FPS Esports for Beginners – Phrases Part Two

Welcome back, or welcome in general, to our FPS Esports for beginners series, your definitive guide to the fundamentals of competitive first-person shooters. We've covered plenty of topics up to this point, including roles, skills, and phrases part one. We couldn't cram all the industry insider terminology into that one article, so we're back with another. 

If you're new to this series, allow us to explain the importance of knowing the different phrases that players use. 

FPS Esports, more so than any other genre of Esports, is all about teamwork and communication. Especially for games where there is respawn, like Call of Duty, and everything is moving at 100 miles per hour. 

Regardless, the tactical composition and decision making of a team is based on the information that its players pass to each other every round, so knowing how to pass that information is going to make a massive difference for your team's performance. 

We covered some of the basic terminologies in part one, so if you haven't read that yet, do so now, and come back for these more obscure and advanced phrases.

Phrases

Flash me in:

Flash me in is a call for a teammate to flashbang a particular area, usually a bombsite before their teammate pushes it. You normally hear this in CSGO. If the player flashes themselves, there is a split second between putting the flashbang down and pulling back up their weapon that they are at a disadvantage in a gunfight, hence why they want a teammate to do it for them. 

Bombs down X: 

This is a call for when you've killed an enemy who happened to be the bomb carrier. This is different from the bomb being planted, and requires a different call, and dictates a different response. 

There are no competitive FPS games that notify you when you've killed the enemy bomb carrier. The only way you have of knowing is if you see the bomb once it's dropped. However, once you do, your entire team can rotate to that area, focusing solely on keeping the enemy away from the bomb. 

Watch over me:

This is a call specific to hardpoint in Call of Duty. When your OBJ is on the hill, oftentimes, they are at the forefront of engagements. This means they are often weak and need to get into cover to heal up. When that happens, they may call for a teammate to watch over them, which means to watch where the enemy is pushing the hill from while they heal up. 

Weak: 

Like one-shot, this is what you call when you lose a gunfight to an enemy, or you don't finish them off. Calling one-shot when an enemy is weak is going to infuriate your teammates, so don't make that mistake. A weak enemy may only be down to half health, so they still have a fighting chance if they're pushed, whereas a one-shot enemy is dead to rights. 

Trade:

Trade is a phrase given to exchanging one life for another. Usually, this is done by attackers to try and open up a site. FPS' are a game of resources, the most important being the lives on your team, so when an enemy kills a teammate, you usually want to trade that kill back, killing the enemy that killed them while they're at a disadvantage.