Mick and myself fairly rocked through several games tonight. We won some, lost others, had a great time and ruled in tanks and on foot.
Unfortunately the server disconnected in our last game, but I think the score remained (I leveled to 17, and I’m 21k points to 18 already!) but the dog tag I got from sneaking up behind an attacker is gone.
Our team made good use of tracers on Arica Harbour. I had one too but in one game we faced two tanks but I didn’t have to pull the tracer out. Others did the job and I locked on and fired. I think others are still getting the hang of it. We were traced in another game and yet rockets flew harmlessly past. Shame the server disconnected, we were having such a good time!
Earlier in the evening I booted up the Xbox to check if BC2 had been patched there and it appears it hasn’t. Field Operative was online though and I joined his squad after he sent me an invite. Unfortunately we were up against a very tough opposition on Nelson Bay. I joined after we took Alpha, then took Bravo. Got the second Bravo but the last Alpha was just a war of attrition which of course we lost. Too late we realized we should have flanked them. The game ended just as I got around the back of Alpha. 🙁
Later: Bah. I just checked the screenshots I took and noticed that I lost all the points earned in the last game. I had leveled up to 18 but I’m back to 17 now. I wouldn’t mind if I had done badly.
Mick blogged about the games too, concentrating on Valapariso which I had forgotten about but where we made great use of the tank and pushed hard attacking.
Onslaught has just been announced. It’s a coop game for Battlefield Bad Company which sounds really interesting.
Onslaught is bringing co-op gameplay to Battlefield for the first time on console. The new game mode puts you and up to three friends against the enemy on Valparaiso, Atacama Desert, Isla Inocentes and Nelson Bay – redesigned with new lighting, time of day, added vehicles and other effects. Each map has a dedicated gameplay focus, requiring different levels of teamwork in order to complete the objectives against an onslaught of enemy AI. Vehicle warfare comes to the forefront in Atacama Desert while Nelson Bay focuses squarely on infantry assault. Players can compete in squads and check individual progress via the dedicated Onslaught leaderboards.
(The video is nothing special, 1/3 of it is company logos!)
The one fly in the ointment is that it won’t be free. If it gets good reviews and if my friends on PSN and Xbox Live want to buy it I’ll probably pick it up.
Unfortunately if you’re on PC, you’re out of luck due to the way they’ve deployed/designed their servers.
Bad Company 2 has been patched on consoles. I had a quick 10 minute game and shot down 2 Apache helicopters on Isla after placing a tracer on them and seriously damaged a Blackhawk.
Wow, this is game changing. The blackhawk pilot did have vehicle smoke (I know because he killed me as soon as I entered the game) but after I planted the tracer he didn’t try to remove it by firing the smoke.
The tracer isn’t quite fast enough that you can point at a moving vehicle and hit fire, you’ll have to lead it a bit but it’s much easier than before.
Edit – Mick has listed the changes by soldier class making it very easy to see what has changed in each.
Bad Company 2 has not been patched yet, but I think the prospect of playing the patched game has attracted all the good players back. We had a tough time of it, but we fought well for the most part. The night is a blur and my eyes are crossed from the effort.
Thanks Mike, Dave and belatedly David, you joined us just as we lost defending on Isla. It’s amazing how fast that game ended since we had got them down to about 13 tickets on the first base. We played really well on the first base. Perhaps people quit and another squad joined the other team? Then again, as I raced for Alpha I took out one guy behind the fence, and noticed in amazement as our own team stared blankly ahead at the hill, totally ignoring the bomb on the crate! I got mowed down at the crate unfortunately and we lost the game.
I loved how we took Isla in the round before. Defenders had us pinned down on the hill. We were at 32 tickets, and Dave pushed forward and took Bravo. We supported him, I died but took an enemy or two with me, and then Mike lead the charge on Alpha, with smoke swirling around us. I think Dave set the charge and the rest of us kept the enemy off it. I stopped at least two defenders and possibly got a headshot over the cement barrier!
We were very lucky on Arica Harbour too. Mike, Dave and I were defending the last crate, Bravo (the upstairs one anyway) and doing a damn fine job of it when we were overrun. The enemy were down to 3 tickets. We all spawned, the siren for the bomb was already blaring, it looked hopeless but then we won! Close thing! The other team must have been fuming! 🙂
I followed Geoff’s advice in one confrontation. I spotted a guy, got a few rounds into him but he disappeared behind a wall and lobbed a grenade in after him. Kill!
Oh, Mike got called a noob for using the heavy MG in the town. I think he pissed off someone! We did tear up the other team though. I was on the stationary AT and took out a fair number of enemy, and spotted more to see them falling, over and over again as the MG took them out.
I unlocked the STG.77 AUG twice tonight. First time I was having a great game and got disconnected, losing all my score! Joined another game and thankfully had another great game, which MJ joined. Unlocked the AUG again and I like it!
I popped the FPS Freek on my PS3 controller as an experiment, upped the sensitivity so I’m not moving like a glacier any more and did quite well. I’m positive it was because of the players I was against but earned a positive KDR twice, and my aim did marginally improve. Could be that I’m playing at 8pm and not 10pm and the evening has been quiet so far so I’m nice and relaxed. Who knows?
Motion mines rock when you’ve just set the bomb on a crate in Bad Company 2. Just throw it in front of you and ding ding ding, you’ll see any incoming defenders. Worked a treat on a crate in Valparaiso!
I played a few rounds with strangers last night. I lost the first game and even though people on my squad used a mic, I could hear a female voice speaking loudly and the sounds of family life in the background the whole time. I quit, it was too distracting.
The next games were more interesting. We successfully defended Valparaiso on the first base, and I think won the next game too but the final few games were tough. I noticed my team was down to 10 men when the other team had 12, maybe someone switched? Anyway, we were overrun several times. The other team were well coordinated, with recon guys sighted on crate taking out us defenders with mortar strikes and potshots. It was a rout.
I suspect both teams relied too heavily on recons however. My squad got best squad in one game, despite losing. Shame nobody used their mics.
Still, I got 2 dog tags. I hid behind a tree while retreating on Laguna Presa. I heard the whoomp and saw the smoke from an assault guy and presently he walked right past me, unawares. Unaware until I snuck up behind him! Can’t remember the other one but that player got his revenge plenty of times as I watched him on killcam way too often …
Oh, leveled up to 17, unlocked a few weapons and gadgets (12 gauge slugs, improved demolitions, SV98 and assault 4x scope), won the “Elite Battlefield Knowledge” award for 5 gold stars, KDR increased by 0.02 but most other stats remained static.
Mixed bag of gaming last night, and the fact I was tired after a long day didn’t help. Started off getting slaughtered first and then joined another game where we did much better. I touched upon the games in my matchmaking post below.
Attacking on Isla I was shot by a sniper, from the mainland. Through the killcam I noticed he was accompanied by 2 others, sitting under a tree next to their tent. Luckily they were still there when I spawned, nearly scaring the **** out of Dave when I spawned behind him and forgot to tell him!
Anyway, Dave was on the road, so I doubled back. Going carefully down the hill I spotted my friends. They had a barbeque going too and the smell of roasting meat was something to behold! Rather than disturb their camping too much I elected not to shoot, but prepared to get my knife out. Three quick stabs and the barbeque had ended, the tent was in tatters and the wookies had decided to book into a hotel next time.
Later on another map someone on our squad managed to tracer the Blackhawk and it was a delight to see my CG round fly through the air and bring down that aircraft. Got 2 kills out of it too.
Or how to get a squad of highly skilled players into a game of Battlefield Bad Company 2 with newbies.
Bad Company 2 like Modern Warfare 2, Halo and practically every other online shooter have matchmaking systems to match players of similar abilities. If you follow a few easy steps you can take advantage of that.
In Bad Company 2 you can create a squad and invite your friends to play in a game. The game then uses a secret algorithm to match your squad up with a similarly talented team and opposition. Unfortunately I noticed when a high level player was on our squad I got trounced and came out of the games with a terrible KDR.
On the other hand, when I joined a low level player in his game, and we were joined by higher level players we stomped through the game for the most part.
So, it occurred to me last weekend that this could be used this to our advantage. Have a low level player join a game and then invite his team mates in. If you really wanted to cheat the system the low level player could then logout and login again as his real player (with a much higher level character of course.)
We inadvertently verified this last night. I fired up Bad Company 2 and found that Dave (evadlive) and Geoff were already online. I joined their game and proceeded to get pummeled by the other team. We were on different squads but before long David (bigpresh) joined me. I gave up after 2 games before asking bigpresh if he wanted to move on to a game that suited our skill levels. I sent evadlive a message saying I was going to look for another game.
I joined a new game, invited bigpresh in, and a few minutes later evadlive joined us, and invited Geoff in. We proceeded to have an easier game of it. Most of the other players in the game were less than level 10, and I don’t think anyone was more than level 16 or 17 (I’m level 15). On Isla, we successfully defended the first base. The other team took Alpha but got no further, although it was close. When we were attacking we won too. Made a nice change from the previous few games.
I don’t think the match making system in Bad Company 2 is based entirely on rank. The game has separate skill level and score per minute values. Thanks to my previous games those were likely suffering which, err, explains why we were placed with such low level players. 😉
So, there you have it. We were playing on PS3 which is due to be patched on Tuesday and includes some match making changes so it’s entirely possible that the game will attempt to stop “abuse” like this in the future, but short of stopping people joining a friend’s session it’d be very hard to stop this. I know that players are juggled around between rounds, but our squad always remained as it was.
As a related reference point, watch these three videos Geoff posted on his channel. He and 3 other skilled players created new accounts and, with only newbie weapons, fought and won several rounds of Squad Deathmatch. They won so decisively that most of the other teams left the game at one stage! I posted a comment suggesting they had been matched with other players who probably weren’t very good but Geoff replied that some of the games were tough, and involved level 40+ players. I’d venture to say those players joined the game after it had started, joining the session of a friend. Either that or they were really useless players to be matched against newbie recruits.
Gavin has just released his first Bad Company 2 montage video. It’s an impressive montage of sniper and tank action.
Unfortunately his site isn’t loading for me (something weird with my dns and his site) and I left a comment but it didn’t post. Honest Gavin! I did!
I loved his takedown of the helicopters, but the opening scene is a little too long. Great video nonetheless.
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