Have you ever experienced how your framerate drops just when you're about to kill the enemy? Or how you wait, wait and wait before the map is loaded? Or have you suffered from extremely heavy lag which has made you unable to play?
You are not alone. Here are some tips how to improve your performance in online games...


General tips

FPS first, graphical details are for nerds
Play around with the controls
Take a look at graphics card settings
Close all programs which use your bandwidth

Team Fortress 2


Steam
 

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General tips

1. FPS first, graphical details are for nerds

Never put graphics quality ahead of a smooth framerate (FPS = Frames per Second). The network lag isn't the only thing which could make you unable to play smoothly.
30 - 40 FPS is a very good average in every situation. However, the human eye can't see the real difference between 30 FPS and 80 FPS, but it's always good to have the highest possible framerate. If the rate drops below 30, you'll start to see some slowdowns. Also, shooting, movement, etc. will start to be croppy.

2. Play around with the controls

Do not stay with default controls, unless you have gotten used to them. You can find a better control set by trying different configurations - maybe ESDF works better for you than WASD, who knows!
The control set depends a lot upon the game you play. We can't give a straightforward tip on this one, but we recommend to try different control layouts.

3. Take a look at graphics card settings

nVidia and ATI, the two giants in the world of computer graphics, bundle a control panel application with their video card drivers. Usually you can adjust a lot of stuff from the panel; such as anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, V-Sync, mip mapping, etc. Some of the stuff can be adjusted in the game as well.
The big idea here is that there are some options which might help you with video lag. For example, V-Sync ties the FPS rate to your monitor's refresh rate.

4. Close all programs which use your bandwidth

It's a great idea to shut down programs which use the Internet while playing a game online. P2P clients, some messaging programs, etc. drain the bandwidth. Once again, this reduces lag - and probably even helps you to frag that enemy around the wall.


Team Fortress 2











Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer game built on Valve's Source engine.

If you want to see detailed information about the classes, weapons and maps, visit TF2 Wiki. In this little guide we assume you know the basics of Team Fortress 2 already, and therefore we skip the simple things.

Gameplay



Special tips for the classes

Scout

• Stay on the move! Jump, run, jump, circle around your enemies... do not be predictable!
• Practice your aim - the Scattergun and the Force-a-Nature do a high amount of damage if you can get close, but hitting a moving target might be very hard.

Soldier

• Since you have only four rockets in your clip, you have to be careful. A neat strategy is to shoot three and save one for reserve.
  
• Hide behind a corner and reload - do not storm into the battle mindlessly! You're much better off with a full clip than with only one lousy rocket.
  

Pyro

• Be sneaky like a Spy. If you're using the Backburner, be even more careful - you're trying to sneak behind the enemies in order to kill the enemies fast with the Critical buff.
• The Axtinguisher is a nasty weapon. Set the enemy on fire, pull out your Axtinguisher and start cutting the meat! The results can be amazing. Remember, this does not work all the time.

Demoman

• Make use of what you have: your whiskey bottle is an excellent melee weapon, sticky bombs can be used for sticky jumps and grenades can be deadly in the right hands. Once again, aiming practise helps a lot.

Heavy



Engineer

• Never ever reserve the Dispenser for your own use! A simple Level 1 Dispenser might be enough to heal your teammates and help them to restock their ammunition. Place your dispenser in a place where your team can retreat if they have to, and they will thank you.
• If you're on the attacking team, build a forward base! A teleporter brings your buddies back to front lines quickly, and a Sentry will protect them while they heal themselves at your Dispenser. Soon you'll hear your team thanking you.

Medic

• Always heal your whole team. Do not stick with the Heavy all the time!
• If you get into a firefight and are losing it, retreat! Stay alive, because a dead Medic is no use for your team.

Sniper




Spy





Game types

• Arena: The newest gamemode in Team Fortress 2 offers something different: no respawning. Suits the best for 4-6 players on each side.
• Capture The Flag: Get the intelligence briefcase from the enemy base and bring it back to your own. The game is won when one team completes the set amount of captures.
• Control Point: The CP maps contain 2-5 control points.
• Payload: The goal in this game mode is getting ''the payload'' to the RED base. BLU must push the cart and attack the defensing REDs.
• Territorial Control: Each team has a "home territory". When one team captures their enemy's home territory the map is won.

Options:

Controls

Not everybody likes Team Fortress 2's default key layout. Just like we've said earlier in this guide, it's a good idea to try some different key layouts.

Also, there's an Advanced menu in the Keyboard tab.
Fast weapon switch means that you can switch weapons immediately with the mouse wheel. Without this box ticked you'll have to confirm your choice by pressing the primary fire button (default: LMB).
Enabling the developer console gives you the chance to use commands that allow you to use third-person view, noclip and lots of other things. Please note that these commands won't (usually) work in multiplayer, but you can test them in Developer Commentary mode and on your own LAN server.


Video settings

You will find an option called "Field of View" in the Video tab. A large Field of View means that you see more of your surroundings.



Rates

Settings > Downloads

The default setting for this command is dependant on your Steam Connection settings.

There is a lot of back and forth on rates in the Source engine, some people will tell you one thing, others will say the opposite. So I'm not going to tell you what to use, just how things work so you can decide for yourself.

There are 3 fundamental client rate commands (CVars):

• rate
• cl_cmdrate
• cl_updaterate

The "rate" controls or limits the total Bytes per second (B/s) of the connection between you and the server (And thus is the most important.). The default setting for this command is dependant on your Steam Internet connection settings:


























The next two are slightly different in their function, they control the number of "Snapshots" (A snapshot is what contains the data telling your client who moved/fired where and etc.) sent and received by the server, where updaterate is snapshots inbound to the client, and cmdrate is the outbound to the server.

These settings however, are subject to the configuration of the server you're connected to. Similar to the client, the server has 6 CVars controlling the range of rates it's clients can have:

• sv_maxrate
• sv_minrate
• sv_maxupdaterate
• sv_minupdaterate
• sv_maxcmdrate
• sv_mincmdrate

The main thing to bear in mind while configuring rates is, there is no universal "best" value. The only way to find out what is best for you is to use the net_graph command and to see what rate settings give you optimal results.
Be cautious however, some servers have very poorly configured rates or over-saturated connections.

net_graph comes with 3 settings, 1 is the most basic and 3 is the most verbose. An example of setting 3 is below:


















The 4 values you need to look at are:

• lerp
• ping
• choke
• loss

Lerp is the amount of interpolation your client is using in milliseconds, you only need to worry about this when it's not 100, as signified by the text going yellow.
Ping is the well know time-lag in milliseconds of the data going between the client and the server, the value of this is largely dependant on connection distance and integrity.
Choke is usually caused by misconfigured rates, generally this should be at 0, but you will find the odd chock now and then pops up to no detriment.
Loss is caused by packet loss in the connection between client and server, if you are getting loss universally, then you have a serious problem with your Internet connection or ISP.



















An example of misconfigured rates, due to incorrect selection of 56k in Steam Internet connection settings. (See above)