Advice for Counter-Strike (the computer game)

I’m not sure if this should go in GQ, but the fact is that I’ve recently started playing Counter-Strike via my shiny new broadband connection. It’s a wonderful game, but the fact is that I keep getting my ass royally kicked. Are there any newbie-friendly servers out there where I can hone my skills? Failing that, are there any tips you can give me that will stop me getting slaughtered as soon as I get spotted? Some of the guys out there are good, and I have the distinct impression that I’m being laughed at…

Please help!

Bib the laughably killable

[ol]
[li]ALWAYS buy Kevlar and a Helmet. It helps your survivability a lot.[/li][li]ALWAYS use the MP5, until you get good enough to appreciate the other guns. The MP5 is extremely forgiving of newbie tactics, does acceptable damage, and is fairly accurate. It’s cheap too.[/li][li]Hi Opal![/li][li]Reload intelligently. You want to be going into battle with a full clip, but you also don’t want to be caught reloading. Try to reload behind cover.[/li][li]Learn to burst fire. With the MP5, five shot bursts are optimal.[/li][li]Crouch. You’re a smaller target, and you’re more accurate.[/li][li]Aim for the balls. Shots to the pelvis are second only to headshots for damage done. Also, recoil brings your shots up into the chest.[/li][li]When you get confident, aim for the head. Headshots allow you to quickly bring down your foe.[/li][li]Buy an HE grenade and use it to soften up your foes. Throw it through a doorway before you run through, and you’ll find yourself facing enemies at only 80 health, which does give you a distinct advantage. Don’t make the mistake of putting yourself in danger just to get a good HE throw off, however.[/li][li]If you want to stay alive, stay in a group. Move with your team, and it’ll be less likely that it’s you who eats the AK bullet in the face.[/li][/ol]

Counter Strike is dedicated to one purpose: kill people. If you’re not good at that, don’t waste your time.

Try Natural Selection. It’s loosely based on the “aliens” movies: one team is marines, another is alien. Throw in the need for teamwork, resource harvesting and building construction, and it becomes a very deep game with multiple levels of strategy. It is possible to be a full asset to your team without firing a shot the entire game.

CS experts do not fare too well, as “rambos” (the moniker for the type of person who wanders off alone trying to get kills) get slaughtered almost instantly.

So far as honing your skills, nothing teaches like practice. And they ARE laughing at you, but that’s ok. It shows they just learned to play themselves, as the REALLY good players tend to try and help newbies. Don’t make an ass of yourself though.

First post, I guess no better way to start off than with a little advice on good ol’ CS.

Tips:

  1. Prepare to be frustrated. Majorly frustrated. You will end a lot of map rotations with a 1:20 ratio or something, which is something EVERYONE will go through (unless you are one of those ppl that are just good at everything). It took me about 2 months of playing ~1 hour a day to break even.

  2. You won’t be good until you learn the map. So if you die early, do a free-look around the area…CS maps are rather small, only a few way for either team to go. So you always end up meeting around the same points. Once you know where people go, then it makes the game easier.

  3. My friend who has been playing CS ever since the thing came out said that almost always, Ts have the advantage on a map. I can neither confirm nor deny this…but if you frequent a server, join the team with the people you recognize as good. It never helps to be on a good team!

  4. Best guns. CT has the m4a1 (buy 4 3). Silencer offers a more accurate, but less powerful shot. Burst of 3 to 4 rounds before it gets too crazy. T has the ak (buy 4 1). Very inacurrate if you fire more than 2 or 3 bullets. So you gotta learn to burst with the AK. That means tap tap tap on the mouse, never holding it down. If you wanna see how bad the spray is, just hold it down against a wall, its crazy how far it deviates from the original target. The desert eagle (deagle) is the best pistol, but it takes time to learn since it fires slowly but powerfully. I don’t recommend trying to snipe until you get good with the other guns.

  5. Echoing others, learn to crouch when you shoot. It’s a reflex for most CS players. And yeah, always stick with a group.

  6. Don’t camp unless you are on a newbie server. Most people know all the good hiding spots (again, you gotta know the map) and will kill you before you can fire a shot.

  7. Oh and always buy armor on the first rotation with you start with 800 bucks (i think). If you are a CT, then you are in good shape cause the USP is the best pistol (unless you are skilled with deagle). If you are a T, try and pick up a USP from a dead CT.

  8. You might wanna try arena maps to learn how to kill before you try the “real” maps. Arena maps are just concentrated maps where everyone kills each other in a matter of 30 seconds. Popular ones are fy_iceworld and fy_pool_day.

Good luck! With a cable connection you are off to a good start :), and remember be patient!

You can always watch demos of other people, and see how they use different guns and map tactics… But the one thing to getting better is play play play play. AND! if you are tired of getting beaten up in servers, you can always download bots and hone your skills there. But remember, it takes a while to learn each nuance of a map and guns.

For bot beatings, I recommend http://podbot.nuclearbox.com/. You can make 'em use different guns, and even knives.

A lot about CS is having good reflexes I’ve noticed. The goal is to be able to react quickly and land your shots where they count the most. The AK can be surprisingly effective once you get the hang of using it. If you aim at around the opponent’s neck area and do 2-3 round bursts, you can often get a quick headshot.

Peripheral vision. Pay attention to it. You’ll learn to spot a dark person hiding in a dark corner, really quick.

Watch how you move, and try to keep in mind where you’re going to be vulnerable. Running down the middle of hallways is a bad thing, as is silhouetting yourself in a dark room against a bright wall (like the main hallway junction in de_dust).

Don’t just spray. You won’t hit anything.

Watch what your teammates do. If they run around a corner and get killed, watch what direction their body will fall in… that can tell you where the enemy is around the corner.

Don’t camp. It never helps.

I used to be a CS addict so I thought I’d toss in some ideas.

Guns:
MP5 - best affordable gun. Aim so that the top of the crosshair is touching the enemies head and burst fire.
Colt(M4A1) - best CT gun. I like silencer and very small bursts to the head. This gun is also great to spray from the mid range(without silencer).
Automat Kaloshnikov(AK47) - best T gun. Spray like a mofo or aim for the head. The first shot from an AK is suprisingly accurate.

The other guns are hit or miss. Sometimes pulling out the auto shotgun will throw the enemy off gaurd. Also(as a terrorist), the glock has no recoil - so just hammer away at that mouse and aim for the face until you get some cash!

Tactics:
Travel in groups and if you end up the last man on your team. Walk around the level(hold shift) to improve your accuracy and give you a little stealth.

CS takes a while to get decent at and I’ve still never gotten to the “good” level. Once you start getting 2:1 ratios you know you’ve come a long way, but there are still better.

Sigh, I miss counterstrike. Can’t wait for CS Condition Zero.

I’ll echo quite a bit:

You have to know the levels; that should be a definite priority.

Stick with your team: if there are 2 or 3 of you firing at one opponent, the odds favor the group. Stick with someone, if you get shot at, the odds are that he will aid you.

Learn to pick your shots. If there is an enemy that doesn’t see you (has his back to you), take the time to aim for the head. Don’t take forever, though. I’ve seen the cockiest players take forever to get their aim right and then get shot when the guy turns around.

Use your sound. Get a good set of headphones and plug in. Footsteps are the one giveaway that an enemy lurks around the next corner. If you are the last man alive, always walk or crouch. This takes the enemy’s sound away, if he can’t hear you, he can’t prepare to shoot you until he sees you and you see him.

One you find the choke points in a level, use grenades to thin them out. Toss a grenade into the hallway at de_dust or lob a flashbang across the bridge on de_aztec. Use smoke grenades, too. This is a bit of a dirty trick, but if the enemies have high pings (latency on the TAB menu), ask your teammates to throw smoke nades into a choke point, this can drop the enemy’s FPS. It won’t make you any friends, but you might get a few more kills now and then.

Try to coordinate your team into sticking together. If you’re playing a 10 vs. 10 game, the 10 players together can almost always beat 4 or 5 guarding an area. This works very well if you are a Terrorist and are planting the bomb. (Rush across the bridge with your 10 and plant the bomb within 45 seconds of round start on de_aztec!)

Guns:
I like using the medium-range rifles (Steyr AUG and SG552). They combine power and accuracy, but don’t ever go full-auto with them.

Don’t ever use the AWP. Ever. If you do, you may as well type in the console: name “Coward” <enter>

The MP5 is pretty good, but it’s not powerful. I’ve put up to 8 MP5 rounds into one man and he walks away from the firefight. More expensive, but still good is the UMP .45. Everyone gives that gun shit, but it produces kills.

Pistols: The USP is really great, use it often. The Glock isn’t very good at all, put it on burst fire and aim for the torso, it will bounce into a headshot. The Deagle is marvelously fun, but you have to have the element of surprise. The P228 is a deceptively awesome pistol. It shoots a .357 round and fires at a nice high rate.

Use the machine gun often, it gives you more accidental headshots than anything else.

The shotguns are great, but, again, you must have the element of surprise.

Buy Kevlar each and every round.

Keep playing, it’s a great game.

Practice hiding and sniping with the AWP. Sure, the other players will call you a @#!% AWPING wh0r3!!! but you can laugh as you rack up a good kill count.

Always buy Kevlar.

Cheat. Everybody else is.

Thanks for the excellent feedback, guys, and I like the idea of playing against bots for a while.

Sniping is certainly out of my league, but I’ll certainly spend more time learning the maps.

I’ll confess that I’m a camper, but sometimes it seems that’s the only way I’ll survive past the first minute of the game. From what you’ve told me, however, it seems like false security.

So, any more tips that haven’t already been covered here? How do i choose a game to connect to? I usualyy wimp out and click on “quickstart”, but more often than not, that just dumps me into a hardcore clan server where I become dog-food.

How do i pick a more newbie-friendly server?

Oh, and welcome to the boards, aggieoli! Jeez, where are my manners?!

Stick with your team mates, and try not to be the first one to go around a corner (evil but its what noobs are for). Wait a few seconds after the first man has gone around the corner and follow, hopefully you will catch them reloading.

All guns can shoot through walls and boxes to a degree based on their power, assault rifles, snipes and the DE are great at this. Use this intelligently, if you know or suspect someone is hiding behind a box put a few rounds through it. Shoot through the edge at a corner wall to hurt someone without exposing yourself.

Use flash bangs to cover your retreat if you have to run, and keep your HE for later in the round (so you can finish off damaged peeps with less armour). Learn the maps, its very important, if you don’t know a map stick with team mates and watch what they do.

Precisely why I started playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Well, that and the fact that it is free.

If you ever get tired of CS, give it a shot. You can get it here.

the “Natural Selection” Half-life mod looks interesting, anyone played it?

And I’ve also heard about a realistic “Unreal” mod with real-world weapns models, bleeding and no power-ups etc. Anyone know what that might be called and wher i could try it?

There has to be an easy to use resource for this kind of stuff somewhere, and some reviews would be nice too…

I disagree on the “don´t camp” sentiments: When I was still playing CS (from 1999 - 2002, I think) camping was frowned upon, but it was actually a smart thing to do. At least,if you´re on the defending team (Counter on bomb maps and Terror on hostage maps), I´d think it´s ok. Nowadays people tend to rush and insult the campers, but protecting the objective is a part of the game.

Besides, one time on prodigy I was CT and always ran that long corridor to the Terror Spawn zone. I always met the same guy and he shot me 7 games in a row. On the eighths (sp?) game I hid behind one of the boxes and shot him from behind. Of course he screamed “bloody murder”, but if you simply cannot win in a direct fight, I´d say you need to camp and shoot the damn rushers in the back :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh and whatever you do, don´t buy the AWP, it´s a very annoying weapon and shouldn´t be in the game imho. I still wonder what the game designers were thinking to have one weapon with the highest range, damage and accuracy. All the other weapons have some sort of drawback, but the AWP is pretty much what the rocket launcher is for quake. YMMV :stuck_out_tongue:

I have recently started to play CS again after a long absence (back in Beta 6 days). I can come close to a 1:1, but usually a little worse. This is after ~ 2 months. At first, it was more like 1:8. Sometimes, I still hit that score… :frowning:

So the best advice is to keep playing, and obviously learn from your mistakes. A lot of good advice here so far, but I’ll rehash it…

  1. Learn the maps. Set up a LAN game on your computer and run around. See which boxes and other obsticles you can jump up on, and remember them as places you can hide - or more importantly where other people could be hiding. I’m sure you have noticed that some maps are more popular than others (de_dust, de_dust2 I’m looking in your direction), so concentrate on learning those ones first.

  2. Master one gun at a time. MP5 is a good bet because it is available to both teams, then expand to Colt/AK, then if you wish Aug/SG. And when I say master, I mean play only with that gun - regardless of how much money you have.

  3. I didn’t start using HEs, flashes, and smokes until later, and even now I don’t use them alot (mainly just flash). That is my next area to work on.

  4. For servers, I have a list of 3 or 4 favourites that I only look to play on. To find them, I just logged on to a bunch of servers, played and got a feel for the type of people playing on them. If you find one that you like, keep going back.

  5. When playing, stick with your team in the early stages. It is generally not a good idea to go lone wolf. Having said that, after the first killing orgy is done with, you might need to break away to help achieve an objective - such as doubling back to look for Ts camping at hostage rescue points on cs maps. Also, keep an eye open for flanking opportunities. Don’t be predictable - take different routes to your objectives every couple of rounds.

  6. Have fun. Your opponent who headshotted you from across the bridge is not cheating (if you are playing on secure servers any way - use a filter when searching), so don’t cry. If people make a lot of fun of you for having a 1:15 score, go do a different server … there is no shortage of them. Try and work with your team, coordinate a plan on a map (i.e. get everyone to rush the double doors on de_aztec when playing as Ts and getting your ass handed to you for the last 10 rounds).

Jayrot had organized a SDMB CS game a few months ago and evidentally it worked quite well. I think we should do it again - me and my 56K modem would love to take down a few posters here… :wink:

Hi Bibliovore and all SDMB regulars.

This would be my first post hear at these forums. I feel a little more comfortable now that I am able to post about something I know about. I have been playing CS since Beta 3 (over 3 years) and still find it quite fun. Especially from a socialization POV. It is one of the few FPS games whree you get time to socialize(while you are in the dead room) and the built in voice feature makes team planning and execution a lot easier. All of the above mentioned strategies and tactics are quite sound. Except for the advice about cheating!!!

Biblio, do not under any circumstances download and install any hacks or cheats. It is a very good way to have your WON ID(a unique number associated with your copy of CS) placed on numerous ban lists and it will make it very difficult for you to join respectable servers and this is the key a good CS experience: Respectable and Well Administed Servers.

A number of very good CS communities(much more developed than clans) do exist and are very welcoming of new players. (If you are able to get on their public servers which are always quite full)

I am assuming that since you are member of this fine forum that you are in fact an older computer gamer(>21 years old). There are in fact some very good CS communities that cater to older gamers. In fact the two that I belong to [CoFR](Crusty Old Fossil Rockers) and [OGWG] (Old Guys/Gals With Guns) have a very wide age range of older gamers (21 to 60) CoFR has over 300 members world wide, while OGWG is much smaller at around 30 member. Other good communities are FOCA, [30+]OWS, [daft], [LOF], and [CGA]. To learn more about these communities see the links below. They will lead you to their homepages and forums so that you can find out more about them and the IP addresses of thier public servers. Once you get there tell them Ninja_Jockey sent you. Some may know me, some not. Also be sure to tell them that you are new and just learning. This is important because most of these servers are friendly fire(you can injure or kill your teammates) and they will be much more forgiving and helpful if they know you are new.

www.ogwg.org
www.cofr.net
www.foca-cs.com
www.daftgamers.com
www.lethaloldfarts.com
www.30plus.org
www.cgagamers.org

CoFR is probably the most established of these groups and would probably be the best place to start. It should also be noted that these groups are also are involved in a number of other games such as Day of Defeat(WW2 Halflife mod), Natural Selection(In fact the COFR NS server is considered one of the best in the NS community), BF1942, Neverwinter Nights, EverCrack , and DoAC amnong many other games.

Hope to see you online!!

NJ