f13.net

I haven't been following the development of this game, since the BF franchise has been getting console-centric and the pc version went down to cartoon-town with Heroes.

So it was a nice surprise to see that Bad Company 2 will be on the PC as well.

This was also a nice thing to see/amusing shot at IW & MW2.
http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlefield_bad_company/archive/2009/10/26/dedicated-to-our-pc-players.aspx

Upwards for new (pretty fucking hot) game play footage...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5lnzScc6ZE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2NpJHOLyj8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vepiJznvvY0 (lots of F-Bombs so possibly NSFW)

Also, you can now pre-order BC2 and get the collectors edition for the regular edition price from most outlets. Includes a bunch of in game goodies detailed here.. (http://badcompany2.ea.com/#/reserve-limited-edition)


Edit: Added 3rd vid

giev gaem plx kk

To placate all those who think I'm some inhuman monster, I plan to buy this for the PC and play with a keyboard & mouse!

That does indeed look fap-fap worthy, graphically-wise, but I'm noticing a few things.

1) all of these videos are recorded by a pad-player.
2) I see no prone/crouch
3) I see no lean

I'm hoping that this is just a consequence of the whole deal being filmed on the console. A quick google seems to indicate that this (no prone) has come about because they found the pacing became too slow, and that people couldn't see eachother well enough.

This makes me slightly worried.

Not balanced for prone? :uhrr:

In the first BC the lack of prone was a function of weak bullets and explosions. Nothing to do with controller choice, simply that they wanted to go more arcade.

I didn't find the lack of prone to be much of a problem in the first one, either.

I haven't played the first one. Played plenty of 1942, DC and BF2 though. I can't imagine not being able to go prone, especially as a sniper class or anyone with a decently scoped rifle. I guess it depends how arcadey BC2 is going to be on the PC.

I'm wrong. Just rewatched the snippets, and there's at least crouch. I was beginning to worry that even that was going to be taken out.

I kinda get it if they remove prone from the console version, but I really hope it's not absent from the PC version as well.

Prone not in console nor is lean, there is a one knee crouch tho.

Anyone else get a key for PS3?

I've been in for about a week now.  Key's are (or were) relatively easy to come by on various websites.  I'm not crazy about it to be honest.

Games are not comparable.

Yeah and the lack of prone made it better for sniping. They're trying to avoid having that handful of snipers who are prone, super far away and picking people off who can't do a damn thing about it. It worked great for BC1 and I hope they keep it out of BC2.

Did the first Bad Company have the carrot-on-a-stick leveling advancement to unlock stuff?

Yeah, but it wasn't as grueling as Halo or CoD. Also, instead of pre-set items being unlocked, you got a point or two to unlock whatever you wanted.

Huh, alright.

I also don't consider the Modern Warfare-esque system that grueling, it keeps me trying new stuff.

Hopefully you'll be able to do attachments and stuff on weapons, that's probably my favorite part of that series.

Even without prone, I remember sniping being somewhat difficult in BC. Note, that was on the console demo.

Pretty, but I am not sure I am sold yet. I wish they would just update BF2 instead of trying to copy MW2. Although I can see why they want to do that for sales. It feels too hectic and game-y...I am wondering how big the maps are and if lone sniping is a viable play style. Also saw something about 32 players total for MP? Bleah. That may have been for 1943 though...can't remember where I saw it. The tracer dart pistol unlock listed for the limited edition is fucking sweet though.

Sniping kills fun. Most FPS are better with out it (or at least with out it being the dominant play style). Ill take destructible environments over sniping.

Completely disagree. What kills the fun (on a typical BF2 map at least) is the gross power difference between ground troops/armor and air power. Getting raped repeatedly by jets and attack helis that are just about impossible to kill from the ground with any regularity sucks. Once a player knows a map it is pretty easy to spot all the sniper hiding spots. With the smaller BF2 character models and longer distances (bigger maps), it is still pretty hard to kill guys with one shot unless they stand still for several seconds.

They're not trying to copy MW2. It's a very different game in that the maps are a lot like BF2 in size and design. A lot of you need to play BC1 because you say stuff that makes me :uhrr: when you make assumptions based on a video.

Tracer dart was in BC1 and if someone is hurt enough you can kill them with it.

Nah. I can deal with those. At least you can see them, and they are limited. However more than half of each team being camping, you will never see them, sniper d-bags? Yeah. not fun.

While everyone else is dealing with running and gunning, cover, and flanking. Snipers sit, usually in inaccessible areas, and rack up kills.

You shut your filthy whore mouth.

Inaccessible areas, until they come out the woodwork.  :oh_i_see:

Snipers can be fun, its the over abundance, and poor level designs that kill it for me.

FPS's are still better for not having it be the dominant play style.

I've never seen it be the dominant playstyle in BC. There's just not enough room for a multitude of snipers. With buildings being destructible and vehicles, it's hard for snipers to just pin down a spot. Not to mention the level design leans towards width and length, so there's room for everyone to go out of the view of where a sniper is watching. They also do a good job of making normal infantry fun. I spent a majority of my time playing, what I guess would be called, a heavy gunner. LMG, mortar strike, med kit and pistol as my setup. I never once felt like someone had an advantage over me.

I have never played BC- I am just judging by the videos. Between the size of the characters on the screen and the cluttered looking enivronments/maps, it looked a lot more like COD 4 than BF2. COD4 always feels like I am in a firefight in a phone booth- Bf2 (and 1942 before it) always felt roomy (almost too much so on a couple of maps). If they can deliver good gameplay on top of the omg drool graphics I will all over it like stink on a monkey. I just fear the worst with the COD series popularity.

It's a promo video and it's probably heavily focused and scripted, whether they tell you it happened while just playing or not.

Snipers aren't a problem whatsoever in BF2. The PROBLEM with the sniper kit is the fucking claymores + grenades. Most players would rather bunny hop around throwing claymores and nades than snipe anyone. And if a sniper get set up some place it isn't very difficult to listen for where the shots come from and kill him. Or wait for the commander (who can see everyone on the map) to mark the snipers whenever they want.

The thing I'm most worried about in bad company 2 is spawning on ANY squad mate. Its bad enough in BF2 where people chain-spawn on the squad leader over and over and over again, it's going to be straight retarded if you can spawn on any member of the squad (like it was mentioned in a video). Throw in some rezzing (insta-rez to full health after a sniper bullet to the head?) and health packs and you'll have some real unfun shit.

Yeah, the squad-spawning kind of sucked in BC.

These games need two things to make me happy: an endurance bar to minimize bunny hopping and a severe penalty to accuracy with anything while moving.  I loved me some BF1942 but the dolphin diving really ruined the fun. 

Yeah, wasn't talking about bad company, I was speaking broadly.

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-battlefield-bad-company-2-beta/17-1695/

This is a good 22 minutes of footage, if anyone is interested. It looks okay, I dunno. I'm hoping the unlockable stuff has enough variety.

I wish they would start filming on a PC soon, watching that pad-panning all the time is painful. Also I want to see if they've got lean in, or if they're also going to be annoying about it.

After what EA/Dice just did with BF:Heroes, i have no trust in them doing anything but a fuckhead thing to make more money of this game. "Oh , you wanna play? Here's a DLC that will cost you 10(insert currency here) and will consist of 1 map. 20(insert currency here) to get a superior weapon compared to anything in-game". Bastards!

Bad Company 1's DLC was pretty straightforward: one free game mode and one free 4 map pack.  Clearly EA wants to incorporate more micro-transactions into their full retail releases (see Dragon Age: Origins) but I don't think we should make too many inferences on how they'll do that in Bad Company 2, a full retail release, from Heroes, a game that's purely micro-transaction-based.

It wasn't in BC1 and I'm pretty sure it won't be in BC2. Also, do you really plan to lean around the corner of a building that can be blown up?

Well, that would depend on what kind of game I was looking for. Personally I'd probably mostly be looking for proper tactics where cover would be a part of it. Not "YAAAA RAMBOOOOO" (or Leeroy Jenkins if you like) and all guns blazing. Since all the films I've seen from the game have been from the consoles, chances are it's more Leeroy Jenkins than not. :P

And yes, if the game hadn't been so Leeroy Jenkins, then I would've been using buildings as cover. It's still safer than stepping out round the corner.

 :facepalm:

Don't facepalm. You're the one looking to BC for tactical movement. Never look to the sequel of a title touted as "Blow shit up in style" to do a complete 180 and go tactical. If anything this game is more about teamwork than anything else, being able to organize your team around a common objective. I really can't recall the last time I found lean very useful, not even in MW1. Unless it was slower on 360 and you had time to lean, but for the most part is was reserved for camping snipers and that's no big loss to me.

Do buildings offer any cover at all from bullets/projectile weapons that don't make 'splodeys?

If yes, then  :roll: :facepalm:


Because any cover at all is better than standing there in the open waving your dick in the breeze, tactical or arcadey shouldn't be a factor.

This is starting to look really good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hARkZPVKQ98&feature=player_embedded

Damn, those guns sound orgasmic.

I'll be giving the gaming community 3-6 months before buying this, though. I don't want to buy a shenanigan-filled game, although I hope they've learned from IW's mistakes.

Wow, that does look sweet.

This game begs for big games with tons of people and vehicles, it's $49.95 to reserve the limited edition, can we do it with the amazon link?

Fuck yeah!

BF's MP has always been my style of game, rather than the spammy combat or CoD games.

I'm going to show my age here...

This reminds me of the direction that the Desert combat mod took BF 1942.  The game went from a strategic, thought-based shooter to a frantic, reflex oriented game.  Perhaps that's the gameplay most FPS gamers enjoy, but I rather prefer a more squad/strategy based war game. 

Might be time for me to consider WWII Online.

Or maybe ArmA 2, if you've got the hardware (and they've fixed most of the bugs, I haven't checked it out myself lately).

Yep, as much as I loved 1942, I found DC/BF2 more engaging. Probably because of the setting and hardware, but even so the game is still at a much more measured pace and less frantic/spammy than things like QW:ET, TF2, CS, DoD and CoD

That is my major complaint about COD4 (the only one I have played in the series)- too frantic with absolutely no team play or tactics. The videos of BC2 remind me more of COD than of BF2, so I am concerned about the pace of play. God the sounds are good though. Has anyone played the console beta to get a feel for the pacing?

I just expect that since it's a teaser trailer and that MW1/2 are such big sellers that the trailer has been designed to appeal to them as much as possible. Since BF has a pretty big following of it's own, and features VEHICLES~! I imagine the gameplay won't be terribly different to past iterations.

I had my best teamwork moments in 1942, DC and BF2. It helps to be in the same room as friends, or at least on VOIP, but yeah, combat can get frantic, but we (almost) always played more tactically, and it was glorious.

That's exactly how the first one played with some minor changes to vehicles, HUD and the map design.

WAP - Typically it's not that frantic until you either A) are going for the victory rush on a flag/gold box or B) two enemy forces happen to bottleneck, which tends to happen in the urban areas of maps. I recall quite a few moments in BC1 where we snuck around and took out soldiers/snipers dug in or tanks laying down fire from afar. I think it's more like BF2 in that you can choose when you enter the fight rather than being like CoD where the fight typically comes to you.

Edit:


http://twitter.com/L_Twin/status/4964309159 (http://twitter.com/L_Twin/status/4964309159) - Posted 1 day after IW announced no dedicated servers for MW2.

To be fair, the first Bad Company wasn't even a PC game. It is not a surprise that they are making this game to go after the disenfranchised PC players who were unhappy with MW2.

There's plenty of that if you find the right server and gameplay.

Aye. I forgot to say that I was aiming BEYOND just that fuckup, but yes, that is the major mistake I hoped they'd learn from.

I just can't get over the sounds. squee!

Its fast, and I agree the sounds are awesome, the M1A1's turbine whine is something to hear. Maybe its a perception thing but there is a slowdown soon as you die. You get to see your killer, his load out and a kill cam for a bit while waiting on re-spawn timer. But your quick back in the action as you can spawn off of squad leaders.

It feels a lot like BF2.

I think my preference is because I cut my teeth on Rogue Spear- very fragile, no healing, and once you were dead you sat out for the rest of the round (isn't CS like this too? been forever since I played it). I do plenty of headlong rushes in BF2 when the situation calls for it (flag defenses or caps mostly), but I can also do things slower and stealthier. I like having the option. Sounds like this is a bit of a hybrid, but it might offer enough to placate me until BF3 gets made.

Yep you sat out in CS. The waiting in BC2 is good tho as it lets you switch up gear loads on the fly before re spawn if your quick enough or check out scores and goals. So there is a bit of slow down/penalty if you die, but BC2's action is fast pace in comparison to R6/RS.

Short video (http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlefield_bad_company/archive/2009/12/18/battlefield-bad-company-2-squad-deathmatch-developer-walkthrough-laguna-presa.aspx) about MP squad game.

Looks fun, but I hope that isn't the predominant MP play style.

Looks interesting, actually. I can;t see the whole game being like this, but I'd much prefer something like this to CoD4's take on this kind of thing.

So, I bit the bullet and downloaded the beta for this on PS3, despite my floundering ineptitude in console FPS controls.

Take into consideration that I never played the original Bad Company, and I wasn't really a BF2142 player, so this is basically a leap from BF2 right into this.

It definitely feels like a Battlefield game, but one that has been dipped in the Modern Warfare sauce, as far as weapons and such. You get the gratuitous kill cam (which leaves the door open for massive teabag fests), and the feature where you can drop in behind any member of your squadmate that is alive. That just ended up being a situation where the entire non-sniper part of your squad would end up spawning behind the sniper on the team that was up on a hill behind a rock somewhere. I'm sure with any sort of decent organization, you'd be able to plan that out a little better, but for the purposes of playing a pickup game with no voice chat and no way to communicate to my squad, that's what I ran into.

The loadout system seemed pretty nice, with the individual XP being earned per class. I played long enough to unlock a SCAR for the Engineer class, which still didn't help the fact that I was running into walls and getting caught on geometry like an ungulate.

The sounds. Oh, the sounds. Everything just sounds right. I prefer the weapon models in Modern Warfare 2, but they are much more 'real' looking in this game, if that makes any sense.

The individual user-to-user combat seems fine, but ultimately, all this beta let me know is that it is still a Battlefield game, with tanks and such, and snipers being way up on a hill away from everyone else. I'm not going to be able to do an apples-to-apples comparison until I get some time in with the PC beta when that finally drops, and I'm not a floundering simian.

Looks good, but I wonder if the PC version is going to require a monster rig.

From the Battlefield Blog (http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlefield_bad_company/archive/2009/12/01/oh-snap-pc-info-ladies-amp-germs.aspx):

Rumor has it that Steam will offer this in 'squad packs' ala Borderlands. Any one interested in getting together on one? I would offer to collect the money, but I live in WA (where Valve is) so I get raped for sales tax.

Potentially in on that.

Whoops, I forgot to cancel my MAG pre-order.  Just took care of it.  I blame Bad Company 2 for my change of heart. 

In case anyone is thinking about going console on this one the PS3 controls were not hard to get used to even with my propensity for spastic turning.

Seconded. And I'm in VA or NJ, and don't believe I get hit with Sales Tax.

Hell, I might even be in for two. When are the system specs coming out?

4 posts above yours?

I'd get in on a squad pack.

I would get in on a squad pack.

Squad Pack me.  Also, I'm CA so I can coordinate one sans sales tax.

Have they even confirmed the Steam packs?

Hmm, this looks better than I thought originally.  Keeping my eye out.

Available for pre-order on Steam as of now. 49.99, allows access to open beta (starts next week), and gives you access to weapons once the game comes out. (not sure if they are exclusives, or if they are unlockables you just get "for free."  No "squad pack" option, as of the moment at least.

Oh yes, will get. And mostly because I really enjoyed the last PC-based BF game, for the teamwork and the vehicles.

Apparently they are "working on" getting a 4 pack deal ironed out.

You are correct: (http://twitter.com/L_Twin/status/8111111274)

Limited Ed sounds like it's pushing onto the 'buy a better gaming experience' territory. Is Don Rumsfeld working for DICE?

Must suck to face limited ed players in vehicles, an up-armored tank, ffs? I don't get worked up about DLC/RMT, but that looks to be a shitty direction for a competitive FPS to head.

I agree. It is pretty shitty to give limited edition/pre-purchase players in-game bonuses. Unfortunately, its the direction I see more and more games going in the future. That, on top of DLC and guaranteed expansions makes it seem like players nowdays are getting less and less with their original purchase price of a game and are being baited into throwing their money at a game as early as possible.

I think that the limited edition only unlocks the items for you right away, but are still available to everyone through the normal unlock system.

That's cool then. I mean, in a way, I don't like unlocks :P Let's reward the better players with better gear so they can more effectively stomp the shitty players. For FPS and PVP, I'm something of a stickler for 'even playing field', since skill is already making it tough for people who can't dedicate their lives to the games.

I tried jumping into TF2 for a bit, it's a fun shooter. But playing against vets kinda sucks some of the fun out of it. Look at the two achievements I unlocked :)

Iron Kurtain
Take 1000 points of damage in a single life.

Rasputin
In a single life, get shot, burned, bludgeoned, and receive explosive damage.

TF2 has done a pretty remarkable job of making their unlocks not straight upgrades actually.  But I am with you, I think in an FPS just making everyone available to everyone and let people play.   Though, veterans will always have a huge advantage in FPS games where pure skill (ability to aim, knowledge of maps, etc) is important.  Thats why I gnerally like to get into a multiplayer fps either at the beginning or not at all, because they generally have a much harder entrance curve if you join later.

BC unlocks weren't too bad. You never felt gimped because you didn't have X weapon. They each had an up and a down to them, you got a nice graph of what each weapon was good at and often anything more powerful came with crazy spray or something else to even it out.

I thought the preorder players only got certain unlocks that everyone could unlock, only right from purchase. Did I read something wrong somewhere?

No you are correct.


Also, there is a video here talking about the PC version of the game: http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/battlefieldbadcompany2/video/6246914?hd=1

At the very least they are talking a good game.

Heh. They could basically say anything but "eff you PC gamers, you'll buy the stupid thing anyway" and be talking a good game :-) In all seriousness, this is going to provide some much needed competition.

I'd like to see if DICE's handling of community and information distribution can surpass the laughable efforts of Infinity Ward and Robert "I use Twitter so much for business purposes, I should be paying them a license fee" Bowling.

I'm holding off buying this atm in wait for a 4-pack.. Should we start organising f13 4-packs now?

I'd be in on one, but not to coordinate it, since I'm in Australia, the're likely to charge more once EA kicks in.

Eeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhh  :oh_i_see:

From what I've read it should be pretty non-intrusive to run it. On top of being able to install it on 10 different machines at one time I don't think there will be much of a problem.

Why the FUCK do they need SecuROM on Steam?? That makes zero fucking sense, and is seriously making me reconsider buying it.

You do know that most Steam releases are pirated, right? And clearly it didn't stop people from playing MW2 online.

I didn't know that most Steam games are pirated, at least not to the degree that non-steam ones are. Or that many people were playing pirated versions of MW2 online. The last time I had tried to get around Steam, I ended up having to use an alternate browser like All Seeing Eye to only play on a much smaller set of pirate servers with other people who had downloaded it. This isn't the case anymore?

Because as I see it now, the only reason I ever choose to buy games atm is because they are coupled with Steam.

Depending on the game, sometimes it takes a third party program to play online, sometimes it just works and for the rest you just get single player. With more games going Steam only, the "scene" groups are trying even harder to make it possible for people to play most of them online. I think the MW2 fiasco was probably what made DICE/EA go with SecuRom on top of the typical Steam copy protection. And as long as it doesn't stop people from playing, I don't think most people will notice.

As long as the damn activation limit isn't as hardcore as they were to start with, like for example spore.

I'm looking at Mass Effect 2 for this, apparently that has a hybrid version of this, where you have the offline mode where you authenticate by using the DVD media, and it doesn't go online (or, I hope it doesn't, fuck them in the ear if they do), or you can do up to 10 authentications which are valid for 10000 days. And apparently you can revoke those activations as well.

All in all, if that's how they end up going in the future, then I'm happy as a consumer again. At least their servers going poof won't stop me from playing the game in 10 years time (if I should so choose).

edit: I haven't researched BC2's copy protection when it comes to this, yet. I usually leave that till after it's been released and a few people have bought it and started whining if the protection sucks.

Humm beta opens today, hope they mention if the four pack is going to be ready before release or not.

You can pre-order, play beta, then cancel your pre-order before the game is released and get your money back. Excellent way to try before you buy and cancel if you don't like it. I wish all games did this.

Beta is downloading on steam now. Should be fun.

I had to kick the tires for a bit to get it to start, but I have it downloading now as well.

Been playing this for an hour or so, I like it a lot.

Rubber-band-tastic so far for me. Tried several servers (sub 15ms pings) and all have the same problem. Judging from the swearing, not just me.

Also, when I unload an entire magazine into someone's torso at close range, and see a red mist spray off them, I kinda expect them to fall down. 1 shot 1 kill this is not (unless that is more netcode screwiness).

Is there any way to see your health?

Also, wtf sensitivity. It goes from 0.0 to..... 1.0. That is all the slider allows. I even went into the config file and manually turned it up and it does nothing. 6.0000 is the same as 20.0000

I think its netcode screwiness, because when I've gotten on servers with low ping, the experience has been great.  People definitely die in just a few shots.  The quality has gone way down to the point I haven't even been able to consistently connect in the last 45 minutes or so though, so I don't know what the deal is.

Keys are available in all the usual places.

If you don't feel like paying for a key, snag one on http://www.fileplay.net/keys - just gotta make a free account.

In-game:

The sound IS great though. Fantastic atmosphere.

I agree, the game looks, sounds, and feels good.  Its been a while since I played a "realistic" type shooter. (Not that this is realistic, but I've been playing TF2, so yeah).  It felt new enough to be interesting while familiar enough that I could figure out what was going by the end of the second round I played.

My only gripe (not sure if it's a gripe) is its so hard to see shit. Especially trying to snipe. The scope is all blurry and small, and you have all kinds of dust, explosions, flying debris all over the place. Thinking about it though it actually will be nice. Sniping isn't as easy as simply laying prone somewhere (oops, no prone) and having 100% clear shots on everyone.

So, I can't play at all now.  I guess EA is having some serious server issues on their end and apparently they are working on it.  The game crashes when I go to the server browser, and when I click Play Now, it tells me I don't have a connection to the game server.  Lots of other people having this issue too, at least that is what I gather from the Steam forums.

I am super happy that there is no prone, honestly. No dolphin diving, and makes it easier to see annoying ass snipers (though the killcam helps a lot with that).

I did have one moment when I tried it over lunch when I got killed by two snipers crouching on the big gas pipe at the end, and then in the killcam watching them both get taken out by a single friendly sniper bullet. That was satisfying.

Found a work around for anyone having the same problem as me:  Try to connect using the "Play Now" button - you will fail.  Thats ok.  Now, on the main screen in the lower right, go to servers (not multiplayer menu -> server list).  This seems to work for some reason.

Also - I am loving medic in this game.  :drill:

http://www.myinternetservices.com/ (http://www.myinternetservices.com/) - Keys available here. Fileplay is out apparently.

My god. I miss this game so much. I've found it to be one of the few online games where you're more likely to find people to support you. Just got 10K in points because my squad mate kept the tank repaired and the infantry off our backs.

I think the friends list is broken right now, but if anyone wants to add me my name is "Zhenya"

I've had some good experiences with team work so far too, would be fun to play together with others too.

Thanks, got a key..

edit: nm, found it.

 Seems to just hang at "loading" for me... hmm

Are you using the "Join now" button?

 I actually don't see a "join now" button. Only order now. However, there is a "get beta key" button, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Hur dur I think he was talking about the beta key website versus the actual game.

Game is awesome! I can't wait to get off work and jump back into it...although they have to do something about the mouse sensitivity, even at max it is really low especially on turrets.

You are correct. Dickbag.

Mavor - Keep trying. I never got it to say anything other than "Loading" and "We're being hammered right now", but still ended up getting a key.

4 out of 5 times I click 'play now' to be placed in a server, it puts me on a server in the UK. Really obnoxious. At least the patch fixed the server browser.

Ok, so after playing a ton between last night and today, I'd like to write up a bit of a "beta so far" review.  Note: This is a gameplay review, so I won't be talking about any of the bugs from last night (server list related).

1.  Destructible Environments:  This actually plays really well. Sometimes with gimmicks like this you wonder how much it is just a selling point on the box, and how much it actually makes the gameplay better, and I am happy to report that this really makes a huge impact on the gameplay.  There is nothing like blasting your way into a building by blowing a hole in the wall.  It also means that nothing is safe really to hide behind.  They say this in the videos when interviewing devs and such, but its actually true.  There is a lot of difference in quality of cover though.  Wooden fences get cut down like butter, walls to houses offer some protection against bullets, but will crumble to explosives, leaving you exposed.  There are some other very hearty materials (thick concrete) that will break down but seem to stay up to some degree even under heavy shelling (can't tell yet if they can be totally destroyed at some point, haven't been able to test for sure).  Buildings CAN be brought down, but more often they are reduced to just their steel frames.    Lastly, if you bring down a building that houses an objective, that objective is lost, this provides a nice way for an offense to break a turtle, if they can get a tank into position to shell the building.

2.  Class Balance:  So far, this seems quite good, though time will tell if it holds up.   Breaks down like this, Assault, Engineer, Medic, Recon.  

Assault is your standard rifle user, he also gets a grenade launcher, pistol, and ammo pack, that can be dropped.  The ammo pack replenishes ammunition to yourself and teammates who stand near it.  It is very vulnerable to being knocked around by explosive damage though, so you have to keep tabs on it making sure you keep it near where you want it. (You can drop a new one after a short cool down, which causes the old one to disappear).  Rifles are only accurate in short bursts, but are quite deadly.  The ammo pack is vital to have as ammo gets used up quickly by all classes, so that makes this class a valid/important part of a team and isn't simply your standard "shooty" class or something.

Engineer is the specialist in vehicles, destroying and repairing.  He gets a RPG along side a weakish rifle/submachinegun (don't remember exactly what it is).  The RPG can knock out armor, or be used to knock down walls, and other bits of terrain.  He also gets a repair device (looks like some sort of power tool), that can be used to repair vehicles that are damaged (but can't repair ones that have been knocked all the way out).  Engineers are important for obvious reasons, as they are your prime means of taking out enemy armor, which can be deady.  However,an engineer that stays along side friendly armor can be even more useful, as a tank that is being healed is hard to take out for a single enemy engineer.

Medic's oddly enough, get a light machinegun.  Its fairly good for laying down covering fire or keeping the enemy pinned down, but isn't going to win 1v1 at close range very well.  In close range, take out the pistol and hope for the best.  He can lay down medkits that work like the ammo packs I mentioned for assault.  These are real important in terms of keeping your team up, and I've seen a few times when teams have had a couple medics lay down packs near each other and have makeshift rally points set up.  This can be a very effective strategy.  Lastly, medics get an AED.  When a team mate dies, medics will see a little heath monitor looking bar appear on their mini map.  If you get to them and use your paddles on them before they respawn (10 seconds or so), they will respawn right away at that location.  Furthermore, it prevents the loss of reinforcements that normally get used up by respawning (in the beta map, the offense has to take all objectives with 100 reinforcements, rather than within a time limit).  Vital for obvious reasons, and awesomely fun to play, I think.

Recon is your sniper.  I haven't played this more than a few lives worth so far to be honest.  Sniping seems tricky in this game, but I've been taken out a ton of times at long range by snipers who know what they are doing, so its definitely powerful in the right hands.  Very good anti-infantry, and can help defeat dug in defenses well, as if someone so much as pops their head out, a sniper can kill him in a single shot.  Recon also gets c4 charges, which can be planted, and then remotely detonated.  I haven't seen these used a ton yet, though I have a feeling it is mostly because people haven't best figured out their place.  I think defensive traps might be one, we will see.  Lastly, Recon gets sensors, which they can throw down on the battlefield.  They reveal enemy locations on the minimap if they are within range of the sensor, and everyone on the team can gets this information.   I've seen Recon players use this to set up a defense around their sniping spot, so they know if an enemy is coming to flank them.  I've also seen defense Recon players set up their sensors at the beginning of the round at key choke points.


The class balance seems good, and all the classes are useful.  Recon seems the most situational so far, but because its a sniper, there are always going to be a few on every team regardless.  

Unlocks:

Unlocks happen with some frequency, sometimes giving you more options to choose from for weapons, or other times giving you upgrades (in "specialist" slots).  This is pretty standard these days.  You gain experience points, or whatever they are called, by killing people, defending objectives, attacking objectives, helping your teammates with your class specific gadgets, etc.  You are also awarded "pins" which give bonus EXP, stuff like "revive three people in one life as medic" you can get these as many times as you complete them, and usually give around 100 bonus exp per.  You get to see all the pins you've been awarded at the end of a round.  Teams are broken up in squads of 4 (or less than 4), and you usually gain extra experience points for helping your squad mates, which encourages squads to stick together.  I've seen some squads work really well together (even with coms), and I've seen some where people are all over the place, but I guess that is expected.

EDIT: Also, there are some "global" unlocks, so far I have one rifle and one shotgun that can be used by ANY class.  This opens up some interesting possibilities, like a shotgun using Recon who is more aggresive, tries to get his sensors behind enemy lines, uses c4 offensively, etc.  I haven't used them yet though.


So, there is only one map in beta right now, and its pretty fun, its a pretty standard attack/defend type mission, where the offense has 2 objectives at a time, after they take those 2, 2 more open up, until they've taken all of them, or until they run out of reinforcements.  I have to say, I am REALLY enjoying this mode so far (its called Rush, the map is called Valdez).  I really only have positive things to say about it so far, and while I had high hopes going in, its one of the games I've played recently that doesn't feel like a let down.  I definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in this kind of game.

Ask me questions if you have them and I'll be happy to answer.

Very nice writeup. Pretty much covers everything I've experienced so far playing the past 2 days.

I'm just going to add a few things.

First off, medics get a PKM. If you've ever played BF2 you'll probably  :uhrr: because the PKM was awarded to the Support kit. So far my experience with enemy medics is them strafing back and forth holding the button down spraying it. Since it has a 100 round clip (or did in BF2) its pretty cheesy. This is the only class that is able to spray.

The beta is limited to 3 unlocks per class. There are more (6 total) but they've had their points required jacked up (they require 100,000,000 points) Also, I believe the unlocks will scale better. At the moment you can unlock the first 3 within a matter of a few hours. I think once the game comes the 6 unlocks per class will scale so you get a few every week/month.

There are global unlocks such as shotguns, pistols, abilities for your vehicles, etc.  I'm also pretty sure you can pick C4 on the assault kit also, which makes it a bit more useful.

The nice thing about the unlocks (especially the global ones) is there is a lot of variety on how you play your kit. I play engineer a lot, so there are times when I want the classic RPG for taking out vehicles. Or, sometimes if I'm on defense I'll opt for the land mines (which take the place of the RPG) There is also a rocket launcher that does less damage to vehicles but more of a splash damage, which is great for buildings. Also, if I need more accuracy/long range ability from my main sidearm I'll pick a weapon that gives me that but does less damage. If I want to do a lot of close combat I'll opt for the pump-action shotgun or the auto-shotgun.

Because of this, I've seen snipers equip a machine gun and go into the front lines, using their sensor balls and c4.

You also have vehicles (ATVs that seat 2 people, two types of tanks, a chopper, and a UAV chopper) Vehicles seem pretty balanced, a lot of firepower, but they aren't as easy to use as in BF2. They have reduced viability, turning radius, and you have to account for bullet drop.

The two most surprising aspects of BC2 is the sound and how well the destructible environments play. For the sound, I knew they put a lot of work into it but wow. Every gunshot, explosion, vehicle, and bullet whir sounds so realistic (as realistic as I can imagine since I've never been in a war) It really, really sets the mood of the game and immerses you. As for the destructible environment, it plays great. Buildings getting shot up and losing walls, trees being topped by gunfire and grenades, vehicles exploding and their burning wreckage providing cover for a few minutes.

Overall its a pretty fun experience. On top of the typical replayability of a FPS, you also have a variety of guns, maps, vehicles, unlocks, and ways to play your kit which keep things different. I'm hoping for a bit more open maps which make better use of squad play and vehicles but they'll be in the retail release.

Wait, an unlock every week / month?

I think I stopped playing BF2 around the time I had my third unlock and the next one required an exponential increase in time investment to unlock.

That number seems like total speculation.  Also, one thing I will note is that the unlocks don't seem to be drastically over powered, this isn't MW2 where suddenly you are facing people who are dual wielding automatic shotguns, so even if you don't have all the unlocks you aren't totally hosed.  Or at least, that is how it seems so far, I can't speak for all the "top end" stuff, but it doesn't seem to be going in that direction, because what I have are some pure upgrades, but definitely some side grades (like one LMG I got does less damage, but has a faster rate of fire than the default, so its not just a straight upgrade).

The biggest problem I have with this game is how sluggish it feels. No, not simply from a performance point a view, but how the mouse feels and how the input feedback feels.

Mind you, this is from someone who downgraded back to XP because the mouse in Windows 7 felt like shit, with no apparent way to fix it. (Well, that was one of the reasons, the main being Windows 7 deciding to boot up with a black screen and a cursor at random times).

Crouching feels weird, aiming feels weird... Its difficult to put into words; but it just feels off even after messing with the sensitivity settings.

In TF2 or L4D2... Or even CoD4 I feel good smooth feedback, and I can maneuver quickly and easily. In this game, it feels like I'm trying to swim in molasses sometimes.

Can't really relate personally, so unfortunately I can't really offer much in the way of suggestions.  Has it just been a while since you played a game like this and it feels odd and you'll get used to it, or do you think its more fundamental than that.  Then again, I've never been very finicky about my mouse settings, I use the default in almost every game unless its way towards the extreme either way.

I have the defaults set in TF2 and L4D2, in CoD4 I set the mouse settings a little lower than usual and it feels pretty much the same as the aforementioned titles. I use a driverless Deathadder with the latest firmware (Drift Control off). I don't really know what you mean by "this". An army shooter? CoD4 is a army shooter too and I have no issue with it.

Maybe mouse smoothing is on or something; I'll have to do research. Also, the button presses feel weird and slow as well. From changing weapons to crouching; everything has this annoying delay to it.

 More likely then not, there will be some mouse options (smoothing and other) in the .ini file that you can play around with. If that doesn't work, then it's simply the way they coded the game (aka, coded it for a gamepad with velocity-oriented turning.. can't flick a gamepad you know). If that is the case... then you would have to wait for some sort of game mod. Even then, if its coded directly into the game I doubt you can do anything to fix it.

 I have ran into this mouse feel problem only when dealing with xbox360/ps3 ports onto PC. Definitely ruins the game experience for me too.

Or it's a DirectX/DirectInput issue, or whatever. I know I didn't have any problems with ArmA2 on XP, but a friend of mine had horrible delay on Vista. ArmA2 came up with an update which fixed the lag, could be BC2 has the same issue.

There is definitely a mouse smoothing checkbox in settings, make sure it isn't checked first.  Are you sure you aren't playing on laggy servers?  It sounds a little like you are talking about simple network lag.  By "this" I meant a shooter than strays a bit more towards the tactical.  While it is still an action game and not anything like a sim, it definitely has more of those elements than TF2/L4D/CoD.  Especially since a lot of weapons in those games use hitscan, and this game doesn't, that could be one of the reasons shooting feels odd.  Doesn't explain crouching etc.

Definitely sidegrades as far as assault goes - better accuracy+damage, lower rater of fire, or replacing HE grenades with smoke etc.

That's how it was in BF2. To get every unlock for every class it required a few months of play.

That way was fine. Unless people are expecting to unlock every gun within a week or two, which seems extremely dumbed down.

I frankly just don't care to be honest.  If people approach it with the "I need to max out myself inorder to play 'for real'" mentality, then they are insane anyway.  Just play the game, unlocks will come when the come.   Approaching it any other way is insane, this isn't an MMO.

Well there are currently people playing in beta that spend all round on a rock sniping. The problem is the ranking system. People shift from playing the game for fun and completing the objectives of the map to playing simply for points.

I could go on a rant on how the ranking systems in modern day FPS games turn it into a MMO-style grindfest but that's probably for another thread. Unfortunately, the ranking system is here to stay. I personally don't have a problem with unlocking a new gun/ability, whatever as I play, its cool when it happens but I'm not going to play any different. My gripe is the people that DO care that shitup the games I'm in. Sniping nonstop, not helping the team, hanging back in a tank the whole round. However, based on what I've seen in BC2, the people that do the best are the ones that go into battle. Kill streaks, knife kills, objectives, etc etc all give points. Hanging back in a tank or sniping only gives you a small amount of badges/awards. Hopefully the poopsockers figure that out.

That's one of the things about vehicles in game... it's a focused objective someone earns a clear benefit in helping protect. Protecting an HQ, a flag, or a checkpoint isn't as gratifying as protecting something that will fuck up the day that gets down the business end of it.

So, yeah, I imagine I'll be a repair type.

Its needed too, because a well supported vehicle is bad ass in this game, and an unsupported one is basically RPG fodder.  The difference is night and day.  You have some support, and repair, and you'll need multiple people to take it down, if its just some lone guy driving around and shooting, a single engineer can blow the vehicle up.  I love things that encourage teamwork, and you are right hat vehicles are definitely one of them.

I still haven't figured out how to snipe in this one; it's obviously not using hitscan...and there's just so much going on sometimes, it can be a bit distracting.

I was trying it a bit earlier.  You have to account for movement and gravity.  Its tough, and I'm not very good at it, though I was finally getting the point where I could at least kill stationary targets. :why_so_serious:

I actually like that sniping is hampered by the fact that so much is going on, there are particles, etc.  It gives non snipers a much better chance to close distance or flank without being seen, meanwhile, good snipers can still be a big asset to their team.  Seems to circumvent the traditional "Noob cannon" problem.

Incidentally I was just in a game where someone was complaining sniper rifles were over powered, and I just told them the trick is not to expose yourself to sniper fire or try to kill them with an assault rifle at long range.    As we've mentioned before in this thread, a lot of people seem to be approaching the game with the idea that is it MW2 with vehicles, and are finding out the hard way that twitch skills aren't all that counts here.   Even as someone who plays and enjoys twitch games (though I think MW2 is WAY overrated in that department), I like BC2 a lot for what it is.

This mp beta is only for pre-orders right?

I think there are some sites giving out free keys.

I actually think they should increase the cooldown on the recon's mortar-attack. Such a pain in the ass at the moment, when half the teams are snipers.
Combine a couple of mortars and a T-90 and that objective is down in seconds.

Yeah, I've noticed that mortars have become a bit of an issue now that lots of people are unlocking it. I guess you have to expect tons of snipers in any game at the moment.  The problem is snipers are VERY difficult to deal with right now except by other snipers, at least that is my experience.  Granted you can do ok avoiding sniper rifle fire as long as you stick to cover, spring when you move, etc, but when they can just lay down mortar strikes, it can get to be quite problematic.  It'll be interesting to see if people will figure out good ways to counter it, or if it will demand some sort of balancing.

Issue I have:
Too many fucking snipers.
Able to blow up objectives with c4/tanks. Strap some C4 to your ATV or UAV and toss it onto the objectives = cheesemode.
Medics gun is retarded. 100 bullet clip, 200 in reserve, NO cooldown or overheating? Are you kidding me?
Recon artillery strike needs a longer cooldown.
Spawning on any squad member is retarded. I knew it was when they said it would be that way, and it is during gameplay. Players popping out of players nonstop is just silly.

(numbered your points for easier response)

1.  Agreed, but thats to be expected I suppose in almost any game that has snipers.  Not sure how to make them less prevalent.
2. I'm torn on this, I like that you can do it in principle, but I think a good team can take objectives trivially easily sometimes, something needs to be done, but I don't know what.
3. Eh, sort of.  I see the problem, but in practice, they still usually lose 1v1 to assault, don't really have long range capability at all with it, though it can't be brutal at close/mid range.
4. Agree, mainly for reasons related to number 2.
5. I like the spirit of it, but I don't like that it allows for some cheese like getting entire squads of people appearing basically out of nowhere.  I think they could come up with some sort of creative way to put squads in play close to each other such that they could easily regroup as a team, without just being able to spawn right into the enemy base.


Still, criticisms aside, I am enjoying the game still.

Filling your jeep with explosives, getting it up to speed, and jumping out at the last second to activate the explosives is a time-honored Battlefield tradition.

I didn't realize they had moved the mortar strike from the "Medic" to the Sniper. Holy ass. well, except that they got rid of the unbeatable missile the snipers used to get.

OK- noticed the 360 demo was up on XBL, so I downloaded it just to see how it played on a console (haven't tried the PC version yet- SecuROM shell gave me pause). It is really pretty, and the maps are definitely big enough (was worried they would be more COD4 sized). I am still amazed people play shooters on a console. I felt like I was underwater the whole time- everything was super SLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOW. I saw that people mentioned the speed on the PC too- has anyone played both to compare?

FOV is really narrow on the console too (as expected). I hope they fix that before release on PC. It does appear to be a successful hybrid of COD-style and BF2 style. I am close to convincing myself that I can live with the BS DRM to play it, but I am waiting to see if anyone reports trouble before I commit.

It really doesn't feel that slow to me, I don't know what everyone is complaining about.  I mean, it isn't  twitch shooter, and the pace isn't fast, but it doesn't feel like abnormally sluggish or something, its just a slower paced game.

As for the FOV, yeah, I do wish they would increase it some, or at least give us the option to increase it some. 

I'm playing on the PC and haven't had any problems yet, and to my surprise I can even run it on high with a pretty modest machine.  Nothing terrible to report so far at least.

Dumb question to you that are playing: How much of an impact do snipers have on the real outcome of battles? 

Past experience with BF1942 was that there were a lot of snipers, but they never had a profound impact on the outcome of battles.  While I hate snipers (like stealth in pvp mmos), I can live with them as long as I know that their abundance is potentially costing the other side a victory. 

Well, snipers, per se, I don't think effect the outcome that much, but Recon as a class is pretty powerful due to stuff like mortar strikes that they get.

In a game like this, it'd be nice if you could paint snipers you see.

A sniper, or even 2 or 3 good snipers will affect a battle, but they wont generally make enough impact to change the outcome, they might be able to hold a choke point from afar, but the map generally has more than one of these at a time.  There are also smoke grenades to provide mobile cover.

The biggest impact on a battle is if 3 or 4 players work together, ie a couple of medics, an Assault, etc, or if someone who can fly the helicopter gets a gunner on board.  I was in a game where the pilot landed the apache back at the pad where an engineer was waiting to repair it and they went back out and totally owned all the attackers.  Seems the guided missile is the only thing that can reliably take down the Apache.

You can. If you get visuals on a sniper, you can press the 'Social' button (default Q), and it paints the target on the minimap for people to see. Makes it a bit easier to aim near the red arrow to get shots. I blindfired and killed a sniper using that once.

Supposedly later on you can unlock a scope for snipers that will automatically paint targets you pan over, as well.

Now allow me to save and review replays of matches and we're golden.

If they don't include that feature in Modern Warfare 3, I'm going to ask what the fuck Infinity Ward (or any FPS maker trying to make their games competitive) was thinking. If I can't analyze my games, then how am I going to see where I screw up or where the game screws up... ohhhhhhhhh. Now I get it.

Q: What do you call 4 Recon on the hill in Port Valdez? a: The Losing Team  tweet from Demize99, some DICE-guy

also

 Originally Posted by Shopkeeper  View Post
On Twitter there are a cpl of messages about C4 and the crates (posted by Alan Kertz, Senior Designer Battlefield: Bad Company 2)

    * @TheMystic_ Takes double the C4 to blow the crate in the final game. Will see if we can patch it into the beta.
    * The PC beta does not contain the C4 vs crates fix.

Good news re: the c4.

Just finished playing with Phire. As they took the first 2 objectives we held the line and as their tank spawned I hijacked it. If not for that, I'm not sure we would have stopped them from taking anything else. But man did we rape them in that tank. I see why the defenders don't get one there.

Yeah, ultimately good news on the C4. I basically can't play a game on offense now without the urge to just go C4 the shit out of the bomb sites, while my teammates flounder around in stupidity.

My wallet won't like this, but I think I'm beginning to like this game.

Being not in the mood to wade through shit TF2 servers at this hour, or try to explain to yet another hapless player that standing in acid to pick up a teammate is not a good idea in left 4 dead 2, I decided to play some BC2.

Most of my play time was with the assault class. Bored with it, I decided to try recon.

Couldn't snipe for crap in this game, but it didnt stop me from sneaking into the opposing team's base and mowing down their team with their own turret. Even managed to sneak up to some tanks and destroy them with C4. Very fun. Had a few of my best rounds in the game as the recon, despite me inability to snipe. Then suddenly a picture of a shot gun appeared on my screen. Apparently I unlocked it.

I change my weapon and go to town... Only I get destroyed in my first encounter. Thankfully, the shotgun doesn't take long to get used to, and I did some pretty fun things with it.

Yeah, the shotgun unlocks pretty earlier, and it can be use by any class.

Fairly early on you unlock the Shotgun Ammo improvement, which sockets into the middle gadget slot that nothing else seems to go in, and you get double ammo. The Saiga with 12 rounds is pretty hilarious, I've taken out a group of three guys that way.

I played for an hour or so just now, and I have to say I really love this more and more every time I play.  Its one of those games that generates awesome stories/moments that I feel like I'll be talking about for years the same way I still do today with Tribes stories.  Just environments play a big role in this, because there are just so many good moments generated through someone blowing a whole through the wall, or mortars tearing a hole in the ceiling, and so on.

You guys were getting me excited to try this... I didn't realize the release date was in March.  I may have to pony up the preorder to give it a shot. 

I know right, at over a full month of open beta, they are giving this game more testing under load than most MMOs these days.

Why is it that certain servers I join don't keep score or allow me to use unlocks, is this a known bug or something?

No idea, but I noticed the same thing.

Are there still open beta keys available somewhere?

I am also loving this more each day, although I am going to be very sick of that map by March :P

This started today. Possible bug with the EA stat server.

Except Ive been having this issue since the Beta was released.

Could it be the individual server settings?

I know some BF2 servers were like that (after release, not in beta)

You suck enough that they turned off your stats? :why_so_serious:

Maybe some servers figured out how to turn off Ranked.

Well there is a ranked check box in the server browser now that I look at it, so it seems likely. 

Downloaded it for xbox live, pretty fun demo, great to see DICE large maps with vehicles going again!  I luv running up and knifing snipers in the back, the knife is worse now than BF2 or BF 2142, but still okay, you just have to be freaking inside the person.  The shot gun isn't a one shot kill....that or i guess I'm still too far away, liked it better how they worked in the other versions.  I am wondering why the got rid of some of the classes, just wish those who played the assault kits would freaking drop ammo boxes!

Does anyone think it has gotten uglier?  BF2 was a mix up of colors that made it nice to look at and play, BF2142 was ugly but very detailed, now this version looks like freaking brown is everywhere....bleah!

I like the how the shotgun and knife are in this version. Also I disagree about the coloring, the graphics are great, and I think you are gonna see a lot of brown and gray, the only map we have is a snow map with concrete buildings pretty much. I really really really like that this is not a modern warfare clone.

I'm sorry but the knife in BC2 is one of the easiest knives I've seen in any game. If you're anywhere near an enemy, hit your knife key and you'll get a kill. I've knifed people behind me, to the side of me, people I've run past, and people behind others.

As for the shotguns. The pump shotgun is decent, but totally dwarfed by the auto-shotty. The pump has literally 0 room for error and requires you to be within 5 feet of someone. The bullet spread is bonkers.

For a hilarious display of the knife and shotgun, see 4:07 and 5:20 respectively in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UizRcJxAMhU

The game is amazing, but the more you play it the more little things like this come out.

Bit the bullet and bought it rather than wait forever for a possible 4-pack. Downloading the demo now. Will check it out in the morning.

Those... are some pretty nasty glitches. The only thing I can think of that even comes close to what I saw in that video from Modern Warfare 2 is the questionable trajectory of certain Sniper Rifle shots that I've seen killcams for.

Besides the obvious "Hey Tactical Insertion will encourage boosters."

I hate magical one shot knives, the only game where it makes sense is Chronicles of Riddick. They should instead put some effort into it. Have a bayonet you can charge with as well as a knife you can only use quickly if you have a pistol. If the first killing attempt fails, the players are locked in melee. Have some sort of a quick button mash fest decide who's the winner, but also have it take enough time that others can shoot your asses dead while you're getting medieval. Guaranteed hilarity, especially with friendly fire on.

My only real worry at this point about the game is the glitches.  When the game is played in the spirit of how it is meant, it is great, but with people cheesing game mechanics to kill objectives in seconds, i mean, sure its winning, but it isn't really playing the game.  Luckily, I haven't seen these exploits being widely used yet, though when they are used, it totally ruins the experience.

Being an avid MW2 knifer, the knife in this game is notably different. The problem with the knives hitting anywhere is that most servers, even with a low ping, have a stupid amount of latency.

There is the chargeup time for the knife hit. You hit the button to pull it out, you pull the knife back, and THEN you stab. With MW2, it's more button, stab. They may just need to bring down the effective range on the knife a bit.

Also - it's a friggin' beta! The last patch they did for the PS3 beta was this multi-page monster. I'm happy waiting.

Indeed, I'm happy they are doing a robust beta for the game and hopefully they will close up some of the loopholes and exploits.

There is that. All of this stuff is coming out before release. But I wonder about their QA department.

Ummm, it's DICE. They've ALWAYS had releases that were buggy as fuck and menus that suck monkey ass through a sippy straw. The first patch or two after release usually fixes the games.

I hope you're submitting all these complaints. There's a reason they gave a month and a half of testing before launch.

To sell more pre-orders?

Pfft, if you had to pre-order to get in, you're too slow.

Way to miss the point and be a douche at the same time!

After some playing - some thoughts.

The game is slower than MW, which is a good thing, but faster than BF2, which is a bad thing. It still feels a little spammy.

Knife is a bit too powerful. Feels more like a lightsaber of doom.

Snipers are too powerful, I think this is due to the narrow map. The best BF1942/DC/BF2 maps were big wide open affairs that allowed for deep flanking rather than being long death funnels. Even Karkand allowed for some thought after the initial assault. If the maps were more wide open and allowed multiple directions/assaults snipers' power would be less overbearing. Wake is a good example.

Too much dust and smoke. It feels like a design decision to try and force players closer together, but one of the greatest things about BF games has always been the wide open rolling spaces. Hopefully the dust and fog is not as prevalent on other maps, but I'm not hopeful.

Russians and Americans? I'd have preferred at least the initial weapons to be national-native rather than generic to both sides.

Fun so far, but so was the initial play of 2142, and I list interest in that one quickly enough.[/li][/list]

Yeah, I do with the map was a bit wider and more open.  I think part of it is that we are basically looking at 32 player max, which I think 1/2 of the earlier Battlefield games, so the maps aren't going to be quite as big.  BUT, I do wish the maps were at least as big when compared to that player count.  Hopefully other maps will have multiple choke points, as Valdez seems to have one major choke point per section, and I think that isn't quite enough.  Still, I'm having a great time with the game none the less.

Had anyone's performance in this game totally tanked in the last couple days.  My computer is admittedly on the low end of what can run this, but early in bet a I was at least regularly getting a very playable framerate, but in the last couple days it seems like my frame rate has tanked even when I turn everything to low.  Damned odd.

:uhrr:

I haven't noticed any performance drops... Actually, I stopped crashing to desktop everytime I was in an exploding vehicle when I updated my graphics card drivers. I'm still trying to get over the shock that updating my drivers actually did something useful for once.

As far as the knife being overpowered; It's at least a little harder to use than the CoD4 knife. The BC2 knife has this weird animation you have to go through, and sometimes it doesnt register. There are times when I stab someone, only to somehow fall on my ass and get stabbed myself... Even though he was turned in the other direction.  :uhrr:

Hmm.  Well, I was tweaking settings trying to get the best frame rate possible, and my frame rate ended up actually getting worse.  Finally, in desperation, I just clicked the "reset to defaults" button and that seems to run better  (its medium settings or so), than everything on low.  Now, DICE has stated that the beta version PC players have is an old build and unoptimized, so I am wondering if it'll get better for the release version.  Then again the old "its beta" excuse never ends well.  Still, I can play the game on default settings with an acceptable framerate, so at least I know I  can do that worst case.

It's not entirely uncommon for games in beta (or shitty releases) to run better on default settings than on lower settings.

Honestly, you get the auto shotgun so quickly after the pump shotgun, it makes me wonder why the pump action is in there at all...

I was an avid engineer and the old M11-87 was a total beast if you got shot with it in BF2, the upgrade to the auto shot gun was crazy awesome!  I'm not liking the range and punch of this pump gun, but then again, I'm playing on Xbox Live (I've got the dvd preordered for PC), so hopefully it is a little better.  I wish that they had kept the seven classes instead of going with 4.

I think with the reduced max players from the other battlefield games, 7 classes would probably be a little much, especially for the console version.  I think  of Bad Company as almost a totally different series than the original lineage of BF games (1, 2, 2142).  They lean slightly more towards the action side, and such.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but I think for what they are going for with BC/2 7 classes would have been too many.  Also, 4 is nice given the squad mechanic.

Was digging around, found out no prone (even on the PC) and a limit of 16 vs 16 on PC (not sure but something like 12 vs 12 for consoles).  Hopefully BF3 will be back on the PC and having large maps with 40 vs 40 teams and the return of squads and commanders.  This will be fun to play while waiting for it.

I basically look at it as a separate game series compared to the normal BF games.  I think its good in its own right, but it isn't necessarily a replacement.  So far I'm liking the smaller squad based fighting.  I find that when you actually get a small team working together there are great gaming moments to be had.  It lacks the epic feeling of the other BF games though.  Perhaps conquest mode will feel a bit different.

Amen.

http://www.ultimateprestige.com/

OK, this is actually pretty cool, complete with areas on a map where a certain weapon is most effective.

If I can blow up the Bridge of America's that would be sweeeeet!  I hatted that fucker and the cluster of how the Panama's Police Force would direct traffic on it.  Panama would be a cool map that they could make for BF3...lots of stuff from Howard AFB, Ft Amador, assulting the Presidents house, etc... could be a fun design.

After playing this game frequently since beta started, TF2 has lost so much of its luster its amazing. 

Ehhhh... Huh?

About the only thing in common these two games share is the fact that they're both first person shooters. Playing BF2 in all it's chaos makes it easier to focus in other games by comparison; but I wouldn't cal one or the other simply "better".

Anyone have a good line a beta keys? Can't run any down.

I finally got a beta key from EA - I think I had signed up for beta on their web site awhile ago and got the email out of the blue.

I like it. I won't be buying it because my computer REALLY can't handle it. I managed to get it playable with the lowest settings possible, but the framerate is shit. There is WAY too much going on, total sensory overload. But the gameplay at its core is Battlefield with some tweaks. The unlock system is nice, and I just unlocked the first set of weapons at lunch. Sniping is HARD, especially on laggy servers (which they all seem to be right now), but recon has been my best kit so far with engineer second. Even my work computer with Windows 7 and an ATI Radeon 4870 had to be set on medium to be playable. Is there a way to turn down the head bob? It's really overkill.

I run an i7, ati 4870, 6 gigs of triple channel, I run on high maxed out with no issues. I use the server browser to select low ping servers. If you click the play now button it will set you on almost any latency server it randomly picks.

Yeah, I've stopped using Play Now all together.  The game feels SO much better on very low ping servers.  Maybe its the fact that the weapons aren't hitscan, but latency makes this game feel terrible compared to other games which might not play well, but are probably at least playable.

What is hitscan?

Hitscan weapons just check to see if the crosshair is over the target, and then if you shoot while that condition is met, the target is hit.    This is how, for instance, most weapons in MW/2 work.  In Bad Company 2, the weapons have bullet physics, so you have to learn to adjust ever so slightly for the travel time and gravity, which matters most at long range, but is noticeable even at mid range.  With bad latency, it can be really really difficult to hit anything.

EDIT:  Even without bad latency, I think this is the reason many people complain that the game doesn't feel real snappy or responsive sometimes.  If you are used to playing games with hitscan weapons, you get immediate feedback.  This way definitely "feels" different to play.

I am pretty sure I like BC2's system then.

With BC2 you get a good satisfying feeling when you get a kill that hasnt been felt to me since the old Counterstrike days.

Nothing's more fun than hiding in a corner as a recon, and planting some C4 on an oblivious light tank and shotgunning the engineer who tries to flank you in retaliation... But there are some serious issues.

Sometimes, empyting a clip into someone doesn't kill them, even if your aim is dead on. I've had this happen to people I was shooting more times than I care to count, It even happens to me sometimes. I start getting shot from some angle; I look around frantically trying to find my attacking, after I should have been dead twice I find him, he runs in to knife he; I shoot him and he dies.

I've definitely taken to trying to play on low ping servers. The BF series has always been really sensitive to lag, more than any other FPS.

Good luck trying to find a decent ping on the east coast. Every server I've went to has had a ping of at least 100 with just one exception.

I've been pining well to servers in Virginia. (I am in New York).

Yeah, it's very rare to find anything that pings under 100, and the ones that do are usually full.

New patch out today.  Addressed performance issues mainly.   Played a bit a very noticeable increase in performance on my dual core  machine.

The new patch helped the performance on home computer a good bit. It's still on low and still a bit choppy in places, but it's playably choppy.

Ughhhh. This gets released a week before FFXIII & two weeks before GoW III. Just not fair at all.

Bear in mind that Multiplayer Battlefield is a long-term experience. You can stop playing for a week or two at a time to play through the 12-hour GoW campaign or the 80-hour FF campaign, then get back to it.

Back in the 1942 halycon days, I used to play a bit of BF most days, and also a bit of <other genres> as well, you know, a few rounds of battlefield, then an hour of your RPG or whatever. Works well.

I have been playing BF2 on and off for almost 5 years now. Totally right- you can pick up and play it whenever, and let it rot while some hot new shiny grabs your attention. Then, when you wanna shoot someone in the face, ol Faithful is there waiting for you.

My team has developed some awesomely cheesy offense tactics. Our best realization so far has been:

UAV is hard to spot.
UAV flies.
C4 attaches to UAV.
Friendly fire does not hurt UAV.

...

UAV + C4. Fly next to point. Detonate. No more point. UAV still alive. Fly away, add more C4, repeat. :awesome_for_real:

They said that they have fixed that for release.

As I understand it, the release "fix" is simply that it takes 8-10 bricks of c4 to blow a point instead of 4-5. I dislike C4 taking out a point in general. I'd be fine with C taking out a building which takes out a point, I just really really dislike the PC beta build right now where a few bored recons can take points with no warning/response window for the defenders.

Yeah, this won't fix it, as we're a team of 4. 2 assaults with ammo kits out (one driving the UAV, the other driving suicide jeeps) and two recons with the expanded explosives kit. We can stick 12 pieces of C4 on something. Merely increasing the C4 limit won't stop us.

There's also some serious brokenness where stacked medics are concerned. On defense, we tend to be 3 medics, 1 assault (for the ammo kit and grenades). Unless an explosion somehow takes out all 3 medics, which is rare, the whole team is alive again after a few seconds. Medic chain-rezzing is pretty damn powerful.

This thread simultaneously makes me desperately want to play this game and avoid it all costs.

Gah.

While the C4 issue is legit, and probably my least favorite part of the game, its damn fun to play anyway.

Same could be said for Modern Warfare 2 were it not for Commando Tact Knifers, Double Shottys, and glitches (previous two aren't glitches).

The game is a ton of fun when nobody abuses C4.

There was some muttering about making C4 hurting MCOMs into a server flag as well. But overall, it's a lot of fun when nobody plays the "I'm going to be a dick because lol" with c4 spam. My other favorite is one dude hides, recons chain spawn on top of him, spring towards mcom tossing c4, detonate as they get gunned down. Even with 5 people defending against c4 rushes, it'll eventually deal enough damage to win the point. Sigh.

edit: supposedly on consoles, the MCOM can be repaired. That and 15 bricks of c4 to blow would be Fine.

Except this is exclusive to one gameplay mode, where as the problems you list extend to everything... Then there's the whole shitty online multiplayer experience thing.

Putting a bunch of C4 on a jeep, ramming it into something and jumping right before you hit, then trigger it, is pretty standard tactic.  Of course you could repair the blown up stuff and friendly fire was standard on BF2 servers...

edit: that standing, I still bought the game, ya pre-order unlocks!

I see that waiting for a Squad discount via Steam has got me exactly no where. Except missing out on a month of free beta play  :heartbreak: Would like to buy it tomorrow, but I have so many other games I am neglecting...torn.

The price seems to have gone up, too. Unless that's just for us Aussies.
When is this thing unlocking?

Don't feel bad, they still have yet to release it for preload.  :uhrr:

Edit:
The beta/preorder has switch to live game. Restart steam to start your download at a stellar 0bytes/s. Is there any way to switch mirrors in the new beta client?  :ye_gods:

Can you still buy the four pack? I'm totally down.

(http://craplog.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/facepalm_picard_riker.jpg)

After playing MW2 for the past few days, the return to this game is like night and day, especially since the release has a few nice fixes in it. Instead of running around taking turns crotch punching one another, you actually have to think about your actions, you don't die when someone breaths on you either.

I just got a gaming PC like last week. I had no idea what the scene was like. :(

Um, yeah.

WAP was talking about his wait for a 4-pack to appear having been in vain. As in the 4-pack he was waiting for never happened. Which is why your post got a /facepalm when you asked if you can still get it.

 :awesome_for_real:

The server browser doesn't show ping....

The game is almost too photo-real.

Installed, entered limited edition codes, & online multiplayer is screwed up.  Won't show the ping, won't let me add veteran status from other games, won't let me connect to games, & doesn't load my limited edition gear.  Why the fuck do companies keep screwing up PC launches!  I swear I'm going to go to Xbox360 only soon.

In beta I would mash Select as I moved so I could spot people before realizing they were there which felt really out of balance.  Retail has toned spotting down which makes me happy but I don't understand how the changes work.  Sometimes a person or vehicle is right in front of me and I can't spot them.  Maybe there is a spotting timer or cooldown now.

I went into the sound option menu and set it to "war tapes."  I'm not sure what happened but my surround sound headset sounds more full as a result.

Single player is decent.  Some of the characters has some great lines, my favorite so far was...

The number of f-bombs is at level 11. I guess they wanted to be sure to get a "m" rating.

Run the game as Administrator on 7/Vista and the ping times will display.

You have my thanks.

Thanks fuser, that solved the problem of not showing ping (really my dumb fault, i forgot to reset it to run on admin when i installed it).  But now I get the great send my ass half way around the world when joining a game!  Click on a server from Chicago with a decent ping & zip I'm over in Germany on an European Server, I got to say hi to the Aussie's too!  They did something to get the extra items working, so that is better, now the bug is with the M1 Garand shows up but can't equip.

The game is fun when it work!  My son & took turns playing it for a bit, and had a great time, just iron out the bugs DICE and it will be great.

Good for you. I can't even connect to any servers. Getting "the server has dropped you. Please check your connection" or something similar.
Tried updating PB which actually worked for one game. Then it was back to square one.
Searched forums without finding anything that helps. Official forum had a post about running updater.exe in EA folder. No such thing there in the digital download. Unless they mean the bfbc2 updater which says i'm updated so..... :oh_i_see:


edit: and just as i wrote this drivel i got into a game  :awesome_for_real: Guess EA-servers are still hosed

I've been able to get into games out, but the clan I am in has had a ton of trouble getting into games all together, whether its the friends list or the server list or any other one of 1000 bugs that keeps fucking up 1 or some of us at any given time.  Its frustrating as hell too, becuase the game is REALLY good when everything functions as it should.

I love the lack of autobalance...

And by love I mean am totally annoyed when it becomes obvious which side is winning to see 1/3 of the people switch to the other side to guarantee the win.

Spent about ~10hrs solid multiplayer and satisfied with this game.

The utter confusion of the new maps and the urban environments that seem to go on forever in every direction make this game really exciting. There's no single choke point to major objectives so you really stand a chance on either side, this is without even considering the whole destructible everything. The game play isn't slow at all, with the urban settings you really have to be a spider monkey on crack to cover every angle and possible way someone can stab you in the base of your skull. Audio is really good and the fading out effects and audio distortion on shells landing near by makes it interesting. Controls are great and it handles really well with a minor gripe of constantly holding CTRL to crouch as there's no toggle.

The PC version still has some major problems, a friend hasn't been able to stay connected to match for longer then 5-10mins. I had nothing but punkbuster issues (getting kicked) launch night, the unlocks and stats go out of sync every once and a while when you get disconnected form EA. UI is very consolish but no where near the issues with say Borderlands but unforgivable stuff like placeholder text are still there. Some other gripes are you cannot automatically sign in, no offline building kit setups, and the way the server browser works is stupid. You have to wait for a full refresh before it will populate the list. If your lucky you can cancel the full refresh then leave the multiplayer menu and come back it with some to display. The friends list works well and you can easily see their stats and join on their games which is a bonus (Yay for not having to find the server they are playing on). From the beta the spamming of marking targets is way down, seems you can only mark one and there's an internal 10-20second cool down.

Hmmmm, let's see, bugs and multiplayer server issues on release? YEP, it's a DICE game.

I don't feel bad at all about waiting a few months for this game to stabilize.

Oh - but there is a lot of fun to be had. I just got kicked from a server for shooting 5 guys in the head in about 10 seconds followed by knifing the admin who wanted to show me who was boss trying to sneak up beside me.

I don't really care for the unlock system. It gives no real control over your "developing" your character.

sync issues, unlocks not showing on some servers, not being able to join the same server as a friend. Yea. That part stinks. As does the massive wave of side switching on rush maps for the +100 pts being on the winning side.

I'm not sure there are enough maps.

You'll be waiting a long time for a stable PunkBuster with no issues.

Has any game not had problems with Punk Busters?

Maybe TF2?

TF2 doesn't use PB.

having too much fun to complain, I'm sure I will find something to bitch about eventually. I understand that some people are experiencing issues. I however have been lucky enough to not have any.

Picked this up last night. Got it installed, then spent most of the night waiting for the fucking server browser to refresh, and then trying dozens of servers to try to get in to a game. At this point I am sure DICE is just trolling the community with their comically bad menus and server browsers. It is like an Intro to Computer Programming midterm project. At a school for lemurs.

When I can actually join and play, it seems really fun. Hope they unfuck some of the issues with a patch soon.

Can you actually sort the server menu by any of the criteria (like ping or number of players)? You couldn't to that in beta and it pissed me right off.

I love DICE games but I swear I want to skullfuck their menu guy until he is dead.

Yep, it's sortable.

BTW. Name is Pennilenko in game if anyone wants to add me to their friends list.

I am WayAbvPar (not that I can get the friends list to let me join a game).

Stolen from an SA post-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlFVtfJzBig

Classic.

I'm binfuser ingame

Speaking of which whats the interest in getting a bat country server?

What do they cost? I am not sure we have enough dedicated players to foot a monthly bill if they are priced like BF2 servers were ($5 per player slot, if memory serves).

None of the filter options work when you hit full refresh, you have to use the search button below the filter options to get them to take effect in your filter selections

$1.24 a slot so $40/month for a 32 slot server with Gameservers (http://www.gameservers.com/game_servers/bc2-battlefield-bad-company-2.php).

Wow that is much better. I would be down for $5 a month or so. Especially if I can lord admin status over everyone else  :grin:

I've ordered a 32slot one in Dallas, will update when the order is completed.

I have zero confidence that DICE can fix anything regarding the server browser, but I will cross my fingers.

I am totally confident they will shake out the issues. I have zero confidence on it happening fast. They always eventually get rid of the bugs with all their other games.

Their server browser in BF2 is STILL a piece of shit after 5+ years. It works better than the one in BC2, but it is really really bad.

It's a BF game. It's server browser being shit is a matter of keeping the series true. Changing the server browser to not suck is like taking the zerg out of starcraft.

Bat Country (http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/68.232.165.37:19567/) is now live :awesome_for_real:

I'll tweak the settings/maps in a bit.

Nice! Is there a way to paypal donations?

Clanpay (http://www.gameservers.com/clanpay/?clanid=e840778cd9586c2c7c60884437ed56f3) allows you directly pay to to server balance and shows the current amount and the fee.

I have added the following to reserved slot list so you can get in if its full:
Pennilenko
WayAbvPar
binfuser

WAP also has admin access

Sonofa that's probably the only thing that can tempt me with a new fps...

I'll be adding the server to favorites.   My soldier name is Zhenya, so pass me a friends invite.

Right on...dropped $10 into the account.

I can't see the server and searching for Bat Country gives me no results, is the server up?

Should be the console says its running I wonder if its a DICE listing issue. You can see the status here (http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/68.232.165.37:19567/).

This is one of those "be careful what you wish for" issues that we cause ourselves.

Remember all the raging against Gamespy as a whole?

Now, weren't FPS games a lot easier to get into when everyone used 3rd party server lists like gamespy/all-seeing-eye and that sort of thing?

These days everything has their own built in browser (granted - some are ran by gamespy for reasons unknown. They suck - that's what got us to this point.) and they all collectively suck. We keep seeing the same limitations and problems repeated by every single company that has games featuring an in game browser.

Is the underlying technology so tough to master, or is it that no one bothers with it until the last minute and then has the intern whack out a quick browser? This is a market inefficiency, and if I wasn't a lazy dolt I would find a way to fill it  :awesome_for_real:

Hopefully it will filter out soon.

Also

How to be donating into the server fund?


Also my friends list doesn't appear to work, Several friends and I have tried to add each other with no luck. I'm having a tremendous amount of fun though.

Master server imploded ~20mins ago all multiplayer is dead, apparently Bat Country (http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/68.232.165.37:19567/) not being in the master list is a known issue with DICE. Hopefully I'll see you guys in game tonight!

Thanks everyone for kicking in some cash for the server  :heart:


Edit: R5 has been installed

Welp (http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc/933742-game-will-back-8-am.html)

Who would want to play on Friday night anyway? Fucking clownshoes.

Less than two minutes after you posted I got a plain jane 502 error page.

Clownshoes indeed.

Edit: Tried a few more times and I got on.  Here's the Google-translated-from-French announcement:

Wow.

That was posted yesterday, and is unrelated to the current outage.

Still, this is pretty much horse shit. It's not like this is release day or anything. I was looking forward to unlocking the UMP today. Oh well.

Everything is up and Bat Country is in the master list.

Nice.  Was in game briefly just to make sure I could find it.  If anyone sees [RR-Zhenya in game, thats me.

This is all happening on PC, right? Bat Country?

Yes,

I got disconnected, it appears to be a popular server, cant get back on because it is full.


P.S. I have put f13 on as a clan tag, if i am the only one interested then cool if not the more the merrier. I will likely only hang out on this server.

Actually, it is release day for Europe. And, in fact, most of the places that aren't the US/Canada. So they probably doubled their load or better in one day.

Not that it excuses being unprepared; their master servers were already pretty heavily overloaded during the beta alone.

Fuser that shit was awesome, time for sleep though. Definitely will play only on the server.

If anyone wants to friend me... katiri

I wish we could set it to multiple game types. The 4 or 5 same maps over and over again gets really old. Plus I am not a big fan of Rush  :oh_i_see:

Who doesn't like Rush?  Limelight is like a great song...

And rush mode is equally good.

Finally connected to the Bat Country server. Had a play around with Fuser which was also fun, and didn't seem to have any latency issues, despite the pacific ocean in the way. If I can connect with any consistency over the next couple of days, I'll definately kick in for a spot.  :awesome_for_real:

The history and favorites list is working now so hopefully you can add the server now instead of having to do a full refresh. I had to restart the server about 30mins ago due to a small issue but its been stable for over 12hrs now with 25+ people so it looks like the R5 release is good so far.

Switched the mode to conquest for the day.


Yeah was kinda fun but rush is horrible with less then 10 people. The reserved slot system is wierd to say the least. I have it setup with two reserved slots but it was reserving like 5 and locking some people it.

Oh yah, it wasn't exactly a "real" game, but I got to test out what the latency was like, and it's always gratifying to shoot choppers out of the sky with the tank's main gun. So it was fun despite not being "for reals".

 :awesome_for_real:

Got this as a gift today, installing now. So expect to see me fail spectacularly in public soon!

Yay, got my crash issues resolved.

Unfortunately, by running in windowed mode and only being able to use "play now" because the server browser crashes me to desktop now.

*sigh* Why must you be so fun but so damned buggy, BF series.

On the up side, I managed to kill 5 people in about 15 seconds with an engineer! And only 3 of them were cheating with the autoaim knife!

Yay for EA servers crashing out again knocking everyone offline


Add me as a friend binfuser and you can join batcountry off of me

anyone from this place needs to put f13 as their clan tag when they play on our servers so we know who to take it easy on. :grin:

The shitty release that keeps on giving. Servers are now back up! BUT BUT BUT is now kicking people punkbuster violations!

After an entire night of the following:

Spamming the spot button while chasing a tank with my drill out, the engineer Im playing in plain english yelling "Pull over so I can fix that shit up!". Moron driver proceeds to take a half dead tank deep into an enemy base where he dies. Quickly.

Medics not dropping health packs... at all. Even when asked. Preferring to spray their LMGs at snipers. Guess how that ended.

Joining a squad deathmatch game with 3 other people who decide to camp out in a very flimsy cover area. After scoring them 5 kills (doubling their pathetic count) I flee to a building. My team lags behind me and decides it would be more prudent to stand outside and fire their BULLETs at the tank that I was trying to evade.

After a while of searching - I had finally found a decent server where two evenly matched teams were fighting a good rush match (You know, we arm the bomb and the enemy team actually comes in and defends / tries to defend), suddenly...! LAWL CANNOT CONNECT TO EA PLEASE CHECK UR CONNECTION.

You can set multiple game types, see here (http://twitter.com/IAmSpacepiG/status/10025761269).

I shall check out the Bat Country server, in game name is Gevo

Is autobalance a server option? You might also want to set me up as an admin, since my playtimes are overall different to most of f13, and someone is needed to enfoce the law onto fuckwits, Judge Dredd style.  :awesome_for_real:

Oh sweet! I willl see if I can make heads or tails of that tomorrow- just played for 3 hours and am wiped. Got most of my first few unlocks done for all the classes now, so I am rapidly approaching usefulness.

Oh my do  I love stabbing people in the face. Only thing that could make it more satisfying is if I had a force feedback mouse or something. Very good times.

Threw some cash to the server fund, thanks fuser for putting it up, had fun playing the other night.  Wish I didn't have to work this weekend, damn full moon and the crazieeees are out and chewing on the seat cushions.

I'll be pretty pumped up when they resolve the Punkbuster issues. I get kicked about 30 seconds into every game.

I am totally in favor of Nazi style admins. I will kick in cash to the server fund again and regularly if we run a tight ship.

I will most likely be joining you fine fellows soon's the game has stabilized somewhat. Please keep reporting stability/playability experiences, good or bad. All I have played for the last year is CoD W@W and its getting a bit long in the tooth. I thirst for the dulcet tinkle of brass casings upon the pavement.

I'm hoping for a server browser crash fix, but yeah, the game is a lot of fun. Played a Conquest map with 4 cap points, all city based, and tons of tanks. Soooo many engineers. Soo few people feeding me ammo for my SCAR of death.

I'm downloading this now.  Wheeee.

Everyone's in Bat Country?

Okay. I'm already regretting buying this game because of the slowest. server. browser. in. history.

Refresh server list? WAITING FOR DATA
Add server to favourites? WAITING FOR DATA
Check list of favourite servers? WAITING FOR DATA
Apply filter to already downloaded server list? WAITING FOR DATA

Worst of all, in the "waiting for data"-dialogue that pops up there's NO indication whatsoever of any activity taking place, how far along the process it has come, etc. For all I know it could be doing nothing at all and I could sit here waiting half a day thinking "it's probably ALMOST done now! Maybe!".

I'm aware that this topic has already come up earlier in this thread, but fuuuuuuuuck.

Edit: Jesus Christ - I tried adding a server to my favourite list 10 minutes ago and it's STILL saying WAITING FOR DATA? Have they made this game simply to fuck with people's minds? If that's the case, it's working.

I don't think that we have an official clan going, we all just put the f13 tag on for easy recognition.

Just had a really good game on Bat Country, started out with just a few people online, but the server filled up after 20 minutes or so, so definitely join the server even if its low on people, as the match making service will get people into the server even if they aren't looking for it. (not to mention the server is going to ping well to most of the US).

Medic seems to be insanely easy to get points with, defending on some rush map (jungle, can't remember name), I had nearly 7000 points BEFORE medals were awarded.

God damn this game refuses to let me play online today. Sigh.

Same. It's all the more irritating because when I *am* in game it's quite frankly breathtaking. I loved the bigger, 64 man maps of BF2 and sort of miss them but the tighter focus, smaller maps and more restricted air power make for some fucking intense firefights. It's just so hit or miss if I can get into a game, any game.

The magic number of people to have on the server before the matchmaking dumps people in is either 4 or 5. It seems once you get to 4 or 5 people you blink and its full.

This is basically me as well, and at some point over the next month this game might be a purchase. I definitely would be interested in playing with you folks again but have other games. I also am sensing with my luck and the current frustration factor of the server browser, that waiting is in my best interests.

Just wanted to maybe point out that currently the Server Page (http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/68.232.165.37:19567/) for the server you created has a mysterious link: "No clan info is available. Are you the game server owner? If so, claim this server (http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/server.php?GSID=854783) to add your clan's information to this page!" which maybe someone from here should click.

Probably my game of the year. Except for this:


And especially this:

Modified the server a bit hence the restart moments ago:

CONQUEST
levels/mp_001
levels/mp_003
RUSH
levels/mp_002
levels/mp_004
CONQUEST
levels/mp_005
levels/mp_007
levels/mp_009cq
RUSH
levels/mp_006
levels/mp_008
levels/mp_012gr

So basically it will rotate modes and maps for the full cycle besides the DM options.

Awesome, the only BF game I've bought, and it blows

30 seconds waiting for the server browser to update
EA screwed up their servers so it fails to respond half the time
and when I get it to list servers it fails to connect, no message, just fails to connect.

Back to TF2

Was having stupid Punkbuster problems earlier...sigh, why can't people just use the Steam solutions?

Yeah, it is annoying when you can't connect, but I really urge you to try back in a few weeks after EA has gotten their crap together.  If you just throw your arms up and say "back to TF2" never to return, you are missing a really great game.  I understand your frustration, but the game definitely doesn't "blow."

Was thinking about buying this, and then I saw this on the Steam page.

Yeah, got into a game after a few more refreshes, it seems to play alot like red orchestra

Well that was nice. The game stayed stable for two hours and let me have some fun. I mean, besides the part where I hate grenades with a passion and the accuracy with which other people seem to toss them <3

Now 500 more points for my engie's red dot sight.

Does Securom even matter if it's a digital copy?

Also, nice server...badly needs an autobalance mod. Teams getting stacked by catasses doesn't make for great games.

According to SecuROM, (https://support.securom.com/faq_general.html#1.4) they do not use any drivers.

Also, what's up with the server listing code? Wasn't that ironed out circa 2001 or thereabouts?

The server side is a mess.

The auto changing of modes is broken, huzza!

Reserve slots do not work at all. If you add a person to the list it consumes a server slot. If you have say 10 people on reserve slots it turns the server into a 22 player server. Also if a user joins that's on the reserve slot player list it takes up one of the 22. I purged the list of reserved slots in order to allow the 32 slots to be used. Add me to your friends list on steam (http://steamcommunity.com/id/iot) and just send a message if the servers full and I'll make room. If you don't use steam my msn address is on my profile.

The only good news is the server R5 patch on Friday resolved a lot of connection issues.

My connection was pretty great after that server patch. Did the patch mess up map rotations? The Bat Country server seemed to be playing the same map about 6 times in a row.

Was thinking of buying this too, then I played the demo and realized that after many years, I think I am finally burnt out on playing armyman.

Are you a communist?

Yeah it was the bug with the server list. I tried to have it rotate conquest and rush maps. It's fixed as of this AM.

Also disabled the requirement for punkbuster on the server. Let's see if that resolve's some player issues on Bat Country.

Glad I waited on this one. Love the game, but this doesn't seem worth it right now.

A very large portion of the servers have punk buster disabled.

I feel for you PC guys. Even though the PS3 version costs ten bucks more, I haven't had a single problem with multiplayer. I remember something like this happening with BF 2142 a few years ago and it sucked. I'm almost positive my copy of MW2 is retired now. Maybe I'll play once in a while to join a match with friends, but that's it.

Auto balance/team shuffle would be nice. The cooldown on team switching is odd, and should not trigger when moving to the smaller team.

My peeves are how quickly a game can go from nice to "half of one team just ragequit and nobody noticed", and people who take tanks and proceed to overextend with them in the first 15 seconds of a game. Or people who run from engineers trying to repair them.

I'll second this.  I'm like 30 seconds from the main menu to in a match and everything runs great.  This game is a blast.

But you still move like you are underwater and have to aim with your thumbs. Let's call it even.

My PS3 copy has frozen on me three times.  After a match I get stuck while the next map is loading.  I can hear my squad continue to talk in the new match but nobody can hear me and I have to power off through the XMB. 

I did finally get to enter my VIP code after repeatedly being told it was invalid or in use.  However I still can't access the in-game store.

Does anyone know what the black numbers in white squares next the names on the scoreboard mean? They seem to run between 1 and 7, with more than 1 of each number shown, but only a few players have them. It shows up between rank and the name. I can't seem to get a screenshot with my crude methods.

That is veteran status, its the number of battlefield game titles they have registered at EA.

Those are battlefield veteran ranks, where you can enter your CD-Keys and info from previous games to get a rank.
Too slow  :awesome_for_real:

See: http://veteran.battlefield.com/

Ah ok. Who was the catass I saw that had 7 then?  :ye_gods: Jesus! Of course, I should have more than I do, but I can't be arsed to find my 1942 and expansions keys and my Vietnam key. I just want my M1 Garand, dammit.

Cheap way to get 1 is with battlefield hero's account.

Yeah that is what I did- used my BF2 log in for it and all its expansions, and then created a Heroes account and played for 30 seconds. Hopefully DICE or EA or whoever is in charge will get the Garand working soon. I have loved that gun since I was a kid.

Weird - server page shows Bat Country up but it's not showing in game (grayed out on my Favourites).

EDIT: Seems to have resolved itself. Wow I suck at this game heh.

Need a better way to shoot down spawn-camping fully-loaded blackhawks. :oh_i_see:

Play engineer enough until you get the auto tracking shoulder fired missile.

If they're just circling, Mr Gustav will introduce the inside of a blackhawk to gravity.

That said, I have determined that the best way to start any round is to run ahead on ATVs and drop 3-4 AT mines along the roads or near the central cap point. It turns the initial tank encounter into a remarkably one sided affair. And sometimes you pop a fully loaded APC with hilarious score spam results.

The best part is, the unexploded mines stick around when you die and change classes. So you can be off assaulting it up across the map and Boom, 260 points for an ATV cap gone wrong.

edit: I'm also the worst recon ever. I'm terrible with a shotgun, passable with a rifle. But I want my mortar, and I really only switch when nobody's lobbing a freaking sensor ball around. Or assaults who refuse to drop me some ammo :(

Well, it does play alot like Red Orchestra, with one minor exception, PEOPLE DO NOT DIE WHEN I SHOOT THEM UNLESS I EMPTY A FULL CLIP IN THEM.

Hardcore mode fixes that but everybody whines too much about snipers. personally I really only enjoy playing on hardcore mode servers. I wish Bat Country was hardcore mode 24/7 or at least rotating.

I just get really annoyed when i unload two rounds from a semi automatic shotgun point blank into somebodies chest and they survive to get close enough to knife me.

M60s and 40mm GLs REALLY need a severe nerfing. So fucking sick of hitting a guy with multiple bursts, then having him turn and cut me down with one burst, or coming around a corner and getting a grenade in my guts from 15 feet away.

The whole game is annoying, I've probably got more knife kills than bayonnet kills in RO, and I've only been playing this game for a couple days.
I can get 3:1 KD ratios in TF2 as a sniper and 2:1 in most other roles, 2:1 KD ratios in RO, played a sniper in Planetside for over a year, got a 30 recon in GA; and I'm lucky to kill someone with a sniper weapon in this game.  Most of my kills come from either emplaced guns or if I get campy like in RO and use my ambush tactics from that game (only for them to fail as I'm used to 3 round bursts actually killing people). Too bad my choices are, play on Hardcore and get sniped within 2 seconds of showing my self, or unload entire clips into people and see them survive only to knife me.

The game is crap for an FPS

It may not be for you then, I am assuming like you there are many people here who are avid FPS fans, that are enjoying the game very much. Not everyone is going to like BC2, it needs a few tweaks, despite that it is really enjoyable once you understand the maps.

In regards to sniping, I have no problems with, and have seen lots of people excel with sniper rifles in both modes. I play hardcore almost exclusively and I really haven't had a hard time avoiding sniper fire. It really comes down to knowing the maps, knowing the angles from the various and likely sniper perches and not staying in the open. I think everyone can agree the knife lunge needs to go away and bullet damage needs a slight boost in regular mode.

Edit: Also I have noticed that people who like to camp, die a lot and get frustrated. This game really is about constant moving through cover. If a sniper gets me while I'm sprinting them props to him, that shit is hard.

I have a hard time playing this game and not getting incredibly frustrated. Every time I shotgun someone 5 feet away only to watch them sprint/teleport and knife me I just want to uninstall and never touch it again. I simply can't stand the knife in this game and the amount of people that pound the fucking key every chance they get.

I usually manage to kill people when using the shotgun. Of course, I'm using the semi-auto shotgun and typically unload like 5 rounds into them from close range. But hey!  :awesome_for_real:

The knife is definitely due for some sort of balance.

Playing tonight I ran into a room with three medics and a sniper. I knew if I pulled my gun they would get me. So I knifed one medic and the other two had not noticed me. I ran at the sniper and knifed him too. The 2nd medic tried running but I got him too.

I'm horrid at this game. I think you need to be a monkey on crack. I play a round and just need to take a few steps away... Seems a lot more intense/action packed then BF2.

I spawned on a squad I was with, they were sniping as russians on the port valdez @ the begining, so I went to toss them a med kit and charge on, when I hit my defib and killed all three...don't ask...I did revive them.

Personally I think melee attacks should be removed entirely from these kind of games.

The knife is either completely useless or overpowered is the issue. It's not like it does damage, it simply auto kills or misses.

A rifle butt option that disrupted the opponent's weapon/reloading would be a far better way to handle melee, honestly. The issue is that the game can turn into sprint/knife or run around in close range spamming knife to kill 3-4 people.

But I do find the knife to be FAR less irritating than someone sitting on an ammo pack alternating 40mm GL/hand grenade indefinitely.

Seconded. And thirded.

I think these games suffer from two faults:  

1) Make it an infantry game or make it a vehicle game.  Allowing only a few players access to vehicles at any given time really changes the flow of the game.  

2) Eliminate snipers.  If you want to play Deer Hunter, go play Deer Hunter.    

I dunno, I think having a mix of infantry/armor/air in play at once makes the game a lot more interesting.  Also, could you explain what you mean by "really changes the flow of the game"?  I'm really not sure what you mean in this case.

I like infantry/armor, and the map layouts MOSTLY make it so infantry has a good chance against unsupported armor. It's a little bullshit when said armor has 3 engies behind it and nobody flanks/mortar strikes the bastards. I say this as one of those three engies knowing damned well that you can put any number of RPGs into the front of an APC and fail to kill it in this situation.

I do wish there was an SMG option for recons, just because it's a great close support class, but I hate shotguns with a passion. About the best time I had as a recon was looting someone's VSS loadout and using it as a shitty assault rifle.

I'm thinking back more to my hundreds of hours in BF1942 and the related mods than BF2.  Planes flown by a skilled pilot or tanks with an adept driver could dominate the flow of a map.  This was particularly the case in pickup battles when your side had idiots taking all the vehicle positions. 

I think the mix of armor and infantry only works well in closed match games where their true potential is realized.  In a pickup match, a few skilled players can dominate a map with vehicle play in a way that is far more obvious than could be accomplished with infantry alone. 

I personally don't want to see the game changed other than a few minor tweaks. I have been lucky enough to build a small library of servers with competent players where most of the concerns in this thread are never an issue. There are a ton of other games that are pretty that have all of the things some people wish for. This game is a mix of what I have been waiting for. Changing it would deprive me of the choice that I enjoy while there are many others out there as described in other posts here.

I say no, no team i have ever been on has complained about me being recon, I get in the action, I support the team.

What you really want to say is make sure the server has admins on that kick the retarded campers that hurt the game.

I'm 99% happy now that it seems Stable.

the 1% is reserved for my team/squad sucking so I feel like I never have any support taking points (you do not need 8 people on a goddamned roof sniping or supporting snipers. If you do, at LEAST have them all using mortars and making the rest of the map an unholy firestorm), and people who think the 40mm GL is a first contact weapon, not a support tool.

Yes, I could tell that from beta. Knifers are way more deadly close in than people with bangybangy guns. A man with a shotgun should have it all over some twat with a knife.

I dunno as tacky as the GL is I was having a laugh for two rounds just using it. Comedy gold taking out a sniper on a ridge at C on Valparaiso from a house at A that was trying to pick me off. Then crying about the epic shot. The GL has basically the chance to insta kill anyone on splash damage on normal with seemly no splash damage hitting you. This is a huge reason its used so much and so effective as point to point combat with zero chance of killing yourself.

Knife is wildly over powered but I have experienced a lot of misses even when perfectly aimed up due to lag (I'm close to my 200 kill medal). It shouldn't be an instant kill but say a 50% damage hit to give the victim a chance to kill you on normal.

Edit:
I turned off hardcore because it's an extreme. Turning off the map(objectives and rezzes needed etc),mag/round count, and number of people in a vehicle is not an acceptable trade off for the damage model changes. That's just my opinion but I'll turn it back on today and will see how people react to it.

Someone with a shotgun is far more deadly than a person with a knife.  Knifes are quiet, and fast, so if you sneak up behind a group you can take them out, certainly, but anyone who can aim will kill you if you charge them with a knife.  Granted....there are a lot of people who can't aim.

Also, regarding the vehicles discussion, I don't really find that to be the case.  Granted, I often play with an organized group, so I think my opinion of a lot of game mechanics is skewed because of it.

Don't turn it on, on account of my complaining. People don't like it and it will be hard to keep the server populated. I say go for what keeps people logged on and hope for a damage model mod to be release later hopefully.

I really don't mind the HC damage model, I just refuse to play it due to it essentially turning off the UI. Slightly improved combat at the cost of all the nice basic information and feedback just doesn't seem fun to play.

I think its a valid point tho. The HC damage is great and I really like it, I just wish they gave server admins a middle ground option. There's a petition started in the official forums but the typical response is to go play MW2  :uhrr:

I would like to see them disconnect the hardcore damage model from all the other options, like spotting, and ui overlay and all that other stuff.

Forgot to mention that R6 patch was pushed out this AM. As a part of the patch push punkbuster is now forced back on any ranked servers  :uhrr:


Oh and the server stability with R6 has gone out the window again.

So it will be functional tomorrow when they turn that back off.

Apparently the knife-animation is much quicker if you don't have a target. So people are now hitting the melee-button, and then putting the marker on your soon-to-be corpse.
Not tested this myself since I still can't stay connected for two games in a row.

My problem with the knife vs. shotgun argument is that I HAVE aimed correctly and hit people directly to the front with my shotgun on point-blank - they don't die, but I do when they instaknife me before the gun will fire the other 2-3 shots required to kill someone.

Yeah, its true, its sort of a quick slash instead of a pull back and stab.  It reminds me a bit of the old "quick stab v. backstab" thing in TF2 when the backstab animation was really long, and if you got good at backstabbing without triggering the backstab animation you were way better off.

The animation for driving the knife into someone's neck is so rewarding though.

I think one of the tweaks to be made is to change the gun emplacements back so that you can see through the fucking visors.

And yes, knife too powerful.

The PC version of this game must be balanced significantly different than the console version.  The only time i ever get knifed is when they sneak up behind me or something.  I rarely have any issue killing someone charging at me flailing with the knife.

Could it be that PC gamers are better at utilizing the knife due to the mouse, so that it has to be downgraded slightly specifically for the PC?

Oh good, I actually thought that it was some sort of texture bug I was having.  I understand why they did it, as it was super easy to headshot people through the thing before, but the solution made those emplacements almost entirely useless.

I agree with what you say, but in a lot of these situations you don't have time for ironsights so you're just hip shooting, and it seems like even with a shotgun the hip shots are terrible.

Like they do less damage even tho you're shooting them from 1-2 feet away.

Yeah, uninstalled it, after getting frustrated and going on a knifing spree, took a point by knifing all 5 defenders, followed by running to the enemy spawn point to hijack a tank (which one of my mouthbreathing squad members jumped in before me negating the benefit). Biggest waste of 60$

Pringle I Ironsight and still can't kill people after putting a full clip into someone, only to have them turn around and drop me with 2 or 3 bullets from the same gun or knife me.

I don't think we are playing the same game.

You guys should really try pulsing the shots on automatic weapons. I have WAY more luck bursting my MG as a medic than when I spray.

The knife is still kind of lame though...except when I sweep behind snipers and knife them all...bastards deserve it.

For serious. This is the most fun I've had playing a shooter since BF1942. Some balance problems with the knife, for sure, but the fun and intensity more than make up for it.

I agree, this game is really awesome.
Of course there's a few glitches here and there, and oh god that fucking interface, but gameplay wise it's a blast.

You actually want to be doing the opposite of this.  The LMG's are designed to get more accurate when fired in longer bursts vs the AR and SMG's which DO need to be bursted in order to get decent accuracy.

At least thats the story according to this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcZ3wXF3r14

I only occasionally fall in love with a shooter, and I tend to find multiplayer exciting but frustrating as I'm always the kind-of-underskilled guy who pads someone else's kills because I don't know the map well enough or play often enough. (I do ok in TF2, for example, but as the required skill and knowledge levels scale upwards, I just don't have the time or the twitch to get really good.) But I'm tempted by this one: it's been a while since I've done this kind of game.

In practice I have always had for more success bursting, even with the MGs. 

I guess this is the kind of thing people are complaining about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrS0yTtmf5s but frankly, the isn't a balance issue, its a people suck at paying attention to whats happening around them issue.

gosh! You sound like you would be a pro-level player, too. At least you
went out in a blaze of uberness.

I should buy this game and tell you when I'm playing.  I love war-type shooters and firmly believe that I play them only to build the self-esteem of others.  Yes, I'm really that bad.  I get the strategy aspects, but lack the ability to bunny hop and strafe while still being able to hit the exact perfect spot on a target. 

I played some UT with schild and his friends and I was little more than a target dummy for those folks.  I had a great time, but was pretty humbled by their high skill level. 

Great video.  I really hope this is not the kind of thing people here are complaining about.

My skills at fps are decent but not top-tier, yet I pretty consistently finish at or near the top on pub servers in bf games. What helps considerably are the rewards for support roles - medic and engineer.

The engineer is like 20points for a squad resupply, but the medic has 80points per squad revive is truly crazy. You can sit at a defend or assault position with a medic pack down getting like 10/20 points from your friends/team defending and then 50/80 for every revive.  I had the class fully unlocked a long while ago, in stark contrast due to my poor aim with recon :uhrr:

Anyone have tips for recon points farming? I notice they give bonus points for distance shots and head shots which is pretty neat.

For recon you are probably better off going with a submachine gun or shotgun and getting in there with the assault players, using your C4 to blow vehicles etc.   I mean, if you are a really good sniper you can probably easily rack up the points, but I know I'm not, and i have much more success playing it as a close quarters class than a sniper.  Also, use your sensors aggressively, you get points for motion spot assists.

Thompson on recon, unlock sensor ball, use it for points. Unlock mortar, laugh your ass off for points.

Thanks for the tips on recon, I'll go assault style  :drill:

And the whole backend crashes again. It seems every night Bat Country is knocked offline around 1-3am due to backend work. Other servers are exhibiting the same issue and the only way to get the server back "online" is to restart it.


So I wouldn't expect any server side fixes team balancing/mode switching this week  :uhrr:

So far my absolute favoritest thing in the game is spawning in a buddy's transport chopper, paradropping behind an established enemy defensive position, knifing some poor fucker while still in the air, and then proceeding to dice up as many of his buddies as possible before taking a 40mm grenade in the guts.

Repeat until they get wise to the chopper that seems to circle into range almost exactly every 30 seconds.

The few people I had actually managed to add to my friends list have mysteriously disappeared.

I had this problem as well, though I lost 20+ people.  Bleh, at least we kept people's names in tha BC2 names thread, so it should be easy to get the f13 people back at least.

Yeah. The game sometimes just crashes. CTD, but just like I'd never been playing at all. I'm also at the point where the only way I can get onto a server is to hit "play now" and hope for the best. Hopefully they fix this shit, and soon.

I'm sure I'd be able to unlock medic and engineer if I could actually consistantly play, and if when I do get to play I could get onto servers that have half-sentient players, rather than collections of random retarded monkeys. And if I had time for more than a couple of rounds per night. I think it'll be a few weeks or even a month or two before I get there, just on the one EZ-points class.

In the meantime I'll just keep playing guys who have unlocked everything in the game in the week it's been released....

Only the very last part of the video where the knifer gets shot like 3 times or more by an SMG and yet survives to knife. That's the thing I have problems with. The majority of the kills in that video are righteous - a bit overpowered maybe (knives and tanks seem to be the only one-shot kill weapons in the game), but yes, players need to pay more attention to their surroundings. My problem is that I can hit someone with an RPG while he knifes me, and he will survive while I die. That's CRAZY.

My issue is the client side hit indicator. It LIES.

I've put 9-10 rounds into someone, admittedly body shots, with an SMG, get knifed, and guy is at 89-93% health. The client hit indicator is worse than the cake at close range.

He misses the knife on the last kill in the video and kills him with rounds from his SMG.  Watch his ammo count decrease.  They were all legitimate kills IMO.

So um using PunkBuster is totally insane. It serves no purpose at all any more besides a distributed MD5 check of d3d9.dll. I have applied for streaming PBBans but denied because we don't have a clan/admin list posted (perhaps a sticky?). Besides that looking at the PBBans there's been a total of like under 30 bans so far.

Playing with the settings on Bat Country and finally got the screen caps to work. So now admins can issue commands to grab a screen shot of suspected cheating(this is myself as a test).

(http://binfuser.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/pb000001.png)

Awesome  :uhrr:

I am about 3 bad deaths away from pbanning everyone who kills me with an M60 or 40mm. My favorite- I am in one of the shipping crates on one of the maps.  A bad guy wanders in front of me and stops ~20 feet away. I fire 2 bursts with my shitty non M60 medic gun. He leaps in the air (bunnyhopping ftl), turns, and kills me with a 40mm grenade, then lands seemingly unharmed.  :mob:

Putting the LMG on the medic was a bad call IMO.  They should have swapped out the engi and medic primary weapons for balance reasons.  Although the engi's have a pretty easy time getting points too.

Giving assault class the ability to perma-spam 40mms was fucking retarded too.

Can't understand why jumping and other "throw the bullets off" dodging tactics hasn't been removed from more realistic FPSes completely (if you jump, aim is thrown off wildly, doesn't recover upon landing for a moment, can't Aim Down Sight until you land, YOU ARE UNBALANCED), such that jumping would be relegated to what I envision it to be: getting on top of shit.

That'd be like if your dodge percentage in WoW went up against Hunters if you jumped.

Yeah, I know what the answer is already. It's fun compared to the alternative I've outlined, and it's been grandfathered into the design by devs who didn't see a problem with it.

Eh, the Engineer is one of the best running and gunning classes. The SMG Suits him just fine. A silenced weapon helps a lot as you need to run around and act covertly to get behind tanks to rocket / dismantle them with your tool. Getting enemy tank drill kills is hilarious. I love when they pop out of their tank to see what's going on too. The problem here is how inconsistent bullet damage is. Sometimes, you get the jump on someone, hit him a good amount of times, and he either gets away or turns around and insta lames you with a 40mm.

I will say it again, the hardcore damage model fixes many of the things people are upset about.

...No.

Hardcore is like using a 12 inch sword for something that requires a scalpel.

I'll be blunt; In hardcore; I can snipe people with an SMG and a 4x scope. I hope I don't have to explain much more than that.

One of the biggest fixes this game needs is autobalance for teams.

I've spent all morning getting onto random servers where your typical bunch of PUG-quality chuckleheads stack one side, and the game turns into a POS.



This is made worse by the server stability being so shithouse, and the server list being so buggy that I think a lot of people just spam the "play now" button till they can get into any game. Back in the 1942/DC/BF2 days you'd end up playing on a few conststent servers, and you'd almost have a community of regulars.

Yeah, hopefully they are getting their shit together when it comes to the server client.  The game is so great when everything clicks, and its even good for a typical pub match, until one team has like 3 people leave.  The teams never get balanced, and then MORE people quit, and then suddenly is 16v9, and then the entire team quits, and then the other team quits, and the server goes from full to dead in 10 minutes.

Treating DICE shooters like MMOG's is a good thing - i.e. wait 6 months to purchase it when they've unfucked the server software, the cheats have been mostly fixed, and the price has gone down.

So I just signed up. WayAbvPar and I spent some time somehow managing to find each other and shooting each other. Mucho fun.

Do we have any sorta TS or Vent going on? I didn't hear any active voice chat. Not that its crucial. So far I've only seen 2 f13ers other than myself.

Waltzing into a shooter that's been running 6 months is a great way to get curb stomped by the hardcore that will be the only player base remaining after such a time.

Not sure what people are talking about...works fine for me.

Also, big points when playing as an engineer, and you have an awesome chopper pilot to make runs with.

I'm Bat Country just about every day as [f13] rldmoto. There's probably about 3 or 4 of us that are regularly on there.

As far as Vent goes, don't the EVE guys have a server up? Maybe we can just get a room on there.

I don't know about that, It's more of how ridiculous this game's unlock system is.

Sad to say, Modern Warfare handled this much better. In MW1, you were handed some good things right out of the gate. This game has body armor, more powerful bullets and really good weaponry... That's only naming a few of the advantages mind you.

I disagree that it is as big a deal.  I mean, there are some nice upgrades, but you can do ok against a person with better unlocks, as they only really come into play when both people see each other and start shooting at the same time.  Skill plays a way bigger role than unlocks though.

Same is true in MW#.

Only been playing a bit here and there, but so far I find advancement a lot slower. I've only been doing squad deathmatch though. Does this game hand out greater rewards in other scenarios?

It all depends on what you do. I find it most difficult to advance with recon, out of the 4. The others have non-combat ways to rack up points quickly.

How do they balance it though? Doesn't seem like shots-per-kill nor getting any sort of XP bonus for making per-weapons achievements like MW1 or 2. What are some ways the game distributes the rewards?

I know this isn't MW, but I've not played nearly enough BF to be familiar with what Dice thinks are worth rewarding for either.

Loving the game either way though. Sure are a lot of Snipers, but I hear that's part of the culture :-)

Sniping seems a lot harder than in other FPS games I've played. The distances can be far longer, and you have to compensate for bullet trajectory decay. Compared to CoD:W@W the game seems to have fewer (in my 24 hours of experience on BC server)

MW starts you off with some good combos, they give you stopping power right off the bat too.

Bad Company's equivalent of stopping power doesn't come until what, Rank 16?

Throwing your sensor ball into a hot area as a Recon can get you points for motion assisted kills.


Sniping is too easy (PS3).  Recon's start with a great rifle and get better with higher powered scopes and auto-spotting.  Now that I've found some good spots on Rush maps it's trivial to keep objectives clear.  Adding sway to the scope would tone things down, accounting for distance isn't enough.

And the Medic's M60 is too much of a killing beast.  When I switch to Assault or Engineer from Medic it's always a shock when an enemy doesn't immediately die.

Just an update regards bat country. The upgrades EA/DICE preformed over the weekend defiantly had an effect on server population. People are staying connected longer and it seems most stability issues are resolved. At 8pm last night it seems the game server blewup and restarted which has been normal instability issues all along. At the same time i turned off punkbuster (again) as DICE has been advising game server providers it should improve stability. I played a few rounds last night and for some reason (it could be a placebo effect) but bullet hits seem to be registering better and less lag.

Server latest stats (http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/68.232.165.37:19567/).

Whats been curious is the day Bat Country went up is the day DICE/EA restricted game server providers from attaching any new servers. So customers/clans have been unable to get any new servers created for well over a week now. I don't know if they are opening up further servers this week or not but I hope they get further stability under the belt before opening it up to more.

I found that descriptor to be humorous for some reason.

When do you think it will allow multiple game types in the rotation? I am sick to death of the 5 Conquest maps (especially the one where my retarded team always gets camped into its starting spot  :oh_i_see: ).

Conquest with 32 people is almost as bad as Dustbowl with 32 people and no engineer limit.

Not even a comparison in my opinion, though it can get a bit cramped on the smaller maps. 

Also, on another note, has anyone crashed today a lot? 

I think I found your problem.

Wow there are some unholy catasses in this game. I have played a ton, and I am seeing people 20-30 levels higher than me. That is fucking insane.

Yeah, looking at the ladder makes me sad, or scared, or both, because I feel like i've played too much since it came out, and people make me look like a noob in terms of time played/rank.

The top dude in the world had about 130 hours played as of three days ago when I checked. That's obscene and well over even what I expect of the worst MMO catasses I've met.

Must be nice to be unemployed and independently wealthy.

Wow, we got a whole other clan come play with us this afternoon. Essentially, they were so organized that if you weren't on their team, you got beat. Handily. Not complaining, since they did nothing wrong other than being organized. I suspect they are all on Vent or something, because battles that should last 20 minutes were lasting 10.

They were stacking real bad on half the maps...like 3:2.

Yeah, whenever my clan gets together in a pub is free points basically, as a team working together on vent is just going to flat beat a bunch of people doing their own thing.  Of course, I've been on the other side of things and it gets tiresome real quick to lose to a team like that, especially when you are used to being on the other side.

Yes, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a clan going to a random server and just beating randoms horribly.

No wait, that's actually called pubstomping (or clan stacking), and is very douche bag-ish behavior.

If these people are actually interested in having a real game, they'd divide up their clan between the two pub teams.

Pubstomping isn't douchebaggish behavior. Sure, it's a little annoying to the loser, but it's just a fact of online gaming - sometimes I like rolling into a pubbie game with one or two other people and just wrecking face. It happens. It makes the other team wish they were better and really, the demoralization in action is just amazing. Now, pubstomping and being a jerk about it is douchebaggish.

You're talking about two or three people, maybe playing with a few friends for fun - he's talking about an entire clan just coming to some server to beat randoms who stand no chance against them. Suddenly the server empties out and they all wring their cheetos stained hands together, snickering at the spectacle... I made that last part up; but you get what I mean.

I presume that clans are simply meant to stay together on their own server, rather than going to another? Sorry, bit new to 'clan' ethics here. Oh, and schild, they were being douches about it. Lots 'cry more newb' comments. I didn't see that as anything out of the ordinary. Its is an FPS on the internet. Its like asking for racial sensitivity at a Klan rally.

I'm not sure of the status of hacks in this game either, but I saw some weird behavior by some players (zooming about at super fast speeds) that seemed a bit off...We may want to reconsider turning PB back on.

Its kind of hard to tell who's cheating and who's not in this game. Earlier today I watched a medic go 74/9. I was screwing around with an assault setup I never played; but never really seemed to die, even when I knifed him while he was sitting in a tight corner reloading. He mysteriously vanished after the game was over.

Dunno what to say here. I am the 'other' in this argument, the useless pubbie who gets WTFPWNT. over and over again. I don't really have an issue with it either. I mean, it's not important. It's an FPS. I dunno, if a clan takes over the server and BBQs everyone, either kill em or leave. So far it's fun for me and I suck at it.

Caveat: I also play EVE.

Someone mentioned that sniping is easier on a PS3. Not to be a PC whiner, but are they mixing console and pc populations with a built in imbalance like that? I've had medics snipe me with an M40 when certain shot snipes of mine utterly missed. Or are the weapons one gets later on so much more powerful?

Complaints about blobbing, in a PVP game? Unheard of. :grin:

"Cry more newb" is generally a response to crying. Don't like it, leave the server. Staying around, and getting beat up (and complaining about it) is just a dumb way to handle it.

Yeah it's douchey, but as said - just leave the server and join another one. Easy fix, and also my solution to team-stacking.

I've stopped playing conquest-maps altogether - I now play exclusively on servers using Rush-mode and all maps rotation, since I feel Rush fits the game better: Advance forward on enemy locations, defend until the buildings literally fall down on top of you, fall back to the next defensive locations, etc. :P

I find myself liking Rush more too, which is the opposite of what I expected.  Battlefield is known for its bigger, chaotic maps, and I thought I would like that style here.  Unfortunately, it seems like people are just as happy to "ninja" around capping stuff behind enemy lines as they are to actually fight over stuff, and the game really shines in combat, which Rush seems to focus much more. 

Same. I've always loved Conquest and the first time I played Rush I didn't "get it" but now I'm almost all Rush, all the time. It leads to some really, really intense fights sometimes. I was on a server with some friends where we had just a brutal, 15 minute long close quarters fight over a point. It was really intense.

Well, this is what I ended up doing, of course. Sad to have to leave your own clan's server because its an unplayable mess.

I've been going back and adding more people to streaming admin list but it's really sucky way to admin it. Either you get the rcon password and have to use a 3rd party client to control the server. Or you get access with @commands which are only usable when the client is running on a dedicated pc.

For a variety of reasons I dropped out of the clan I am in, so I'll be playing on Bat Country a lot more now instead of just occasionally like before.  I've put the f13 tag on, so I'm [f13] Zhenya

Was stuck on a team full of retard snipers yesterday. My entire squad was spawning on each other on Sniper Rock and just sitting their while our tickets bled. After encouraging them to move the fuck up and help at least 5 times, I kicked all of them  :oh_i_see:

As for the clan invading the server- I don't mind as long as they keep about equal numbers on each side. If they start stacking I am going to tell them to go start their own server, because I am not paying for them to be able to all play together and rape n00bs. Fuck that.

Patch out today v522174

You all griping about the M60 should really watch out for the XM8 LMG, it is a beast!

I still can't use the M1 Garanda, wish they would fix that!

Been fun on the server, any chance we can get reserved slots?

Patch not going live today, it failed QA?

Reserved slots are broken, if you setup one the server never uses it  :uhrr:

You say that like you think I expect NOT to be curbstomped in an FPS. It doesn't matter if it's day 1 or day 1000, I'm not that good. Hell, I didn't play BF2 until over 2 years after release and I'm STILL loving it when I play. Sucking is not a hindrance to my enjoyment.

I wish I had this skill.

I picked it up, so let the suck commence.

I agree with this 100% with regard to FPS.  As long as I can get a couple of kill shots and contribute to the scenario, I don't mind being the weakest link.  It always encourages me to practice more.

I tend to suck bad for the first few months of any twitch game. Then I get merely 'decent'. But I tell myself I am having a learning experience!

One thing I do like about BF2 is that with the engie, you can repair vehicles and feel marginally useful and with the sniper, you can be a spotter and also feel somewhat useful.

I'm not going to sweat my kill count till I have some levels and unlocks on me. It appears that many of these starter weapons aren't particularly powerful so I'm not going to be too hard on myself when I see I'm getting a 60% accuracy rating on my sniper shots, but only 1 or two kills.

Of course you leave if you don't like it; that doesn't make it any less annoying. That's why servers die so quickly in this game; one side gets outnumbered, leaves; the winning side- losing its opposition also leaves.

Auto balance would go a long way; though it wouldn't have solved this particular brand of griefing.

It probably would actually help a lot, as the losing team tends to have the quitters, and then there is a decent chance the clan will have some of its players auto switched.

Update- had another squad full of fuckheads doing this again. This time I turned on friendly fire, warned them time after time, and then started dropping C4 in their laps, wandering away, and touching it off. Then repeated it again after they set up again. Eventually they got the message.

Update on Veteran:
They gave the M1 Garanda to my Xbox360 account!  Bastards!

So reserve slots and auto balance would be nice to have, plus like a little message that says, "don't quit yet, auto-balance after every match", would be nice.

The demo/beta didn't do the game justice, both PC & Xbox360 have great graphics, decent controls (I miss the wheel that says, spot, ammo, heal, & squad/commander interaction), the weapon unlocks are fun, battles are fast and furious, vehicles are great (I still can't fly!), & the same buggieness of DICE is out (servers, balance, etc...).

I don't understand why snipers think the should only camp, the pistol, c4, and all the other stuff they can do means they should be running and gunning with the rest of there squad.

I play exclusively rush hardcore mode, until they fix the damage model or change it. I do check the bat country server first though to see how many of us are on there. I play there if there is more than one of us on. I really like this game and I seem to be an average player that really doesn't get affected by the steamroller clan groups. I also have no problem team killing the shit out some retards on my team to get the point across that they need to be more active.

So apparently the shotgun attachment to assault rifles is not too bad. I seem to actually have better luck with it than the 40mm grenade launcher...and I like to tell myself it takes more skill to sneak up on people than just sit on ammo and spam nades.

Speaking of shotguns, has anyone tried the Pump Action + Magnum Ammo + Slugs combo? It's great fun... when it feels like working.

When you sneak behind enemy lines, one shot kill three people and C4 a light tank; you're right as rain.

When you ambush some guy reloading, unload a shell point blank a crouching, stationary engineer; only to somehow miss and get knifed; you yell at your screen. Having to right click before firing really hampers the already limited application of shotguns.

Heh, I've been enjoying the hell out of the recon class lately, since I forgot about the sniper aspect completely:

Dense Map, Ghille suit, Semi-auto shotgun, extended mag, extra ammo, proximity detector and C4. Game on!  :grin:

I sniped a helicopter pilot yesterday. I think I'm hooked.

I did this once and it was easily my favorite recon moment (not that I have many to choose from).  The other thing was on Valparaiso when I was defending and there were snipers up in the light house and we were on the next set of objectives  I sniped one guy at the very top and got a marksman +146 headshot (for a total of 50 + 10 + 146 = 206 points).   There are good moments to be had, but I like the more intense firefights of the other classes in general.

Picked this up recently and really been enjoying it.  I think I'm pretty set that Hardcore/Rush is by far my favorite way to play already.

Been playing mostly recon while I'm learning the maps and such.  Being one of those annoying people that sits back and plays sniper all game.  Managed to get my first quad kill last night :D

Of couse I also managed to mortar myslef twice last night when apparently it targeted some leaf right in front of me that I coudlnt see instead of what I actually aimed at.

Charming. Trying to play this morning. Mistakenly joined a Conquest map, so I played out the round, then left to find a Rush server (BC was empty at the time). I spend 45 minutes fighting with the fucking server browser until I finally get a server it lets me actually join. CTD when I join. Try BC (which by now had 8 or 9 people on it). CTD. Try again. CTD. Reboot my PC. Try again. CTD. Try another favorite server. CTD.

I am starting to wonder if this game is worth it any more. So much frustration and bullshit to wade through just for a few nuggets of fun game play.

It's why I started playing Mass Effect 2 when I had 8 hours to kill Monday instead of getting dick stomped by weirdness in MW2 for that amount of time.

WAP, what changed in your config? Was there a patch this morning?

The server browser is an unforgivable POS. It doesn't remember your filtering preferences from one session to another and its slower than heck. I just can't get my mind around it. Is it because its console code ported to the PC in a lackadaisical manner?

I gave up last night prepatch. CTD about 5 times no changes in config or patches (steam). Was thinking it might be my PC and reboot or video card update but thanks for confirming it's not just me.

I had a lot of crashes the last 2 days as well.

Yeah no changes in my config at all. Was playing fine, then suddenly nothing. Waited an hour, and got in- just played 4 rounds with the goons. Of course, it ended with a server crash... :oh_i_see:

Yeah the server bombed out again after almost 24hrs of no issues :uhrr:

I've contacted the GSP about refunding donations,  and will strongly avoid whenever BF3 is launched.

Yeah I've had a few CTD's today as well, no changes on my end.

EDIT: You know the crashes, the balance issues etc. None of it bothers me much. But the server browser seriously makes me nuclear stabby. How can it be that slow??

I just wish I could see ping on the browser.

Other than that, I have not had issues. :|

You can see ping if you set Steam.exe to run as administrator (right click the executable, select Compatibility tab) and then do the same for the BF2 executable. Lame, but we know that about BF2 interface code by now.

This.

Just got my refund email from PayPal.

I'm loving the shotgun with slugs and magnum ammo. Specially for hardcore. It just sucks that if you fire a shotgun without ADS mode, the slug or pellets apparently scatter to the 4 winds once they exit the barrel. Just unlocked the Neostead, gonna have some fun  :drill:

Thanks for having the server fuser, even if it is buggy, was fun to play with ya all...of course never saw more than 5 of us at once.  SGT SKIPPY will have to go level up on some other servers :)

Reinstalled the game hoping I could get into it, this time when i reinstalled it I was faced with 3-5 minute browser wait times, random CTD's, and now massive rubberbanding (I havn't seen that since UO), which really sucks for an fps where precise movement can mean the difference between life and death (and no more face stabby). Uninstalled and reinstalled same issue.

The game just earned my first ever dispute for a game purchased with a credit card (which pretty much all have been), for this:


Game is pretty much working as intended, just not as expected, and it'll be patched later.

Steam can take and shove their no refund whatsoever for whatever reason policy, and deal with Visa's dispute process.

And unfortunatly anyone who doesn't do this is just saying, "Yeah, I'll buy a crappy game at release and hope it works later."

Well, it works fine for me and countless other people so... Too fucking bad?  :awesome_for_real:

Other than the server control issues, and the slow(but not unworkable browser) I have no issues. The game is immensely fun.

Actually, I've been having an enourmous amount of fun with the MP so far. The Single player experience is also polished and fun. The Multiplayer is extremely good, despite it's differences from the wide-open maps of BF2/1942/DC which I really enjoyed. The game does have it's flaws and technical issues, no question, but for me personally the quality of the game is enough to override the technical issues. Which is a rare statement from me.

So I guess I'm saying "I disagree with your bitching, so go fuck yourself, whiny new guy."

The abuse is a reaction to your blanket statement toward anyone who "doesn't do" what you have chosen to do.  :why_so_serious:

SecuROM removed from Steam version.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62826

 :awesome_for_real:

Are there ways to practice on a map before playing the map? I want to vroom vroom, but I'm having a hard time with everyone shooting at me all the time.

Also, do any of you use joysticks for vehicle controls? I hate turning the turret on a tank. I hate it so much.

It's possible to quickly go into the options screen and bump up your mouse sensitivity when you jump in a vehicle. I wish they'd patch in seperate sensitivity options for vehicles, but I suspect that they have set it up deliberately like this as a balancing method.

I don't think you can play SP-MP, but turn off "no empty servers" on your MP filters and you should be able to find some to practice on. You won't be able to control the maps, but previos BF games' token SP experience have always had NPCs shooting at you.

Just had some good rounds. Permabanned a guy for swapping to the winning team at the last second even after I warned people about it earlier, and it is listed on the server info. If it was anyone you know tell him he is welcome back under a new name  :drill:

Guess what doesn't work. Banlists and server info  :uhrr:

Charming. He didn't come back afterwards and I announced it in chat, so hopefully it will be some sort of deterrent.

Also had to C4 a sniper in my squad after spawning on him 3 times in the same fucking space 15 steps from our spawn. Warned in team chat, then twice in squad chat, then blew him up up. remarkably I ran into him down in the middle of the fight not long after that  :awesome_for_real:

So is this 'no sniper' rule something hard?  That's cool. Just wanna know if its just certain behavior you don't like, or if there's a unanimous 'snipers suck' rule going on.

I think its more "don't be an asshat who sits back and gets a high KD ratio while not helping his team at all, especially on offense"

Sometimes I don't get the sniper hate; killing people is always helpful.

I say this with sniper being my least-played class, for once.

Sniper hate isn't just in games. If you're a sniper in real life, and you get caught by the enemy, you're most likely getting served.

Like, 1 maybe 2 snipers killing people is always helpful.  Anymore is hurting your team.

Firstly, I don't get a high kill count with the sniper. For me sniping in this game is way harder than in CoD W@W. Fuckers aren't still long enough. Secondly, what about spotting? Isn't that useful? I'm the first to get into an engie kit if I see a few tanks up, but I'm utterly useless as a beginner medic or assault. I have the twitch reflexes of a stunned vole on a thorazine drip. At least sniping, I do some good with spotting, and I take out other snipers.

You also use your RPG to shoot individual infantry. :oh_i_see:

No, that was a lucky shot :P

Taking out defenders does very little good since they have an unlimited supply. More than 1 sniper on an attacking Rush team will absolutely cripple the whole team.

I do that all the time with the M2. I probably have close to 100 kills with it, and all but a few are infantry  :grin:. I have been trying to get kills with the M136 now (so I can get a bronze star), but it is fucking useless. Takes forever to fire, needs to be guided, etc. Recipe for death.

Thissssssssss.  I joined two squads in a row composed entirely of snipers at or behind the current spawn in Rush maps.  I quit out of Battlefield altogether to prevent an aneurism. 

A sniper on a Rush map who is hanging back 1) killing enemy snipers who are covering the objectives, or 2) keeping the objectives clear, is a good sniper.  The rest should go hide in a bush on a Conquest map because they hurt their own Rush squad by hanging back and doing anything else other than these two things.

The absolute worst is having 3 snipers in your Rush squad hanging back during the beginning of the Isla map plinking away at random defenders.  That is more annoying than hearing someone's loud music / TV / family dispute throughout an entire match over squad chat.

like.  more of this.

They were fun rounds, we actually had 4 F13's in our squad! (GO ECHO!)  & WayAbvPar did give the guy a warning and warned the snipers from the get go not to dick around, you can be recon, but don't break the initiative and hang back if you are the attacking force.

Do we have the map where it is the Sub Base the Russians are attacking and the US is defending?  I've gotten to like that map a lot, as you can flank each side pretty easy and rpg people in the back  ;D  That damn 3rd unlock of rocket launchers does suck, it won't track the darts, is practically useless on aircraft, and takes forever to get ready and fire and reload.  The only plus I've seen is you can carry 6 with the perk (I'll have to check, can't remember but it was a lot of them).  The splash damage isn't that great on any of the rockets, but I have gotten double kills with my Charlie G and my RPG-7, that other one doesn't seem as nice. 

3rd one is good on tanks and airplanes. And it tracks.

I had fun playing for a bit, but dear god, teams get unbalanced in 15 seconds of not looking at the scoreboard.

I always feel like an ass when I go recon, but sometimes you just have to, because your entire sniper team can't seem to countersnipe or mortar barrage a damned tank. Last night it seemed like my entire team would make a concerted effort to ignore bombs being placed, too.

Sniper to sniper battles are damn fun... but I can certainly see how it's a separate game almost completely divorced from the main action. There should be a way on the server setup to limit the number of classes that can be chosen per squad or per side, but that would probably involve good server admin software and, well... DICE.

I spend most of my recon time with a Thompson and a fistful of motion sensors and C4. It is a really good run and gun class for Rush- sneak into the MCOM, scatter C4 around, drop a sensor, arm the MCOM, then run out and wait for the defenders to run in to disarm. Then touch off the C4 and watch the points spam down the screen  :grin:

Server R7 changelog:
    * Several common crash fixes. Especially those which have monitoring scripts that rely on the Remote Admin interface should see stability improvements.
    * PunkBuster can send commands to Remote Admin interface (so ‘pb_sv_task 0 -1 <stuff to send to admin interface>’ works)
    * Veteran-rank handling corrected (it was broken in R6 and possibly earlier)
    * Switched back to Release version of the low-level networking library; less debug output but higher performance
    * Increased the initial server reconnection interval to 30+rand(30) seconds
    * PB GUID generation is now based on EA account IDs (it used to be based on persona names)
    * Added new command line options which allow providers to easily maintain server GUID's

PB GUID was shocking it ever made it to release. Every time you created a new soldier you got a new GUID which meant anyone who was PB banned could easily just create a whole new name without any repercussions. Now your GUID would kill your purchased copy of the game.

Veteran rank is meh because it gives you back the M1 which is nothing big.

Switching back networking should get pings down, possibly better hit registration and reduce rubber banding.

Edit:  Bat country is now updated to R7

I want my M1! Excited to get killed while holding it.

Is it me, or is every weekend a full retard free for all with these online shooters?

I just left a server where both teams were equally horrible, but the opposing team had two squads who actually knew what the objective was, so they won. There's nothing quite as fun as dying after trying to defend the M-com alone, watching the minimap and see literally 8 people still aimlessly wandering around the lighthouse.

Play Squad Deathmatch?

I've found a couple of servers where it's mostly retard-free, so I've been enjoying myself.

Also, those Squad packs we were waiting on 2 months ago have shown up. Guess they preferrred to sell as many full-price copies as possible before going the discount route.  :oh_i_see:

The M1 Garanda rocks!  Right now I don't get it or the 2 other veteran rewards, but it works on 360...  I wonder if the veteran status was only screwed up on PC (any PS3 people with veteran status there?).  Once again the Xbox 360 seems to be less troubled than the PC, wish these damn companies would work on something just for the PC and get it right (besides Valve, which did a great job).

I just got my M1. Of course, my BF rank is still all screwed up, but that's EA for you.

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/446923.page

If you're interested in fixing your game's mouse smoothing follow this simple guide.

This begs the question : Why the fuck do I need to do all of this to do something this basic? Run toggle and iron sights holding would be real nice too; I mean - without having to use autohotkey.  :uhrr:

Thanks to ya'll in the f13 marketing dept., this found its way onto my steam list. Runs and looks great so far but have only braved a bit of the solo play. I like the setting a little better than the first, never dug that whole 'gold' thing in BC1. I'll dig into the server/multi once I get my feet a little more wet... I've been fartin' around on the consoles too much latey.

Man, I feel bad. I was lining up a shot at an assault unloading on my teammates, pulled the trigger, and popped fuser in the head as the came through a gap in the wall last night. :(

I was really, really bad with the accidental TKs last night.

Speaking of which, is there really a need for FF?  I feel like the game plays a lot worse with it on to be honest.

Noticed with the new net code there's a lot more effects flying around (shell/tracers etc).


That was a bad round for me, I died ~5 times due to TK's on that defend map, no worries!


It's kind of good on how it seems to curb the use of explosives and also gives you the option that Way used to encourage snipers to move up. Either then that it gives you some really bad times when your sitting at 1/7 mostly due to TK's. I'll turn it off on the server right now tho.

Question has people noticed on rush maps that most people on assault are happy just to bog down and not advance? It seems like they are happier to keep their KvD ratio high and sit back sniping etc vs leading an assault.

Edit:
Best moment of last night. Flanking the assaulting force, then visiting all their towers and hidy holes knifing 4 snipers unnoticed  :drill:

It's common for assault teams on rush maps to just camp out and shell, which is pointless. The defenders have no ticket limit, people!

My other lolTK moment was two snipers in a building. I miss my 40mm, duck to reload, stand up, line up perfectly and put a round through the window...
promptly killing the guy who had just run up the stairs and knifed both snipers while I was behind cover <3

I prefer FF on because it lessens the 40mm and mortar spam. With it off, I can be a bitch about waiting for a bomb to be armed, and then promptly dropping a mortar strike on it to keep defenders from being able to disarm it.

My main annoyance is when the defenders play like their KvD ratio matters. Get in there and aggressively skirmish, people! If you die dropping someone, you're winning! Also hate assaults who don't drop ammo, and recons who don't mortar strike anything that lacks legs.

BF2 & 2142 had most servers playing with friendly fire, same with the xbox version modern combat & 1943, it is more a tradition for battlefield games (except for Battlefield Heroes) to have friendly fire on, so people don't spam the explosives without fear of it hurting them.  Hell the old mines the engineers laid down cost me many a team kill when I would capture a point, tell the whole freaking team I'm mining the point, then see a squad of 4 ram into my mines, the only saving grace was the got a team kill for hitting me too.  A lot of the Modern Warfare guys are used to not having friendly fire on, so it confuses them that they can't drop an explosive in the middle of the squad without penalty.

Oh I finished the Medic class...wow I'm a catasser (but only in FPS'ers...go figure!), the MG3 isn't that great, shoots ammo like a fire hose, but isn't as effective as the M60 or MG36, I like those 2 more for being able to equip the better heal packs and still kill pretty well.  I hate medics who don't revive or drop heal packs!

Finally got the M1, it is sweet!  Glad it only has 8 rounds, otherwise people would be all over this baby, but it is nice to have a reach out and touch someone weapon until I unlock the G3 or M14.  Any have those unlocked? 

FF with landmines is my only real complaint. I get a few TKs from those, but usually they wind up being "plant 3 mines, switch classes, get random 200-300 points in 5 minutes"

I like the 'realism' of FF, and the penalties aren't that severe. In fact, you can TK and then revive at a tidy profit, which is another good way of dealing with snipers who don't like to move. They can't get out of the loop if you want to be a real asshole and do it over and over. People never fucking learn though- my last game last night was attacking on Valparaiso. My entire squad was in the helicopter going around and around and doing very little good. When I spawned at the start instead I went by no fewer than 5 fucking snipers, which means that fully half the team was actively not attacking. No wonder we were losing every map.  I TKed 4 snipers and then quit for the night  :drill:

Couple of counter points to arguments made in the last few points:

Rushing forward as assault can be foolish, even as defending, since there is a 10 sec respawn timer. Get enough of the assault defenders killed in one mortar blow, and that gives attackers and ample window to set off the charge. I like to run to the fireline, then slow down and pick my battles to maximize the amount of uptime I have while still hitting oncoming targets. Sometimes I may be guilty of erring on the side of caution, but for me, the 10 second respawn is not only an advantage to the enemy, it also can be disorienting when the immediate theater can change a bunch in that 10 seconds.

Secondly, mortaring vehicles is cool when it works, but it also requires the enemy vehicle to stand still. Good tank drivers do not.

Most moving tank drivers are less dangerous in Rush than the ones hanging out shelling the objectives using Optics.

Close in tanks are vulnerable to engies. Long range shelling tanks are vulnerable to.. long range shelling <3

Oh yes forgot to mention: Player Stats (http://bfbcs.com/) (ok not official)

You have to add yourself to the queue keep trying and it will process eventually.

Interesting system stats:
Global PC Statistics
Players:209,810
Players online:65,048

Global XBOX360 Statistics
Players:21,340
Players online: ?

Global PS3 Statistics
Players:21,006
Players online:33,603

I don't know why Players Online exceeds Players though, and by such a large margin. Tough to say if the numbers are accurate.

Of course, a tank (or bradley) is not a fucking sniper rifle. And as much fun as it can be playing in a tank, sitting on a hill far, far away from the objective taking potshots at defenders, you're really no more useful to an attacking rush team than a sniper.

The armour needs to move up, supported by the infantry, and try to dominate the ground, but even failing that, armour can be the big "shoot me" distraction that allows you to blow up an M-Com station or two. Now that I type it up, that's pretty much also a Warhammer 40k tactic. Tanks aren't quite as disposable IRL, but this game in many ways is closer to 40k anyway.

Except that as a tank you can knock down builds with objectives inside them from relative safety.

Only some, on some maps. Instead, I often see them just being used from up the back as a super-sniper rifle while the attacking infantry get fucked up.

Especially on a regular server. I'm noticing that Rush is getting much harder as people get better at the game, rank up and get more unlocks, and learn the fine layout of the maps. May not be true on random PUB servers, but it's true on the ones I'm playing on.

Newest tactic is Carl Gustav with EXPLMK2. I got killed roughly 10 times with it on a single rush, it's making me stabby.

I haven't tried it since I got the explosives upgrade unlocked and I still have more kills with it than any other weapon. It is ridiculously easy to use.

The explosion upgrade was just a terrible idea. It should have been something to deal more damage to armor or something. This is coming from someone who plays engineer with Carl Gustav a lot; though I prefer the PP-2000 with magnum ammo over lame cheese TF2 soldier kills with the rawket lawnchair.

You don't even need the explosives upgrade (though I agree, horrible idea for an upgrade), Sir Carl is pretty much a direct fire 40mm with no arming distance.

Essentially tactic of the day in this game will always be "what can I use to oneshot things"

But I'm becoming increasingly amused by running around with a siaga on a recon and using it as close sensor mine support and mortar battery. Because I don't have magnum ammo or slugs yet <3

Then get in the tank and drive it yourself? Or yell at them?

Community Auto-Balancer (http://www.f7c-foren.de/showthread.php?t=66889)

I've started this up on a local PC and it seems quite good.

ingame chat commands (for Admins):
------------------------------------
@start         // starts the balancer
@stop         // stops the balancer
@kick <name>       // kick a player
@last          // show the last joined player
@kicklast       // kick the last joined player (for instance,
                           to get free slots for clanmates)
@lastswitched       // show the last switched player
@kicklastswitched    // kick the last switched player
@kickable       // show the player who could be kicked to get
                           teams balanced
@balancekick       // issue a balancekick will effect in a new
                           kick task like the balancer does
@update       // force to update the playerlist and start
                           the balancer if needed

I'll start adding f13 people to the "admin list"

That should help.

Does kick last switched work on just automated switches, or will it kick players that switch on their own? Because those are the fuckers that need to DIAF.

I'm not too good or experienced with Carl yet, I'm actually a pretty good shot with the ye olde RPG but that hasn't yet transferred to CG.

On recon with saiga though, that's not far off my best class combo. And I only have a few sniper kills. If you're good with the saiga you can really devastate sometimes especially as recon able to close assault and drop your own sensor mines which your team also tends to appreciate. Add in extended mag and extra ammo.

Also C4 on offense rush missions makes for some fun tactics - drop C4 all around the room, activate the MCom, drop sensor next to it, then bug out and hide in the next building. When you see the enemy swarming the MCom, just detonate, wiping out a wave of defnders in one shot who now all have a 10 sec respawn, watch the point roll in and the MCom go off since the guys who were willling to defuse it just got wiped. Win!

If only I had thought of that! (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=18193.msg779996#msg779996)   :oh_i_see:

I stole it from a video a guy post on SA though, so I suppose all's fair.  :why_so_serious:

Wow, we had some epic battles going on last night. People actually pushing up and shit.

Too bad I still hate the 40mm and the CG when used exclusively; using them to kill single targets feels stupid to me.

scratch that

I'm Mr. Bonkers. Sometimes I suck, sometimes I do not suck.

It is time to turn PB back on, shitty as it is. I kick/banned one guy who was 30/5 and killed me from across the map like 5 straight times. I would bet money it was an aimbot. Another guy on our team was like 69/15, which is almost impossible without some sort of help. I just kicked him, since I didn't see anything directly.

The aimbot dude was pretty obvious, too. He was headshotting 3-4 people in a row from around half a rush map's starting area using a thompson :P

Lol, I actually read about that trick on a different forum to here (not SA). I must have read it in this thread as well, but it didn't sink in.

What's the chance we could get a sticky in PC/Console with all the info (clan/f13) people, admin list, info, etc? I have a post ready to go but PBBan's won't approve f13's application for a streaming ban account unless we have a sticky post.

I'll run it by Schild for you.

Thanks, also punkbuster is back on and server is upgraded to R8

Cheating has become insanely bad. Aim bots are all over the place now with punk buster starting to pick some up. The PBBans site has a running tally (http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-latest50-bfbc2-lfb36.html) of people caught and banned with a jump of around 500 bans over the past week. One guy last night had 75 kills and 10 deaths which is insane for a rush attacker (probably the guy you banned).

I was going to ask last night if it's a bannable offense to get an explosives efficiency pin on Bat Country <3

The aimbots were crazy, though. The rest of the games were fun. Barring that island map where we had 8 snipers and 4 medics backing them up, and a whole 4 poor bastards trying to actually take points.

I've seen people getting banned left and right on the server I play on. Luckily most people on it are from the same group (not quite clan) so others get bumped for us. Haven't played for a few days, but it's good to see the bans happening. Do they ban my account or by copy of the game?

I am going to ban first and ask questions later. There are plenty of players to keep the server full.

I should start playing on this server. I'll have to see what my ping is like.

Is there a way to manually add a server to favorites? I haven't even checked.

Search for the server name "Bat Country". Add to Favs.

There is a huge long hash that EA adds to the server name that you can manually edit into your .ini or something too. Not sure how to find that info, however.

That was the most frustrating match ever. The other team decided to bring back oldschool tactics. Half their team was shotgun recons with C4, explosives upgrade, and explosives capacity. If a single one lived through to the objective, you lost it instantly. *sigh* And my team refused to compensate by playing closer to the objectives.

God I want that patch that adds "does c4 damage objectives?" to the server flags. I'm fine with taking out the building on some objectives. Whatever. But I'm really sick of the idea that a lone recon can suicide into an objective twice and there's very little you can do about it besides "uh, spam motion sensors around and hope you can intercept?"

Generally there's only one way to ban right now and thats via Punkbuster. Punkbuster uses a GUID hash thats unique based upon your EA account which is tied to your game key. Last patch they fixed a loop hole that allowed you to generate a new GUID by making a new soldier name.

If you look at PBBans for example (http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-viewban-a56bfb61-vb164814.html) they list the users GUID. A lot of people are using the "streaming" part which is a distributed GUID banlist to auto kick and ban people where the server forgets bans after restarts.

MG36 - Best Gun Ever. :awesome_for_real:

I mean, come on...a MG, with a free scope? Just use it semi-auto, and it's gold.

If it is anything like the real gun (which I have used) it should be mad fun.  :awesome_for_real: :heart: :awesome_for_real:

I unlocked that gun yesterday. Funnest damn gun ever. Frees up a perk to let you use a speedboost, which is great for getting to teammates to help them. I don't know whether to use magnum or LMG Spec though. LMG spec lets you fire from the hip with insanely good accuracy, but magnum is... well, magnum.

So I decided to have a play around with SP mode tonight, and I find that since the update(s) I can't play SP any more, since my digital downlaod steam copy now wants me to insert the disc to play SP..  :oh_i_see:

I rarely fire from the hip, so Magnum for me when I get it....though, I thought LM spec helped with aimed fire as well?

Im not even sure honestly, I think it does; but I've heard to the contrary sometimes.

Strazos is mean when he's on the server by himself.
 :heartbreak:

Ya, what's been up with that? Last three times I checked today, the server pop was down to nothing.

For those that haven't picked it up yet, there's a deal right now, $10 bucks off for the weekend, and another $20 bucks off if you use the code PAXEAST842 on checkout.

Today is the last day for both deals.

Is this on the EA site, Steam, or where?

Sorry, EA store, DD only, no physical copies.

I was there with him.

Hey, what do you want? I was bored and playing, hoping enough people would come in for the server to reach critical mass and loop in "Play Now" random types.

Let's get some people together and start it up- we should have enough to get it started and visible.

You still use the PAX East code on a physical copy of the game, you just don't get the extra $10 off from the weekend sale.

Still, $20 for BC2 is worth braving the EA Download Manager again...

Wow, was on a Hardcore server earlier...Really wish you could search for servers based on the Hardcore setting. So I have to tab for the map, and the spotting doesn't show up as much. The damage is more like what this game should be.

 - If I burst-fire a guy in the head, he should die.
 - A shotgun blast from close range, if it's even close to a direct hit, should probably kill a guy most times.

The damage just feels right in that mode. As a bonus, the mg50 seems less overpowered on this mode, especially with the superior accuracy of the top-end assault rifles.

Its sort of a double edged sword for me.  I do like the more realistic feeling damage, I have to admit.  But on the other side, I feel like the maps have largely been designed for the slower paced normal mode combat.   In the end, I feel like the game generally plays better all told on normal than hardcore, even though I really do like some of what hardcore has to offer.  I do like the slower deliberate objective based game, and I feel like normal mode delivers that better, and hardcore mode can basically devolve into pure death matching, especially on conquest mode.    I also feel like defense has a pretty large advantage on rush in hardcore.

Normal mode should have about 65% of the damage of Hardcore, or something. As is, it's a little silly when I can shotgun a guy in the back at point blank, and he's not dead.

You can just take way too many shots on Normal. I have the flak vest, but not sure it helps a whole lot on either mode.

I quit the Hardcore after you left, just finished out a round.  It is good and bad, like how the 9mm guns turn into beasts, but the 7.62 guns tend to get turned down (i.e. was taking more hits with the M1 or M14...) of course it could have been the lag monster.  Something is not right with the X8 Compact, I was seeing people 1 or 2 shot me with it & from a range that should make it less effective, probably not a cheat, but some bug with the latest patch.  M1 Garanda and the M14 continue to be great all around weapons (just wish they held more ammo!), heck tonight I had more fun using M1, M14, M1911, and the M1a1 "tommy gun".

What is up with all the cheaters today?  I saw a ton of people getting banned for aim-bots, & there was a bunch of crazy stuff on xbox live today too (on Modern Warfare 2). 

I had a dubious experience just now with hardcore. I emptied half an x8 clip into a sniper that just hip-shot a sniper rifle and one shot me.

Also, is anyone able to use the server filter mechanism to get PB only servers? I tried to filter it, but just about any server I join has PB off.

I think a few weapons are underpowered in normal (most of the lower tier SMGs, the first AR, any semi auto sniper rifle, and the shotguns pre slugs seem to top out at ~99% damage at point blank), but some of the higher tier weapons in normal are practically one burst kills as is (the m416 to the head, same with the AN, the MG60), and the SMGs make up for it with large clips and close range killing power at the higher tiers.

I'm not entirely fond of how it feels Magnum rounds completely change the weapon dynamics, either. I need to find someplace that's done the math on them, because they feel like they make anything into a sniper rifle. I had some crazy 18-2 ratio sniping with an M416 and a 4x scope with magnum rounds earlier on a pug. Part of it was people being stupid and sitting in my killing corridor, part of it was some two bursts and anything died at long range.

Also, I take it the team balance mod is broken, because now it's decided to never let me switch teams after doing it once to balance them, and every goddamned match on Bat Country today turned into 20-12 when a victorious side became likely.

The m416 and m16 are almost unfair with magnum rounds on hardcore. I tend to play pretty carefully now on hardcore as assault; just flank and snipe with a red-dot sight.

I've been on both sides of this exchange.  I've hip-shot people with an M24 about 7-9 times and killed 3 enemies i think.

I hip shoot people all the time with the .50 and it's awesome.

That said, there was a shitload of spawn camping on all the conquest maps I played today on the 360. I spent pretty much an entire round sweeping my teams start point because the assholes we were playing were more interested in killing us where we started rather than taking and holding objectives.

You can spawn on your squad mates or any of the objectives that you have, so it should be pretty easy to get around spawn camping unless the other team controls the entire map.

I just bought this, if we have active players here I also have a couple groups of friends playing. Maybe we can help populate each others servers and shoot each other in the face.

If you guys havent already seen this here's some pretty decent weapon damage charts.  It will likely confirm most of what you've probably already figured out through play (it did for me).

http://www.joinaclan.com/?p=356 (http://www.joinaclan.com/?p=356)

That kinda confirms what I'd felt about magnum rounds. That and I really want the m14 soon to use with my medic leveling. I hate the LMGs, and there's something charming about a random rifle that can almost twoshot people.

Man, I know, right? I'm enjoying the game, but the Bat Country server's been 0 pop every time I check. What time you guys usually play? I suck, but love the game. Particularly destroying buildings snipers hide in.

The lack of a functional server browser (with pings, and filters that stay on and/or work, and more of them) isn't so bad when you get in a decent server.

When you have to hop out to it two or three times in quick succession because the first server you tried has things turned off (and no mention of them in the name), and then you load into a game with twice as many people on the other team and a knife in the face, and then you fail to find a server with LA in the title so you don't have latency that would make the Pony Express blush... it is soul crushing.

I agree with all complaints about the server UI, but also will add no way to add favorites via IP, inability to actually add a fav after locating it in the list (I tried last night with Bat Country 3 times but it never did anything but sit there saying "Please wait") and the extreme delay with server information appearing in the list causing servers to show open slots when they were already full.

I also wasn't able to get wrap my head around this:
(http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f27/taolurker/Learn2Spell.jpg)

Their UI person should be taken out back and shot.

So, dedicated servers and server browser for your FPS's, so long as they aren't designed and implemented by Simple Jack.

Yeah, I'll admit that recently I've been playing less just because I don't feel like contending with the browser, which is kind of sad.  I do enjoy the game when I sit down with it long enough to really get into a round of it, I just find myself less and less willing to. (Full Disclosure: Part of this many be due to the fact that I got into SC2 beta).

Let's fill the server up. Just logged in and there are 3 others.

Server is doing something weird- just loading map after map after map and never starting the game. Might be why no one is playing on it. Will restart it and see how it works.

Edit again- that seems to have done it. Let's go!

Patching now.....

and thanks to however posted the code:

PAXEAST842

20 bucks off got me and a friend playing. Still works....

Yeah thanks... Now everyone can enjoy killing brain cells... Especially binfuser and his gustov spam

That was an amusing match.

I actually think it more fun with smaller teams, and I seem to survive long enough to actually kill people.. Compared to 15 vs 15 where I have died within seconds of spawning.

I prefer 16v16, but mostly because running around with motion mines and knifing people seems mean with small squads.

Really though, the starter LMG and starter assault rifle are just shitty imo.

Yeah the starter stuff is pretty crappy. I would suggest working up to medpacks and then point whore with medic until you get a better feel for things. That will help unlock other stuff along the way too.

I was not too effective the last half of that map- I have kiddie duty tonight and he was on my lap 'helping'  :awesome_for_real: Hopefully I can jump back on a bit later.

Well, the starting weapons definitely don't do much when everyone you're fighting can rip you to shreds faster. I will need to die way too much to unlock weapons, but it's still fun.

I think the game is going to destroy my hearing though, because 15 minutes after logging out of the game I could still hear the explosion whine in my left ear.

Newbies start off way too naked in this game.

Like for example: Medics don't start with the healing pack or the defib... What the fuck is that? Newbies now not only know not how to play, but can't even HEAL people as a medic.

Yes, it's definitely on the loud side by default.  I knocked all the volumes down about 20% after my first couple of games.

I'm sort of torn about the starting equipment: I genuinely like the PKM more than the the next two unlocked LMGs but agree that it's dumb that you don't get the Med Kit/Ammo/Repair until a few games in.

Yes. Shitty weapon, no healing, no rezzing. I've yet to level medic past I think the second LMG/heals/defib. The only class that's mostly functional out of the box is the engie, and mostly because repair is the least important thing they do most maps.

Does anyone know how to add a server to favorites via GameSettings.ini?

I managed to favorite one server, and this is what it looks like in the ini:

FavoriteGames=2217048389,c4eea16e-7fc3-45a6-8b4b-13db1606be58,MEDICK'S MAD HOUSE BAY AREA CALIFORNIA;

I'm not sure how to do it, but this is what I have for Bat Country:

1579307081,903d021f-1732-4d4b-80c2-2075dda58d4c,Bat Country [Dallas\, TX/Ranked/FF]

I think its fairly balanced given how stupid fast it is to accrue points with heals and rezzes.  Its probably the easiest class in the entire game to level.

I completely disagree with you on shitty weapon as well.  I think the LMG's are some of the easiest weapons in the game to get kills with.  You just cant run and gun like the other classes as a medic.  Maybe you are doing it wrong?