PlaneWhore's top 4 BF2 changes that need to be in the 1.5 patch
And there will be a 1.5 patch... right DICE? This lackluster 1.4 can't be it... can it? I mean you can't just leave the game like this... can you?
If you don't like reading a novel you can skip to the bolded parts to get to the meat of the post.
This post was sparked by countless various conversations I've had with random squad members in real Battlefield 2 games with VOIP and our near unanimous agreement on certain game balance issues that have really taken away from our overall Battlefield 2 experience. These aren't all uber-l33t gamers I've discussed this with but casual gamers who want a little more variety and balance. These changes can officially be referred to as the Skillful Gameplay Encouragement Adjustments. The main focus of these changes is to promote balanced combat styles, discourage exploitation of various broken gameplay aspects and encourage people to try and use the rifles for a change.
In no particular order:
1) Grenades. The goal: to reduce spamability and exploitability (hmm did I just invent two new words?) of grenades but retain the intended function and usage. By reducing the unsavory and unskillful aspects of grenades you also encourage them to be used intelligently.
Often times on maps I find that over 50% of the total kills over the duration of a round are the result hand grenades. Now don't misunderstand my intentions... I have absolutely no problem with grenades explosive potential when used correctly (to root out a dug in camper for example) but I do have a problem with grenades in the current implementation that allows them to completely replace and exceed the effectiveness of a players main rifle (see Volx).
Two simple changes to the BF2 code will fix this problem
a) The support class ammo packs can no longer resupply grenades (supply crates will still be able to resupply them). This will stop the grenade fest that happens every single round at Karkand and put a rough hard cap on the number of grenades thrown per player per death (excluding an encounter with a supply crate).
b) The starting number of grenades will be reduced on a class by class basis. Classes with the most diverse skills will be reduced the most while classes with a limited combat focus will retain the most grenades. 1 grenade for medic/spec-op/sniper/anti-tank/engineer and three grenades for the assault and support classes. This will encourage the skillful and intelligent use of grenades rather than the purely random tossing of them for easy kills.
2) Claymores. Goal: to make claymores an effective defensive trap that has to be used intelligently and still can be defeated by various methods.
We've all seen these players. The "claymore runners". The snipers without an ounce of skill who run through heavily populated area on a suicide mission (the alley on Karkand for example) and toss claymores like they're going out of style. These players know that when they drop that claymore it's pretty much a guaranteed kill and there is absolutely nothing the enemy team can do about it (other than die to it already and get it over with). The same discouraging scenario exists when a squad spots claymores on a flag in advance (blocking the capture radius) and then has to suicide/revive on said claymore to remove it.
One simple change will solve this exploitation (a change that used to be in effect but was removed why again?):
a) Explosives destroy claymores. That includes grenades, tank shells, the n00b tube, c4, TV missile, artillery ect.. ect. This allows people a realistic method to remove an offending claymore without sacrificing a teammate. Furthermore when a claymore can be destroyed via explosive a sniper is suddenly much more concerned with hiding said claymore rather than just running in to whatever populated area and tossing them at random. This is especially true because said populated area will be exploding quite a bit.
3) n00b tube. Goal: To make it so n00b tubers can no longer fire the grenade launcher at point blank range effectively.
Why oh why DICE did you change this back in 1.4? We know you changed it (as one of your expansive list of undocumented changes) so fess up already. The n00b tube has made a comeback as unskilled players can yet again fire it point blank at their feet for an easy unskilled kill. Why bother with a difficult to use rifle when a tube is a 1 shot kill and is extremely easy to aim? I recently got revived during a round of Sharqi and ended up with a different kit (F2000) and a full compliment of tube grenades. Four point blank tube grenades later I had four ridiculous easy kills that I would've otherwise have had to aim for with a rifle. But I empathize with the plight of the underpowered and otherwise generic assault kit and I really do believe DICE does need to do something to improve them but NOT by boosting that annoying tube again.
As with most of my suggestions this fix is ridiculously simple:
a) Implement a minimum arming distance on the tube before the grenade explodes. How hard is this to implement DICE? We don't need any of this buggy bouncing tube crap... just make it so if you fire that thing at your feet it doesn't explode. Problem solved.
4) J-10/A2A missiles. Goal: To balance the J-10 and reintroduce skilled air to air combat
We all know the story with the J-10 being god-moded so I'll cut right to the fix:
a) Reintroduce 1.12 A2A missile dynamics (A2A only). This effectively balances all the various aircraft (however the J-10 does retain a slight edge as DICE intended IMO). Best of all this is easy for DICE to implement and I mention this again because DICE has complained in the past about balancing the J-10 being too difficult. If you don't understand the beautiful dynamics that made 1.12 air to air missiles so balanced then you'll just have to trust that the PlaneWhore himself knows what he's talking about.
That completes my list and this little post. I know DICE does read these and other popular Battlefield 2 forums and I can only hope that they take notice and give the gamers what they want for a change. I am of the honest opinion that if DICE implemented the four easy changes above the quality of the gameplay would reach an all-time high. In fact I think if DICE included all of the above balance adjustments it would exceed the sum total of all the positive changes DICE has made throughout the extensive list of patches (minus the two new maps).
With Battlefield 2142 on the horizon and looking rather dissapointing (IMO) I'd really appreciate DICE taking the time and putting in the effort to make this game as excellent as possible till the next batch of amazing games rolls arounds.
Feedback appreciated and debate encouraged.
If you don't like reading a novel you can skip to the bolded parts to get to the meat of the post.
This post was sparked by countless various conversations I've had with random squad members in real Battlefield 2 games with VOIP and our near unanimous agreement on certain game balance issues that have really taken away from our overall Battlefield 2 experience. These aren't all uber-l33t gamers I've discussed this with but casual gamers who want a little more variety and balance. These changes can officially be referred to as the Skillful Gameplay Encouragement Adjustments. The main focus of these changes is to promote balanced combat styles, discourage exploitation of various broken gameplay aspects and encourage people to try and use the rifles for a change.
In no particular order:
1) Grenades. The goal: to reduce spamability and exploitability (hmm did I just invent two new words?) of grenades but retain the intended function and usage. By reducing the unsavory and unskillful aspects of grenades you also encourage them to be used intelligently.
Often times on maps I find that over 50% of the total kills over the duration of a round are the result hand grenades. Now don't misunderstand my intentions... I have absolutely no problem with grenades explosive potential when used correctly (to root out a dug in camper for example) but I do have a problem with grenades in the current implementation that allows them to completely replace and exceed the effectiveness of a players main rifle (see Volx).
Two simple changes to the BF2 code will fix this problem
a) The support class ammo packs can no longer resupply grenades (supply crates will still be able to resupply them). This will stop the grenade fest that happens every single round at Karkand and put a rough hard cap on the number of grenades thrown per player per death (excluding an encounter with a supply crate).
b) The starting number of grenades will be reduced on a class by class basis. Classes with the most diverse skills will be reduced the most while classes with a limited combat focus will retain the most grenades. 1 grenade for medic/spec-op/sniper/anti-tank/engineer and three grenades for the assault and support classes. This will encourage the skillful and intelligent use of grenades rather than the purely random tossing of them for easy kills.
2) Claymores. Goal: to make claymores an effective defensive trap that has to be used intelligently and still can be defeated by various methods.
We've all seen these players. The "claymore runners". The snipers without an ounce of skill who run through heavily populated area on a suicide mission (the alley on Karkand for example) and toss claymores like they're going out of style. These players know that when they drop that claymore it's pretty much a guaranteed kill and there is absolutely nothing the enemy team can do about it (other than die to it already and get it over with). The same discouraging scenario exists when a squad spots claymores on a flag in advance (blocking the capture radius) and then has to suicide/revive on said claymore to remove it.
One simple change will solve this exploitation (a change that used to be in effect but was removed why again?):
a) Explosives destroy claymores. That includes grenades, tank shells, the n00b tube, c4, TV missile, artillery ect.. ect. This allows people a realistic method to remove an offending claymore without sacrificing a teammate. Furthermore when a claymore can be destroyed via explosive a sniper is suddenly much more concerned with hiding said claymore rather than just running in to whatever populated area and tossing them at random. This is especially true because said populated area will be exploding quite a bit.
3) n00b tube. Goal: To make it so n00b tubers can no longer fire the grenade launcher at point blank range effectively.
Why oh why DICE did you change this back in 1.4? We know you changed it (as one of your expansive list of undocumented changes) so fess up already. The n00b tube has made a comeback as unskilled players can yet again fire it point blank at their feet for an easy unskilled kill. Why bother with a difficult to use rifle when a tube is a 1 shot kill and is extremely easy to aim? I recently got revived during a round of Sharqi and ended up with a different kit (F2000) and a full compliment of tube grenades. Four point blank tube grenades later I had four ridiculous easy kills that I would've otherwise have had to aim for with a rifle. But I empathize with the plight of the underpowered and otherwise generic assault kit and I really do believe DICE does need to do something to improve them but NOT by boosting that annoying tube again.
As with most of my suggestions this fix is ridiculously simple:
a) Implement a minimum arming distance on the tube before the grenade explodes. How hard is this to implement DICE? We don't need any of this buggy bouncing tube crap... just make it so if you fire that thing at your feet it doesn't explode. Problem solved.
4) J-10/A2A missiles. Goal: To balance the J-10 and reintroduce skilled air to air combat
We all know the story with the J-10 being god-moded so I'll cut right to the fix:
a) Reintroduce 1.12 A2A missile dynamics (A2A only). This effectively balances all the various aircraft (however the J-10 does retain a slight edge as DICE intended IMO). Best of all this is easy for DICE to implement and I mention this again because DICE has complained in the past about balancing the J-10 being too difficult. If you don't understand the beautiful dynamics that made 1.12 air to air missiles so balanced then you'll just have to trust that the PlaneWhore himself knows what he's talking about.
That completes my list and this little post. I know DICE does read these and other popular Battlefield 2 forums and I can only hope that they take notice and give the gamers what they want for a change. I am of the honest opinion that if DICE implemented the four easy changes above the quality of the gameplay would reach an all-time high. In fact I think if DICE included all of the above balance adjustments it would exceed the sum total of all the positive changes DICE has made throughout the extensive list of patches (minus the two new maps).
With Battlefield 2142 on the horizon and looking rather dissapointing (IMO) I'd really appreciate DICE taking the time and putting in the effort to make this game as excellent as possible till the next batch of amazing games rolls arounds.
Feedback appreciated and debate encouraged.
![FPS[VT_NERD]](data:image/svg+xml;base64,CgkJCTxzdmcgeG1sbnM9J2h0dHA6Ly93d3cudzMub3JnLzIwMDAvc3ZnJyB2aWV3Qm94PScwIDAgNTAgNTAnPgoJCQkJPHJlY3Qgd2lkdGg9JzEwMCUnIGhlaWdodD0nMTAwJScgZmlsbD0nIzdjZDc4YScgLz4KCQkJCTx0ZXh0IHg9JzUwJScgeT0nNTAlJyBmaWxsPSd3aGl0ZScgZm9udC13ZWlnaHQ9J2JvbGQnIGZvbnQtZmFtaWx5PSdBcmlhbCcgZm9udC1zaXplPSczMDAlJyBkb21pbmFudC1iYXNlbGluZT0nY2VudHJhbCcgdGV4dC1hbmNob3I9J21pZGRsZSc+RjwvdGV4dD4KCQkJPC9zdmc+CgkJ "FPS[VT_NERD]")
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