Hello all you CoD fans, newbs, and players.
My name is Mitch, but you will most likely see me as (_8(|) when I play Call of Duty online. For those who can't see/read ASCII Art, my monogram is Homer Simpson in ASCII. Anyways, I plan to give you guys this little tutorial/booklet that will allow you to play at your absolute best! Guaranteed. You will up your KD ratio by at least 3 times.
But first a little history about myself. I origionally bought CoD1 (yes the origional) in late 2004 from a pool fund for a LAN party. None of my friends had CoD but we wanted to play the MP since we heard it was the best of games out. We were sick of UT2K4, UT2K3, Quake III and Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam. So I got the game, made copies using cloneCD and distributed amongst the brethren at the LAN. Needless to say, not just I became addicited. It was an unfortunate accident on the part of one of the younger attendees at the LAN to download a wallhack because he heard "great things about them" and PunkBuster immediately busted him. Consequently, it busted everyone's CDKEY as well. While others went out and bought a new version, I was... poorer, and couldn't afford another $40 disk. So I was stuck with nonPB games. Oh what joy.... More hacks and cheats than you could shake a stick at. Initially, I was beyond pissed. As soon as someone began to get even a decent KD ratio, some immature player would turn on his/her hack and "hack back" as they affectionately called it. As if they were crusdaing against the bad guy and they were right to do so.... as if. So in a totally legit game where one guy was actually aiming when he shot instead of run n' gun, some @sshat decided "noone can be better than me! I am god! I cannot die this many times! *DING* I MUST HACK BACK!" It was a sad era for me.
But that all changed when I joined certain clan servers. Now, I do not endorse clans, in fact, I turned many down because I just did not feel like I could give that much commitment and comradery. Area51 (the origional, not the spinoffs) was my first, last and only clan I joined. I played in 3 clan matches, and just kinda phased out of it after that. I had school at the time and I just couldn't play a 4-hour game at 4am against the clan from Australia just because they didn't want to play us at 4am their time. But regardless, there are certain clans out there that are really good (and by good, i don't necessarily mean skill-wise... I mean good as in good people... something you don't often see online anymore). Those servers are still out there in nonPB if you look. I checked a couple months ago before I upgraded by GPU and my favorite players are still running them as well. kudos to you guys.
I often had a KD ratio of 20+ - 2 or 3. It may have been because the people in nonPB games were cheaters and had no skill without hacks, but I was often accused of cheating myself. The way I fought and shot was often mistakened for aimbot and wallhack. I'll explain these tricks later, but for now, let's just say the only people who knew the truth about my legitimacy were those who were in the same room as I when gaming or those in the servers previously mentioned. Evening spectating me while I played looked like I was cheating, but looking over my shoulder onto the same screen was another story. It was pure skill, and I plan to share that skill with you all now.
For some, these tips and tricks are things you've done since the beginning. Skilled players will say "I've done these before" and I realize this. But there are some things you may want to brush up on or even some new things that you might want to incorporate in future butt-kickings. enjoy.
TIPS AND TRICKS 101
.:THINK:.
First off, you need to know the basic idea of Call of Duty MP: Kill more than you Die. Simple huh? That's why the all-important KD ratio is always shown at the end of every match. one, because half you newbs don't know TAB will bring it up and two, because everyone should know who shouldn't be on their team next round. Something many people don't realize is... or at least subconsciously while playing don't realize, is that even if you kill 200 times, if you die 200 times, you're no better to your team than that guy who's been AFK sitting at the spawnpoint since 0 minute. Neither of you killed more than you died. He's 0-0, you're 200-200... but HE doesn't have the possibility of accidently nailing a teammate in the balls with stray fire. The best thing you can hope for is a ratio with 0 deaths. This goes without saying, but if you think about it, you have AT LEAST a 100% kill ratio (1-0). Better is a high kill with low deaths. This simply means you aren't camping in one spot and getting a singular kill (sniper shot i guess), but actually contributing to the destruction of your opponents. 20-3 is awesome in most games against decent players. You are killing about 7 guys for every one death. Meaning, you took out about their entire team before you died. Kudos. Even more Kudos if you are running at the opposing spawnbed with no support and a Kar98 and a half-loaded pistol (that'd be me, lol). Even better than KD ratio is how you are getting your ratio. In most MP games, the team with the greatest number of kills wins (TDM, DM). Why are these most prevalent... well... when you're running and gunning, you die alot... and you don't want to sit out for 4 minutes while your team captures the HQ without you.... or sitt in spec mode for 20 minutes while your team plants to bomb. These types of players are the newbs I speak of (though I enjoy TDM and DM just as much as the next guy, I just don't play it ALL THE TIME). If you've ever seen me online, I've played CTF, HQ, or the bomb one (name escapes me now) because you aren't prone to run directly at an MG42 with a pistol and see if you can take out one guy before you die. In games other than instant-respawn, you need to pick your battles, your strategies, and your shots very carefully. There have been hundreds of times I let a newb run past me when I had a clear shot with a panzerfaust simply because I didn't want my position given away. If you're trying to plant a bomb, and some newb is running past you (you're hiding i hope), but there are still defenders near the bomb site, LET HIM RUN! His team will think he's cleared that area and will assume that flank is cleared, turning their attention to the other direction. Once you plant the bomb, you know approx. where the newb is and assume where the others are (somewhere along the other path to the bombsite). Same can be said for TDM but won't work so well in bigger games (12+ people). Imagine a building where 2 snipers have a clear view of the centermap (the most important position, explained later), 2 SMG supports protecting the rear, and another guy watching medium-range with a rifle. If you can get one alone, but aren't close enough to inflict an ambush on the rest, don't do anything! Is it better to shoot one guy, alert his backup, and die as well? Or is it better to ignore the one guy, toss a grenade in the center of their defense circle and take 4 guys out and maybe even survive retreating for a 4-0 attack? It is one mistake most people make and often the SOLE reason why they're 12-42.
.:POSITION:.
The next thing you need to realize is position. Position is key on a chessboard as all good chessplayers know the center four quares, if held and defended adaquetly, will often win the game for that player. Now, the same cannot be said for CoD maps because, unlike the chassboard, the maps have their own unqiue layout per map. Just an example, neuville from CoD1 is an "open map" where you can walk from one side to the other by any number of ways. There are no long walls preventing access to one part of the map by only one or two ways. It is open, literally. In this type of map, the center, as with the chessboard, is key. If you can hold the center and develope a spawnpoint there, you can access the entire map in half the time it would take your opponent. If they are at point B and you are at A, but the next HQ spawns on the opposite side of the map as B, but A is in the center... well, guess who makes it to the HQ first AND has an opportunity to intercept the opposing team as they make their way across the map? Center-holders will reach any part of the map in half the time the holder of the map rim will. Plus, being concentrated in the center allows you to cover multiple directions instead of being spread out (as is the problem with rim-dwellers).
.:CAMPING=BAD:.
Something people think is a good idea is actually bad. What i speak of is camping. It's not bad because it's cheap and not good gameplay, it's just that you are giving away you favorite positions to the enemy, thereby losing any chance of using the same spot next round because you'll be taken out early by a sniper or a nicely-placed grenade. I actually endorse camping. Don't get me wrong, many people abuse it, but you can't ignore the fact it stops those newbish run n' guns. Another form of camping is spawncamping (both offense and defense). Offensive spawncamping most of you are intimately familiar with... a lucky SOB is able to look over your spawnpoint and headshot you are you spawn (or kill you within 4 seconds of spawning). Usually, it's a garand or semi-auto MP44 bearer who does this, but often you get the crazy nutjob how runs into your spawnbed with a fast-moving thompson or mp40 and unleashed half a clip into anyone he runs into. This is actually bad form because one, if you do manage ot kill off the team, your team is going to be closer to you than the other side of the board, so the opposing team will spawn clear on the other side of the map once the spawnpoint is initialized. They an then mount an effective counterattck because they know where your team will be... sitting in the open waiting for the other team to spawn again... and then the tides shift and do a 180 on your team. The other spawncamping is defensive, where you basically sit around your spawnpoint "protecting it" as many explain. This is even worse than offensive spawncamping! Let me explain how spawnpoints work: the algorithm basically spawns you the furthest possible point away from enemy territory (INITIALLY!), but will spawn you next to anyone who's not near an enemy once the game starts. That means, if your team is battling west of your spawnpoint, but you're the only one sitting safely, you team is always going to spawn next to you in that same spot until someone else gets far enough out of danger (usually 400ft in-game). Not only does your enemy know where your guys will be coming from, but they know where you're spawning and can send a group of 2 guys to offensively spawncamp at your position. instead, you should join your brothers in arms in battle and allow the algorithm to pick a random spawnpoint for your team. This way, you can attack from different directions and not always gaining backup suport from the east. Also, if you are the victim of an offensive spawncamp, DO NOT TRY TO FIGHT IF OFF BY HOLDING YOUR GROUND!!! By the time an effective spawncamper has held the spawnpoint for more than 10 seconds, he has at least 3 people form his team joining the fray. Trying to fight off a dug-in enemy who has a clear view of your spawnbed (spawnbeds are usually open... bad for defense) is suicide and I have kicked many a player form my servers for doing just that. By never leaving the spawnsite, your team will always spawn there until someone from your team gets away to a safe distance orthe opposing team gets too close and the algorithm saves you by spawning you somewhere else. A good player knows to leave at least a road's-distance between himself and the opposing spawnpoint to prevent respawn elsewhere.
.:AIM and SHOOT:.
Aiming is key. duh, i know. but you'd be surprised at how often (or not often) people actually use the sights. The only time you don't need to use the sights is in close-quarters. inside a room, within 10 feet, etc. But when you're that close, you should melee (put this down in your to-do list: LEARN TO MELEE). a single melee does 100% more damage than any single bullet when placed to the head, neck or back. check out the actual coding. it actually delivers a crapton of damage if striking the right place. anyways, back to the sights. Learn to use them. period. All the sights are different and the location the bullet actually strikes is different on each sight. The kar, i know, you need to aim about 0.5 to 1 mm above the target (so that the head is just, JUST, below the middle sight) on long-range (and i mean long... snipr-long). The thompson is just above. the springfield crosshair is a little off. have a friend stand half the mp away so his head is 5x5 pixels on a 1600x1200 resolution. you'll see what I mean. you need to aim diagonally from where the middle is positioned (if i remember correctly). people often ask me "but i can't aim, so i need ot be up close." well that's fine. many people do. either because your mouse doesn't have enough DPI for your screen or it's not sensitive enough, but you still need to aim. The less time you spend spraying and the more time you "tappa-tap-tap," the more damage you inflict and the less time you reload. "tappa-tap-tapping" is a system I developed based on how the military instructs you to fire a fully-automatted weapon. Basically, on a MP44 or BAR, I don't use the fully automatic feature. The recoil it too much and the only bullet that actually hits where you first aimed is the first. The rest go high. So using some practice and skill, I can make the semi-auto feature near-auto. I hardware-modified my MX510 optical mouse to be uber-sensitive to button press. If you play paintball, you know that having a trigger that depresses very little, with very light pressure means you can tap the crap out of it and shoot hundreds of rounds per second. Using two fingers, you doubletap the mouse, one after the other, not jointly. That's the skill. The practice is actually controlling the mouse without my index and middle finger (who are doing the tapping). It's tough at first... your hand is skewed to theleft (right handed) and it doesn't feel right at all. again, practice. With this, or a speedy index finer (which I'm perfecting to be faster than the doubletap), I can unload a semiauto round at auto-speeds. even faster if i have the MP44 (notice the MP44 auto is a bit... slower... compared to other MGs, but the semiauto feature is time-unlimited in the coding so it's only limited by your click speed). This was one of the msot often things people mentioned when they called me a cheat. They figured I had a bot that would shoot semi-auto at auto speeds. Well, if I had an mp44 on auto mode, and was shooting it in semi-auto clicks, and i was cheating, why wouldn't I just shoot it in auto then? I'm in the right mode for it.... but that was usually the only thign I was able to type before I was kicked. *sigh*
DODGE and PICK YOUR SHOTS:.
Shooting is great, but avoiding bullets is better. You can retreat, find some health packs and get back to killing your oppoenent before he can find his (no longer a strategy in CoD2). I was known quite well for being able to duck and dodge. I'm not bragging... really, i'm not! But because I lways chose the Kar98 for speed and power, I was able to move faster than someone with a heavy MG. Also, being limited to a single shot with the kar and a quick burst form my pistol, I made sure every shot counted. One shot with the kar (headshot: kill, bodyshot: 10% life left) and followup with one or two pistol shots. It was an algorithm in itself. I could do that, or unload with carefully planted psitol shots. A clip from the luger would kill anyone at short range. You just had to shoot it fast enough and accuractly enough to utilize it's power. Plus, the luger allowed you to run even faster than with the Kar. *gleam* There was this one match I remember phenomlly well because it was the end of a S&D match (THATS THE NAME WITH THE BOMB, i remember now) in neuville. Everyone was dead except for me and the guy on the other team. Everyone else was in spec mode, most were watching me because I only had a Kar (dropped pistol when I was hit from before... modded game where if you were hit in the arm, you'd drop the gun you were carrying) and the other guy had a thompson and mp44 (from pickup). It was rifle vs. dual mgs. The bomb was placed at the flak cannon behind the mialhouse (if you don't know where that is, look on the neuville in-game map) and I only had a few minutes left. So I was running around by the curved stone wall up the grassy yard towards the wooden fence when the other guy heard my footsteps (ANOTHER NOTE: PEOPLE WITH HEADPHONE CAN HEAR FOOTSTEPS AND LOCATE WHERE IT"S COMING FROM BY TURNING THEIR CHAR'S HEAD LIKE AND OWL AND FIND YOUR POSITION AND DIRECTION... CROUCH!) and stepped out form behind the wooden wall. He unloaded his thompson at me through the sights. He did short bursts and aimed each time (it was not a newb sprayer i was up against. this guy was hardened). I dodges left and right, never jumping or proning because those positions slow you down, always keep up your speed when dodging. Luckily I was close enough to the tree in the middle of that yard and I stood behind it, facing him. Don't stand with your side to a tree (especially one that skinny) because unlike in real lfie where you'd drop your hands ot your sides to avoid getting hit in the hands, your character just stands there, arms are ready. I could easily have been pinged off simply by having my hands sticking out. So I faced him through the tree until he ran out. Unbeknownst to me, he had another MG so when I rushed him (thinking he was reloading or pulling out a pistol, 5sec and 2 sec respectively), he whipped out an mp44 in auto mode. I essentially ran directly at an mp42 (doh!). But at this point, I was close enough I could do more dodging. The thing about big guns like an mp44 is that you can't see the ground well. it takes up more screen space. thusly, when I was 3 feet from him, I went prone, shimmied to the left (below his gun from his POV) and crouched, then shot back to my right. This guy was skilled, so I couldn't just prone, melee his feet, and be done with it. No, this guy backed up and off to his left to view the ground where I was without having to shift his sights in case I stood back up for an attempted melee to the back ot the head. But my quick thinking and crouching back ot the right allowed me to slip with him to where he backed up to because I was always under his gun. He immediately realized this and looked down. I literally jumped (allows you to stand faster) and did a melee at the same time he shot. Who won? Me of course. or else it wouldn't have been my favorite story. He did hit me with his mp44. Taking in the 2 shots from a pistol when i dropped mine in the early game, the 3 shots that glazed me with his thompson, it would only take a few to finish me off at that range with an mp44. luckily, the melee is faster than the autococking on the mp44 and he only got 2 shots in me. My life was down to literally 2 pts. but my melee caught him in the head and he went down before his gun could get three off. WOOOO! fun story huh? not like you'll ever have the opportunity for that nor the chance to pull it off. That was a one in a lifetime kill between two great players, both equally matched... but one with two MGs and the knowhow to use them right.
.:Pop-a-Dock:.
The last thing I will teach in this revision is the "pop-a-dock" technique I was ALWAYS accused ot cheating with. The name refers to the way you attack, popping up and docking the team a member. It works best when behind something you can look over when standing but not when crouched. Like a window sill, low wall or car. It's the same principle as the normal rifler who shoots, misses, reaims and tries again. But the problem I always see with this i that while you're reloading and reaiming (or adjusting your aim if you don't have a bolt-action weapon) is that as long as you stand, the other person has a chance to hit you. That's fine if you're all honorable and want everyone to have equal chance to kill you, but unless you want to die and be a burden to your team, I don't think that's wise. So I began experiementing with way to elleviate this problem. Being a rifler all the time, I knew i had one shot, one kill or the target would hide and relocate (now knowing my position). This really only works with stationary targets, moving targets or moving yourself are at a level I'm still practicing. Ok, the first thing you need to do is be able to take a mental picture. For example, let's test you. look at this page for x seconds (where x is the time it would take a bullet to leave your gun.. aka, BAM!). Now, looking only at that mental image, how many smilies are on this page? paragraphs? point in your mental image to a capitalized sentence. ok, open your eyes. CLOSE THEM! point in your mental picture where the S in CLOSE THEM from the previous sentece is. OPEN EYES! CLOSE THEM! ok, how far off were you? In the new mental picture you just took, adjust your finger to where the S is (you should be close form last time). OPEN THEM! CLOSE THEM! did you get it this time? good! That, my friends, is the trick. "WHAT?!" you ask? ok, let me explain it. Imagine you are behind a window sill on the second floor aiming with a non-scoped kar98 down a street.... dawnville let's make it. Someone is in the rubble at the fa end and they have a springfield. They have the advantage. They have 10x zoom, you have 2.5. You are 3 inches tall on their monitor, they are 2 pixels on yours. Want to get closer? That would waste time and you'd lose position (position in dawnville is that center T road) and possibly expose yourself to other enemies. So here's what you do: paint a quick mental picture of the rubble through your kar (WHICH SHOULD BE IN SIGHTED MODE!). DUCK. you are now behind the sill and even the scoped rifle will not hit you. you shouldn't have closed your eyes if you did. simon didn't say says! Anyways, that mental picture should be overlaid on the current screen. see where your gunsight is, where he is, and adjust accordingly while you are still crouched. STAND SHOOT DUCK. if you're good enough, that's all you need to adjust and reshoot without actually seeing him. If not, the new mental picture of where he is and where you shot will now be overlaid on the sill again, adjust, retry. when you stand, shoot and crouch effectively, you aren't even visable to the guy looking through the scope. If those three buttons are pressed nearly simultaneously, all they'll see is what looks like you hoping while you are crouched, but your back will only come up 2mm on their screen from the top of the sill. What you see in your screen is you standing, seeing the road, shooting, and crouching all in one. So this solves the problem of being open to attack while aimaing and reloading. The only time they have to shoot you is the 1/50 of a second it takes you to stand shoot and crouch. NOW FOR THE BAD NEWS: when being speced by spectators or in the killcam, you redjusting your aim while crouched, standing up 'without aiming' and getting a perfect headshot looks alot like wallhacking. When you are crouched and adjusting your aim from your mental picture, it looks to spectators that you are looking at him through the wall and adjusting accordingly. Standing shooting and crouching is nothing special... anyone can do it (though speed takes practice), but adjusting your aim while crouched and getting a headshot the next attempt is astounding for most, unbelievable for the rest. I've been kicked out of countless servers for "wallhacking" even though the server admins run hack-pickup programs that point out any programs running the the background or any hacks someone is using. I've had many emails form admins after the fact saying "We are sorry you are now banned from our server. Even though our programs diplayed you as clean, your actions in the game signify a wallhack is in use. proof follows: ..." and they send me in-game recordings of me doing just what i described. I laugh it off and just accept that some things are too good to be true for most people.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So ends revision I. I'll update this later for any other tricks I remember from my old days and any news ones I pick up from CoD2 and if they still apply in the new edition.
