0.3 first impressions - my thoughts (detailed), suggestions...

[Habib_al_Mahu]

Masaa al-khayr and hello

I bought a copy of BF2 recently after reading that it rated superb. Graphically and functionally I thought it deserved it. I am an artist by trade and have played war games most of my life admiring the makers and artists and hoping someday to be part of making a game. I am not ex military but where I am from we learn how to handle weapons. I was given an ak-47 for my 19th birthday and that weapon served the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. It was brought to me from my Uncle’s last battle. But I digress. What I mean to say is perhaps it was that background which makes me snicker when I read that one game is ‘more real’ then the next.

But I was very pleased with the implementation and changes in PRMM .3 removal of crosshairs is the first step to tying a player to the iron sites and that move alone almost always in fps design, imparts a physicality to the weapon and the eye. Further, while knowing if you have killed or even struck an adversary is amusing in games to some it is not part of a real world experience. Often you are unaware of where a projectile is impacting in the heat of things. Even more so when the target is in grass or on the move. So the removal of notifications was excellent to me. Right away I noticed that the duration of “live time” was increasing per spawn. By forcing other players to their iron sites which I used even in the “vanilla” BF2 I noticed that I was living longer. This brings more immersion.

Squad play became more fluid. Since players are not constantly being “winged” by point and shoot enemies with no intention of scoring a killing shot, squads hold up better on their objectives. Supporting one another becomes more cohesive.
All in all PRMM is clearly one of the best versions of BF2 for both immersion and function. (I have tried almost all the mods made for the game. ) My suggestions would be as follows.

Increased audibles and tracers on rounds. By increasing the sight and sound of fire you will increase the very real effects of suppressing fire.

Add the RPG. The RPG is ubiquitous while most of the AT weapons in BF2 are extremely rare. Also, the AT weapons do not seem to be very effective as anti personnel weapons but it might be me. RPGs are to MEC style forces like the .50 cal was in ww2 to US soldiers. There is also a paucity of recoilless rifles.

I would like to see the tanks hardened while their components are softened. In other words let the drivers live and force the bail outs. Most tanks and APCs are going down to component damage rather then full destruction. (Jammed turrets broken treads and gears, fouled vents, and vehicle fires.) Tank and APC ‘total’ destruction is generally reserved to anti tank weapons from air to ground or tank to tank. Most passengers survive AT/RPG hits on vehicles. (The way your wrecks stay active longer helps give the impression)

Games should be much longer. I’m not sure why the rounds are always so short or why there isn’t a series of maps that are all strung together. What I would see as ideal is if a map didn’t end till all but the chokepoint spawns were taken and tickets ran out. Then the next map would start with the winner forced to fight out of that choke point into the new map zone. A string of city maps would be nice too but I haven’t taken a look at the MOD editor limitations yet.

[Armand61685]

Great post, and I agree with everything you say, especially on the points on immersion effects (sound and visuals) to give a more raw, gritty, and utterly shocking war-like experience.

Btw, are you afghani? If you are, then haale shoma chetor ast? Man irani hastam.

[PvtJackson]

I may be wrong, but I thought that on the AAS maps, on the top left corner in green lettering it tells you what the next CP is. It can't get much clearer than that.

[Hot Tub Man #1]

Along the lines of indicating the next control point in AAS (which I think is handled pretty well at the moment), I'd like to propose an indicator of which point you're supposed to defend.

This is particularly confusing if you're on a map like Muttrah City, you're MEC, and you're getting pushed back. In one game, once the US capped the mosque point, I wasn't quite sure whether to defend the market of the construction site. Both points were equally distant from the mosque. This caused half the team to spawn at one point, half at the other. When the US charged into the market, they took it easily. It might not have happened so easily if the whole team were at the market.

I don't like to use anecdotes, but this is about all I can use to argue my case.
In any case, it's a minor fix that I doubt many people will pay attention to (since it seems defensive players are in the minority). But you'll be helping me out

[da.SPAWN]

my first impression after 3 hours playing 0.3 (not played any BF2 stuff for nearly 3 months):

- Added attrition spawning system; for each death 1 second is added to your "you were killed" time (aka respawn time), to a maximum of 30 seconds penalty. This does not affect your "man down" time (the time which you can be revived). Each second of "You Were Killed" time is for a death, so if you have 15 seconds of "You Were Killed" time, it means you have had 15 deaths.

THIS REALY SUCKS

- 030 BUG: Some users have reported black textures on buildings on night maps when running dynamic shadows on HIGH settings. We do not know what the cause is. Work around is to run dynamic shadows on medium settings; the visual difference is not that significant and we decided to release it with this bug and work around.

needs to be fixed ASAP keeps me from playing night maps, i don´t see a reason to set the graphics to lower than needed.

but the rest is absolutly SUPERB

and by the way the third person sound for the AK47U is still broken....

[Malik]

I don't think it does suck. It's only 1 second. I like it because it tells me how badly I'm playing when I get those seconds added to my timer.

And about the NVGs, your reason is there, if you want to play night maps properly then turn your graphics down.

[eggman]

I love the 1s penalty. It does have an atrition affect... I mean if everybody on one team is taking 10s longer to spawn, then the other team is more effective.

Regarding night maps, workaround is to try and set ONLY dynamic shadows to medium .. all other graphics settings should be fine. We're trying to fix this, but not sure of the cause.

egg