PC Gamer Blog

Wednesday, July 27, 2005                                  

Battlefield 2 Bunny Hopping

Some people swear by it, others hate it. Personally, I'll do whatever I can to avoid enemy fire. But, the one thing I don't do at all, is try to fire back while bunny hopping. I think that is the crucial point. So many people hop around like idiots while continueing to fire at you. This is the main point people are upset about. First of all, lets not even begin to discuss how, with full battle gear and carrying all those weapons, a person can jump 5 feet high. I know the game is not meant to be a super realistic simulation. But, why does the person's accuracy not seem to go out of whack while jumping madly around you? I always seem to get killed by these bunny-hopping idiots. I consider this the same as an exploit much like those stat whores we all know and love. Personally, I still love the game and am able to deal with these weenies. I just wanted to see if I could get a discussion going. What does everyone else think?

And, oh yeah. Don't forget to order your copy of the Battlefield 2 Strategy Guide. It's a really useful reference.

Monday, July 25, 2005                                  

Battlefield 2 1.03 Patch Announced

EA UK announced in their forums on Friday, that the 1.03 patch for Battlefield 2 is currently in the works. They are targeting the end of August for release of the Battlefield 2 1.03 patch. Here is an except from the posting describing some of the "improvements" they are making. For example, one of the more controversial changes, is adding points for the Special Ops class for destroying enemy artillery, radar, and UAV installations. Some people, namely Special Ops players, think this is a great thing and a long overdue change. Others think it will just lead to that many more people playing an already way over-played class. Personally, I say, just play the game and enjoy it. If you don't like playing with so many Special Ops players, then find another server. Or, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!


Server and Client performance improvements
Improved Server Browser -– added Favorites and History Lists.
Point-farming prevention - game will stop Support/Medic/Engineer point farming exploits.
Squads - locked squad leader will get a message if someone wants to join.
Many HUD improvements - see the names of others in your vehicle, zoom level changing depending on vehicle, map zoom depending on map setup (16, 32 or 64 player map) etc.
Teamkilling changes - the logic of how teamkills are tracked will be changed.
Gameplay tweaks - the way transport helicopters work will be tweaked.
Additional scoring changes - players who destroy an enemy commander's assets will be given points.


See the full Battlefield 2 1.03 patch announcement here.

Friday, July 22, 2005                                  

Battlefield 2 Commander Tips

Here are some tips and tricks for being a Battlefield 2 Commander that I've accumulated from other sites as well as from what I've learned myself for about 3 in game hours. I'm not an expert, just making some tips and suggestions for those having difficulty.

  • Persuade as many players as possible to form squads, preferably with at least 2-3 players per squad, no smaller (except possibly sniper + SpecOps squads)

  • I'd recommend playing as an Engineer and find a good hiding spot nearby your teams artillery, radar and UAV trailer installations so you can repair them yourself rather than wasting a supply crate.

  • Use VOIP! I can't stress this enough. It's much easier to give voice commands to all squads at once than using the in game command interface (but use them in conjunction if possible.

  • Commend your squads that obey your orders, or ones that are performing well.

  • Scan the map prior to deploying the UAV. Make sure there are enemy's where you are planning on deploying the UAV. Don't waste it.

  • Don't send your squads running all over the map. Send them to the nearest objective they can handle.

  • After a successful, heated battle for a flag, drop a supply crate for your squads to resupply and heal. Don't wait for them to ask for one!

  • I thought this one would go without saying, but in the past few games I've played, I guess not. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to be on the front lines and play the commander role. You will suck at both. Play one or the other. Period.

  • Do not drop artillery, under any circumstances, in the close proximity of your squads, unless they explicitly ask for it.

  • Don't waste artillery on snipers. Just point them out on the map to your squads, or order a smaller squad to their position to take them out.

  • When attempting to take a heavily fortified control point, try to have two squads come from multiple directions. Don't just direct them head on, they will usually lose.

  • Communicate, communicate, communicate!

  • Cheap, but sometimes effective trick: if no one on your team is in need of a resupply, you can order an artillery strike in the center of a populated enemy control point, then drop a supply crate immediately. Most of the time, the enemy will all jump on the supply crate right away, resulting in a number of artillery kills.
  • Thursday, July 21, 2005                                  

    Battlefield 2 Strategy Part I

    First off, let me say that I am far from the best in the game, or even really good. But, at times, with certain strategies, I do fairly well. Other times, I suck. So take these strategy suggestions with a grain of salt. Try them out, see how they work for you.

    My favorite role on most of the maps I play (Songhua Stalemate, Sharqi Peninsula, Mashtuur City, Dalian Plant) is as chopper pilot. Doesn't matter whether it's the transport chopper (Blackhawk is the most maneuverable for me, the Chinese version is a dog) or the attack chopper (MI-28 Hind or Apache are both great). Lately, I've enjoyed playing with my squad member ONG_MO as we team up in the chopper. He's usually the gunner and I'm the pilot. It can also help greatly if whoever is the gunner, or just have another person or two jump in) is an engineer, as they can switch back and forth between repairing the chopper and gunning. Repairing while under fire can be dangerous though and will only buy you another few seconds to hopefully get out of dodge.

    As the pilot, the best technique/role to take on, is base clearing and flag capping so the enemy can no longer spawn there. Make sure that you are in a squad with your chopper buddy as it helps if your gunner gets shot out of the chopper, he can spawn right back in the chopper. More on that part of the tactic later. Request an order from the commander and go directly to that base. Hopefully the commander knows what he's doing. If your gunner is in the left gun position, approach the base from the right (keeping the base on your left side) at a medium altitude. Commence circling around the outer perimeter of the base using mostly the tail rotor (yaw control) to circle around, keeping the same altitude. The key is to stay steady and level! If there are any fellow RL pilots out there, you are basically executing a turn around a point, where the point is the center of the base. If you have a good gunner, and are able to circle steadily, you should rack up the kills. I've circled once or twice while my gunner, ONG_MO has taken out at least 6+ soldiers. After racking up a bunch of kills, it may be relatively safe to drop in and try to cap the flag. This does work best with more people in the chopper, but is riskier overall as more of your team is wrapped up in the chopper and not on the ground. The best way to come in to the base, is so that your gunner positions are facing the openings where the enemy will approach from. That way, even if you have one gunner, he can switch guns and keep you covered. My choice is to stay in a hover to capture the flag. It makes it much easier to get the heck out of there if someone gets missile lock on you. And I advise you do just that. As soon as you hear the missile lock, hit the throttle and get the heck out of there and get to a safe place to get repairs to come back and try again. Make sure your gunner takes out anyone at the AA missile stations next time. They will most certainly be waiting for you. ONG_MO and I have easily taking 2-3 flags in a row before getting taken out. As I said, it works best if you have some ground support with you to hold the base after you take it. Most likely, there is one or two enemies hiding waiting for you to leave so they can recap the flag.

    Let me know what your favorite tactics are. I know my tactic can be controversial, if you read the forums often. Lots of people hate the fact that you can capture flags in choppers. But it can be great fun, and not too bad for points.

    Oh, and one last thing. It's kind of personal preference, but I find it much easier to fly with a joystick than with the mouse and keyboard. Some people may argue this, but, I can hover much better if I can just set the throttle to pick my altitude and leave it, rather than having to hit the increase throttle button every second.

    Tuesday, July 19, 2005                                  

    Share Your Greatest Battlefield 2 Moments

    It seems to be a slow news day on the Battlefield 2 front, so I thought we could use this time to welcome my new subscribers, and ask everyone to join in and share your greatest, funniest, craziest or stupidest Battlefield 2 war stories.

    I had a really stupid few moments last night that, afterwards, seemed pretty damn funny. I had just respawned on top of the TV Station tower on the Sharqi Peninsula map and my squad mate had just taken off in the apache, so I called him back to pick me up. But there were about 5 other team members running around like chickens with their heads cut off up there, all wanting to get in the chopper too. So my teammate turns around and heads back to the TV Station. As he's coming in over the top, everyone's running towards him, and the enemy chopper has also arrived and has started bombarding the TV Station tower, so my teammate starts to take off again. I made a mad dash towards the chopper which was quickly accelerating away from the tower, but I thought I might just be able to catch it. So I jumped over the side of the TV Station frantically hitting the E key, hoping I'd get close enough to the chopper, but I couldn't reach it. Just at the same time, the enemy chopper nailed me with a missile and my body came crashing down directly on the barbed wire fence below. It looked painful, but pretty funny.

    Tell me your war stories....

    Monday, July 18, 2005                                  

    Battlefield 2 Medals and Ribbon Details

    I came upon a great guide that gives the exact details about how to obtain each Battlefield 2 Badges, Ribbons, and Medals. For example, how do you earn the Basic Air Defense Badge? Simply spend at least 10 minutes in a Stinger missile turret (Surface to Air Missile). How do you earn the Staff Officer Ribbon? Spend 28 minutes as commander in 1 game and have a commander score of 50 in a single round.

    Check out the site for more great details. I wonder how they were able to figure all this information out? Someone must know an insider.

    EDIT:
    For more detailed information about the complete game, including great strategies, tips and game details, check out the Battlefield 2 : Prima's Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides). It's under $12 from Amazon! Great deal; that's a whole $5 cheaper than at EB!

    Sunday, July 17, 2005                                  

    Battlefield 2 1.02 Patch Released

    Ok, it's finally here. EA has fixed the first 1.01 patch and released this "hotfix" as version 1.02. Download the Battlefield 2 1.02 patch from EA. This may not work for some people, so here are a bunch of mirrors where you can get it. My favorite is Fileplanet as I'm a yearly subscriber.

    Battlefield 2 patch at Fileplanet
    Battlefield 2 patch at FileFront
    Battlefield 2 patch at Filecloud
    Battlefield 2 patch at JustPressPlay
    Battlefield 2 patch at GameArena (registration required)
    Battlefield 2 patch at GamerNode
    Battlefield 2 patch at WorthPlaying
    Battlefield 2 patch at GCNetwork
    Battlefield 2 patch at NoFear
    Battlefield 2 patch at AusGames

    Friday, July 15, 2005                                  

    Battlefield 2 Stats Site Partially Available

    There has been some new information as of late with regards to Battlefield 2 stats websites. It seems that all the recent activity from websites querying EA stat servers has been the root cause of all the account server login difficulties, as well as possibly bad code causing a pseudo DOS attack against Gamespy (this is just my theory though as the timing of that rumor was only a day or two ago. While writing this post, I checked out the official Battlefield 2 website and my theory is true.)

    So it seems the best Battlefield 2 stats tracking website is now partially back online after reaching a tentative agreement with EA/Dice. Here's a quote from the website:

    Site Partially Online 7/14

    After speaking with EA/DICE/IGN, I have been informed that the overuse and misuse of the stats querying services were a major contributing factor to the slow login times and laggy account servers over the last few days. In an effort to improve gameplay, the stats website were thus blocked. However, because there is no "good site, bad site" filter, even sites like mine that use lots of caching to be kind to EA servers, were blocked. This was not a light decision either, as the developers fully support the stat sites and value them, however, game play comes first.

    For the time being, I have worked out a temporary deal with the developers to run this site with stat queries at reduced functionality. However, EA/DICE/IGN are working very quickly on a more permanent solution for general web stats querying. I imagine that within the next week or two there will be an XML service that will be separate from the main servers. When that becomes available, I will release and updated package so that everyone can use that.

    UNTIL THAT TIME IF YOU HAVE A STATS PROGRAM AND IT IS WORKING, PLEASE ENABLE CACHING AS OUR USE OF THEIR SERVERS IS NEGATIVELY AFFECTING GAMEPLAY FOR EVERYONE.

    More news as it becomes available. - Jeff


    Thanks Jeff, and keep up the great work, and the great site! BTW, if you happen to visit my site and read this post, I was curious how you figured out how to access the stats feed anyway. Did you use a packet sniffer to see the traffic coming in to the game when you clicked on the BFHQ tab? I haven't tried it myself, but I'm assuming that function in the game accesses a webservice of Gamespy that provides the functionality for accessing user stats. But I haven't been able to confirm this by searching the net for more information.

    Thursday, July 14, 2005                                  

    Battlefield 2 Stat Sites shut down

    It seems that EA/Dice has brought the hammer down on some Battlefield 2 Stat sites like the one I linked to here, as well as BF2Tracker. A message posted on Bf2s.com states:
    Site Offline 7/13

    I'm in contact with EA/DICE/IGN about resolving the issue of websites querying stats, but for the time being stats will not update from EA's servers. Previously cached stats will show up where avialable, but will not be up-to-date.

    I hope to have everything back up and running in 24 hours or so.

    Jeff

    Tuesday, July 12, 2005                                  

    Battlefield 2 Patch Buggy

    To say the least. EA is reportedly instructing Battlefield 2 users to uninstall their game (leaving their profile) and reinstalling the game sans 1.01 patch. Apparently, in their haste to release the first patch with bug fixes that should have been part of the initial release, they introduced new bugs, including a nasty memory leak that has caused many a machine to crash. Luckily, I have yet to experience any crash bugs myself, but I have had the game quit to the desktop a few times since installing the patch. Also, they really didn't "fix" the server browser. It still sucks, just not as bad as before. The filters still don't work right. I deselect all Small maps and I still see all 16 player maps in the server browser. Back to the drawing board DICE. Lets get it right next time! And to everyone (all 5 of you) who installed the patch from the links on my blog, I apologize. With EA, it comes with the territory though.
    The Battlefield 2 official site has the details.

    Wednesday, July 06, 2005                                  

    Battlefield 2 Patch Released!

    The highly anticipated first patch of Battlefield 2 has just been released by Electronic Arts on their ftp server. This patch fixes a lot of annoying and well known issues with the game, including

  • Fixed in issue that caused the Multiplayer Browser to become unresponsive.

  • Fixed an issue where some game controls were not available to be rebound within the Options menu.

  • Fixed an issue with increasing performance degradation on servers.

  • Fixed a problem with shader caching on client/host : after the first map in a rotation, shaders would be loaded on the fly during gameplay.


  • Download the Battlefield 2 patch. This link may not work for all users. Here are a few mirrors (list courtesy of TotalBF2.com

    GamerNode #1
    GamerNode #2
    FileFront
    BF2 Files
    Gamespot


    Brief opinion....since this patch was released only about two weeks after the game went gold. The one bug that I absolutely think should have been fixed prior to game launch is the problem with the multiplayer browser. It's almost unusable. It hangs for long periods causing you to miss your "window of opportunity" to get into an almost full ranked server. Oh well. Get the patch. Play the game.


    EDIT July 15, 2005:
    Ok, I should have added this edit a while ago as I still see many people getting to this page and downloading the patch. The patch has a memory leak! See my more recent post talking about the memory leak in the Battlefield 2 1.01 patch. So wait for the hotfix that EA is currently testing:

    HOTFIX Candidate Now Being Tested!
    Listen up soldiers, this update is to inform you that EA and DICE have a HOTFIX candidate for Battlefield 2 v1.01 in testing now. What does this mean? It means the fix for the memory leak found in v1.01 is being tested and will soon be available. While we're unable to specify an exact release date, rest assured, it's not far off and we will keep you updated through this web space.

    EA to release Battlefield 2 patch today at noon PT

    The official Battlefield 2 site was updated late yesterday with more information about the upcoming patch. First off, great news: the patch will be released later today at 12:00 pm Pacific Time. For all you liberal arts majors, that's 3 pm Eastern Time.

    Also, they have made the unranked server patch files for both Windows and Linux available now.

    Keep an eye out for the patch and get it quick. I'm sure it will become difficult to download the patch fairly quickly as the thousands pound EA's ftp servers.

    Friday, July 01, 2005                                  

    EA announces patch for Battlefield 2 coming soon

    EA has announced that they will be releasing a patch for Battlefield 2. They've listed a few major bugs that they are addressing, the development of a new Linux server build, their progress on the BF2 Editor, and the initial public release of Advanced Tactical Center for Battlefield 2. No word on the exact release date yet.

    That's right, the first Battlefield 2 Update is coming your way very soon. We've kept quiet about this update so far, but today we're going to reveal the major fixes coming with the Update. The best part is, every fix in this update is a result of Community feedback on the demo and retail game release.