Well well. EA decided to release patch 1.2 to the world yesterday, February 14th. I played a few rounds on a couple servers to see how the patch had affected things. My thoughts: some things have changed, but not all for the better…
I hopped on an EA DE server running Dalian Plant. As USMC, I joined a squad and spawned somewhat away from Main Entrance as anti-tank, allowing me to test out the new unlock, the P90.
The P90: Carrying 50 to the clip, a reasonable rate of fire, and dealing significant damage, the P90 is a nice weapon for taking on people at close-to-medium range. Which brings me to my first point…
Having spawned and realised there was a tank nearby, I hid behind some cargo containers, despite my squad leader’s suicidal ideas of running across the open grass to get past it. I used his distraction to my advantage, firing two AT rockets into it. The gunner jumped out, but the driver went down with the tank. Knowing the gunner would be after my blood, I played it cautiously, waiting for him to emerge around a corner of a shack. A few shots at leg level (umm… my mouse was playing up) were enogh to deal fatal damage. Nice touch.
I wont bore excite you with the details, but Suffice to say I was able to continue to piss off the two ]FFA[ guys I had already killed at Main entrance, getting killed only when I was out of rockets and facing down a tank in a reloading TOW.
Next, I tried the anti-air. Now, eprhaps a J-10 wasn’t the bets target to try against, but I say you have to take on the toughest target to get a good idea of what’s going on. There are a few things to note:
- Lock-on distance has been decreased. This is pretty noticeable.
- Missiles don’t seem quite so attracted to your own teammates. Either that, or they are, but then they realise and veer off. Seemed that way anyway.
- It’s still easy to kill someone in an IGLA from miles away in a plane 🙁
I’ll need some more experience of AA missiles before I can pass a full judgement.
Oh yeah, and you can see the UAVs. And destroy them. Oh well.
Next up is the sniper unlock, the L96A1. The map? Mashtuur city.
The L96A1: Three words: headshots are easier. Or perhaps just one word: deadlier. The L96A1 is a very nice sniper rifle, but it seems to do well as a medium-range combat rifle (ie a scout rifle) as well. I can’t explain quite why, but I had more kills with the gun than I would with a sniper rifle normally.
Oh, and the blackhawk is much worse, which is good 🙂
But some things are still there, in all their annoying glory. The grenade launcher’s grenades still detonate fairly close (maybe not at your feet, but pretty damn close to it). You can still be spawn-raped (a 2-sec immunity would be nice), and some other things that cannot be rectified in a simple patch.
On the whole the patch looks like it will improve things in general, but I’m still going to be fairly cautious.
And while I wouldn’y normally do this, I would recommed getting the patch from FilePlanet. Yeah, it sucks in general, but for this patch it was the fastest mirror I could find. BF2 account logins should work for it anyway.</em
My first impressions: the P90 is a Peashooter…the sound and feel of it make it sound like one anyways, and the damage isnt bad, but the rate of fire is a bit slow.
Not tried out the sniper rifle enough/at all to be able to comment on it, but I have noticed that all the rifles seem to be much mroe accurate, which I don’t understand, as there was nothing wrong with them before IMO. Takiong of acduracy, the support weapons have been made much more accurate, namely the PKM, which I also don’t understand as they were fine for me before. Now it seems every second person is support.
Blackhawk I have yet to be in or see in action, so can’t comment.
As for the anti-air/helicopters/planes (they are all linked), I find it works very well. Anti-air yes has a shorter lock on distance, but it at least is almost guarnteed to hit if there are no flares messsing thigns up. The chopper flares regenerate quickly, giving them some protection if they dont dilly dally. All this means you now have to have some skill to stay in the air against these.
I have been doing quite a lot of flying since the patch, and you get shot down more by other planes, their ant-air missles have the same treatment as the ground ones, but you also shoot them down a lot more. All in all, these combinations means planes and choppers are no longer the 65:1 k:d rape machines they used to be, you need skill to stay alive.
I have been grenade launcher killed only twice since the patch (both fair game), mainly becuase most people are onto the PKM now. I think now dolphin diving and shooting while jumping have been axed, the number of people using this weapon will decrease, give it a week or two for people to stop using the PKM and we shall see how it evens out.
Spawn raping happens, and always will. I personally only find it a problem if they are at an uncappable abse, while they still have other bases, or if the server rules forbid it…apart from that its fair game. Just start mpving and jumping as soon as you spawn if you think it is going to happen.
I got it from FileFront, no wait and maxed out my speed.
Overall, everything they have changed I like or don’t mind. The weapons are more accurate, but meh. The anti air changes really help the balance. I have seen a couple of bugs since the patch, but none that have stopped my enjoyment of the game.:D
Oh its so sad, now patch 1.50 is out and the game is still buggy…
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