Battlefield 2 'Features' that I hope don't show up in ET:QW

(Ifurita) #1

I think Battlefield 2 has some interesting parallels to what we’ve seen in ET:QW, with some class-based features, vehicles, etc. However, as I play BF2, there are some things that I find to be totally silly … and have full faith and confidence that our SD developers won’t repeat.

  1. Loading screen. While it’s nice to spam your logos everytime the game loads, it sucks having to wait a minute everytime, watching your logos, with no way to ESC out of them and get right to the game.

  2. Options screen.

  • When ever you finish a key assignment, the cursor returns to center screen. WHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!! This has probably increased my mouse travel and config time 5 fold
  • I like having different binds set up for vehicles and land, but common controls should always override specific controls when non are specified. For example, everything defaults to WASD for movement, but if I change my movement keys to ESDF in Common, I shouldn’t have to change the movement keys in every fricken window to match.
  • The prompts for key conflicts is poor, buggy, and piss me off

  1. Binds. Why on earth there is no way to assign mwheelup/down in the options menu is beyond me.

  2. Unassignable keys. KP_Downarrow in BF2 always prompts “common key in use” when it isn’t assigned anywhere, but makes it unassignable. Stupid shit like this is just unexcusable

  3. BF2 needs /kill. It sucks to spawn, find no vehicles, and be resigned to a 2 minute trek across the map. To be fair, at the 16-player level, it seems that most maps are manageable on foot.

  4. Game modes, glorified camp the flag just doesn’t do it for me. We need ET style missions. In fact, it would be cool to have obj runs, where the obj runner cannot get into a vehicle.

  5. Class mechanic. Interesting, but needs to be a little more limited. I’m not sure that I like being able to jump in and out of kits as easily as you can in BF2

  6. The vehicle damage mechanic, while not realistic, feels about right. You can bring down any vehicle with a combo of other vehicles, AT weapons, and grenades, so that they aren’t all powerful.

I’ll think up more things when I get to it.

(Loffy) #2

I could not bind crouch to left Alt button (I crouch with my thumb). I just cannot understand how a modern fps game can do this to me? I payed for the game darn it.
The attack helicopter is hard to fly! But then I saw my kids fly it. So i guess the problem lies behind the controls.

(FireFly) #3

I’ll think up more things when I get to it.

Well, that expains why you aren’t on the ET: Level Design forums these days…
You’re too busy playing that damn BF2 game :fiesta:

(Kendle) #4

The opening movies can be disabled and most key bind stuff can be done outside the game by editing files, but it does suck that BF2 forces you to do this and the facility for binding keys in-game is the worst I’ve ever come across.

The conquest game mode in BF2 is seriously flawed, and the single biggest reason I’ve given up on it and gone back to ET fulltime. The “Supply Lines” mode that was mentioned prior to release but never saw the light of day would’ve been an improvement (whereby flags are captured in order so as to concentrate the action in a single area), but the current “each team captures the other teams flags while they do the same to you, rinse and repeat” merry-go-round in BF2 sucks big time.

Vehicles are “OK” up to a point, but on maps where you simply must have a vehicle to get anywhere (and even some of the 16-player versions are like that) then, as Iffy says, spawning and finding no vehicles available for a while, or worse still spawning a finding a team-mate drive off on his own in an APC that could’ve taken several others is annoying to say the least.

It remains to be seen what ET:QW can do to learn from BF2’s mistakes, but something other than BF2’s conquest game mode would be a big start.

(Joe999) #5

congrats, you digged deeper into the game than i did. i stopped already at the demo which sucked gameplay-wise and after it froze my sys i knew this is thrown out money. but hey, at least the commercial intro and the long long and even longer loading screens worked.

(carnage) #6
  1. Game modes, glorified camp the flag just doesn’t do it for me. We need ET style missions. In fact, it would be cool to have obj runs, where the obj runner cannot get into a vehicle.

from what ive read it sounds like some objectives are vehicle like u got get a comand vehicle to a location then set it up or something

one think i dislike about bf2 is perhaps the level of teamplay needed with weapon loadouts i always end up in situations where its imposible to defeat ur oponent cos u though ude be a nice friendly medic and the other dude has a tank. i like ET cos no mater what ur situation u have a chance of beating ur oponent even with a knife

will there be something like jumpin on vehicles and killing the driver or something so drivers have to actaul think about how they gona use them rather than just be given the kills on a plate

(SCDS_reyalP) #7

You can suicide from the class menu. Whether you can bind it I don’t know, but that shouldn’t be a big deal since there is no wave respawn. However, I’m pretty sure it will count against your teams tickets.

I had an alternate idea of how to deal with this. Make a very simple vehicle (maybe a bicycle or motorbike) that is available almost everywhere. You can’t shoot from it, it doesn’t give you protection, but you can get from point A to point B at reasonable speed.

Note that BF2 makes the especially annoying since the infantry movement is so slow. If it had ET movement speed and strafe jumping, it wouldn’t be nearly as much of an issue.

  1. Game modes, glorified camp the flag just doesn’t do it for me. We need ET style missions. In fact, it would be cool to have obj runs, where the obj runner cannot get into a vehicle.

Agree 100% about the gamemode being blah. IMO, letting a doc runner use vehicles would be lead to some geat car chases.

  1. The vehicle damage mechanic, while not realistic, feels about right. You can bring down any vehicle with a combo of other vehicles, AT weapons, and grenades, so that they aren’t all powerful.

I think the infantry suffers too much against vehicles, especially aircraft. A squad of 7 guys on the ground has essentially no chance against a well flown aircraft. IMO, the anti-armour soldier ought to be able to choose between the AT rocket or a stinger/igla. For that matter, it shouldn’t take 3+ antitank rockets to take down a transport helicopter.

I agree with carnage that is is pretty annoying to have so many situations you can get into where you have absolutely no chance. Yes, it should encourage teamwork, but on a pub you can only push that so far.

The other thing that really annoys me is the spawn system. No spawn protection makes for annoying gameplay, especially when you can’t choose where at a given flag you spawn (it’s lovely to spawn right under an artillary barrage, which you have absolutely no way to avoid or escape). This is compounded by slow travel problems mentioned above. No spawn protection also makes revives much less interesting.

On the plus side, spawn to commander is pretty cool, and gives a real reason to form squads.

The integrated voicecom is a good idea, but the implementation isn’t that great. Not being able to chat when dead (you can if injured, but not if you are dead, AFAIK), and the fact that you can’t chat between rounds means that people will tend to use TS or vent instead. A lot of people also seem to have troubles getting their levels right with it.

It would be nice to have a ‘local’ voice channel, which talks to everyone in a given radius (or everyone in your vehicle if you are in one), as if you character was talking out loud.

I think the vehicle interface is pretty good overall, but it would be nice to see who is in each position. It would also be nice if the APCs and tanks allowed the driver to give control of the main weapons to one of passengers. As it stands, the gunner in a tank is pretty weak, while the driver is overloaded.

(Ifurita) #8

Hmmmm, the airpower seems very unbalanced. As ReyalP said, a skilled pilot in a fast mover, not offset by one on your own side, seems to have free reign over the battlefield to kill everything without a whole lot you can do. I don’t have nearly the same problems with helos.

(blushing_bride) #9

bf2 is just plain shit. i hope et2 is nothing like it

(Ifurita) #10

LOL

(Joe999) #11

you speak my words. unfortunately there’s a market for it. otherwise i can’t explain how the stupid no-teamplay-flag-capturing concept of BF2 ever worked out. i wonder why they still have no improvement of the game concept in every game they release.

but hey, at least they got loads of commercials before every launch of the game.

(carnage) #12

the only person i no who likes bf2 and play it all the time is one of thoies ppl who write to the devs and complain that the sniper cant pierce the hull of the comanche atack helicopter and this is unaceptable as a rifle that powerful can easily do such a thing

otherwise craving realism. imo stupid cos i never played a game that got close to seeming realistic

(au.Hiroshima>) #13

wow, all this stuff is never mentioned in the gushing reviews and glossed over by those who enjoy the rest of the game. I use qwes for movement and left alt for crouching, so some of these thing would really annoy me. I’m glad I didn’t rush out and buy a new graphics card just to play it!

(SCDS_reyalP) #14

I think BF2 is a pretty good game. If it weren’t for the above mentioned annoyances, it would be a great game.

The global ranking/rewards system is worth mentioning too. The upgrade weapons themselves mostly aren’t a huge advantage, but it encourages various forms of XP whoring, which detract from the game. When EA tries to crack down on XP exploits, it creates further acrimony, and still doesn’t solve the problem. It should be blindingly obvious that if you make rewards that take hundreds of hours to get in normal play, people are going to try to find an easier way. Same goes for medals with ridiculous requirements…

Overall, I think the global XP and ranking detracts from the game.

(au.Hiroshima>) #15

don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of things about bf2 that I really like the sound of and I do hope to play it eventually, but it’s the little things such as not being able to customise controls etc that tend to put me off most games.

The global skill accumulation doesn’t hold much interest for me either, playing for stats is a real turn-off and tends to promote poor sportsmanship in my experience. I suspect it is also used by the game makers & publishers as a cheap hook to ensure a captive audience who won’t have strayed by the time the next version is released…

(Ifurita) #16

Net net, I think it’s a fun game, but for me, it’s those little things that annoy me and really detract from it. Those are the issues that just feel like they weren’t thought out very well. Automatically center the mouse every time you bind a key? WTF?

Oh yes:

  1. No support for wide screen

  2. Wish the scripting system was more straightforward. Hard to get easier than set x “+moveforward”

  3. Screen res seems artificially capped at 1156 x 864, 60 hz (or something). That seems silly.

  4. Fast moving aircraft is way too powerful.

(SCDS_reyalP) #17

You can specify arbitrary resolutions from the command line. For example, I have a batch file containing:


start C:\games\battlefield2\BF2.exe +menu 1 +fullscreen 1 +szx 1280 +szy 1024 %*

so i can use my LCD at native res.

(Ifurita) #18

How do you get rid of the crappy corporate ads?

(Joe999) #19

in vietnam there was a command line switch for that, maybe there’s one as well in bf2. the almighty google says you should check out this page: http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_7.html

if bf2 is as intelligent as et, then after specifying the ip address of the server you want to join, you might get directly into the game.

why u ask about how to get rid of the crappy corporate ads? according to your list it sucks for you, so why do you play it anyway? :smiley:

i saw it already in the demo that it isn’t my game, so i’ll keep playing ET for a month, then buy and play Quake IV when it comes out and after a week when i saw that Q4 isn’t my game i’ll switch back to ET until ET:QW comes out. i hope SD means early spring 2006 when they speak of 2006 :smiley:

(fattakin) #20

These problems are merely annoyances, they arent really problems with the game / gameplay are they?