Having looked at multi-player online FPS games lately, I can tell you the following is in effect.....

1. People cheat these days.

2. There are FPS/fast-game hardware builds - this is the new norm for FPS, racing, and fighting gaming - that give people a massive edge over your quaint and clunky XP PC, because they are moving and reacting faster than you are, with 144fps or higher gameplay on hardware that is newer and superior to yours.

3. Many people who play regularly know the maps inside and out and have been playing them forever, so they know where and how to make the best kills.

Now that I think back, I remember at some point losing interest in playing Tribes, my favorite MMORPG EVER - because people became way too serious and competitive and would frequently kick people off of servers just for playing for "fun only". I guess that same shift probably occurred with UT, I just wasn't around to witness it first hand.

Never really even considered that some of these individuals may be playing on new hardware. I actually did test out the OldUnreal patch on my Windows 11 PC at work, but it's an office PC and the graphics performance was garbage. So I suppose I was aware that it was possible, I had just put it out of my mind.

Yeah I'm literally playing with an old clicky keyboard and ball mouse, just like back in the day - not with fancy "gaming" hardware. I'm averaging around 60 FPS though, which I thought was good. I guess it's not good anymore.

Some of the people you're playing against may have been playing UT99 for a quarter of a century! 😁 They say that if you practice anything for X amount of time you can become an expert, and I can't remember what X is but it was only a few years, not 25. There are probably almost no new players picking up UT99 in 2004, so I'd say that you're not going to get much of a mix of skill levels these days, and instead mostly there will be experts, and then people who get so utterly destroyed by the experts that they give up quickly and don't go back (which, from the sounds of things, is what would happen if I tried).

I play it every once in a while. It just depends on which server you join.

You can get "casual" players, where matches wont be so intense. If I tryhard I tend to win those, my skill is fine, but nothing amazing.

If you go a server with rankings, where people have mastered the game, you gonna get ragdolled.

Also you cant really expect you pick up a game, you played 20y ago at lanparties, and be amazing at it. Give it some time.

Good advice, and that all makes sense. Sometimes I forget there were people who didn't take a 15 year hiatus from playing computer games like I did!

I'm not ready to give up yet, because in a way those intense matches are an adrenaline rush for sure. I guess I somehow missed out on the serious/competitive side of things and never really knew anybody IRL who took the time to become "skilled" at games.

I thought it was hard back in 2005 and that was just a 3 player LAN game with my 2 workmates!
This is why I never really played online. even co-op games were way too competitive vs my "it's all just a bit of fun" approach.

Luckily I had a brother and mate to play against growing up so played at our own amateur level 20 odd years ago.
We all got together and had a game last year, me and my mate had to relearn more then we realised, but my brother who had continued playing the whole time had no problem taking both of us out game after game

It use to be you and the schmo's you knew, now your pool is the entire world. Expect better players.

Also any casuals that might have been playing stopped a long time ago.

Shagittarius wrote on 2024-03-04, 02:39:

It use to be you and the schmo's you knew, now your pool is the entire world. Expect better players.

Also any casuals that might have been playing stopped a long time ago.

😀

Naah, we're all just getting old! I think most of us are in our 40's and 50's, reactions and eyesight just aren't what they used to be.

I've played Fortnite a few times with my kids, I don't bother any more, I just get creamed! 🤣

I played UT online with a 56k modem a few times 😀 but in any case it's an online effect

where many players practice and practice online their ability level becomes sufficiently far ahead of even moderately good players such that any player, from noob to pretty good will all feel equivalently outclassed and even unable to keep up with the speed with which frags take place

out of 10,000 players the top 1% is 100 - that's enough elite player to completely dominate the game, the other 9900 will feel like they are varying outmatched to utterly bewildered

that's why it is often, sadly, pointless to play online - in a matter of days there are players with n days x 18 hours more practice than you already dominating!

a lot of FPS players seem to play patterns, same runs same clicks in same moments, almost like its a script - i doubt they even use the scope or check you are in place, they just send a round down to the usual spots. it can look that way anyway

also, some will be younger and a kind of twitch reaction speed advantage does exist in the young, its not huge but it can make the critical difference in almost any encounter

certainly playing the bots is great but the skills don't map well into online - the best human players are all Xan, better than Xan really

Old age and cunning will beat youth and skill, ping flood them and take them out.

Yeah, it's crazy! I was actually very fortunate to join a server last night at just the right time when none of those experts were playing. Everyone was way more evenly matched and it was actually fun instead of a slaughter fest with 1-2 players dominating by 100+ points. Had a couple good rounds like this until it was taken back over by the experts.

I have also begun to wonder if a contributing factor to my clumsiness and ineffectiveness in games is the fact that I am connecting the keyboard and mouse through a KVM switch. I read that serious PC gaming people pay attention to minute details like like the response time of their mouse. I would imagine my KVM adds a bit of latency to the peripherals' response time and perhaps that matters. Not to mention I have regular old "office pc" keyboard and mouse, nothing special. These are things I never took into consideration before.

I'm actually in the planning phase for hosting a local LAN party this summer/fall for 16-20 people. I know that will be a blast, and the chances of there being an Unreal Tournament expert in the group is a lot lower than when playing online. If I had to guess, it will mostly be all the oldsters like me (I'm mid-30s but you know what I mean) playing just for the nostalgia factor rather than some sort of world glory.

Most of the go-faster stuff for PCs is like the go-faster tat for cars. Don't waste time on it, let alone money 😀

Perhaps the only significant thing to slow you seeing something, and thus responding to a game, is the screen. Flat panels can be significantly slower than a CRT, but do test it if you can: if your graphics card has dual out, clone the display and see if a CRT is visibly "ahead".

The worst screen I saw was a cheap TV a mate bought from Lidl or Aldi, a budget supermarket that always has a pile of clearance junk in the middle. The screen was probably an early non-plasma screen and was 720p, maybe had no digital tuner. My mate was really mugged, he fell for the purposeful HD vagueness and marketing waffle that frankly has only got worse when it comes to selling gadgets.

The Nintendo Wii was current, and the tennis game was unplayable on the TV due to the screen lag. Except my mate's girlfriend, who could beat anyone, because she had only played on this awful setup: she had learned to swing far too early. The lag was probably equivalent to the ball doing most of a court-length in Wii sports, and something like an FPS on that would have been unplayable.

A whole video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-t37idOfvk

Git gud at dogfighting with the mouse in Frontier: Elite 2 or Frontier First Encounters, you need single pixel accuracy on deflection shots to not get blown out of the sky real quick. Then when you go to an FPS you'll be getting kicked from servers with the claim you're running an aimbot real quick. 🤣

1) People play UT for almost 25 years (so massive skill difference)
2) Cheats
3) Stable 120+ frame rate on 120+ Hz displays.

A lot of what you described could be standard cheating. FPS games this old didn’t have any protection against cheating, and cheating in FPS games is very common.

I find that a good mouse (and mousepad) and can make a difference in FPS gaming.

A standard office type PS2 mouse (which many people use on their retro rigs) just isn't responsive enough for precise aiming, even with PS2 Rate and similar tools. Almost any USB mouse will feel better. Not to mention a modern USB gaming mouse with a 1000 Hz polling rate (or more) and adjustable DPI settings. Pair that with a decent 120 Hz display (or better) and games suddenly feel a lot snappier, at least to me.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-03-05, 07:11:

I find that a good mouse (and mousepad) and can make a difference in FPS gaming.

A standard office type PS2 mouse (which many people use on their retro rigs) just isn't responsive enough for precise aiming, even with PS2 Rate and similar tools. Almost any USB mouse will feel better. Not to mention a modern USB gaming mouse with a 1000 Hz polling rate (or more) and adjustable DPI settings. Pair that with a decent 120 Hz display (or better) and games suddenly feel a lot snappier, at least to me.

Agreed. Also would like to mention the size and shape of the mouse, the way people naturally hold the mouse is very subjective and I don't think people often realize that. I personally use a smaller mouse for fingertip grip using fairly high sensitivity, give me some bulky low sentitivity palm grip mouse and I could just as well use a console controller with analog sticks.

I've been using one of those standard PS/2 mouses you mentioned with my P3 system and while it's perfectly usable there sure as hell is a big difference how well I can aim with it compared to the modern USB mouse I use with my other systems.

Yeah, I'd also expect cheating. There can be a huge difference between a competent player and an expert. Back in high school there were these 2 guys in our class. One was in a CS1.6 clan the other was in a Quake 3 clan. I was never obliterated by them as much as I was in online play.