Point System

Players of Battlefield 1942 will remember its point system, which ranked players on each server according to certain actions that they took during the game. Killing players, converting or capturing flags, and the like would all add to your personal score, allowing you to see where you ranked among the other players in the game. Battlefield 2 adds to and enhances this system. The ultimate goal in a game is still to beat the enemy by converting the most flags for the longest amount of time, but since your personal score is going to contribute to your ranking, you'll want to fight with maximum efficiency, at least on ranked servers, to increase your score and hopefully earn yourself higher ranks.

With that in mind, here are some of the changes and additions to the point system in Battlefield 2. The biggest change is to the points scored for killing and capturing flags, and to the penalties for team-killing, but there've been a lot of minor additions to the point totals as well.

Note 1: Flag assisting and flag capturing points all work together to form a comprehensive reward system. Assume that you and a couple of teammates are heading towards a flag owned by the enemy. The first player into the flag capture zone is considered to be the primary converter, and will earn two points for converting the flag to neutral, then another two points for converting it to your side. The two players that come in afterwards are considered to be assisting the primary flag capper, and will get one point for neutralizing the flag, then another point for converting it to your side. This is intended to reward players who risk their lives to go after flags that are in the hands of the enemy. If all players enter the flag capture zone simultaneously, such as by entering while they're all in a vehicle, then they'll all gain the full capturing points.

Note 2: Kill assists will reward players for dealing a good amount of damage to an enemy, but who aren't quite capable of finishing the job. If you deal more than 50% damage to an enemy, but one of your teammates finishes him off later, then your teammate will get the two points for the kill, but you'll still get a one point kill assist bonus.

Note 3: If a player is attempting to capture one of your flags, and you kill them, then you'll gain the two points for the kill, as well as a one point flag defense bonus. Sometimes it pays to guard the homestead!

Note 4: You earn a driver assist for each kill that a passenger in your vehicle obtains. If you're in a vehicle with a mounted turret that someone else is using, then you'll gain one point for each kill that they pull off.

Note 5: All of the annoying bastards who love to team-kill will hopefully have to find another game to ruin, as DiCE seems pretty serious about penalizing players for going after their teammates. You get a two-point penalty for dealing 50% damage to a teammate, then another four points for actually killing them, so you'll earn an eight-point penalty for killing a perfectly healthy teammate. (This is what it theoretically should be, but in most cases you wind up getting -6; apparently everyone takes a small amount of damage while spawning. You only get the minimum -4 points, however, for killing a teammate instantly, such as with a shotgun blast to the head or by running them over with a vehicle.) These penalties apply to teammates in vehicles, as well, so if you "accidentally" blow up a fully-loaded APC or helicopter, you can expect to take some massive penalties. What's more, server operators can set their servers to automatically kick players when they earn a set number of negative points, so you'll want to check your targets on servers with friendly fire turned on, which we expect will be almost every ranked server out there.