I wanted PoE to be good. I really did. It's obvious the mod team put a lot of effort in to PoE and for that I salute them but they've really got to rethink a lot of the key game elements. They need to add polish and do some seriously hard thinking about certain gameplay elements that IMO they botched.
What I liked:
The artwork. As in the new weapon/vehicle models and skins. They all look pretty good and that portion of the mod is very well done.
The blood. It's a small thing but when I blast my opponent I like to see the red stuff fly.
The sounds. All very "beefy" and realistic. I like them better then the regular BF2 sounds.
The artillery. It's not the way I would've implemented it but I do really appreciate the skill and fun involved in operating and firing manual artillery.
The TANKS! I love the choice of multiple kinds of shells depending on what kind of target you're attacking. It adds a whole new element to tank operation and is very fun. This also gives tanks a much needed offensive boost versus attack choppers as those SABOT rounds haul *** and make for a much easier chopper kill.
The tank/transport machine gun sights. The BF2 turrets leave something to be desired as when you're in a moving tank that gun on the top is pretty much worthless. Even with the tank mostly still that gun really lacks. The new stabilized gun aim was much appreciated.
Also I got absolutely no CTD during my PoE session, the FPS seemed good and oddly enough (even though it's based on 1.3) the lag/netcode seemed to be better even though I was forced to play on a server that had triple the ping of my usual server.
What I disliked:
The maps. My biggest gripe with the mod. The maps *look* great and on ths surface appear to have a nice layout but when you actually play them you really get an appreciation for some of the less complicated DICE map designs. The control points are too spread out and mostly creates a disjointed battle that feels mostly empty even on a 64 player server. This isn't a problem with how they look because most of them look stunning but rather how they play.
It's too dark. This ties in with the maps section but annoys me so much it's worth a separate point. I love maps like Mashtuur, Sharqi and Dragon Valley because they're so bright. I don't like to get up close to my monitor and strain my eyes to make out a target. And no I don't want to adjust the brightness on my monitor to compensate. That washes colors out and on my monitor. The 24" Dell 2405FPW is already blindingly bright to begin with but even then the maps were still way too dark for me.
The grass. Again another point that ties in with the map design and this really annoys me. Not that I don't like the way the grass looks because I do but rather I know with such a huge amount of grass many players on low graphics settings have an absolutely massive gameplay advantage. I don't feel like having to crank my eye candy down to low to stay competitive so please don't make grassland maps that encourage it. I encountered lots of situations where I'd be down in the grass against an enemy and I can't see even an inch of skin but they're blasting away at me like a retard sitting still in the middile of a big flat field.
Uncap damage. Why encourage such wimpy behavior by default? If the enemy can't adapt and counter a simple uncap attack then they just flat out suck. This also gives an unfair baserape advantage to aircraft as they can choose the medic class and attack the uncap and escape otherwise unharmed.
The airplanes. The whole airplane handling system is clunky and just feels "wrong". Jets look ridiculous as they go coasting over you at what seems to be about 20mph. I don't like the airplane handling. I don't like the airplanes weapon switching system. And I especially dislike the weapon payloads in certain aircraft. Aircraft certainly didn't feel as skilled as they do in vanilla BF2.
Never miss A2A/S2A missiles. Self explanatory and this shouldn't be in any revision of Battlefield or related mods IMO. Where are the ultra-fast and ultra-destructive manual fired unguided anti-air rockets?
The weapons in a couple respects. They all do too much damage are far too accurate. Battlefield 2 is a arcade FPS and for good reason. In vanilla BF2 I have an aggressive infantry play style. I'm constantly rushing and moving up (otherwise I'm bored). Of course this means I don't have time to peak around every corner so often times I'll end up with an enemy blasting at me from my rear/side. In vanilla BF2 I can turn, shoot and kill the enemy before they kill me. In POE I'm pretty much instantly dead. Ultra-accurate high damage weapons favor a camping gameplay style which is very boring and discourage skillful gameplay. All of the guns I tried took no more than 2 shots to kill and because of the accuracy in scoped mode a large percentage of my skills were 1 shot headshot kills. I noticed the guns took a lot less skill to handle/be effective with then the regular BF2 weapons (which is a very bad thing).
The AT rockets. They fire a little too far IMO and leave the tanks a little too vulnerable. I enjoy the AT missiles that do a little less in regards to DPS but are able to be guided. That sort of accuracy rewards skill allowing the user to plunk off tread shots.
Can't rate the helicopters just yet because in my first play session I was unable to snag one to test out.
Don't let my mostly negative review discourage the PoE team though because this mod has a lot of good things going for it and I think with a rethink on some of the map designs/settings and weapons this could be a really killer mod
For me I enjoy vanilla BF2 a lot more than PoE but I could imagine if DICE incorporated certain PoE elements in to the gameplay it'd make vanilla BF2 even better.
What I liked:
The artwork. As in the new weapon/vehicle models and skins. They all look pretty good and that portion of the mod is very well done.
The blood. It's a small thing but when I blast my opponent I like to see the red stuff fly.
The sounds. All very "beefy" and realistic. I like them better then the regular BF2 sounds.
The artillery. It's not the way I would've implemented it but I do really appreciate the skill and fun involved in operating and firing manual artillery.
The TANKS! I love the choice of multiple kinds of shells depending on what kind of target you're attacking. It adds a whole new element to tank operation and is very fun. This also gives tanks a much needed offensive boost versus attack choppers as those SABOT rounds haul *** and make for a much easier chopper kill.
The tank/transport machine gun sights. The BF2 turrets leave something to be desired as when you're in a moving tank that gun on the top is pretty much worthless. Even with the tank mostly still that gun really lacks. The new stabilized gun aim was much appreciated.
Also I got absolutely no CTD during my PoE session, the FPS seemed good and oddly enough (even though it's based on 1.3) the lag/netcode seemed to be better even though I was forced to play on a server that had triple the ping of my usual server.
What I disliked:
The maps. My biggest gripe with the mod. The maps *look* great and on ths surface appear to have a nice layout but when you actually play them you really get an appreciation for some of the less complicated DICE map designs. The control points are too spread out and mostly creates a disjointed battle that feels mostly empty even on a 64 player server. This isn't a problem with how they look because most of them look stunning but rather how they play.
It's too dark. This ties in with the maps section but annoys me so much it's worth a separate point. I love maps like Mashtuur, Sharqi and Dragon Valley because they're so bright. I don't like to get up close to my monitor and strain my eyes to make out a target. And no I don't want to adjust the brightness on my monitor to compensate. That washes colors out and on my monitor. The 24" Dell 2405FPW is already blindingly bright to begin with but even then the maps were still way too dark for me.
The grass. Again another point that ties in with the map design and this really annoys me. Not that I don't like the way the grass looks because I do but rather I know with such a huge amount of grass many players on low graphics settings have an absolutely massive gameplay advantage. I don't feel like having to crank my eye candy down to low to stay competitive so please don't make grassland maps that encourage it. I encountered lots of situations where I'd be down in the grass against an enemy and I can't see even an inch of skin but they're blasting away at me like a retard sitting still in the middile of a big flat field.
Uncap damage. Why encourage such wimpy behavior by default? If the enemy can't adapt and counter a simple uncap attack then they just flat out suck. This also gives an unfair baserape advantage to aircraft as they can choose the medic class and attack the uncap and escape otherwise unharmed.
The airplanes. The whole airplane handling system is clunky and just feels "wrong". Jets look ridiculous as they go coasting over you at what seems to be about 20mph. I don't like the airplane handling. I don't like the airplanes weapon switching system. And I especially dislike the weapon payloads in certain aircraft. Aircraft certainly didn't feel as skilled as they do in vanilla BF2.
Never miss A2A/S2A missiles. Self explanatory and this shouldn't be in any revision of Battlefield or related mods IMO. Where are the ultra-fast and ultra-destructive manual fired unguided anti-air rockets?
The weapons in a couple respects. They all do too much damage are far too accurate. Battlefield 2 is a arcade FPS and for good reason. In vanilla BF2 I have an aggressive infantry play style. I'm constantly rushing and moving up (otherwise I'm bored). Of course this means I don't have time to peak around every corner so often times I'll end up with an enemy blasting at me from my rear/side. In vanilla BF2 I can turn, shoot and kill the enemy before they kill me. In POE I'm pretty much instantly dead. Ultra-accurate high damage weapons favor a camping gameplay style which is very boring and discourage skillful gameplay. All of the guns I tried took no more than 2 shots to kill and because of the accuracy in scoped mode a large percentage of my skills were 1 shot headshot kills. I noticed the guns took a lot less skill to handle/be effective with then the regular BF2 weapons (which is a very bad thing).
The AT rockets. They fire a little too far IMO and leave the tanks a little too vulnerable. I enjoy the AT missiles that do a little less in regards to DPS but are able to be guided. That sort of accuracy rewards skill allowing the user to plunk off tread shots.
Can't rate the helicopters just yet because in my first play session I was unable to snag one to test out.
Don't let my mostly negative review discourage the PoE team though because this mod has a lot of good things going for it and I think with a rethink on some of the map designs/settings and weapons this could be a really killer mod
For me I enjoy vanilla BF2 a lot more than PoE but I could imagine if DICE incorporated certain PoE elements in to the gameplay it'd make vanilla BF2 even better.
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