Battlefield 2 kicks my ass

[Hanzii]

Ok, I played around with the press preview for a few hours. Here are my thoughts:
(with the caveat, that I actually liked both the original, the expansions and BF: Vietnam... allthough I felt BF:V was just another overpriced expansion).

As you know, the setting in BF2 is modern days with the armies of the United States, China and MEC (I suppose that's the Middle east Alliance... they all looked like swarthy Hussein wannabees to me).
The map I played was kinda like urban Iraq with desert, cityscape and a US carrier parked outside the coast.
The weaponry is moderne, but emphasis is on fun over realism, and the game seems pretty well balanced.
Choppers kick ass and are truly deadly with a full crew - but on the other hand, heat seeking missiles are easy to come by.
Jetfighters are deadly against other aircrafts, but really fast, so I think attacking and strafing ground targets will take a lot of skill... and there's still those damn heatseekers.

The tanks are nice, but I managed more than once to kill one with an APC. The tank hits hard but reloads slowly, the APC shots it's main gun (20mm or 30mm or somesuch) fast and has 2 slow loading TOWs.

The buggy is really really fun to drive. I'm sure the first mods/maps will be buggy racing tracks. The handle well and drives really fast. The new physics engine means lots of fun jumps and whatnot.

The physics engine also means that there's some wonky ragdolls. Since there's no blood or dismemberment the ragdoll physics are quite fun. Once I backed over an Iraqi with my APC and had a new weird hood ornament, I had to shake loose. Another time my guy flew 50 meters into the air and managed one shout of 'MEEEDIC!' before landing because he ws hit point blank by an artillery round. Fun.

Speaking of artillery the major new addition is the role of commander. One player that has access to special features and tries to command his forces on the Battlefield - that is a player, whos has a map and some tools and frantic shouts for unresponsive players to go there and do that. But I think this will kick ass in a clan or with the right players. The commander has drones, that can scout the bttlefield and show enemy positions to all players. He also have artillery and it seems that the reload shortens if your side control more flags... so if your team is down to your last spawnpoint, you not only have to deal with the spawncampers, but also the repeated artillery barrages, that will wipe everybody.

It seems like there's more and better weapons for the grunts. More roles and more ways to help each other - medics, support (with ammo) and engineers are effective... but again probably not on public servers.
Height is used much more... not just for planes. In the map I played there was a flag on a building site with a bloody tall crane.
I took the flag, planted 2 Claymores and climbed the crane with my sniper. The opponents, that my claymores didn't take care of, I took out with my rifle... if not, I could just parachute to the ground, surprise them with my silenced pistol, retake the flag and once again climb my sniperrifle.
from this position I could see very far and kill from a great distance. The sniper isn't overpowered though. The scope is closer to the original BF scope (without the bad glass) and only had one setting. The rifle was single shot and good players would be able to take me out using another sniper, or two guys (one supressing me and one climbing) or a chopper. I'm sure a good commander would see this and make it happen... or just use his artillery.

I read somewhere that the game scaled to the number of players. This I disn't see on the map we played, which frankly sucked when only 5 of us where left. But perhaps the fact that at least 10 other players where logged in, but not playing, ruined this feature.

finally, I must just add, that the voice command menu is greatly improved. Fewer set responses, but much faster and easier to access. Voting and everything else UI is also easier. The main interface isn't as slow to use and the built in tool to locate servers looks effective too.... with only 4 servers worldwide, it was to early to tell.

Thus endeth my night - I'm looking forward to this.

[Stormwaltz]

I've been curious about the jets. In BF42 I found that the smaller maps (Kursk) tend to reduce aerial combat to infinite turning to stay within the map borders. Given that the jets seem to move faster, do the maps have enough room for them?

EDIT: I'm especially concerned given the (otherwise Holy Grail level cool) dynamic map borders that pull inward when a map has fewer people.

[Hanzii]

Well, the map turning smaller didn't work - but it wasn't the finished game and this has been mentioned enough times, that I think it will be present. Gotta wait and see if it works.
The map we played in seemed to have 2 borders, where the inner one seemed to be more lenient in punishing you for crossing it. Perhaps this was because the game had allready resized itself? The 3 guys from DICE supposed to answer all those questions were stranded in some Swedish airport and never arrived.
But with the second border, the map did seem a bit smallish for the fast jets. But the US jets I got to play with were anti-air and all that turning seemed fine enough for dogfights.

[NiX]

Something else I'll have to pre-order.

[WayAbvPar]

Interesting. I just started playing 1942 again, which inspired me to order Bf:V  (which I have only played briefly thus far). I am intrigued, but after my recent forays into public server life, I am afraid it will just be the same fucktards dressed up in new shineys. Why does the general public suck so much ass?

[Viin]

The whole 'commander' thing can work out really well if you can get a good one.

Games like Allegiance totally rocked, and having a commander that knew what he was doing really really helped. Another game that has a "commander" role is Natural Selection. For NS, only one side has a commander (the marines) so if you don't like someone bossing you around you would just play as aliens instead.

The problem with both of those games is that there's no offline way to learn how to command.. everything had to be done online with Joe Public b!tching about everything you do as you try to get a handle on it. Hopefully Battlefield 2 will provide some offiline way to get use to how it works.

I'm certainly looking forward to BF2, but how does it stack up to the current BF1942 mods like Desert Combat? Is the gameplay that much better or is it just sparkley  graphics?

[Strazos]

Natural Selection was just Buttah!

[Big Gulp]

I'm certainly looking forward to BF2, but how does it stack up to the current BF1942 mods like Desert Combat? Is the gameplay that much better or is it just sparkley  graphics?

Apparently they've modeled hit locations much more accurately, they have penetration in the game, so walls don't necessarily guarantee safety, and the terrain is destructible.  And if done properly I can't see how the command and control element won't be game changing.  Things become much more interesting when you've actually got a team working together rather than a clusterfuck of individuals doing their own thing.

And as someone who is fanatical about helicopter games I can't wait to get behind a Blackhawk.

[Strazos]

I just want somenoe in a chopper to drop me a ways frmo the enemy, and let me sneak up and snipe them. Typhoon Rising almost let me do this, but I didn't get to play after they fixed the problem with the grass dissappearing when viewed from a distance.

(For those who don't know, to you, the grass would seem concealing, the at a distance, the grass was not drawn, so you were really just laying out in the open...not good for sniping.)

[Gong]

a few general comments/expectations from my experience as a competitive(CAL/TWL) clan BFV player.

the 'commander' feature should be quite nice, but don't expect it to have any impact unless you're playing in a clan match, or exclusively with people who you know will follow orders. in public games, you'll still have a clusterfuck of individuals doing their own thing, plus a frustrated guy on each time who is feebly trying to organize things.

after the relative crapfest of BFV (buggy launch, imbalanced gameplay, lopsided maps, overpowered vehicles, glaring problems that were obvious to eveyone within 1h of playtime)) I'm regarding this with mild caution. it looks like a great game, and I know it's being made by DICE Sweden (BF1942 team) rather than DICE Canada (BFV team) but I can't help but be a little paranoid.

BFTV implementation needs to be a top priority. Punkbuster protection for BFV is a complete joke; within the past month, 3 people within major clans have been busted for hacking - all of them caught by other players proving it, not because of Punkbuster protection. If players were required to make BFTV recordings of match play, it would go a long way towards improving the security of the game.

one of the biggest flaws of BFV is that 'the loop' was completely broken. choppers rule over everything hands down, and there aren't really any effective counters to a good chopper pilot (aside from having one of your own). in BFV, getting a vehicle is pretty much a chance to dominate others who don't really have much of a chance to defend themselves. in BF1942, an infantryman could oneshot a tank with a bazooka, expack, or mine. in BFV, tanks are much easier to aim and fire, and are also considerably more resistant to damage. judging from the fact that one of the BF2 gameplay videos is titled "the loop" and demonstrates light vehicles beating infantry, tank beating light vehicles, helicopter beating tank, etc. hopefully they now understand the importance of making sure 'the loop' is unbroken and offers a bit more complexity than 'rock, paper, scissors'.

BFV has far too many lopsided maps where it is practically a given that one particular side will win. in clan matches, whoever has the greatest number of tickets remaining after the first two rounds gets to choose sides for the third round. this often leads to teams trying to 'lose by a lesser amount' than actually attempting to win, which isn't how competition ought to be.

all my hopes revolve the DICE Sweden team achieving a high level of quality. DICE Canada didn't do much more than make minor improvements to the original 1942 code, make some stupid gameplay decisions, and rake in the money. BF1942 had a pretty robust Buddy List system added about 5 months before the release of BFV. The exact same Buddy List system didn't get added to BFV until about 3 months after release.

In summary, BF1942 was a quality game. BFV was an inferior derivative cash cow of the original game that somehow managed to be quite a bit of fun despite its shortcomings. Hopefully this team has been more attentive to quality testing than the previous one. They've said to expect a demo soon-ish, which will be a good opportunity to make sure they didn't fuck this one up (note that BFV STILL does not have a demo, yet another sign that the game was little more than 'give me $$ plz thx ^^' for EA).

[Trippy]

The problem with both of those games is that there's no offline way to learn how to command.. everything had to be done online with Joe Public b!tching about everything you do as you try to get a handle on it. Hopefully Battlefield 2 will provide some offiline way to get use to how it works.

I'm pretty sure NS let you setup a "listen" server (a non-dedicated) server on your own machine so you could practice the commander position by yourself. It was a little goofy cause you had to keep leaving the command pod to run out as a regular solider to see the effects of your commander instructions but I remember being able to do it back when I played.

[Hanzii]

I didn't see any evidence of destructable terrain. As far as I could tell, my M1 Abrams was still stumped by a small shrubbery... but I do believe I killed somebody through a woodden door, but I'm not sure. .50 rounds punching through brick walls like in real life doesn't seem to be happening here, though.

Vehicles seem much more balanced than in BF:V. Choppers were much easier to control, so people not training on a daily basis could actually do some damage. Apaches and Blackhawk with a full crew manning the weapons seemed VERY powerfull - on the other hand there was quite a few AA emplacements with heatseeker avaliable. I didn't see how many missiles was needed to down a chopper, but they weren't hard to come by and unlike BF:V you didn't have to spawn as a gimped AA guy, just to get rid of a pesky chopper.
The carrier had emplacements with control of both Vulcan guns as well as heatseekers - not as effective as the full radarcontrol avaliable in real life, but I don't think it will be easy to sink a carrier, if your opponents has their act together.

There was an offline option to try out the different roles. I didn't try it though. I think this game really calls for locked servers and clan gaming, but I also think that one good commander and just a handfull of players lsitening to him and working together can really have fun and break havoc on a public server.

[Toast]

Thanks for the heads up.

I am curious about the meta-command portion of the game. This seems risky to me.

+Preorder

[edlavallee]

Great information so far. As a veteran (target dummy) of clan matches in TWL, I am really looking forward to a DC-like Battlefield game with the improvements noted in all the press releases.

I am sad that it is easier to fly a helicopter, but maybe a little glad (in a pink bunny, everything should be equal kinda way) that it does a fair job of balancing the effects of a very good chopper pilot. Not everyone has that many hours to master the flight controls a-la DC choppers. I am mostly curious about the flight physics for jets though. In BF-V the jets seemed very sluggish to turn and throttle modulation didn't appear to do much. In DC, jet control seemed much more crisp and backing the throttle off on a turn actually did a good job of reducing your turn radius. I hope in BF2 the jets feel more like DC than like BF-V.

[Viin]

I'm pretty sure NS let you setup a "listen" server (a non-dedicated) server on your own machine so you could practice the commander position by yourself. It was a little goofy cause you had to keep leaving the command pod to run out as a regular solider to see the effects of your commander instructions but I remember being able to do it back when I played.

Yah you could do that, though it'd be much faster and more efficient if there were bots. I believe that's how I learned in NS. With Allegiance you had to join one of the official servers to play, so you had to hop right in an lose like 10 matches before you finally got to the point where you weren't completely smashed to bits.

For NS it'd be nice to have alien bots that did whatever and marine bots that followed your orders. That way you could work on setting up resource locations and at the same time getting guys to defend against the rush of aliens on your spawn point. I have seen some really good bots on a couple of the newer NS3.0 servers, so maybe it's possible now.

[Big Gulp]

I could see the commander position being a lot more tenable if the commanders were given admin powers on every server (so obviously not everyone could be a commander).  Not being a team player, and disregarding orders?  Your ass is banned from the server.

That would tend to cut down on the tards right quick.

[Fabricated]

I could see the commander position being a lot more tenable if the commanders were given admin powers on every server (so obviously not everyone could be a commander). Not being a team player, and disregarding orders? Your ass is banned from the server.

That would tend to cut down on the tards right quick.

And players if some shithead gets commander position. It'd be really cool on a tightly admined clan server though.

[Hanzii]

I could see the commander position being a lot more tenable if the commanders were given admin powers on every server (so obviously not everyone could be a commander).  Not being a team player, and disregarding orders?  Your ass is banned from the server.

That would tend to cut down on the tards right quick.

Well, it was possible to press 'mutiny' and get rid of the commander by vote (which is good). It would make sense if the console allowed players to tie the commander position with admin powers... but I don't know if it is possible.


Oh, and I forgot to add, you get points for kills, assisted kills, defending flags and for taking flags. This leads to field promotions... but I neve did find out if these served a point or was just for bragging rights.

[Viin]

With the new Natural Selection version, there's a mode that does a ranking system instead of having the commander dish out weapons and armor. Every time you "level up" to the next rank you get to pick one addtional tier of equipment (armor, weapons, or accessories (jetpacks, etc)). That's how you get access to the heavy armors and better weapons.. but with NS you actually spawn with the best set you have picked (since it goes in tiers anyways) and there's no way to pick a lower tier set once you upgrade your kit (that I know of).

Each round this is reset, so everyone starts at level 1 and earns the higher ranks by killing the bad guys. Toward the end of the round marines are in heavy armor and the aliens have evolved into big ugly things.

The nice thing about this mode is that you don't have to keep asking your commander to deck you out whenever you spawn. Everything is based on your own merits and you aren't held back because your commander is a jackass and hadn't setup enough resource points or left hardware around for you to pick up.

If this mode isn't available in BF2 I wouldn't be surprised if someone implemented it.

[Strazos]

Still waiting for a Source conversion of NS.

[Megrim]

With the new Natural Selection version, there's a mode that does a ranking system instead of having the commander dish out weapons and armor. Every time you "level up" to the next rank you get to pick one addtional tier of equipment (armor, weapons, or accessories (jetpacks, etc)). That's how you get access to the heavy armors and better weapons.. but with NS you actually spawn with the best set you have picked (since it goes in tiers anyways) and there's no way to pick a lower tier set once you upgrade your kit (that I know of).

Each round this is reset, so everyone starts at level 1 and earns the higher ranks by killing the bad guys. Toward the end of the round marines are in heavy armor and the aliens have evolved into big ugly things.

The nice thing about this mode is that you don't have to keep asking your commander to deck you out whenever you spawn. Everything is based on your own merits and you aren't held back because your commander is a jackass and hadn't setup enough resource points or left hardware around for you to pick up.

If this mode isn't available in BF2 I wouldn't be surprised if someone implemented it.

What you are describing is called NS-Combat and it's basicaly the deathmatch version, that has nothing on the real game. It's been stated before that Combat has actually been quite detrimental to the growth of NS (which in itself is a great game) because all the newbs that come into it see Combat and go "oooh i can level up and get itam!" and never bother with learning the complexities of the 'real' game.

That said, it is fun to play once in a while, but the full game is just so much better that it should be made mandatory for everyone who plays fps to play it =D Oh and NS on sauce is going to rock.

 - meg

[Shannow]

Sounds nice. I'll echo the thoughts on the commander not working with the general public.
Is there any though of either adding to via the devs or mods a meta-game to the BF series, ie where winning your map actually has an impact on a larger aspect of the game? I like playing games like this for the quick action buzz but after a cpl of weeks of playing the same maps for nothing else it gets boring quick.

[Sky]

a few general comments/expectations from my experience as a competitive(CAL/TWL) clan BFV player.

Good post. What clan were/are you in? I was in Fragnastika back in the 1942 days, I think they moved mostly to the DC mod when I got out of it.

And kids, remember: we have a f13 servers, admin'd by some local jackanapes who don't take kindly to smacktards who don't take kindly to folks who don't take kindly. Well, we would if folks would show up and play :p

[Gong]

Sky - although I played the hell out of 1942, I never really got involved with the competitive side of things. Mostly I just played with some RL friends, we were mostly just pub-allstars. In BFV, I was in the clan <SF> (we took 1st place on 5v5 inf ladder before retiring as a clan) for quite a while, and then I stopped playing BFV for about 3 months. Recently I've started playing again, this time playing for Strike Gaming «sGx». Some of my buddies from my old clan have been playing with them for a while, and they eventually talked me into coming back to BFV.

Admittedly, one of the main reasons I decided to start playing BFV again was so that I could go ahead and secure my place in a top-tier clan so I wouldn't have to waste any time once BF2 gets released. Although it is fun watching stuck-up 'vetarans' from CAL Season1 cry when they get owned by a 'nobody' (me) in clan matches, it would be nice to have a bit more respect

regarding f13.net servers, I would wait until the BF2 demo is released. BFV is definitely a dying game, both in terms of general population and competitive clans that are sticking around to play the last BFV CAL season before BF2. Most people tend to stick to the well-known servers where the good players are found, and for that reason it's going to be quite difficult to attract players that aren't total morons. BF2 is a good chance to jump out there and try to get the name circulating.

[Hanzii]

regarding f13.net servers, I would wait until the BF2 demo is released. BFV is definitely a dying game, both in terms of general population and competitive clans that are sticking around to play the last BFV CAL season before BF2. Most people tend to stick to the well-known servers where the good players are found, and for that reason it's going to be quite difficult to attract players that aren't total morons. BF2 is a good chance to jump out there and try to get the name circulating.

The word from EA is that the game will be out in June - no demo first.

[schild]

First week of June according to my local EB. You can preorder the DVD edition now and get a free limited edition logitech headset with it. Which is useful for those of us who don't have headsets. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes in some sort of camou-tin too.

[WayAbvPar]

You can preorder the DVD edition now and get a free limited edition logitech headset with it.

Hmmm. Very tempting, since my headset consists of only the mic part now, the rest having been broken off over the years. If there is a enough folks here that are going to play regularly, it might be worth preordering knowing I will have a mostly fucktard-free environment in which to play.

[Viin]

Pre-ordered.

Ebgames.com says June 27th, but Amazon.com says June 14th. Guess we'll see.

[Trippy]

You can preorder the DVD edition now and get a free limited edition logitech headset with it.

The non-DVD version comes with the headset as well if you preorder (at least from ebgames.com).

Hmmm. Very tempting, since my headset consists of only the mic part now, the rest having been broken off over the years. If there is a enough folks here that are going to play regularly, it might be worth preordering knowing I will have a mostly fucktard-free environment in which to play.

I'll probably be getting it. The persistent character thingy intrigues me and I'm curious to see how they handle advancement for the support classes like the medic and engineer which tend to be my preferred classes in these sorts of games assuming they are done well.

[Sky]

Although it is fun watching stuck-up 'vetarans' from CAL Season1

HEY!! I'm a season one vet! :p

I just cry because my skill has atrophied, and I weep because my new (otherwise awesome) controller just doesn't cut it for flying planes (I go into detail on the 1942 board). I miss the days when my kill:death on pubs was 20:1ish all the time.

[WayAbvPar]

I pre-ordered for a store pickup with some trepidation. I usually get screwed when I preorder online (in fact, I refuse to do it for MMOGs, lest I miss out on all the reg server troubles and hideous conn/lag troubles of opening night!).