This game for 24/7 players only?

You should have seen us around release trying to fight and learn the game in the middle of the rawkeetpods hell. My screen was on fire most of the time.

I like to skip the feeding the grinder part.

It's funny, when I die on a good infantry kill streak to a tank or MAX I feel like "welp screw this, infantry time over". And then I go back to being the jerk who does what was done to me.

Plus I just don't even like TR's infantry weapons.

Any average player can do pretty well for himself simply by following friendly zerg, or more specifically, joining a squad and following orders.

The 24/7 players have skill advantage in 1 on 1, but this game has significant emphasis on player numbers - the ratio of player on each side. So staying with a group neutralizes most skillful gameplay

Basically, you just have to learn the game, from all the examples you gave, they're all just you lacking knowledge (not skill, but knowledge) of the game mechanics, those are learned by both casuals and hardcore all the same.

Don't worry too much about staying alive...

I more than 10 years of experience in FPS games, and have played in LAN tourneys and whatnot. But guess what? I have 2.2 K/D in this game lol

As long as you kill things and have fun, disregard stats and all those things.

Short answer: yes, 'normal' people can play and play successfully. it's not victimising people who don't play 24/7.

I'm a casual player; these days I play on average an hour a week. I'm by no means an expert, but I get kills, I earn certs and I have fun.

PS2 is very different to other shooters in that you're not a hero. You're also not a significant part of your faction's force composition. In a game like (say) BF, you're representing a fairly chunky amount of your team's total fighting force. In PS2 you're just another soldier. You will die, and you will die a lot. Even the good players die a lot.

PS2 is very much a MMO. The best advice I can offer is find a squad with a good squad leader, and follow orders. Yes, it means sometimes you're sitting twiddling your thumbs while you know that there's some badguys just over there... but good trigger discipline and squad cohesion count for a lot in PS2.

Will you die in a squad? Heck yes you will! But there's also a good chance that if you're in a squad, and the squad is a good squad, that you'll be back on your feet in no time thanks to the team's medic.

If you aren't comfy dying a whole lot for awhile while you get your bearings in this game, you're gonna have a bad time. I'm 3+ KDR now even when I'm using awful guns just for the auraxium medals, but I was 0.3 KDR for like...2 months after I first started.

Just join a big outfit and move with them, that puts the odds nicely in your favor

Maybe you really can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Did you see what I did, there? Ya, you saw it.

soo when how do you learn using a vehicle if you never tried it for the first time.

SHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKE

Good lord, whoever thought "OHK splash out to 10m and 6 rounds in the mag!" for the Zephyr was a good idea needs their head examined

Once you understand what kind of weapons the enemies use and watch how other people do it (or just get helpful advice from an allied outfit...) you can learn to get better. Or if you join with a large group of other tanks (safety in numbers, the zerg way!)

Otherwise you usually don't survive long enough to learn anything.

welp then im doing it wrong when i decided to start flying reaver alone, and searching solo air gurus also some guys in my own outfit (u said allied...) to help me out instead of zerging with everyone else lol

Grandpa,

There is some great advice here and I'm not that good myself to be honest, so I can't add much.

What I can say though, and I will no doubt get flamed for this, is practice some of your shooting skills from within the spawn room.

Yes, VR is a great idea for getting to grips with some of the gun characteristics, but you are firing at stationary targets.

You have to pick a suitable base with a suitable fight going on. I tend to choose a base that is over run with enemy. It means you may only get three minutes of target practice, but it is surprising how much you can do in that time. I have also spent over an hour at bases that are swinging back and forth.

I find that when I do a bit of the Spawn Room Warrior thang, it allows me to weigh things up and "work" at my own pace.

As a SRW, you can still be quite helpful to the overall team regardless of what the armchair generals will tell you, as they are screaming "GO CAP THE POINT!!!" through prox chat. You can heal other SRWs that stray outside, or repair MAXes that pop in and out of the spawn room. If the enemy come within sight of the room openings, stick a bit o'lead in 'em. Or even get out your sniper rifle and try a bit of longer range target practice. Every now and then you will spot an enemy sniper, out there on the hills, popping off your team mates. Take him out. It could take him quite a while to get back to his "nest."

Then there will come times when you feel that you can hold your own in close quarters and step outside for a bit... test the water... see who is out there. Kill a few and get killed in the process. Go back to the safety of the spawn room for a bit.

That's just my two pence, anyway, for what it is worth. You may despise the ideas I have presented, in which case, fine, I can understand that, but you may find my approach will at least allow you to ease into the game at your own pace.

cheers

andy

Allied. As in, part of the same faction. So it is pretty much as I was saying. You either need an expert to teach you on how to be better, or you need a safe environment that will allow you to practice and become better yourself (VR doesn't count because it isn't combat experience).

I mean what other way would they be allied? There is no way to "ally" another faction with yours (although that would be cool)

Anyways.

My airgame has increased significantly because I found a guy to teach me how to fly much better and map my controls to better suit my flightstyle. I would never have figured it out on my own because I never got much combat time before I got blown to bits, and on Mattherson there isn't a lot of A2A outfits to fly with. (at least not that I've seen.)

Learning to play the game can be rough when you don't survive long enough to gain any real experience. How do you know what you are doing wrong if you just randomly blow up and have to wait 10 minutes before you can try again?

I consider myself a normal player, I have a GF a job and a play golf so I don't have massive amounts of time to dedicate to gaming any more.

With that in mind I think the answer is yes this game is normal person friendly.

I have no issue keeping a positive KD or understanding where I need to be and when. The trick with this game is the same as any other, spend time understanding the META game and learning to read the map. Once you understand the positional stuff this game is a piece of cake.

Considering that I havent played FPS games at any length since the classic unreal tournamnet over 10 years ago. I am over 30 have kids, 2 jobs and a girlfriend who does not particularly enjoy that I sit too much infront of the computer and I do fine.

The first 50 Battleranks my performance was abysmal but even as a casual player you can learn to succeed, Infact I would be so bold as to say that your improvement curve is steeper than that of a experienced FPS gamer. Since KDR is important to people I will use that as example, when I started out my KDR was somewhere around 0,2-0,3, now, providing I dont have a bad day my KDR avarages somewhere between 2-5.

Even scrubs like me can get successful in this game, but it does take some dedication on your part and a willingness to learn and improve.

Slowly, very slowly, you will die less instantly and take enemies down faster but it's a VERY slow learning curve.

For example snipers (I HATE snipers in every game and usually end up countersniping but sniping is very hard in this game)
At first you die what seems a lot to them.
But slowly, very slowly, you learn to read the battlefield and where snipers are maybe positioned.
For example, you are outside running between bases:

- You keep an eye out for sniper tracers.
- You look were possible sniper positions are and look at the map if there are friendlies there; most notable infantry but also air. (air take out snipers; they have anti cloak radar)
- You notice if there are snipers shooting at you because bullets are wizzing around your head.
- You look at ridges and see if there are a bunch of enemy (probably snipers) up there.
- You know the general direction of the enemy so you take cover on the opposing side.
- You know when a fight is sniper central (happens sometimes) and you redeploy to another fight or just play engineer and stay back repair some stuff like ams and maxes.

This is just an example but it works with a lot of things in this game. There are two things which make the game even harder.

1 there is no decent wiki and this game is (needlessly) complicated.
For example: I just mentioned an ESF airplane can see cloaked enemies and makes them visible on the map.
But at what range? does re-cloaking remove you from the map? Does it also show crouched infiltrators? How long are they visible on the map? etc. You don't know. I also don't know. Information is power and you (and me as well) don't have access to this information.

2 You only have the default weapons. While they are not bad obviously they are more jack of all trades, master of none. You do not have a longer range carbine or LMG. You don't have a smg. You only have frag grenades. Your max is completely standard, so are your vehicles. You get the point. Someone who plays this game for a long time could deck out his class for either longer range or close range. Maybe carry more and different grenades. And have attachments for all his different weapons. You do not have this luxury (me neither after 500 hours) so you are at a disadvantage.

NEVER

STOP

MOVING

It took me roughly 1000 deaths before it started clicking. It takes a while, particularly since like me you're not there 24/7. You've got to get used to a good few things:

- the basic mechanics: CoF, recoil, etc. And your specific guns. Get used to the guns particularities: some are good at hipfiring, some pretty much require ADS, and some require ADS *and* not moving (i'm looking at you NC6). If you use a gun the wrong way, it's not going to end well.

- the many sources of death: regular infantry, flying fairies, SMG ninjas, snipers, tanks, ESFs, libs, mines... Death come from many directions and takes many shapes. Until you have been on the wrong end of these often enough, you're not going to expect them. After a while, you'll *know* that looking up every now and then is a good idea. Of course, as you're learning to look up, you'll die from people on the ground, so it'll be painful.

- the layout of bases. We have 3 continents, but i would advise you to get a favourite one (which is populated enough on your playing time slot) and spend most of your time there. Warp out for variety, but make sure you spend most time on the same one at first. Playing in those same bases often will teach you the layout, the hiding places, the roofs that the LA love, where the sunderers hide, etc. Familiarity with a base makes an awful lot of difference. As the sides rotate between the 3 warp gates, you'll get the opportunity to learn the layout of the bases across the entire map, and it'll help. A lot.


After a while, you will *know* beforehand when you should just not run out of spawn. Redeploy or get some cheap kills, up to you, but when a base is properly camped, it takes a strong coordinated effort to break it from inside. Unless you're in a platoon doing that, you'll just die lonely.

As recommended by various posts, there's a few ways to make things easier:
- join public platoons, and switch platoon until you find one with some leadership (voice orders preferably), waypoints for platoon/squads, smoke, beacons, most players in the same place... It makes all the difference in the world having squad mates. Lone wolfing is fun, but it's a different game.
- play support: medic was boring for me, so i spent most of my early platooning as engie. Medic/engie are perfectly fine combat classes, and provide some important support with reviving, repairing and providing ammo. It means you don't have to hit the very front lines to make yourself useful and learn the ropes. Quick tip: hitting 'B' on engie while deploying a turret switches between turret and ammo pack. You do *not* need to have the ammo pack equipped as engie, ever. So get some AP mines instead, and collect some additional certs for the future. Deploying mines all the time will also teach you where to look for them in time.
- watch Wrel's video on PS2 latency. I can't emphasize this enough. If you don't know what effect latency has on this game (with client-side detection), you'll spend a lot of time wondering why that guy entered through the door you were camping and killed you before you could shoot.

Not really. Considering drop, you'll get used to it