Battlefield 2: Special Forces Expansion

[AcidCat]

Battlefield on a smaller, more personal scale - I think this sounds like a great idea for an expansion. My favorite maps in BF2 are the city encounters more focused on infantry combat, so this sounds perfect.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/632/632446p1.html

[Sky]

I don't like the sounds of the zip line...particularly using it to quickly traverse maps...sounds like that old Quake thing, I always hated that. Never liked the translocater, either. Bah.

Night fighting sounds cool, though.

[Merusk]

If they do it the way America's Army did night fighting, it is indeed VERY cool.   Sitting near spotlights with your NV goggles meant you could see folks creeping in the woods, but they couldn't see you unless they took off the goggles.  Which then meant someone coming for flanking from your team was likely to get the drop on them.

  Since AA was much, much, much more squad-based this was great for defense, and forced the offense to be tactical rather than blind-rush objectives. BF2 would do well to at least take a look at AA when considering this stuff and make sure they're at least equal.

I'd also love to see a BF2 server that did "one shot and your out" rather than the tickets method.  Faster games and, again, really makes you work as a team.

[Shockeye]

Why the fuck are they talking about an expansion pack when they can't even get a fix out for their goddamn servers?

Do they need the cash that fucking bad?

Blow me, EA. Blow me, DICE.

[Toast]

You know what they say...

"We have an expansion team, and we have a Live team."

I think expansions are good. The live team does not generate revenues. It is dependent on box sales from release and expansions to stay on the job. So, a successful expansion could help squash bugs by sustaining the staffing / resource levels on the live team.

[WayAbvPar]

Why the fuck are they talking about an expansion pack when they can't even get a fix out for their goddamn servers?

Do they need the cash that fucking bad?

Blow me, EA. Blow me, DICE.

Amen.

OTOH, the expansion sounds fucking awesome. Focusing on infantry combat will give me a chance to wtfpwn all the fucking jet jockeys for a change. The grappling hook is a really cool addition too.

[penfold]

The grapple in Q2CTF was great, if good you swung about the maps like spiderman. I defended against some of the best in Europe, and if they escaped they would cross the map and cap within seconds.  It will look odd in a modern setting like BF2 with all these special forces types swinging about like tarzan mind you.

[Paelos]

The grapple in Q2CTF was great, if good you swung about the maps like spiderman. I defended against some of the best in Europe, and if they escaped they would cross the map and cap within seconds.  It will look odd in a modern setting like BF2 with all these special forces types swinging about like tarzan mind you.

That's funny, the situation you just described is why I thought it was totally ghey.

[HaemishM]

Why the fuck are they talking about an expansion pack when they can't even get a fix out for their goddamn servers?

Do they need the cash that fucking bad?

Blow me, EA. Blow me, DICE.

EA is accelerating their plans to pump out mediocre expansions and sequels until they run DICE into the fucking ground. QA is not EA's problem. Or any of their developers for that matter. They already have your money.

As for a more infantry-focused game? Good for them.

[Yegolev]

Why the fuck are they talking about an expansion pack when they can't even get a fix out for their goddamn servers?

This is what I was wondering.  Every time I think about getting BF2, I see a horror story of how it won't run on someone's modern rig.

[Shockeye]

This is what I was wondering.  Every time I think about getting BF2, I see a horror story of how it won't run on someone's modern rig.

Well, the fact it won't run on client machines is bad as well, but just from the server standpoint it is a joke. Especially when they're raping people over shared server rentals.

[Sky]

The grapple in Q2CTF was great, if good you swung about the maps like spiderman. I defended against some of the best in Europe, and if they escaped they would cross the map and cap within seconds.  It will look odd in a modern setting like BF2 with all these special forces types swinging about like tarzan mind you.

That's funny, the situation you just described is why I thought it was totally ghey.

Ditto.

As far as pumping out an expansion: nature of the beast. As long as they have a live team working on the other issues, I have no problem with it.

[Toast]

The game will run on your gaming rig. The engine is actually pretty slick. The guy with the oddball bug horror story is always heard loud and clear.

Sample size = 3 (me, brother, friend)

Rig:
All three have
P4 2.8
Radeon 9800
1-2 gb ddr Ram

The game runs great at "medium" settings.

Bugs encountered:
Random server disconnects
2-3 CTDs each
Patch snafu requiring fresh install of game (~15 mins)
Account server hangs two days ago due to dos attacks (or maybe too many stats sigs in stupid ass forums hitting the servers)

Overall, way less downtime and hassle on release than any MMO i can remember.

[Yegolev]

Overall, way less downtime and hassle on release than any MMO i can remember.

Why would you try to sell me a car by positively comparing it to a leprous dog?

[Toast]

Now with 50% fewer lesions!

[Trippy]

Battlefield on a smaller, more personal scale - I think this sounds like a great idea for an expansion. My favorite maps in BF2 are the city encounters more focused on infantry combat, so this sounds perfect.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/632/632446p1.html

I predict the mod makers will put in most of those features (dunno if the upcoming SDK will allow enough control over the graphics to do the NV stuff) before DICE releases the expansion.

[Azazel]

Why the fuck are they talking about an expansion pack when they can't even get a fix out for their goddamn servers?

Do they need the cash that fucking bad?

Blow me, EA. Blow me, DICE.

Sounds like bollocks to me. If I wanted infantry-based combat I'd be playing CS/CS:S/AA/SOF2/et-fucking-cetera

The appeal and differentiation of the BF series is being able to use vehicles, there's plenty of infentry-based games out there.


 - Ok now having read the article it sounds decent, having a number of national forces present is a nice change. Not sure about zip-line mania though, and will it be taken up by the BF community, or will it be largely ignored like RTR and SWWW2?

[Sky]

I don't feel RtR was ignored. I actually liked the maps and there was always a lot of activity on them. The new planes rocked. But some folks cried because they limited the tanks from their formerly uber status. SW, otoh, yeah...that sucked. Jetpacks? Puh-rease. But jetpacks aren't as bad an idea as ziplines could easily be.

[Azazel]

Guess it depended on where you were. On low-ping servers to me, (Australia/NZ) the expansions got a few weeks of play and then slowly faded into the background in favour of Vanilla BF maps. Since I bought the things, I was regularly looking for servers running them so I could play on some different maps, but no Dice...

[Megrim]

The game's been out for how long and they've already announced an expansion?! Christ, STOP GIVING THEM MONEY. THEY MAKE BAD GAMES.

ffs

 - meg

[Sky]

Except when they make fun games. As I said, I don't shell out for every expansion, I didn't grab Secret Wars for 1942. I don't think they even released an expansion for Vietnam.

If it's fun with good maps, I'll buy it. If it's zipline spidey nonsense, I won't. That's how capitalism works.

You can't really be a gamer and boycott EA, imo. Sucks, but there it is. At least I can buy only the good games and make my small statement. If you want to skip fun games to make a statement, bully for you. But an EA boycott simply doesn't make a dent on the problem, and I'd rather not deny myself the fun of a game like BF2 to make a statement that will fall upon no ears at all.

[schild]

I own zero EA games. I never even purchased UO with my own money. Grats Ding. I've managed to boycott them. XSN and Take 2 4 LIF.

Edit: Ok, I said that off the cuff. But I just looked at my games from this generation and it turns out I don't own a single console game made by EA. I do however own a couple PC titles. Supporting Maxis isn't wrong, right?

[Strazos]

I'm sure I own a few EA games, prolly on the PC.

I know I own NHL 98...Nothing wrong with that, right? It was one of the last GOOD hockey games on console.

[Toast]

Battlefield 2 is a damn fun game.

Congrats on the political statement and the boycott.

[schild]

Battlefield 2 is a damn fun game.

You mean demo, rite? Doesn't everyone have to pay for the upgraded server browser with the expansion?

[AcidCat]

I don't feel RtR was ignored. I actually liked the maps and there was always a lot of activity on them.

I also got a lot of mileage out of RtR, there were some really cool maps.

[Megrim]

You can't really be a gamer and boycott EA, imo.

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 - meg