For years the single biggest threat to my personal fun factor in any given FPS game was Bunny Hopping. Fortunately over the years more and more servers have effectively enforced ‘No Bunny Hopping’ rules. I can now spend a handful of hours playing CoD2 across a couple servers and never see one Bunny Hopper.

I should be in gaming bliss right now with CoD2 except there is a new fun sapper taking over the servers - Nade Spam. Nade Spam is throwing grenades with the hope that you kill someone. In other words throwing grenades without a confirmed target. Typically this involves rushing out of spawn and jump-throwing grenades towards areas you guess the enemy is occupying. Lesser forms of Nade Spam are throwing grenades at any point during a round without site or sound knowledge of an enemy. Exceptions would be clearing a room you intend to enter.

UrbanDictionary.com’s definition of Nade Spam claims that victims of Nade Spam are stupid. I completely disagree: victims of Nade Spam are dead because of stupid, unrealistic, smacktard like behavior.

What makes Nade Spam especially frustrating for a Tactical-Realism fan like myself, is that most CoD2 Tactical-Realism servers are encouraging Nade Spam through modification (or lack of) despite rules against that exact behavior on their servers. When combined, cookable nades, stock throwing ranges and accuracy, increased damage and abundance only encourages using nades unrealistically. It is simply too easy to rack up kills by indiscriminately hurling grenades around small CoD2 maps.

Using grenades realistically requires strong discipline among players and is virtually impossible to police. The Tactical-Realism community should be modifying their servers to encourage more realistic use of grenades.

Here are a few modifications that would greatly reduce Nade Spam of all flavors:

1. Cooking grenades down to the last second is not realistic. Hand grenades (nevermind specifically the ones produced in the 1940’s) are not safe once primed due their unreliable timers. With few exceptions, soldiers are not trained to cook grenades - it is not only highly dangerous for the soldier, but for his squad mates as well. Distractions (like being shot) are common on the battlefield and the last thing you want is a lot of grenade cooking going on around you. I have been continually shocked to see how much of the realism community has embraced, and in fact rushed, to implement cookable nades. Read more about how grenades actually work.

Solution 1: remove cookable grenades.

Solution 2: cookable nades should have a random time to detonation.

2. There should not be 64 to 100+ nades available on a full 32 man server. The CoD2 maps are too small for even half that many grenades.

Solution 1: grenade load outs should be limited severely. Ideally there would be an overall grenade limit per team (12 frags for example on a 32 man server) and those grenades would be randomly distributed each round.

Solution 2: The previous suggestion may be difficult too mod into the game. So as an alternative some weapon choices could have 0 grenades. Like ranged (sniper) and heavy weapons (BAR). The current state of grenades on tactical-realism servers is not a reflection of modification in the spirit of tactical-realistic game play. Rather they are like snipers deployed one house away from the battle - unrealistic, but ever present due to the unwillingness of players to give up their toys.

3. The reason a trained soldier would ever participate in the dangerous practice of cooking a grenade, would be to avoid the equally dangerous practice of the enemy soldier throwing that same grenade back. Of course your Sgt. would say the best solution is to throw your grenade from good cover.

Solution: if any aspect of grenade warfare should be modded into the game it should be the ability to pick up and throw a live grenade.

4. Grenades are excellent for clearing the enemy from fortified positions; whether that be a house, trench, bunker or vehicle. |7.DR| Timmay came up with a solution that retains this element, while reducing the effectiveness of Nade Spam.

Solution: increase the radius of damage and make the damage extended shellshock only. These grenades will kill an entrenched enemy that you are aware of - since you will mop them up while they are shocked. However a victim of Nade Spam will most likely never be mopped up by the Nade Spammer (by definition a Nade Spammer nades without knowing there is an enemy there) and will simply have to wait for the shell shock to wear off. This retains the value of grenades used to clear known enemy positions while taking the kill out of Nade Spam. This is an excellent idea - no more throwing grenades into areas players never intend to enter/clear.

The purpose of tactical-realism modification should be to promote tactical-realism game play and not just mimic what is possible in reality. In the case of grenades that means recognizing that assaulting the same tiny villa hundreds of times is not realistic. You would not know that there are two Germans hiding behind a low wall - in fact you can’t even see that low wall because you’re still behind a large burnt out Tiger tank. So why are you throwing grenades at an unseen/unheard ‘target’? Because you’ve played this map a hundred times and you know there is a low wall behind the tank and you know that there is a high probability that one or more of the sixteen enemy soldiers is likely to be behind, passing by or near that low wall (that you can’t see). It doesn’t matter if you’re fifteen seconds into the round or five minutes - it’s still a form of Nade Spam.Maybe I am in the tiny majority, even within the tactical-realism community. When I am playing among one of several tactical-realism servers I just cannot help but consider how much more fun/challenging/tactical/realistic the game play would be if grenades were not so dominate.

Read more about how grenades work and the issues with time-delay detonators: howstuffworks.com