How do you get real good at FPS?

[courtesi96]

I won't mention the games that I play but safe to say I could use some general advice. I keep moving in the game and what not but there are times when I am strifing and unloading my weapon into someone and its right when I reload that I get killed. Blah.

[Oobgarm]

Practice.

I'm serious.

[PapaStu]

Practice.

I'm serious.

What he said.



That and it really does depend on the game. Certain games require different styles to play. Do I play CoD4 the same way I play Halo 3? I think not.

[DeputyMoniker]

Practice practice practice. I once read an article regarding the effectiveness of uberperipherals. The article stated that little to no gameplay improvement was happening there. That isn't to say that a $2 mouse is going to do the trick, but don't expect a $130 mouse to make you better at the game. Those things don't play the game for you...you still have to know what to do with it. The only way to improve your game is to practice. Be sure to pay attention to your enemy. Learn their AI, how they react to things, what they notice, and what they don't notice. Get online and study techniques and get into your game and practice them.

[Lady Jaye]

Topic moved to the modern gaming forum. It's about gaming after all...

*swoooooosh*

[exit]

Practice and patience are the key man, you can't expect to jump in a game like Call of Duty and expect to dominate everyone in your path, it just doesn't work like that.

[roushimsx]

- Learn the maps. Know the routes that people generally like to take and how to exploit their patterns. Know where item and player spawns are and know how to time your arrival in a room to coincide with them, but be aware that it's easy to fall into a pattern that other people will pick up on.

- Learn all of the weapons. Know when each one is most effective and learn how to aim well with all of the weapons. If a game has realistic ballistics, practice shooting at various distances so that you can get a feel for how to best use the iron sights / scopes. With splash damage weapons, go for the feet. With games that have location-based damage, get real fucking good with aiming for exposed weak points (heads!). Practicing Unreal Tournament (the 1999 one) with the ASMD core's alt + primary fire is a nice little routine.

- Set your FOV to a higher setting if the server allows it. If you have a widescreen monitor, this will give you a nice advantage. If you have a 4:3 monitor, it'll take a little gettin' used to to deal with a FOV of 120, but you'll find it offers a major advantage over either the old standard of 90 or the new substandard of 75.

- Use a mouse with a decent DPI. You don't need anything ultra high end, but a low quality ball/optical mouse will cause problems with precision aiming.

- Maximize your framerate. Turn down extra effects if you have to. You want a smooth framerate!

- If a game supports surround sound / positional audio / 5.1 / 4.1 / Aural Sex, use it. Snag some decent surround sound gaming headphones for not-too-much.

- Use voice comm in team games. Fuck, use TEAMWORK in team games.

- Other stuff. Every game is different! :)

[kaedesdisciple]

It sounds like common sense, but making sure you have a fully loaded weapon before you enter a firefight is always a good idea.

If you're playing Halo, grenade accuracy is essential. Lobbing that well-placed grenade a fraction of a second earlier than your opponent can make the difference between life or death.

Learn where the power weapons are, when they respawn, and how to use them. Even if you are terrible with the sniper rifle now, just keep using it until you get better.

Learn the maps, well. Knowing where you are vulnerable on a map from particular weapons can decide whether or not you take on certain opponents, which ties into my next point...

If you can, try to fight on your own terms, and don't feel bad about running away if you know you're outgunned.

Try to learn behavioral patterns, people are creatures of habit and usually take similar, if not the same patterns again and again. Know these and exploit them.

If you find you keep dying the same way, don't continue the same behavior. Someone may have learned your pattern and is exploiting it. Try to mix up your strategies a bit and keep your opponents on their toes.

Above all, like everyone else said, practice practice practice.

[Rob2600]

You have to be unemployed, live with your parents, and spend at least 12 hours a day playing the same game over and over while wearing one of those Garth Brooks headset microphones.

[calthaer]

Rob2600 is right. Some people sink way too much time into this for you to ever beat them.

That being said, I will say: use WSAD and make sure you play people who are better than you are.

[tom]

and practice

[heybtbm]

The four basics of success in an online FPS:

1.) Practice
2.) Know your maps
3.) Know your weapons
4.) Reload after firing your weapon

[ProgrammingAce]

one of the things i used to do is cheat in single player so i could pratice my aim. I used to run through halo 1 with nothing but the sniper rifle with infinite ammo and beat it without zooming. Suffice to say, there aren't too many people who can out snipe me these days...

Get me stuck with a shotty or sword and i'm still screwed though...

Gears is the complete opposite. I generally sneak up on people and chainsaw them or blast 'em with the shotty.

Find what you're good at. In team based games, a bullet sponge can be useful too. Your teammates can use you to figure out where the other team is, just make sure someone has your back.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

And to add a little to Rob's comment above... the envinronment in which you play the game is integral to your success at the games. The best players definately come from the dark subterranean dwellings known as thier parent's basement. Unless you continually train in that sort of place, there's no way you can truly master Unreal Tournament.

[djbeatmongrel]

you need h4xx0r5

[Gamemaster_ca_2003]

Like everyone else Said Pratice is the Key to Greatness.
Also You Need to know the Game from front to back.
Hand eye Cordination is also a great thing to have.
Finally you need to stay Loose out there.

[Push Upstairs]

You need to find the Cloak of FPS gaming (gives +15 ability!)

[Mattiekrome]

simple... wallhack :D

[Balloon Fight]

Practice as much as you can vs STRONG competition. Don't go noob bashing, play the best people you can. Then learn things such as weapon spawn times, special item spawn times, best locations on a map for sniping etc.

[cyberfluxor]

Along with the "play a lot to learn how others play," it really is great advice. I've played thousands of Starcraft games online from '99 til around '04 and after absobing your first few waves of men I'd have a wonderful idea of what you would do and know the perfect counter measures. Once in a high school class I played 1v7 players and owned them all simply because they were pure air offense and never thought of reaver drops happening behind their crappy defense. Sure it's a RTS game but there are simple applications of leaning skills for FPSs as well that can make even advanced players struggle to take you down if you know their tactics.

[Skelix]

Learn the maps, if the game allows it make a private game with just you. Explore the map, look for places where you can be on high ground above your opponents. Look for where the power weapons spawn (if its that type of fps).

Moving around continously isn't always the best, sometimes you can camp in a spot for a little bit, it's knowing when to move and when not to move.

Aim for the head, getting in the habit of going for the head shot. If you land them in most fps you'll kill quicker. Also learn the melee for the game you're playing. Usually after a few shots and a melee you're opponent is dead.

[Lord_Magus]

Like most other posters have already mentioned, practicing against HARD opponents is the key - you will adapt and learn much faster than when playing against noobs, and this holds true with any other type of game. Also, try and use the more "advanced"\hard to use weapons in the game, i.e. don't just go for the rocket launcher all the time only because it make things easier.

Personally, I found that my FPS skills skyrocketed after I played Quake 3 with the InstaGib mod for a while - the railgun takes an insane amount of practice to use effectively, and once you do so you can play with other weapons much easier than before. I think anyone here who is an InstaGib fan can understand what I mean :)

[Mattiekrome]

Depending on what kind of setting you are in, try to watch someone who is better than you actually play the game. Back in college, we used to have huge battles in half life (Turkey Burgers!). Usually around 12 people or so. I generally placed in the top 25% of most of the games we played, but this one guy basically won every game we played. One day while playing, he had killed me several times in a row and mocked me as he did it, so I got up and went to his room to mess with him. I ended up watching him play and caught on to some of his secrets, which I then used against him (hiding places, hidden weapon spawns, sniping locations, etc).

[Trebuken]

Yes watch.
Use the spectate option in games that have it, espeacially when you find someone who is very good.

Be aware of connection issues and framerates.

No where all the shields, power-ups, health packs, and enhancements are and move around to those locations sporadically, but don't always follow the same path...

Play some warm-up before entering a ranked match.

[TurboGenesis]

What is help me in the Halo games is I tighten up the aiming sensitivity. I set it to 1! I still am suck so bad but it help me out a bit… Sorry I am not able to offer much help. As other have said, PRACTICE, we're talking about Practice, man.

[iamchris]

I suck in general at FPS's. Except for Call of Duty 4, which I'm decent at. Especially objective based maps. All I can say for a FPS like COD is to stand still to fire, and run around the very edges of the map. Everyone else likes to go around the middle. But if you stay to the edges, its real hard to get shot in the back, and you can shoot people in the backs as they run past you. It pays to be a pussy, perhaps?

[WanganRunner]

If you just want to ratchet up your reflexes, I recommend the following:

Play Unreal Tournament 2K4, Zark/Binslayer mod, at like 150% gamespeed with outrageous (double digit) mouse sensitivity.

Initially you will be dying every 5 seconds, but once you can get the hang of that you'll be able to tear up anyone.


Granted, this really is only applicable to super-fast twitch FPS. I don't play shxt like CoD4 or whatever....I like super jumps and full auto one-hit-kill weapons only.



Oh, and taking ass-tons of adderall before playing helps too, lol.

[Rev. Link]

I've been having the same kinds of problems with Halo 3. I never really play FPS games online, but I've been enjoying Halo lately. Problem is, I pretty much constantly get my ass beat. Hard. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of tactics I try. The worst part is, it seems like people are taking me down in one hit every time, while I can unload a whole clip into them and land a melee blow and they're still breathing.

I've come to believe that unless you play nothing but FPS all the time, you're just not going to be able to beat most of the people that play online. These people play the same games all the time and get very good at them. I'm pretty good at games myself, but I play so many games, so many different types of games, that I'm not supergood at any one of them. That's the key ingredient to many of these online players' success.

[Berserker]

You don't need to play one kind of FPS all the time to be decent at it. You just have to take the right concepts learned from other games and apply them appropriately. Here's my advice for doing that.

-Install Quake2. Patch up to the latest version.
-Then install EraserBots for Quake2

Why Quake2? The railgun in this game is imbalanced. Any direct shot to the head is going to result in an instant kill. It has a bit of recoil, but no reloading, and no speed/aiming penalties for using it. This is ideal for working up your aim.

Start out on the first deathmatch map, Q2DM1, the Edge. Start out with only one other bot on the map, but make sure to grab the railgun before you spawn him. It's in an underwater tunnel in the pool of water. Basically just run around and try to shoot him in the head, always. Try to get a one shot kill.

Start to get a feel for and learn the map as you go along. Learn what the central points are on the map, and how to control them. Don't just run around like a horse with blinders on. Own your surroundings. Learn to scan your surroundings as you move, keeping an eye on particular places/entrances/exits where you know someone could come out.

Spawn a few more bots once you get the hang of it, if you like. They're not overly bright, but they WILL shoot at you, and that's the point. You're trying to work on having good aim while being shot at. You're going to have to move around as you're shooting to avoid the fire, which is also the point.

Now if you're getting the hang of it, start working with the rocket launcher. Start getting a feel for blast radius -- how it makes more sense to shoot at the surface closest to them, the ground at their feet, or the wall closest to them if they're in mid-jump -- to score successful kills, rather than just going for the head. This is a blast weapon, and so this idea is true for most all other blast weapons in FPS games. Finally, work with the other weapons a bit. Machine guns, shotguns. Learn how controlled bursts aimed towards the head/torso make more sense than simply unloading when it comes to machine guns. Learn how direct close-range shots at the torso work best with shotgun weapons.

When you're satisfied you're making some good progress, move on to Quake 3. Change around to different maps. Use bots. The bots here are going to be a little harder to kill, but the weapons you'll be working with are going to be the same idea. Aim weapons, blast weapons, machine guns, shotguns. With some slight additions. Take the same concepts you learned and apply them here. Learn the maps, control the maps, own the maps. You're not simply going from Point A to Point B until you see someone and watch as they kill you anymore -- you're traversing your home turf, your familiar territory, scanning for who shouldn't be there, and then blowing them the fuck away.


Repeat as necessary. Go back to Quake 2 if you want to work on your aim some more with the basic weapons, or move on to other games if you like. Learn to adjust the controls/sensitivity to fit your own personal preference. Higher or lower mouse sensitivity -- there is no "right" way to set this. There are kickass players who play with lower sensitivity, so it really all comes down to preference.

When it comes time to move to real, multiplayer games, it might be a good idea to start out with a team game, so at least you have someone else watching your back. Don't start out playing against people you KNOW are significantly better than you. They're just going to mop the floor with you. Start out at your own level. You might be surprised, however, that you may end up progressing quickly up towards those level of people whom you wouldn't have even had a chance at aiming in the general direction of previously.

[Rev. Link]

Well, you all might have something here. I just won two matches in a row on Halo 3. Both of them were variants I'm not very good at, Crazy King and BR Slayers. I don't ever win a match, so I'm pretty happy about this.

Tweaking your control settings and practicing really does help.

[MonoTekETeA]

Truthfully...enjoy the game you are playing. I am decent at shooters, and enjoy it when I win. However; It is more important to me to just be having fun instead of wining. In Halo, I spend most of my time driving, trying to splatter people. In DoD I spend most of my time trying to knife people. In Counter Strike, I spend most of my time just using stupid weapons like the Machine Pistol or the Dual Pistols. In CoD4, I run around with the Grenade Launcher and try and kill people, or grab the Mac10 and just rush people and gut them. I enjoy watching vehicles and bodies fly in the air, more then I enjoy getting triple kills or something of the sort. Just figure out what it is that you like and rock it up. You will get better.

-Jeremy

*Edit* Also, crank you sensitivity up, rather then down. Down is a temp. fix that doesn't really help when getting shot in the back. The faster you can turn and aim effectively, the better. I play on a 7 on Halo, and a 15.6 (I think) on Half Life.