...After 2mins of running you get shot by a bush camper and thats that....JO tends to develop at times the same syndrom as in wolfenstein where everyone wants to be a medic but in this case its that everyone wants to be a sniper.
The biggest problem is the overall confusion and lack of coordination. Most of the time yer just wandering along alone hoping some friendly player will pick you up but...

You can actually play MAG now, most of the time I'd say, but it can be a harsh-ass motherfucking mistress.

The vaunted 256 player modes aren't available to new players - you could be forgiven for thinking that 256 was a kind of default, since the title and these mystic numerals have been made inextricable, but there you have it. The level requirement for entry into such realms is 10, which I haven't yet secured. I estimate that it would take most people perhaps three, three and a half hours to get there, "there" being the game they thought it was to begin with. Trust me, though: you need that time to marinate in the game's mechanics.

You need time to have that one game - as I did last night - where everything comes together, so that you can get a sense of an optimal round's overall shape. With Squad Leaders who give a shit, who offer themselves up in service, broadcasting the tangible benefits of their experience to those nearby. Squads with real plans, solid communication, and blended expertise. The scale is often remarkable, even in the sixty-four player scraps I'm in now, and concessions are being made to it: the gunplay doesn't feel especially immediate, or visceral. Maybe it can't. You have a round like that, though, and it becomes a game you can see yourself playing for awhile.

The games leader roles are level locked as well, and rightly so. I think that might be a good spot for me. I suspect everybody feels like that - feels they've always been "management material" and "boy, if I was running this place." But in my case, it's because I'm marginally less useless as middle management than I am as a frontline combatant. I had to find a role that felt right to me in the space, which required that I reach level 5: as a field medic, with the ability to both heal and resuscitate. I've been in the top three for my squad every round since I put that together, because the experience rewards for doing so - for playing in the way that feels most natural to me - are substantial, and satisfying. I'd still be playing tonight, and not writing my post, if the server hadn't shit the bed.

I'm not such a big fan of sniperfests. Not that I don't enjoy playing sniper (I do), but I prefer to be able to run around and not die constantly. That's actually one of the things I like so much about TF2... you can play sniper and own (or get owned), but if the snipers piss you off a lot, you can go soldier or pyro and fuck those bitches up something fierce. You're not stuck trying to go sniper-on-sniper like most of those other games.