Good Online FPS Games/Servers For Beginners? 804
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."
America's Army (Score:5, Interesting)
Savage (Score:5, Interesting)
info: http://www.s2games.com
RtCWeT (Score:5, Interesting)
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..
Halo isn't too bad (Score:5, Interesting)
TexanGirlz Servers (Score:4, Interesting)
Check them out: Texangirlz [texangirlz.com]
Re:America's Army (Score:2, Interesting)
Your best bet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem with Game Balance (Score:5, Interesting)
Play UT on CSHP servers (Score:3, Interesting)
(I haven't played UT in a few years, so I don't know what's what with the UT community as of late)
When I played UT, all of the best servers ran CSHP [unrealadmin.org]. There's a little more info here [planetunreal.com]. (Sorry, I didn't have time to find better links -- the CSHP home page seems to have gone away.) CSHP stands for Client Side Hack Protection. This is a aimbot/cheat protection mod that makes sure that everybody is playing on a level field. All of the servers running is, advertised it.
I just don't get it. What's the point of playing an online game if you have to cheat to win? What a way to ruin a game for everyone. (eyeroll)
Wow, this server's got forty players! (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:America's Army (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Day of Defeat (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:RtCWeT (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Natural Selection (Score:1, Interesting)
Plus with the new "combat" mode you can have 10 minute games as well as the hour long games in "classic" mode
Re:Practicing with Bots (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a good idea, but the bots are too predictable after a while. To offset this, slowly turn up the game speed and bot difficulty as you improve your skills. You should be using the bots to improve your reaction times and "fundamentals". In Unreal Tournament, if you can win the matches with the bots at 150% game speed and the higher levels of difficulty, you'll do fine when you play online at 100% gamespeed. On Unreal Tournament, play this way on the Instagib and you'll be a pro in no time.
Re:Natural Selection (Score:2, Interesting)
Nothing beats dialup (Score:1, Interesting)
If you really want to compete in Q3, you have to get ISDN.
Re:RtCWeT (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well (Score:3, Interesting)
The anti-cheat stuff like punkbuster is pretty solid now, and the only complaints I have are from noobs.
In light of this, a honor system like that in America's Army is a very nice bonus. But this does not seem to solve the problem at all. I think it would be better if game servers are dedicated to three different classes of players (newbies, intermediate and expert). That should help solve the unevenness in some games.
Re:Practicing with Bots (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Definately BF1942 (Score:3, Interesting)
Walk around with your gun... get shot by a tank
Respawn, grab a helicopter or a bomber, blast the tank... get blown away by a jet
Jump into an AA gunsite, or a tank with AA... blow away the jet.
The vehicles greatly enhance what you can do, and of course there's also joy in just trekking around on foot. Nothing quite like the joy of actually taking out that annoying hind all by your lonesome with just a stinger missile.
Try Battlezone from 1998 - Great Community (Score:1, Interesting)
Legends! (Score:5, Interesting)
Loosely based on Tribes...
http://hosted.tribalwar.com/legends/ [tribalwar.com]
Tribes (Score:2, Interesting)
Operation Flashpoint Resistance (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Your best bet... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Practicing with Bots (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd also suggest trying out the Planetside demo (7 or 30 days free, depending).
Both games allow for slower more heavily armored, heavier hitting classes. These are good for the newbie as they'll last a bit longer and have more opportunity to learn the game.
I like planetside because it can be played with a mind for tactics, rewarding fire and maneuver more than a typical FPS.
My idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Practicing with Bots (Score:2, Interesting)
Take that aspect away, and i see 1/2th the peope who play for more then 4 hours a week quiting the game. If I got kicked to a new server every time I pulled a decent score, I would say "fsck this" and give up the game, as how to you play with friends and develop communities, and all that shiz
Good luck (Score:2, Interesting)
The "casual" online gamer is not going to be rewarded in the majority of online games. If you want something fun to play online "for a half an hour now and then when [you are] bored" I suggest either Yahoo games or a different hobby. FPS's and MMORPG's are dominated by people with nothing but time on their hands. And the hard and fast rule of getting skill in any competition is that it takes a lot of time to become skilled. A casual gamer is going to be "owned" because he simply is not going to be able to compete with the hard core gamers. This fact, combined with the presence of many people who are not graicous winners, insures that online gaming won't be very fun for the casual gamer. However, if you are committed to this style of play perhaps there are some alternitives which hopefully I will be able to iterate.
*Try playing a mod of your game of choice. Preferably one that simply changes a few of the game's core rules. The reason for this is that hardcore gamers hate change. They have worked very hard to obtain their level of skill and they dont like it when their game is messed with. You want to be playing with a population of gamers that are roughly at your level of skill for it to be fun. You may find that the people that play mods are friendlier as well.
*Play on servers with restrictive rules and omnipresent admins. Gamers generally have foul mouths online. A server with rules against profanity or racial slurs will usually not be populated with hardcore gamers. Thus you get a good server to play in with players of average skill who aren't playing to call each other "fag" and what not. Homelan runs servers like this for many different games.
*Like other posters have said: be nice. If you can find a group of people that are friendly towards you and that you are comfortable with it will make any game that much better. Online gaming doesn't have to include social alienation.
*Play new games. Older games almost always have a high population of hardcore gamers who don't take kindly to newbies and casual gamers. Again, it just isn't fun to play a FPS where you are constantly dominated.
The basic rule for FPS's is that you need to find the server which works for you. Shop around until you find a server where you are comfortable playing on. It will make your online experience much better.
Captain video's newbie server (Score:2, Interesting)
It's called captain video's newbie server and for the name alone it usually attracts beginners.
If somebody too "l33t" logs in they are usually politely asked to leave and most of them do.
If not, they are voted off.
It currently runs "urban terror" a quake 3 modification. For instructions and download locations visit http://www.captainvideo.nl/quake/
If you allready have urban terror then simply type connect 62.221.195.175:27960 in the quake console.
I play with the nickname kusje
Hope to see you there!
Re:Practicing with Bots (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Anti-social people (Score:3, Interesting)
So, it's hard for a beginner to start because these kids have all the time in the world to become either frighteningly extreme experts or lame cheaters. And if you somehow do manage to beat someone--like you mentioned, they become weenies about it.
LAN parties are where it's at. You get to play with your buddies, you get to have fun. Yell insults at each other as you play. Hand each other some sodas and chips. Way better.
I highly recommend call of duty (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:bzflag (Score:2, Interesting)
I love bzflag. "Battle Zone" in 3-D and with teams.
If you search the server listing (late at night or EARLY morning), every now and then you find an unoccupied server - a perfect place to 'practice'.
Joining a team (as oppossed to being a 'rogue') is great for 'newbies'. A common goal: blowing up tanks that are not the same color as you.
When I first started playing, even the more experienced players who'd been at it a while were pretty friendly: "Welcome to the fold, dude" kind of attitude.
Of course there's always the occasional dickhead, but there are ways to keep them off the playing fields.
WWIIonline (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Planetside (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What kind of cheating do people do? (Score:2, Interesting)
Gunbound's a Blast ;) (Score:2, Interesting)
A friend recently introduced me to Gunbound [gunbound.net], a cartoonish game, where you can pick a mobile cannon with different features, add features, play on a team, chat away, and blast away until someone is finally blown up or falls through a hole you've created. Only downside is the lack of instructions - kinda learn as you go
I seem to find a lot of women playing too - which always makes things a little nicer, IMHO ;(
Natural Selection (Score:2, Interesting)
Marines vs. Aliens, playable from each side. Combat mode, where kills and experience earn you equipment/ability purchase points and ranking, or Classic mode, with buildable upgrade structures, where one player becomes an RTS commander to guide the Marines against the more chaotic Aliens.
It's a gorgeous cross between the movie Aliens, StarCraft, and the old game Marathon.
It's on Steam [steampowered.com] now as a third party game, getting anti-cheat all up in it. Current version is 3.0 Beta, available for anyone to play.
Rational Rating Systems Needed (Score:2, Interesting)
This is exactly the situation with online gaming. I am very good at some games, to the point at which I am accused of cheating. At others, I'm fair to middling. And I'm hopeless at some. All of these games would be more enjoyable for me if there were an online rating system that matched me up with players of similar skill. I've seen the fledgling effort in Warcraft III, but it doesn't seem to work very well. Why not just have a USCF-like rating system, where, if my UT2k3 rating is, say, 1643, I could get on a server for people rated 1600-1800? And for Q3, I'd be unrated, so I could get on a 0-1000 server until my performance had been logged for a while, so that the rating bot could assign me a provisional rating.
This would certainly require some effort on the part of online game developers, but the general problem of rating systems is well understood. The developers could choose to "stand on the shoulders of giants", rather than on their toes, by adopting these proven solutions into their online games, making more fun for all of us, and more sales for all of them.
Re:America's Army (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that this addresses the issue, but I remember introducing my office mates (at my previous job) to Quake, and setting up lunchtime deathmatches. By this time, I'd been playing FPS for years (since Quake was more than a bit aged when we played) and everyone else was new to the concept (much less the game.
To level the playing field, I set everyone up with drab skins, hard to see on most of the brown Q1 maps, and gave myself a bright stop-sign red skin. To boot, for quite a while (until people learned the maps, the moves, and the weapons), I used only shotgun. Everyone appreciated the equalizing.
The funny part, to me, was the different verbal reactions: with some, it was "when I see red, I know where to aim," while others said "when I see red, I run away!"
My pointless two cents. :P
Play the PC Game of the Year (Score:2, Interesting)
call of duty [gamespy.com].
This is exactly what you are looking for.
The game has amazing graphics and sound, it's fun, and overall i would say the average skill level you will find while playing online is low, when compared to bf1942 or cs.
But you don't have to take my word for it:
rottentomatoes.com 96% [rottentomatoes.com]
gamerankings.com 92% [gamerankings.com]
gamespy pc game of the year 2003 [gamespy.com]
shacknews pc game of the year 2003 [shacknews.com]
ign best pc action, best sound, best multiplayer game of the year, 2003 [ign.com]
etc [google.com]
Not to mention, killing russians never gets old
Planetside?????? (Score:2, Interesting)
the only true MMOFPS i know of.
Even though it's for sale, it still feels like beta. they keep evolving and tweaking the rules.
Pros:
1) 200 player battles are not uncommon.
2) three empires with specific weapons
3) not as bandwidth hungry as BF1942
4) Air vehicles, tanks, buggies, atv's
5) character development means that newbies can drive most powerfull tanks etc, but not be as flexible as developed players (who can drive those, and also maybe planes and be snipers)
6) Flying mini-mechs (if you play VS like I do)
Cons:
1) 15 dollar monthly sub
2) need monster Memory
3) Some balance issues with weapons
4) No way to "win" - the battles keep on going forever
It's a Science Fiction world. Lots of nano stuff to explain the fact you can respawn.