An open letter to Bad Company 2 snipers

To whom it may concern,

Battlefield games are not Halo or Modern Warfare. Battlefield Bad Company 2 is an objective based game. There is a Team Deathmatch mode for those of you who enjoy standard shooter fare and/or rubbing your bulbous parts as you compare your kill/death ratio on the leaderboards.

In the Rush gameplay mode the defending team has an infinite number of respawns. The offensive team has a finite number of respawns. Therefore, if you are on the attacking side, sitting on top of your spawn and attempting the Gunny Hathcock mile long sniper kill so you can put it on Youtube and impress everyone else in Chemistry class does little to no benefit for your team.

In addition, your presence so far from the objective negates any advantage your team might have from using you as a spawn point. In essence, you are worthless. But fret not! There is a way forward! The sniper class is actually incredibly useful if deployed correctly. A few tips:

1. Move closer to the objective. You can spawn camp to your heart's delight and the rest of us can use you as an actual benefit. And wonder of wonders you can actually call in mortar strikes and help to win the game!

2. If there are already 2 snipers on your squad, it's probably not the best idea to be the third. The game is built to be won with a balance of different types on squads, and a third or fourth does nothing to help matters. I know it's terrifying to think of playing a class that helps other players and doesn't look as good on the kill to death ratio chart, but grit your teeth and try it. You'll be surprised to find that you actually score higher!

3. If you are defending and a bomb has been planted, even if you have a killer hiding spot it's best to actually attempt to disarm it. Again, it's an objective based game. Even if you get 100 kills and no deaths, you still lose.

If these tips escape your comprehension, I assure you Modern Warfare 2 misses you terribly.

Cheers,

Gabriel Shelnutt

(11)

Omri Petitte

March 11, 2010

I exclusively play the Recon kit in Bad Company 2, but I don't just hang back and uselessly waste the enemy's tickets. You can rack up an impressive amount of points by simply moving up with your teammates, spotting enemy units, and utilizing the motion-sensor ball. Oh, and mortar is your friend.

Alex Martin

Sniping is fun on Battlefield. I try to be useful though, and I wish more snipers would play by these three rules.

For the record I'm not talking about recon players that understand the team aspect--just the silly ones that spend the entire game attempting to rack up kills and completely ignore objectives and their team. I've played with some outstanding recon guys.

It's still fun for them to do that though. I wish DICE had just punished them individually for not helping. Course, that's not really in the spirit of fun.

Nick Giunta

March 24, 2010

What can be annoying is when you're on the defensive, and the attacking team is nothing but snipers. Slows down the game tremendously and becomes a sniping war.

ToureÂ´Â Johnson

March 25, 2010

I think you should send this message to everyone playing Bad Co. 2! The objectives are the key people! If you kill 30 people and only die twice while trying to accomplish the objectives, god bless you! However, it sucks to be on a squad where two people have 3000 points and everyone else has 300.

Daniel Fecteau

@Nick I love it when that happens! It's the perfect time to switch to Medic, run behind enemy lines, and perforate or stab-izise each Silent Scope fanatic. Self-centered Recons never pay attention to who is getting killed on their team nor do they often use the motion sensor/pokeball to tell when someone is creeping up on them. Thanks for the dogtags, scrub!

Jason Shearer

March 27, 2010

Most BC2 snipers are pretty bad. They tend to flock together and stick to the same sniping spots. This makes them easy to counter-snipe. It's like Duck Hunt. My advice is to keep moving (remember that when you kill someone, they'll get an idea of where you are), spot everything that moves, and mortar the objectives constantly. It also helps to confuse your victims as to where you are by looking in a different direction.

Jared Lafferty

December 08, 2010

It's actually funny to hang back a little and watch all the little COD/Halo players try and play conquest and rush. My only complaint about being in a random squad is the LACK of COMMUNICATION! Your XBOX comes with a microphone so USE IT! I've recently stopped pressing a on the loading screen because of the retards that spawn off of me while I'm hiding in a bush 100 m from the objective and run straight out at the enemy giving both of us away. Bad Company has left a bad taste in my mouth with the Battlefield series... Went from 32 v 32 on BF2142 to 12 v 12 on this... its just not as good. Less strategy is involved in this game and the COD people are proving it to the max.

Doug Otto

I love this! Completely on mark with my thoughts on BC2 snipers. You can't just apply this one class to every situation. The beauty is being able to change your class with one click of a button to adhere to your current situation. If you're being closed in on, you should probably get up close and personal with the Assault class to buy your team some breathing room. Don't just sit from the farthest point away on the map picking off one player every two minutes. They respawn within twenty seconds at the most.