Battlefield Play4Free New Player’s Guide

Battlefield Play4Free New Player’s Guide by Skunkw0rks

Hello fellow soliders,

I decided to write a little guide for all the newcomers who never played Battlefield 2 or Bad Company 2. I won’t go into that much detail about skills or weapons since most of them aren’t available now. But I want to give you an overview to all the gadgets and the overall gametype of P4F. As a BF2/BC2 and BFH veteran, I know a lot about the stuff available in the game. Since there are many questions asked ingame, I hope this little compendium will help BFH players adjust to the modern, fast paced setting. If you’re a BF veteran allready, you won’t find tips you allready know.

Gameplay

Lets start with the actual gametype. Let me quote Ben Cousins from his Dreamhack presentation:
We’ve a new gamemode which is just about capturing and holding points.Your kills don’t count towards the victory anymore, so what this does it demands a strategic way of playing the game. You’ve to corporate in capturing and defendig flags. And those guys who stood on top of a building just sniping people aren’t contributing to the game, so we’re trying to encourage those people to get involved and actually take part in the game.

Or as Tcommand put it:
Tcommand Wrote: the new game mode is easy to explain. The goal of your team is it to be the first of getting 1000 ticket. For every flag ur team hold ur team get one ticket per second/impulse. So if your team hold 3 flags and the opponent team hold only one flag in a duratation of 60 seconds, that means that after this 60 second ur team get 180 tickets and ur opponent team get only 60 tickets … kills havent any influence to the amount of tickets.

So your main goal should be to hold more flags than the enemy to win the round. This could be achieved by flanking your opponents with a jeep and take their backflag. Just standing on a corner shooting at enemies won’t help your team that much. So make sure to use the available vehicles even during a match by spawning back in your base, grab a vehicle and flank your opponent. You don’t need a Jeep, APC or Tank for it, but it makes things much easier.

Class specific features

• AssaultThe Assault is a infantry killing machine and ammo supplier for the team. At the moment it’s pretty bugged to recharge your ammunition, but I hope this will be figured out soon. You should always throw down ammo packs near your teammates, to give them the opportunity to fill up on rockets for that pesky tank camping your spawns, or resupply Recon who ran out of ammo sniping the enemy. It gives you points and makes your comrades happy. Win win for both of you.
• MedicThe name says it all, this guy is capable of recharging the health of teammates, and in a future version will be able to revive fallen soldiers from the battlefield. Atleast i hope that this feature will be available. ^^ So do the same as an Assault, throw down medi packs near friendly players to recharge their health, it gives you points and your team will love you for it.
• EngineerHe’s the anti-tank guy and carries a RPG to get rid of those tanks, APC and jeep who stop your team from advancing. Mke sure to save your rockets for vehicles and don’t use them on infantry. You’ve a SMG and psitol for that. Don’t get in long range fights with Assaults or Recon since you’ll loose most of the time. Better try to flank enemies and attack them from behind. You guns don’t make that much of a noise so you should use this to your advantage.
• ReconThe long range fighter in this game, equipped with a sniper rifle which is superior an great distance. P4F has bullet drop on the sniper rifles so don’t expect the same behaviour for the rifles as in BFHeores. To get a feeling for the deviation hold down the left mouse button after shooting to stay zoomed and watch where you bullets hits. After a while you’ll get used to it.

Gadgets

• Tracer Dart GunThe tracer dart is available to all classes in P4F, and gives you the ability to mark vehicles. This will not only mark them with a rectangular symbol seen all over the map, it will also help Engineers to lock on their RPG Launcher on marked vehicles. This gets rid of the balisitic curve the rockets fly normally, and makes it easier for them to take out those camping tanks. You’ll receive points if a marked vehicle gets destroyed by one of your teammates. So make sure to use it on any occasion possible.
• Combat KnifeThe knife isn’t equipped by default, many players think that it replaces the pistol if added but that’s not true. So make sure to equip it with every soldier you have. It’s pretty useful while flanking the enemy, or if you ran out of ammo. Not much more to say about it other than slice them up!
• Motion SensorsA lot of Recons asking ingame what this bomb is they carrying around. Well it’s not a bomb it’s a motion sensor which reveals enemies in the proximity of the thrown sensor. They’ll show up on the minimap seen by your whole team. You’ll get points if someone gets killed while in range of your “balls”, so make sure to use them.
• Vehicle Repair ToolThis Engineer exclusive gadget gives you the option to repair friendly vehicles, makes sense giving the name of the gadget. It takes a while to repair a tank, APC or jeep, but if you stick around long enough you’ll be rewarded with 20 points for being your teams mechanic. I didn’t tried out to kill people with it till now but I hope it’s possible, similar to Bad Company 2.

General Tips and Bug Workarounds

If you got stuck with an empty weapon, hold the reload button and change to another weapons. It works!

You ranked up and didn’t got your ability points? Close the game, logout of the website, log back in and fire up the client. Go to the trainings tab and click the little icon and the upper right corner. After that it will show you the correct amount of points for your respective level. Now you can spend it on the Frag Grenade ability, success!

Sometimes the game gets pretty wobbly, if that happens switch your weapons and it will go away. I’ve this problem mostly in alleys, or in the building near the square flag for example. It seems to happen while in narrow spaces, but I’m not 100% sure about that.
For people experiencing the 3D model viewing of a soldier when your game starts up;

Click off of your client, wait 3-5 minutes, and you should have the full functional screen with a player selection screen in front of you. Works for me, and I saw a lot of people having the issue.

Allright soldiers, that’s it for the moment. I will update this little guide as soon as new stuff gets introduced. If you’ve something to add feel free to post your ideas and tips right below.

Cya on the battlefield.