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Feb 18

Battlefield 4 Begins: Things To Know For Your Very First Game

Categories:

Battlefield 4, Battlefield Newbie

by

Everyone is a newbie at Battlefield the first time they play. Even if you’ve played other shooters, there are important differences to learn.

Battlefield at its heart is a team game. Much of your goals in the game, and the points you score, come from doing things for your team, and for your team mates. No matter how many enemies you kill — barring death match game modes — your team won’t win the game without success in the game mode’s objectives.

You earn a lot of points by achieving game objectives, and by assisting your team mates. It is entirely possible to have a high score — even top the game leaderboard — with no kills, by being a good team player. So even if you suck at killing the enemy, you can still contribute effectively while you learn.

You can have a lot of fun doing this, and that’s important to keep in mind. The game is about having fun, and there are a lot of things to do while on the battlefield.  The game offers a huge range of options in the form of weapons, gadgets, and vehicles to play with.

When you start out in Battlefield 4, you have almost no choices for weapons and gadgets to select.  The options open up as you advance in the game.  It is easy to forget how confusing the initial choices can be, and all the questions that experienced players simply know the answers for.

Starting Play

There are some nice guides for this, so I’m going to go over just a few things here.

http://www.primagames.com/games/battlefield-4/guides/battlefield-4-eguide/battlefield-bootcamp/getting-started

When you first enter a game, you will be placed on the deploy screen.  Here you can select your soldier kit (class), and choose a location to spawn (appear) on the map.  Depending on the game mode and map situation, you may have several choices.  If possible, it is always worthwhile to spawn on your squad mates (shown in green).

If you joined a game on a friend, you will automatically be placed in their squad, unless their squad is full or their team is full.  In either case, you may be assigned to no squad, unless you disable (in the team menu) joining on your friend for that game.  If your friend’s squad has an opening, which typically happens automatically in succeeding games, you will automatically join them (as long as you have that option on in settings, it is by default).

The deploy screen is also the map of the battle.  You can see symbols for soldiers of both teams (red for enemy, blue for friendly, green for your squad – default colors), objectives, and vehicles on the map.  There is a zoom function to let you look at the map in more detail, and if you select a squad mate or vehicle to deploy on, a small window will show the action around them.  If you see a “WARNING” flash on that screen, it means they are under fire and deploying there risks coming under fire yourself immediately, and often, instant death.

Soldier Kits — Equipment and Weapons

Starting out, there are four kits — general specializations — for your soldier. As you progress, you will get more options to customize each, and that happens fairly fast, but at the beginning you can choose only one. Each kit has a couple of subdivisions based on the sort of gear used.  You always choose one of these when joining a game.  You can configure the equipment and custom appearance of your soldier by selecting the kit and equipment in it.  At the start of a new career, you have almost no options, so you may as well jump right in and play.

 

Assault:  Infantry Specialist – Medic & Heavy Infantry

When you start out, a good choice is the Assault kit. The assault is a heavy infantry specialist, with the M320 40mm grenade launcher, and a medic, with the First Aid Pack. You can fire three heavy grenades, in addition to the hand grenade available to all soldiers, before having to resupply. The first aid pack is even more wonderful. You can drop up to three at once, and they will heal up both you and your team mates. The first aid pack continues to heal the soldier as they move. They replenish quickly, so toss them down as often as you can to help out your team. And every time someone uses them to heal, you get points. Remember that — help out your team, get points.

As you progress, you get more medical tools — the Medic Bag and Defibrillator — and more grenade types and the underbarrel shotgun. You may choose to be a combat medic specialist, or a grenadier specialist.  The underbarrel weapons deserve special attention.  If you have an assault rifle equipped with an Underslung Rail, rather than going through a “change weapon” delay to use it.  This makes using it as a backup or auxiliary weapon much faster, as your primary weapon is just a fraction of a second away from use.   Not all assault rifles can use this, or use it for the shotgun.  You will notice that if the rail is usable, the underbarrel weapon will use the rifle’s sights and weapon body, rather than having its own.

http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Underslung_Rail

The 40mm grenades can damage vehicles, but will not easily destroy them alone.  They are best used to clear out groups of infantry, especially in enclosed areas like building interiors, stairways, and hallways.  The grenade launcher gets alternate ammunition choices that you can unlock, adding flexibility.  A few weapons will show the Russian GP-30 instead of the M320 when you equip the grenade launcher.  It works exactly the same either way.

The First Aid Pack requires some effort to use because you can toss them out almost as often as you think of them.  If you are like me, and many other players, you will be overjoyed when you unlock the Medic Bag which you can just drop and let players come by to get healed.  But the First Aid Pack has some advantages, and there will be times when it is worth taking over the bigger Medic Bag.  First, it works while moving, which makes it very useful in games where you can’t afford to stay still (Rush & Obliteration especially). Second, it works while under fire as long as no bullets hit, making it easier to stay alive while in the open.

Your primary weapon type is the assault rifle, the most well-rounded, good for all ranges weapon type in the game. The starting gun, the Russian AK-12, the latest version of the Kalashnikov series (going back to WWII’s AK-47), is an easy weapon to learn to use, and to manage recoil on. It has a special feature:  if you switch to Burst Mode, it fires three bullets at  750 rounds per minute (RPM) rather than 680 in full auto.  This can help in longer range combat, to help outshoot some of the faster firing weapons while retaining its superior accuracy.

Note that all weapons in BF4 benefit from reduced recoil, and thus better effective accuracy, when fired on single shot or burst mode rather than full auto.  The AK-12 (and its carbine counterpart the AKU-12) just get an added bonus.

 

Engineer – Vehicle Specialist – Mechanic and Anti-Tank

The second kit is the Engineer. The Engineer is a vehicle specialist. You can be mechanic to repair vehicles, and use heavy weapons to destroy them. You start out with the repair tool — shown in game as a torch — and the MBT LAW antitank missile launcher. A nice thing about the MBT LAW is that it can be free fired — without waiting for a lock on — against any target. It has a smart seeker to help it strike vehicles it gets near to, but it can also be used against infantry, walls, and other objects. This makes the Engineer another heavy weapons specialist in foot combat.

As you progress, you will get more antivehicle weapons — mines and missiles — and more tools.

The repair tool is the main tool of the mechanic. By repairing friendly vehicles, you not only keep them alive in combat but score points. The repair tool can be used while riding as a passenger in certain open vehicles, like the Scout and Transport helicopters and the Attack Boat.  Otherwise you must get out of the vehicle to repair it (or if on foot, just walk up to a friendly vehicle and start fixing).  The tool can also be used as a weak weapon, able to damage and destroy vehicles, enemy equipment, and enemy soldiers if they stay still long enough.

The Engineer will unlock a wide choice of rocket weapons, but can only use one rocket weapon gadget.  The anti-tank series, which can be fired at many other types of targets, include in order of increasing damage, are:  MBT-LAW, Javelin, SRAW, SMAW, RPG-7V2.  The first three are guided weapons, the last two unguided.  The Stinger and Igla rockets can only be fired at and harm air vehicles.  The choice and use of rocket weapons could make an article itself, but as they make up half of the Engineer’s specialty, it is worth knowing a little about them from the start.

The MBT-LAW, along with the Javelin and SRAW (and a range of vehicle weapons), can lock on to a laser designated target.  You will see a red diamond indicating a locked target when you have this type of weapon equipped.  This can allow someone else on your team to find the targets, and let you engage targets you can’t see.  And for the MBT-LAW and Javelin, to hit air vehicles which they will not lock onto by themselves.

The Engineer’s primary weapon type is the PDW — Personal Defense Weapon. Short range, high fire rate, decent accuracy without aiming down the sight. They are short ranged, close quarters dominating weapons which let you hop out of your vehicle and engage infantry effectively. At point blank range, while moving, firing from the hip you will take out most opponents easily, especially with a moment of surprise.

The starting PDW is the Beretta MX4 Storm, is powerful and effective, especially fired from the hip. Don’t expect to land hits easily at long range. as it has moderately high recoil — choose your engagement range appropriately.

Support – Supply Specialist – Indirect Fire and Perimeter Defense (Suppression)

The third kit is the Support kit. The first, and usually primary, role of the support is ammo supply. You start with the Ammo Pack, and you can drop up to three at a time to resupply ammunition for your team mates. You also have the XM25 25mm Airburst Grenade Launcher. The XM25 is a unique weapon type, and can be hard to learn to use fully.

The XM25 is intended to engage targets hiding behind cover, rather than being a direct high damage weapon. The explosion is unlikely to kill with one hit, but it will Suppress the enemy, making it harder for them to engage your team mates. Suppression is the second role of the support, with the powerful LMG weapons able to fire for extended periods and limit the enemy’s abillity to return fire effectively. It has five shots, and you may need them all to get a kill, but the blast radius can take out multiple targets at once.

The XM25 has two fire modes — direct fire and airburst. When fired from the hip or without an Airburst lock, the grenade explodes on impact with a solid target, limiting the area damage but effective for directly hitting a target. Airburst lets the weapon explode at a set distance in the air, allowing you to engage targets you cannot see directly.

To set the airburst distance, aim the weapon at the cover BEFORE you aim down the sight. When aiming down the sight, it will show LOCK and the distance where the grenade will explode. Move the aiming point to clear the target, and fire — the grenade will explode at that distance, letting you hit people on rooftops or hiding around corners. The sight has IRNV – Infrared Night Vision — with a greenish yellow tint, which can see in darkness and through smoke. It also has a rangefinder function, showing the distance to the aiming point.

As you progress, the support gets more tools for both indirect fire on the enemy, more resupply, and more explosive weapons to defend or attack key locations.

As Support, you will act to provide covering fire for your team mates and keep them supplied so they can continue the attack. You get points for every ammunition resupply. Drop ammo packs constantly. Your team mates use ammunition all the time, so this is an excellent way to get a lot of points. Do not be the guy who ignores the team mate asking for ammo, when you can easily drop it and keep them happy.  You start with the Ammo Pack, and like its medical counterpart, you get three of them but later unlock the more powerful Ammo Box.  The packs have the advantage of being more usable when on the move, and they supply ammo instantly without waiting.  But they will not supply explosives such as grenades or rockets, which makes the large Ammo Box more valuable.

The starting weapon is the U100 MK5 Ultimax Light Machine Gun (LMG).  It is a magazine fed weapon, with a smaller (45 round) magazine than the typical LMGs, which have 100-200 rounds.  It falls in the category that the US Army calls Infantry Automatic Rifle, and it is much closer to an assault rifle in handling than the bigger LMGs. It is fairly accurate and has an easy recoil pattern (straight up), making lining up a shot in the center of the target automatically rise up to hit the head.

The Support sub-specializations overlap more than the other kits.  The starting equipment is in the Indirect Fire specialty, but the LMG is the best weapon for providing Suppression.  In Battlefield 4, soldiers will react to weapons fired in their direction.  Sniper rifles with their long range surprise death threat are good at this, but LMGs are the best.  The threat of a sustained, unstoppable stream of fire will limit the effectiveness of enemies you fire at, even if you can;’t actually hit them.  There is a reason you have bigger magazines than other weapons, so take advantage of this.

Recon – Scouting (Spotting) Specialist – Sniper and Special Operations

The last kit is the Recon. Recon is all about locating the enemies, and if possible taking them out on your own, often by surprise. You have two specialties, the Sniper — fairly obvious, a long range bolt action rifle which can kill enemies with one hit head shots at long ranges.

One shot to the head, the enemy is dead. If you are accurate enough, you can kill at any range with a single shot. It may kill with a chest hit at very short range, but the Defensive Armor upgrade will allow your target to live. This makes close range engagements very risky. Still, take the shot — you will get a “assist counts as kill” for the high damage hit when a team mate kills your target. Snipers are also spotting specialists. While everyone can use the Spot button to point out enemies for their team, Recon has more tools to make it easier and more effective.

For every enemy you spotted killed by your team, you get points. This can add up quickly.

The second role of Recon is special ops — Spec Ops. Get close to the enemy, locate enemies, and destroy them with explosives. These two roles aren’t absolutely mutually exclusive, which is a good thing as your starting gadgets are the PLD Portable Laser Designator — a hand held tool to spot enemies — and C4 explosives, remotely triggered explosives to kill enemies and destroy vehicles and objects.

The PLD has an IRNV scope with 1x and 3x zoom and a rangefinder. This makes it excellent for spotting targets, especially in the dark and through smoke, and determining the range to enemies for long range shots. But its key function is a laser designator, which will mark and lock vehicles for your team mates to fire lock on missiles against. It is good for up to 500 meters against ground targets, 300 vs air, but its IR sight gets fuzzy at long range, making it hard to distinguish targets visually. You get points for any hits or kills assisted by the laser designator.

C4 is a versatile tool. You can stick it on walls or vehicles — two are a sure kill in direct contact — or lay it down or even throw it through windows and over walls. Once placed, you can detonate it with the trigger device, but it can also be detonated by weapons fire and other explosions — even very light ones such as Flash Bang grenades can do it.  C4 can be placed while swimming, which makes it a good option to destroy boats.

The Recon gets a good collection of equipment to help locate and target enemies, as well as some additional tools to kill them,  But there is one gadget which is both extremely useful and worth equipping often once you unlock it:  the radio Spawn Beacon.  You and your squad can deploy on the map on any Spawn Beacon placed by a member of your squad.  This makes having at least one Recon with it very important when you wish to have a closer spawn location in case you all die.

Recon has Sniper rifles as their primary weapon type, and the Chinese Norinco CS-LR4 as your starting weapon. With a 6x scope, moderate fire rate and fast bullet velocity, it is good for moderate range engagements. If you can learn to use this one, you can master any sniper rifle in the game.

Bolt action snipers only fire one shot at a time, and unless the Straight Pull Bolt is equipped, will not allow you to reload for the next shot while aiming down the sights (scope).  Sniper Rifles are the only weapons which use the Long Range Optics (6x and higher magnification).  They have a special accessory, the Variable Zoom, which adds an alternative 14x magnification to any Long Range Optic (and can’t be used or equipped otherwise).

All Long Range Optics (and the 3X Scopes available for some pistols) will have Scope Glint when you aim down the sights with the weapon.  If your target is looking in your direction, this will make your presence and location very visible.  Try to limit the time you aim, or use another weapon (or your PLD) to look for distant enemies, and shoot as soon as you have a good shot, then move on if you get a kill.  You can equip medium or close range optics and not suffer this effect on Sniper rifles.

Sniper rifles can benefit from the scope zeroing function, which adjusts the scope aiming point to center at the designated range, with ranges of 200, 300. 400. 500, and 1000 meters available.  This can help hit targets at 200 meters and beyond.  While you might not try for that early in your play, it is a skill worth developing.

When you use a sniper rifle, you are at a disadvantage in any close combat situation.  While most sniper rifles do 100 damage (instant kill) on a body hit at close range, the Defense upgrade path gives Armor which reduces this damage.  And if you miss, or get a leg hit, you aren’t likely to get another shot.  You should avoid close combat, or learn to use your secondary weapon (pistol).  If you must engage up close, try to stay near team mates you can rescue you or finish off enemies you wound.

The All Kit Weapons

There are three classes of weapons, besides the secondary weapons, which are available to all player kits.

 Carbines — smaller versions of assault rifles, better at close combat but shorter ranged.   A good universal  all-range alternative to the kit’s primary weapons.  Unlocked by playing Engineer.

Shotguns — very effective short range weapons, with poor long range potential compensated for by alternative ammunition.  Unlocked by playing Support.   At close range, very high damage makes them reliably lethal,  Slow fire rate and limited magazine size requires care when engaging multiple targets.

DMRs (Designated Marksman Rifles) — semiautomatic (single fire) accurate battle rifles good for moderately long range engagements.  Gives all kits a longer range option.  In normal mode games, they take three shots to kill, or two with a head shot, at any range. Unlocked by playing Recon.

 Grenades and Melee

All soldiers start with the M67 Frag Grenade, a high explosive thrown weapon with a fuse delay.  Throw it, and shortly afterward it explodes, doing nice and potentially lethal damage in an area.  You unlock additional grenade types by points earned with grenade kills, so early on, use these often.  There are two other types of explosive grenades – the V40 Mini (you get two of these), and the RGO Impact (explodes on impact with no delay, slightly less damage).  The other grenades are M34 Incendiary,  M18 Smoke, M84 Flashbang, and Hand Flare.  In real life, there is a dangerous trick called “cooking the grenade,” where you activate the fuse and wait a second or two to throw it.  The USMC does not approve of this use, because it is impossible to be certain exactly how long the fuse will take to burn — resulting in deadly results to your own side.  In Battlefield 4, use the RGO Impact grenade if you want it to explode with no delay.

All soldiers are equipped with a knife.  You will get a lot of choices for custom knives to choose.  All only affect the appearance of your soldier.  They work exactly the same way.  Use the melee (knife) key when near an enemy solider to begin a knife attack.  If you are behind the soldier, you’ll see a fatal takedown attack play out.  If you attack from the front, the enemy can use the knife key during the first second of the attack to perform a Counterknife action, turning the attack around and killing you, the attacker.

The melee attack is also usable against objects such as windows, fences, boxes, enemy equipment such as Spawn Beacons, and can be used to push vehicles (very helpful for boats which have run aground).

Running, Swimming, Jumping, Parachuting

Moving in Battlefield has a lot of options, and while they aren’t hard to learn it is nice to know the rules before you start.

Running (or sprinting) is easy — hold the run button down, and you move faster. It also makes shooting harder or impossible. Running around corners blindly will leave you vulnerable. Crouching and laying down (going prone) slow your movement down a lot, but can help let you hide behind cover. They also make shooting more stable and accurate, In Battlefield 4, you can run as long as you want in one direction, but will slow down if you turn.

You can swim in water simply by entering any body of water which is deep enough. You can dive by using the crouch or prone key in water, and swim underwater. You can hold your breath approximately five seconds, and must surface after that or take damage. While swimming on the surface, you can use most sidearms to shoot (hip fire only), and some gadgets such as repair tools and C4. You can swim more quickly by using the sprint key in water. Water breaks line of sight for spotting, but doesn’t offer good protection against enemy fire.

Your soldier can jump, but unlike the “When I say jump!”, you don’t have much control over how high. It is enough to get over low obstacles, but larger objects will still block your path. While in the air, most gadgets are useless and weapons are difficult if not impossible to use. Jumping while running will not make you move any faster, and might even slow you down, but you’ll often see players jumping anyway, perhaps just to do something different.

All Battlefield soldiers are equipped with parachutes. No, you won’t see them before they deploy, but they are there. Any time you are far enough off the ground, whether from exiting an aircraft or jumping off a high building or cliff, you can press the jump key to deploy your parachute and try to land safely. You can control your flight to a small degree, and practice will make controlled landings easier. It is possible to shoot most weapons while riding a parachute, and use some gadgets including rocket and grenade launchers, but the motion can make accurate aim much harder.

 

Go Play Now

You know you want to.  Jump in, try things out, have fun.

 

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Feb 15

I’m A Newbie At Battlefield

Categories:

Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline, Battlefield Newbie

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Everyone says that the first time the play, and sometimes for a long time afterwards. Even if you have played other first person shooters (FPS), Battlefield has differences from other games out there.  So if you are, just sing along with this “I’m A Newbie, At Battlefield-oody”.

 

OK, it isn’t about Battlefield, but it rhymes better and is funny.  It also lets me make a point about the Battlefield series.  KD (or K/D), the Kill/Death ratio or score, is one of the less relevant stats in a Battlefield game. It doesn’t hurt to be good at killing the enemy.  This is a game about war, and shooting, and blowing stuff up, after all.  But it is much more a game of achieving goals, and sometimes in so doing you are going to die more often than you’d like.  Still, K/D is an easy score to see, is tracked on your stats, and can give you a feel as to how your direct combat skills are stacking up to the competition in the game.

A question sometimes asked is “What is the average K/D?”  But that is a sort of complex trick question, and I’ll get into why in a moment.  A better question is “What is the median K/D?”  Followed by, for all those who aren’t stats mavens or mathematicians, “What’s a median?”

Easy enough, median is middle (like the zones in the middle of a highway called median strips).  Half the players will be above this, half below.  Here is some good news for newbies, who worry that they aren’t good players because they don’t have an awesome, higher than 1.0 K/D yet.

http://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield_4/comments/1yomh4/the_median_battlefield_player_kd_is_065/

Rejoice! Newbies, and players with skills well below the hypothetical average of 1.0, make up the majority.  This is true of other shooters as well.  But in Battlefield, there are ways to score high and help your team even if you aren’t the best at either killing or staying alive.

Killing Efficiency

So why is the average K/D a trick question?  Let’s look at a very simple game, a one on one death match.

  • Player Ace 20:0, Player Newbie 0:20.  Total kills 20, total deaths 20, the average is 20/20 or 1.00.  Player Ace shows a 20.0 K/D (zero deaths is treated like one for the stats), while Newbie scores 0/.0.
  • Player Alpha 10:10, Player Beta 10:10.  Still 20 kills, 20 deaths, 1.00 average.  Each player has a 10/10 or 1.00 K/D score — a perfect average game.
  • Player Good 15:5, Player Bad 5:15.  Still 20 kills, 20 deaths, 1.00 average.  Player Good has a 3.00 K/D, player Bad 0.33.

Run any combination, you get an average of 1.00 for the game.  The presence of players who score well above 1.0 K/D mean that other players have to score much less to balance.  Add more players in the game and the average won’t change.  You cannot have a game where all players are above average in a round.  Nor does it work out that way in lifetime stats either.

But wait, there are complications.  First, you can die from causes other than an enemy kill.  Drop a grenade at your feet, fall off a cliff, crash while driving, stand near an exploding gas tank, whatever else is present that can be lethal.  This causes more deaths than kills, which would bring the average down below 1.0.

Second, Battlefield (and some other games) offer a revival system, where “dead” players can recover and continue action, and not count as dead.  A simple two vs two match example.

  • Player Good Player 20:0 & Healer 0:0 vs Good Shooter 20:20, Napping Guy 0/0.  Both “Good” players scored 20 kills, but Healer revived every single time, wiping out those deaths from the stats.

This makes it hard to measure whether a high K/D in Battlefield is due to personal combat skill, or the talents and skills of the supporting team.  While healing has the biggest impact on survival, vehicle repair, ammo supply, spotting enemies and supporting fire for assists also make a big difference.

Learn your role, play the objectives, have fun, and you don’t need to worry about your K/D or other stats to enjoy the game.

Battlefield Friends – Learning How To Play (Better)

Battlefield Friends is something every Battlefield player should check out.  Starting with Battlefield 3 and continuing in BF 4 (and likely to do so for Hardline as well),  It is funny, but hidden in the humor are real lessons about how the game works, and how to have fun playing.  The first episode points out something that new players shouldn’t do — so let’s get into things to get your game play started right.

Battlefield 4 offers the Test Range, and the Single Player campaign uses the same weapons and vehicles as are in multiplayer.  You can use those to learn how to operate vehicles, and practice using your weapons, and in general learn much of how to play the game.  Battlefield is also a server-based game (rather than matchmaking).  When learning, you can choose the server to join based on game type, maps, and number of players.  You can even join an empty map simply to explore the world and practice.

Using Weapons

Using guns is one thing that players of other FPS have to relearn in Battlefield.  Most FPS games do not model or track the movement or impact of projectiles (AKA bullets).  Instead, they use a hit method called hitscan.  When a player hits the trigger button, the hit is immediately registered on the point where the gun is aimed.  In Battlefield, bullets are tracked as separate objects.

http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Projectile_mechanics

Using hitscan isn’t a bad thing.  It is a reasonable approximation of gun fire at short ranges, and eliminates complexity for both the players and the game engine.  Players have no need to try to compensate for the movement of the target or the travel time and drop of the bullets. Let’s look at some simple cases.

A gun which shoots bullets at 600 meters per second (600 m/s), firing at a target 60 meters away, takes 60/600 or 0.1 seconds for the bullet to hit the target.  That is 100 milliseconds (ms), or the time of 6 frames of 60 frames per second (FPS) video (the rate used by North American and many other TVs and computer monitors).  It is also just at the threshold where a typical human can respond or react to an action.  A runner moving at 3 m/s only moves 0.3 meters, or roughly 1 foot, in that time.  For games where combat takes place at close ranges, where 60 meters would be a long shot in the game, it is easy and sensible to consider the bullet impact to be instantaneous.

At shorter distances, the travel time becomes even harder to observe with human senses.  At 10 meters, the time drops to 16.6 m/s — one frame at 60 fps video.  Even with lower velocity projectiles such as those used in suppressed weapons and shotguns, the bullet travel will still be so fast as to seem to happen at the moment the trigger is hit at any close distance.

Battlefield doesn’t restrict you to such close distances.  Shots are possible at hundreds or even thousands of meters distance.  The Frostbite engine (used since Battlefield Bad Company 2, and is on version 3.0 in BF4) makes it possible to see, shoot, and track the motion of bullets at extremely long ranges as individual objects.  Because of this, players must be aware of the effect of bullet velocity, drop, and compensate for both their own and their target’s motion.

Key effects to be learn and be aware of:

  • Bullets take a noticeable time to travel and will drop below the aiming point at longer ranges.  This most strongly affects sniper rifles, but all guns are capable of shooting at ranges long enough for this to matter.
  • Weapon ranges are not compressed (shortened) to make the difference between short and long range weaponry great enough to be noticeable on small (under 60 meter) maps.  Every gun can score hits at hundreds of meters distance, though some are much better at being lethal at long range than others.  Notably, shotguns and pistols can kill you at more than 60 meters distance.
  • Bullets remain in flight even if the shooter takes a fatal injury.  This is more commonly noticed when two players engage and one is using a weapon with much lower bullet velocity — especially shotguns and suppressed weapons.  Trading kills, where you and your opponent both kill each other, are possible, not uncommon, and realistic in Battlefield.
  • Both the movement of your target and your own movement can affect the impact of bullets.  A shot aimed right at your target’s head can miss entirely if the combination of movement and distance is enough.

Guns have a fair number of other effects to learn and compensate for.  Recoil – both vertical and horizontal, spread, moving accuracy, damage and how it changes over distance, the effects of various attachments, reloading, and more.

http://www.primagames.com/games/battlefield-4/tips/battlefield-4-understanding-base-weapon-statistics

The weapon stats shown on the in-game screens and on Battlelog are only a rough approximation of the actual weapon stats in Battlefield.  For Battlefield 4, check out http://symthic.com/bf4-stats.  There are stats for other games there as well.  Symthic uses the actual data used within the game itself, and offers much more detail about the differences between various weapons than is available in the game itself, or elsewhere.

Nothing substitutes for actually using the weapon in the game.  The stats can help give you guidance about what a given weapon is best at and how to handle it, but you still need to practice with it.  The attachments available can change how a gun handles as well.  Aimed fire, standing hip fire without aiming, fire while moving, and more, are things you truly can only learn by practice.

It is fine and fun to jump right into a multiplayer game and start blazing away, but at some point it is worth learning more about how to use the weapons and shoot accurately.  Besides the BF4 Test Range and playing the single player campaign, one thing that never hurts when starting play, especially using a new gun, is to simply shoot at objects on the map and see how it handles.  If you want to see what the gun’s recoil pattern (the way the barrel moves when fired), pick an empty wall which will show bullet holes and just fire off a whole magazine.  This will show you which direction you need to move the mouse (or controller) to compensate for that recoil.

If you can hit targets on the practice range and any target while you are moving, you have better chance to hit enemies in a multiplayer game.  And for those who care, shots fired in practice don’t count against your game stats.

Battlefield has fairly good weapon balance.  By this, I mean that in each class of weapons, every one has advantages and disadvantages, which makes them equally useful if you learn how to make use of their advantages.  Each class of weapons has its own niche as well.  Know your weapon’s strengths, and try to find opportunities to use them.  While it may seem that some weapons are better than others, especially when you are being killed by them, a good player will do well with any weapon in the game.

In Battlefield 4, the starting weapons for each kit are good enough to use forever.  You may like other weapons better, and find they fit your preferred play style more, but they are neither underpowered nor obsolete once you unlock others.  There is a nice reward for sticking with a weapon for a while:  By 100 kills with a weapon, you get the first 10 (most useful) attachments, 2000 XP for the Service Star, and a Gold Battlepack with more goodies.  Give each weapon you use a chance, you might find you actually like it.

This Game Has Vehicles

It is one obvious difference from many FPS games out there.  You get to use a wide range of vehicles in combat.  Ground vehicles are pretty intuitive for most people, though the weapons used can take a while to learn.  Just as with guns, the shells from cannons, especially Tank cannons, take time to hit their target and will travel in arc as they drop. Flying, that is harder.  It is best to practice outside of a live game before you try to fly in a game where players will complain about your crashing skills.

Most vehicles have passenger seats, and if you aren’t so good at driving, you might find the role of passenger, especially a gunner passenger, to be useful and effective.  It is a good way to get XP to unlock things for your vehicles as well.

Unlocks

Battlefield is a game where you unlock, and thus can use, more equipment through experience in the game. The good news is that the stuff you start out with is always useful, and it doesn’t take long to unlock the things you most want and need to have in order to play effectively.  Being a low ranked newbie with just the starting gear will not stop you from effectively killing your enemies, either with guns or vehicles.  Yes, the stuff you unlock does help you, but not so much as to give you a big advantage over your opponents.

One thing you’ll quickly notice is that you not only earn XP (experience points) to increase your overall soldier (character) rank, but you also get XP for each kit, combat vehicle, and weapon type as well.  You only gain points for a category for actions you take using it.  One cool thing for vehicle XP is that the points count for the vehicle even if the gadgets were placed (like mines that explode or sensors that spot enemies) when outside the vehicle.

Weapons are a special case of this.  The weapon class counts points earned using the weapon, which includes kills, assists, suppression, etc., rather than any action you can take while holding one.  Weapons also have attachment unlocks, which are gained only by scoring kills with the weapon. All of the common attachments for a weapon are earned with 100-170 kills, depending on the weapon, with the most useful ones unlocked by 100 kills.  But you also unlock weapon Battlepacks with more kills, which will give you all the remaining attachments available for the weapon by the time you get them all, at 510 kills for most primary weapons.

Ah, Battlepacks.  You will earn many of these while playing, and the rewards, while randomized, come fast enough and often enough that you tend to get the most useful items pretty quickly. As in, there is no need to ever pay money to get them.  There are three general categories of rewards:

  • XP Boosters.  These increase the XP you earn while playing for a set amount of time, and are activated in the game on the deploy screen.  XP boosts are cumulative with any promotional XP boosts which run — the Double XP weekends for example — so if you are using a 50% boost on Double XP you will get 300% experience, doubling both the boost and your base XP.
  • Weapon Attachments.  In BF4, there are attachments only unlocked by Battlepacks, which give you alternative versions of the basic attachments, plus a handful of special ones not otherwise available:  three optics (the FLIR and IRNV night vision scopes,and the 20X Hunter Scope for Sniper Rifles).  The differences are mostly cosmetic (appearance), but some people do prefer the look of different optics than the default on each gun.  Note:  All guns in BF4 come with either American, Russian, or Chinese optics by default — one of each — with the others unlocked by Battlepacks.
  • Cosmetic Items.  Camouflage (uniforms) for your soldier, Paints to customize your vehicles and guns, Dog Tags, Emblem elements, Knives (all work the same, but the in game model, animation, and kill message are different), and maybe anything else they can come up with.  None of these affect play, but they are nice to make your soldier stand out on the Battlefield.

Again, you will find the the unlocks for things you find most useful will come quickly enough that soon, you will forget how much you wanted them.

Team Play

Everything is awesome when you’re part of a team.  Battlefield is a game where you are rewarded in many ways for helping your team mates, as well as for achieving objectives which are needed to win the game.  Teamwork is not an afterthought in this game.  You should always be thinking about how to work with and help your team, not just who you should be shooting at.  This can be hard when you are just starting out, especially if you’ve played other FPS games which do not have similar teamwork features.

First, when you join a game you are not just part of a team, you are also part of a squad.  The squad is a small group which makes up a unit which is part of the team — in Battlefield 4, of up to five players.  On the map, enemies are shown in red, team mates in blue, while your squad mates are in green (default colors).  Find and stick with your squad mates — you get extra points for working with them, and if you don’t know what to do, go with them because maybe they do.

Second, you have gadgets which can help out your team mates as well as yourself.  This is most intensely and importantly applied to the medics (BF4 Assault, Hardline Operator) who have medical packs (bags, boxes) which will heal team mates, and ammo suppliers (Support, Enforcer) who give replacement ammo for their team.  These two kits are also the easiest to get used to playing at the start — a strong primary weapon and a clear team play task to perform.

In the desert, the saying goes “If you can’t remember when you last had water, you need to drink.”  With both medic and ammo packs/bags/kits, you shouldn’t wait until you see a wounded team mate, are hurt yourself, or need more ammo, before you drop them.  No, you should be putting them out all the time, any time you are near team mates, or even at a good location where your team mates are sure to come by.  But especially, if you see the icon which shows that a team mate needs healing or ammo, don’t hesitate or forget to give it to them.  Not only will your team mates appreciate this, but it actually helps them to win the game — and gives you lots of XP.

The repair tool (Engineer, Mechanic) should be used whenever you are near or on board friendly vehicles which are damaged.  Again, bonus points for helping your team, and your simple effort can help your team win.  This isn’t as hard to remember to do as supplying health and ammo, but you still may need to remember that you can fix vehicles in this game.

Third is spotting.  The last kit (Recon,Professional) has tools to help with spotting the enemy, but the feature of spotting is another key element of Battlefield teamwork.  It is also one which every player can do.  Press the spot key, and the enemies you see will be shown on your minimap (and big map), both for you and for your whole team.  You should develop a spotting reflex in this game, where you automatically try to spot enemies even while you are shooting at them.  That way, your team will also know where they are, and can help you engage them — or track them down avenge your death.

Last things are orders and objectives.  These go together, because in Battlefield, each squad has a leader, who can give orders to engage a game objective.  You will see that objective highlighted on the map, and in BF4 will see a line between you and the objective showing where to go. By working together with your squad and following the leader’s orders, not only are you more likely to actually secure the objective, but you earn bonus points for following (or giving) orders and for working with your squad.  If you happen to be the squad leader, remember to give orders whenever you can. Both you and your squad will earn extra points, and be more effective in the game.

 

The team Commander (Hardline Hacker) is also a big part of this when present in a game, offering the squad leaders guidance and support (and extra bonus points) for securing objectives.  Squad leaders should try to accept Commander orders when given, as this gives extra points as well, and can help the whole team coordinate better.

You should always be aware of the objectives, and work to achieve them in the game.   This is, by far, most easily done by having a good squad and working with them.  A good squad will communicate — voice or text chat — and it isn’t too hard to make at least temporary friends with your team mates during a game and work even better together.

Have Fun

Sometimes, you can forget that the ultimate goal in playing games is to have fun.  Winning or losing can feel serious, but don’t get so caught up in the goals of the game that it feels like work.  There is room in Battlefield to slack off and mess around, try new things, and play however you want to in order to enjoy yourself.  As long as your actions don’t deliberately annoy or hurt your team’s play, people don’t mind.

Still, the sense of accomplishment when you work with your team and achieve victory is amazing in this game, and even a newbie can do that.

 

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Feb 13

Are EA’s Games Too Hard To Learn?

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General Gaming

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Are EA’s games too hard to learn?

http://www.gamerheadlines.com/2015/02/eas-games-hard-learn-2/

 

During an on-stage interview at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, EA’s chief creative officer Richard Hilleman stated  that he believes EA’s games might be too hard for players who are new to video gaming.

“Our games are actually still too hard to learn,” Hilleman responded to a comment made by interviewer and comedian Pete Holmes, who said he would like for control layouts to remain the same across games and even between games of different series. “The average player probably spends two hours to learn how to play the most basic game, and asking for two hours of somebody’s time is a lot for most of our customers between their normal family lives. To find two contiguous hours to concentrate on learning how to play a video game is a big ask.”

 

As a long time Battlefield fan, I’m not in the category of either someone new to video games, or an average player who rarely plays such games.  There is a reason that games with depth and complexity end up doing well, even if they do have a learning curve.  But I don’t think that this is an EA issue.  There are a wide range of games out there, and they are designed to appeal to different audiences.  This is not a new thing either.  It even predates video games, with such games as chess and go considered hard to pick up by some people, even though the “controls” for the game are pretty basic.

Game Control Schemes Hard To Learn?

Now, there is a big valid point in the quote above, but it isn’t truly an issue of hard or easy to learn.  Games in the same genre, with the same sort of actions to perform, often have very different control schemes.  Even games in the same series can have the control layout change between releases.  Why not try to standardize the common elements?

This is a bigger problem on consoles than PC, where it is more common to allow custom control layouts.  But with both current generation consoles and PCs, and even older platforms, there is no reason that alternate layouts and a custom option couldn’t be offered for those who don’t like the “new, improved” version offered by default in the game.

There is a second issue, and it is even more important.  Different games can offer different features, which need new controls in order to employ them.  A new control interface and layout allows a new game to achieve innovation, and if successful, can become the new “standard” for future developers to try and use.  Different genres have very different sorts of actions to take within a game, and there is no reasonably simple way to make them universal.  Even the Wii and Kinect can’t make complex actions inherently intuitive.  There are only so many simple actions you can map to obvious controls before you run out, and have to use something which requires learning how to use them.

Maybe It Is Just Different Games For Different Players?

People totally new to video games are likely to pick games which are simpler and easier to learn, rather than go for those which do require more effort to learn, let alone master.  Still, this is an era where preschoolers (and perhaps infants) are exposed to video games.  The basic skills of a genre of video games can be learned from the first game played, and then applied to others.  Most gamers don’t take long at all to learn the control schemes of new games.  Much more time is spent learning how to most effectively play the new game. Easy controls aren’t the same thing as easy games, either.  There are many point and click games — a simple interface, works well on tablets and smartphones — which are frustratingly hard to master and win.

With games costing $60 US typically for a new release, a week or two to get comfortably familiar with a game and gain a sense of growing expertise isn’t much time at all.  For that amount of money, we expect to play a game for months.  The fact that so many of EA’s games develop an enduring base of dedicated players — people are still playing 2001’s Battlefield 1942! — says to me that any difficulty in learning the games doesn’t detract from the ultimate enjoyment of them.

There is a matter of being a newbie at a game, and being sometimes frustrated by a failure to grasp the goals and skills needed to succeed. But the control scheme is a minor aspect of that.  The challenge of learning a game, and the quest for mastery, is itself part of the pleasure of playing games with complexity and depth.

EA — and other companies — offer a large catalog of new and older games which appeal well to casual gamers and are easy to learn.  So easy, that honestly, saying a child could play them is both true and relevant.  Children are part of the casual gaming crowd.  Some of them grow up to be serious gamers, and a few years of game playing make most adults very familiar with both how to learn games, and how to learn new control schemes.

 

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Feb 10

Hardline – The Beta Is Done

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Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline

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The battle’s done and we kind of won
so we sound our victory cheer
Where do we go from here? — Once More With Feeling, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, 2001

 

Now that the Beta is done, the question is “Did we like it?”  That is a trick question, really, because a lot of people played it and had fun.  No, the real question is “How much do you want to pay for it?”  With no worries about money, I’d have no problem paying full price, maybe even pre-ordering the game.  Well, almost no problem, but my issues won’t apply to everyone.

GTA V is coming out on PC, and that is a must have for me.  That doesn’t reflect on Hardline itself, but I’m not going to wait on GTA and get Hardline instead.  The GTA series is one of my all time favorites, and I’ve played every one since GTA 1. I’ve grown used to the wait for it to come out on PC (got a PS2 to play GTA 3, way back when).  The price for GTA V and Hardline are the same, not counting the extra for the Hardline Deluxe.

Other cool games are coming out as well this spring.  So deciding how to best spend our money to add to our gaming collection requires some thought.  GTA V is on Steam, so for us, one copy will let all of us play it, with separate saves and achievements  — just one at a time, not together.  Hardline multiplayer means one copy per player.  Two copies of each at full price is a lot — not really more than two BF4 Premium pre-orders, but I don’t like to drop that kind of cash more than once a year, and then on the best games I find out there.  We still have the fall game season to pay for, more good games to get.  Hardline’s single player adds value, but how much is that worth?  We won’t know enough until the game comes out and we get a chance to play it, or at least let reviewers play it for us.

How much you want to spend is a personal decision.  I liked playing the Beta, and would love to play more of Hardline.  It is a game which, like any Battlefield game, is improved considerably in multiplayer when played with friends.  I’m likely to treat Hardline as a BF4 alternative when we want a change of pace if our gaming community really takes to it.

So let’s get to what worked well in the Hardline Beta, and what can use improvements.

First, a quick item.  The term Hacker for the commanding boss leading the team has way too many bad connotations.  The fact that game (and computer) hackers in real life cause endless trouble, that nobody enjoys having a “hacker” in their game, and a professional — police, corporate, or criminal organization — computer manipulator wouldn’t accept being called a mere “hacker,” all suggest that a different term should be used instead.

I suggest Technician.  Like the kit roles, it could apply to both sides and still sounds like an official title, not some jerk working from his basement.

Was Hardline Beta Good?

The Bank Job Heist mode played very well once I was with players who understood the objectives.  It is an intense, infantry-focused map, and really makes great use of the tools Hardline adds to the game.  We zip between rooftops and climb up walls to quickly get to locations otherwise too well protected to brute force our way through.  The game balance worked well too, with both sides winning games.

Hotwire is simply a blast to play.  It could be improved, but it was consistently fun and very different from the classic Battlefield modes.  With nine maps to play on — haven’t seen enough of them to be sure how they will all work — it should allow for fun team play.

Conquest was straightforward, but the choice of types of vehicles and Hardline’s weapon and gadget picks make it play differently from Battlefield 4.  The Hacker presence does affect this, as well as the other game modes.  It is easier to jump in and out of that role, so I expect to see it used more often in Hardline than BF4.  The Hacker’s “traps” aren’t lethal, but do affect play, while the camera and GPS sensing really change your strategy, especially if you are trying anything sneaky.

So what about the rest of the multiplayer game?  Blood Money was fun, and I expect it to still be so, especially with more maps.  Hotwire on Everglades map looked good, so more is just going to be even better.  The Heist mode seems pretty solid as well.  The two mission modes, Crosshair and Rescue, sound good but we haven’t seen enough to see how it will actually play.

Conquest and Team Death Match are classics and should always work OK.  Straight up fights, without the crime related themes, but shooting and killing is what FPS are all about, after all.

The Unknown Future

EA has pushed — with ads, tweets, facebook postings, etc. — Hardline, especially in these last couple of months prior to the Beta.  They’ve done a good job presenting what the game is about, and what it will play like, both in multiplayer and the single player campaign.  We know what we’ll get with the game, and the Beta showed fairly well how it plays on the maps and modes we tried. But we don’t know anything about what EA and Visceral are planning to do with this game in the future.

BF4 had a whole preplanned season of Premium content and DLC expansions.  BF3 had as well, but Premium wasn’t issued immediately on launch.  But if we go back to BF Bad Company 2 (from 2010), the VIP program added a series of additional maps over time, which eventually (as in, if you buy it now) were added for free to the full game package.

Then there is “This Season On Hardline”.  Sure, the stuff is all just good videos of game play from the Beta now, but that line suggests that there could be future seasons, in keeping with its Cop TV show theme.  If this game takes off like I think it can, there is room to add a lot of stuff to it, without waiting for a Hardline 2 version.  We could have additional single player action, maybe some coop game modes (smaller story based multiplayer), and of course, many more multiplayer maps.  You could even see a variant of the BF2:BC Vietnam concept, with a new setting (old school Untouchables vs gangsters or 80s Mafia movies?)

Since we don’t know what will come in the future, this is just speculation and can’t really be used to judge when and if to get this game.  That we have to decide based on what we see before us.  To me, this game is good, and I expect to play it.

 

 

 

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Feb 09

Hardline – Surprise! Extra Day Of Beta And Balance Patch

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Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline

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http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bfh/forum/threadview/2955064789053252108/

There is a new balance patch which changes a bunch of weapons, for the PC version.  Plus the Beta extends through today, February 9, giving us a bit more time to play with the changes.

Game balance is a tricky thing. Designers set up values for the weapons in a game, or the rules, or the units, often based on approximations of real world data.  Or else, what seems like a reasonable set of values which looks at first analysis like it should be fair.

Testing by the developers and playtesters provides useful feedback to tweak the values, but once the game is out – like now in this open Beta, or once released – the way players actually use the things will quickly find any imbalances which remain.  Good statistical analysis skills — using both the game stats and the recorded results of real games — can provide evidence of these imbalances, and data to help make the best changes to correct them.  This is a trial and error process, because each change may introduce new imbalances while correcting old ones.  Repeat until things seem reasonably fair for everyone.

Our playing now, and feedback in the Hardline Beta forums, can help the developers make this game even better.

 

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Feb 08

Hardline — Funday Sunday, Last Day Of Beta

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Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline

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Matimi0 posted this nice video about the Hacker role in Hardline, and I pretty much agree with this completely.  I’ve only got the 2nd level of Hacker unlocks so far in the Beta, but that doubles the GPS scan radius (thus quadruples the area covered).  I am not certain just how much the other functions are boosted, but if they are also doubled it is a pretty big edge over a level 1 hacker.

There are 5 levels to unlock, and it looks as though as max level Hacker will be able to reveal the entire map with GPS scans and cameras, and only an equal level Hacker will have a chance to counter this.  I have over 60 stars in BF4 Commander.  I don’t think that getting max level in Hardline is going to be that hard to do for anyone who plays the role much at all, so max level Hackers will be common in this game.

I honestly think that doubling the area is about as good as the maximum level should achieve, with the earlier levels being only a slight (10-20% per level) boost.  That will be good enough to keep it balanced, without making the advancement worthless.

So let’s get back to this weekend’s play in the game.  Hotwire and Heist mode are working well in games I’ve played with people who grasp the objectives.  It is a lot of fun.  The Bank Job Heist mode is infantry only, but on other maps we will have vehicles and more running room to play with.  I watched some video of the Everglades Hotwire play, and that looked like it worked well too.

Here are a couple forum threads with suggestions to improve Hotwire:

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bfh/forum/threadview/2955065239842277945/

 

The problem of explosives destroying the cars messes with the balance of the very fun Hotwire mode. But if the goal is to actually recover stolen vehicles, why don’t we get to deliver them someplace for cash (XP)?

First, I think that the game mode’s objectives need to play to completion. The goal is to recover the vehicles, but instead we drive them around until they are destroyed. That makes for fast play, but there is no need to actually take the vehicle to a particular location on the map.

A quick way to do this would be to add a timer — control the vehicle long enough and you’ll get a message to take it to the delivery point. That might be a random spot on the map, or the off map base. Drive it there, get out, get bonus points.

You could also have check points on the map that you must pass in order to clear the car for recovery. Same idea, just that it forces you to drive a circuit of the map rather than just hold it for a time. This risks the check points being camped as traps, unless they are randomized enough (for each vehicle) that it wouldn’t be effective.

I know this changes the game play, but I think it would enhance both the action in the game and the feeling that this is actually a real cop story and not just a video-tv-show sport.

How big a bonus? I think it has to pay off both in money (XP) for the car’s crew and affect the game score. You can get over $1000 for driving around, so delivering the car should give you at least this much. A delivered car should count, for control and tickets, as owned until the car with the same letter is captured again. Perhaps a small number of tickets could be taken from the enemy team when a car is delivered (10 or so?), or the delivery team could gain a small number of tickets.

Possibly, the delivery value of a car could go up for each checkpoint that is passed. So keeping it in play and alive gives you bigger bonuses if you can survive many circuits through the whole map. This idea is to eliminate the “do donuts by the base” camping with the captured cars, which happens sometimes now.

This is my favorite mode in this beta, and I’d like it to be as good as it can get.

PanteraPanther95

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bfh/forum/threadview/2979150494119151064/

 

Hotwire during the first 24 hours of the beta was a blast because there wasn’t yet a critical mass of people that had unlocked trunk RPG’s. Now every hotwire round is just campers standing around with an RPG/SPAW waiting for EZKILLs. And $90,000 to unlock the trunk RPG is nothing – it takes 20-25 minutes.

I went into Hotwire skeptical like it couldn’t possibly be fun, then ended up having some good times, but now its more annoying than anything.

NeilDiamondMD

Which gets suggestions to slow down the replacement of trunk weapons and explosives from ammo boxes, and to reduce the utility of them in the Hotwire mode, if not every mode.

This game has grown on me.  I’ll miss it when the Beta ends.  If Conquest mode would have Bad Company style destruction, I think it would be better and more fun.  Overall, I think that greater destruction on the small town and rural maps would make the game more exciting.  There are plenty of active routes to travel, so blasting down some obstacles to make a few more (or block some with debris) wouldn’t hurt that.

Still, the Beta is live for a while, so I’m going to go and play some more today.

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Feb 07

Confessions Of A Game Hoarder: Or, How To Get A Big PC Gaming Collection Without Spending A Fortune

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General Gaming

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Wise men say, ‘forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza’! — Michelangelo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990

 

Do you buy games that you rarely if ever play?  Like to get games just to fill places in your collection?  Or just are always looking for the best bargains for your gaming money?  The last is a key one — waiting for sales is a good idea for shopping in general.  You miss out on playing the latest release right away, but you save money and often if the game was good when it came out, it is still good to play. Just like late pizza can be worth it, with a discount, once reheated.

You may be a game hoarder.  Games purchased on PC, especially digital purchase, have little if any resale value.  And games in general really don’t appreciate in value on the used market.  It isn’t like some things where rare, older items may someday be worth a fortune. The value of the money we spend on our games is the entertainment  we get from playing them.

I have hundreds of PC games, with over 300 purchased in the last couple of years. I didn’t spend thousands of dollars on them either.  A few were purchased at full price, even some preorders, but most of my collection was obtained at very high discounts — 75-95% off retail, some less than a dollar per game.  You may wonder how I have time to play all of them.

Surprise! I don’t.  I didn’t think you’d be surprised though.  I get some games in bundled collections with only one or two of them on my “wish to play” list.  Still, I may try out the others if I have time, simply because I have them. But here’s the thing:  If I’m paying only a tiny fraction of the regular price for a game, even if I don’t ever play it I’m not out a lot of money.  If I buy 10 games at 90% off, and only end up enjoying one of them, it is the same as if I’d got that game at full price.  I still have the others, in case I change my mind, and I may never have tried that one cool game if I hadn’t bought it on the super sale.

My situation may be different from yours.  Or not, there are probably others like me.  We have a multi-PC household, with multiple gaming accounts (Origin, Steam, U-Play, Battlenet, etc.) on them.  For games where we want to play at the same time — multiplayer mostly, but some single player games too — we have to have copies for each of us.  This makes bargain shopping even more important to us.

Buy At Full Price

There are games we want at release, that we believe in so much we even preorder.  I’m a Battlefield fan, and preordered two copies of BF4 Premium Deluxe, so we’d be all ready to play right away.  That’s about $220 US, for those who don’t know the price.  In my case, I played the Alpha and liked it, we played the Beta and had fun, and trusted that the release game would be awesome even if it had some problems at the start.  Did we get our money’s worth?

How much is entertainment worth?  A movie rental might be about $1 US per hour, while going to a movie theater is at least ten times as expensive.  Watching TV can be hard to measure — generally less than a dollar an hour, depending on the service package — but I find movies and gaming more engaging, generally, than most TV shows.  There are exceptions, of course, but I’d say that about a dollar an hour is a good price for entertainment.

So with over 1200 hours in BF4, we are well ahead on that score.  But I’ve purchased other games at full price and played them far less, but I usually get at least an hour of play time for every dollar I spend on those games.

Preorder or full retail price games are the most expensive, but if we want to play what our friends play, it is often the only option.  But if you are bargain minded, you can wait for the first sale.  How long does that take?

Wait For First Sale

I’ll use BF4 (COD Ghosts came out at the same time, so it applies to it too) as an example.  The October 29, 2013 release was followed by the November Black Friday sales, with a 33% discount on many new releases including BF4.  You’d save about $30 off the Premium Edition by waiting a month — or a dollar per day of play time.  Since we played far more than an hour per day, and enjoyed the game when it wasn’t crashing or glitching out :-(, I’m OK with the full price.  With other games, I’ve been willing to wait for that sale, and only lost out on a month (or two or three) of play time on that game.  Since we do have other games to play while waiting, and may play the game when we get it for months or years, the money saved can be worth that short delay.  We can buy other games with it, and stretch our gaming money.

Watch For Bargains

The bulk of our gaming library was obtained from the best bargain sales I could find.  The PC gaming world has some especially good bargains if you know where to look.

The best deal out there is the Humble Bundle.  They sell games and other things to raise money for charities.  The collections tend to be split into two or three tiers, with higher tiers requiring a larger minimum donation.  Most of the PC games are available from Steam.com, though deals through Origin and others are also offered.  Savings average over 90% compared to the current retail prices.  The games can be a mix of old and new.  The current big bundle is a collection of Star Wars games, and includes the 2005 Star Wars Battlefront II, which might interest people who never tried it and wonder what the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront game is going to be like.

Steam Sales

The next big place to find bargains is on Steam itself.  The largest online digital superstore, it is more than just a game store online.  It is a gaming community site, allowing gamers to connect and offers services beyond just games.  Steam has sales all the time, but it is its seasonal sales — a full week or more of special bargains — which offer the greatest deals. Dozens of games go on sale, with discounts of 75% and even 90% being common.  Game collections and Franchise Packs (all games of a given series) are often offered on sale, and those collections often are far cheaper than the individual price of the games themselves.

Last summer’s sale (2014) inspired me to buy a lot of games.  Part of this was the price.  The other was some family needing a “place to stay for a few days” messing with my vacation time.  I figured that getting extra games to try out in my computer-filled (four PCs in LAN) Mancave would help me tolerate extra house guests.   It cost more than 5 new release games, but we got a few dozen new games to play (some multiples to play together).  We’ve played most of these games, and those we haven’t I expect will be tried out when time allows.  In terms of play time per dollar, I think we’ve done better than a dollar per hour of play.  But a less “binge purchase” might have been better, though if I’d had more free time during my vacation, who knows, I might have played them all.

Steam Features Support Game Sharing

I want to mention a couple features of Steam which people may not know.  Many of you probably know the first one, but your Steam account works on any PC, not just one machine.  Other digital game services work the same way.  Your games are tied to the account, and you can install them on any PC you wish.  You just can’t play them on more than one PC at a time.

Steam Play is an extension of this.  Your games aren’t tied to just one platform.  Whether you have Windows or Mac or Linux, if the game is available on one of them, your purchase includes it as well. No need for separate copies.

For us, Steam Family Sharing is a very cool feature. You can authorize family and friends to have access to your Steam game library, and be able to run those games from their account (and with their own saves and achievements).  The only catch is that a given library can be in use on only one system at a time, so you can’t all play at once.  But nothing stops you from opening one or more “Family Sharing” accounts for those games which you plan to take turns playing.  Other game account services will let you share by changing users, but this is even more flexible.

A last cool feature at our house is game streaming.  My Mancave holds our gaming PCs, but our living room TV has a media center PC hooked to it.  It isn’t nearly as powerful for gaming, but Steam streaming allows me to play a game from my couch, wireless keyboard and controllers in hand, with the performance of my dedicated game machine via WIFI streaming.  While I tend to play at my 27″ monitor with headphones on, the living room is a better place to show off your gaming.  And there are games designed for shared family play, which work especially well here.

Many Other Good Sources For Bargains

Other online gaming services and stores offer their own special advantages.  Amazon has its own set of good sales to check out. GoG.com — Good Old Games — is an excellent source of older games, packaged to install and run well on current PCs, and often offers very good sales.  EA’s Origin.com offers its own set of sales, and has two special ways to get games.  The first best deal is “On The House.”  This literally gives you games for free, if you pick them when they are available.  While most are older games, that doesn’t make them less fun.  And free is always good.  The other special offer is “Game Time,” which lets you try out a full game for a limited time, at a time of your choosing.  Steam also offers limited time access to try full games, but is usually limited to select free weekends.  Either way is a good chance to test out a game you might like, but are unsure about buying.

Free To Play

The last way to get more games is to get them for free.  Yes, if you don’t know by now, there are games offered for play at no cost at all.  Some of them are easily as good as any game you pay money for.  The only catch with some is that you have the option to spend real money to get stuff to use in the game.  In most games, you can play and have fun without spending that money.  You need to watch out for those which lure you in, but then make you “pay to win”  by making the upgrades you need to enjoy the game cost money.  Fortunately, there are plenty of good games out there which are fun to play without costing you anything.

Becoming A Game Hoarder

With a bit of money and some careful judgement, you can amass a collection which includes games of every sort you most want to play.  There will always be new games to entice you into spending more money, but having a good collection makes it easier to resist the temptation to impulse buy, just because something is new and shiny.  Or on a good sale.

But beware.  Bargain shopping and collecting can get addicting.  You too may find yourself with dozens or hundreds of games and not enough time to play them all.

 

 

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Feb 06

Wargame: Red Dragon — Real Time Tactical Classic Tabletop Warfare

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Strategy

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A Take On Modern Combat

The list of modern real time tactical combat games (as opposed to classic building Real Time Strategy or first person shooters) is rather short.  The Wargame series by Eugen Systems is a unique standout in this category.  The first game, Wargame: European Escalation, came out in 2012.  That was followed up by Wargame: Airland Battle in 2013, and the current game, Wargame: Red Dragon. I mention this history because the predecessor games are still quite decent, very similar in mechanics, and offer different maps and single player campaigns.  So if you aren’t sure about trying out Red Dragon, you could go for either or both of the prior games.  Even if you do like Red Dragon, the others are cheap enough (especially with the Franchise Pack) that you could get them as well.

Wargame

Wargame.  The name itself says what it is.  It plays very much like a real time version of a classic tabletop miniatures wargame.  It is set in a cold war gone hot 1980s-1990s world.  You have individual units on the map — tanks, helicopters, trucks, artillery, and even individual soldiers — brought on the map by a point value system.  The game plays by giving orders to units, or groups of units, which they then carry out.  You have a range of orders for units, more than just move and engage the enemy.  As a tactical game, there is no base building, or building of any kind.  You have a fixed number of units in your battle group (called Deck within the game), and bring them into the game based on their point value.  Better units cost more, but you have a finite number of each type of unit. Once they are used, you cannot get more of them.  This makes the tactical value of survival important.  You may win a fight but lose too many of your best units, and be unable to follow up on your momentary victory to actually win the game.

This has some similarities to the older games World In Conflict and Blitzkrieg.  But Wargame: Red Dragon puts you in the role of the off-map commander of a company or battalion, directing all the forces present on the battlefield represented on the map.  Your forces can range from couple hundred infantry with IFVs to a few hundred infantry supported by dozens of armored vehicles, all of which are individual units on the map.  Infantry is controlled by squad (you can’t give orders to individual soldiers, but each is its own figure).  Vehicle units can be grouped together in formations, making lining up your forces for battle easy.

Easy To Control

The game interface itself is easy to learn.  Placing units and giving orders is easy.  This isn’t a game where rapid repeated actions are helpful or necessary.  You can give units orders and trust them to continue as planned, with only a few things requiring immediate, reflex actions.  If a unit comes under attack, you get an alert and can immediately switch to it to give new orders.  No need to find the units in danger.  As the number of units on the map get larger, keeping up with what every unit can get tricky.  Fortunately, most are just fine either holding locations or attacking the enemy as ordered, no need to babysit every action.

There are a huge number of unit types in this game.  Over 1450 from 17 different nations.  Some of these are either duplicates or similar to other units.  Each nation may field its own version of a given tank or IFV or plane, but the stats are often nearly the same or identical.  Infantry is always purchased with transport vehicles, so each infantry unit + transport is a separate “card” in your force deck.  But no matter, there are still a wide range of units, filling just about every role you could see in a modern battlefield.  The units are not generic either.  Each nation has its own unique mix of characteristics in its units.  There is a lot to learn to become an expert on all units.  The stats on all units are readily available in game, so memorization isn’t required.

Harder To Master

Combat has tremendous depth.  This isn’t just a rock-paper-scissors level of strategy.  The unit roles and stats reflect modern combined arms tactics.  Your modern tank group will destroy enemy ground vehicles easily, but is vulnerable to infantry shooting rockets from ambush, especially from behind, and air attacks.  The terrain on the map provides real cover.  Units, especially infantry, can hide in forests, behind hills, or in and behind buildings.  Recon units are essential to locate enemy forces.  If you can’t see the enemy, you can’t shoot them.  It is not only practical but effective to move units out of sight to flank the enemy, and place units in good hiding locations to ambush them.

But then you have air and artillery units, which can strike units at just about any location on the map.  They themselves are vulnerable — air to air defense units, artillery to airstrikes, other artillery, and things like an airborne ranger force landing behind them.

There are a choice of victory conditions, but the typical game begins with each side having one Zone on the map, their original deployment zone.  You move command units into other zones on the map — suitably supported so they don’t get destroyed — in order to take control of them.  Each zone has its own reinforcement point value — the central areas most fought over are worth the most usually — and some also have extra value because they open up new areas for off-map reinforcements to enter.  With roughly even play, both sides will have roughly the same value of controlled Zones.  That makes the side which best preserves its forces, especially its best units, while eliminating the enemy the one most likely to win.

But not always.  Good tactics, especially good sneaky moves, can snatch victory from defeat, or at least hold a bad situation to a draw.  The game plays fairly fast as well.  A typical game may be 20-40 minutes long.   Action tends to be constant throughout the game, and keeps the player attention focused and tense until the very end.

Big Multiplayer

The game has a single player campaign, but it is built around multiplayer play.  The single player skirmish mode is just a multiplayer setup with an AI (and game speed controls).  Wargame offers not just one on one play, but allowed teams of two to four players (with AI fillers if needed), and even 10 vs 10 games.  In a team game, each player on the team gets a share of the reinforcement points — both the initial force and those earned in the game.  By dividing the forces on the map between different players, it makes it easier for each to keep focused on their own part of the map.  It also allows each to use their own preferred choice of units.

Create Your Own Battlegroup

That leads to the other special part of Wargame.  Deck building.  You get to pick the units which make up the battlegroup you will have access to during each game.  You get to pick from cards containing a number of a kind of unit.  The type and quality — from unskilled rookie to elite — affect how many of each unit will be available.   Each card taken in a deck has a point cost, based on its position in the deck layout.  The first cards of a given class of unit tend to cost less than additional cards.  This makes a balanced force easier to field.  Decks can also  be specialized, and thus get more points to play with, or more and better units per card.  Armored groups get bonuses for tanks, but have less or more expensive infantry and supporting units.  Picking a national alliance, or a single nation, gives you access to more units of those nations at the cost of having none from others of your side.  Choosing to restrict yourself to older units gives you more points, but loses access the most modern (and thus most powerful) units.

Naval Warfare

Naval combat was added to the series in Red Dragon.  It is interesting, but there are far fewer types of naval units (ships, not all of the supporting land and air units available to support the navy) than the land  and air units in the game.  I think that could easily be expanded and balanced better in the future.  It is still fun and interesting to play with the naval units, but the game focus is still on land and air combat.

Polish And Conclusions

The game visuals are quite good, but you tend not to spend much time looking at the cinematic view while playing.  It is worth it when it is safe to do so — watching an airstrike up close is satisfying — but you are usually too focused on the big picture.  Fortunately, the game offers a full, saved replay for all of your games.  You can watch the game from any point of view, move the camera to see all the action in detail, and see the map as your opponent saw it.  You can learn a lot from this, and have a lot of fun just watching how a well fought game played out, in war movie fashion.

All in all, if you are into modern warfare strategy games at all, this is a must have.

 

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Feb 04

Battlefield Hardline – First Day Impressions

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Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline

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I’ve had a few hours to play the Beta yesterday, and it is fun.  But not so much fun that I have to go “Wow, I need to buy this right now.”  Still, six weeks from now things may change, including how much spare money I have lying around, and which of my friends get it.

First, a useful quick link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BRCKbiWcIo

JackFrags all you need to know video offers a decent introduction to the game.  The game itself is action movie cops and robbers.  The weapons available, game modes and missions, and even the general physics are not meant to reflect anything like a realistic police — even SWAT — environment.  The voice acting — lines in the multiplayer, haven’t seen single yet — fit into this.  The car radios play in-game music as you drive, to fit the situation.  I don’t know if we will have the ability to add our own user music to this, but it is a very nice action movie theme touch.

One quick bit people might not have mentioned:  the game and map loading times are very fast.  About 10 seconds to load off my SSD, and very short when reloading the exact same map.  The Bank Job map in Heist mode runs only that map, so new game rounds start with only the delay for players to “ready up” and join.  I don’t know how much of that is due to the Beta configuration of the maps or the number of players on these servers, but for a quick action game this is a welcome change.  I’ll check it off my laptop hard drive soon.  Edit note:  approx 30-40 seconds for the conquest Dust Bowl.  Not bad, but not especially fast.  Maybe the SSD and 16 GB of RAM make the difference, not sure which is most important.

Hardline isn’t a reskinned Battlefield 4, not anymore.  The squad and team mechanics, and the weapon handling, as well as the underlying engine, those are all Battlefield.  But the game itself plays out quite differently from a typical Battlefield game.  The four kits play their roles much differently from Battlefield. The unlock and customization system is also very different  Enough so that figuring out what to buy with your cash (game points/XP) is hard to decide.  You do rank up, but that doesn’t, by itself, unlock anything.  You have the choice what to get and when, limited only by the money you’ve earned in game.

Money and ranks come extremely fast in the Beta.  I haven’t seen confirmation, but suspect that points are boosted in the Beta, to give players a chance to try out more stuff.

Map destruction on the three maps in game is limited.  The micro-destruction in building interiors and little things is excellent.  I believe that this is a performance issue, and more may be included when the game is optimized.  Other maps may have more, and that is also a map design issue — a fixed arena vs one user-customized by explosions.

Hotwire and Heist are a lot of fun.  The objectives are fluid — moving cars and movable money — and the game pace is likewise fast.  I found the objectives hard to see in the in-game view at times with all the other things highlighted in the HUD.  You can always check the map, but I think that the key objectives should be very clear.  This is especially true in Heist.  The money packages can be above or below you, and knowing exactly where they are is essential as they are what you need to win the game.  The objective markers should be more animated and colorful, so they are easy to see and distinguish from the player and other markers present on the HUD.  I’d go with a gold tint (most are money based) with neon glowing team colors of red (enemy) or blue (friendly).

 

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Feb 02

Battlefield Hardline Beta Day – Is It Going To Be Worth It?

Categories:

Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline

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OK, I have Battlefield Hardline beta queued, about a 10 GB download.  Not too bad, with any high speed connection (an hour or so here).  I intend to play this thing to death, just like I did with the first Hardline Beta — played right up until it closed.  I expect to have a blast playing it.

But the hard question is “Should I buy this at full price?”  Or for that matter, buy it at all.  I get asked often if I’m going to get it, and if the game will be worth it.

Now, figuring out which games to buy and when — preorder, full price, wait for sale, wait until the price really drops down, or skip it — is a personal decision.  You are the only one who knows whether a given game is worth the money to you.

Hardline, as a standalone game, no worries about its Battlefield 4 connection or the impending release of GTA 5, or any other games which might compete or influence it, seems like a decent fast paced modern FPS with vehicles. A definite cop action movie feel shows in both the single and multiplayer.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/battlefield-hardline/Game_Modes

There are seven game modes revealed so far. I’m going to break these down into three groups.

First, the fast action crime games:  Blood Money, Heist, Hotwire.  Recover stolen money, escape with stolen money, steal vehicles — all three get lots of fast car chases and intense action around the objectives.  The pacing is fast, the objectives clear, and the action definitely should make for great cinematic videos.

Second, the classic Battlefield games:  Conquest, Team Deathmatch.  Hold the territory (flags) or just kill everyone you can.  The pacing is slower and more tactical, the goals clear but not tied, as such, to the crime theme of the game.

Third, the mission objective games:  Crosshair, Rescue.  Escort a VIP to safety or eliminate him, save the hostages or keep them.  Both with limited (or no) respawns, a definite challenge requiring tactics more than quick reflexes and speed.

We don’t get to see the last two in the Beta, at least for now.  I don’t know that they couldn’t do a bomb defusal sort of mission (as in BF4) and keep to the mission theme as well.  I’m sure they can come up with other good game modes — I’d expect a straight capture the flag (grab the evidence/jewels/etc.) sort of game to play well.

All in all, it looks like the multiplayer is shaping up to offer an exciting environment and new challenges.

 

Unfortunately, it has two big immediate competitors for the gamer’s money.  First is the PC (and current gen console) version of GTA 5.  No, the game play isn’t the same — GTA is a single open world, and focused more on the single player than multiplayer, though there is plenty to do there, and the new heists should expand on that.  But it is more of a coop game vs the mission enemies rather than pure player vs player gaming.

Second is Battlefield 4 itself.  If you’re looking for modern large scale combat, you already have BF4 and can play that.  If you don’t have it yet, the price is less and you get more.  BF4 is not going to die off just because Hardline comes out.  DICE is continuing the CTE development for BF4, and is not going to forget about it yet.

If you have the money and like it, you can just get it anyway.  If your friends play it, that is another incentive.  If you’ve played GTA 5 on the 360/PS3 and don’t feel the need to upgrade, this could give you a cops-view of the crime world to play in.

Ultimate answer:  play the Beta, see if you like it.  Spring game releases tend not to go on sale for a while, but you could take a chance and wait if you’re unsure about  it — or don’t want to pay full price.

 

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