THE GREATEST GAME THAT EVER WASNT.
(Warning, griping and useless information to most follows: )
First, let me start by saying, no I dont take this too serious.
With the exception of the times between double clicking the BF2 icon
on the desktop and clicking the QUIT button within the game, I dont waste
much time worrying about a video game.. Ive been in the computer software
business for 25 years. Chances are, if it was a popular release during that
time, Ive tried it. My first modem was 110 baud. Ive been 'online' since before
Matthew Broderick started 'Global Thermonuclear War'.
Im not claiming to be the be-all end-all source of reference as to what is and
what isnt 'good' in gaming.. but, Ive been around the block more than once.
Having said that, the time in-menu and in-game can sometimes, and for me, far too
often, be painful to take. The game has many great features, and the graphics
to go along with them. The physics of the weapons, vehicles, bullets, rockets, etc.
are pretty damn good. They've done a good job getting air vehicles flight characteristics
playable. However this as I will state below in my 'Top 5 things that make BF2 miss
the mark.' More specifically, the way the vehicles are incorporated into a battlefield.
This game IS called, 'Battlefield 2' ya know..
So, I will begin my rants and state my beefs.
Top 5 things that make Battlefield 2 miss the mark.
#1 Startup, Menus, and the infamous Server Browser:
Connecting to the Account Server sometimes takes over a minute, other times, 5 seconds.
I dont get it. We're just logging in, we're not uploading a 100MB file or anything. It
should take 10 seconds at most, and thats probably giving them 7 seconds too many..
Millions of people can login to yahoo, cnn, foxnews, and millions of other places on
the internet, most times so quick its not even noticed..but for some reason logging into
Battlefield 2's account server takes 60 seconds or more at times.. a mystery to me,
when all my other games over the past 15 years have accomplished this in blazing speed.
The setup for your hardware isnt that bad, a couple minor tweaks are needed such as
being able to bind a command to a key without having to reset the one that may already
be assigned to it first.. No big deal really.
Battlefield 2's server browser.. Wow, what can one say, but, its total junk. A disgrace
to online games everywhere. The information it gives you at first is only useful in
the # of players field, the ping times are a joke. 265 ? No, click once, its 145 ? No,
click once again, its 63. Sad.. And no buddy List? Finding your buddies to play really
requires xfire, or yahoo instant messenger.. Very sad.. But hey, thanks for that
favorites list addition 6 months after game release.. yipee! Honestly, I havent written
much code in the past 8 years, but yes, I could write a better one in a matter of hours,
beta test it for a day or two and have it released within 3 days, tops. Sometimes theirs
locks up for a minute or more, doing what? who knows..
#2 BF2's voting system:
A total joke.. a tiny text message ignored by most players comes across for this or
that vote. Having read this and other forums for a while, I hear a lot of people saying
they hit page up (or down..) just to get it off the screen whatever it is.. Getting a
useless, or self serving stat padding commander off your team is nearly impossible. Ive
logged 1500 games and have only seen maybe 1 successful mutiny, but have seen the need
for a mutiny hundreds of times. Want to vote for another map ? another tiny message
at the bottom goes ignored by most...
#3 Dominant Air power over all else:
Like I said, the aircraft are all cool as hell, physics are awesome, etc.. But again,
lets be honest.. A lot of games are played with less than 20 players 10/10.. Is there
really a need for 2 jets and a couple choppers for each team ? Nope. Far Far Far too
often they're used to chopper cap flags, which is about as unrealistic as anything
ever. Other times, on other maps with the cannon equiped choppers they slaughter
everything in a 50 yard radius. Skilless spam, with no REAL defense against them when
they are piloted by even a half decent pilot and gunner, when piloted by a very
good pilot/copilot its a slaughter even worse. And lets not forget the jets. I actually
get killed by frienly jets about as much as enemy ones. Way too many trigger finger
jet tards in this game. Teammates tk'ing each other for them. Retards using your
one and only jeep for a taxi ride of 100 yards so he can get to his precious jet, blah.
So, all in all, its basically how they are used. Not so much that they arent a great
part of the game itself. So my suggestion for this is to make these server side options.
Give the admin the power to say if and how many jets are in the maps. In my personal
opinion, take them all out, the game is 10x more fun without them, but thats just my
view.
#4 Commander mode:
Like I mentioned above about the useless voting system. Its impossible to get rid
of useless, or self serving commanders. Hell, I have nothing against some new guy
wanting to learn how to command, send me a message saying 'hey im new at this, give
me some time..' Im cool with that.. but that isnt the case most of the time. I either
get 1 of 2 types of commander in just about every game I play..
commander type a; this is the guy who uavs himself, supplies himself, and now more
recently gives himself vehicles all game long, ignoring all requests by most others
for help. His mission is his mission, tough luck for you whatever youre trying to do.
They are generally less skilled players, hence the reason they need that 2x bonus!
commander type b; this is the commander who helps him or his buddies only. You generally
find these on clan servers. You know the ones.. they got 3-4-5 guys on your team, 1 is
commander, the other few are in a squad, and they get ALL the help. They are generally
decently to above average skilled commanding, but for the purposes of 'HEY ITS OUR
SERVER!' you get squat.
Other aspects of the commander mode that are a joke.. Magical radars with all your
enemies locations on it ? Who thought that up? Look at your uavs folks, it even
shows which way they are facing ?! wow! again, lets make that a server option. Game
would be twice as fun without uavs and arty spam, imo.
#5 EA/DICE's lack of support:
Yea I know, every game is gonna have some bugs. But lets recap here, because Ive been
around this game since it was released. First we had choppers full of players chopper
capping bases in .003 seconds then moving to the next base.. FINALLY got a patch that
thwarted that after what? 3 months? Red tag bug, which affected me dozens and dozens of
times. Even last night I seen 2 guys without a tag at all. Still a minor bug there to
fix. Releasing a patch that stops a player from jumping and firing at the same time ??
i.e. bunny hopping. And why? Well, because some people complained about it because it
'wasnt realistic.' Ok, answer this then.. Is a medic reviving a DEAD person , then the stiff hops up
and runs off to fight again, realistic ? Hmmmm.. dont remember any complaints about that
one.... Or.. a chopper that can take ground from the air ? realistic ? I think not.
Where are the posts about that? Where is the patch for those ? case closed.
Basically, they keep issuing patches for this game, some of which claim to fix '150+'
bugs, but yet, some of the same things after 10 months of release are still there.
Ive got news for you folks. If a piece of software's 3rd or 4th patch has '150+'
bug fixes in it, you got yourself a horrible piece of code. And lets not forget that
DICE took a long vacation the week the game was released. Can you say WTF?!?!
In ending, 'Id say they had a great idea for a great game, and almost ended up with
a true winner. But in the end, playing on most servers these days, its down right painful
having to deal with exploitation, no teamwork in a teamwork oriented game, and toss in
the fact that even getting started, logged in, browsed, and connected is a chore in itself.
I just wish EA/DICE put as much effort into fixing their bugs, starting with the
server browser (call me! I'll write it for you EA. no charge!) as they did trying to
toss out $10 expansion packs with a few maps in them. Give the admin some more options
so he can run the server he's paying for the way he wants. Dont worry, EA, you can
keep your precious ranked server stats system intact, just give him some room to deal
with all the problems this game has. This is the only game I have ever seen where the
server messages almost always say 'Dont do this, Dont do that, Dont do this, Dont do
that' and why? because these admins how no power to do it internally.
Honorable mention problems, some of my own little personal rants.
a. do we really need 8-10-16 babysitter players before we can start a game just so
you can "deal" with your stat padder problem.
b. Do apaches really take direct tank shell hits and survive ? I think not.
c. Sometimes my AT mines kill me, sometimes they dont? someone explain it to me..
d. If you can warn and then take health away from a player who is outside the
battlefield zone, can you not keep a jeep from being dropped on a carrier by the commander?
e. Could the chat font size not have been just 1 point bigger? Perhaps a setting for it ?
(yes I know its incorporated into the graphics..) but still, its too small.
/end rant
I hope you will see that while I feel there are soooooo many problems and exploits in
this game, that I also did praise the game for what it DOES offer. Sometimes it can
be the best game ever. I'm merely stating that with a few more hours of thought and
good code writing, it could have been OVER THE TOP awesome. Right now, I'd give it
a 7.5 out of 10 on my gaming experience score. It should have been a 9.5 or 10.
my back is now turned, flame away!
-- "Do it right the first time and there wont be a second time..." --- someone smarter than me.
(Warning, griping and useless information to most follows: )
First, let me start by saying, no I dont take this too serious.
With the exception of the times between double clicking the BF2 icon
on the desktop and clicking the QUIT button within the game, I dont waste
much time worrying about a video game.. Ive been in the computer software
business for 25 years. Chances are, if it was a popular release during that
time, Ive tried it. My first modem was 110 baud. Ive been 'online' since before
Matthew Broderick started 'Global Thermonuclear War'.
Im not claiming to be the be-all end-all source of reference as to what is and
what isnt 'good' in gaming.. but, Ive been around the block more than once.
Having said that, the time in-menu and in-game can sometimes, and for me, far too
often, be painful to take. The game has many great features, and the graphics
to go along with them. The physics of the weapons, vehicles, bullets, rockets, etc.
are pretty damn good. They've done a good job getting air vehicles flight characteristics
playable. However this as I will state below in my 'Top 5 things that make BF2 miss
the mark.' More specifically, the way the vehicles are incorporated into a battlefield.
This game IS called, 'Battlefield 2' ya know..
So, I will begin my rants and state my beefs.
Top 5 things that make Battlefield 2 miss the mark.
#1 Startup, Menus, and the infamous Server Browser:
Connecting to the Account Server sometimes takes over a minute, other times, 5 seconds.
I dont get it. We're just logging in, we're not uploading a 100MB file or anything. It
should take 10 seconds at most, and thats probably giving them 7 seconds too many..
Millions of people can login to yahoo, cnn, foxnews, and millions of other places on
the internet, most times so quick its not even noticed..but for some reason logging into
Battlefield 2's account server takes 60 seconds or more at times.. a mystery to me,
when all my other games over the past 15 years have accomplished this in blazing speed.
The setup for your hardware isnt that bad, a couple minor tweaks are needed such as
being able to bind a command to a key without having to reset the one that may already
be assigned to it first.. No big deal really.
Battlefield 2's server browser.. Wow, what can one say, but, its total junk. A disgrace
to online games everywhere. The information it gives you at first is only useful in
the # of players field, the ping times are a joke. 265 ? No, click once, its 145 ? No,
click once again, its 63. Sad.. And no buddy List? Finding your buddies to play really
requires xfire, or yahoo instant messenger.. Very sad.. But hey, thanks for that
favorites list addition 6 months after game release.. yipee! Honestly, I havent written
much code in the past 8 years, but yes, I could write a better one in a matter of hours,
beta test it for a day or two and have it released within 3 days, tops. Sometimes theirs
locks up for a minute or more, doing what? who knows..
#2 BF2's voting system:
A total joke.. a tiny text message ignored by most players comes across for this or
that vote. Having read this and other forums for a while, I hear a lot of people saying
they hit page up (or down..) just to get it off the screen whatever it is.. Getting a
useless, or self serving stat padding commander off your team is nearly impossible. Ive
logged 1500 games and have only seen maybe 1 successful mutiny, but have seen the need
for a mutiny hundreds of times. Want to vote for another map ? another tiny message
at the bottom goes ignored by most...
#3 Dominant Air power over all else:
Like I said, the aircraft are all cool as hell, physics are awesome, etc.. But again,
lets be honest.. A lot of games are played with less than 20 players 10/10.. Is there
really a need for 2 jets and a couple choppers for each team ? Nope. Far Far Far too
often they're used to chopper cap flags, which is about as unrealistic as anything
ever. Other times, on other maps with the cannon equiped choppers they slaughter
everything in a 50 yard radius. Skilless spam, with no REAL defense against them when
they are piloted by even a half decent pilot and gunner, when piloted by a very
good pilot/copilot its a slaughter even worse. And lets not forget the jets. I actually
get killed by frienly jets about as much as enemy ones. Way too many trigger finger
jet tards in this game. Teammates tk'ing each other for them. Retards using your
one and only jeep for a taxi ride of 100 yards so he can get to his precious jet, blah.
So, all in all, its basically how they are used. Not so much that they arent a great
part of the game itself. So my suggestion for this is to make these server side options.
Give the admin the power to say if and how many jets are in the maps. In my personal
opinion, take them all out, the game is 10x more fun without them, but thats just my
view.
#4 Commander mode:
Like I mentioned above about the useless voting system. Its impossible to get rid
of useless, or self serving commanders. Hell, I have nothing against some new guy
wanting to learn how to command, send me a message saying 'hey im new at this, give
me some time..' Im cool with that.. but that isnt the case most of the time. I either
get 1 of 2 types of commander in just about every game I play..
commander type a; this is the guy who uavs himself, supplies himself, and now more
recently gives himself vehicles all game long, ignoring all requests by most others
for help. His mission is his mission, tough luck for you whatever youre trying to do.
They are generally less skilled players, hence the reason they need that 2x bonus!
commander type b; this is the commander who helps him or his buddies only. You generally
find these on clan servers. You know the ones.. they got 3-4-5 guys on your team, 1 is
commander, the other few are in a squad, and they get ALL the help. They are generally
decently to above average skilled commanding, but for the purposes of 'HEY ITS OUR
SERVER!' you get squat.
Other aspects of the commander mode that are a joke.. Magical radars with all your
enemies locations on it ? Who thought that up? Look at your uavs folks, it even
shows which way they are facing ?! wow! again, lets make that a server option. Game
would be twice as fun without uavs and arty spam, imo.
#5 EA/DICE's lack of support:
Yea I know, every game is gonna have some bugs. But lets recap here, because Ive been
around this game since it was released. First we had choppers full of players chopper
capping bases in .003 seconds then moving to the next base.. FINALLY got a patch that
thwarted that after what? 3 months? Red tag bug, which affected me dozens and dozens of
times. Even last night I seen 2 guys without a tag at all. Still a minor bug there to
fix. Releasing a patch that stops a player from jumping and firing at the same time ??
i.e. bunny hopping. And why? Well, because some people complained about it because it
'wasnt realistic.' Ok, answer this then.. Is a medic reviving a DEAD person , then the stiff hops up
and runs off to fight again, realistic ? Hmmmm.. dont remember any complaints about that
one.... Or.. a chopper that can take ground from the air ? realistic ? I think not.
Where are the posts about that? Where is the patch for those ? case closed.
Basically, they keep issuing patches for this game, some of which claim to fix '150+'
bugs, but yet, some of the same things after 10 months of release are still there.
Ive got news for you folks. If a piece of software's 3rd or 4th patch has '150+'
bug fixes in it, you got yourself a horrible piece of code. And lets not forget that
DICE took a long vacation the week the game was released. Can you say WTF?!?!
In ending, 'Id say they had a great idea for a great game, and almost ended up with
a true winner. But in the end, playing on most servers these days, its down right painful
having to deal with exploitation, no teamwork in a teamwork oriented game, and toss in
the fact that even getting started, logged in, browsed, and connected is a chore in itself.
I just wish EA/DICE put as much effort into fixing their bugs, starting with the
server browser (call me! I'll write it for you EA. no charge!) as they did trying to
toss out $10 expansion packs with a few maps in them. Give the admin some more options
so he can run the server he's paying for the way he wants. Dont worry, EA, you can
keep your precious ranked server stats system intact, just give him some room to deal
with all the problems this game has. This is the only game I have ever seen where the
server messages almost always say 'Dont do this, Dont do that, Dont do this, Dont do
that' and why? because these admins how no power to do it internally.
Honorable mention problems, some of my own little personal rants.
a. do we really need 8-10-16 babysitter players before we can start a game just so
you can "deal" with your stat padder problem.
b. Do apaches really take direct tank shell hits and survive ? I think not.
c. Sometimes my AT mines kill me, sometimes they dont? someone explain it to me..
d. If you can warn and then take health away from a player who is outside the
battlefield zone, can you not keep a jeep from being dropped on a carrier by the commander?
e. Could the chat font size not have been just 1 point bigger? Perhaps a setting for it ?
(yes I know its incorporated into the graphics..) but still, its too small.
/end rant
I hope you will see that while I feel there are soooooo many problems and exploits in
this game, that I also did praise the game for what it DOES offer. Sometimes it can
be the best game ever. I'm merely stating that with a few more hours of thought and
good code writing, it could have been OVER THE TOP awesome. Right now, I'd give it
a 7.5 out of 10 on my gaming experience score. It should have been a 9.5 or 10.
my back is now turned, flame away!
-- "Do it right the first time and there wont be a second time..." --- someone smarter than me.
Last edited by SgtMurphy (2006-05-31 21:12:32)
