I have a simple question. Having played Battlefield games since the original I just want to know how bad company 2 compares to say 1942 or any of the pc exclusive releases of the franchise. Has the porting to consoles changed or overly simplified the pc experience?

Because I really want to get back into pc battlefied games and heroes is (while free and fun) not deep enough for me.

You just move slower, other than that it's not different than 1942 (as in not simplified, it's obviously improved over 1942 in many ways). Plus u dont get to fly aeroplanes, but u new that already.

The PC BF community sees it as a true BF game. It's an awesome game.

Well thats good to hear.

I would disagree. BF1942 is still the best game in the BF series. The whole leveling schtick they are pulling is absolutely horrible, the maps are much smaller, and overall there's less stuff to do. No naval ships or airplanes. There are helicopters however, but that's about it and they are as unwieldy as the ones from previous games.

It is also dumbed down. The Scout spots for artillery, but the players aren't the ones who supply it, it just falls from the sky sort of. The engineer and anti-tank are combined. So now you have a guy with rocket launchers, guns, repair tools, and mines running around. The medic is given a fucking machine gun which is ridiculously overpowered for a class which can heal itself whenever it wants to. Oh yeah, the assault is also the one that carries the ammo boxes in this one, so you have the class with the most powerful weapons basically have endless ammo to their grenade launcher.

The game also has far less vehicles in sheer number than Battlefield 2. The leveling bullshit is even worse than in Battlefield 2, you literally start with nothing at the early levels, and there are many many weapons to unlock, not just 1, or 2 with the expansion, for each gun type.

All in all, BF1942 is still the best BF, then BF2, then BC2. Basically, reverse chronological order.

Edit: Just a few more things. Shitty netcode, I have a blazing fast connection and even when connected to servers across the street from me, literally, I have never seen less than 130 ping. If I am not connected directly to my modem then I cannot play since the game disconnects you from the servers instantly. Also, there is no proper player auto-balance at all or something to even ensure people don't switch teams when one starts to lose. Maps also do not change their size depending on the amount of players on it. So if you have a map with 5 people, it will be as big as if you had all 32.

No it doesn't, it sees it as an dumbed down console experience. Battlefield 2 was bigger and better than BBC 1 or 2. PC community is waiting for BC3, which will be hopefully PC exclusive. Still it's better PC experience than MW2, that's why BBC2 sold more on PC than MW2.

Bad Company 2 is incredible and you should def pick it up its a ton of fun. Some PC elitists might tell you its dumbed down or the usual stuff they say but its not really. Obviously you're slightly slower and perhaps a bit stiffer but still a great gameplay experience. I highly recommend it.

Basically this is a tl;dr version of what I said. Dumbed down console experience on the PC. Here is why they never released BC1 on the PC, direct link from the developer:

"t's not a shift in focus, but more like somewhere we wanted to explore. I think what happened was, consoles have reached a level where we could introduce people to something we had been giving to PC players for quite a while. It was an exciting opportunity. So we really focused on that. There are more expectations of us, for the PC game. It almost kind of makes you weary, you get nervous, you put these unrealistic expectations on yourself as a developer. You forget that the whole premise is to get something out there that's really fun. We realized that BC2 was going to provide that. We have a lot to live up to on the PC, and I think the original Bad Company's focus was to kind of...reintroduce Battlefield to a new audience on the console. BC2 is like, maybe in retrospect, we could have given BC1 to the PC but we didn't. We didn't feel like it was worth it to go back and try and do that, but we thought, "Well, let's give them BC2." It lived up to expectations, I think, what PC players were expecting. Especially for a new engine."

Or to summarize, PC gamers have far higher standards and console gamers have almost no standards at all. Here is a link to the interview, it's the first question:

http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/battlefield-bad-company-2/1082050p1.html

Why dont u like the leveling? I think it's near perfect. U start out with quite a decent arsenal but it's still worth it and fun to level up to get slightly better gear.

Most shooters have 4 classes. In BC2 they're all attractive because their powerful and all have stuff that is easy to use. Assault gets grenade lanucher, Medic gets M60 and Engineer has Carl Gustav bunker-buster and snipers have mortar strikes. They're all almost equally popular.

Did 1942 even have a spotting system?

Maps aren't smaller in BC2 than in 1942.

No, you start off with shit arsenal. Medics dont have the paddles or healing, engineers dont have repair tools, scouts dont have spotting or motion sensing, assault doesn't have their ammo packs. You have nearly no chance of killing a player that is a higher level outside of getting lucky. Their bullets can do more damage, or they may take less damage, or they can just see you from 200 feet and kill you before you know they are even there. You can;t even play your job correctly. It is a very shitty system.

Most shooters also suck, so having just 4 classes may be a problem with them, not a plus. If you are gona have a game built around startegy and tactics, it needs to be balanced. As it is, it is not at all.

Noticed your edit. If by spotting you mean the little things that fly over people's heads on others' UI when the scout has the spotter, then no it doesn't. It does however have artiullery spotting, except that the players have to aim and use the artillery, not the computer. BC2 does have smaller maps than BF1942. You can make an argument out of Rush maps, but they are just long, but very narrow. In BF1942 I could fly around in a plane for a good while to get from one side to the next in a map. This game doesn't even have planes, probably because of its tiny size.

Then why have levels if you won't get better anyway? I admit it was lil hard at first, I had K/D ratio 0.64 at first, but it was mostly because I was simply rusty with BF tactics, I was too run-and-gun style, and  after 1-2 hours with each class you get almost top gear (and since then I am rufly 1.0 K/D) Its not a big problem. I didnt feel it was too hard to kill otehrs as a noob. Also it's good that it takes a few hours to get the good gear because it prevents people from making new accounts and "smurf". I hate smurfs. I want people to stick to one ID in games.

Okay, maybe by area the maps in 1942 were larger, but speaking of Rush, Rush introduces something awesome into BF - more objective based and focused gameplay with the map divided into 4 separate phases. I loved that system in Enemty Territory: Quake Wars. The Conquest game mode pretty much sucks, it's a lot more dumbed down than Rush.