Slashdot Mirror
BF2's Persistent Scoring More Harm Than Good?
jasoncart writes "Persistent scoring (where your score is counted from one gaming session to another) is the norm in MMORPGs, but using it in arguably less mature genres such as FPSs makes for interesting gameplay. " From the article: "The most prized asset for the competitive, ranking-sensitive Battlefield 2 player are the helicopters. These fearsome death machines are almost ludicrously overpowered, in the right hands. They feature a gunnery position with a nasty cannon (best for troop takedown), and TV-guided missiles (best for vehicles). The pilot, whose job is to grapple with the newbie unfriendly control system, and powerful engine also has access to a bank of effective-in-quantity missiles. Newbies inevitably do get hold of them sometimes, to disastrous effect - they are pretty difficult to fly until you get your head around the control system. I'm reminded of a driving school car around my way that says 'Everyone had to learn once!' on the back."
...as the most sought-after vehicle. This is true. And the article describes a couple different ways players fight over them. My buddy is quite skilled at flying the attack helicopters; he gets them to do things that cause experienced players to bail out. Flying in vertical loops, regularly coming within inches of obstacles...it's like riding a roller coaster without safeties.
But I like flying gunner on the Black Hawk (or Chinese or MEC equiv.) better; and my buddy likes to pilot. Starting from scratch, we got our first promotions within a few hours of playing.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Welcome to warfare. Air superiority matters.
Wait... what? This made it to slashdot's main page? I read the article, looking for anything that might be new, thought provoking or mildly interesting. What I found, however, was a rant about helicopters in BF2. It's the same type of rant you see all the time on gaming forums. It was fairly well-written, but the article really didn't even have much to do with persistent scoring. Mod me as a troll or whatever, but this really isn't slashdot material. It would find a better home on digg.com, a site without a traditional editorial system like /.
-William Brendel
You'll always have the odd asshat around, but they don't dominate the game. The Choppers powerful, but not invincible. A coordinated attack will deal with them as well. Get on a squad and use that VOIP.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
Keeping persistent score records results in score-whoring? Who woula thunk it?
Ah, yeah, brings back to mind the good old days of Air Warrior and Warbirds, before I even played them, where there was a "bomber" ranking for the most damage. Someone figured which hangars got the highest score, and would fly around the map bombing those. Or heck, before that, on that PLATO MP flight sim, I recall...
Basic law folks: when you make recognition A depend on artificial measure B, you generate experts in achieving B. "No child left behind" or "Battlefield 2" -- it's the same thing: you make everything depend on a test, and you generate good test-takers.
Of course, in a game where there are other metrics than the personal one, you won't get all score-whores, but you will get your share. Welcome to teh intardnet.
In what way, exactly? Couldn't be referring to the classic definition of "mature;" you see a lot more blood and "adult" stuff in FPSes than in MMORPGs. And FPSes have been around longer than MMORPGs, so it couldn't be talking about age, either. The only other thing I can think of is that the maturity levels of the types of players that play the two genres are significantly different, and, well, that would be inaccurate (NSFW).
Rob
I think this article is somewhat one sided. It appears the author (who admits to being addicted, I feel his pain *grin*) only has bad experiences playing.
Yea, I see people standing in lines 3 or 4 deep to get a plane or some such, and it is foolish. However, I also think many players eventually realize that fundamentally this is a team game. Yea, 6 organized players can easily win if everyone else is just running around. Heck, I've been places with one other buddy, and we can quite easily orchestrate a victory just by knowing the map and playing off the fact that people don't know how to team play (think support and engineer at a good ambush point, or spec ops and support, or medic and sniper, etc).
But I also have played on servers where admins *are* around all the time, where people get booted immediatly for TKing intentionally, or not playing for the team, but padding. You just have to go find a good server. As far as that goes, also playing in a clan is wonderful. I'm a member of COT (Covert Operations and tactics) and everynight I play with two or three guys from it. We have our own TeamSpeak server, that allows for effective communication, and we use XFire to track each other and allies in other servers.
Basically, if you play by yourself, and ignore that nice new "favorites" button on servers, yea, its gonna suck a lot of the time. But if you play with people you know and can train with, and on servers where you know admins are real close, I think that most of the points made in TFA aren't valid.
In a well trained group, or even just a group good at team play, you'll have two good guys in the chopper, that's their job. No one else waits for it, as they're filling another role. This all comes down to the maturity of the player, and how much they'll play for the team and listen to the commander, versus playing for themselves and their stats.
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
If spawn camping is "interesting gameplay" I really don't want to see dull gameplay. I'd be interested to hear someone defend this as anything other than weak game design.
OK...
During every major conflict, control of bridges, roads, etc. (choke points) has been critical. If you know where the enemy is coming from, sending his reinforcements in from, etc., then you can most efficiently use your resources.
During Operation Enduring Debacle, terrorists attacked a U.S. mess with mortars because going after the "spawn point" (where reinforcements come from) is often most efficient.
Spawn camping is a good way of killing large numbers of newbies and, occasionally, the odd veteran.
This is pretty much exactly as it is in the real world: Ambush a choke point and you'll wipe out huge numbers of idiots blithely marching though and idiots assigning resources will keep sending more to die - but anyone with half a clue will quickly find a means to address that inherrent problem.
Similarly, in a game like BF2, if people keep on respawning at the point they know they just got killed by someone who's infiltrated it, they deserve to die. Anyone with half a clue will immediately change their spawn point and respawn elsewhere, coming in with full health and full ammo to quickly kill someone they know is low on both and likely focused in just one direction.
Sure, in games where there are only one or two spawn points and it's an absolute point, that may not be the case. BF2 usually has several bases per side (save for the very beginning of rounds or the very end) and will spawn you in any of several different random locations around that point - making it very easy to go and kill the guy who's focused on just one point.
And that's where the balance comes in - the team whose spawn it is can pour out dozens of guys there - all of which can wittle the guy down; they can respawn elsewhere and run in with an absolute advantage; they can get their CO to put a UAV overhead or run a quick scan to pinpoint the camper, etc. All of those tricks give them a massive advantage over one guy who has a long run to get there and runs out of supplies.
Unless of course they don't think to use all those advantages - sure, then they're just sheep to the slaughter. But is that the game's fault due to bad design or theirs for not getting it well enough to be competitive?
Perhaps the problem isn't that the game has fundamentally bad gameplay (to me, it's just an additional interesting dynamic) but rather that those who don't grasp the tactics fall afoul of it just as inexperienced, poorly led troops will in the real world. Of course, just as 95% of drivers consider themselves above average, I'm sure 95% of gamers are unable to accept they may be well below average and thus those that are dying are doing so simply due to their not getting basic tactics.
The point with BF2, and it is a well balanced game, is that no one strategy ever gives you an upper hand against an intelligent enemy - for more than a couple of minutes:
Use armor, the enemy will respawn as anti-tank and you and your crew will die before ever getting a shot off. Use helecopters and the same holds true plus they'll be taking AA vehicles, manning the fixed AA (though I would like to see the game add shoulder mounted SAMs) and lobbing grenades at chopper spawn points. Camp a base, they'll spawn elsewhere and flank you. etc.
A smart player has a whole set of tricks and varies them constantly, as the situation demands, maintaining an overall edge. A stupid one falls victim to the same technique over and over - either from not learning or always being one technique behind a smarter player who varies techniques. But then, if you can't handle playing against constantly evolving smart players, that's what single player with AI difficulty settings is for.
"Persistent scoring (where your score is counted from one gaming session to another) is the norm in MMORPGs, but using it in arguably less mature genres such as FPSs makes for interesting gameplay. " From the article: "The most prized asset for the competitive, ranking-sensitive Battlefield 2 player are the helicopters. These fearsome death machines are almost ludicrously overpowered, in the right hands. They feature a gunnery position with a nasty cannon (best for troop takedown), and TV-guided missiles (best for vehicles).
Bull. They're not all that easy to fly and a lot of times you'll get two helicopter pilots in the same level who are skilled and therefore see each other as the threat. So, while they're busy trying to take each other out, I'm busy manning the anti-aircraft or the anti-tank. (Yes, I've actually taken down helicopters with a combination of two anti-tank rounds and the shotgun upgrade.) Having played just short of 100 hours, the times that I've had to deal with helicopter pilots that do nothing but massacre are very rare. And if you find a server with that kind of pilot and no one to counter-act, there are hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other servers that you're more than welcome to connect to. And - believe it or not - vehicle-mounted machines gun can be devastating to helicopters!
Additionally, being a gunner means shit if the pilot (A) is more focused on his own points and (B) can't get it through his head that the pilot is supposed to line up the shot for the gunner.
Personally, I find the jets in the hands of a good pilot to be far more devastating than a helicopter.
The pilot, whose job is to grapple with the newbie unfriendly control system, and powerful engine also has access to a bank of effective-in-quantity missiles. Newbies inevitably do get hold of them sometimes, to disastrous effect - they are pretty difficult to fly until you get your head around the control system. I'm reminded of a driving school car around my way that says 'Everyone had to learn once!' on the back."
That's why you do one of two things:
This article sounds more to me like sour grapes. "Oh, wah. That helicopter guy is just SO good! How can we ever compete against him!" Well, he was once a helicopter newbie, too. He was once clueless about how to fly it, too. Just because you're not very good now doesn't mean that you can't get to his skill level if you stop whining and do one of the things that I mention above. And once you get your first helicopter-based kill, you'll just be more eager to get even better. So, stop whining and just do it. The other guy did. That's why he's good!!
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.