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

[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.

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

[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

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

[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.

LORD!

[coronaride]

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

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

[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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!