FPS Gaming - Sharing My Tips & Tricks

[UK_Wildcats]

I have been playing COD starting at the tail end of MW2. Over the years, I have learned many things about gaming that are relevant to games (such as first person shooter) where timing is critical. I wanted to share my experiences with people that would possible help others.

Lag compensation
Everyone has different internet connections, console-to-console variations, etc. To avoid giving an unfair advantage over faster connections, the servers compensate for this by adjusting the in-game settings. This is often referred to as lag/latency compensation.

Detailed explanations of lag compensation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Latency_Compensating_Methods_in_Client/Server_In-game_Protocol_Design_and_Optimization

Lag Compensation Tip - Netduma R1 Router
After watching several youtubers talk about this NetDuma R1 router, I decided to do some research and see what all the hype is. I was impressed enough by the research that I bought one. The Netduma R1 is a basic router with special software. The software allows the router to provide various functions to help minimize lag compensation.

First, the Netduma has geo filter. "Geo" is short for geographical. This means that you can set a home location with a radius and only play with servers that are within that radius. By limiting the distances which you connect, it will help to get better server connections and game performance. It also has a lot of other features such as host pinging, ping assist, congestion control, etc. You can find all kinds of information on their website, various reviews and youtube videos.

My experience: I can definitely say that the Netduma has helped me to get consistently get much better games and improve my gaming experience along with the k/d ratio. Do I still get some games that are laggy? Of course, I still get a few, but they are a lot more rare now. Also, I find that it does not work as well when I am playing with a party that are spread throughout the USA. Therefore, I have to turn off the geo filter for them. It does still work with parties if I am playing with friends that are geographically close.

Display Lag
This is the delay between a button press on your controller and what results on the display. See the below link for more information.
http://www.displaylag.com/what-is-input-lag-the-breakdown/

You can see your TV or monitors lag from this database.
http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/

Display Lag Tip - Gaming Monitor
I was gaming on my Sony Bravia 55" TV for years and was happy with the performance. I started seeing SO many reviews about gaming monitors and how they they make a huge difference. I was not buying all the hype, so I continued playing. I was discussing this topic with with a few gaming friend while playing COD. A few switched to monitors and were stating the same huge difference.

Gaming monitors (TN panel models such as BenQ) are great because they have very quick response times and often have features that help specifically for gaming (i.e. black equalizer, motion blur).

My Experience: I looked up my TV lag on the above database and it was not that good. After seeing several reviews and recommendations, I decided to buy the BenQ RL2460HT gaming monitor. As of this post, I have been using it for about 2 weeks now. I am an average player that almost exclusively plays Domination. I am an OBJ player that goes for the win and not kills. Before the monitor, my k/d ratio was about 1.25. I have good games and bad games. For the past two weeks, I have been running an average k/d of 1.5. I am consistently getting great games. I am winning gun fights that I would not have been able to win with my TV. I am quickly turning on people after being shot and killing them quickly. I am getting a lot of people mad and calling me a cheater. LOL I can honestly say that the gaming has truly made a difference. It was not hype.

Controller & Titan 1
Since you are on this website, you know about this already. If you are a serious gamer, I do recommend a good controller such as a Scuf or Battle Beaver Custom. Yes, they are expensive but every bit helps in gaming.

Headset
A good headset definitely can help make a difference too.

I just wanted to share my experience and give others a chance to share their tips and tricks.

[J2Kbr]

Lag is a real deal for people who live in countries that does no have local gaming servers. Usually my latency to US East servers are around 100 to 150ms ... it could not seems much, but in the game it translates to situations where you need empty a full clip to get a single kill, but the the enemy can kill you with couple bullets ...

Thanks for the tips!!

[UK_Wildcats]

I noticed that when I zoomed out on the map and was looking at the dedicated servers. Do you find that p2p works better than dedis in your situation?

[J2Kbr]

it really depends. In p2p if I'm the host definitively I can notice a great improvement in my k/d ratio. However, if the host if geographically far from me it behaves like I described above.

In general I still think dedicated servers is the best solution for multi-play matches. At least it is more consistent than P2P.

[OFC-Giorgio]

I come from the Doom (1993), DukeNukem, Quake and Unreal Tournament era. I remembered the ms dos commands lsl, ipx odi, netx and 4 people performing the same commands in order to join a game of multiplayer (4 players) doom with PC's that had 4 MB of expensive memory but.....there was no lag since it was a local network in our living room.

My COD career started on the wii (waw, mwr, bo, mw3, bo2, ghosts) (with beautiful graphics compared to doom and ugly graphics compared to ps3/xbox and stripped down maps, kill streaks and number of players) and loved the wiimote (imo the best natural way of pointing and shooting).

The things that helped me the most with COD are:
- wiimote (on wii and on ps3 with titan one but without map packs: no cheats for me)
- good/big television (for my old eyes)
- good headset (I always use the dead silence perk so only hear the other players footsteps, reloading sounds etc.)
- map knowledge (both knowing your way, the main routes and the location of sounds of broken glass, different surfaces (footsteps) etc.)
- router settings (assign the wii/ps3 a fixed ip address and portforward the cod ports to that ip address (this worked from waw to mw3 where you where god when hosting the game) or to a different dummy address (since the messed up bo2 lag compensation you do not want to be the host anymore)