Are there Strategies and Tactics for Operation Metro in Battlefield 3 ?

Are you looking for a strategy for Operation Metro map in Battlefield 3? Lucky for you I am an expert in.. well, not metro but disparaging horrible map/game design choices.

First up lets define what is refered to by metro. Specifically conquest, +200% ticket, 64player spam fests. Not one to be hung up on arguments of skill, but the stratless tube that is metro surely has little.. of anything. Even action is lacking. Rush, TDM, Squad rush and other game modes are not metro when most players discuss metro.

Look guys, you really need to get out more if you are still enjoying metro after all this time. The lack of strategy or tactics (or anything really) required is borderline retarded. With that said, lets get down to business!

Why is Metro so popular

There are a number of reasons – it manages to cram a large number of players into a small area better than most other vanilla maps. With all the other vanilla and Back to Karkand maps you cannot run (without manually admin changing the level) 64 players on conquest small maps*. This meant that out of the box the only three flag map available to 64p admins was metro. You could of course play 64 player TDM, but generally did not end up with the “front” that forms on metro (more on this later).

*These are a lot more fun than metro.

The original theory was that metro players wanted unlocks. I played some operation metro while getting BF3 unlocks and it did speed up the process marginally. However not being OCD this was only required for 2-3 weapons. Maybe for below average players who wanted every unlock under the sun this could have been a reason for the first.. six months? Can’t imagine it taking much longer than that. Spam dem hallways boys.

The next theory was players wanted rank 100, specific dog tags or simply to inflate their stats. With the advent of double XP we see even more reason to push for crazy high SPM.

This is a decent theory, at least it took a while to be debunked. Now metro is full of players at rank 100, who only play metro. Was their taste tainted by playing so much to get there.

I think in truth they like it. This does not bode well for future releases of the game or other developers watching Battlefields progression, but that is the topic for another article.

So metro strategies? Please!

There is no strategy as such for metro (see metro definition above, this does not apply to squad rush or even conquest with reasonable player numbers. However this is not metro.). Teams line up at various choke points* and try to kill each other. Generally no players push, the ones that do will occasionally get past the front and maybe their squad mates will spawn on them. I don’t think this is really a strategy, it is just how they choose to play. There are no flanking options, no brain options when doing this. You can identify the least guarded route, but with 32 players and three avenues of attack you are going to run into a problem of facing off at least 5:1. Probably worse odds.

*Popular ones are Side/front/back stairs, tickets vs outside, US first flag and both team spawns.

There is no strategy, get over it 😀