Battlefield Marketing: Why Vietnam is Timed Perfectly (Also, Valve!)

This came to me last night and I felt I had to post it before I forgot about it. As I've said, I watch a lot of YouTube, but not just Call of Duty. I play(ed) and watch Battlefield Bad Company 2 from commetators like DCRU Colin, StoneFaceLock, Swordsman75, jayekaiser, mistuhed and Benjisaur among the more prominent. In the past months prior to Black Ops's release, there were rumblings of discontent with the state of the Battlefield scene, and for good reason. EA DICE released almost no truly "new" content. They updated maps for different game modes, but the maps themselves never really changed. For the first two or so months of the game's lifetime, this was a complaint to be sure, but not a damning one. As things went on, though, it trotted closer and closer to that point of no return, when even the dedicated Battlefield players withdrew for what they considered greener pastures (Black Ops and, to a lesser extent, Halo).

What I think DICE was well aware of, even back in the March release of BC2, is that their game was not Call of Duty 4, the game that needed no infusion of new content to remain both relevant and prominent for two years and longer. This led them, or at least it led Electronic Arts, to the following strategy based on their knowledge of their game. They knew they had about six months worth of game life ahead of them if they did nothing, and seven or maybe eight if they released different map types but not new maps. Their calculations put the end of their game's relevancy right at the release of Black Ops and the huge rush that the game would surely (and did) bring. They knew also that Battlefield wouldn't die out entirely, but it would begin to fade. However, the second tier to their plan was the coming Vietnam expansion, placed about a month and a half after Black Ops release of November 9th.

The timing of this expansion, and the Map Pack 7, which actually brought new maps, is next to perfect, and ingenious regardless. By allowing the giant push and affair with Black Ops to fade and then shoving a boatload of new content at their faithful consumers, DICE extends the lifetime of Bad Company 2 until the release, or at least the Beta, of Battlefield 3. To encourage their followers to play even more, and this is perhaps the most effective marketing that isn't Team Fortress 2's constant update system and Portal 2's announcement. By asking their players to use 69 million support actions (heal, ammo box, repair, revive, spot) in order to receive a fifth map for Vietnam, they've assured a huge amount of time spent in other things in game. Vietnam has been rumored for several months without a release date, and now that it has a firm December 21st (18th on PC) release, you can bet the dedicated BC2 players will not only be helping their teammates a whole lot more (something that was certainly lacking in the games initial stage), but that Vietnam will get even more orders.

I put Valve in parentheses in the title for a reason: they already do this kind of thing, and the industry is only now catching on. TF2 released and was immediately patched quite a few times in the months following its hitting Steam. Valve has always been dedicated to making their games as playable as possible for as long as possible. But they didn't stop at just game tweaks. They did what more developers need to do, at least from a business standpoint: add new content at all times and take full advantage of their community's own map/content making ability. TF2 as a game on release wasn't really much.  Few maps with only two or three game modes and nine classes when a fairly set playstyle, I would have placed a lifespan of around six months at the very most, even with constant game code tweaking and bug fixing. Valve, as usual, knew how to make their game continue thriving for three years and counting: class updates. Placed around four months apart, Valve had 36 months, or three years if they only updated the classes and added nothing else. They also added new maps, game modes, in-game systems to acquire class items (hats included), community maps becoming official, contests and more. This does not even take into the fact that they haven't yet finished the Meet the Team videos and remain coy on both what those clips will contain and which gender the Pyro is (we want to know, dammit!)

I'll end by saying what I've always said outside of this blog to my friends. The video game industry is reactionary to Valve. They innovate, and everyone else clammers to catch up, even Bungie. DICE and EA took the right rout with the release of BC2 Vietnam, and when Battlefield 3 comes out, I think there'll still be players trudging the rice paddies long into the future.

Xiant

BC2 Update(s): Final Review

Well, looky here! An update not at 3:00 in the morning! What a sight to see!

Ahem. The rest of the weapons and items really received very little in the way of boosting or nerfing. The M1A1 Thompson received a damage boost and in the last update the MP-443 Grach and M1911 pistols received a little tweaking. The MP-443 received a damage boost, since it was already the weakest of the pistols but with the highest fire rate and clip size, thus making it a much more desirable weapon. The M1911 had its rate of fire significantly reduced, which was good, considering it was almost a machine pistol with really big bullets to begin with. It is still a very powerful weapon, but it isn't as widely used as it was. You see the MP-443 and the M9, even the M-93, which also received a damage boost. The M1 Garand is finally usable, since DICE fixed its inability to receive stars, and you see it a lot more in the game nowadays. Prior to the update, I'd seen it used once, and I don't really know why, since the guy using it really cleaned house.

Probably the largest change for the general kits came to the shotguns. Their slugs lost accuracy, which was good considering they killed at any distance with pinpoint accuracy, and overall shotguns no longer require magnum ammo to be effective, though some people still run with it out of habit or superstition. A better option is the increased ammo capacity or explosive damage increase for the assault shotgun players (C4 works wonders if you know how to use it).

Two small things I forgot to mention in the actual class reviews.

First, the recon mortar strike had its recharge time increased to 60 seconds, which is actually quite a bit with a game that moves fast (they do, sometimes). It also makes tactical use of the strike much more valuable, considering it's great cover fire on Rush and works wonders against a stationary vehicle of any kind.

Second, the engineer's repair tool overheats faster but repairs faster, so overall the effect is the same, but pulsing the tool is now more attractive than constant repair. Killing with it is, of course, now easier, and still just as rewarding.

I think that's all of it. If I missed something, I'm sure I'll think of it after the post.

Overall though, this update gets an 8.5. I'm not averaging the scores too much, just seeing where the high-middle might be. The updates to the game do make it more playable and enjoyable on a more consistent basis. Rage always happens. That' the topic of tomorrow's post.

Thanks for reading,
Xiant

Penultimate Reivew: The Engineer

Tonight's entry will be short, this time not because I'm tired, but because there's really not much to talk about.

The engineer's main weapons, the SMG's didn't really get too much tweaking in either of the updates. Without the data from the first update handy, I can only talk about the current one. The UZI had its ranged damage increased and the PP-2000 had its up close damage decreased. The UZI, not having used it, didn't really need this little increase, and the PP2000, if anything, needed  a very slight boost. As it is, the weapon is really not much use, even with its high rounds per minute. You're really better off with the AK74u or the XM8 compact.

The real topic of debate, continued debate, is the Carl Gustav rocket launcher. Even though DICE reduced it's lethal radius to 1.8 meters rather than 3, it's still a primary weapon for many engineers. Some say even more so than it was before the "nerf." I tend to agree. I see more and more engineers using the CG at the expense of other weapons for purposes other than vehicle destruction. Paired with the tracer dart, which saw a slight reduction in travel speed, most vehicles have no hope of survival, especially against a determined few engineers and their CG's. However, with explosive damage increase and more explosives carried, a total of 8, CG only engineers have the ability to spam their weapons until they get the kills. With the lower skill level required for CG kills in this case, those looking for high K/Ds with minimal effort need only look as far as the Carl Gustav.

Granted, I don't really know what DICE can do to decrease the CG effectiveness any more beyond reducing the radius still more. Reducing its damage is out of the question, seeing as it then becomes useless, and without the two main nerfable areas, there isn't a good alternative.

Regardless, DICE did nothing to address the issue at all, so this part of the update gets a 7.75.

Thanks for reading,
Xiant

The Medic Kit: Review

There's two reasons I"m reviewing only the medic tonight. One, I'm tired (again), but also because it begs a bit of explanation.

When the medic kit first hit, the gun everyone used was the M60. The gun was accurate from across the map and had the most damage of any light machine gun (and still does). The only real drawback was the giant recoil, which didn't really matter at anything other than long range. Add to this that LMG's were generally accurate at any movement speed save sprint meant that medics with M60s ran and gunned, carrying whole teams to victory on the virtue of their overpowered mancannon. It became a polarizing issue in the BC2 community, the first of many. It's damage, fire rate, ammo carried, lack of accuracy falloff and other lesser factors created a class play style that wasn't intended. Instead of staying at the mid-lines keeping everyone alive and reviving, medics took the assault's job away from them to some extent. Another gun like the M60 but not nearly as vocalized was the XM8 LMG, whose increased fire rate and rounds per minute coupled with its own sizable damage output made it a worthy second to the M60's crown.

DICE took their time in balancing the weapon in the major update, wanting to be sure that it no longer carried the stigma of launch. When the patch finally came out, the LMG's saw perhaps the biggest nerf, since rather than a single weapon seeing a reduction in its attributes, the entire LMG category felt the blow of the balancing hammer. LMG's no longer carried near the accuracy when moving, and no crouching gave the best results. The hit was so great that running and gunning medics all but disappeared and medics, if they wanted to go back to their old ways, were forced to choose from the all kit weapons with much more limited ammo supplies. The M60 and the XM8 also saw great reduction in their damage output over range. While the M60 now carries a 16.7 damage at max range, that, combined with its great recoil, does lower its ubiquity somewhat.

With the recent update, the status quo changed the most for the medic kit as well. The intro LMG, the PKM, saw an increase in its damage at range, the T88, which previously received a nice pad to its damage output, found itself reduced back to standard fare. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the MG3, the final LMG rewarded to medics, with the highest rate of fire and lowest damage, received a boost to both damage up close and at range. Originally, I believe, 10 damage up close was the maximum, but now that figure is 12.5 and damage at max range is 10. With rounds per minute at 1000 and .06 seconds between each bullet, it takes approximately 4.8 seconds to kill up close and  at max range, assuming every bullet hits (my math might be wrong).The weapon has, therefore, seen a rise in users. The SPECACT kits released do something for that as well.

Overall, the medic updates are good, but the M60 is still a little over powered. Proficient users still snipe from long range, but its core users, the run and gunners, moved on, thankfully.

The updates get a 8.75.

Thanks for reading,
Xiant

Bad Company 2 Update Review: Assault and Recon

Strangely, despite DICE's claim that they tweaked a lot of weapons in the latest update, I can't say I see all that much in the way of improvement. The weapons I can speak to I'll talk about, but there isn't much in the way of stats for the update, at least comparatively. Therefore, I'll talk about the two update together in places where it's pertinent.

First, the Assault Kit. This kit didn't get much of anything. The two main changes came for the 40mm shotgun and the AN-94. I'll touch on the shotgun first, since I've never used it. Apparently, DICE raised the base damage from 14.3 to 16.7 with a multiplier of x12 based on distance. This, combined with the 2.5 damage bonus for headshots, greatly increases its range. I may start using it, but since I rarely play assault anymore, that may take a while.

As for the AN-94, I can't speak to it before the second major update, but that one made it the new M60, and everyone who's anyone uses it, unless they find it distasteful. It's base damage at close range is 20, making it a five shot kill. While it's rate of fire isn't stellar, it is fast enough at .1 seconds that the kill is only about half a second long. Most players don't react that fast to much of anything, and if you've got them in your sights from most distances before they see you, they're dead. This is still true since the update. The only major change is the damage drop off at distance. DICE lowered this to 14.3, which makes the weapon the equal of the M16A4 at any distance and most other weapons at mid to long range. The only real drawback to the weapon is the fire rate. If you want more kills, it's the weapon to use.

The Recon kit recieved a slight buff and a hefty nerf in the first update. The M95, a bolt action, .50 caliber sniper rifle, reduced its longest range damage to be in line with every other bolt action, which many people found distasteful. There was no longer a reason to use it over any of the other rifles, considering the accuracy is actually less than the GOL or the M24. Interestingly as well, the headshot multiplier for the M95 is only 2.3 while the other bolt actions are close to 4. This not only makes the M95 a poor choice up close, it is less effective at range as well. All this, added to the paltry increase to 55 damage at max range (from the base 50) in the recent update, and the rifle is useless as a bolt action. I prefer the GOL.

These parts of the update I give an 8.

That's all for today. Tomorrow is the medic and engineer kits. The day after covers the rest of the weapons.

Thanks for reading,
Xiant.

The BC2 Patch: Knifing and Review Begin

Sorry about the missed update yesterday. The family went to a party I didn't know we were going to and that messed up the rhythm of the day. I'm back, though it's my father's birthday tomorrow, so we'll see what I can cook up.

Tonight's topic is, as promised, the beginning of a review of the Bad Company 2 update. I'll speak to knifing in this blog. In future entries, I'll touch on further problems that arose in the second major update, as well as any statistics changes I can find.

But knifing's back. Everyone cheer! When BC2 first launched, after the obligatory problems with any big launch, knifing was a whole new experience. I believe that in Call of Duty, especially the newer ones, the knifing is a little overdone. I know that the Commando perk in Modern Warfare 2 is a bit much (and that's putting it mildly). Therefore, when I first knifed someone in BC2 I was surprised, but not negatively or positively so. The animation was exceedingly slow and the hit registration needed work. That is the negative. The positive is the satisfaction actually knifing someone gave you. You had to really work to get the knife, and on the big maps for any game mode save Deathmatch, going knife only, as is possible in Call of Duty with a fair bit of skill, became a task of almost monumental difficulty. Granted, it is possible, and people do it. Some of them even go positive doing it. They are, however, an even greater minority than in the Call of Duty franchise. I know of only two or three in BC2 while I'm sure there is at least ten times that number, if not more, in CoD.

Then the patched the game in April. Knifing went to hell. Strangely, knifing from behind did not work. You had to be within 180 degrees of your enemy's front if you wanted to get the knife kill. On the other hand, the longer knife animation was not always necessary for the knife kill. A simple swipe got the job done. Hit detection in this regard was much improved, and it was still satisfying to out think your opponents in fights when you've both run out of ammo (which is easy to do between players of equal skill or fail level). Overall, though, knifing fazed out of fashion if only because it was now even inefficient than using guns.

In the recent update, which came out on June 29th, my birthday, they fixed knifing. Anywhere near the opponent and suddenly he's dead. Right on! Unfortunately, the awful hit registration returned as well, and there is, once again, a little bit of a lunge when you knife someone, sometimes. Other times, you just fail. In all my time before knifing returned, I didn't get a single melee efficiency pin, a hard pin to get. I can now claim at least six to my name in the twelve or so hours I've played since the 29th.

This part of the update I give a 9.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 Updates and New Game Mode

This is something of a point of contention among the BC2 community. That is, of course putting in lightly. In reality, the flame wars in the community are rampant and widespread, with DICE/EA being the brunt of many insults and expletive filled comments. On release day for BC2, the EA servers dedicated to making the game run were completely overfilled, and only a fraction of the players had the ability to even join a game. Granted, game launches are hard to get right, but the degree to which the launch failed surprised and angered many. I myself couldn't play for about a week and a half, though once I started, I didn't feel like complaining. After playing for a while, there were some very specific complaints that I shared with many other players. Namely, overpowered M60's (a medic weapon) and grenade spam. The latter of the two was such a problem that players grabbed their assault kits and used the 40mm grenade as a primary weapon. The M60's damage killed in 4-6 hits at any range and it had dead on accuracy from any range. Add to this that there was very little falloff while moving and run and gun medics became a real issue.

DICE, in response to community outrage, responded with a huge update that balanced weapons, reduced damages and kill ranges, decreased accuracies and buffed weapons otherwise unused. This and many other things went into that first update, and the community was happy. For a time. New problems then began to pop up. First, knifing was now all but obsolete as it was only completely reliable when done from the front. Knifing from the back now did absolutely nothing except on a glitch or when the enemy was moving. People, like myself, who enjoyed sneaking up on enemy snipers (recon kit players) and knifing them in the back now had to actually shoot, hoping no one else heard the death and bullets firing. Secondly, and this was the only other in game complaint, rather than the 40mm grenade being a primary weapon, now rocket launchers took that mantle. In DICE's defense, they did decrease the kill radius of the rocket launchers, but did nothing to the damage against human targets. Why decreasing the kill radius increased the usage I cannot fathom, yet there you have it.

The other two large complaints came in the form of a lack of private servers being completely private. Currently, and the patch is coming out today or Monday on Steam, you need eight players for a private match. If you don't have that many friends, or friends that own BC2 and regularly play it, it really isn't great to be you. The second complaint is one that constantly evolves, as the consoles, PS3 and 360, received several updates while the PC got nothing. Add to this that a promotion and addition to the game, the SPECTACT kits, comes with the update, and you have a recipe for hatred and flame, which is exactly what DICE has.

What really exacerbated the whole problem is that DICE announced the update in early May, and it is only now, on June 23, that we actually get it. The huge delay, coupled with very little feedback till lately, and the continuing, lamer growing excuse of problems with Quality Assurance, did nothing to help DICE's case.

Now, one has to remember that when the update does in fact go live, a good portion of those people who wanted nothing more than proclaim DICE and EA as the worst game developer/publisher combination the world has ever known will undoubtedly shift their position completely around. DICE and EA, to them, will be the greatest community responders the world offers, and when called on their change in viewpoint will deny and circle the point until someone finds themselves banned.

On a more recent topic, BC2 Onslaught mode. On the surface this seems like a really novel idea. Four player co-op against AI opponents until the entire squad is overwhelmed. New and interesting, except Valve did it with Left 4 Dead two years ago. What saves DICE from being just ripping off Valve is the uniqueness of their class setups. In L4D, each player has exactly the same skills, whereas in BC2, there are medics, assaults, engineers and recons, each of which bring something different to the table. As I understand it, Onslaught mode has no goal, only survival. You keep going until each and every one of you dies with no hope of revival. If this means that entire squads will be medic and constantly revive one another remains to be seen, but somehow I think the game will make players chose one of the four kits and stick with it, making a team of four using all kits.

Either way, it'll be interesting.

Thanks for reading,
Xiant

The Quest Begins

Hello, internet, they call me Xiant on Steam, and I'm watching G4's coverage of E3 2010. Currently they're talking about the Ubisoft press conference. As a goal of mine is to eventually reach the fabled halls of big name video game scriptwriters, I thought that a good place to start would be here, in the vast reaches of cyberspace, with my writing about the industry. At some point I might begin to write a script here when my traffic reaches a certain point, but first I just wanted to get started. So here we go.

With this blog, separate from my more personal ones, I'm going to talk about news, reviews and my interpretations of video game stories. Also, I'll give a sort of running commentary on the state of multiplayer games as I know them. This last bit is the topic of today's, the first, blog. The game of choice for today is my game of choice, Team Fortress 2.

Now, TF2, as I'll write it for convenience's sake, came out almost three years ago, but has changed immensely since then. Back then, there were only a few maps, Dustbowl, 2Fort, Gravel Pit, Turbine, Hydro and Granary. The nine classes (scout, soldier, pyro, demoman, heavy, engineer, medic, sniper and spy) all had only three weapons and their class's abilities to combat the enemy team. Players needed to adapt to the situation in ways today's player would likely find different and perhaps still more challenging. Medics had no ability to call out ten second non-stop critical hits; demomen couldn't lop off people's heads; the scout couldn't go invincible for six seconds; and, my favorite class, the spy had ten seconds of cloak with a thirty second recharge time. Map knowledge was paramount, especially for the spy, since if you uncloaked in the wrong spot, you were dead. Quickly. No one likes a spy.

Since then, over 120 updates have completely changed the game, giving each class save the engineer (forthcoming) three new items to play the game differently and more complexly (or cheaply, some argue). Since I talked a little more about the spy, that'll take up the rest of this entry.

I began my entry into the spy not long after I got the game, once I found my bearings. At the time, the December 11th, 2008 update was still a couple months away. For those new, or newer, to the game, it was that update that allowed spies to pick up ammo boxes and fallen weapons to restore the cloak meter. Valve got a great deal of flak for this update, since spies of even superficial skill, with enough map knowledge, to stay invisible indefinitely, picking their spots to uncloak. Or, if they knew the location of a full ammo box, they could camp (unless a pyro has half a brain and starts flaming the ammo locations) as long as they liked. 

The main argument beyond this, however, is that the spy was now so much easier to play. The tactical cloak uncloak was "out the door" so to speak, and optimal use of space no longer mattered. As long as there was ammo, you could uncloak wherever you wanted. To an extent this became true. Spy did lose some of its difficulty and more people started playing. Of course, the spy at this point remained a class that took a good, if not great, amount of skill. Uncloaking was perhaps harder since players with map knowledge now patrolled the ammo locations and began timing dropped weapons disappearing. Spies picking up ammo or dropped weapons became a dead giveaway. A team with competent pyros just needed to spray a couple puffs near where the spy just was or might be and suddenly twelve to sixteen players converge to send the spy into the ground. The spy was not invincible, and the play style changed to adapt to the new update.

Then came the spy update, which changed everything. Again. Two new invisibility watches created two new play styles, for better or worse. with the Cloak and Dagger, campy spies became vogue, since standing still now recharged the cloak. Map knowledge and troop movement knowledge still applied since you needed a safe place to wait for recharge. Also, since the C&D (as I'll now call it), used cloak faster, you had less time before good players knew exactly where you were and converged on you to end whatever your plans were. By the time of this writing, the C&D is the least used watch of all of them, I think, because of the stigma against camping and the reduced moving cloak time. However, the other watch they introduced, now the most used of all of them, is yet more stigmatized, and does essentially make the spy, physically one of the weakest classes, invincible for about 6 seconds.

I speak, of course, of the Dead Ringer (DR for short). With only 10% damage for 6.5 seconds and fake death to throw off your enemies, a full health spy can take several critical rockets, stickies, pills, even several backstabs (whose damage can go into the 1000's). However, after Valve allowed spies to recover DR energy with ammo as well, since this was not original feature, the DR became what has come to be called "easy mode." Valve attempted to remedy this by capping the cloak energy gained from ammo and reducing the amount of cloak energy left when you decloak (since it takes a full cloak to activate the DR). 

With the advent of the DR, spying reached a new, low level of difficulty, (though none of the classes are really "easy" to play well). As a consequence of the DR's ubiquity among all levels of spy play, and the length of time a spy remains on fire even after having the DR activated, made every single player, pyros especially, paranoid beyond anything before. Now spies who did not use the DR have a much more difficult time, since spy death went way, way up on the list of priorities. Higher, even, than it had been before. Regularly cloaked spies, since the DR forces you to stay visible until it goes off, fear the paranoid pyro (or soldier, or demo or anyone with skill). 

As for myself, since I play on large, 32 man servers on maps primarily made for 24, I use the DR if only because the choke points doing really allow for a good way around the enemy team to behind them. Better spies than I, of which there are many, will of course get behind anyway and have a great time. Lesser spies than I, of which there are an equal number, can do the same and have just as much, if not more success, with the DR. I can use the regular watch to great effect, but I'll admit I'm a bit rusty, since I play soldier and demo and medic more these days. 

My opinion on the matter is this. The DR is now an overpowered crutch that lesser spies use to get good scores and gain infamy on the servers they play on. However, I will say this in the DR's defense: every watch at the spy's disposal has a use depending on the situation. 

The end story to TF2, not just the spy, is that combat, how you play and the weapons you use are situational. For the spy specifically, the DR has its uses in crowded areas when there are nigh-impossible ways behind enemy lines. The C&D is good for wide open map with metal just far enough away to be inconvenient for the regular watch. The regular watch itself is good for almost any map with enough metal and/or hiding spots for stab-and-go tactics. Which ever watch works for you is the watch you should use. Whatever style of play you enjoy will dictate which watch you want to use.

In the end though, Team Fortress 2 is a game. Have fun with it. Don't over think it or put too much stock in it.

For tomorrow's post, I'll talk more about the spy, specifically his ranged weapons. Since there's not quite as much to talk about there, I'll branch out into some (maybe all) of the update weapons for the nine classes. The post after that will talk strategies I've discovered over the years. If I decide to get the Medal of Honor beta before all that's done, my initial impressions will appear here instead, with the finish to follow.

Thanks for reading, those of you that have, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Xiant