Routing at Rowdy Guns

Last night all of my favourite servers were either completely full or completely empty, so I hopped onto the Rowdy Guns server. Things were going okay for a while, but once Operation Clean Sweep loaded, things started to fall apart.

Now I guess I may as well get it out of the way: I'm just a Corporal, having logged just over 35 hours multiplayer, so yes, I'm a newb. Yes, I suck. No, I don't know all the intricacies of this game. Yes, I'll complain about them anyway thank you very much.

I was MEC. Sniper. Why sniper? Since I'm a newb, I feel it is my duty to learn to play every class equally for a while until I get the hang of them. Yesterday was sniper day. Anyhow, I tried to join the squads, but as usual for me, they were all locked and I couldn't join any. So I went solo and worked on defense of the 1st flag at the front line, and called in enemy positions. As it turned out, the enemy took a transport helo to our main airbase in the back island, took it over and started a 2-prong approach.

After a while it dawned on me that our team had no commander, so I stuck up my hand and got myself the job. After about 5 minutes of raining death on pretty much nothing, and only having 1 request for supplies, I resigned, hoping someone with some good leadership skills would take over. No such luck.

We were being pounded pretty heavily from the air, I think they had stolen our jet, and we were being constantly dogged whereever we went. After very little success fighting the air units, I decided to spec ops and take out their artillery and command trailer. I didn't get too far, because their commander was scanning me and artying me at almost every opportunity that I had to get to a boat. At one point I had finally gotten a boat, then about halfway across I came up against a boat with 2 soldiers in it; I tried to outrun them since I was outgunned but they killed me a few hundred yards from the shore.

Since that didn't work I went back to sniper and spawned back at our rear bases, first trying to get a jet, but one of our guys managed to be doing okay with that. I took up a ground AA and took down a few helos and a jet or 2, but our ground forces weren't having much luck defending flags so I decided to go help. At this point we had 2 flags left, and the enemy was closing in. I was running towards our mobile AA vehicle when suddenly I got a few rounds in the back from a teammate. I checked the scoreboard and he had a score of -6, so I figured he was just learning. A while later he did the same thing, again and again. Always shooting me to within an inch of death then leaving. I called for an admin - there were a bunch of {GOB} players on - but no on seemed to care. I guess they only care when it's affecting their team. I read their rules which states "No TK'ing allowed" but I guess that doesn't include team "wounding". At one point the player actually TK'd me and I was happy to not forgive him. Right after that I spawned and another player who had just shown up TK'd me again. Great.

My buddy AnotherEd lives by the motto "PGUP for thumbs up! Always forgive!" which I generally do but I seem to attract the idiots. I might try Rowdy Guns again but if idiots are allowed to run free then that'll be another server on my Snuff List.

Lesson to learn: Why can't I join squads? Why would squad leaders lock people out who just want to help their team?

Lesson confirmed: I am a magnet for idiots.

The Psychology of the Casual BF2 Gamer

You are a casual Battlefield 2 gamer. You are not "hardcore", whatever that is. You don't put food, work, or family aside to fire up BF2. You might find your ranking and stats interesting, but they don't define your online being. You are not your BF2 persona. Your BF2 name doesn't contain fake clan tags, it likely contains part of your real name. You want to occasionally join a server, see some big explosions, kill a few enemies, then call it a night. There are no battle stories to tell the wife, you are not interested in joining a clan. You spent good money on your computer, and it is a tool to you, not a way of life. BF2 is an occasional escape from reality, it doesn't define it. You might have owned a few other games in the past, and you may buy a few more in the future. You might have received BF2 as a gift or bought it for something to do, but you weren't the first in line to pre-order it. Frankly you'd rather be doing something in the garage or outside most of the time. You are the casual Battlefield 2 gamer.

Where It All Started

Having played both console and PC games for many years, and especially enjoying FPS (First Person Shooter) style games, Battlefield 2 was a natural progression. I had played most recently such games as Far Cry, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty 2, Counter Strike: Source, and Day of Defeat, among others. Bumping it up a notch by playing what all my efriends were playing seemed like a logical choice.

What I didn’t bargain for was the experience was like nothing I’d ever played previously. BF2 came highly recommended. I was warned that I’d need a decent system to play it, so after I bought a new machine with lots of RAM, a fast SATA hard drive and decent video, I pickup up the Deluxe edition which included Special Forces.

Installing was simple enough. Leafing through the manual during install, I thought to myself, “looks simple enough”. If it uses WASD, should be a piece of cake, right? Little did I know I would quickly develop an intense love/hate relationship with this game.