After finally managing to get Nexuiz to work, and fiddling with the settings of Damn Small Nexuiz to squeeze a few more frames per second (hah, even did cl_particles 0 !), I finally was ready to logon to the servers and give Nexuiz a long awaited revisit.
Haha, yes I know it looks ugly! It doesn't matter to me, what's important is that I can play!
As I've mentioned to some of you, I'm in China. Internet speeds are ok domestically, but due to distance and the Great Firewall, the lowest ping I can manage when connected to an American Nexuiz server is 250...usually, though, the ping averages around 350.
At first, I didn't think about seriously playing with that kind of ping. I remember many years ago, in high school, I played Quake 2 over the net with 200 ping, and I found it incredibly difficult.
Anyway, I'm posting this because...I actually am playing Nexuiz regularly, despite the latency! But, to do so I had to come up with some tricks and strategies. Please forgive me if you are already familiar with how to play this way, or have dealt with slow connectivity in the past.
I'm an average player, my aim, weapon use, knowledge of the map and situational awareness are all sometimes good, othertimes laughable. Nonetheless, to stay average, I had to change the way I play:
1) Avoid Hitscan
Shotgun, nex, machine gun are almost useless. Sometimes if I happen to spawn right next to a Nex, I'll try to snipe someone, but basically I have a 10 percent chance, if that. The shotgun *can* work, either manual or burst fire, but it also is not very powerful. The machine gun can work as a finishing weapon: spray it in the vincinity of a weakened opponent. Mostly, though, these weapons should be avoided, because it's hard to hit people with them!
2) Avoid Rocket Launcher
Hitting people with it is quite difficult, even at close range. The rockets are slow and have too low a rate of fire. Even trying to right-click explode is often miscalculated.
3) Avoid "juggling"
Often the most talented Nexuiz players will "juggle" their opponents: use the laser/mortar to make their opponent airborn, then annihilate them as they float through the air. However, this strategy is counterproductive with high ping, because hitting an airborn opponent usually requires a hitscan weapon and low ping! Yes, I know some of you regularly hit people middair with the electro and mortar. Nonetheless, I would imagine your l33t shots would be hard to do at over 300 ping!
So, keep you opponent on the ground, where's it's easier to do splash damage to them (e.g. using map surfaces such as the floor/wall etc.)4) Use the Electro
This is your all purpose weapon. A great weapon in normal play, the electro is fabulous for high ping play. It has just enough speed that you can lead your opponents with some amount of accuracy. Also, it ideals splash damage, rewarding you for miscalculated shots. Don't leave home without it. Plus, if you're really desperate (e.g. ping spike!) you can just spam the right click fire and hope for the best!
5) Use the Mortar
This is your medium/long range weapon. Yes, it can be used up close, but generally it knocks your opponent around so much, it can be hard to land repeated hits (as stated above, an airborn target is much harder to hit). Also, you use it to knock your opponent around in order to make your escape.
6) Use the Crylink
This is your group weapon. It has a wide angle of fire, and yet also a relatively high rate of fire, making it effective at tackling clusters of opponents. Furthermore, it makes a great finishing weapon since you'll hit people more and with greater damage than with the machine gun. Only downside is it doesn't push your opponent around (like the electro and mortar do), which means your opponent can hit you easier.
7) Run
It's always a good idea to keep moving through the map in any first person shooter (e.g. getting the powerups/health/armor, being unpredictable etc.), but as a high ping player it's even *more* important. That's because, if you're staying in one general area, especially a tightly confined one, someone can come around a corner and shoot at you before you've even seen them on your screen!
8 ) Embrace your unpredictability
It's hard to hit people with high ping. However, it's also somewhat difficult for others to hit you. You will appear somewhat jerky, "out of sync", or otherwise unpredictable in relation to other "normal" low ping players. Keep this in the back of your mind, and if you realize a player is offput by you, try to get a sense of what actions are throwing them off. This takes some practice and depends on the server/situation/map, but certain strafe or movements patterns can really seem odd to others. Yes, this is somewhat of a guessing game, since you can't directly see what they are seeing on their screens. But, if done correctly, you can really start to irritate other players, especially if they are annihilating all the other low ping players, but can't seem to kill you despite your high ping! Heh, they don't call us HPB (high ping bastards) for nothing!
That's it! Not sure if this was helpful or not, but I thought I'd throw it up here.
Oh, and I want to once again thank Amoebios and Fruitiex, because without Damn Small Nexuiz I wouldn't be able to play at all on my clunker laptop. Thank you!!!
This reminds me how awesome a Chinese dedicated server would be. Sadly, I don't have the resources to set one up. *sigh* I can dream, can't I? 