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Good Online FPS Games/Servers For Beginners?
An anonymous reader writes "I have been playing videogames for years, but only recently got a DSL line in my house and so have never played any online games before now, as dial up was always too slow. Now that I have a fast connection, I want to get into online gaming, FPS gaming in particular. My problem is that Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, Quake and all the other popular games seem to be dominated by people using cheats, and by established clans of players who are a lot better than me. Are there any online FPS games or servers whose barriers to entry are not too high for the average player? I am looking for something that I can just connect to for a half an hour now and then when I am bored and can have fun with."
bzflag is great. Easy to start, easy on the eyes and it's OSS.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Most online FPS use punkbuster or something similar now, and cheats are almost non-existant. You might wanna try out America's Army, it's a free download and free online FSP shooter (pretty detailed and fun).
Enemy Territory is an incredibly fun team-based game and completely free. Most people are migrating from the (dead) RTCW now, so if you want to join teams and grow along, this is the time.
I forgot to mention, it's got Windows and Linux binaries.
Once you get the hang of it, get the Desert Combat mod. Updates the weapons, vehicles, and maps to present day.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
If your machine can handle Unreal Tournament 2003 it's good against cheaters and you can usually find public servers with enough other n00bz to have a good time... also if you can find an invasion server that isn't using the RPG mod then you don't play against other players, it's human players v. computer aliens.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Day of Defeat is a great WWII mod for half-life. It's easy enough grasp the game play and to pop on for a while and servers are starting use cheating death or other software to crack down on cheaters. I also like Americas Army, but it requires you to pass some training and sign up before you can get online. However because of that and the experience point system it uses, there is a lot less morons team killing for the fun of it like you see in DOD or counter strike.
Frenchman to King Arthur - "You've got two empty halves of coconuts and you're bangin' 'em together"
Someone forgot to put a URL...
americasarmy.com
Don't just game, Dungeoneer
It's free and so far I have been pleased with it.
Team play is crucial and the overall maturity seems higher(relatively) than some games like warcraft and counter-strike.
Also, the different classes allow the not-so-quick trigger-finger-player to still play a vital role.
Folks seem friendly, but that may not last.
I'd suggest you check out Tribes. Not only can you play different roles in the game, but lots of the servers are pretty evenly balanced between newbies and "game gods".
I play on the T2War server http://www.tribeswar.com.
Server name: -2004 TRIBESWAR.COM
IP Address: 66.237.58.11:28000
Daily restart time: Approx. 5 AM PST
For more information about the game, and how great being able to play different roles than just "deathmatcher" or "flag grabber" check out: http://www.dansdata.com/t2bastard.htm
-- Mark Lyon http://www.marklyon.org
Plus ET has punkbuster to detect cheaters and kick them. Often new cheats are detected quite quickly too. Other games with punkbuster are RTCW, Americas Army, Battlefield 1942, Quake3 Arena, Call of Duty (soon to have pb), Rainbow 6:3, etc.
ET is an awesome game. Can't get enough. It's completely freeware, and there are stacks of user made levels to download. Highly addictive! Plays great on 56k modem (hardware modem, not win-modem) too.
Urban Terror of Silicon Ice fame is getting ported to RtCW: Enemy Territory since they released the source (I think, or at least Silicon Ice Development has it) so they'll release an official version 1 (no beta this time) which is the equivalent of version 3.3 (I think).
:D
Urban Terror will guarrantee that you fail at least one course because of it.
Most people playing online have been doing so for months if not years. They've developed the reflexes, knowledge of game systems and maps, and tactical know-how to stay alive. Unfortunately, the only way to gain these skills is practise.
I suggest you download Wolfenstein: ET. First of all, it's free so if you decide online gaming isn't for you after all, you haven't lost anything but a little time.
Secondly, the penalties for death aren't too harsh. Unlike Counter-Strike, where you have to wait up to 5 minutes after dying to play again, you'll be back in the game within 30 seconds.
Thirdly, it's "easy-to-learn, hard-to-master", to use the cliche. You don't have to learn complex firing patterns or master the intricacies of every weapon in order to play competently. You can introduce more complicated elements and strategies at your own pace without being left behind.
Finally, during your 30 seconds of waiting to respawn, you have the option to view one of your team mates through their eyes. Watch what they do. Think about what they do wrong and what you'd do differently. See if they charge too easily or hesitate too much. Don't treat online gaming like linear, formulaic single player games. Always think and try to learn from your mistakes.
Also, I don't know any situations in which the maps you can play is restricted by your honor rating. Unofficial servers should give no bearing to honor at all, and people who do not like the honor concept can bypass it completely.
I agree with you that it sucks that idiot team mates can easily reduce your honor by running into your grenades because they do not pay attention, etc. This has certainly happened enough times to me, but in the end it is a rare enough event that I do not hate the game for it. Chock it up to realism, in real life you might want to anticipate that your team mates may be confused or just plain dumb, so throw your grenades far enough away that they won't injure themselves.
The biggest qualm I have with AA is the annoyance of the training missions. I just want to get my friends on the internet to play me... NOW. I don't want to go to people and say, I found this great game called America's Army, why don't you spend 3 hours tonight passing all the training, then sometime tomorrow night we'll play. It just isn't enticing when I try to sell it to friends and coworkers.
Otherwise, I love AA, more than counterstrike or quake. When on a good, communicative, cooperative team, facing creative opponents, the game is extremely enjoyable.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Easier to play than AA (and much better, IMHO) is Battlefield 1942, particularly the free Desert Combat modern warfare mod you can download for it.
There are very few (useful) cheats, and the latest 1.6 patch includes PunkBuster and that's almost eliminated all traces of cheating. Even before PunkBuster, cheats were pretty rare, especially if you play on "pure" servers (which is most of them).
Not unlike the awesome old Team Fortress, BF1942 has a variety of classes you can play (assault, anti-armor, medic, engineer, scout, etc.) so there's a spot on the team for everyone, even those without the experience or trigger-happy twitch fingers.
And, very much unlike all other FPS games, there are vehicles. Planes, tanks, battleships, humvees, helicopters, motorcycles, artillery, etc. This, to me, add so much to the genre that I have trouble playing other FPSs without getting bored quickly. Vehicles can also be a good equalizer -- no matter how twitch fast that enemy is, if you're in a tank, and he's on foot, he's toast.
As an added bonus, you can find 64-man games pretty easily, which makes it even easier to get along without a lot of expertise. You can play a support role (engineer, medic) effectively with little practice, and so you'll be able to help your team win even while learning your skills.
You can pick up a copy in the stores for about $35-40, or online for $20 or less. There are two "offical" addons: Rode To Rome ($15) and Secret Weapons ($20), but neither are required to play. And, if you gravitate toward the DC mod (as most have, based on recent server stats), the add-ons are totally useless.
Oh, and the number one most important thing you need to work on to be good at FPS games is your config. That is, how you assign your player functions to your mouse and keyboard keys (please resist any temptation you may have to not use your mouse for looking around). Think about this carefully before you just slop something together. Otherwise you'll get used to a bad config and have trouble switching from it later when you realize that you need to be able to do action A and B together a lot, but you've got them both assigned to keys that use the same finger.
everything in moderation
America's Army is a grenade fest. The only thing to do is launch nades.
Learn to snipe with the M16. Mountain Pass is a lot of fun when you can snipe with the M16, well out of range of grenades. Also, learning how to move and how not to be seen will keep you from getting tagged by a grenade. Learn to listen for grenades and cook off the ones you throw.
And here's a quick guide I wrote on defending the Weapons Cache map... it contains some suggestions that you might find useful for other maps.
But other posters are right... AA has a steep learning curve; if you give it time you'll find it very rewarding.
examples of these would be, www.stoofoo.net and www.shacknews.com ... in the comments section, almost daily 'stoobattles' and 'shackbattles' are announced with much fanfare, and scheduled to begin at around 9pm EST. if you play regularly, and frequent the boards, you learn the games, when new patches come out, and meet a lot of cool people. Also, you get to know the people you play with, and it gets to be better than any lan game you can play because you play against / with these people on a regular basis. Plus, its much easier than transporting yer whole rig to a spot, and its almost like your favorite sitcom that comes on 'every tues at Xpm', you just know to show up.
You might be interested in PlaneShift. It's an open source and free-to-play MMORPG. I have been interested in it, both as a player and to help out, but have not done either at this point. Laziness mostly. Anyway, YMMV, but looks like you can download it for Windows or Linux and start playing quick enough.
Don't play with other newbies. You will get better, faster if you play against challenging opponents.
Play on lightly populated servers. Generally, the LEET get bored on these and move on to higher frag opportunities.
Watch for hacks. There are plenty of servers that allow cheats. Read the MOTD. Often servers will identify their exploit policies and installed mods. It won't take you long to realize if you've fallen victim to wall hacking or other exploits. Observe the other players during your dirt-nap to see if they're cheating.
Get a fast video card, plenty of RAM of of course a decent processor. Lower the vid. quality if necessary to get a decent frame rate; a consistent 60 FPS+. Lots of folks disagree on this because your eyes can only detect something like 32 FPS+ or less, but trust me on this. Lots of other factors come into play and a high frame rate removes other bottlenecks and quickens reaction time.
Buy a decent mouse. USB Optical mice work best in my experience, and there are mice available that are specifically designed for game play.
Listen to the environment. Get a decent surround speaker system. It is a great advantage to hear a shot or footsteps with 360 degree accuracy. If you can't afford this, play with good headphones. Remove distractions.
Don't drink beer. I haven't formulated a precise equation, but you can expect your frags to decrease exponentially per ounce of alcohol consumed. Other intoxicants will lead to misplace your icons.
http://www.techyrants.com
Get into Day of Defeat, learn it, and don't worry about how well you do compared to others. There are plenty of clans, don't let it bother you. It's rare that a server is domainated by a clan at any given time.
Another game to consider is Ricochet. It has few players, but there are no clans and it's extremely fast-paced with no teams, just everybody vs. everybody. Of course, as a newb you'll get your ass kicked in ways that you didn't even know possible, but you'll catch on.
Do you have ESP?
Playing on DSL & cable modem lines provides plenty of sub 90 ms ping servers. You will find many servers under 50 ms, especially near bigger cities.
ISDN? Give me a break. All modern broadband is better for gaming than ISDN.
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I would strongly recommend TFC for beginners, as it allows a player: 10 different classes with different abilities to play, instant respawn, team play, runs on the Half-Life engine, is a free download to owners of Half-Life, and doesn't allow team kill*. Also, as an added bonus, someday TF2 will be released http://tf2.sierra.com/ but the last update was in 2001 - so I wouldn't go preordering anytime soon.
No matter what game you play, tho, make sure of the following:
1. Snipers - learn how to snipe, for God's sake - they rock
2. Encourage team play - CS is great, but all it takes is a server with Friendly Fire turned on to make everyone unhappy - BF1942 usually has this turned on to drive me crazy.
3. Make sure you are enjoying yourself - I have played a lot of online games, and at the end of 2 hours was pissed off something fierce. Then I thought "WTF am I doing?!" and promptly moved on.
4. You play on the same server regularly and get to know people a little. Doesn't hurt if there is an active admin who can kick nincompoops, either.
Good luck, and if you see RevCo online - just log out and save yourself a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.
*generally
I've found that Day of Defeat, an add-on for Half-Life, kicks much ass. My Girlfriend, who has always had a penchant for Quake (and Quake-alikes), took to this WWII-based mod like a fish to water. Teamwork is MORE prevalent in this than say Counter-Strike, where I've found most players as of recently are only concerned with their individual statistics than the team score (and getting the bomb planted/diffused).
Certain objectives reqire two teammates to complete on some maps. And did I mention that the elaborate, detailed maps are some of the best maps I've played in any game? Many maps are Cap'n'Hold, a "king of the hill" like variant of Capture the Flag, some are Attack or Defend (one side has the objective to blow something up before time runs out, the other team has to wait for time to expire before their shit blows up...), some are mixes of the two - one map has one side seeking plans from a downed plane (a la one-flag CTF), the other team has to blow up tanks with shoulder- mounted Rocket Launchers before the other team caps the plans.
Sure, less people play it than CS, but this can be a good thing - I've found players are of a better calibre than CS. They don't cheat as much, they appriciate good teamwork, and don't TK as much when Friendly Fire is on.
I used to play some FPS games on Dial-up, up until about a year or two before we got DSL. Things were great when most gamers only had Dial-up - I used to play A LOT of Quake 2 (especially ExpertCTF) on Dial-up, and during one of my binges, found my name on theclq.com's listings of the top ExpertCTF players in the world for a week (in the top 150!). But then the prices of DSL started to drop, and the early adopters were rewarded with lower latency, fewer dropped packets, and an easier time lining up sniper rounds.
I've also been playing a lot of Team Fortress Classic - again, less players than CS, but a better player you'll find, usually.
And Practice makes Perfect. FPS games are no exception. Sure, some are born with killer instincts, but the rest of us have to learn the maps (and appropriate tactics) on our own.
If yer ever playing DoD, and you bump into "The Outsider" (me), "Kagenin" (me again), lulu (my girlfriend), or "General Spanky" (my sister's boyfriend), say "Hi!" or something.
Kagenin
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
Definately! Savage is the must-have game of late 2003 - early 2004. The demo does not do it justice. I purchased my copy online, from iGames, for Linux, and I've been hooked ever since.
Savage is definately one of the best PC games that I've played for years. Give the demo a try, but don't judge it too hard. The demo is buggy, but the 2.00 version of the official game is fantastic and has a ton of extras.
I can't wait for S2's next game. I hope that a Linux game is in the future as well.
you know, i played that for the first time the other day and was in awe at the quality i got for free. beautiful maps, relatively smooth graphics, and pretty nice gameplay. the objectives and style of play involving teamplay are great.
however, i found that a lot of people dont tolerate noobs. i hit a couple of mines in a game and they almost voted me out. pissed me off that i had been playing 15 minutes and they just coudlnt stand somebody new playing.
without a doubt ill play again, however.
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
I only play FPS games online every once in a while. When I started out, I learned some useful fundamental skills that still allow me to have fun even though I'm never the best player on the server.
In general, I will echo some comments already made: (1) if you are just starting out, don't assume excellent players are cheating; chances are, they are just much better than you. (2) Don't be intimidated. And don't be afraid to suck, because you will suck mightily for a long time. (3) It's probably not a good idea to play round-based games at first, because you will spend a lot of frustrating time waiting for the round to end if (when) you are the first person to get killed.
More specifically, if you need to buff up your aiming, dodging and moving skills, play Quake 3 against the bots on the second hardest difficulty level until you are consistently winning the map. You just need to build up your twitch-gaming skills.
If you want to play C-S, here are some specific tips to help you avoid common newbie mistakes:
(1) Concentrate on staying alive, not racking up kills. Don't lead the rush into a hail of bullets. You learn a lot more by staying alive through a whole round than you do trying to get one kill right away and then waiting out most of the round after dying in the first rush. Plus you can actually learn your way around the map.
(2) Contrary to your instinct, don't bother playing with other beginners. You will learn more playing with advanced players, because your mistakes will be punished and your good habits will be reinforced. If you only play against bad players, you will only develop bad habits.
(3) Use headphones, unless you have a top-notch surround-sound speaker set-up. With headphones you can get a better sense of directional sound. It makes it easier to locate people by the sound of their footsteps or gunfire.
(4) Use controlled, 1-3 bullet bursts. You can stand right next to a guy, and if you empty your clip at him in a long continuous burst, there's a good chance he will blow your head off before you kill him (I have seen this happen, and it has happened to me).
(5) Learn to compensate for recoil. The easiest way to get used to recoil is with the AK-47. With the Ak, aim at your enemy's upper chest and fire a short, 3-bullet burst. You'll find that the third bullet will most likely be a headshot.
(6) Learn the Buy menu. Don't worry if everyone is long gone by the time you finish buying your gear in your first few rounds. Once you figure it out, you'll be ready to go with the team.
(7) Don't use the sniper rifles. Just don't bother. You don't learn anything by hiding and trying to pick off targets from a distance.
A team-mate of mine would frequently kill rocket-weilder's with the crowbar just to prove he could. Rockets were great, but they can be avoided if you know what you are doing. People who complained about rockets in Quake I are whiners.
I'm with you on liking the old rockets. I don't think I've ever enjoyed an FPS deathmatch more than the original low-gravity level on quake. (By the way, in big low-G maps, other weapons were much more effective than the rockets, unless your opponent was foolish enough to keep his feet on the ground the whole time. Hitting an airborne moving target with the rocket launcher, while you are also airborne and moving, was both very tricky and very fun.)
In answer to the poster's original question: It doesn't matter what FPS you start with. You will feel like a total "n00b" for a while. Even with a brand-new game, you'll find yourself on servers populated entirely by the original beta testers, all sitting on the local networks of their ISP office and taking full advatage of the DS3 drop. Even when that's not the case, somebody who's mastered one mouse-based 360-degree FPS is going to be pretty good at all of them, so they will always have a leg up on you until you've played a little more. Just get in there, get killed, have fun, and you'll learn. Ignore your scores while you practice your strafing techniques and get the hang of aiming on the run. Soon you'll be spraying death everywhere with the rest of us.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
There are no keygens for Savage, because when I generated the CD Keys for it I did not do it algorithmically. All of the valid keys are kept on the server, which is where the cd key check happens (not locally).
Jon (Slothy)
Ex-employee, S2 Games
Here's an FPS tips site which includes tutorials and information on Quake, Aliens vs. Predator 2, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Wolfenstein.
...is playing with other people." - gabe, Penny Arcade
If you're wanting to avoid these crackshot players who've been playing since the day the game came out, you're going to have to start playing the day a game comes out. What's worse is that a lot of these people are just darn good at FPS anyway. A team game might be just what the doctor ordered in that case, except that it means getting into clan.
My suggestion, and one that I haven't seen mentioned, is to first find an FPS with a much smaller following. Tron 2.0, NOLF 1&2, for example, are great games with such small followings that even though they're really great, they're so desperate for other players that these guys will take you by the hand and help you get good if only to have fresh blood.
I remember then the now completely forgotten Legends of Might & Magic came out, I happened to get a free copy at work. Think Counter-Strike + Might and Magic but suckier. The thing is that there were only 5-10 servers, but everyone was really nice and a very tight group, and they were more than happy to show newbies the ropes. Even though the game design really blew, the community made it much more playable.
So, to summarize, my first suggestion would be to get in on day one on some upcoming FPS, maybe Far Cry. My second, and more realistic, is to find one of these small FPS games you like and just jump in. =)
Hy there, :D
I've been in the same situations a few months ago when I got my
Cable Modem
I played UT a LOT on single player, so it was OK for me, thou on
advance servers I get fragged a lot.
For Unreal Turnament there is a beginner server:
"Truff's Newbie-Friendly Unreal Tournament Servers"
http://www.truff.net/
For CS, I don't know beginner servers, just stick to common public
servers. Make sure they run some anti-cheat, like: Cheating Death http://www.cheating-death.com/
Stick with your team or a good player and you'll learn from them.
Also try to read some tips and tricks. This is a good place to
start: http://www.csimmortals.com/
Take care and have a Good Game,
Richard