Had a great BF 1942 moment the other night. I was playing on a server that had Friendly Fire at 100%. We had a guy on our side TKing and basically pissing everyone off. Since the rest of our team actually seemed like they wanted to play the game right, I took it upon myself to track the bastard down and make his life miserable.
After scoping out his MO for awhile, I deduced that he liked to spawn on either the Carrier or the Airfield (if we held it). So I picked the assault guy, plunked down near one of the spawn points and waited. As soon as he appeared, I gunned him down. The idiot continued to pick the same spawn point (maybe because he wanted to get me back), so I’d wait for him to appear again and repeat.
This went on for a while, where I’d just hunt down his location and put the hurt on him. Some other teammates joined in and we had his favorite spawn points pretty much covered. Because he couldn’t stay in the for more than 3 seconds at a time, I think he got a little frustrated. He then said, “Ok, guys. Let’s stop TKing now and just play the game.” Our collective response was, “Nah, why don’t we just focus on killing you.”
I decided to take a quick BF1942 break at lunch today. Logged onto a random EA server.
Some idiot named PLAYER is running around the game shooting his team members.
However, friendly fire was OFF!
So the only real downside was that you had one guy who was doing the team no good.
The truly sad thing was that he was running around doing this for the entire 20 minutes I played. Going up to fellow Axis players and shooting them point-blank. With no effect. It never sank in.
I just can’t play anymore. This is a fantastic game when everyone is playing well. The teamplay and combined arms tactics are awesome. But Butter is always empty now and I can never get on an EA Backfire server. So the TK’ers rule. What’s so fun about TK’ing? I mean, why kill your guys when there’s a bunch of bad guys over there making trouble?
We had a 5-on-5 going last night. If you want a game on butter, you can always schedule one in advance or come to the PlanetCrap IRC channel and see if anyone is interested…pick-up games aren’t probably going to happen just whenever.
I think my problem is that I’m on the East Coast. I got the impression somehow that the people playing on butter were West Coast or Great Middle Section people.
I never stay up past 11 these days because I’m tired because of the baby. It’s funny, our daughter sleeps about 8 hours a night, but I’m still tired.
Has anybody ever investigated the possibility that infants somehow sap the brainwave energy of their parents in order to survive and that this whole “breastfeeding” thing is a big scam? And wouldn’t that have made a great episode of ST:TNG? Or not.
I’ve only been playing on private servers to avoid these problems, but there are not enough players yet to get (and keep) good games going. Hopefully EA will do something about reducing the TKers and griefers, like a corporate effort along the lines of United Admins http://www.unitedadmins.com/. However, look how long it has taken Valve to start doing something about banning cheaters in the HL engine games. Now look how lame EA’s support has been for online MoH:AA. The future may be grim.
Once again the burden is going to fall on the players to police their games. When the full game is released we can get some community-building started & good servers will emerge. There are lots of well-moderated servers for CS/DoD/TFC/etc. out there, you just have to find them.
In related news, I learned the other day that the ban list for my clan’s servers has over 14,000 WON IDs on it. It is like a small city completely populated by assholes.
Any EA server that does not say “FF ON” has friendly fire turned off. I have had really good luck playing on those servers–they seem to be frequented by good players that work together, for the most part. I dislike the Backfire servers because backfire annoys me. I’d rather have friendly fire turned on than not, because it makes the game more interesting (and more challenging–you can’t just open fire at random). But on public servers I prefer to play without it.
Way to go. I hate TKers with a passion, but I never thought of dropping the game and going after them. I get into this 'must capture flags…must capture flags… ’ vibe and can’t get out of it.
People are such jerks though. This guy hopped in my tank today, and it just so happened we had every flag (allies), and I was waiting for a flag to go neutral. He starts yelling at me to go go go, about 15 times. I was in a good position, behind some sangbags with a wide field of fire, why do I need to go somewhere? While I’m typing ‘find another ride’ he hops out and starts throwing grenades at me. So I potted him. Nobody fucks with my tank.
I’ve also had guys hop into my tank and drive off with it while I’m fixing it. That they take the gunner’s chair is not so bad, but they drive off leaving me there afterward?
The weirdest is the guys waiting for planes though. How silly. They stand right out there in the open. An enemy plane flies over, they shoot their machine guns at it. Bombs fall, and men die, senselessly. The flak cannon is 100 meters away, but no, they might lose their place in line. Very weird.
I still think many people have no idea how victory is achieved. It was nice last night being on a server and team that understood. I was on the axis and have around 60 or 70 and the allies had around 20 or 30.
Everyone on my team either holed up in the last village and mined the hell out of the entry points, flew a plane to defend just that section not trying to capture other flags, or was on the destroyer with me laying waste to anyone approaching the village from the other side of the bridge.
We just chatted and laughed as the allies just threw themselves time and time again against the defenses. We easily won.
The same team also concentrated attacks together, land, sea and air. When a team works together to soften a village and move in, it is pretty easy to dominate. The next game with our new found teamwork, we crushed allies with over 150 tickets left at the end.
Similar to tribes, teamwork can always defeat a solo star player.
I think my problem is that I’m on the East Coast. I got the impression somehow that the people playing on butter were West Coast or Great Middle Section people.
Funny, I’m on the west coast and I always assumed the problem was the east coast folks with their (timeshifted) early bedtimes.
I was lucky enough to be on when a group of planetcrap guys dropped in for a skirmish. I spent most of the battle trying to repair the carrier and defend it using the carrier AA guns, which in retrospect was probably a waste of time.
I have also found Butter at 0/16 every time I checked, but the EA servers work out okay. I don’t mind playing with Backfire, even though sometimes it’s a pain…I like it better than FF OFF, because I find with FF OFF enemies tend to spam buildings (especially the med buildings) with the rocket launcher and grenades all the time. It also makes tanks, planes and engineers more powerful (esp engineers), and if there’s anybody who doesn’t need love, it’s those three.
I totally agree w/ Chet about teamwork, though. Get on a good team–ESPECIALLY as the Axis–and you can rule. Combined arms and concentrated forces are devastating. There is nothing I like better than being in a three-vehicle armored column heading for a spawn point. And, as several people have observed, knowing the ticket rules can also make a huge diff (I had another one of those frustrating experiences last night–Allies, we had no spawns, five guys left/ten dead. One was flying a plane around like an imbecile, and the other was walking around on the destroyer. I was like “GO CAPTURE A FUCKING SPAWN YOU GODDAMN IDIOTS!”)
I love this game, but it is so NOT for the solo artist. I don’t think I’ll enjoy this game half as much as I can unless I join a clan. I have high hopes that Qt3 will represent. There is such a difference in playing a game in which no one talks, everyone runs around mindlessly, versus a game where there is just a rudimentary “defend the airfield”, “need repairs”, “they’re attacking the village!!” form of communication. That makes it so much more fun. I’ve seen more Allies doing this on their own than the axis. I think it is just easier to defend as a group (everybody to this side! now that side!), then it is to get 15 wildly flailing attackers to listen to each other.
I just want to play on a team that designates a few roles (these guys are ships, those guys are planes, most of us are grunts working together with a good mix of classes and a sense that attacking with and caring for tanks is important. Walking the destroyer’s artillery into spawns would just be bonus at that point.
I’ll be gone for a week’s vacation (not Prague), and by the time I come back the game will just about be out, and hopefully there will be seeds of a Qt3 army.
I completely agree. The trouble makers tend to head directly for the FF servers. Not to say there aren’t new creative ways of being a griefer on the non-FF servers. There is always the drive the carrier/destroyer off the map trick people are so fond of. Then there were these one set of morons who decided it would be fun to have an air show rather than bomb anything for us. All in all though non-FF is far less annoying on public servers.
