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."

Comments

America's Army

[servicepack158]

America's Army is free i just downloaded it :) it's pretty sweet. go check it out. It's more realistic too, ie no missle super guns and cheats that I know of.

Re:America's Army

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? I have no idea what you're talking about. Sure, grenades are a thing to avoid, and some maps (Bridge) are filled with them. But most of the time, it's realistic fun. Especially on larger maps such as Mountain Pass SE and Radio Tower.

Also, America's Army has punkbuster anti-cheating software to prevent aimbots. It works pretty well too. I'm noticing less headshots/impossible stuff done by noobs. Development for the most popular aimbot has also stopped since it's users were constantly being banned.

As for the honor requirement, you need 15 honor to play a special forces role on the SF maps. Otherwise, you play as indigenous forces (only difference is you can't mod your gun as IF).

There is one map that restricts to 15+ honor, and that is Pipeline SF. If you have less then 15, just play normal pipeline.

Re:America's Army

[smclean]

I disagree. Anyone knows where a 203 (grenade launcher) can and cannot get to, and after playing for 5 minutes you should be smart enough to realize how to go about keeping out of a 203's reach. This is realism. Writing off AA as a grenade fest is like writing off quake as a rocket fest.

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.

Re:America's Army

[randyest]

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.

Re:America's Army

[doorbot.com]

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.

Re:America's Army

[Giggles Of Doom]

...and how not to be seen...

Ah, he was behind the middle bush.

Re:America's Army

[Golias]

Back in my Quake days I could let just about anybody have all the rockets they wanted, and still gib them six ways from Sunday with other weapons. They might get the occational "splash damage" kill on me if I step too close to a wall at the wrong moment, of fail to "rocket jump" off their shot, but at the end of the level, it would be my name at the top of the screen, not theirs.

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.

Re:America's Army

[MrAngryForNoReason]

If you are into the rush of not knowing where the enemy are or where the next shot might come from, you should check out Vietcong. Single player is a bit of a dissapointment but multiplayer is incredibly tense.

You sneak through the jungle being as quiet as possible, making sure you stay in cover, going from tree to tree bush to bush. You don't hear anything, wonder where everyone is, then suddenly you come out from behind a bush and are literally face to face with an enemy. Its that split second rush where you both just crap yourselves and start firing. This of course pushes everyone else over the edge and suddenly the jungle just erupts with gunfire.

It has the same problems as other games with griefers and people who don't take it seriously but if you get on a good server it can be very tactical.

Savage

[SuperQ]

I've been playing Savage a bunch recently, it's a great combo FPS, and RTS.. I saw it at Best Buy for $20, and after playing the demo.. what a deal. (the demo is a bit bugy, but fun, the retail version update 2.0 fixes all the previous bugs)

info: http://www.s2games.com

Re:Savage

[SuperQ]

I forgot to mention, it's got Windows and Linux binaries.

Re:Savage

[13Echo]

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.

Re:Savage

[Slothy]

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

Re:Savage

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Jon you big slothy monkey. Adam here :) Also EX employee at S2games :)

RtCWeT

[Lumpy]

Return to Castle Wolfenstine Enemy Territory...

excellent game that REQUIRES team play and has lots of friendly people if you are interested in actually being a team member...

I'ts one of the very few I play on a regular basis..

Re:RtCWeT

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a heirarchy of difficulty for a given game.

1) The hardest servers will be fully patched to the newest version.

2) Much easier servers are servers that were never patched. Many noobs here, young kids, etc that didn't play enough to want to patch, or don't know that a patch exists.

3) Easier still is the demo version. Almost entirely newbs here, everyone at all serious layed out the $40 long ago.

So, using Return to Castle Wolfenstien as an example,

- The 1.4 servers are tough. Clans live here.
- The 1.33 servers are much easier
- The Wolf MP test beta is easier still.

BTW Wolf has punkbuster. Just because someone gets constant headshots does not mean they are cheating. I can regularly dominate a match, but I also routinely get owned by peole who are simply phenominal.

Re:RtCWeT

[Chip7]

Also, RTCW:ET uses punkbuster. It doesn't catch all cheats but does a decent job keeping the game fair.

Re:RtCWeT

[JuliusRV]

Yes! It's fun, it's free (as in beer) and you can play it under Linux!
But be prepared to get addicted... after a few days, your vocabulary will be reduced to the messages of the quickchat, as happened to the people in the video on this page (hilarious, a must see!):

http://www.et.gamesunited.de/files.html

Re:RtCWeT

[NutscrapeSucks]

I love RTCW:ET, but I wouldn't recommend it for the casual player.

The maps are very large and there's a complex set of objectives which have to be accomplished. Basically, you have to know where to be and where to go or else you are largely going to be useless.

I tried it with some friends of mine -- while in standard RTCW you could just bumrush the Map Room or whatever, these guys never really got the hang of ET and were always wandering around the wrong side of the map.

The good thing about the games is that if you aren't the best FPS shooter, you can be a Medic or Engineer and just play defense.

Re:RtCWeT

[Akki]

Seconded. ET was the first multiplayer FPS I ever got into. It was absolutely confusing at first, but once I stepped back and ran through the maps locally to figure out what the hell was going on, I loved it. You really get a sense of accomplishment from team-based FPSs that deathmatching can't get you. And ET is a wonderful team-based FPS. When you're new, the people on your side can take up your slack a little and you can learn from watching them. Strategy and tactics are very important. I'm still discovering new tactics eight months after starting. I'm even to the point now where I carefully calibrate my mouse, spend way to much time tweaking graphics settings, and set my FPS to 125 so I can strafe-jump just that little bit farther.

Re:RtCWeT

[74nova]

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.

LORD!

[coronaride]

Legend of the Red Dragon on someone's telnet BBS. Oh wait..he said FPS! oops!

bzflag

[pherris]

bzflag is great. Easy to start, easy on the eyes and it's OSS.

Well

[doomy]

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).

Re:Well

[CompWerks]

If you think there aren't any cheats that circumvent PunkBuster/Steam then you are't looking very hard.

Re:Well

[Zathrus]

Another thing to note -- if you aren't experienced in the game you have no way of knowing if someone is using a cheat or not. Even if you're good it can be hard to tell.

I'm a decent FPS player (on public servers I usually rank in the top 2-3%; good enough to get accused of cheating from time to time), but I have a friend that can beat the crap out of me. To the point that I won't ever get a kill unless he goofs around. And I know he's not cheating -- he's just that much better than me.

If you're not familiar with the game then you're not going to be able to tell if you just died to some l33t script kiddie that is using an autoaim hack or to someone that just knows how to play.

Even if you only play 1/2 hour a day you'll get better (unless you just have no tendancy towards being able to play well), but you're going to spend a lot of time just dieing at the start. It simply takes awhile to learn the feel of the game -- what weapons work well where, how to navigate certain maps, etc. It's just like anything else.

Re:Well

[tricops]

Be that as it may, I don't understand everyone's automatic assumption that so many people are cheating.
Granted, I know there are people out there who do cheat, but people have a tendency to blame cheating
any time someone is much better than them. If it were anywhere near as bad as some people make it out
to be there would be a ratio of like one person not cheating for every 3-50 who are. :-p

Re:Well

[Gyorg_Lavode]

I'm sorry but I call BS. It is standard procedure in any FPS, (but especially CS), to call anyone better than you a cheater and attempt to kick them from the server.

Re:Well

[Shalda]

That brings to mind the biggest problem with playing games online. People are weenies. That's why I've given up on the Internet and gone back to LAN parties.

Re:Well

[LordKronos]

I don't understand everyone's automatic assumption that so many people are cheating

Here is what I base my assumption on. I've always been good at online games, usually finishing first or near first place of any game I was in. However, over the years, as cheating has grown more common, I've noticed that my apparent skills have followed a pattern. When a new game comes out, I do very good at it. However after a few months of playing, once the cheats start spreading, I find myself doing worse and worse. Eventually it gets to the point that I feel like I'm a n00b at the game. When a new but very similar game comes out, again I find I'm very good at the new game for a few months, but gradually start getting worse again. Now it may be innocent coincidence, but I have a hard time believing that either a) my skill level declines with practice, or b)other players get better than me but are somehow unable to transfer those skills over to other games, and thus take months of practice to surpass me again.

I've reached the point that I've just given up on online games completely.

Re:Well

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Its not in their backpack, thats a common misconception. In reality, all of the skilled players have just learned to fire a weapon out of their ass. I fart nothing but headshots.

LAN with Friends

[DreadSpoon]

Honestly, just get some friends together on a LAN and play. It's more entertaining than playing with a mass of immature idiots online anyhow. ;-)

It'll also give you the opportunity to build up those skills to get good enough to compete with the losers^wpros who spend all their time playing FPS games.

Re:LAN with Friends

[blanks]

"Honestly, just get some friends together on a LAN and play. It's more entertaining than playing with a mass of immature idiots online anyhow. ;-)"

Compared to what? playing with a mass of immature idiots in your living room?

Re:LAN with Friends

[Pxtl]

Amen - not only that, but with LANs you can run all the most obscure mods you want. Before you say "who has a home LAN" - think it through, most geeks out there have a few old P166 boxen around. Anything above that level can run HL or Q2 - Voodoo2 cards are like $20 if you hunt for them. Just from keeping old computers around when they get replaced, I've got a 7-PC lan of computers faster than 166 at my family's house.

If its an older lan (p133 and up) get Quake 2 for Superheros Q2, Weapons Factory, Transformers Quake 2, and Action Quake 2. And get BattleZone. Half Life if you've got Voodoos. If you get HL, don't be afraid to hunt for the more obscure mods - my fave mod for HL is an obscure little action/racing hybrid named Turbo. Very fast, very violent, very cheap.

Good introductory games:
UT - easiest deathmatch FPS ever. An endless supply of good mods exist, and unlike in HL you can mix and match them.
Nerf ArenaBlast - UT for the kiddies!
Cube - simple, but painfully fast. wouter.fov120.com/cube
Serious Sam - easiest FPS to learn, no getting lost, no thinking - just shooting.

The newer FPS games I've played have all been harder, faster games. UT2k3 lost the whole "Quake for newbs/girls" appeal that the old UT had.

Oh, and BattleZone 1 is the greatest RTS/FPS hybrid ever.

Practicing with Bots

[Meridun]

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.

Re:Practicing with Bots

[rsilvergun]

You know, it's all well and good to tell the guy to practice, but has anyone ever considered the possibility that he doesn't _want_ to get that good. I know I fall into that category. I just don't have the dedication (or inclination) to practice that much (nor the inherent skill that makes practice unnecesary).

What would be nice is some sort of in game system that could filter servers by skill level. Maybe just a ladder would be enough. Set it up so if one player dominates, he gets booted to another server with a higher rating, and the weakest players get booted to a lower level server. Throw in some load balancing for good measure and you might have something accessible for newbies.

Re:Practicing with Bots

[dubl-u]

What would be nice is some sort of in game system that could filter servers by skill level. Maybe just a ladder would be enough. Set it up so if one player dominates, he gets booted to another server with a higher rating, and the weakest players get booted to a lower level server. Throw in some load balancing for good measure and you might have something accessible for newbies.

Bravo! This is a great solution to the problem. It is also what happens in real sports.

Another option is the sporting notion of a handicap. If somebody is really good, then the server makes it harder on them. If the server makes the handicap public, then they still get to be known as a bad-ass, while everybody still gets to have fun.

Re:Practicing with Bots

[randyest]

You have a good point, but I think you're jumping too quickly to a solution in the wrong direction, IMHO. You want servers filtered and segregated by skill level. I don't think this will work. Here's why:

Intermediate-to-advanced players will surely occasionally hop onto a n00b server to shoot some fish in a barrel, take out some frustration, test a new tecchnique, or whatever. This will annoy and discourage players who are "expecting" to do well because of server skill settings.

Some new players may even incorrectly assume that they don't have to bother with the (relatively high) learning curve of the controls and coordination required for most FPS games.

A sort of Peter principle kicks in: as soon as you have one or a few games where you start to do much better than the preset skill level for that server, you have to move on. It would be hard to tune the system to choose the "break-point" at a proper time for everyone. If I get lucky and a wild grenade kills 10 enemies, am I ready to move on? A tough AI problem, for sure.

The idea of filtering by skill quickly gets reduced to filtering by score, or at best aggregate average scores. This can work if you have a game with uniqie id's and centralized tracking. But then you'll need to account for multiple player for the same game CD, which allows for "cheating" the system by creating new "n00b" accounts.

Even if you work around the problems above, note that score is really not strongly related to player skill. Scores are more a combination of relative player skills, the maps, and playing styles used in each game. Bad players can get high scores and good players can gwet low scores, especially in team games, depending on the class and role they are playing.

In fact, some team-based mods are now actually not tracking individual player scores, but only team scores. This is to encourage more teamwork and less Rambo-style play. Some players get very high scores by baseraping with planes or whatever, yet still play poorly (by definition) because their team loses, and they don't help. If team victory is the goal, individual scores don't do well to promote it.

The above emphasise the problems with determining "skill" in terms of segregating servers and enforcing the segregation, and it also leads into my suggestion.

With class-based games, you have the option of focusing on 5 or 6 different skill sets / strategies. If you're not the best/fastest twitch finger in the West, consider playing classes other than assault/soldier and choosing not to run head-first into the front lines. Maybe you would be better playing medic, or engineer, or artillery support. I play a variety of classes (mostly in BF1942), and each one is a very different experience requiring totally different skills and play styles. Please consider trying them all a little and see what you may have a natural knack for, and enjoy.

Halo isn't too bad

[Mantrid]

I've found Halo to be pretty fun for what your describing...log on play for 15-20 minutes and quit. The vehicles make it interesting, although the game is not without its problems. But if your just playing casually on line it isn't going to be too big of a deal.

TexanGirlz Servers

[miketang16]

I've been playing on the Texangirlz Counter-Strike servers for almost a year now. It's a great recreational place to have fun. Generally the servers are filled with all levels of players too.

Check them out: Texangirlz

Enemy Territory

[S. Bolle]

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.

BF1942

[scumbucket]

Get Battlefield 1942. It's really fun!

Once you get the hang of it, get the Desert Combat mod. Updates the weapons, vehicles, and maps to present day.

Re:BF1942

[Tophorn]

I would agree with this statement. I've played Counter-Strike for about 4 years now and recently started playing BattleField's Desert Combat mod. Mostly the maps allow for beginners to "run-around" somewhere that will allow them to stay out of the action and work on whatever skill you feel you need to improve. Also it's got pretty graphics.

ArmageTRON

[Stavr0]

FP Light Cycle Game (open source, multiplatform) just like the movie.

Tribes

[AstrumPreliator]

Try Starsiege: Tribes. It's an old game but people still play it. It's actually a pretty easy game to pick up, but damn hard to master. You will lose the first couple games, but thats going to happen in any FPS you pick up. Tribes takes advantage of the third dimension (jet pack) so it teaches you to lead properly and it gives you a good feel for hitting someone with a projectile. Once you get good at Tribes you're almost garunteed to be good at another FPS.

UT2k3

[Lehk228]

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.

The newest on the market

[FortKnox]

Find the newest game on the market. Most are all pretty much the same now-a-days, and if you want to get on a game that has no established game gurus, and no cheats, you need to get the bleeding edge game that no one has had a chance to master and/or crack.

Honestly, any game someone mentions thats a bit older (like Enemy Territory) is a bit too complex for a 'fps newbie'. A fps newbie should get used to playing a standard deathmatch, and learning things like circle strafing... THEN get into a game that requires complex strategies and team play.... that's when things get really fun :-)

Your best bet...

[Jacer]

Your best bet is a LAN party with your friends. Your real friends, who, if you catch cheat, you can nail tacks through their, well, ya know. Online gaming is dominated by cheaters and fourteen year old kids who threaten to hax0r your computer when you're doing better than them. Though they rarely know what an IP address is, let alone a port. If I sound a bit bitter, it's because I play a lot of Warcraft, and the maturity level is insane. I don't talk to people when I play, and all I can stand to lay is team games with my room mate. I played a lot of C-strike in the day, but it just lost its appeal after having played Aztec for the hundred-thousandth time. Not to mention all of the kids who use aim bot. I have it a bit easy, where lan games can be arranged by walking down the dorm hallway and yelling at the kids on my floor. It's really hard, and a lot of people ruin the fun. Though, I guess your other option is to just get insanely good and hop around all the servers screaming "3a7 my r0ck37 biz0tch" as you let loose your fury in such an unholy manner everyone just assumes you ARE cheating, and ban you.

Re:Your best bet...

[EulerX07]

Battle.net...

You will never see such a wretched hive of scum and villainy anywhere else in the galaxy. We have to be careful not to be pwned.

BF1942

[dfj225]

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.

Problem with Game Balance

[Prien715]

I've played quite a bit of CS, and one of the biggest problems is lack of balance between servers and players. It doesn't matter if a player's cheating or not, but if the player's 30-3 someone should kick them. They're either playing against people who are much worse than them in which case they should join a server with better players or else they need to stop cheating. I'd like to see more servers with kick votes to help with this kind of stuff.

Day of Defeat

[michtu]

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.

bzflag

[BadBlood]

http://www.bzflag.org/

The game is like the old Battlezone game where tanks move around trying to simply kill each other. The flag part is where you run over flags and get different "power-ups" depending on the type of flag.

It's cross-platform, simple, and the graphics are scalable such that it can be run on a variety of machines varying horsepower.

Website

[TheAngryMob]

Someone forgot to put a URL...

americasarmy.com

Enemy Territory

[Quill_28]

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.

Some good places to start

[HappyFunnyFoo]

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.

Move up through the ranks

[Apreche]

Beginners should play single player first. Get yourself a copy of doom. Beat the game on at least hurt me plenty mode. Then beat doom 2 the same way. It doesn't take long. Then beat quake 2 single player on normal. Forget quake 1. Then beat half-life single player on normal. After that you should have amassed enough fps skill to rock the house.

Play some good old team fortress classic. It isn't that popular anymore, but people still play. It will train you to apply your already existing fps skills against real players. Once you've got the multiplayer fps groove and the skills to avoid being called a n00b pick your game of choice. You can go for a slower paced lower skilled game like america's army, BF1942. A middle of the road game like UT. Or the high skill fierce competition games like CS and natural selection.

There are lots of fpses out there, and one of them is right for you. But don't jump right into the online world like you're in the polar bears club. Remember, you're going up against guys like me who've been fpsing since wolf3d on dos and the game wont be fun for you if I frag you in two seconds every time. Go through the same skill building process we did. You have the luxury of not having to wait years for new games to come out, so take advantage of it.

As for me lately the only fps I'm into is NS.

Check out Tribes2

[marklyon]

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

PunkBuster

[grolschie]

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.

Terracorps

[Spleen]

Terracorps is an online armored combat game that does not have huge hardware requirements. This is a very simple shooter type game, anyone can play, but the strategy behind it can become incredibly complex. This game pulled me away from Quake III and C&C Generals.

Wow, this server's got forty players!

[foxtrot]

It must be good!

Don't make the mistake of thinking that way. It probably matters a little less what game you play (though I highly recommend Enemy Territory).

Find a fairly small server, maybe ten people total. This will have the benefit that you'll be able to hear yourself think. You might actually see some of the map more than a dozen yards from your spawn area.

Most games have an in-game chat function, and messages will show up on your screen. People will try to point you in the right direction.

If you do decide to try out Enemy Territory, try out the Medic class; you give everyone on your team extra hit points just for being there as a medic. Pick someone and follow him, he'll wind up showing you the objectives as he tries to achieve them. And you'll be able to keep him healthy and revive him as you go. It's not a bad way to learn.

-JDF

Natural Selection

[CeleronXL]

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.

Day Of Defeat

[DR SoB]

This is a half-life mod similar to Counter Strike, only 1000 X's better. It does not have the cheating issue's that CS has. I have been playing it since the release of Half Life, and it is amazing. Everyone that plays it with me is instantly hooked. I can't say enough good about this game. I have been a gamer since Sierra's earliest days (yes, I still have my original copy of Police Quest 1.).

Urban Terror getting ported

[mindaktiviti]

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).

Urban Terror will guarrantee that you fail at least one course because of it. :D

Do you want to play with others or just win?

[GoofyBoy]

> seem to be dominated by people using cheats, and by established clans of players who are a lot better than me.

With any game this is going to happen. Its like playing football with other people, sometimes the other team is going to have big bulky guys and sometimes you are going to lose.

Play and have fun. Its no fun losing 0-10 but thats why you have rotating maps and teams get mixed up. And you will get better.

My suggestions:
1. Learn the maps. Learn the guns.
2. Follow another player. Do what they do. Talk in game to them. (use team talk)
3. Try and play as a team. Say thank you. Joke around (Sexual jokes are welcomed. Homosexual jokes more so.)
4. Enjoy the excitement with playing with pretty guns and the thrill of shooting them off.

Everyone is better than you for a reason.

[Rexz]

Online FPS gaming is very different from its offline counterpart. The optimum strategies are often counter-intuitive, your enemy actually thinks, and you are forced to rely on other people in order to stay alive.

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.

That's what he is (and I am) trying to avoid

[Mr. Underbridge]

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?

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.

Legends!

[nulltransfer]

It's free (~80 MB download), runs under Linux, Windows and Mac OS 9/X, and comes with both server and client for all three platforms...

Loosely based on Tribes...

http://hosted.tribalwar.com/legends/

find a good community that plays..

[Antilles]

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.

PlaneShift OSS MMORPG

[OzJeep]

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.

Quit your whining.

[NerveGas]

seem to be dominated by people using cheats

While people using cheats do exist, they're not nearly as prevalent as you seem to think, you're just unable to accept that people are that good.

Take Quake 3, for example. I got tired of having my butt handed to me by people with the railgun. So, I limitted myself to *only* using the railgun. In time, I got pretty good. With more time, I got really good. With even more time, I got fan-freaking-tastic. When you're single, don't own a home, and have a 1-megabit pipe into your apartment, it's amazing how much time you can dedicate/waste on those things!

So, what did that get me? A bunch of whining cry-babies yelling "Aimbot! Cheater!" every time I killed them. After they did it enough to annoy me, I'd chase them down and kill them with the gauntlet. At that point, they'd generally just leave the game.

steve

Advice for FPS Newbies

[jejagua]

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.

My idea...

[throbbingbrain.com]

but if the player's 30-3 someone should kick them

I play Unreal INF and there's usually someone on each server that is so much better than the rest that it lowers the fun-factor for everyone else.
I think the player with the highest score should glow in some eye-popping color and have access to only the lowest hit weapons. When their score drops, they go back to normal and the next highest takes their place. Call it an equalizer.

Day of Defeat

[Trailer Trash]

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.

What are you talking about?

[Argyle]

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.

ban? Don't think so

[Barbarian]

Unfortunately, the same people that are modifying punkbuster or any other anti-cheat system have hundreds of cd-keys to play with. They always claim it is a keygen, which is usually false. What happens is they set up some irc bots to send people trojans who join irc channels (a good way to always target people who play the game in question), or they scan for open windows fileshares. As an example, there was a windows file sharing scanning program going around cable modems near me--you'd see it try to connect every 5 minutes or so from a different IP (all local cable modems in my city). I made a samba share to look like a windows directory and got a copy (and sent it to Mcafee and norton) showing that it was really a trojan/worm.

Anyways, one day I decided to try connecting to the people scanning, and sure enough, they had open fileshares in windows, usually c:\. I probably shouldn't have, but I left a note in autoexec.bat followed by "pause". The other thing was, they all had Half-Life directories. I could have stolen their cd-key's if I wanted by copying their registry! I'm betting they all got duped by a "cheat program" that someone put out.

Team Fortress (TFC) is cheap, easy, and fun

[Daemongar]

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

Day of Defeat, anyone?

[Kagenin]

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

Response from another casual gamer

[{tele}machus_*1]

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.

Re: Ridiculous

[benzapp]

Beginners should play single player first. Get yourself a copy of doom. Beat the game on at least hurt me plenty mode. Then beat doom 2 the same way. It doesn't take long. Then beat quake 2 single player on normal. Forget quake 1. Then beat half-life single player on normal. After that you should have amassed enough fps skill to rock the house.

Just because it has taken you 10 years to learn how to play a FPS doesn't mean the average geek reading this site will require that much time.

Doom I??? Doom II??? I haven't heard of anyone playing either of those games in at least 5 years. My god, they had a Doom release on the Atari Jaguar!!! Think about that!

I think you have dedicated way too much of your life to playing these games.

In the amount of time that has expired since Doom I came out, you could have gotten your undergrad degree, gone to medical school, AND finished your residency. You would be a real, licened, ready to probe the vagina gynecologist.

Lets get our priorities straight here. Games should be a minor diversion, not an activity which requires 15% of your life to master.

WWIIonline

[Lodragandraoidh]

World War II Online is the best battlefield simulation - bar none. It is also a FPS - in that you can only view the environment from the first person perspective, whether you are an infantryman, a tank, a ship or a plane. However, it is not for people with short attention spans, or folks who want instant action. It more than makes up for this with the following capabilities:

1. Massive Map. The map is of Western Europe; you could spawn into Holland, and walk all the way to Switzerland if you wanted to (1/4 scale - with accurate elevations and terrain features that nearly match the real map of Europe) - this would take you days, if not weeks to do this. There is no 'zoning' between smaller areas like in other online games - and the map is humongous compared to any FPS currently on the market. You don't have to worry about running into a wall when you are trying to maneuver - and battles don't end up being 'frontal assaults through a bottleneck' - with interesting results and possibilities for offense and defense.

2. Visual Distance. The edge of the 'fog' curtain at the edge of your vision is 6 or more kilometers away. You can see men with your avatar's naked eye out to 2 Kilometers, ground vehicles out to 3 kilometers, and much larger vehicles, such as ships out to the edge of the fog (6km or more). Optics, such as binoculars or telescopic weapon sites allow you to see further for each type. Tank battles typically occur between 500 and 2000 meters.

3. Damage System. The damage system is very realistic - going so far as to break up different parts of your infantry avatar (head, torso, extremities) - and apply damage based on the physics of the weapon that is impacting the 'part' of the body or vehicle (or both).

4. Combined Arms. The game includes Air, Land and Sea forces that all operate on the same battlefield; while there are a few games that do this (such as Battlefield 1942) - none have the same feeling or realism that engagements in WWIIonline have. Whereas in an infantry based FPS (like Socom, or the Rainbow 6 series) - you can pretty much ignore the other components, in WWIIonline you must work together with other branches to succeed. Calling in an airstrike on an enemy position, or doing an amphibious assault (river patrol, destroyer and transport ships currently modeled), or flying as a pilot, or being a ship commander, or a tanker, or an infantryman (sappers, riflemen, light machine gunners, and soon rifle grenade equipped infantry - plus smoke and frag grenades - as well as knife) and all working together move the map.

5. No Gankers. You can not kill your own side. That being said, that does take away from the realism a bit - but more than makes up for it in the playability department - unlike other games where griefers use team killing to get the choice equipment, or just disrupt the gameplay.

6. Night and Day. Currently the system has a fast clock that has a 'day' that lasts 6 hours (don't quote me on that), and a night that lasts half that time (3 hours?). There are clouds - but currently no weather effects - but that is planned for future development.

The game begins with a 'map reset' - where the starting 'frontline' positions are set to the defaults. The game commences immediately and the map runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week until a winner is declared. The winner is the side that captures the vast majority of the enemy's towns (large towns/cities count more than small towns - but are also harder to take). Maps last anywhere from a week to several months. After a winner is declared automatically, the map is reset and the war begins again.

The equipment is based on WWII types, with a more historic approach than other games (such as BF1942) that start off with the Tiger tank (for example). Instead you will learn to use the PZII, PZ38, PZIII, Sd232 on the Axis side, and the Sumoa, Char 1B, Renault, and Panhard on the French, and Matilda, A13, and Vickers on the British (they

FPS tips

[xihr]

Here's an FPS tips site which includes tutorials and information on Quake, Aliens vs. Predator 2, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Wolfenstein.

Exaggerated cheating

[xihr]

Although cheating is a serious problem on some servers, the fact is most claims of cheating are false. It's the beginners who see cheating when it's not there. They come from newbies who don't realize that although they think they are good, there are people much, much better than them. There's a hierarchy of tiers of player skill in FPS games, just like there is in life. Even people in the top tiers will get trounced by people on the even higher tiers.

All the problems that come with people cheating can be eliminated simply by playing on a good, reliable, well-administrated server that you've come to trust. It can take time to find one, but it's worth the investment. In short, don't sell out Quake, Counter-Strike, and its progeny just yet.

Ok, no, really..

[msimm]

Team killing is always really popular. If possible (depending on game) throw gernades, light team mates on fire or generally stand around in peoples way.

If someone shoots you a lot and you cant seem to touch them, that means their cheating. Its always best to call them a cheater out loud. This will show the other players that you just want to play a fair game.

Monopolize. If your playing on a level with any 'scarce' items its probably best if you get to them first then run directly over to the enemy side and open up! Just to show them how leet you are (they'll apprecaite you donating the weapon too).

Talk shit. Players really respect a player who knows how to talk shit. If your losing, insult the enemy team! This goes great along with accusing enemy players of cheating.

Finally, if *your* using a cheat its probably best to start accusing enemy players of cheating *as soon as you log in*. Your team mates will apprecaite this and admire you for your honesty.

Don't forget to bunny hop! Good gaming!

There's a far more elegant solution to all this

[TyrranzzX]

If you don't want to practice and put in the time to get good(which tends to make you decent at a number of games when you get good at one), then stick to single player games. There's simply no way you're going to be able to go out and have a good time in FPS games without spending some time learning a game well. Expect to, especially when the game is as difficult as tribes, get your ass handed to you on silver platter for the first few months, and that's if you're putting in a few hours a night and you've got the talent. I know a guy in my clan who is 40 somethin years old, a retired marine and he's k3wl as fsck, but even after years of tribes he can't mid air a guy jetting up and down. He can do other things and be a sneaky bastard but he can't mid air people consistantly (last time I played with him, that is).

There simply is no multiplayer FPS game that exists that doesn't have the skilled players and cheats and clans (whom almost all usually cheat to some degree, usually the highest clans either don't cheat at all or cheat like a mofo with custom stuff). That's the reality of it.

With that said, there are some excellent single player games out there like morrowind (if you've got the super powerful hardware) or Deus Ex, Chrome, and a couple others. There are also some low-skill multiplayer games like planetside, halo, and everquest that are designed for someone like yourself, but obviously some have a monthly fee. (I'm taking this in comparison to high skill games like tribes, BF1942, and to a lesser extent Q3, UT2K3, Natural selection, etc).

Wolf ET

[mp3phish]

Most people call this game Wolf ET, or just ET. Don't let the name fool you. It is full blown WW2 saving private ryan style FPS. Its awesome...

Here are some quick tips for newbies:

- Start out as a medic. You can revive people with the needle, and lay down health packs for other players. If you do this well, people will start to help you by protecting you when u get into trouble. As a medic, stay in the back or middle of the pack when you spawn so you don't have to fight first. Insted, play cleanup, and finish off the enemy and revive teamates. Reviving teamates is the easiest way to get a good score and get yourself on the scoreboard if your a newb (but don't let this fool you, most of the top players play medic regularly) Another good reason to start medic is that your health automatically replenishes, so you will live longer.

- Learn the maps. All the maps have objectives. After completing the first objective, there is usually a second main objective. As a medic, you will be able to follow the better players around.

- teamplay teamplay teamplay... This is the name of the game. Don't run off by yourself or you will die and have to wait for respawn. As a medic you start out with smaller levels of ammo. You will have to be nice to your teamates or they will not give you any ammo. Also, without medics, everyone dies faster. Without fieldops, there isn't enough ammo for the team. Without engineers, there is nobody to complete the objectives. This game requires teamwork. Cover the engineer while he is planting the bomb. stay behind as a medic so the guy in front of you will have a backup in case he gets ambushed, etc etc.. Teamwork is the name of this game (most of the teamwork is pretty straightforward so the basics should come naturally, this is the best part of the game and why most people play it) If you are in it just to get frags, ET probably isn't the game for you...

- Try not to talk shit. Its probably OK to talk shit sometimes, but this game isn't like CS where 24/7 shit talking and unfair gameplay is tolerated. People doing lame shit will be booted by most server admins if they see it. This is also a good reason why its such a popular game for both newbies and hardcore clan players.

- Since this game isn't like quake*, you only have 1 main weapon, not 9 of them. So it will be easier for you to learn your loadout. There is pistol, main weapon (usually sub machinegun) and then your special weapons (needle and health packs for the medic) This simplicity means you can learn the gameply much faster. The drawback is that you have to navigate the "limbo" menu before you can join the game. This is the hardest part for most newbies: just select which team you want to be in, and select which class you want to go (medic, fieldops, soldier, covert ops, engineer) and then select your weapon. Thats it! Jump in the game and start going

- Try not to get frustrated when your respawn timer is high. That is part of the game and if everyone had instant respawn, the gameplay would be way less fun. It keeps people from doing rambo rushes and gives value to your life. One small problem is that the enemy might try to "spawn camp" you in which case the game is no fun. If you are a serious newb, try another server, or if you get better, kill the spawn killer and your problems are solved.

above all, have fun. This game is awesome and free. Go download it ASAP!

"The worst part of multiplayer games...

[superultra]

...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. =)

Any FPS without respawn

[terminal.dk]

Respawn really kills the game, people don't act realistic in any way, and uses bazookas all the time to blow themself up, sometimes killing someone else as well.

Games without respawn is way better. A good current example is Rainbow Six. Start playing cooperativew games to learn. Mature gamers, friendly atmosphere. Have yet to meet coop cheaters. This game rocks.

Otherwise go for strategy games, like some of the best out there. Myth II Soulblighter rocks.

Re:Realism

[Beardydog]

It seems to take a few tries to get in trouble. I shot the guy training to my right first, and had to start over. I got yelled at, failed to learn my lesson, assassinated my instructor, and then went to prison.

I've spent the last hour getting yelled at in medic training for jumping on tables, looking at other people's papers during tests, and standing up for no reason.

As far as escapist gaming goes though, it might be a little too real. If you talk to the nurses too often, one of them tells you she's married, and the other tells you she has a 6 foot tall, 240 pound boyfriend in Special Forces.

Rejected by pixel-women...

Re:Good Online FPS Games/Servers For Beginners?

[R1ch4rd]

Hy there,
I've been in the same situations a few months ago when I got my
Cable Modem :D
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