Improving situational awareness

**jb4** · 09-21-2007, 01:31 PM

In an effort to get better at this crazy game I started taking time to watch battlerecorder files of games I played either as a player of SL. I saw this game in a whole new light. It was painfully true to see myself as a player running directly into an enemy trap or running toward a flag to have 4-5 enemy on my heels that I never saw or even trying to revive someone with a dead body camper nearby. Very enlightening to see it in third person without the adrenaline of playing the game. Another great learning for me was to follow some of the top players around to see how they moved or behaved in various situations. One takeaway was that they adjusted their speed of play for the sitation and I was going full-on all the time which led me to undesirable results. I know this is nothing new, but I wanted to throw it out there for anyone who cared to share their opinion. How have you improved your situational awareness over time?

Lucky Shot · 09-21-2007, 01:48 PM

Definitely, I played a decent game with BF2 but when I first started playing POE I was less then average. I had to do what you just did and sit back and figure out what those who were surviving longer then me were doing. You can pick up tons of tips on not only what to do to improve your gameplay, but also what you can expect from your enemies. By knowing their tendencies you can plan around them. For example, I knew on Spies what direction another well known POE member likes to attack a flag from. I knew he would be attacking as we had just flanked around his squad and I knew the tendency because that's the pattern that he's always shown. So we were in position for the attack and we won out in a battle that could have swung one way or the other. Awareness of that one tendency was enough to allow us to keep that flag.

So yea, I agree with you that by watching others and watching BFR you can become a MUCH better player. Copy those who roll over you and when someone stops you, then use that scheme on defense. I should add that to my Secret Tactics Database sometime.

Lucky Shot

**ProjectNA** · 09-21-2007, 02:42 PM

Same here. BR files have been incredibly helpful to me too, as I was stuck in run and gun BF2 mode, which only gets you so far with the elite players here at TG. I followed some of those elites around using BR, just to answer the "how the h*** did that guy (or gal) do that???". The important thing for me was learning to predict where someone will be, not where they are, and to slow down. Even just learning to pause once in a while and let things transpire takes a little time, but once you slow down a little, its a big impact. Being SL helped me just as much, as you learn its more important to stay alive : )

What was also very helpful is looking at BR files after a night when there were really good squads (IHS or not), to watch their tactics, etc.

Rick_Slick · 09-21-2007, 06:13 PM

I watch BattleRecorder to review all of my kit selections and spawn-in locations, as 95% of my game is spent staring at the spawn screen. I frequently find myself saying "Okay, had I chosen THAT kit instead, I would have lasted 14 seconds instead of 12 seconds..."

Here are some other helpful situational awareness tips I swear by:

1) When I am defending a flag and it turns gray on me, in retrospect I should probably have turned around at some point to look behind me.

2) Always make sure to check what team that tank is on before I try running at it with my wrench out to helpfully perform a repair.

3) I can only stand next to a tree and fire my gun for so long without moving before someone knives me.

4) If I note the direction someone runs in after they teabag me, I can get a heads up on where to spawn in at in order to receive another teabagging ASAP.

5) If I run past a claymore quick enough, I will still die.

6) When someone on my team spots enemies and all the red indicators appear on my mini-map, it is probably not a good idea to turn my mini-map off "because all those flashing dots are too distracting."

7) If I'm following my teammate around the corner and I see him die instantly, it's probably not the best idea to continue blindly around that corner, because chances are whoever killed him didn't use the entire magazine to do so and, unlike myself -- who forgot to reload since my last firefight 3 minutes ago -- will most likely have some ammunition left in his weapon to kill me as well.

8) If I'm going to impress everyone in the Blackhawk with a barrel roll, I better make damn well sure I can actually do one without crashing into the ground.

9) If corporate moves into my line of fire while I'm busy missing the enemy, the impending TK is his burden to carry, not my own.

10) The oldest trick in the book is for someone to run up to my tank and scare me into thinking they're going to blow it with C4, causing me to jump out and then they get my tank -- I only fall for this 16 or 17 times before I get wise to it.

11) If I'm going to throw my smoke grenade, I better damn well make sure I complete my maneuver through the smoke before it runs out and I'm left there standing out in the open like an idiot.

12) When encountering an enemy squad passing nearby, it would probably be far more effective to pick them off one by one from behind after they pass, rather than to stand up and start firing wildly at the first guy, in plain sight of the other 5 behind him that can quickly converge their gunfire onto my location.

13) If someone runs up to me with their shock paddles out, and I'm still alive... they're probably not trying to revive me, nor are they on my team.

14) First aid kits do not function anything like anti-vehicle mines, no matter how hard you wish.

15) While rapidly deploying C4, I must always remember POE2 has only FOUR C4 packs, not FIVE like in Vanilla BF2.

16) If I am commander, it's not a very good tactical maneuver to pop smoke on my defenders when I see the enemy rushing the flag -- it just tends to piss them off.

17) When approaching a sniper to knife him, there are certain angles of approach that just don't work -- namely his forward 180-degree firing arc.

18) No matter how hard I try, I can not jump a tank over that hole in the bridge that's been taken out by C4.

19) I can assure you the rest of the squad does not find it funny when I'm leading the squad as a sniper and I plant my claymores nearby to prevent anyone from getting near me, because that also has an unfortunate side effect for my newly-spawning squadmates.

20) Remember... killing someone who's AFK, or busy responding to some trash talk I just typed in chat, is still a legit kill -- I'll take what I can get.

**[tR]Greasy_mullet** · 09-21-2007, 06:52 PM

18) No matter how hard I try, I can not jump a tank over that hole in the bridge that's been taken out by C4.

Please try harder... and um send me the BFR files for it so I can um... make sure its working properly...

**draeh** · 09-21-2007, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick_Slick

Here are some other helpful situational awareness tips I swear by:

+rep!

I haven't laughed this hard in quite a while.

**ProjectNA** · 09-21-2007, 09:44 PM

Is someone collecting all these Rickisms somewhere? LMAO. Classic (again).

**jb4** · 09-22-2007, 12:45 AM

Rick, you have clearly missed your calling as a comedy writer. I will buy into your thought that the best type of situational awareness may be to look on the lighter side and the rest will take care of itself. Extra LOL for you. I always appreciate the humor in your posts.

SharinganTH1422 · 09-22-2007, 07:16 AM

Wow "Rick", you definitely have a talent for comedy, if you're as good on the battlefield, as you are with comedy, I'll defin. be looking out for you, i can just imagine number 11 in my head, tooo funny.

BaneII · 09-22-2007, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jb4

In an effort to get better at this crazy game I started taking time to watch battlerecorder files of games I played either as a player of SL. I saw this game in a whole new light. It was painfully true to see myself as a player running directly into an enemy trap or running toward a flag to have 4-5 enemy on my heels that I never saw or even trying to revive someone with a dead body camper nearby. Very enlightening to see it in third person without the adrenaline of playing the game. Another great learning for me was to follow some of the top players around to see how they moved or behaved in various situations. One takeaway was that they adjusted their speed of play for the sitation and I was going full-on all the time which led me to undesirable results. I know this is nothing new, but I wanted to throw it out there for anyone who cared to share their opinion. How have you improved your situational awareness over time?

I wish more people would take the time for such introspection. The Battlerecorder is a gold mine of information for the player. I'm constantly amazed at how many times people have ignored enemies, sometimes not even two feet away from them. If you haven't been taking advantage of it's availability, then you are missing out.

gator skywalker · 09-23-2007, 12:27 PM

I would like to use BR more, but you see, I am a teacher in real life and I have to plan for the future of our nation. I know most kids would understand the "I die alot on BF2 and rather than spend time on you, I spent time on a game" line, but unfortunately neither their parents nor my principal would not. So if anyone has any ideas as to how I could record BF2 to an AVI file so it is easy to watch, then maybe I could die less and thus get mad less. Though I still cannot figure out how a guy on the other team was able to tk or punish a guy on my team for a kill or the guy who could see through walls.

Braidedheadman · 09-23-2007, 01:57 PM

You can capture video in most (if not all) games using "Fraps". Be warned though, it saves video files as raw data so it makes for HUGE files on your hard drive if you let it run for any length of time. It most suitable as a clip-making aid rather than for recording whole videos of entire (up to 45 minute long) matches.

The shooting through walls bit? Harder to say. It could be hacks on the one hand, but on the other it might not be. The thing to remember is that if you're backed right up against a wall, especially thinner walls like fences and stuff, parts of your body will poke through because BF2's engine was not sophisticated enough to prevent clipping issues such as these. You can then be shot, or even knifed at times when you think you are perfectly safe. Also, with the thinner fences, especially with those corrugated tin fences, most bullets in BF2 do have a certain amount of material penetration and you can score hits through them if you hose then down with bullets in the general area where you think people might be.

**khaerus** · 09-23-2007, 03:49 PM

My favorite "wall-kill" recently was on Odessa... Some guy was running on the sunny side of the corrugated tin fence outside of the junkyard, and the shadows from his feet were visible under the fence. An empty mag and a lot of tin-holes later, a guy was crying.

I'm always telling guys in my squad not to go prone near walls, and to try to stay a few feet off the wall in any event, to prevent those kind of things. For a long time, I actually wouldn't shoot somebody who's leg was poking through a wall or something. I'm not that nice any more.

**corporate** · 09-23-2007, 07:30 PM

LMAO Rick

Regarding #9, I USUALLY don't punish. But your situational awareness should include knowing where I am and where I'm going.

gator skywalker · 09-23-2007, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Braidedheadman

The shooting through walls bit? Harder to say. It could be hacks on the one hand, but on the other it might not be.

I know it was not hacking because the guy was saying something like, "Hey everyone, something weird is going on...I can see through the walls."

Anything FREE which FRAPS is not.

Thanks.

09-21-2007, 01:31 PM	#1 (permalink)
jb4 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: AZ-In the cool A/C Age: 44 Posts: 1,140	Improving situational awareness In an effort to get better at this crazy game I started taking time to watch battlerecorder files of games I played either as a player of SL. I saw this game in a whole new light. It was painfully true to see myself as a player running directly into an enemy trap or running toward a flag to have 4-5 enemy on my heels that I never saw or even trying to revive someone with a dead body camper nearby. Very enlightening to see it in third person without the adrenaline of playing the game. Another great learning for me was to follow some of the top players around to see how they moved or behaved in various situations. One takeaway was that they adjusted their speed of play for the sitation and I was going full-on all the time which led me to undesirable results. I know this is nothing new, but I wanted to throw it out there for anyone who cared to share their opinion. How have you improved your situational awareness over time?

09-21-2007, 01:48 PM	#2 (permalink)
Lucky Shot Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 4,636	Re: Improving situational awareness Definitely, I played a decent game with BF2 but when I first started playing POE I was less then average. I had to do what you just did and sit back and figure out what those who were surviving longer then me were doing. You can pick up tons of tips on not only what to do to improve your gameplay, but also what you can expect from your enemies. By knowing their tendencies you can plan around them. For example, I knew on Spies what direction another well known POE member likes to attack a flag from. I knew he would be attacking as we had just flanked around his squad and I knew the tendency because that's the pattern that he's always shown. So we were in position for the attack and we won out in a battle that could have swung one way or the other. Awareness of that one tendency was enough to allow us to keep that flag. So yea, I agree with you that by watching others and watching BFR you can become a MUCH better player. Copy those who roll over you and when someone stops you, then use that scheme on defense. I should add that to my Secret Tactics Database sometime. Lucky Shot

09-21-2007, 02:42 PM	#3 (permalink)
ProjectNA Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Hotlanta Age: 39 Posts: 809	Re: Improving situational awareness Same here. BR files have been incredibly helpful to me too, as I was stuck in run and gun BF2 mode, which only gets you so far with the elite players here at TG. I followed some of those elites around using BR, just to answer the "how the h*** did that guy (or gal) do that???". The important thing for me was learning to predict where someone will be, not where they are, and to slow down. Even just learning to pause once in a while and let things transpire takes a little time, but once you slow down a little, its a big impact. Being SL helped me just as much, as you learn its more important to stay alive : ) What was also very helpful is looking at BR files after a night when there were really good squads (IHS or not), to watch their tactics, etc. __________________

09-21-2007, 06:13 PM	#4 (permalink)
Rick_Slick Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Indianapolis, IN Age: 31 Posts: 184	Re: Improving situational awareness I watch BattleRecorder to review all of my kit selections and spawn-in locations, as 95% of my game is spent staring at the spawn screen. I frequently find myself saying "Okay, had I chosen THAT kit instead, I would have lasted 14 seconds instead of 12 seconds..." Here are some other helpful situational awareness tips I swear by: 1) When I am defending a flag and it turns gray on me, in retrospect I should probably have turned around at some point to look behind me. 2) Always make sure to check what team that tank is on before I try running at it with my wrench out to helpfully perform a repair. 3) I can only stand next to a tree and fire my gun for so long without moving before someone knives me. 4) If I note the direction someone runs in after they teabag me, I can get a heads up on where to spawn in at in order to receive another teabagging ASAP. 5) If I run past a claymore quick enough, I will still die. 6) When someone on my team spots enemies and all the red indicators appear on my mini-map, it is probably not a good idea to turn my mini-map off "because all those flashing dots are too distracting." 7) If I'm following my teammate around the corner and I see him die instantly, it's probably not the best idea to continue blindly around that corner, because chances are whoever killed him didn't use the entire magazine to do so and, unlike myself -- who forgot to reload since my last firefight 3 minutes ago -- will most likely have some ammunition left in his weapon to kill me as well. 8) If I'm going to impress everyone in the Blackhawk with a barrel roll, I better make damn well sure I can actually do one without crashing into the ground. 9) If corporate moves into my line of fire while I'm busy missing the enemy, the impending TK is his burden to carry, not my own. 10) The oldest trick in the book is for someone to run up to my tank and scare me into thinking they're going to blow it with C4, causing me to jump out and then they get my tank -- I only fall for this 16 or 17 times before I get wise to it. 11) If I'm going to throw my smoke grenade, I better damn well make sure I complete my maneuver through the smoke before it runs out and I'm left there standing out in the open like an idiot. 12) When encountering an enemy squad passing nearby, it would probably be far more effective to pick them off one by one from behind after they pass, rather than to stand up and start firing wildly at the first guy, in plain sight of the other 5 behind him that can quickly converge their gunfire onto my location. 13) If someone runs up to me with their shock paddles out, and I'm still alive... they're probably not trying to revive me, nor are they on my team. 14) First aid kits do not function anything like anti-vehicle mines, no matter how hard you wish. 15) While rapidly deploying C4, I must always remember POE2 has only FOUR C4 packs, not FIVE like in Vanilla BF2. 16) If I am commander, it's not a very good tactical maneuver to pop smoke on my defenders when I see the enemy rushing the flag -- it just tends to piss them off. 17) When approaching a sniper to knife him, there are certain angles of approach that just don't work -- namely his forward 180-degree firing arc. 18) No matter how hard I try, I can not jump a tank over that hole in the bridge that's been taken out by C4. 19) I can assure you the rest of the squad does not find it funny when I'm leading the squad as a sniper and I plant my claymores nearby to prevent anyone from getting near me, because that also has an unfortunate side effect for my newly-spawning squadmates. 20) Remember... killing someone who's AFK, or busy responding to some trash talk I just typed in chat, is still a legit kill -- I'll take what I can get.

09-21-2007, 06:52 PM	#5 (permalink)
[tR]Greasy_mullet Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Tennessee Age: 29 Posts: 619	Re: Improving situational awareness 18) No matter how hard I try, I can not jump a tank over that hole in the bridge that's been taken out by C4. Please try harder... and um send me the BFR files for it so I can um... make sure its working properly...

09-21-2007, 09:44 PM	#7 (permalink)
ProjectNA Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Hotlanta Age: 39 Posts: 809	Re: Improving situational awareness Is someone collecting all these Rickisms somewhere? LMAO. Classic (again). __________________

09-22-2007, 12:45 AM	#8 (permalink)
jb4 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: AZ-In the cool A/C Age: 44 Posts: 1,140	Re: Improving situational awareness Rick, you have clearly missed your calling as a comedy writer. I will buy into your thought that the best type of situational awareness may be to look on the lighter side and the rest will take care of itself. Extra LOL for you. I always appreciate the humor in your posts.

09-22-2007, 07:16 AM	#9 (permalink)
SharinganTH1422 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: East London, England, UK Age: 19 Posts: 1,364	Re: Improving situational awareness Wow "Rick", you definitely have a talent for comedy, if you're as good on the battlefield, as you are with comedy, I'll defin. be looking out for you, i can just imagine number 11 in my head, tooo funny. __________________ Anger is a gift - Malcolm X ...If you can dream--and not make dreams your master, If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same...

09-23-2007, 12:27 PM	#11 (permalink)
gator skywalker Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 164	Re: Improving situational awareness I would like to use BR more, but you see, I am a teacher in real life and I have to plan for the future of our nation. I know most kids would understand the "I die alot on BF2 and rather than spend time on you, I spent time on a game" line, but unfortunately neither their parents nor my principal would not. So if anyone has any ideas as to how I could record BF2 to an AVI file so it is easy to watch, then maybe I could die less and thus get mad less. Though I still cannot figure out how a guy on the other team was able to tk or punish a guy on my team for a kill or the guy who could see through walls.

09-23-2007, 01:57 PM	#12 (permalink)
Braidedheadman Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 933	Re: Improving situational awareness You can capture video in most (if not all) games using "Fraps". Be warned though, it saves video files as raw data so it makes for HUGE files on your hard drive if you let it run for any length of time. It most suitable as a clip-making aid rather than for recording whole videos of entire (up to 45 minute long) matches. The shooting through walls bit? Harder to say. It could be hacks on the one hand, but on the other it might not be. The thing to remember is that if you're backed right up against a wall, especially thinner walls like fences and stuff, parts of your body will poke through because BF2's engine was not sophisticated enough to prevent clipping issues such as these. You can then be shot, or even knifed at times when you think you are perfectly safe. Also, with the thinner fences, especially with those corrugated tin fences, most bullets in BF2 do have a certain amount of material penetration and you can score hits through them if you hose then down with bullets in the general area where you think people might be. __________________

09-23-2007, 03:49 PM	#13 (permalink)
khaerus Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: NYC Posts: 1,228	Re: Improving situational awareness My favorite "wall-kill" recently was on Odessa... Some guy was running on the sunny side of the corrugated tin fence outside of the junkyard, and the shadows from his feet were visible under the fence. An empty mag and a lot of tin-holes later, a guy was crying. I'm always telling guys in my squad not to go prone near walls, and to try to stay a few feet off the wall in any event, to prevent those kind of things. For a long time, I actually wouldn't shoot somebody who's leg was poking through a wall or something. I'm not that nice any more. __________________ TG Primer--TG FAQs--BF2 Rules/SOPs--TeamSpeak--Admin!

09-23-2007, 07:30 PM	#14 (permalink)
corporate Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Knoxville, TN Age: 37 Posts: 395	Re: Improving situational awareness LMAO Rick Regarding #9, I USUALLY don't punish. But your situational awareness should include knowing where I am and where I'm going.

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