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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."
Why don't you try playing single player, or perhaps set up a LAN game filled with some bots while you bring yourself up to speed with the games?
I know that the question specified "online", but if you consider yourself a beginner, then you probably need to practice some before you get online and swim with the sharks. Many of the current FPS games allow for single-player with bots, and the bots are often good enough to mimic real players, with the useful difference that you can adjust their difficulty. I know that my officemates and I practiced with Tribes 2 that way for several hours when we bought the game before we logged into the online servers, and it made a world of difference in our enjoyment.
If you think there aren't any cheats that circumvent PunkBuster/Steam then you are't looking very hard.
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
I would suggest battlefield 1942. You can hop in to a game quickly, and it uses punkbuster, so there is little to no cheating. BF1942 is not one of those games where people get insanely good and know every little inch of the map. Plus, if WW2 isn't your bag, you can always download destert combat for some modern action. I personaly like DC better than the original, but thats just me.
SIGFAULT
If you are referring to UT2003, try GibGames.com port 2206 or 2225 for the more "skilled" players, or just connect to one of the countless deathmatch servers. Cheaters are rarely a problem; I encounter a cheater once in every twenty matches on UT2003. With Quake 3 your best bet is to only join servers with punkbuster enabled (this should have been obvious already) as it seems to stop cheating to some degree.
Some inexperienced FPS players automatically assume that someone's cheating when they get smacked down, often repeatedly. 99% of the time it's just skill, in my experience. I often thought the same way when people would have 20 frags and no deaths. However, I now realize that it's just talent. I am not in any way saying that you are one of these people, it's just that cheating is a lot rarer on online FPS games than one might expect from reading this post.
I have no experience with Half-Life: Counterstrike. This only applies to Q3 and UT2003.
Natural Selection is quite good. It's a Half-Life mod that has an excellent player community - very few nubs, and almost zero hackers. Relatively complicated gameplay, but once you learn it, it is very fun.
Because you never get up to speed playing maybe a couple hours per week, like the guy in question does. You play that infrequently, and you still get your ass kicked.
Bottom line is he (and many of us!) want servers where one can be capabibility-matched, so as to have a fun and competitive game regardless of skill level. Basically the idea is to vent some real-life frustration without making the game a full-time job.