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.

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

[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..

LORD!

[coronaride]

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

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.

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.

Re:Well

[CompWerks]

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.