I'm a casual gamer, which explains my 1,500 hours but lowish skill level. I don't particularly spend the time in a game discovering and using the Meta build, I just use what I find comfortable or suitable enough. However I'm constantly finding myself in scenarios where I'm rolled over, easily outplayed, or even toyed with by tryhards who recognize how easy I am. I've had moments where I run into an Infil, I try side stepping and all within a split second they decloak, ADS, click and they magically find my head at close range on a moving target. On my side at the same time I always have so much trouble finding and tracking headshots that I default back to body shots cause it's a larger target to hit. I've missed headshots on stationary targets, I've even completely missed with shotguns at close range. You just don't do that, but my hands get too twitchy and I overcompensate my aim. Anyway, I'd just like some insight into whatever secret these people use. Does everyone just run Nanoweave because it's mandatory? I constantly see people pop medkits after downing me. How do people manage headshots at medium range with carbines and smg's while I struggle to land them with ARs. If you want I'll leave the details of my Main class that I play the most with. Engi The Diamonback (just started using, it's neat) w/High Velocity rounds, Foregrip Shotgun secondary. Spitfire Munitions suit w/4 bricks of C4 Regen and Safefall Implants (cause I don't have any exceptionals and these are the most practical I have).
If you are going to go for Auraxium'ing weapons I suggest going for 2 at a time. One for CQC and one for range, it is far less frustration to do so that way as you are using a weapon for its intended range. I would drop the munitions suit for nanoweave (in most situations it is the best option) or the shield capacitor (makes the engie have lightning fast shield regen). On implants I would go for Survivalist 4 (more shield regen) and/or Catlike 5 (the extra jump height is amazing). Athlete is also decent for CQC as the sprint recovery time means if you and an enemy round a corner while sprinting you will get the first shot. As for going for headshots. You may need to try adjusting some settings like turning off mouse acceleration and playing with sensitivity. Also, aiming is more hardware dependent than most want to admit (having 60+fps helps). Getting a better mouse or even simply getting a better mouse pad can help if you don't have a good one already.
TL;DR: There is no TL;DR. Read this or else you will be miserable in this game. Generally, this is what you want to do when playing FPS games that are either very competitive or can get very intense, especially when you have 100s of people present in an area at the same time. First of all, you want to relax. You don't want to suddenly feel twitchy, nervous, and over-excited because that will alone get in the way of you being able to consistently win engagements. Drink some water if you have to, walk around the room a bit, breathe in and breathe out if that helps because once you get on the battlefield, you need to be calm. Of course some times you get into really intense fights where things are cutting a little too close, resulting in excitement, which is fine, but 9 times out of 10, remain calm. There really isn't any secret to what people do. It really has much to do with map knowledge, understanding certain tactics and strategies that people utilize, what types of infantry tend to be mostly present, and what vehicles, if any, are giving extra support. You just need to know when there is an opening to rush a deployed sunderer as a heavy or light assault or when to use a tank to destroy the spawn point being used by the enemy to keep the pressure on your team. If you, for instance, don't see a lot of people defending the sunderer, attack it. If you see a bit of a presence as well as constant deployment of tank mines, then obviously, somebody is making sure that the particular sunderer being defended is very important. Take it out of the picture and you just dealt a significant blow to the attackers or the defenders if someone deployed a sunderer at a base's perimeter to defend the area better. As for landing accurate shots and getting kills, it comes down to knowing what weapon you are using and what weapon the other person is using. If you are in a close quarters situation and you have a slow firing weapon that deals a lot of damage, you would not want to actually rush someone with a fast firing weapon directly because before you even fire one or two shots, they would have fired five or more rounds at your head, killing you in the process, and getting just one kill closer to winning a battle. If your weapon is designed for medium to long range, use it for that. Flank the enemy if you need to and attack from the sides or the back. Fast firing weapons don't have the accuracy to land shots consistently at decently long ranges, but a slow, heavy hitting weapon does, assuming it is designed for that kind of situation. You will need to test the weapons out to see which one is suited for which case. Of course if you do find yourself fighting in CQC with a slow firing weapon, go for those headshots. If just 3 or 4 rounds hit the enemy before they can react, they will die faster than they can fire the needed amount of rounds to kill you. If you are using a high rate of fire weapon, then you want to be mobile and move quickly in close quarters and medium range engagements. The faster you move and the faster you kill, the harder it will be for the enemy to catch you because you are mobile. Being unpredictable in this case is extremely useful. Regarding infiltrators, you have to understand there are essentially two types of infiltrators, with some minor adjustments depending on personal playstyle and taste. The long range infiltrators are basically your typical snipers. The last thing you want to do is run towards them hoping they won't shoot you in the head. Any long-range sniper worth their nanites is going to go for that headshot and kill you before you even get the chance to think about what you want for dinner. If you are out in the open getting shot at by snipers, best thing you can do is find cover and keep your head down, and I mean actually looking at the ground while running. This little trick makes your head hitbox hidden from shots so the enemy sniper will miss unless they know what you are doing, in which case, expect to get shot at a minimum, twice in the back, one shot to take out your shields, and the other to kill you, of course, if they are close enough so that the shots do that kind of damage. Anyways, when you have an idea where the sniper is, figure out a way to sneak up on them. If you need to run or drive a good distance to attack them from behind, do that. But be advised, the good long-range infiltrator who knows what they are doing would have most likely deployed mines or trackers to prevent somebody from sneaking up on them. If you detect an infiltrator movement beacon or darts, crouch walk. Those things won't detect you if you crouch walk. Then, just wait and find out where they are hiding by listening to footsteps and listening to them cloak and decloak. Then when the time is right and you spot them even when they are cloaked (yes, you can see a cloaked infiltrator if you are close enough), shoot them and stab them in the back. There is going to be a delay before they can shoot you or stab you when they decloak. Use that to your advantage. As for the second type, the CQC SMG or in some cases, the Battle Rifle infiltrator, you are going to want to figure out where that person likes to play and tends to hide more often while also keeping track of the previous mentioned details regarding mines and trackers. If you spot something move like the Predator, shoot it and if a shot hits them, you will see the cloak shimmer a bit and just keep shooting until they are down. Also, you can equip a flashlight as that will reveal infiltrators while they are cloaked. Now, the CQC SMG infiltrator, if they know what they are doing, is going to shoot you from the side or from the back. Sometimes, they may engage you from the front if you are not paying attention and they have the element of surprise. SMGS have manageable recoil and high rate of fire so these players are going to go for headshots. They will usually go for 1 to 2 or sometimes 3 kills if they get lucky and immediately run and cloak themselves. The Battle Rifle infiltrator is going to behave like a hybrid between the two. They are going to keep their distance, find ways to attack from odd angles, but they will be close. Again, figure out where they are hiding, sneak up on them from the side, and surprise them with a backstab or a few shots to the head. Now, the most important thing that is applicable to every FPS game. Never ever, and I can't stress this enough, EVER, aim down. You always want to aim straight. Figure out how tall the in-game avatar is, especially where the head is, and keep that crosshair positioned where the potential enemy's head will be. It doesn't matter when you are running, walking, walking around corners, keep that crosshair straight and right where the enemy's head will be. If you aim-down sight, same thing. Also, a pro-tip. When checking corners, don't stand too close to the corner because the other player is going to spot you before you spot them. How? Your arm will stick out from their perspective, while from your perspective, you are going to be staring at the wall. You want to do, what I have seen people call, "slice the pie." You want to keep some distance from the corner so that you spot the enemy first before they do. One last thing, each weapon, even if it says they are meant for close, medium, or long range, is going to behave differently. Just because weapon A and B are high rate of fire weapons doesn't mean they both will behave the same. Check their recoil pattern, check how they handle when you fire a single round vs multiple rounds, how they behave in various ranges. Same thing applies to slow rate of fire weapons and so on. Each weapon has its own character and you have to respect that. Figure out how much you need to move your mouse down so that you can compensate for the recoil of the weapon. You need to understand the recoil pattern of the weapon. Not knowing how it behaves is going to make you an easy target because you will miss easy shots. Also unlock as much equipment as possible as you never know where your team will be lacking when a fight shows up. If you need more medics, play as a medic. Assault rifles are amazing in this game. A good medic also goes a long way. But remember, you are a combat medic. You shoot and kill first if you are in danger of getting shot, then you revive a fallen comrade if they are close by. A dead medic is useless. A medic who is alive who just took out a few enemy targets and healed a few people in the process instead of risking to revive someone who was dead is more useful. While you are healing someone, your comrade is shooting the enemy and in the process, is also able to tank a few extra shots as long as those heals keep coming. If there are plenty of medics, but no engineers, go engineer. Ammo is being printed left and right and the more bullets you fire to suppress the enemy effectively, the less likely they can shoot back. Light assaults rely on their jetpacks for positioning and mobility. Different jetpacks work differently. Use the right one depending on the environment and watch how people start treating you as their worst nightmare, especially for the sunderers and tanks when they don't see a light assault with a few bricks of C4. Heavies play like you would expect them to. They support the team, they got the heavy guns, but they have several playstyles. One is focused on infantry and the other on vehicles which should be self-explanatory. Against infantry, bring frag grenades, flashbangs, and anything else that disorients the enemy. For vehicles, bring explosives including anti-vehicle grenades and lots of rockets. As for MAXs, same idea like the heavies. As for air combat, that is an entirely different animal and frankly, way more complex than ground combat. We can discuss that later if you wish. Besides, this post is long as it is. I hope this cleared some things. Ask questions if you are still not sure.
I play casual. When I try too hard and it doesn't work, I get tilted. Playing relaxed is key for me. However, it's still important to chose the right weapons and gear. It has to fit my playstyle. You can't avoid learning at least basic knowledge about weapons and their handling, clientside, hardware and settings. Aside from getting better naturally, I recommend asking friends, your outfit or even streamers on twitch for advice. Sometimes it just helps watching someone else play to realize some things about the game.
I'm a hard core player, and a vet, and I have trouble with infiltrators, don't feel bad about that. They aren't balanced, haven't been for years. Anyone who tells you otherwise plays infiltrator. Still, here's a couple tips ; -> if they start shooting you in the back, your instinct will be to turn around and shoot them in return. (in general, not an absolute rule) don't do that. He or she already started shooting you, by the time you turn around, find him, aim, and shoot back, there's a good chance you'll be dead already. Instead try to move, make him miss, turn around at hte same time but the priority is to make him miss you while you get your bearings and figure out where he is. The first reason I said already, the second reason is that infiltrator weapons don't tend to have large magazines. Whether it's SMGs or hand guns (I don't know much about sniper), they'll be reloading pretty soon. That's when you hit them back (or just before). --> If it's a sniper, especially a good one, they'll be going for the head shot. Simply pressing C and crouching is very often enough to make them miss. --> Try hard hitting weapons, like shotguns. Infiltrators are a little more squishy than other classes making "hard hitting" weapons more effective on them. I personally use the decimator (rocket launcher), it can be tricky to aim, but it's a one shot if it lands. ___________ For the rest : -> Most important is to not wildly empty your magazine like Rambo. There's (at least) two factors in the game that require to shoot in bursts if you want to be effective. 1. Hit detection / lag / latency / whatever-you-want-to-call-it-when-you-aim-right-and-there's-no-way-you-can-miss-but-it-feels-like-you-are-shooting-blanks. I can't explain the technical side of it, but if it feels like you're shooting and your bullets aren't hitting, if you're not seeing a red cross indicated the target is being damaged, stop shooting (very briefly) and start again. That usually works for me. 2. Recoil. It's hard to follow recoil when you're fighting. If you get close to a wall and shoot it, that's easy, but in the middle of a fight, for lots of reasons, including the game, it's not always obvious. This is what explains how so many players get angry saying "I emptied a FULL MAGAZINE in this guy and I did no damage to him!!!!" Fact is, in many cases, the guy missed most of his shots. You can avoid this by shooting in bursts. Generally speaking, it's very important to do this at long range, less important at shorter range, but knowing when to do it or not, but not only that, how you do it (how frequent / fast, how long etc), is really the kind of thing you learn from experience. It becomes intuitive after a while. 2.b don't forget you can counter recoil (to a degree) with your mouse. I learned that when I was still new to the game because I'd get pissed off and shoot a guy without bursting at all, but because I was pissed off, I also clenched my mouse really strongly. Turns out that works (to a degree). _______________________________ Other than that, I think the most important, what I feel is the biggest thing a new player has to learn if he wants to improve has got nothing to do with shooting, aiming, or reflexes. Use your brain, in particular, be smart about where you run, how you run, what door you choose to go through and how, whether you take the stairs, whether you sprint to meet your enemy or whether you camp and wait for him. If you engage an enemy and don't kill him, disengage, cause chances are hes gona kill you now, if he chases you, let him and wait for him around a corner. As he runs round it full speed, bam. Predict what your opponent is going to do, if you shoot a guy, just a couple bullets, what's he gona do? He's gona turn around and look for you isn't he? You know it, use that, it's an opportunity. This kind of thing is (in my opinion) what really makes a difference between an experienced player and a new player There's two entrances to the a buildling, the closest one has a small set of stairs leading straight to the A point. The second one is a little further away, but only like 10 meters or something. The enemy is waiting for you at the top of the stairs. Many if not most players will rush in and die. On the second run, they'll try to enter cautiously. It's human nature to take the easy path, the shortest route, but if you run to the other door, only 10 meters away, you go up the wider set of stairs that is unguarded, and once you reach the top, next to the A point, you've got a clear view, at short range, of all the enemy players focusing down the other smaller stairs. Maybe with a mana turret. You know what I mean? It's simple. It's logical, it's reasonable, but no one does it, they all rush into the first door. Flanking, in my personal opinion, is an absolutely crucial skill to learn. As a matter of fact, I'm not an FPS player, traditionally, I play MMORPGs. I usually PvP with swords and axes and ****, and I'm not a good shooter, it's why I don't usually play shooters, I can't shoot very well. But I like to think that being smart about how I play more than makes up for this, as I regularly beat opponents who shoot much better than I do simply because I play smarter. Honestly, don't under-estimate this. ____ EDIT Just thought of one super important tip : always keep an eye on the minimap. I can't count the times when I saw an enemy creeping up on an ally, and I was too far or not in a position to shoot him so all I could do was spot him, making him appear as a red triangle on the minimap, and then crying or laughing (depending on situation and mood) as I watched the guy walk up to the ally dude in the back and take him down. In fact, particularly when hunting infiltrators, but also when fighting in smaller fights, and if we've got radar (making the enemy appear on the map as red dots), I spend more time watching the minimap than anything else. Simply being aware, by glancing at the minimap, of what is going on, makes all the difference, I mean it's enough to make you kill or die.
What helped for me (I am being serious, and I can not explain why it helped): Taking a few months off. Did that involuntarily when my internat provider took its merry time to fix a problem and I was stuck without connection for a little less than 2 months. When I came back I was better than ever before. Like, this doesn't mean too much, I'm not a total pro or somesuchg (I'd describe myself as "a solid player", if anything), but if I'd had to guess it was a performance quality increase of around 50% ("measuring" by personal impressions). Best guess it that it's the distance and new perspective when coming back, combined with the added experience as a person from what happened in the meantime. Other than that, all of the advice given by the previous posters above is very good.
In my opinion though, the engineer is the weakest class in a straight up fight. CQC Infiltrators and LA's will usually have the initiative anyway, HA's will just pop their shield and medics can heal whilst shooting at you and have access to AR's.
An engineer on the frontline, calling frontline troops killing them tryhards. Secret??? There is no secret. You're an Engineer, you want to be a killer? Then switch to the appropriate class for the appropriate application.
The Engineer's specialty isn't winning 1v1s or outright fighting; that's the role of the Light Assault and Heavy Assault. Engineers are all about support play. You have sole access to all tools capable of repairing mechanical entities, be they vehicles, MAXes, turrets or generators. You also have access to temporary deployable turrets, meaning you've got insane defensive play and area denial power. Your ammo pack is an afterthought, but it's still important to keep your allies from running out of ammo.
It's a good idea to make sure that you're getting a decent framerate. Having stable FPS can help with aiming and tracking targets. These are the recommended settings for your useroptions.ini file, located in your PS2 directory. Adjusting your mouse sensitivity can also help with aiming. Most people generally settle with a lower sensitivity, but it's better to use what you're comfortable with. If you aren't sure what loadout to use, this guide lists the best in slot equipment for each class.
#1 problem I see is loooong time veteran gamers even good ones running around with jacked up mouse sensitivity. They've been running that way for years and have well established muscle memory that they are afraid to try to reprogram. Skipping technical details on dpi and cm per 360, all that.. If a full mousepad swipe from edge to edge makes you do anything beyond a full rotation then it's too high. 270< probably better. The heavy mains cutting everyone down? Low sens. Headlevel crosshairs all the time (note the yellow line found indoors). And lots of reps just snapping quickly from head to head...
Thankyou for starting this post, 'MichaelMoen'. I am your doppelganger for sure in the 'gaming world'. Suspect many will find this very useful.
Sometimes you just potato and miss shots you know you should have probably landed. I do it all the time and I guarantee I'm not the only one. You can only really improve this with practice. Same goes for map knowledge. You only really get the hang of a base with time. Best advice I can give: 1) Pay attention to the minimap, see what is there. See what isn't there. You can learn a lot by cross-referencing what you see with your eyes to what is shown on the map. 2) Listen. So many things in this game give themselves away audibly long before you ever see them. You can hear the enemy's spotting callouts, given time you'll learn to recognize what they sound like. Same with weapon sounds (even the suppressed ones) and for cloaking. Sounds for vehicles, MAX suits and jetpacks are also helpful, even if they don't tell you the faction they are simply knowing they are around is helpful. If you can get the hang of correctly interpolating the minimap and audio cues into the game you will find it a lot easier to enter fights if not with an advantage then at least with parity. The rest will sort itself out, a lot of these things just kind of go with the territory. You learn things to do or not to do based on your experiences in the game and what you personally are capable of. As far as other players are concerned: the most important lesson to learn in life is that there is always someone better than you. This game just hammers that one home a little harder than most.
