“Everyone, please select your roles first. We must have a medic, an engineer, and a machine gunner. The rest of you can choose scout, or another medic or machine gunner. Feel free to pick whatever you want; it basically doesn’t affect combat ability.”
As an experienced player who had already participated in the internal test, Chen Sha assigned roles to his teammates.
In Bullet Hole 2, roles were both important and unimportant. They didn’t affect combat power, but rather enhanced the ability to interact with map mechanics. Each role could demonstrate its advantages in specific environments, so the selection depended on tactical arrangements.
If a squad was determined to capture and clear enemy strongpoints from the start, they would definitely focus on engineers and machine gunners, and might even use two machine gunners to enhance suppressive fire. If a squad didn’t want to attack fortified positions and preferred to ambush isolated teams in the wilderness, then scouts who could expand the portable radar detection range would be essential.
Of course, even if a squad’s role composition wasn’t perfectly balanced, it didn’t matter much. When the actual fighting began, tactics and shooting skills were what counted.
“I’ve officially queued up. Listen to my commands when we start. This game is much more interesting with proper tactics!”
“Friends in the livestream can learn a lot too. Once you understand the game mechanics, your gaming experience will be greatly enhanced!”
Soon, Chen Sha was matched into a classic mode game.
The three modes had different player counts, with classic mode having the most—200 players. Perhaps because the game had just launched, matchmaking wasn’t very fast, taking over five minutes to enter the game.
But Chen Sha was already satisfied, because he had previously only played in test environments. Although Heavenly Fire Studio had recruited a hundred players for testing, they weren’t always fully staffed. Plus, he had previously encountered familiar faces, but now he was meeting random players, which would definitely create a different gaming experience!
As Chen Sha led his teammates into intense battles in the game, viewers in the livestream were interacting through comments while examining this game from a new player’s perspective.
The first impression was that the game mechanics were innovative—never seen before!
At the beginning of the game, two transport aircraft routes were randomly generated on the large map. Players were evenly distributed between these two aircraft and could choose when to parachute.
Of course, due to Bullet Hole 2’s sci-fi background, parachuting wasn’t traditional. After jumping from the transport, players in battle suits could descend rapidly and change their flight direction using jetpacks on their backs, quickly reaching their desired ground location.
By default, squad members flew together with their leader, but could detach at any time.
Even before landing, Chen Sha had already started marking various points on the map, including where each team member should fly to, where supplies could be found, and which areas nearby enemies might land in—all clearly marked.
This way, squad members could quickly scavenge their assigned target areas after landing and prepare for battle as soon as possible.
The process of scavenging was full of surprises.
All resources were marked with different colors, perfectly embodying the concept of “starting with just a pistol, with all equipment needing to be picked up.” This joy of rapid scavenging was something many FPS games lacked.
The significance of the scavenging phase was that it gave players more strategic choices and gaming pleasure. In other FPS games, players only had the option to shoot, which was relatively monotonous. But with the scavenging phase, players had to weigh: when to scavenge and when to fight?
By scavenging resources and being well-prepared, even players with slightly inferior skills could defeat more skilled opponents. This was somewhat like the development phase in MOBA games—players could compensate for operational weaknesses through tactical choices, the so-called “game intelligence.”
When players won through game mechanics, they also gained a unique sense of satisfaction.
Moreover, the scavenging process was full of randomness, and randomness always had an irresistible attraction for players. The joy of finding good equipment could be experienced several times in each match, which undoubtedly made the game’s thrilling moments more frequent.
After simple scavenging came intense combat.
Chen Sha’s squad had chosen a strategic strongpoint that was very eye-catching—clearly a must-have location—so competition was fierce.
Several squads were forced to engage in chaotic combat with whatever weapons they could scavenge. If you were lucky enough to find an assault rifle or shotgun upon landing, you could chase others around, but you might also be ambushed by enemies lurking around corners with small pistols—absolutely thrilling and exciting!
Chen Sha also briefly commented on the gun feel: quite realistic, and although the weapons had a strong sci-fi appearance, they somehow remained logical.
Many weapons could be traced back to real-world prototypes, meaning that even though a randomly picked-up gun might look sci-fi and cool, you could basically determine its correct usage just from its appearance.
As for the difficulty of using these guns, it was somewhere between Counter-Terrorism Plan and Sea Fortress. Not as easy to control recoil or get headshots as in Sea Fortress, leaving significant room for technical improvement, yet slightly easier than Counter-Terrorism Plan. Considering the rich map mechanics and diverse resources, even novices with poorer shooting skills could thoroughly enjoy the game.
In the game, downed teammates could be revived, and even eliminated teammates could be respawned by taking their core to designated points. Unless the entire team was wiped out, there was always hope.
Soon, Chen Sha cleared all enemies from the strongpoint with his superior shooting skills, brought his two fully-armed teammates to revive their dead comrade, scavenged some resources from the nearby wilderness, and finally returned to firmly occupy the strongpoint.
During this time, a team of players tried to sneak in using optical camouflage but was detected by the strongpoint’s radar. A fierce battle ensued, with Chen Sha’s team killing three enemies while the remaining one fled in panic.
Fifteen minutes passed quickly, with Chen Sha’s squad scavenging, engaging in street fighting, rescuing teammates, scavenging again, and defending—the fifteen minutes were packed with non-stop action.
What was key was that throughout these fifteen minutes, there were very clear objectives. It wasn’t just monotonous shooting; both the players’ hands and minds remained active.
Next, the game entered its second phase.
The remaining 100 players were divided into two factions for a 50vs50 small-scale campaign. Full squads maintained their current configuration, while incomplete squads were merged and filled according to the system’s matching rules, ultimately balancing the power ratings of the two factions.
Chen Sha was fortunate to be selected as his side’s commander and took the opportunity to explain the game’s specific commander selection mechanism to the players.
The interesting aspect of this selection mechanism was that it was based on the performance of each squad and player in the previous phase.
The system would consider factors such as whether players actively chose the commander position during matchmaking, their win rate when previously serving as commanders, and their squad’s performance in earlier matches. After calculating these factors with certain weights, it would select the best commander candidate.
Moreover, after the first phase of combat, factors such as each squad’s performance, resources, and positions could be used as weights to measure their true strength. This ensured that the power between the two sides would be relatively balanced after distribution—much better than methods that matched players based on their historical performance before entering the game.
Resources gathered and strategic positions captured during the first phase would be retained in the second phase, allowing the benefits of risky behavior in the first phase to continue. Dropping into crowded areas became a high-risk, high-reward action.
Should you drop into crowded areas, risking everything to carve out a bloody path and gain an advantage in the second phase? Or should you drop into less populated areas, gather resources, and survive until the chaotic battles of the second phase? Players could choose different strategies according to their preferences.
When the 50vs50 battle officially began, Chen Sha started commanding various squads to capture strategic positions on the map.
The strategic positions across the large map served different functions. For example: air bases allowed reconnaissance, briefly displaying enemy situations in certain areas on the map, and could also airdrop supplies, providing bullets, armor, and weapons to frontline soldiers; bunkers could suppress nearby areas with firepower—a machine gunner operating a bunker’s machine gun could be an impenetrable defense, making frontal assaults extremely costly; field hospitals provided first aid kits and recovery items to players, also accelerating the revival speed of wounded soldiers.
After the chaotic first phase, these strongpoints were controlled by both sides, basically presenting an interdigitated state. With both sides having similar strength, concentrating superior forces for an attack could generally capture a strongpoint, making the battle situation particularly intense.
Some important strongpoints might change hands repeatedly, with both sides concentrating large forces and continuously sending reinforcements, creating a meat-grinder-like situation.
Other strongpoints, seemingly at the edge of the battlefield, might be suddenly infiltrated and captured by small enemy forces due to lax defenses, causing a dramatic reversal in the battlefield situation.
Moreover, engagements between the two sides didn’t necessarily occur within strongpoints. A truly excellent commander would know how to choose battlefields at uniquely shaped choke points based on strongpoint functions and suppression fire ranges. To break through such a choke point, mindlessly charging was pointless—one had to think strategically, whether concentrating superior forces for multi-directional attacks, sending small units on flanking raids, or avoiding the enemy’s strength by choosing alternative main attack directions, all depending on the specific situation.
The battlefield situation was constantly changing. While leading their squads in battle, all squad leaders needed to report the battlefield situation to the commander in real-time. The commander had to analyze the enemy’s intentions, respond immediately, or even predict in advance to lead their side to victory.