by ibleedv20

www.omnilinkit.com

Do you remember when there was a server admin?

Do you remember when there was a modding community?

Do you remember when there was a mapping community?

And do you remember when all three came together to form a crafted PC gaming community that was more than the sum total of it's parts.

Yeah that was just 6 mos ago wasn't it?

It looks as if  gaming communities that practice the Craft of PC gaming where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole might be a thing of the past.

It seems that there is a real trend now to eliminate the mapping and modding community from any involvement in future games themselves.

Dice ,the creators of the soon to be released BFBC2 has goneout of it's way to court the cast off COD PC gamers left in the dust by IW.There was some promise of map and mod tools by Gorden Van DykeThe associate producer for Dice. and now there is the unequivacle statement by Gorden himself that There will be NO Tools released for this game,

Quote:Mod Tools: There will not be mod tools for BFBC2.  However a majority of the the games logic is controlled by the server and there will be Serverside control options for the dedicated servers.

So no Mod tools for Mapping and Modding to be practiced.More than a little dissapointing for many in the gaming community.

However, it seems that players should be satisfied to have some server side settings to keep them happy.Didnt IW promised the same thing with MW2?

Maybe the server files will be tweakable enough to save the server admins from obsolescence.Uh I don't think so.

Gorden says:Public Server Files: We will not distribute these publicly.  There are many factors for why we have decided this with the biggest factor being security & integrity of our game & Dedicated Servers.

This is doublespeak for lockdown.just as IW locked MW2 down to funell all the players through IWNET for whatever monetary reason they wish in the future.

Van Dyke say in a twitter post

Yes, server rentals are available through our partners and on our dedicated servers. Won't release the server code.

So there will be no acess to the server files.And this can only mean server admins will have to be content to tick off some boxes that change the game state or gametype in some way.

Thats not server admin.Thats gamesetup.And we all have seen what that can mean.Just look at what IW has delivered to us as far as tweakables in private matches.

So the hype and excited promise that is alive in the COD community over the BFBC2 release as some substitute for MW2 debacle is now being shown in contrast to what Dice is actually offering.

No control : No competitive community

No Server files: No server Admin Community

No Mod tools:No Mappers and no Modding community.

All in all this game is not much different from MW2 in that you can play it but not much else.You will have to rest your hopes on Dice releasing a damn fine game with excellent support and a promise.

The horrible peer to peer listen server experience of MW2 will be substituted by server partners where you will pay for but have no control over. Or you can play on EA's own dedicated servers where that experience is a crapshoot also.

Now why would anyone pay for a dedicated server with no control over the config except for private gameplay?

I imagine SOME clans might want that.

And as far as an EA dedicated server goes remember that this game has destructible environments and max 32 players for PC.

Those better be high quality dedis and there had better be plenty of them.

This game is no shoe in as a success on PC by any means.The PC gamer is waking up to the awful reality that MW2 is just an awful PC experience.And after talking to the PC community in a direct fashion Van Dyke has set the bar high enough for BFBC2 that voices will be heard and PC sales lost if BFBC2 is a subpar online experience.