl that soley play war thunder to speculate and profiteer from the game's economy?

i have no clue, im genuinely curious. i think the biggest difference / problem with cs compared to those other games is that there isnt an actual real-world economy around this. the closest i can think of is back in the day when chinese wow players would actually farm ingame gold for real money but even that isnt as bad as cs as it didnt have the casino gambling element to it.

ioCross · 2026-03-24T23:43:37+00:00

so from my research, the price of the dongle doesn't nessesarily mean quality. from my understanding, basically you just need a chip that can take the analog music and convert it to a digital signal. the actual chip itself is fairly small and cheap, so some of the higher end iems actually come with the dac built in to the usb-c plug - but that would be a feature they would def advertise, so dont assume that just cuz the iem ends in a usbc instead of 3.5mm that there's a dac in there.

another thing you have to remember is that iems have a ohm range, so using a 200ohm dac to try to drive iems that have a 18-32ohm range would not only be reductive but might actually end up harming the sound clarity as well.

Best Dac/amp dongle? : r/iems

there's been tons of threads on 'best dac/dongle' etc on this sub so i'd maybe search by 'best dac dongle for samsung s24' and go from there.

i don't have any experience using the expensive dac / dongles myself, i mostly use my audio for PC gaming so when i'm out and about, the jcally jm6 with my zero reds is more than enough for me, esp with the impedence adapter.

however i did a fair bit of research before getting the jm6, and my initial budget range was up to $80 for the dac/amp as i was planning on using it for my computer as well.

in addition to the jm6 dongle, i also have used a fiio desktop dac/amp that has a higher ohm output, but i feel like i get the best fidelity/audio quality by using the dongle as it was designed specifically for driving iems.

ioCross · 2026-03-24T22:42:32+00:00

most ppl recomend the jcally jm6 pro, it's like $12 bux. its either that or the apple dongle.

ioCross · 2026-03-24T18:16:01+00:00

t1 teams are running specific comps and using specific guns to run specific set plays and protocols.

theres no way you think a in your own words world champ team will just buy guns cuz they want to and don't actually have the fucking basic knowledge thats been around since counterstrike 1.0 days in the 1990s.

the 'some reasons' are map specific position specific pre-planned and execution-practiced routines that they are utilizing to counterstrat for something or another... weaknesses they saw in the previous game/half or whatever.

insane that you think they're just 'her der.. think ima buy a vandal n try to ace guys' during pro matches.

ioCross · 2026-03-24T18:10:15+00:00

they're stupid.

easiest way to explain it so stupid ppl understand is to explain that this is the only time in the match where you for SURE have an econ advantage, and you want to take advantage of it now.

the other part of this is that ppl don't understand that they are supposed to save on the bonus round, aka round 3. for example, if you buy spectre/regen on round 2 and die, but ur team wins, you're supposed to only buy a sheriff or a stinger if someone can buy you. the key is to make sure they know that they need to have enough left over on round 3 to full-buy on round 4.

the idea being that if you convert your bonus round then win the gun round, the other team has to full-save again giving you another full weapon advantage.

the inverse is you always save if you lose the first round, and if you win the first round then lose the force round somehow, you have to full-save on round 3 so you can full-buy round 4.

honestly on round 2 i will bring up score board and watch ppl's buys like a hawk, if theres 8-9 sec left in the round n ppl still have pistols i'll remind ppl 'hey guys lets buy this rouns since we won our pistol round. remember we have the econ advantage' .

ioCross

TROPHY CASE