Multiplex
12-05-2006, 02:27 AM
Deathmatching and You
"The Art of killing them before they kill You"
Introduction: Killing is the bread and butter of any first person shooter and Battlefield 2 is no exception. Tactical shooter and combat simulator purists will tell you that it's the strategy and the tactics of the whole team that matters most in BF2. I'm here to tell you that before that before squad or team tactics can be brought to fruition each individual must assert their dominance over their opponents. No matter how you try to avoid it, you will need to kill other players to capture flags, seize choke points, defend against rushes, or to protect your squad leader or even to move around the map effectively. When another player sees you, they are going to try to kill you. Your best defense against being killed is to kill them back!
Enter this guide... I will do my best to share my own views on BF2 deathmatching so that you can improve your game. Think of this like one of those bad coaching videos from your Physical Education classes in high school. I'll even try to include some lame comic relief to move things along. If you manage to make it to the end of this guide then you will have hopefully picked up enough bits of information to have improved your game. Even small improvements make a difference and will make a noticable impact upon on the level enjoyment that you draw from playing BF2.
This guide is not as technical or tangible as my movement guide. It revolves more around generalities and basic theories than specifics, I hope that you keep this in mind while reading it. This guide is intended to point you in the right direction, not to provide mind numbing detail that is unusable with grasping the overall concept regardless.
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Tactics and Theory
To Prone Or Not To Prone: That is the question. There are really two optimal ways to fight duel in BF2 in the prone position or moving around shooting on the run. Both tactics have their positives and negatives whenever you engage an opponent you need to instantly decide whether you want to be prone or stay standing. Note that I don't mention crouching because it's not a position which I ever use. I find that the small boost in accuracy (which is not as great as the accuracy you get from being prone) is not worth the sacrafice in mobility. Since they've added the crouch delay in patch 1.4 the movement has lost it's usefulness to me entirely.
Going prone rewards you with greatly increased accuracy and you present a much smaller target to the opponent. Prone is best utilized for long range shots and any time you are not at close range with an opponent. You can go prone while you are in mid air and you should use this to your advantage whenever you possibly can, combining it with jumps or other movements is a key survival tool and covered in more detail in my movement guide. On the flip side, going prone has several negative side effects as well. While you do gain incredible accuracy in the prone you also sacrafice all of your mobility. You might as well assume that the spot which you go prone is is the spot you will effectively stay in until you stand back up to move. You simply cannot belly crawl in the prone fast enough to avoid fire or even back around corners while being shot at. While you prevent a much smaller target in the prone, that target is largely comprised of your head. That means that whenever an opponent does hit you while you are prone, chances are good it will be right in your face. It's also worth noting that once you go prone there is a prone delay to stand back up, I think it is either 1 or 2 seconds long so plan accordingly!
Making the choice to stay standing in a gun fight is bold and I salute anyone who consciously makes this decision. Too often your average player assumes that they must always spam prone to win a fight but this is simply not true. Let's get the negatives of standing up in a gun fight out of the way first. While standing your accuracy is not so hot, 40% of your rounds are probably going to miss while standing still and 60% are probably going to miss while you're moving around. Also, while you're standing you're making a much bigger target so you need to make up for that with mobility. By staying mobile and shooting you are making your opponent work for their kill. They need to track you left to right while they fire, meaning that if they are using a burst fire weapon or a weapon which requires bursting to stay accurate then they need to also time their shots with their mouse movements. Jumping around while moving also forces them to track their target up and down which most players are not good at doing. When you're standing up in a gun fight you have to actively make your opponent miss, you can't get lazy and just strafe back and forth, try to fool them into missing. When shooting, don't forget that it's going to require more rounds to take out your opponent so ensure that you have an appropriate amount of ammo left in your magazine!
My rule of thumb is simply that if an opponent is already prone and aiming at me then I will try to stay standing and fight him that way. If an opponent already has his iron sights up and is prone then you hitting prone is going to make you an easy kill. He's going to put a round through your face and walk away proud of his quick kill. If your opponent is prone then you should try to go vertical if at all possible, it's hard to track upwards when looking down iron sights. If your opponent is standing... try to get prone before he does and waste him.
Target Selection: Choosing which opponent needs to die first is a important if you want to stay alive on the battlefield. I'm going to be brief here:
a. Shoot people who are looking at you first, this one is obvious.
b. If more than one person is looking at you shoot the one who is prone first.
c. If no one is prone shoot the target closest to you, that target has the ability to out maneuver you and easily win the fight.
d. If all else is equal, here are the kits ranked by importance:
Most Important
1. G36E wielding Medics (AK-101 at close range)
2. PKM or RPK wielding Support guys (that look like they know what they're doing)
3. Pump shotty Engineers at close or medium range (good to shoot even at long range... keep them away!)
4. SVD wielding Snipers at medium or long range ("spam teh autosniper for teh w1n")
5. DAO-12 wielding AT guys at close or medium range (the room broom will mess you up quick, keep at an arms length)
6. Everyone else in the game (all the rest blend together... if you're on your game then they don't matter unless they jump you)
Least Important
You will learn over time to make your own decisions on target priority as you continue to play the game. Your own "most hated" kits will develop over time as you find kits which counter to your own personal playing style. Make sure that once you learn what defeats you the quickly/easiest that you use this information to your advantage!
The Three Defenses: In BF2 there are three defenses which exist to keep you alive, knowing what they are is important so that you can work to improve the two that you actually have some control over:
a. Your opponents skill. Yes, your opponents skill (or lack of skill) is a huge factor in staying alive. If everyone in BF2 was a perfect shot then there would be know point to the game; everyone would die so fast that it wouldn't be fun. Your opponents skill is your buffer, your tolerance for mistakes that allow you to not always make the right decision but sometimes still live on to defeat your opponent. It's the random aspect of the game which makes it really fun.
b. Your Overall Tactical Knowledge. How well you know every nook and cranny of the map determines how successful you will be. You have to know all of the possibilities before you can begin to counter them. To learn maps and gain tactical knowledge, try breaking them down in to sections and then learning them one at a time. For example, think about the Mosque on Mashtuur; there are many ways to attack it and if you are defending you should learn every one of them. Combine that with knowledge of your opponents and you give yourself an advantage before the first shots are even fired.
c. Your Active Defense. By active defense I mean defenses which you work constantly to maintain in a gunfight. These include bunnyhopping, going prone, standing up, moving around, weaving, circling, strafing, and using obstacles to take away line of sight. Your own active defense is something which must be consciously maintained, it is not a passive skillset or an uncontrollable factor. Think of this as your shining plate mail armor which will keep you safe by keeping the opponents weapons from harming you. You might think this active defense crap sounds silly... well maybe it is, but I think it works well for me.
"The Art of killing them before they kill You"
Introduction: Killing is the bread and butter of any first person shooter and Battlefield 2 is no exception. Tactical shooter and combat simulator purists will tell you that it's the strategy and the tactics of the whole team that matters most in BF2. I'm here to tell you that before that before squad or team tactics can be brought to fruition each individual must assert their dominance over their opponents. No matter how you try to avoid it, you will need to kill other players to capture flags, seize choke points, defend against rushes, or to protect your squad leader or even to move around the map effectively. When another player sees you, they are going to try to kill you. Your best defense against being killed is to kill them back!
Enter this guide... I will do my best to share my own views on BF2 deathmatching so that you can improve your game. Think of this like one of those bad coaching videos from your Physical Education classes in high school. I'll even try to include some lame comic relief to move things along. If you manage to make it to the end of this guide then you will have hopefully picked up enough bits of information to have improved your game. Even small improvements make a difference and will make a noticable impact upon on the level enjoyment that you draw from playing BF2.
This guide is not as technical or tangible as my movement guide. It revolves more around generalities and basic theories than specifics, I hope that you keep this in mind while reading it. This guide is intended to point you in the right direction, not to provide mind numbing detail that is unusable with grasping the overall concept regardless.
--------------------------------------------
Tactics and Theory
To Prone Or Not To Prone: That is the question. There are really two optimal ways to fight duel in BF2 in the prone position or moving around shooting on the run. Both tactics have their positives and negatives whenever you engage an opponent you need to instantly decide whether you want to be prone or stay standing. Note that I don't mention crouching because it's not a position which I ever use. I find that the small boost in accuracy (which is not as great as the accuracy you get from being prone) is not worth the sacrafice in mobility. Since they've added the crouch delay in patch 1.4 the movement has lost it's usefulness to me entirely.
Going prone rewards you with greatly increased accuracy and you present a much smaller target to the opponent. Prone is best utilized for long range shots and any time you are not at close range with an opponent. You can go prone while you are in mid air and you should use this to your advantage whenever you possibly can, combining it with jumps or other movements is a key survival tool and covered in more detail in my movement guide. On the flip side, going prone has several negative side effects as well. While you do gain incredible accuracy in the prone you also sacrafice all of your mobility. You might as well assume that the spot which you go prone is is the spot you will effectively stay in until you stand back up to move. You simply cannot belly crawl in the prone fast enough to avoid fire or even back around corners while being shot at. While you prevent a much smaller target in the prone, that target is largely comprised of your head. That means that whenever an opponent does hit you while you are prone, chances are good it will be right in your face. It's also worth noting that once you go prone there is a prone delay to stand back up, I think it is either 1 or 2 seconds long so plan accordingly!
Making the choice to stay standing in a gun fight is bold and I salute anyone who consciously makes this decision. Too often your average player assumes that they must always spam prone to win a fight but this is simply not true. Let's get the negatives of standing up in a gun fight out of the way first. While standing your accuracy is not so hot, 40% of your rounds are probably going to miss while standing still and 60% are probably going to miss while you're moving around. Also, while you're standing you're making a much bigger target so you need to make up for that with mobility. By staying mobile and shooting you are making your opponent work for their kill. They need to track you left to right while they fire, meaning that if they are using a burst fire weapon or a weapon which requires bursting to stay accurate then they need to also time their shots with their mouse movements. Jumping around while moving also forces them to track their target up and down which most players are not good at doing. When you're standing up in a gun fight you have to actively make your opponent miss, you can't get lazy and just strafe back and forth, try to fool them into missing. When shooting, don't forget that it's going to require more rounds to take out your opponent so ensure that you have an appropriate amount of ammo left in your magazine!
My rule of thumb is simply that if an opponent is already prone and aiming at me then I will try to stay standing and fight him that way. If an opponent already has his iron sights up and is prone then you hitting prone is going to make you an easy kill. He's going to put a round through your face and walk away proud of his quick kill. If your opponent is prone then you should try to go vertical if at all possible, it's hard to track upwards when looking down iron sights. If your opponent is standing... try to get prone before he does and waste him.
Target Selection: Choosing which opponent needs to die first is a important if you want to stay alive on the battlefield. I'm going to be brief here:
a. Shoot people who are looking at you first, this one is obvious.
b. If more than one person is looking at you shoot the one who is prone first.
c. If no one is prone shoot the target closest to you, that target has the ability to out maneuver you and easily win the fight.
d. If all else is equal, here are the kits ranked by importance:
Most Important
1. G36E wielding Medics (AK-101 at close range)
2. PKM or RPK wielding Support guys (that look like they know what they're doing)
3. Pump shotty Engineers at close or medium range (good to shoot even at long range... keep them away!)
4. SVD wielding Snipers at medium or long range ("spam teh autosniper for teh w1n")
5. DAO-12 wielding AT guys at close or medium range (the room broom will mess you up quick, keep at an arms length)
6. Everyone else in the game (all the rest blend together... if you're on your game then they don't matter unless they jump you)
Least Important
You will learn over time to make your own decisions on target priority as you continue to play the game. Your own "most hated" kits will develop over time as you find kits which counter to your own personal playing style. Make sure that once you learn what defeats you the quickly/easiest that you use this information to your advantage!
The Three Defenses: In BF2 there are three defenses which exist to keep you alive, knowing what they are is important so that you can work to improve the two that you actually have some control over:
a. Your opponents skill. Yes, your opponents skill (or lack of skill) is a huge factor in staying alive. If everyone in BF2 was a perfect shot then there would be know point to the game; everyone would die so fast that it wouldn't be fun. Your opponents skill is your buffer, your tolerance for mistakes that allow you to not always make the right decision but sometimes still live on to defeat your opponent. It's the random aspect of the game which makes it really fun.
b. Your Overall Tactical Knowledge. How well you know every nook and cranny of the map determines how successful you will be. You have to know all of the possibilities before you can begin to counter them. To learn maps and gain tactical knowledge, try breaking them down in to sections and then learning them one at a time. For example, think about the Mosque on Mashtuur; there are many ways to attack it and if you are defending you should learn every one of them. Combine that with knowledge of your opponents and you give yourself an advantage before the first shots are even fired.
c. Your Active Defense. By active defense I mean defenses which you work constantly to maintain in a gunfight. These include bunnyhopping, going prone, standing up, moving around, weaving, circling, strafing, and using obstacles to take away line of sight. Your own active defense is something which must be consciously maintained, it is not a passive skillset or an uncontrollable factor. Think of this as your shining plate mail armor which will keep you safe by keeping the opponents weapons from harming you. You might think this active defense crap sounds silly... well maybe it is, but I think it works well for me.