Holding RMB while jumping and crouched (For example when you go to zoom your aim as per the training level's instruction) will, most of the time, make you jump silently.

Walking upright while ADS does not consume stamina. Doing this is completely silent.

Getting hurt directly affects your Balance meter. Jumping puts you at 5 balance, running at 30, crouching still at 80, laying (Prone) at 100. Shotguns are designed to throw you off balance, but getting shot by some guy's pistol will usually take you out of the fight if you were already sprinting.

Getting ragdolled will almost 80% of the time make you lose fights, even if you shot each other at the same time and both fell over. Being crouched or prone before someone pushes you will usually make you win unless they shoot you in the face.

Energy might also affect how long it takes to get up after being shot down into a ragdoll, but I haven't really tested it.

Running, jumping, shooting and crouchwalking (probably some others) lowers your energy. Your camera will sway if you're tired and (I haven't tested it much) being low energy affects how fast you will stand up after being ragdolled.

Additionally, when you get to low enough energy levels, you will start audibly panting, which everyone can hear.

If you equip armor you can drop it anywhere you'd like, but while it's equipped you will emit very loud sounds even when crouchwalking. You can still crawl around (Prone) to move silently, but the armor is usually there to help give you a 40% damage resistance. This also affects how much balance you lose, so it's tougher to ragdoll someone wearing armor.

Nothing is stopping Intruders from taking the armor, and at first it can be confusing to tell if an armored intruder is a guard or not, so if you see armor laying around you're able to pick up armor and drop it someplace else.

Shotguns can still tend to instantly end fights against armored people by ragdolling them.

On some maps, jumps can be harder or downright impossible if you're wearing armor due to how much it can affect your jump height and movespeed.

This is the window by the Intruder spawn on Cliffside.
It is not slippery.

This is the window by the Guard spawn on Cliffside.
It is slippery.


There is not any visual difference (past obvious ones like one of them not having the metal bits) between them, but the map maker has made the surface here slippery. It will always turn you into a ragdoll, and is implemented to discourage unfair peeks in maps due to guards being more outfitted for holding their ground, and the intruders being more outfitted to subverting their attention rather than outgunning them.

On some maps there's little or no warning for a slippery surface, so generally you should stay away from handrails and thin objects, or most things overlooking a long fall. (Most the time it's windows, handrails or edges of balconies, if getting shot would send you falling to your death, you shouldn't be standing there anyways)

When you die or ragdoll, you don't drop anything other than Briefcases or Riot shields, including guns. As intruder, if nobody takes the anti-rush sniper rifle by the time everyone's moved out, you can prevent guards from taking it by picking it up, and giving it to a teammate or just outright using it.

Of course, this also means that you should share gear with your teammates! Most fights end in one shot, so you certainly won't use 90 pistol ammo. This is more important if you pick up the sniper and use it to push into the objective- If a guard were to push up around a corner and kill you, then nobody could snipe that guard, etc.

You don't drop:
Keycards
Sniper rifles
Shotguns
SMGs
Pistols
C4
Bloon Cams
Armor
Ammunition
Staplers
Etc

Like in Counter-Strike, where your red dot sight shows is where your bullet is going to fly. You don't need to worry about where your barrel is, and can use that to make yourself more scarce.

Lag is a pretty big factor and on servers higher than 5v5 (For instance 20 player server) can tend to turn every firefight into "We took turns bullet trading and ragdolling until I died" if you don't play in your region. I try to find a better server if my ping averages at anything over 120ms. If you play on EU, play on EU servers, if you play on US, play on US servers, and if you play on AU servers, god save you.





When there's no populated servers in your region you're able to join any official server or just make your own lobby with a funny name. Servers aren't hosted on your machine, so that won't affect anything.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1656614640
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1656802105
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2631239344
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2216282553