There are plenty of tweaks you can do in RO2 to help your game which don’t take much effort, but will still help you out a whole lot. I will continue expanding this guide to encompass these tweaks. They are (almost) all perfectly legit, and I have discovered them along my way in RO2, so I’ll take you on the journey as well. Most will gradually increase in complexity as I continue in the guide. I’ll also include a tip about how many hours into my gametime when I started using these tips, and when I stopped (if I did). Many of these are just things I’ve learned after getting into PC gaming over the past few years, and aren’t related to RO2, but will apply to all games.

Game options:
The first thing you’ll see when you open up the settings menu are settings for roles, weapons, and vehicles. Tweaking this is easy and will help you.
Turn off all hints, turn manual bolting on, and turn auto reloading off. Vehicle settings are up to you. I don’t play tank so it doesn’t matter to me either way, if you do you may very well love incremental throttle, which changes the way throttle works to be… incremental… and not just stop/go.

Manual bolting means you have to click to bolt your gun after you fire a shot. Adds realism, makes bolting faster, leaves you open to melee after shooting which makes the rifles beastly for CQB. Fire hipshot then sprint in and stab the guy, since you can’t melee whilst operating the bolt.

Started using: ~5hrs. Stopped: Never.

Video options:

Turn post processing preset to enhanced, this makes the colours pop. Turn DoF and mblur off, maaaaybe knock brightness up a little for help in dark spaces and dark maps. This will give you popping colours and less blur making it easier to see.

Started using: ~10hrs. Stopped: Never.

Audio options:

Tweak for your audio gear. All that matters is turning music level to 0. Native voices are a good idea, too; turn them on so you don’t gotta hear cringe stuff like “I HAVE SEEEEX FEET OF ROOOSIAN FOR YOUUU FRITZ!” Your mileage might vary, but I can distinguish German/Russian voices better when hearing yells with native voices on. English/Japanese voices are impossible to get confused.

Started using: ~5hrs. Stopped: Never.

Control options:

The default keybinds are rubbish. Just rubbish. Don’t use them. It takes 10 mins to rebind to a better layout. Here’s a quick rundown of mine. You should tweak binds in any game when you install, don’t be an idiot.

Started using: 0hrs. Stopped: Never.

ESDF – Movement

WR – Leaning

Caps – crouch tog

Alt – prone tog

Use – G

Drop – J

Map – V

Reload – T

Weapon function – Q

Tactical display – X

HaafuGee has a much better ESDF setup than mine. Check out his guide: http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=722184333

Input settings:

Turn mouse smoothing off, just do it.
This game is no CSGO so people won’t yell at you for not having sens on 1. For a long time I have fiddled around with it to find where I like it and what works best. Too low and I can’t lead on people cause my mouse is dragging behind them, and I can’t turn quick enough in CQB. Too high and I get twitchy and miss shots due to twitching off the guy. Just try to find where you’re comfy with and experiment. However, in this game it is better to be too high than too low.
My zoomed (ADS) sens is a few notches above my hipped sens, which avoids the slowdown you get from zooming in whilst aiming. But I use fingertip grip with resting wrist on table, so it may differ for you.

It took me around 200hrs to get this to a point of tweaking where I really liked it.

Started using: 0hrs. Stopped: Never.

Ingame settings are pretty simple. Configure them well and you’ll have a small advantage over people who don’t.

Section on tweaking visuals out of your game to get the best result.

Firstly, if you run any programs that change the colour of your monitor to be more homogenous (ie. Create less variation and contrast between colours) disable it. This means things like Flux. I run Flux but I turn it off before playing RO2.

Monitor tweaking:

When I play RO2 I have my monitor brightness on 100, and contrast at 25 so the colours pop more, I also have an old Samsung monitor with what it calls a ‘magiccolour’ feature. Your monitor may have something similar. Normally magiccolour looks horrible since although it makes colours pop more and brings out the contrast, it significantly blurs the image. The isn’t a problem in games, but is for general use. Fiddle with your monitor, if you have anything that makes the colours pop, then put it on. Your mileage will vary.

Started using: ~350hrs. Stopped: Never.

SweetFX:

I consider some uses of SweetFX to be CHEATING, so you should avoid going overboard if you choose to use this tool.

If you didn’t already know about it, SweetFX is a graphics injector that can be used to add effects like SMAA, Sharpening, etc… to a game. But it can also be used to change Gamma, correct contrast levels, and other dubious things that I could fathom with correct tweaking could possibly do things like make shadows almost disappear, and make it very easy to see on night maps. I personally don’t know how to tweak all this stuff to do that, but I do understand it is very possible. You can definitely use SweetFX for added features which you don’t have on your monitor, like tweaking up the vibrance and saturation a bit (once again, to make the colours pop).

Although I think using SweetFX to bring vibrance/contrast etc.. up to make colours pop is legit, I also think it is sketchy and I wouldn’t use it if I were you. I used to use it but quit because even though the tweaks I had weren't super sketchy, it was definitely giving me an unfair advantage. I also think that RO2 should not allow you to use SweetFX, as some other games do. For example, Battlefield games block programs from interfering with the game graphics. If you take screenshots or video other people will also be able to see the effect of SweetFX on your game, as it is injected into the pipeline, and is not an effect introduced later. You can see in my screenshots that since I started taking them I do not use SweetFX.

Edit for 2024 (in case anyone sees this guide): My recommendation against using SweetFX on the basis that it gives an unfair advantage no longer stands. Back in 2016 when I originally wrote this guide, SweetFX (now ReShade) was rarely used by gamers to get an advantage. But gaming culture has gotten a bit sweatier. Monitors these days are way more insane too. I installed RO2 last year and got a few games and I died from 250m on Bridges in the Russian spawn. There's no way someone can see that far through the fog without ReShade or maybe a 4K monitor. Because tech has gotten so crazy, I no longer hold the opinion that ReShade or SweetFX should be avoided. I highly recommend using the settings 'Unsharp', 'Clarity' and some form of sharpening in ReShade. If you feel it's cheating just toggle off. I try to create a lot of vibrance and colourbanding. I also unironically like the super-sharpened, blur-free image, and use similar settings in singleplayer games.

Started using: ~100hrs. Stopped: ~150hrs.

GPU config:

In your GPU config for both red and green team there are many settings which you can change to tweak your visuals. Most of them are useless. However, for almost every game I change my GPU to create 0 prerendered frames. This creates smoother visuals if you’re playing at your monitor’s refresh rate, but if you drop even 5fps below you land in chop city. Basically, I just feel a little bit smoother with the prerendered frames at 0. Once again, your mileage will vary.
That leads into the fact that… you should run some utility to check your frames to make sure you are at the 62 fps cap RO2 has in place. You don’t wanna dip into lower FPS rates or your game will be choppy and play poorly. You can even just download the free version of fraps to check it, although most GPU overclocking utilities will have it. (Afterburner, Radeon Pro, etc...) In my screenies I just leave it on for the sake of it, although there is no reason to leave it running all the time. I just like it.

Started using :~450hrs. Stopped: Never.

There are only two useful tweaks I can think of which require file-editing specific to RO2 that might help you, and I think both of them aren't that useful. You might get more out of them than I do.


Change weapon zoom:

Navigate to C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\My Games\RedOrchestra2\ROGame\Config

scroll down to the section:
[ROGame.ROPlayerController]

there you will find
IronSightZoomScaleSMG=1.000000
IronSightZoomScaleRifle=1.000000
IronSightZoomScaleBipod=1.000000

Here 1 means maximum zoom and 0 means no zoom.
Tweak them to your liking. Removing zoom on SMGs may be a good idea.

Started using: Never.

Force higher FoV:

Navigate to C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\My Games\RedOrchestra2\ROGame\Config

Open the ROGame.ini file with a text editor
Search "PlayerFOV" without quotes

Set the FoV at desired amount then save the file
Right Click on R0Game.ini and go to properties
Set the file as read only with the checkbox or RO2 will overwrite on loading. If you change settings RO2 will overwrite and you'll need to do it again.

This tweak would only ever help if you're a Quake pro using RAGE/EWAF bindings and jump on LMB.

Started using: Never.

As far as I know there used to be a bunch of other sketchy tweaks that people were doing in ROGame.ini to remove fog/foliage but they were blocked sometime after release. There still might be some sketchy things you can do, but I don't know about them, and you shouldn't use them if you find them.

More to come, I will add more content soon. BUT REMEMBER, there is no substitute for skill at this game, and the best way to get better is to play more. This is simply a guide of generic things which have helped my game over the past 800 hours. Will following it make you a pro? No. If I didn’t use it, would I play any worse? I doubt it, maybe a bit worse though.