Surviving BFBC2 Multiplayer – Part 1

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is probably the hardest multiplayer game of recent times for a newbie to survive in. Unlike Modern Warfare 2 you don’t get a taster of the classes you’ll be able to unlock as you level up, you don’t have a Copycat Killstreak available. In fact you get pretty much no help at all. Not even from the instruction manual.

If you’ve come to BFBC2 from MW2 and think that you can waltz in and be beast from the get go then you’d better think again, otherwise you’ll end up crying into your Gatorade. Thankfully, and with the help of the wonderful world of the intertubes I’m going to attempt to redress the imbalance by giving a heads up to all the new players out there. This can never be a definitive guide – I don’t have the time, and seriously don’t have the 1337 skillz to cover everything in the game. Hopefully areas that I’m sketchy on, have missed, or gotten completely wrong will be commented on by someone with more knowledge.

To begin with we’re going to go over getting started. We need to do this as EA appear to have forgotten this fairly important part.

Getting Started

When you start the game you can alter the brightness, volume and sensitivity settings – the run of the mill stuff that most people do. *Note* If you have been playing Modern Warfare 2 you’ll probably find the control quite sluggish in BFBC2. In MW2 on the PS3 I play on sensitivity 3 – on BFBC2 I have the sensitivity up at least 60% and even that can be too slow some times.

BFBC2 Multiplayer Options

Once you’ve finished fiddling with the settings go back to the main screen and choose the Multiplayer options (this being a Multiplayer guide, it would make sense to choose it). The two options we’ll look at in this part are Play Now and Play with Friends.

Play Now

No friends - no problem

If don’t have any friends online, don’t want to play with them, or simply have no friends then you can jump into a game using this option. Choose your game type, level and whether or not it’s hardcore and away you go…..good luck.

Play with Friends

When you choose the option ‘Play with Friends’ you get a screen with three choices – join a friend in their game (but not necessarily in their squad), create your own squad, or view game invites.

Joining a friend’s game.

To join the game of a friend who is already playing you need to highlight their name (as long as it has BC2 next to it) press X (on PS3) and the game will try and join you up. If the server is full you’ll get a message saying as much. You can either then try again until you do join their game, or choose someone else to join. When you get into your friend’s game it’ll put you in their squad only if there is a slot available – otherwise it’s pot luck whether you are friend or foe in game.

Creating your own squad

If you like to be organised and have it all worked out before hand you can create your own squad by clicking on the Create Squad Button. From there you can send invites to your friends and once accepted they will appear in your Squad box. Below the Squad Box is the area where you select your game type. When your squad is together and you’ve chosen the game type you can select Find a Game at the top to launch the multiplayer.

Create Squad and View Invites

Accepting an Invite

If you are invited to a game you can use this option to view your message invites. It’s not usually an issue if your friend is setting up a squad in a lobby, but if they are already playing then you need to pull your finger out or you’ll miss your slot.

That’s it for Part One. In Part Two we’ll be looking at the classes available to the new player and in game comms.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Check out BackslashGaming.com for gaming news, views and reviews.

Pyrotoz PS3 go boom! :sadface:

***UPDATE – Pyrotoz has got his new PS3.***

Well, not exactly boom, but it might as well be. Pyrotoz (Tommy) is a Modern Warfare 2 player/commentator who posts his videos to his channel on YouTube. In his latest video he explains how his PS3 has failed and that’s bad news for him. As a student he doesn’t have the means to pay Sony £130 or whatever they charge at the moment to get it repaired! I like Tommy’s videos as he tends to use odd-ball combinations of weapons and attachments – AK-47 with shotgun attachment anyone? He’s not shy at trying out new things and it’s entertaining to watch. He’s also a good player with a good attitude to match.

***UPDATE – Pyrotoz has got his new PS3.***
It would be a shame if his PS3 became a doorstop, not just for him (especially as he has literally only just got Final Fantasy XIII for it), but for those of us who enjoy watching his vids. So here’s my thinking. If you have two minutes can you pop over to his YouTube channel (linky linky) and help him out in any way you can.

• If you’ve had any experience with the problem he describes in the video where you able to resolve it?
• Do you know of any cheaper alternative way of fixing PS3s other than the Sony Repair Centre?
• Maybe you have spare parts that you could donate to him if it’s a component failure?
• Maybe you’re in a position to help him in a more direct way?

***UPDATE – Pyrotoz has got his new PS3.***
Whatever you can do, kind words or otherwise, I’m sure that Tommy would appreciate them. For reference I’ve got no connections to Tommy other than watching his vids – I have nothing to gain from posting this.

***UPDATE – Pyrotoz has got his new PS3.***
Here’s his video:

Good luck Tommy, hope you’re back on the PS3 soon.

***UPDATE – Pyrotoz has got his new PS3.***

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Is Quickscoping a Random Event?

So this post is about quick scoping and no scoping. I was inspired to write it after watching the following video and then reading/participating in the comments. The video isn’t really that interesting unless you enjoy listening to someone complain constantly about how crap MW2 is, but here it is for context:

Recently I’ve put my lack up success in Modern Warfare 2 and pretty much every other FPS down to my awful aiming. It’s as good an excuse as any and is something that only I can have an effect on. So I’ve been looking at how the more successful players aim in game and in most cases they make it so that the enemy is within the onscreen crosshairs before ADS (aiming down sight). This means that they already have a bead on the enemy and they are not chasing them across the screen with their sights. But what has that got to do with quickscoping and no scoping?

Bear with me because in order to fully explain this it may take some time. On screen (unless you’re playing hardcore) you have the cross hairs – four little white blocks towards the centre of the screen:

The Crosshairs can be seen in the centre of the screen around the number 1

When the Call of Duty series started, one thing that they did well was to increase the realism of firing your gun. So no longer did your bullets go in a straight line from the barrel of the gun to the horizon.

No more Laser Guns

Instead, when you fire without ADS (aiming down sight) your bullet will follow a trajectory from a random point within the crosshair area to replicate muzzle sway:

The Hit Area

If your taget is across the map then your chances of getting a non-ADS kill (or even a hit) are greatly reduced. But in the event that your enemy fills the “hit” area then you will hit them – not accurately, but a hit nonetheless. And as Bruce Lee said “A hit is a hit!”. If you are lucky your hip fire will strike them in a critical area scoring a multiplier before they are able to return the favour. The ONLY way to accurately hit your target is to ADS, or scope in if you are using a scoped weapon:

ADS - the best way to fly

The crosshair accuracy increases if you crouch or go prone – in most cases it will noticeably contract. Accuracy is reduced when you are moving which you can see on screen as the distance between the crosshair points expands.

So now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get on to no-scoping, and quick-scoping (NS and QS from here on). I don’t have a problem with people who no-scope or quick-scope, but I do think that on the whole those who say it is all about skillz and being 1337 are teeny tiny bit delusional. People who NS and QS in MW2 utilise two things in their “skill” whether they realise it or not – luck, and the helping hand of auto aim. When your crosshairs are filled by your target, or they occupy a large proportion of it then your chances of hitting that target are increased. When you scope in, the auto aim “snaps” you towards the target if one is close to the center of the crosshair. Combine with that the fact that the sniper rifles do a lot of damage and you increase your chances of getting a kill even further.

To illustrate the random spread of fire when no scoping have a look at this quick clip from Hutch:

As you can see, the guy he’s trying to shoot is in the middle of the crosshairs, but due to the random spray element the bullets are missing him….. Which neatly brings us on to the whole Sniper Rifle hitmarker complaining that people – mostly quick and no scopers – are complaining about. I’ll allow YouTube comments from the first video to explain how I feel about hitmarkers with the Sniper Rifle (I posted before about getting hitmarkers when using the silencer).

I missed off the ‘t’ in ‘event’ in the last reply…. Anyway – that’s pretty much how I feel about quickscoping. If it was total skill then the quick scoper would not get hitmarkers and their shots would be upper body/head. But that is not the case because they are effectively in between hip firing and ADS. If you watch any QS videos you’ll see that in most cases the scope doesn’t even come up far enough to see the enemy in it….is that aiming?

One thing you’ll notice is that QS and NS posters on YouTube will generally post montage clips of their 1337 skillz. Invariably they show every hit getting “One Shot Kill” or “Headshot” – but these are montage clips, meaning they are the best bits. If you watch videos from QSs who post full matches they you will see them miss, sometimes a lot.

But generally they put it down to lag, or Infinity Ward messing up – but it’s not. Try aiming, that’ll fix the problem in a heartbeat. I particularly like the commentaries that go: “So….um…..yeah. I’m sniping and….. oh my god look at this! A hitmarker?!…..and then he kills me. Infinity Ward, you need to fix this, like, immediately as this is the single thing that makes me want to quit playing this game right now, along with noobtube noobs, commando noobs, Assualt Rifle noobs, SMG noobs, pistol noobs, shotgun noobs, rocket noobs, thermal noobs, grenade noobs, semtex noobs, claymore noobs, C4 noobs, hardscope noobs, turret noobs, prone noobs, jumping noobs, camping noobs, running noobs, chopper gunner noobs, AC130 noobs, last stand noobs, martyrdom noobs and nooby noobs. So……um…..yeah”

In my opinion and experience, is Quickscoping governed by random chance? Yes, yes it is. I’m fully prepared to be proven otherwise, but so far I have not found one person who can consistently get upper body or head shots while no or quick scoping. Even so called Quick Scope tutorials are vague at best on how to do it. My own no scope and quick scope tests indicate the bullet spread remains random compared to actually aiming.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

The War is Over….I think

You know those two guys I’ve mentioned before – Ben Kurton and Rings of Wedemption? Well, looking at the stats for here and on YouTube for my stuff it seems that interest in their “spat” is finally waning. I say “spat”, but there really wasn’t anything to it and in reality the whole issue was overblown and perpetuated by the community (myself included) rather than the protagonists.

Obviously any traffic I get is appreciated, but it was a bit disheartening that the majority of visitors here and to my YouTube channel were looking for the latest drag on that spat rather than to read my witty and informative badly written blog.

So the good news is that traffic to ‘the spat’ is down and pro-community traffic is up:

And in other news:

Geoff – sasbenjr, who has a YouTube channel of immensely helpful gaming tips and tactics is in the middle of a give away competition. He’s looking to give away a Hauppage HD PVR which I posted about it when it was announced. Although I do plug Geoff’s sasbenjr channel fairly frequently I’d like to point out that it because I value the information in the videos rather than as some sort of major sucking up “give me the HD PVR Geoff!” strategy. Although if it will actually make a difference – “pick me for the HD PVR Geoff!”…..

But here’s the thing – this blog doesn’t get a great deal of traffic. So plugging Geoff’s sasbenjr’s excellent YouTube video tips and tactics channel probably won’t get him that many visitors in real terms. Not from here anyway. Which is why I think we needed to reach a wider audience, so I took matters into my own hands:

Picke me for the HD PVR Geoff!

So I’d just like to make it clear that I wouldn’t plug Geoff’s channel nor spam a post with links to Geoff’s sasbenjr YouTube channel if I didn’t think his stuff was any good, HD PVR or not.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Cheap Freaks FPS – Review

So that there’s no confusion, this is not really a review. Now that’s out of the way…

You may have seen the KontrolFreek FPS doo-dahs being pushed by everyone and their dog lately. This sudden ramping up of viral marketing can be put down to one of two things – they’re either the best thing since thumbs, or there’s commission to be made. Or maybe both. – Yes, I’ve linked to them, but it’s a direct link, no referal codes, if you go there I get nothing, if you don’t go there I still get nothing.

But on with the “review”. It’s only fair to point out that I do not have, nor have used the KontrolFreek FPS thumb dingles. I have read what other people including Donncha, SeaNanners, PyroPuncher and others have said about them. What interested me more is not whether or not they turn you into an MLG Pro player overnight, or turn your 26-3 stats into 75-1, I was into the physics of it. If it worked, how does it work.

But before we get into that, allow me to introduce to you the Cheap Freaks FPS*. It retails for no pennies and is available free in most homes.
*Some assembly required.

What’s in the box?
Well…nothing, but here’s what you’ll need:

A child’s drink bottle (or any that has those little plastic caps on top), your console controller, and some blu, or white tack – white is the choice of Pro’s.

Assembly

First, take the clear plastic sealer cap from the top of the bottle. Place it to one side and then drink the contents of the bottle – glug, glug, glug. You can use the bottle for other projects as “Hydrogen Fuel Cells for Beginners” or “Fun With Hydro Rockets”, otherwise recycle it.

Now get your blu-tac, or Pro white-tac and roll out a small sticky sausage to fit the circumference of your analogue stick. If you want to be super precise you can use the following formula to work out how long that is: 2 π r

Once you have your sticky sausage, place it toward the outer edge of the analogue stick. You can now get the plactic cap and place it on top. You may need to adjust the placement, but the good thing about this is that you can place the cap to whatever is comfortable for you. And it will look something like this:

It’s ugly.

Ugly is not the same as useless. As long as something does what I want it to I’m not particularly bothered what it looks like. So does it work?

That really is the big question…..

Well here’s my experience. It didn’t help my k/d. In fact, it was worse during my testing phase of three games. So obviously that makes it useless right? Wrong! My k/d is bad because I’m a bad player, my k/d was worse because I was looking for engagements. To explain a bit more, here’s my conclusion:

My Conclusion
The Cheap Freaks FPS does what it says on the tin in my experience. And if my crappy no-monies version works then the proper KontrolFreeks FPS must also work (but look better). I normally play on a Sensitivity setting of 2 or 3 when playing Call of Duty 6 – Modern Warfare 2. With my Cheap Freak attached I was playing on 7 (I incremented up to that). I could probably have gone higher, but didn’t feel the need as the concept had been proven to me.

They don’t make your game better though. No add-on will ever make you a better player – that is completely down to the individual. What it does is give you more control – especially fine control for tricky aiming. Having come from PC gaming this level of control is something that I have sorely missed. If you’re fine with your controller as it is, then these products will not be of benefit but if, like me, you find your aim is erratic then give it a go – either the Cheap Freaks if you don’t mind looking like a street crazy, or the KontrolFreeks if you like to video yourself playing.

Would I buy the proper version? For $10 yes I probably would because I noticed a significant difference when using my Blue Peter version. But since I live in the UK I’m not likely to buy them as I abhor postage charges, nor the $ to £ conversion that suppliers use (“$10….well, we’ll sell it for £10. No one will ever know…..”)

Hey! What about the Science bit?
M = Fd
Okay. How they work…..it’s all about leverage. The nubbins on the controllers are quite small so the shaft (lever) is short. This means that small movements of the nubbin/lever translate into large inputs. So when you extend the length of the lever the fulcrum/pivot relationship is altered in such a way that you have to move the nubbin more to gain the same amount of relative movement as before.

So when you run around the corner and get surprised, instead of wildly flailing and firing at the sky, your knee jerk reaction becomes a smooth arcing headshot. BOOYAAAH! as JunkYard would say.

Found this helpful? Good. Found it really rubbish? Well, you read this far so it can’t be that bad ;-p

****EDIT/UPDATE****
After playing last night (Friday 5th March 2010) for over an hour the Cheap Freak went out of position due to the white-tac getting warm and through the pressure of use. White-tac or blu-tac is not designed for this purpose so the flaw is not in the material, but in my choice of material. The issue was a lateral shift which hindered my movement control. So I’ve removed the Cheap Freak and reverted to my old sensitivity setting of 3. In this test, for me, the concept of the KontrolFreek FPS has been proven and if I come across some of these for the equivalent of $10 then I’ll be investing in them.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

YouTube Three to Watch Week 2 – and Hauppage update

Here’s week two of the Three to Watch series – not really sure how long this will run for as I’m trying to show YouTube uploaders who don’t have that many subscribers, or who aren’t really well known yet.

This week we’ve got:

xBrZz who I saw in a dual commentary with……..someone else I’m subscribed to who I can’t find now.

KCsCloud/xJollyLlama who I found via his posts on codnation.net which in turn I found via sasbenjr who has influenced KCsCloud’s gameplay (and mine).

DerekDandy who was another referall from another subscription.

–Hauppage Update

I was checking out the Hauppage site earlier to double check how many pennies I have to find down the back of the sofa when I saw something that I didn’t notice before. Previously I had the price worked out at $220 (roughly £140), but I failed to notice the bit that said

Note: Shipments to Ireland, UK, Belgium and the Netherlands will be shipped from our Ireland warehouse, and will be charged shipping costs plus 21% Irish VAT on goods and shipping.

Which then works out at £176…..so I take back everything I said in this post. I’m taking back the high five I was giving to Hauppage and replace it with a heartfelt BOOOO! Looks like it will be 2036 before I squirrel enough pennies.

Ho-hum. Looks like Play.com is doing it cheapest after all.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Dear Infinity Ward…

Dear Infinity Ward,

Please could you make it that when I join a game it’s not already half way through with multiple enemy air support in the air waiting to spawn kill me, or that when I join the game I am on the losing side with only five seconds of the round left to play. It may just be me, and you may consider this to be belly aching, or griping, but I consider those to be insurmountable odds. Not even the bastard love child of Rambo and Chuck Norris could win some of the matches that I found myself joining tonight.

Other than that, you’re doing a fine job (except with Commando, but we’ll leave that for now).

Yours sincerely

Crabmeat Nicol

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

MW2 YouTube Peeps Part Deux plus Uno

Okay, here are some new additions to my Modern Warfare 2 YouTube commentator list. The people listed are commentating MW2 gameplay in an interesting or amusing way and hopefully giving an insight in to better gameplay. So if you want to improve at MW2 why not check out some of these guys – and don’t forget to rate and/or subscribe to them!

Latest additions:

• aplfisher
• GoldGlove
• EarnMyRespect
• Junkyard129
• MisterFantasmo
• NoOneBetterGaming
• OnlyTheKnife
• Synwyn
• WoodysGamertag

And the original original list (yes, original is twice….now thrice):

• Blame Truth
• Kr4hu
• NKE07
• OnlyUseMeBlade
• pyrotoz
• Richeeeee
• Ken Burton
• Wings of Redemption
• czeko92
• jx23
• Mr360Games
• sam5000
• SeaNanners
• Hutch
• tejbz here and here
• TheMoodieSwede
• SandyRavage

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

Cheap Kills in the house

I hit and then maxed out level 70 last night – mainly thanks to the AK47 (beast of a gun). And rather than jump into prestige and possibly make the worst decision in gaming I’ve created a second account as a bit of a mess about. Mainly to see if I could handle going back to level and not having any perks or weapons, and to allow me to have mess about doing stupid stuff like running around with the riot shield, or camping with C4.

I’ll look forward to mucking about on Karachi and Terminal especially. They are two maps that I just can’t seem to do well on. The new psn is CheapKills so feel free to add that as well as my usual id – evaDlivE.

It’ll be interesting if going back to level 1 will help me improve at MW2, or just show how much of a nooby booby I am.

Long live the noobs!

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

To prestige or not….I’m thinking not.

Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Badges

For those people who are new to Modern Warfare 2 or the Call of Duty series once you reach a certain level (in the case of MW2 it’s level 70) you have the option to lose all the weapons, perks and attachments that you’ve unlocked and start again from level 1. But you get a new symbol, one new custom class for every other prestige (1, 3, 5, etc), and the ability to unlock new titles……is that worth it?

I played Call of Duty 4 (Modern Warfare) but at the time I wasn’t really into it, nor had the time, so didn’t actually get the opportunity to prestige – I was planning on doing so, but then the xbox360 had the red ring of death and I got the PS3 instead. At the time of writing, I’m level 68 and have been playing since early January so it’ll probably take roughly two months per prestige if I was to do it.

The life cycle of Modern Warfare was roughly two years before MW2 came out so there would theoretically be enough time to go through at least one prestige, but can I really be bothered with starting from zero again? It took me long enough to unlock all the ghillie suits (300 one shot kills). I’ve unlocked killstreaks that I haven’t even accomplished yet, and currently I don’t think I’m ever going to get the 25 killstreak required to call in the nuke.

Ofcourse it’s great having all the messages popping up on screen when you get a certain achievement or promotion. But I hate being the noob level. I couldn’t wait to unlock claymores, Ninja Pro and Cold Blooded Pro and I’m not sure if I could play without them. I would prefer the prestige to give you the option to keep one unlockable weapon and one unlockable perk to be going on with. Another thing is the match making, once you prestige it’s going to match you more with higher prestige levels – and I’m really not that good. It’s bad enough being matched with multi-prestige levels as it is.

I think I’m going to create a new PSN account and try it from level 1 to see if I can handle not having any equipment. If it’s okey dokey then I’ll consider prestiging, but if I spend my time being bent over and intruded then I’m not doing it.

What do you think?

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE