Bad Company 2 Beta initial thoughts

[veganzombie]

Amazing.  It feels like you're in the middle of a war.

Anyway, with Rush mode, and on a map the size of Port Valquez, you are ALWAYS in the action.  If you don't know Rush mode, basically, there are two sides: Attackers and Defenders (Attackers attack, and defenders defend, Fat.  That's why they're called "Attackers" and "Defenders").  The entire map itself is huge (think one of the Chinese maps on BF2), but you're only ever playing on a portion of it (about 1.5x the size of Sharqi).  That's because the Defenders protect two sites in sets of 5.  Once the Attackers destroy those two sites, the Defenders pull back to their next base, and so on.  Attackers win by destroying all the sites, and Defenders win by killing off all the Attackers, which is accomplished by causing the Attackers' tickets to run out.

Attackers begin with ~90 tickets, and gain a few more (30?  I forget) every time they destroy a crate.  A ticket is used up each time an attacker respawns.  Each team gets one main battle tank (Abrams/T-90), one light tank (Bradley/IFV), one chopper (Apache/Hind), and one UAV mini-copter, which spawn depending on how the battle is going.  I haven't really figured it out yet.

The beta only allows up to level 11 from what I know, so you only get to try out a few weapons and attachments.  The guns aren't insanely different: For example, the three Engineer guns all do the same damage, but with varying levels of accuracy and RoF.  The rockets vary between being more effective against armor, or more effective against infantry.  If you decide you want a shotgun, you have choice between pump (More dmg/Slow RoF) or an auto shotty (Less dmg/Fast RoF), or you can choose between buckshot (less range/more dmg) or slugs (more range/less dmg).  So with the guns, you're able to choose your playstyle and preferred skin, even though it doesn't allow for full customization.

With the gameplay itself, it's just frantic and crazy.  You can sit back and take it slow if you want, and working with a squad makes things absolutely amazing (VOIP doesn't work in the beta yet), since there's nothing cooler than one guy shooting a tracer onto a tank, and then watching 3 rockets fly at it immediately.  And since you can spawn on ANY squad member (only 4, not 6), you can find yourself in or near the action within seconds.

And there's bullet drop.

It's 0230 and I'm tired, so I'm gonna go to bed now.  Poke me with any questions and I'll answer what I can.

[NewbieSupremo]

Nice to hear from you vegan! Good stuff. All your points sound fun, and even the bullet drop sounds great. Funny explanation for Fat! lol.

[veganzombie]

Hilo newb o/.  Been a while.  I've been on XFire mostly cuz sara gets lonely without me.  Ya think Fat'll understand this?  I did use some big words, after all 

Oh, wanted to mention some other things:

The armor/health perks is basically juggernaut, and the weapon spec/+ explosive are basically stopping power/sonic boom.

Weapons feel slightly weak to me, even though they're still pretty similar to BF2.  To destroy a tank at 100% health, and no engineer repairing, the starting RPG takes 5 shots from the front, 4 from the side, and 3 from the back.  Killing an infantry with an RPG requires a nearly direct hit, and the GL has a little more leeway.

A submachine gun requires pretty much a full clip to kill, and an assault rifle about half a clip.  A submachine gun, like the SCAR-LS, has a 30-round clip, and do more damage at close range.  If your target is 15+ meters out, it'll take all 30 rounds to kill him -- and that's all 30 rounds impacting.  At 1-10 meters, it'll only take about 15-20 rounds.  However, since you pump extra rounds into someone just in case, or because you miss a couple, you pretty much require a full clip to kill someone.

The pump shotty has a 4-round clip and take 2-3 shots at 1-3 meters to kill.  The autoshotty has 6 rounds and takes 3-4 shots at that same distance.  If your crosshairs are not directly on the target, it'll take many more.

M24 kills in two hits, and the autosniper takes about 3-4.

Oh, and there's no prone in the beta, and I'm not sure if they'll be adding it.  Their press release last year said prone would definitely be in the PC version, but on the Twitter feed last night, the lead dev said there would be no prone anything.

[fattuesday]

ing Vegie-tales... put in english please!   Sheesh!!!  Say Hi to Sara for me - not sure how she can live without me.

[veganzombie]

Sorry, Fat.  Translating to your version of English takes effort.  And sara's got me =P

Update on the game if you're planning on buying/preordering BC2 and you have a dual-core:

You might want to wait for the retail version to come out and see the reviews.  There is currently a CPU bottleneck with BFBC2, in which dual-cores get <20 FPS.  The devs say that they have multiple optimizations ready for retail, as the Beta version is an older version of the game, but it's possible that dual-cores are going to be severely gimped.

[Apoc]

I've been playing the hell out of the beta since I finished Mass Effect 2 and I can tell you that I'm enjoying it immensely. I'm at level 11 and have quite a few unlocks available now so I can see how their 'perk' system is going to be progressing. 

Vegan's breakdown of the weapons is spot on, particularly about the SMGs and RPGs although I've learned how to kill people pretty effectively with rockets now (hit their cover).  I think the Assault Rifles do a pretty good amount of damage though.

The damage system is a bit of a necessary trade off. Because of the nature of the game, you get shot a lot, from far away, and from many directions. It's essential that you have the time that the hit points give you to get your bearings and get yourself to cover.  The downside is that you have to empty a lot of rounds into people with certain weapons to kill them.

I see this only as an ammo conservation issue, not something that makes the game feel cheap. Taking down somebody quickly is easy with some well placed shots, but holding down the fire button is far less effective.

[NewbieSupremo]

I agree with you both, vegan and apoc. Fun game, even as a beta. I am running an AMD X2 6000+. The fps bottleneck is constant on my machine. Its still a helluva game, given the performance on dual cores. Hopefully they will allow it to run smooth once retail releases. Cant wait to play with BHN again.

[Apoc]

I bought a Quad Core and it should arrive tomorrow. I'll also be getting 64 bit windows 7 ultimate or professional in the next week.  The game has forced me to upgrade earlier than planned.  I'm the kind of person who doesn't notice slow down in frames per second until I upgrade and see how a game runs optimally.  Even as it runs now I enjoy the game so it can only get better.

[fattuesday]

I bought a Quad Core and it should arrive tomorrow. I'll also be getting 64 bit windows 7 ultimate or professional in the next week.  The game has forced me to upgrade earlier than planned.  I'm the kind of person who doesn't notice slow down in frames per second until I upgrade and see how a game runs optimally.  Even as it runs now I enjoy the game so it can only get better.

Which Quad cpu are you going with - are the game recommendations pointing you toward AMD or Intel?

[dougien1]

My new pc has an Intel i5 in which seems just great, so they're worth taking a look at. Dunno what it's like for BC2 as play.com screwed up and gave me a beta code that was sent to someone else, and after emailing them twice asking for a new one, I still haven't received a reply. ):