excerpt from an interview

[Snail88]

This is from an interview from computerandvideogames.com...

"So Battlefield 2142 gives you license for a whole new bunch of cool weaponry and gadgets to play with - can you fill us in on what we'll get to play with?

Jamil Dawsari: That's the fun stuff. I mean we have 40 unlocks and the way we're pacing them is to be fairly quick early on and then of course it gets longer as you play. So people will be able to explore quite a few of the unlocks and then you'll really have to pick and choose as you move on.

One that deserves special mention? Well, one is a weapon and it's the rifle rocket. In its standard mode it fires just a slight ballistic arc and detonates on contact. But when you zoom, it actually sets the range at whatever you're looking at and it will explode automatically at that range. You can also increment the range with your mouse wheel. In practice, when you're fighting someone behind cover who keeps popping up and ducking down, you bring out the rifle rocket, zoom on the cover over the wall, increment by a metre and fire a quick spread. These explode in airbursts above his position - boom! It's quite a skill-based weapons system - but in standard mode it rewards someone who's just getting used to the game. But in zoom mode, it really rewards the skilled player.

We've also heard a whisper about cloaking devices and mines?

Jamil Dawsari: The active camo? The darling of the recon set and the bane of everyone else. People seem to think it's going to be this complete invisibility shield. It's not. Battlefield has always been about balance and so as part of the unlock for the Recon kit you can get this active camo, which enables you to be invisible and wander around. In the play area you will see this person's shadow and a blurry motion, think Predator if you will. The effect in things like Titan mode is when the assault have laid these clouds of dust which are sitting there and you can't see through the dust and you see this blurry thing moving through the dust at you. It's one of those moments when you think, this is pretty cool!

The motion mines are another favourite, and these are mines that you lay on the ground and what they do is acquire vehicles who are moving at velocity. So there's a moment when they'll acquire you and they'll pop up, so as a driver if you're going carelessly... say it's the M25 at three in the morning, you don't really care how fast you go, then you could be in trouble, because if you're not paying attention, they'll acquire you, home in on you and then they follow you. So if you're quick, in one of the faster vehicles and you can use your boost you can stay ahead of them.

But they will track you eventually. The other idea is you slam on your brakes when you see them and you try to move back slowly and there's a little bit of gameplay. In the end the engineer also has a defuser so he can defuse them and if you have a sniper on your team, who has the heavy sniper unlock, those can shoot and destroy the motion mines. So gameplay- wise we've tried to balance out and foster a bit more teamplay.

With regards to teamplay, something of special note is the networked battlefield. This is something which is really going to reward squad play. In essence, you will see as targets anything that your squad mates see. You'll see these red icons moving and if you put your target reticule over them, you query them and get information based on what unlocks your squad has - you'll see what kit that person has, if they're in a vehicle, they may even stay up longer based on other unlocks in the world. What it gives you is this situational awareness, if you will, and the people who play it are going to have an advantage."

How cool is that rifle rocket?? I like how the secondary function takes skill where you can designate when you want it to blow up. And those homing mines are going to be a personal favorite of mine. Any new info is good news in my book

[BaneII]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com....php?id=143035

[Shiner]

So does this mean all the 40 unlocks including the stealth suit are going to be only available on ranked servers? That doesn't sound good for TG.

[UnDeaD77]

That's going to be the problem, if we do that, surely the server will de-listed and not for the public, so its already going to be a big predictament.

[Exploding_Silver]

Currently in BF2 a SL can easily call for kits to do jobs eg engineer mine the west rd,
hopefully they get the balance right so you can know what your squad can do and call for jobs accordingly, without it being too complex,

eg Santa you've got the super-widget sniper unlock, take out those motion mines.

eg Robo you have the sonic-wrench unlock repair the titan

[Snail88]

lol well there are only 4 kits. But the beauty of it is that you can customize your soldier ON THE FLY. So you need a roller mine instead of that atomis wrench?? bring up the kit screen and swap it out. They said they wanted to cut down on the amount of suicides and that will help a great deal.

Icky stated (and im not quoting, just paraphrasing so feel free to correct me if im wrong) that well just have to wait and see when it comes out how itll work for unranked servers. And that if they will not let us unlock anything unless we want to be delisted, then the powers that be might consider joining the ranks. Who knows, they might already be discussing it in the admin forums. The biggest point though about this is that the defibulator is an unlock...how could you be a medic without it?!

Oh and thanks for the link Bane...i was too lazy last night.

[UnDeaD77]

It's too bad ABR won't be available for this at launch, since its technically a mod for the engine. It's sure looking nice for people running unranked servers now, and wanting to use alt ranking system.

[Shiner]

ok so google doesn't help.. what is ABR?

[loyalguard]

Originally Posted by Shiner

ok so google doesn't help.. what is ABR?

I belive ABR was the "Alernative Battlefield Ranking" system that was developed for those playing on unranked servers (especially mods) so that people could still get points and experience the BF2HQ style ranking system. EA/DICE quashed it with 1.3 I believe.

[UnDeaD77]

http://www.battlefieldranking.net/ - It's a Ranking Engine this team devloped for people who didn't/couldn't afford to run a ranked server, and wanted to control the ranking, its got everything, new rankings, new awards, you can customize anything you want, ie "johndoe" gets all his unlocks, and "joeschmo" doens't get any. Check out the latest Battlefield Podcast, (http://www.bfpodcast.com/index.php?id=38) As they interview one of the dev's about it, and he explains a ton about the system, currently PRMM mod is using it on some of the servers.


@Loyal, yes it was squashed in 1.3, but then they raised hell about it, and Dice/EA wanted to discuss it with them, so in 1.4 it will be working again, remember the issue of people crashing to desktop, because of the host file? That was the issue, they used ABR, and it was EA's alternate ranking system detterent.

[Snail88]

that would be so sweet if we could run that here. We could make any award as hard or easy to get as we want. I think it would boost population tremendously. Actually, i know it would.