Battlefield 2 multiplayer, worth it for the casual gamer?

July 25, 2005 12:58 PM

I'm looking into buying Battlefield 2, for the multiplayer experience. Can anyone comment on the ability to accomodate the casual gamer? I've always been turned off by multiplayer games as it seems only a select few who play all day control the flow of the game. Is it easy to just pick up a quick game here and there?

There appears to be a ranking system and I've read at various exploits at people who take advantage of it. Is there a good feeling of team for those who don't join a squad? Do people bond enough to work together even through one game? Or do a few rogues end up spoiling it for everyone?

I'm often dismayed at playing and being totally whiped out by those who seem to be able to exploit every nuance of every map. Playing the demo seemed just a free-for-all rush.

Maybe I'm just being lame about this, if the answer to these questions is "it happens in all multiplayer games", is there a general rule to avoid such miscreats and anti-social types?

I guess as a side-note (though this would properly be in MeTa), would there be interest in making a Metafilter squad?

posted by geoff. to computers & internet (6 comments total)

If you're on a pub server and people aren't joining squads and cooperating your team is going to lose. If your commander can't function and your team isn't wise enough to vote him out early on you are going to lose. That's pretty much the way any hybrid game I've played works (Gloom, Natural Selection, etc).

Wether the game is accessible to the average player is another issue entirely. From the basic handling of the release by EA I'd say no, it's not accessible to the average player. The server browser doesn't even have a history or a favorites section, and half the time the reported statistics are entirely bogus. So right off the bat you have to use a third party program to find a game with any sort of immediacy or relevance. In conjunction with the bungling of the interface, you probably know by now how the patching has been going - not very well. Before they even released a working patch an expansion pack had been announced.

Can you jump in a game and blow things up for 10 minutes and have fun? Yeah, but you can do that in a lot of games. When your squadmates and your commander click, BF2 can be a lot of fun and provide a certain amount of larger-scale tactical depth. The problem is, when everyone wants to jump in for 10 minutes and blow things up you never get to that point. To answer your other question, yes an experienced player will absolutely wreck against a team of misfits. I was playing the other day and there was a guy in an enemy attack helicopter who only died once and had well over a hundred kills within a half-hour game. It wasn't even funny.

Similarly, a good pilot and a gunner crew can use the troop transport helicopter to capture points without even setting down on the ground. They'll just go off and fly to the enemy airbase and take it over, coming in from the back lines. Since the nodes aren't linked ala Onslaught (UT2K4) you see a lot of missed opportunities for large scale battles due to this activity. Teams end up chasing each other in circles around the map, capturing points in a totally reciprocal manner rather than clashing in a contested zone for 5 or 10 minutes.

I suppose a lot of this depends on what your expectations are based on your gaming history. There's probably no definite answer, everyone finds certain aspects fulfilling and others do not. That's my take on it.
posted by prostyle at 1:25 PM on July 25, 2005

There are, no doubt, a bunch of nogoodniks running around in the game, but they don't seem to be able to ruin it. BF2 is kinda like videogame crack -- no plot, no story... just a whole bunch of killin'. All action, all the time.

... and it pretty much rules.

I'd be down with getting some squad action going with other folks... feel free to drop me a line offline.
posted by ph00dz at 2:14 PM on July 25, 2005

Prostyle's pretty much got it. Couple more things:

-The stats have little real significance beyond unlocking a few weapons of marginal utility. So I wouldn't worry about that.

-The best thing to do to avoid annoying internet players is to find a server that has good rules and involved admins. So if you find a server that's working well for you, jot down the IP address.

-If you are going to play, definitely download All Seeing Eye, as it's a vastly superior experience to the in-game browser.

-I think the minimum commitment per session to get that "fun" buzz is about 30-40 minutes.

-I think casual gamers might want to stick to the more close-in urban levels, as there is less of a concern re: finding transportation to the fight and less downtime. You can find servers that only run the urban maps.

-I'd be glad to get some BF2 in with the metafilter bunch. Anytime, my ID in game is the same as it is here.
posted by selfnoise at 2:34 PM on July 25, 2005

I know that when I used to play Rogue Spear on MSN I could add nice players to my favorites and join games they were in. Nothing like that in Battlefield 2?

Also, how's the single player campaign?
posted by joseppi7 at 3:41 PM on July 25, 2005

You can't add favorite players or servers in BF2. You can do this, however, in All Seeing Eye.

In general, just think of the BF2 server browser as worse than any server browser you've ever seen.

There is no single player campaign per se. You can play unlinked 16-player skirmishs against enemy bots. These are limited to the "small" size maps.

It's also worth noting that bots are unavailable for multiplayer games, ruling out the concept of co-op play.
posted by selfnoise at 4:05 PM on July 25, 2005

BF2 is awesome. It will take you 2-3 hours to get a clue as to what is going on. You can get over this learning period in the free demo. At least before the game was out I was able to find people who played seriously in a free for all rush.

I'm a casual player and have found the squad system works well and is one of the best things about it. It makes it easy to find a group of a few people to coordinate and work loosely with. I'd say only about 1/3 of the servers I play on have had really clueful teamwork games, but that's enough to be fun.

I'd love to find a gaming community to join that would help me find clueful games more often. Clans are too serious, but I don't have enough gamer friends to find folks to play with.
posted by Nelson at 4:33 PM on July 25, 2005