Give. Help.

This is a repost of a blog I do every year. Please help if you are able.

 

I used to work in a homeless shelter for a short while. Was my first salaried job actually, and while the pay was horrible, I believe my work was important. Unfortunately there were many things I could not do because there is so much work to be done. My main job was to keep the housing establishment safe and help elderly people apply for medicade and eventually move into assisted living homes, while helping others search for jobs. But much more needs to be done in a shelter.

Feeding our guests was usually the job of church volunteers who would have their congregationsdonate money for one night of the week and have a few actually appear to serve food, but many nights the shelter could not provide dinner. This is actually an easily avoidable tragedy. If any of you work for a grocery store of fast food restaurant you have unused food at the end of the night that will spoil and is usually thrown away. Do not throw this food away. Baked goods from grocery stores are especially easy to give away, and every selter will accept them unless they are an unusually successful shelter. Ask your local baker or grocery store managers what they do with extraneous food. Ask them if they would be willing to donate that food to a homeless shelter. Youd be doing your community a great service.

Another way to help is to volunteer time helping kids stuck in shelters with their homework. These kids are usually starved for attention and need some kind of direction. Their parents want to help them but are usually stuck trying to find affordable housing, jobs, or going to school. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

I only bring this up now becase I remember summer was a horrible time for shelters. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter are generally holidays that shelters rely upon, but summer months are hard for these places. There are no college kids or high school kids who need to earn community service hours for school, no presents or donations from large corporations, and even less church volunteers because of the vacation season.

So help out now while it is most in need. Give your time, food, other items many people never think about like blankets, old linen, clothes, toilet paper (lord how homeless shelters need toilet paper), cleaning supplies like bleach, sponges, mops, brooms and pine sol. Give what you can, because these institutions are worthwhile enterprises. It has been almost four years since I worked in a shelter, and even then government grants were hard to come by. Im sure with a conservative (no offense, its just their policy to have churches help more than the government, and there arent enough churches to really donate what is needed) government in office funds are even harder to come by.

Give what you can, and feel better.

Posted by Fetal @ 8:46 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

COD4---A Beginner's Multiplayer Improvement Guide: part deux

In the last lesson I tried to show you how to improve a bit individually. This time I'll give a couple more hints about individual shooting, but I'll focus the majority of this blog on team play.

Here's a tip for those of you having a hard time aiming, or just finding yourselves a bit slow with your reaction time. Try using steady aim as your third perk in conjunction with either juggernaut or stopping power as your second perk. Then select a weapon with a high rate of fire like the P90, uzi or RPD/SAW and spray and pray as you come up on your victims. As long as you're aiming in their general direction and not allowing your weapon to ride up from the kickback too much, you should kill them faster than they can kill you. This method of killing does have a limited range though. If your crosshairs don't cover at least 1/3 of your opponent's body, you must aim to be a reliable shot.

Team Play-- When playing with your team, your strategy should change depending upon the gametype being played, and the roles already likely to be filled by various team members. I'll explain further by listing these styles of play by gametype.

Death Match -- In death match games, the object is to score 750 or 1000 points via kills before the enemy does. This depends on if the game is being played with 12 or less players or 13 or more. . This means you have two immediate goals...1) Kill....2) Don't die. I admit the second part is damn hard to do. COD3 is built to have people die and respawn quickly, but if you limit your deaths...within reason...you should come out on top. This doesn't mean play uber conservatively and be the tactical genious MLG competitors must be. It only means you need to know when you set up and cover a flank, when you seek the relative safety in the middle of your group, or when you should go it alone and try to flank. Those options all really depend on which weapon and loadout you are currently using. If you're a Light Machine Gunner and you find yourself in a fairly defensible position, go prone and cover that flank. You should get at least a 3 for 1 kill/death ratio if you do this before the other team knows where you are. If you're a sniper, I would suggest you find some ground in the back to middle of your team that has long, wide firing lanes for you to snipe from. If you're an assault gunner you should try and push slowly through the middle or try and go it alone and flank from the sides. And if you're using a shotty or an SMG, you should charge into the heart of darkness and face the horror so others on your team don't have to.

COD is not a slow game. You'll find fronts move quickly if your whole team loves to run into the enemy, or the enemy loves to run into you. Try guessing where the new spawn locations will be for you and the other team. That info should help you decide on your plan of action. But you better make it fast! If you don't decide in 10 seconds or less, you'll find yourself out of position.

Domination -- Domination is all about locking down spawns. Kills, deaths, who really cares? Just as long as you always know where the enemy is, you can always line guys up to feed the slaughter machine that is usually created in domination games. The best way to lock down these spawns is to take two territories and allow the other team to keep their territory and try to funnel the enemy into one of three or four preprepared kill zones. A key to this strategy working is having no one get overzealous and charge into the other team's spawn. Should you do so, you increase the liklihood a few, or even all of that team will spawn to your team's rear. Since your team isn't set up to defend your flag, or defend the middle from a rear assault, you could jeopardize the outcome of the game by running in their spawn guns blazing. Just don't do it. It is that easy to win in this gametype........If you find yourself locked in, you must mass all on one flank and push through, ignoring the middle capture point and trying to run an end-around their defenses to force yourselves to spawn closer to their flag.

Headquarters -- Headquarters is basically a mad rush to capture a territory. You must constantly change your tact in this game from pell-mell suicidal rushes when you're trying to capture an area or take away a headquarters that has already been set up, to a more conservative, camping style when you have already established a headquarters. It is helpful to change your loadouts often in this gametype. If you find your team is having no problem at all capturing headquarters, but can't defend one for more than 10 seconds, try switching to a LMG with claymores so you can lie in wait watching one direction and have the claymores watch your back. If you find yourself losing out on getting headquarters and constantly trying to dismantle the enemy's base, try switching to an SMG loadout with extreme conditioning for those quick footraces to the headquarters. Under no circumstances should anyone ever snipe in headquarters games with the exception of playing on the map Bog (and I'm leary of even letting anyone do it on that map). This is because that sniper will act as an anchor for your team's spawns, and more than 3 out of 4 times you'll find yourself spawning so far away from the new headqurters that the team will have a hard time just arriving in time to stop the other team from taking it. Another helpful hint in headquarters is when taking a virgin headquarters and after the other team has made their initial rush to stop you, pile two or three people on the headquarters to speed up the process so everyone can find a good hiding place to surprise the enemy should they arrive again. And another hint is also to have one person stay just out of range of the headquarters and rush in just as the person trying to take it dies. There is a split second where your time accrued in the capture zone does not disappear even though no one is in it. Use that time to dash in and take over where your teammate left off.

Sabotage -- This gametype is a lot like search and destroy but with infinite lives. The one difference between it and the other gametypes listed above is that instead of respawning whenever you press that X button, you're now on a group respawn. 10 seconds from the point the first person on your team died, everyone who died within that 10 second span can respawn together at your initial bases. This means should one guy die, and then 7 seconds later everyone on your team buys it, press those X buttons fast so you can all respawn at the same time! In sabotage the object is to plant the bomb on the other team's arm site while defending your own. It is essentially a great big game of rugby with firearms. The best bet in this game is to have one guy run one direction early to draw fire and have the rest of the team run the other way for a quick arm. If this is successful the game won't last longer than 2 or 3 minutes. If it isn't then you could be looking at a 20 minute game at least. At the end of regulation time the game suddenly becomes a search and destroy game with only one life. If you do not have the bomb in your posession, you might as well kiss a win goodbye. Aggression is the name of this game. You do not want too many flankers. One on each side is plenty and they should always be in front of the main group. The reason being that if the other team decides to push through that flank with the bomb your main force should be able to jump right on them and nix that push. The flanker's death let's you know ahead of time which direction the main enemy force is going.

Search and Destroy -- One life, best of 7 rounds. Use your life well. Quick feet is essential here. You and the rest of your team must be in synch in order to push into one of the two territories you're given to assault. This choice is what gives the offense a slight edge. On offense you have three choices: 1.) Send all your team to one arm site and the bomb dude to the other (high risk but high reward), 2.) Send everyone to one site and try to defend the bomb guy while he plants the bomb (has about a 50/50 shot of working) or 3.) Just try to turn the game into a death match and hunt down the defenders. On defense, teams usually send two to one arm site and two to another leaving two somewhere in the middle for quick backup after the other team's destination is known. The defender's strategy is almost always one of turning the game into a death match. If they kill everyone but the final guy with the bomb, then they have a distinct advantage. They can then use the clock against the bomber forcing him to give up his hiding spot to try and arm the bomb quickly and live long enough to defend it so it blows. The Offense always has the advantage in search and destroy. They have the initiative. Once that is taken away by thinning their numbers, the defense has a better shot at winning the round.

Hardcore gametypes -- Hardcore gametypes usually have the same strategies as their regular counterparts. The differences are they should move slower, and the loadouts should be much different. This is because the weapons do much more damage...to the point where one bullet from a skorpion SMG will kill someone. This makes stopping power unnecessary, ans since running and gunning isn't on the agenda, steady aim. The best loadout to use in my opinion is UAV jammer with dead silence and a silenced weapon. This loadout helps you in a number or ways: 1.) It makes it harder to hear you if you happen to run past an enemy hiding spot and might let you get the jump on them. 2.) The UAV jammer makes their UAV's useless, and if they manage to get an air strike, so long as you're not hiding in the middle of a bunch of your guys who don't have a UAV jammer, their air strikes won't hit you. ( I like to run on teams where everyone has the UAV jammer as their second perk. 3.) The silenced weapon will still have almost the same amount of killing power as an unsilenced one, but the lack of noise will make it even harder for the other team to locate you due to the lack of the kill cam.

 

Hope this helps anyone who feels they need it. If you have any questions, as always, feel free to pm me with them and I will answer them every Thursday.

Posted by Fetal @ 5:18 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

COD4---A Beginner's Multiplayer Improvement Guide

I've received a few e-mails about creating for COD4 what I created for Halo 3....basically a guide to help improve the skill of players who are having a hard time. This guide isn't going to be as comprehensive as my previous Halo3 blogs. Much of the information I gave in those blogs works just as well for COD4 as it does for H3.

But there are a few differences, and a few tricks in COD4 that should improve your kill/death and as a result lead to an improved win/loss ratio.

Just like Halo 3 I'll mention the basics first, explain some of the better perks and finish with some basic strategies for team gametypes.

COD4 is just like any other FPS. He who shoots first, faster and more accurately while minimizing his exposure to his opponents stays alive longer and denies death points to the opposing team/players or lives long enough to help accomplish the team's immediate goal.

1.) In COD4 you have 3 different positions; Standing, kneeling and prone, and each have their advantages and disadvatages.

While standing you will notice it harder to shoot, but your movement rate is much faster than kneeling. The disadvantages to standing are 1--your are a much larger target and thus much easier to shoot and 2--you make more noise when you move about alla footsteps. I generally only stand in the beginning of a game when I'm running to my position.

Kneeling is probably the best position in my opinion. You'll notice it is easier to shoot a sniper when kneeling, you aren't as big a target as when you're standing, you make much less noise when moving and the drawbacks to kneeling aren't as bad as the other two positions. This is because when you are kneeling, you can still toggle sprint for that quick burst of speed without having to switch positions like you would in the prone position.

Prone is the friend of the camper. There is nothing wrong with the prone position. It has the advantages of being the most stable firing position and also making you a smaller target, and can even hide you if you go prone in some tall grass. If you're a sniper, prone is sometimes your very best friend. There are two problems with prone though...1--you can not just up and run quickly without changing your stance first. Your turn speed is dramatically reduced and it is really easy to get flanked. 2--prone pretty much elininates the need for juggernaut and last stand perks. This is because generally if you get shot in the prone position from an enemy in front of you, it is most likely going to be a head shot. I am not saying never go prone. Just be aware of your position before doing so.

Trick with player positioning....So you find yourself out in the open in a one on one confrontation with an enemy. He's firing at you but isn't real accurate and isn't killing you with his weak skorpion or some other weapon....What do you do? Toggle your stance from standing to kneeling to prone and back to kneeling and back to prone until you kill him. If he hasn't killed you right off the bat when you guys meet, chances are he isn't a great shot, by changing your position a lot he'll find it harder to hit you. Of course, you'll be hard-pressed to shoot back, but after you do it a few times you'll find killing the enemy much easier and it should help you out every other game or so.

2.) Watching your Radar is just as important in COD4 as it is in H3.

The radar in COD4 isn't movement based like it is in h3. It is triggered by loud noises like unsilenced weapons or the deployment of a UAV by a yourself r a team mate. What you can infer from looking at the radar in COD4 is much the same as in H3. If you see one red dot, there are likely to be more clustered around that position.

Using your UAV is probably the most important and poorly executed thing in COD4. If you find yourself with a UAV, don't immediately use it if one has already been deployed in the past 10 or 15 seconds. This maximizes the time your team will have the advantage of always being able to see those enemy players who aren't using a UAV. I can't tell you how many times I've set off a UAV for my team only to have someone waste their UAV 2 seconds after I used mine. Always call out when you are going to use your UAV and let your teammates know one has already been deployed. Then let your team know about 10 seconds bfore it dies to call out another UAV so you always have one deployed.

3.) Your Perk Loadout is key to winning and surviving in COD4.

You'll read in the forums how people enjoy running with dead silence and stopping power, and if they find it works for them, let em do it. BUt I have one rule when I choose my loadouts... I always want to maximize my class objective with my perks. Let me say this again. I always want to maximize my class objective with my perks. This means I don't want to run martyrdom with juggernaut. Why not? Because they don't really complement each other.

Here are some maximized class examples:

Perk1:Bandolier Perk 2:Stopping Power Perk 3eep Impact----This is maximized for inaccurate rapid fire weapons like SMG's LMG's and every assult weapon except the G3 and M14. Now with this loadout and one of the previously mentioned weapons I can fire indiscriminately at anything that moves and be reasonably sure I'll be a killing machine until I die or until my ammo runs out, which because of bandolier gives me more time to hold a position without scrambling for another weapon should I live that long.

Perk 1:Grenade Launcher RPG, claymore, C4 or 3x's Frag Perk 2: Sonic Boom Perk 3: Martyrdom---- With this class I'm an up close killing machine. Until I get my 3x's frag I'll run with the RPG usually and a shotgun or an inaccurate SMG like the UZI. Why is this maximized? Because sonic boom allows all my explosives to be the shiznit ( I can't believe I just said shiznit) The choice of weapon dictates that I must be closer to my targets to kill them, so If I die, the martyrdom will be much more effective, and doubly so due to sonic boom. I rarely use claymores or C4 unless I'm playing headquarters, so the 3x's nades with their amped power are great for just throwing prayer nades and getting lucky kills.

Perk 1: toss up, choose what you like, I prefer bandolier or 3x's frag Perk 2: UAV jammer Perk 3: Dead Silence--- This loadout is good for only silenced weapons, and I run with it exclusively with my silenced M16. With this loadout you maximize your ability to be the ninja you always wanted to be. Just remember...there is a kill cam, so unless they're stupid, they'll find you eventually if you become too much of a pest.

Perk 1:Another toss up Perk 2: Juggernaut Perk 3: Last stand----This loadout is great for taking flags in domination or capturing headquarters. This is because it maximizes your life when you're in those target areas hopefully long enough for you to take them. This is a weaker loadout because one headshot will ruin it, but it is great because you effectively have to be shoot three times to die giving you those 2 or 3 precious seconds to take that flag or headquarters. Every objective team should have at least one guy with that loadout in my opinion.

 

These are just 4 basic loadouts. There really isn't any new informations here. What I was trying to show is that any loadout you choose should use all three perks to accomplish one specific goal.

This is it for today's blog, but I'll post more on wednesday or thursday afternoon. Until then ask any questions about COD4 and I'll try to answer them in my next installment.

Posted by Fetal @ 7:32 pm EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments

Halo 3: Improvement Techniques --- Are on hiatus....

Sorry I haven't continued posting my Halo blogs. There are two reasons for my inability to write these lately: 1.) work has been pretty rough on me lately. I'm routinely working 14 hour days, 5 days a week and when I get home, the last thing i want to do is write a blog or even play video games. 2.) When I do get around to playing I find myself drawn to COD4 more often than not. I still like Halo, but COD4 just seems like a better game to me, and right now I'm addicted to grinding out my socre and unlocking those challenges.

So, I have decided what I'll do is write once a week and answer any questions anyone has about Halo 3 to the best of my abilities. You can submit questions for my Halo 3 blog by either leaving them in the comments section for the previous week's blog, or PM them to me. If it is a particular situation that always gives you trouble, or you are just having a hard time with a certain technique, feel free to describe your problem in as much detail as possible and I'll try and give you a solution, or at least some helpful advice to get you out of your rut.

Posted by Fetal @ 6:57 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Halo 3: Improvement Techniques 16.) Roles: What they are and What you should be

In my last blog I worte about how teams are generally interchangeable parts, and any person should pick up any weapon at any time to deny the other team a shot at said weapon. That was true, but only to an extent. Teams still want players who are better at using one particular weapon to have a greater chance of using it. Teams also want people who seem to fare better in certain situations to be in a prime position to be able to work their magic. The better teams do this by assigning roles to each of their four members.

Here are the possible roles:

Slayer AKA- Main Slayer-- This is the guy who typically enjoys running around on his own and uses the prearranged placement of his team to kill people. Killing people is his primary responsibility. You'll find people who are good with the sniper rifle, or have the strange ability to rush opponents outnumbered but still win are generally slayers. The reason there is one person who's main responsibility is killing people is simple; when people are dead and on respawn, they can't harass the rest of the team. His job is to keep people on that respawn timer as much as possible.

The thing is you can really only have one person who is a "main slayer". This is because these guys are like rock guitarists in that they have a tendency to wing it on occasions. They will often run out of pre-arranged positions to one they think is more favorable for killing. This is their job, but it is a fine line they walk. These "main slayers" have to have the ability to control their naturally aggressive nature and return to their positions to help out the team.



Support Slayer-- The support slayer is essentially what his name implies. He is a supporting player, and is not encouraged to ever run out of his position and hold his ground while always putting shots on people. Getting kills is not his main priority. Depleting shields is. As a supporting player his job is to shoot anyone and everyone he sees, even if he knows he won't get a kill. His job is also to lay covering fire to fix an enemy's position so the main slayer and/or the objective player can accomplish their goals.

But, he is not always a support player. He is encouraged to change his role for short periods of time when the main slayer is on respawn. So for 5-8 second intervals, this guy's job is to play as a main slayer when the initial one is dead or returning to his position.



Objective Player-- This is the guy who almost always has some measure of success when taking flags, or arming bombs, or taking territories or holding a hill. Their main goal is to carry the bomb, or get the flag, and they generally do this single mindedly and stubbornly. prior to their attempting to grab a flag, they play the role of "support" until they find themselves in position to accomplish their main goal.

As a general rule, Objective players are usually the weakest slayers on your team. This isn't always the case though, and in fact, you'd like your objective player to be proficient in up close encounters, especially beat-downs because that is when the majority of his killing will occur. But is is a good idea to put that player who just doesn't have as good a BR aim in the objective role.

It is also worthy to note that objective player's roles really do not change much when they play slayer matches. They will play a lot more support, but instead of grabbing a flag being their main objective, grabbing power ups and weapons like rockets are now their main goals.



Support Objective-- This dude (or dudette) is almost an exact clone of the support slayer. His job is almost exactly the same, except he goes after objectives when the objective player is down for the count. He is to hold his positon and put shots on people for the main slayer to kill, but he also pays special attention to the status of the objective player and helps him forge his way though the map more than just shooting at random people. Probably the best example of a support duo are the orge twins.



So, how do you know what role fits you? It depends on the team you have fitted together. Generally your uber agressive, best sniper shot will always be your main slayer. He must recognize though, that he has a specific job, and he also has a sector of the map that is his resposibility to cover his teammates flanks. He can not ignore that or his teammates will suffer while he gets umpteen kills. He has to remember he is to kill people so they don't kill his teammates, and not just run after and chase kills that don't matter to the overall scheme of things on the map, or that pull him so far out of position he can't get help from his slayers or help his teammates. This is the guy who must be good in head on charges because he will most often lead them should they be necessary. A person who is a "bear" player type and can control his bearishness when it benefits the team is the ideal slayer.

The support slayer is usually the guy who is right on par skillwise with the main slayer but has a more passive approach to killing. He must be willing to hold his position though if things get hairy, and not always run away at the first sign of resistance.

The support objective guy fits the same mold of the support slayer, but he's also good at close range battles should he need to take over objectives if the objective player fails.

The objective player is generally the weakest link....but not always. Don't feel bad if you are the objective player. It doesn't mean you're horrible at halo, it just means there are three other players on the team who are generally better shots than you. What the objective player is, is the sneaky little thief. He is the only player who isn't to shoot at someone if it would give away his position and his clear run at the objective. The objective player is almost always the most passive player on the team. In slayer games, he tries not to die more than tries to kill. He will,and is sometimes encouraged to abandon positions that are too tough for him to handle. If he's good though, he'll lead thsoe following him into traps set up by his teammates.



These are just basic descriptions of the roles people play. You must remember though, that everyone on your team is first and foremost, a member of the team, and everyone on that team can and will slip into any role that the gameplay forces them into. Having roles is only the ideal way to play. As some of the competitive players on this site will tell you, it doesn't always happen the way they envision it, but a team's ability to change roles at the drop of a hat makes them harder to beat.



Also, very important!!!!!!!!!!

Every team needs a leader...... Just one leader. You can't have four people on a team who all believe they have the key to success to winning. Everyone must be on board with one person's plan, or heads will but and eventually you'll find your team breaking up. It is generally not a good idea for that leader to be the main slayer. This is because this guy is the best killer on the team, and he will expect everyone on his team to live up to his exacting standards. As we all know, no one is perfect at halo, but these guys generally have an ego that tells them they are God's gift to halo. They will have a hard time being team leaders. A good team leader is the person who recognizes everyone's strengths and weaknesses and can devise strategies that compliment everyone. The leader is NOT the person who yells the loudest, but the person who makes the most sense. Remember that and your team will fare much better.



Posted by Fetal @ 11:32 am EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments