Battlefield 3?

[Fire Fly]

Breaking: Battlefield 3 Leaked Info

October 9, 2007

A tipster sent us PDF document which looked like an outline of features for Battlefield 3. The three page document is apparently prepared for investors which should get it by December of this year. It details basic features of BF3, and are as listed:

* Release in late 2008
* Powered by “Frostbite DX”
* Set in year modern day (just like BF2, ed.)
* Will ship with 8 maps, each supporting up to 40-players per team
* Two playable factions, NATO and MEC (Middle Eastern Coalition)
* Same “ticket-based” gameplay style as before
* Maps are mostly urban, based in Middle East
* Squads and Commanders are present, introduced are “Battalions”

which consist of three to four squads.
* Five playable classes; Sniper, Assault, Engineer, Medic and Support
* Will feature 48 different vehicles (24 for each faction)
* Will feature 34 different weapons (17 for each faction) and another 22 unlocks (for both factions), in total 56 different weapons.
* Other unlocks include different types of ammunition, body armor, helmets, camouflage and accessories.
* Possible public beta in “Summer 2008″
* Online stats tracking, awards and “real world ranks”
* “Soldier” feature, looks like MMO-styled characters and avatars
* Ranked servers will be available for resellers weeks before the game ships (for testing, apparently, ed.)
* In-game replay and recording feature
* VoIP, friends list, in-game IM-client and “extensive clan support”
* Built-in auto software updater (no more patches!, ed.)
* Widows Vista and OS X (no XP?!, ed.)
* Announcement and teaser trailer in January 2008.

A map is mentioned by name, called “Baghdad Burning”, and appears to be a massive urban map, similar to BF2’s very popular “Strike at Karkand”. The game is powered by “Frotbite DX”, currently the Frostbite engine is used in Battlefiled: Bad Company on PS3 and Xbox 360. The “DX” could refer to DirectX (10?), a PC version of the Frostbite engine.

Please note that none of this is confirmed, we’ve emailed a few people from EA and DICE (Battlefield developers) and will update the article as soon as we know more. Also note that we cannot, for obvious (legal) reasons, release the PDF document. Stay tuned for more info.

Link

Well, any thoughts? I do have to say, there's something about the modern setting which is just more enticing. BF2142 didn't do it for me as much as BF2 did.

[Seggybop]

Why rehash BF2? I'd really like to see a BF game with another new setting, perhaps with NATO vs Warsaw Pact or, or even something earlier like WWI.

Also, only 8 maps, all set in the desert? blah.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

1942 is old enough that it could really benefit from a modern remake. But I've pretty much lost all faith in EA/DICE anyway, as Project Reality and the upcoming Forgotten Hope 2 promise to be infinitely superior to the lowest-common-denominator type crap they've been aiming for lately.

[wautd]

Looks like yet another glorified BF2 mod to me

[Sea Skimmer]

Sounds like console only crap; especially the limit to 40 players. Squads and battalions hun? I guess platoons and companies are too complex an idea.

[Hotfoot]

Sounds like console only crap; especially the limit to 40 players. Squads and battalions hun? I guess platoons and companies are too complex an idea.

GG reading comprehension.

That's 40 players per team. Existing games tend to have a max of 32 per team. This is, accordingly, an improvement.

And what the fucking hell do you need platoons and companies for with 40 men or less as a total army? Moreover, why the fuck are you bitching about better team organization than in the previous two games? Because it's just not real ENOUGH?

Christ, if you're going to bitch, at least bitch about the stuff that detracts from the entire experience, like the fucking flood of unlocks you need to get in order to stay competitive, like in the shitfest that was 2142, or the MMO-izing of what should be a straightforward team-based online shooter which prevents casual players from even having a chance of playing the entire game as it is "meant to be played".

[Exonerate]

So what's new to the gameplay? BF1942 was a hit because you had airplanes, jeeps, tanks, ships, etc all on a single huge map, and were player controllable. It was probably the first (popular) game to integrate it all, which made it interesting. Now cue to 2007, the 4th installment of the BF series, which basically, as far as I can tell, has more or less the same basic gameplay. It seems like EA is milking a dead cow to me.

[loomer]

Deformable terrain features.

[Seggybop]

You mean like BF2 was supposed to have? For some reason I have difficulty believing that will make it into the final game.

[Enigma]

I'd like something like a mission based SP game that BF1 had.

[DavidEC]

I think practically all the new ideas have been sucked out of the franchise for now, and that's indicated by this list and its lack of actual novelties. VOIP? Well wow, I've never seen that before in an online game!

They should concentrate on making as smooth an experience as possible. BF never was about the graphics, for example; people play Gears of War for that. We need better netcode, better optimization, less bugs, less grenade spam, better fucking SERVER BROWSER and so on over amazing novelties, which DICE got, as a previous poster said, with 1942.

[DavidEC]

I'd like something like a mission based SP game that BF1 had.

I disagree. Unlike Half-Life or Bioshock or indeed quite a few , the longevity of BF, like Unreal Tournament, is always in its multiplayer. Spending any time crafting convincing AI and getting in more than a worthless narrative (which even good games, like GoW and Rainbow Six Vegas, suffer from) is likely to detract from the main course, which is, as we've already seen, quite short and limited at 8 desert maps.

[Uraniun235]

I think practically all the new ideas have been sucked out of the franchise for now, and that's indicated by this list and its lack of actual novelties. VOIP? Well wow, I've never seen that before in an online game!

They should concentrate on making as smooth an experience as possible. BF never was about the graphics, for example; people play Gears of War for that. We need better netcode, better optimization, less bugs, less grenade spam, better fucking SERVER BROWSER and so on over amazing novelties, which DICE got, as a previous poster said, with 1942.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty fucking ridiculous that BF2 somehow had a worse server browser than BF1942. How the fuck does that even happen?

[chitoryu12]

You mean like BF2 was supposed to have? For some reason I have difficulty believing that will make it into the final game.

They confirmed that it's the same engine used in Bad Company. I think even EA/Dice will have figured out by now that taking back an extremely obvious promise will actually piss off the players rather than just make them go "Meh. Whatever."

Or that could just be thinking more wishful than Bush not taking billions of dollars for the war effort.

[RazorOutlaw]

I disagree. Unlike Half-Life or Bioshock or indeed quite a few , the longevity of BF, like Unreal Tournament, is always in its multiplayer. Spending any time crafting convincing AI and getting in more than a worthless narrative (which even good games, like GoW and Rainbow Six Vegas, suffer from) is likely to detract from the main course, which is, as we've already seen, quite short and limited at 8 desert maps.

Battlefield 1942 didn't even have a complex single player, it was basically a linked multiplayer session. I would have liked to of seen that again in Battlefield 2, or 2142, because their single player skirmishes were poor. A limit of 16 players on tiny maps was ho-hum, even if the AI did more than aimlessly run around the map.

I think you've got a point in that no time should be spent on a narrative, per se. Save me from your shitty writing and just give me something I can play on my own time.

LATE EDIT:
Also, the 40 player maps are interesting so I can understand why they'd have so few. More time had to go into creating and balancing much larger maps. Didn't Battlefield 2 have just a few maps, like 10 or so? It's been a while since I played the game, but I don't recall them offer much Single Player wise at least. Multiplayer just had a couple variations on the same maps.

[CaptHawkeye]

1942 is old enough that it could really benefit from a modern remake. But I've pretty much lost all faith in EA/DICE anyway, as Project Reality and the upcoming Forgotten Hope 2 promise to be infinitely superior to the lowest-common-denominator type crap they've been aiming for lately.

Seconded. I had actually been hoping for a revisit to WW2 for the Battlefield series in general. I could really care less about Battlefield 3 with what i've heard so far about it. It looks much more like Battlefield 2.5 than 3. Oh lookie, they've got eight whole maps! Which is barely half of what BF2 had. And most of them take place in the same type of urban enviornment anyway. Yayzorz?

In the mean time, I breathlessly check the FH2 forums everyday hoping for the glorious day of release. Which the devs say is soon. In all honesty, I didn't even buy BF2 because I wanted to play it. I bought BF2 just so I could play Forgotten Hope 2 and the equally as fun Project Reality.

[Commander 598]

Well, if you're waiting for the FH2 mod why would you bother to want another horrendously inaccurate 1942?

[DPDarkPrimus]

Wouldn't the next game in the franchise be Battlefield 2143?

*da-dum pish*

[wautd]

I think practically all the new ideas have been sucked out of the franchise for now, and that's indicated by this list and its lack of actual novelties. VOIP? Well wow, I've never seen that before in an online game!

They should concentrate on making as smooth an experience as possible. BF never was about the graphics, for example; people play Gears of War for that. We need better netcode, better optimization, less bugs, less grenade spam, better fucking SERVER BROWSER and so on over amazing novelties, which DICE got, as a previous poster said, with 1942.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty fucking ridiculous that BF2 somehow had a worse server browser than BF1942. How the fuck does that even happen?

On average it took me 15 minutes to find a decent game. FIFTEEN MINUTES!
Needless to say, I got tired of it fairly quickly

[ray245]

Sign...I guess it is because of all those idiots saying ww2 games are so outdated...

Sign...is it that hard to make a GOOD ww2 Pacific campaign game? I have been waiting for a pacific COD for ages...and yet we got all those people saying almost every battlefield in ww2 has been explored.

Hello? What about the pacific theatre?

Someone got to knock on game devlopers and tell them that.
I hope the Band of brothers 2 : AKA the pacific can tell all those game developers that there is a pacific front in ww2 as well...

[CaptHawkeye]

Well, if you're waiting for the FH2 mod why would you bother to want another horrendously inaccurate 1942?

Erhm, maybe because I liked BF1942's hokey action movie WW2 gameplay too?

I LOOOVE Forgotten Hope, but I liked 1942 also. Though I had little interest in playing BF's sequel because modern warfare doesn't interest me as much as WW2. Now look, the franchise has how many games set in modern times with one game back in 1942 and one game in 2142? I think modern combat games are starting to get stale frankly.

[RazorOutlaw]

How can you say modern combat games are stale when there's a dearth of WW2 first person shooters (not even counting strategy games here)? I think Call of Duty 4 is a breath of fresh air for FPS games and that another Battlefield game in WW2 is only interesting in as far it's capturing points instead of being a one man army.

If you're pointing out "booster packs" or whatever for Battlefield 2, well 1942 had two as well. Oh and then the mod for Battlefield: Vietnam (except nobody likes to talk about the forgotten sequel).

[ray245]

How can you say modern combat games are stale when there's a dearth of WW2 first person shooters (not even counting strategy games here)? I think Call of Duty 4 is a breath of fresh air for FPS games and that another Battlefield game in WW2 is only interesting in as far it's capturing points instead of being a one man army.

If you're pointing out "booster packs" or whatever for Battlefield 2, well 1942 had two as well. Oh and then the mod for Battlefield: Vietnam (except nobody likes to talk about the forgotten sequel).

Oh please...tell me there are how many GOOD pacific front FPS? Other than battlefield 1942.

And I mean FPS...

[Enigma]

How can you say modern combat games are stale when there's a dearth of WW2 first person shooters (not even counting strategy games here)? I think Call of Duty 4 is a breath of fresh air for FPS games and that another Battlefield game in WW2 is only interesting in as far it's capturing points instead of being a one man army.

If you're pointing out "booster packs" or whatever for Battlefield 2, well 1942 had two as well. Oh and then the mod for Battlefield: Vietnam (except nobody likes to talk about the forgotten sequel).

Oh please...tell me there are how many GOOD pacific front FPS? Other than battlefield 1942.

And I mean FPS...

Didn't Medal of Honour have one?

[RazorOutlaw]

Medal of Honor had two.

Oh please...tell me there are how many GOOD pacific front FPS? Other than battlefield 1942.

And this changes my point about there being too many WW2 shooters how? I didn't feel much of a difference between Pacific Assault or its older bother, Allied Assault anyway.