Does anyone here play BF2? I remember reading about you guys playing BF1942 and that's what got me to try the game. My friends and I have 2 BF2 servers (one for vanilla BF2 and one for Special Forces) and I thought it'd be cool to play the game with any of you that have the game.

I'm still getting used to the concept that I joined a "clan" as I'm not a hard core gamer, but I kept visiting this one server because they had a good ping and they were really good about kicking boneheads off of the server. Once I got on Ventrillo, they were cool to talk to as well. Most of us are married and/or have kids so I guess we have some of that stuff in common. I get regularly get razzed for being Conservative too, but it's all in good fun!

Anyway, if you play the game and want to say hi, our server IPs are listed here.

Mwaha. I've been waiting for a post like this. I play 3 or 4 nights a week and for the last couple of months I've been playing on one particular server - it's administered by Tactical Gamer. I discovered this server a couple months ago and can honestly say that it offers a completely different gaming experience. I can't go back to public servers at this point.

The thing about the TG server is, teamplay is mandatory. Squad members have to listen to Squad Leaders and SLs have to listen to Commanders. VOIP is pretty much a must. There are lots of long term players and you get used to a lot of the regular SLs. It's also pretty much constantly administered except for late at night. The server is also not ranked for various reasons.

Some of the matches we have are spectacular. The TG server really is the only server I've played on where everyone actually uses all of the tools available in the game. A lot of the squad leaders actually use the marker system to tell you where to go and UAV, Artillery and supplies aren't just haphazardly dropped.

All in all it's pretty sweet. Even when you're losing (sometimes badly), you can still have a good time if you have a decent squad. I would check it out.

Yeah, I play this game quite a bit. I think its fantastic. I usually play on ranked public servers, but I'll check out the servers in this thread. Being in a squad that works together is great fun.

I've enjoyed getting the different badges and ribbons, etc. I just got my veteran pistol and basic knife badges the other day -- in the same round. That was pretty cool. The "award" system is like a side quest in an RPG. Some of them are pretty tough. A good resource to understand award requirements is BF2S.

Mostly the awards are just a fun diversion. The best part of the game is playing with some people who are really interested in teamwork.

Post your screen name here. I'm "TigerJimmy". The My Leaderboard on BF2S can tell you where a particular player is playing. I'll search for you guys when I play and we can get in a squad together. Using the custom squad button, we can create an "empeg" squad, then it will be obvious which one to join!

Jim

I forgot to mention that our servers are both Ranked. The rank thing is addictive! How the hell did you get your pistol and knife?!? Wow.

I'm [dwg]Quank in BF2 and on XFire.

I try to play at least once a week. I'd play much more but my internet is wireless and has horrible latency. When I am on I am EvilWaterman. I'll check those servers out next time I play!

Knife is hard, no question about it. I recommend a full (64 player) Karkhand server for both badges. I got all three of these (basic & veteran pistol, basic knife) on full karkhand servers as USMC.

First the pistol. Spawn at the left forward spawn point and move parallel to the road leading in to the city. Right at the city entrance on the left side of the road is a wrecked APC that's built in to the map (it is not a player APC that has been blown up). You can crawl underneath this thing from the rear and you're pretty well hidden and in a shadow. You get people both in the city and as they come out the hole in the corrugated metal fence to your left. MEC spec ops like to come out that hole and take a left and move to where you're hiding. They put C4 on the road and blow up tanks entering the city. Keep looking left and pick these guys off. Use the UAV and don't be surprised by them. Keep checking the left. When you shoot the pistol, use the sights (takes a few minutes to figure them out, but your bullet will hit at the top center of the forward sight just like in a real pistol). You will need to shoot an opponent quite a few times to kill them with the pistol. Use the recoil to help you -- first shot at the belt, then rapid fire as quickly as possible without moving the mouse. You will strike them progressively higher with each shot because of the recoil. You've got to shoot them repeatedly and quickly. Another trick is to play as sniper. Shoot them once with the rifle, then switch to the pistol and one shot will finish them off. This is harder for me because you've got to aim again after switching weapons.

Knife. Spawn as USMC at the same place as pistol. Move forward to the corrugated metal fence. From the hill, use the rifle to shoot anyone on that street. When the street is clear, go through the fence opening and sprint across the street and into the little notch on the wall to your right. Hide there for a second. When the coast is clear, continue up the road to the alleyway that leads to the right. From this alley you can see the Hotel spawn flag. That alley is a spawn location for Hotel spawners. You can stab 2 or 3 of them sometimes before they get you. The knife is a 1-hit kill, so stab them and immediately get another target. You know if you hit them by the sound that the knife makes when it hits. This is a good place to get pistol kills, too. If nobody is there, hide behind the dumpster so you aren't picked off by Hotel flag defenders. Just wait a few seconds and a new batch will spawn. Usually there will be a sniper laying in that alley and you can just walk up to him and knife him.

You can also approach this alley by staying in the field to the right of the fence and going through the opening at the end by the brick wall. I prefer the street because you have better visability.

The ranking and badges are really fun. I have 39 knife kills. After I get 50, I want to try to get the veteran knife badge. It has the same requirement as basic: 7 kills in a round, but you've got to have 50 globally first.

Let me know how it works for you!

Jim

How did you get the staff officer ribbon? 50 command points... I've heard that a very sparsely populated server is the secret. Is that how you did it?

Jim

Commander points are just an average of your whole teams scores. So, the trick is having a good team! I imagine that servers with a low population will run longer so people on your team will tend to have higher scores but I got the ribbon without trying. I was just commander over and over trying to learn it and got it on accident.

RE: BF2S, I love that site! My listing there.

Glad you like that site. I already looked you up, which is how I knew you had that ribbon!

J

FYI command points arent an average of your teams score. You get points from people using supply boxes and when a squad leader requests something you give it to them.

That isn't true. The commander's score is the average of the team member's scores. It's actually a bit more complex. When a team member scores a point, the commander gets a fractional point equal to 1/(number of alive teammates). Using commander assets has nothing to do with your score as commander.

Well, a 1/3 full server was the trick. I ended up with 177 points and got the Staff Officer ribbon with ease. I also got the Armored Service Ribbon and my Veteran Sniper Specialist badge all in the same round.

Do you have the Special Forces expansion pack? The expansion pack gives you two weapon unlocks per rank as well as the additional maps.

Here's the cool thing. Once you log on using a machine with the Special Forces expansion, you get access to all the unlocks. If you guys don't have the expansion and want the unlocks, I can logon using your credentials so you can pick the new weapons.

The two "must-haves" are the assault and medic unlocks. You will need to have those kits unlocked in "vanilla" BF2 first. The assault unlock gives you flashbangs, and you can use them in the vanilla BF2... Great for taking down choppers.

Let me know if you want/need me to do this for you.

Jim

Yeah, I experienced that tonight. I got flashbanged, and was thinking WTF!?! I had to take a moment to remember I was playing BF2, not CounterStrike. Then the Assault unlock... man I was getting taken out left and right with that thing! But it's alright... I got 3 ribbons/awards tonight. Almost had that pistol one, but came up short at the end of the round. I usually play over at my buddies place, so I will unlock those guns there next time we play.

I have a quick, semi-off-topic question. When I first got BF2 (when it was launched), the game itself was incredible, but I had a lot of problems with it. The load times were atrocious, connecting to a server was an exercise in frustration and I would randomly crash to the desktop. The game (when I was actually playing) was a lot of fun, but all the problems made it more frustrating than it was fun.

Did any recent patches fix those issues? Should I take the time to fin my disks to play again? I still have it installed, but my 'play' disk is buried somewhere in my office

- Tim

Most of those issues are a lot better especially the crashing to desktop problem. Load times are still bad due to "Verifying Client Data". The server browser is a LOT better than the unpatched version and is supposed to get better in about a week when patch 1.12 comes out.

You'd better start downloading the patches now, they're HUGE!

My experience, for what it's worth, is that the single most important thing for playing BF2 properly is gobs of ram. 1GB is the MINIMUM spec to make it run even vaguely properly, 2GB makes a huge difference. It doesn't actually need the fastest possible cpu/graphics card, although obviously that will help. For instance, It works quite happily on my games box, which is a 3 year old shuttle with an XP3200+ in it, even with the original radeon 9700, at 1280x1024. Very pretty graphics indeed.

I've upgraded to a 256MB 6800GT card which made it even prettier, but it was fine before. On the other hand, only 1GB of ram meant it was swapping to disk all the time, causing the game to stutter for the first minute or so of play, and intermittently throughout the game. 2GB fixed it completely.

pca

I've had 2GB since before the game came out, which is why all the problems surprised me. I will definately take another look at it as soon as I find the disks.

Thanks!
- Tim

The last patch did a lot. EA got tons of flak due to the horrible patches they released at first, and took more time on the last one. I still have problems in the server browser, but it's much better than unpatched.

The load times are still totally unacceptable. I have a decent machine with 3GB of RAM and maps take about 5 minutes to load. Sometimes they take significantly less, but there doesn't seem to be a pattern. The game is installed on an old disk, and I am certain that the "Verify Client Data" step is limited by disk IO. I can't justify reinstalling my entire machine on a new disk just to play this game. If it could be done without the hassle of reinstalling all my applications, then maybe... I've tried copying system disks before with limited success in Windoze.

Jim

Copying a system disk with Ghost or whatever the other program that was mentioned not long ago was called, is no problem. I've done it several times. Just beware of the LBA48-setting if you go from less than 137GB to a bigger than 137GB disk. I've been bitten by that earlier...

Stig

Would putting in another (secondary) faster drive and installing it on there help you at all? Much easier than reinstalling everything. It would have the added benefit of less 'junk' on the drive so less fragmentation also.

I'm going to see if I can find my disk when I get some free time. You guys have convinced me to give it another shot.

- Tim