The Battlefield Bad Company 2 patch is out today so I’ve spent a sunny morning indoors giving it a once over while canvassing the delightful BFBC2 community as to their opinions on the matter.
These ranged from ‘NICE!!!’ to ‘Bollocks’ to ‘noob team can’t defend’. Interesting. There was a lot of ‘I think my [favourite weapon] is less accurate but it could just be hit lag’; EA’s refusal to specify exactly what weapon balancing has occurred leaves plenty of room for a soldier’s imagination to take over it seems. The certainty is, however, that hit lag and hit recognition is still a problem. It’s something that I’m finding to be a bit of a barrier to delicious, creamy enjoyment myself; sometimes you can blaze away at close range, emptying an entire magazine at your foe, only to score a couple of minor hits on him. It just makes the game seem ragged and haphazard (in keeping with a long heritage of ragged and haphazard Battlefield titles I suppose).
It is apparent that the M60 has been nerfed – it’s trickier to kill at distance with it thankfully and experienced medics already seem to be spreading their favour over other MGs. I spent a little while as recon with my M24 and was pleased to find sniping is less of an exercise in luck and frustration. I don’t know if they’ve upped the damage slightly or flattened the firing arcs, but killing at distance is definitely more satisfying – I think I managed more headshots this morning than my combined scalp collection from the past few weeks. [Update: They did nothing to the M24 - It was all in my head!!]
The server browser over-hall has remedied a few annoying issues and failed to address others. Searching for servers is easier now and refreshing your server list, although a fairly lengthy process, actually works – it doesn’t just hang on the ‘refreshing’ info box until you cancel it manually as it used to for me. Annoyingly, I found I had to refresh the entire server list every time I wanted to find a new game. The browser doesn’t retain your previous searches so you can’t just click to refresh them individually, you have to repopulate the list from scratch. This wouldn’t be so bad if the server information was actually accurate but I found I’ve repeatedly clicked on servers with free slots to find them full not a heart-beat after the refresh. And ping info is meaningless – there are now a load of servers in my list with latencies of 1. This means low, between about 80 and 200. It just shows a dispiriting lack of polish for such a big title. The game seems to have a problem with maths as well…
50% of 18 is 6? I’m no maths wizz but I’m 105% sure this is wrong
Hopefully DICE will get their act together and this won’t simply be the beginning of another long highway of patches for the latest Battlefield title.
I’ve not had a chance to hop into a game with the new patch, but the new server browser is confusing. What’s the difference between a check in the box and an X in the box for full/empty servers? I’ve also heard that the favorites tab is completely broken now, and there’s about 10 seconds of lag when you try and respawn into a new round. And from the patch notes, it seems that the M60 is still a fairly powerful gun due to the buffs to LMG accuracy, even with the lower damage. They need to get this stuff fixed, and fast.
According to the patch notes, the respawn lag is intentional to prevent experienced players dominating the game at the start.
Can you tell me where in the patch notes it mentions the LMG changes?
I’m pretty sure in BFBC2 1 shot does not necessarily mean one kill. Thus in your screenshot, 18 shots fired, 9 shots hit, 6 kills = 50% accuracy?
I might be wrong, but just my thought on that ;)
Yeah, you’re probably right. Why don’t they display that?
All has been revealed as far as weapon balancing goes:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=243677
My community is updating its servers tomorrow morning, so I’m going to hop on tomorrow night and give it a spin. I must say I was a fan of the M60 before, so we’ll see if I’ll revise that opinion now.
And yeah, 3 of the shots you fired will have hit and not killed (something that still infuriates me whenever I play recon, which isn’t particularly often – it’s even happened to me on hardcore servers!)
The gun balance is making everything sound very bland – like everything is the same but just looks different.