Walk out, immediately get gunned down by someone with better knowledge of the map and familiarity with the weapons. It's that which put me off BF:BC2.
Stay close to your squad members. Being a medic is the best starting point. Try to not get involved with the firelight as much as 1st line support and this way you'll still get plenty of points for ranking up & unlocks plus being close to your team/squad allows you to get familiar with the maps!
What? So your surprised that someone who has played more than you has a better knowledge of the above than you, and that put you off?
More that I joined the game late, so everyone was dramatically better than me. It felt like an uphill climb in the middle of a landslide. I appreciate the CoD is just mindless carnage now, but I know that i'm an okay player. Being the one whom is often killed and rarely does well doesn't lend me to a game, the fact I hadn't seen even a slight improvement after a week's solid playing didn't endear me to the game either.
That's true, yeah. When I last thought this through (with reference to films, but same deal) I decided that the only objective standard you can consistently use is enjoyment and headcounting: if more people enjoy game X, you have to concede that it's in some sense "better" than one that less people enjoy. This is frustrating because it goes against my intuitions (shared by quite a few others, I know) which say that what's popular (like Transformers 2 and The X Factor) is often crap and what's niche and less popular (like Moon and Black Books) is often awesome. But I've never found a way to consistently justify these intuitions that doesn't just amount to "it's good because I like it". There is weighted enjoyment, which is what IMDb tries to do: giving more credence to people's enjoyment and opinion if they're more experienced in the particular art form. In theory, someone who plays more games is more likely to know a good game and enjoy it for the right reasons (good design, good voice acting, inventive gameplay) and someone who barely plays games is likely to be indiscriminate and like a game for the wrong reasons (the ability to create a house and watch a mini-you wash the dishes in it). But this gets mucked up by genres. It takes different tastes and familiarities to enjoy different genres: I couldn't tell a good RTS from a bad one, because I never play them, and someone who only ever played Doom 3 from the entire shooter meta-genre would probably be fooled into thinking it was a good game. So ideally you'd weigh people's familiarity with genres...I despair at ever finding a workable metric. I agree that the comparisons are still worthwhile, the opinions worth cultivating. But in light of this quagmire of subjectivity, I hate making hard claims about what's good and what isn't or what's better than what, because I just don't feel confident in them.
Not to offend mate but anyone can be good at COD. It's a twitch shooter and to be frank, there is no skill involved just be quick with your mouse and you've got a kill! Battlefield on the other hand has always being about planning first and attacking second!
Haha, do you understand COD? You are saying that everyone can be as good as everyone else? The same theory applies to BF3, just plan first and attack second! Simple!
I normally skim past Dwarfer's comments, but he's absolutely right in this case: twitch-shooters are simply about reflex and repetitive systematic learning of certain actions. Tactical shooters have open-ended gameplay with huge possibilities, and the player's success is determined largely by ingenuity and planning. There is skill involved in twitch shooters, but it's unconscious skill - skill in the literal, basic sense. One is 'good' at Call of Duty in the same sense that one is 'good' at somersaults or skateboarding; and of course, there are people that will never be any good at skateboarding, but even when you're amazing at it, it's hardly intellectually challenging. It's just mastery through repetition. Twitch shooters are to tactical shooters what banner ad quizzes are to the Bar exam.
No, that's a complete whitewash of what makes a good cod player. I know because I have over 4 years experience playing competitive cod and over 1000 hours of multiplayer under my belt. Granted, a great player will have excellent accuracy and gunskill, but thats a very small part of why he's a great player. That is partially true in a twitch shooter environment also. It isn't about going round mindlessly. It's about moving from cover to cover, using your knowledge of the spawn system and traffic patterns to constantly get in a better position of your enemy. Reactions (in the sense you think) play a small part of what makes a good player, because they don't need to rely on them when they can position themselves much better than an inexperienced player. OK maybe I misread that a little at first. I agree that a good player will instinctively and subconsciously perform many of his actions, so in that sense yes cod is a skill in the same way that being good at football is a skill (or set of skills). But that doesn't take anything away from the person's ability or skill level. There are MANY different skills being used simultaneously - map knowledge, spawn knowledge, understanding lines of sight, understanding perks/guns/attachments, gun accuracy, reaction time, movement, vision, and so forth - which a great player will have to learnt and perfected. That takes a huge amount of ability/skill that many players cannot do. Cod is one of those games which anyone can pick up and play, but it takes months to master. Your view seems to reduce cod to simply a matter of reacting to random gunfights and hoping you can pull the trigger quick enough to get the kill. But that only accounts to about 20% of what makes a good Cod player, which you cant understand but I will try to explain to you. You think that a good player will succeed if he can simply 'out-react' his opponent in gunfights, being able to pull the trigger faster and aim more quickly than his 'slower' opponent. But you miss out on all those other skills which are essential for a good cod player (map/spawn knowledge and not just accuracy and reaction time), and then use that ignorance to tarnish cod as a game. As I have said previously, moving around mindlessly solely relying on 'reflexes and reactions' to outgun your opponents is just asking for a deathwish, and is not what good players do. A good player will understand the traffic patterns and can predict and see where his enemies are most likely to come from. He can thus position himself around the most popular lines of sight and pick enemies off before they can even look at him. When I go 30-0 in a free for all, for example, very few of those kills would my enemies have known I was there. I am killing them without a gunfight per se. We're not both shooting at each other, only me shooting at them. It's not luck or anything; I outpositioned him because I either heard him coming, and/or I predicted his movements because of my much better map knowledge. I would have taken cover around an obstacle and killed them without them knowing of my presence, or only when its too late and they're in the killcam. In addition, a good player will almost certainly have a headset, so not only do they have a much better understanding of the maps, spawn points and traffic patterns (parts of the map where enemies tend to move the most), but they will also be able to hear you coming, because any decent headset can pick up enemy footsteps and audio cues. Therefore, if you was the step inside a map against a good player, or team of good players, you wouldn't understand how good they are. You'd be annihilated without moving outside your spawn, and none of that would be down to 'reactions' 'reflexes' or 'gunskill'; no, it would be down to better understanding of the maps and spawn system. For a demonstration of what I mean about positioning vs 'reflexes' or 'gunskill', just see how this guy wins by out-positioning (out-smarting) his enemies in this 30-0 FFA on MW2. It's not the best vid to demonstrate what I mean but it gives you an idea.
+rep, I consider myself corrected. I was going to go through and multi-quote it, but on reflection I agree with pretty much everything you said. I would question how many regular COD players (proportionately speaking) play intelligently and with planning, though. Based on the scoreboards and how easily I got into the upper quarter of them when I picked it up briefly on a friend's PS3, I'd guess that a lot of people on COD are playing with consideration to nothing but twitch reflexes and random chance. The same problem plagues the BF games, though, so it's a moot point. Most BC2 servers have a minority of intelligent, adaptive and strategic players and a majority of durps camping with sniper rifles, stagnating at the bottom of the scoreboards. So I guess the lesson there is that gamers are retarded wherever you look. That hurt a little, though, I like to think I can understand a point if it's explained well (which yours was) It's a compliment and an insult in one, so it balances out :3 -rep if I could, I'm sick of seeing these whiny "thread close!" complaints littered all over perfectly good discussions. Nobody's flaming, points are being exchanged, things are being learned. If that's too intense for you, don't read the thread.
