Surviving Stalker
STALKER Multiplayer Tips, Strategies, and Review
Hello there fellow Stalkers! This section of Stalk The Planet is set up to help you “survive” Stalker Single Player and Multiplayer games because even with practice, things you don’t know about the game will kill you. I’ve been playing it for a while now and I am sure there’s things I have yet to learn. But, here I’ve picked up on a lot of things and I’d like to share.
To rant for a moment about Multiplayer, at times it can be very frustrating and at times totally unfair. I’ve been shot through walls, gotten stuck on ladders during a firefight (and killed), had team mates frag me for no reason, had enemies spawn right behind my position, etc.
Never Stand Still for Long!
I’ve seen alot of people make the mistake of getting into a firefight and standing still. Don’t Do This unless your mark doesn’t have a fix on you. If you turn a corner and an enemy is front of you, sidestep left to right while shooting him with short bursts. What this does is throw off your enemy into aiming then by the time he’s shooting at you, you’re in a new spot AND he’ll be prone to hold down the fire key. A combination that will be deadly for him once you unload at him every time you move, allowing your bursts of fire to more accurate that his single burst that ALWAYS causes greater dispersion in bullet direction.
Even at greater distances, and theres no enemy in sight, if you are in a location where a sniper can get a fix on you, all he is waiting for is for you to slow down or stop so he can place a perfectly straight shot. Sniping people who are on the run or in constant “upredictable” motion is ridiculously more difficult to do in this game (much more so than real life in my opinion due to what the lag can do to characters, they skip around and what not most often). Good snipers (the ones you need to worry about) are prone to not want to give up their positions by unloading an entire clip at a running enemy, so they may even see you but as long as you are in motion you increase your survivability.
Use Real World Tactics
Another thing I’ve picked up on is most people’s disregard to real life CQB (Close Quarters Battle) Tactics used by professional Swat teams, HRTs, Special Forces, etc. I long for a group of team mates that would move in a coherent unit through the many maps, especially in team death match where it seems like no matter what, your mates end up all over the map. I’m no CQB expert, but I have watched alot of videos and read many books on the subject, enough to keep myself alive in this game much more than most of my counterparts. I fret when I see players just smash into each other like waves without working together as a unit, it makes me just want to sit on base some times.
Camping Is Not A Crime
I think people who complain about people camping are idiots. They’re the type of idiots that get mad at you when their girlfriend tries to hook up with you without telling you she’s with someone, then the juicehead moron negates the fact she’s a total whore and thinks its your fault for all his problems and tries to kill you in your sleep and since his uncle is a cop you just have to take it… but I digress. When you camp in Stalker on your own base its like saying, in real life, “gee there’s a magical place in which bullets can do me no harm, I can’t die, I can buy any weapon I want…” wouldn’t you sit there too? But it goes to the heart of the matter, if your close enough to get shot by a base camper, it must mean you are “base raping.” Which is worse in my opinion.
Location, Location, Location
People who have been playing Stalker MP for a while will all tell you its about Location, getting yourself to a spot to ensure maximum damage with minimal exposure. But, quite cleverly, it seems that there’s almost no place in this game that is completely safe, unless I missed one, so it’s really important that you use team work to ensure that whatever area is exposed can be covered by a mate instead of an enemy. If an enemy gets to your mate, you’re ready, instead of taken by surprise. I’ve seen guys sit (especially in Dark Valley) right at the edge of the pipe where Blue Spawns and tear house every time we rounded the corner, with every possible weapon, even the grenade launcher! What this did was make us fear to leave our base, effectively allowing his entire team to roam free, unmolested throughout the map. Ubergeigh, but clever nonetheless.
Ping Rate and Lag
Low Ping Isn’t Always Your Friend. I’ve actually experienced that a lower ping is met with greater frustration due to higher ping players only being able to be shot if they stop for a second or more, but if they are in motion, it takes a TRUE genius to pick them off, MENSA members perhaps (a high IQ is not enough, sorry). Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I have a 30 ping and someone has a 200 ping, when I face off against him, we are about 2.3 seconds off in any direction… in your mind imagine NEO in the Matrix moving so fast he’s in 10 places at once, even though STALKER multiplayer this phenomena does not occur visibly, that’s whats going on. It’s hard to explain if your new to multiplayer, but ping is not your ally all the time. I’ve seen guys with 100 ms ping tear house on guys with 20, 30, relatively low ping rates. Learn how to lower your Ping for Multiplayer Games.
The server for STALK THE PLANET games for Stalker Multiplayer is sitting about 5 feet away from me which would make you think I’d get a great ping rate. The IP is on a different node and C class, which results in the lowest ping I’ve ever gotten playing STALKER, 19. When pinging it in the main server list, it usually says 15. On the LAN with my 10/100/1000mb router I experience avg ping rate of 12. So I think that’s as good as you can get for online play, 15-20ms. I’m sure there must be exceptions though :). My friend across town experiences a 30 ms ping on this server, not sure what others read, but it seems many of our European Stalkers can’t really hang with us too often. So, when it comes to many things in STALKER multiplayer, Ping Rate it’s all about “Location.”
Advanced Tweak Settings
If you weren’t aware, there’s a file called user.ltx that contains hundreds of somewhat cryptic settings that affect pretty much everything about video and sound. Thanks to a host of different sites for this info, these can be the most beneficial settings to use during multiplayer to help smooth things out. I personally am stuck in between wanting to increase FPS with these settings to increase performance and raising the quality settings, reducing performance and FPS, but allowing me to see things more clear in the distance. I’m leaning toward performance. What’s more important to you, clarity or speed? The answer should be obvious.
Here is the entry dealing with the settings I use, maybe you can give suggestions that I’ve missed.
