Battlefield 3

[weemadando]

Nope, multiple reviewers have commented on this "feature".

[Stofsk]

That's pretty lame.

[Stark]

To illustrate why the tunguska isn't on more maps... check out my last battle report.

10,000 points raw, 33,000 after awards. 60 kills. 5 deaths. They resorted to trying to airdrop guys behind me to destroy me, because the tung is so agile it can dodge rpgs easily. And people want it on every map.

Best weapon? Revolver.

So yeah, let's hope they fix the balance issues a tiny bit. The other team became so frustrated they tried to block off access to the tung with their apc.

[CaptHawkeye]

They also still let enemies jump into vehicles from the opposing team and steal them. This has never, ever, been an ok thing since BF1942 and DICE still lets it happen. Now it happens more than ever because the damage model in BF3 encourages abandoning the vehicle before it explodes. Result? Enemy team now has one more tank than yours, and your tank won't respawn.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I've never had the stats update problem. Every time I've crashed or been disconnected (which is about half of my matches, it seems), my things still update in a few minutes. I know I've gotten a couple service stars, crashed, been worried if they'd get updated, and sure enough in a few minutes they showed up on the battlelog.

But yeah, in general I share Nephtys' assessment of the idiotic PC interface. Some of the battlelog ideas are good, but heaven forbid someone should want to configure the game's settings and keybinds before they're actually in a god damn match. And fuck Origin.

[Losonti Tokash]

Can you guys describe for us consoletards what's actually wrong with Origin?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Nephtys nailed it. Everything annoying about Steam, but without Steam's more useful bits. It's an extra process you have to keep running, an extra thing you have to register for and sign in to before you can get to your game, and general clunkiness. Other digital distributors manage to stay out of the way (Impulse, although with GameStop at the helm now that may change...), but Origin is not one of those. It's a minor annoyance, but an annoyance, with no redeeming features. Compared to the Battlelog, which at least does have redeeming features.

[Artemas]

hey guys, remember in the beta when grenades and explosives would make craters?

but they had to remove it because of quicksand falling through maps? but they said it was a "temporary fix" and "the release build has a proper solution"

yeah

guess whats not in the game

[Mr Bean]

hey guys, remember in the beta when grenades and explosives would make craters?

but they had to remove it because of quicksand falling through maps? but they said it was a "temporary fix" and "the release build has a proper solution"

yeah

guess whats not in the game

Are you on the console because you can still crater the map with explosions but one grenade won't do it. In BC2 one grenade exploded like it had eight grenades of force VS structures (And half a grenade VS players) in BF3 repeated grenades can hull buildings or dig craters but not the two foot deep ones in the Beta.

[Artemas]

what does then?

cause i've yet to come across a crater i can take cover in

[Mr Bean]

what does then?

cause i've yet to come across a crater i can take cover in

Mortars, repeated hits from high explosives, 40mm rifle launched grenades, ect.
C4 is the most reliable, and the craters are only good enough to take cover in while prone.

[Edward Yee]

Yeah, but the game works, so they beat out Bhhemia Interactive. :v

Good point. I recently downloaded JCOVE Lite (it's a publicly released VBS2 distro) and it actually works. Too bad it isn't a real game though, just a couple of missions.

Oddly enough, I haven't had ARMA 2: CO+DLC fail on me unless addons were involved, although it's the supposedly-clunkier Steam version.

However, the one mission that I played (it was a defence of an Iraqi outpost from insurgents) was actually better than any game in Arma/Arma2.

Hmm... are you including player-made missions in that?

I've never had the stats update problem. Every time I've crashed or been disconnected (which is about half of my matches, it seems), my things still update in a few minutes. I know I've gotten a couple service stars, crashed, been worried if they'd get updated, and sure enough in a few minutes they showed up on the battlelog.

Same here, I've had stats update even if I quit out of a match, albeit taking long than if I'd finished the round.

(Impulse, although with GameStop at the helm now that may change...)

Impulse... I've read somewhere that it was bad (i.e. impossible to properly archive) even before GameStop got it, but seeing as it didn't get any better under GameStop -- I spent a whole weekend on failed BF3 LE pre-loading -- that I ended up just redeeming the product key in Origin itself, allowing me to totally bypass Impulse, and I'm just using the $10 gift card* in-store.

Unfortunately, I have no idea where to find a corresponding Origin key for the Physical Warfare pack...

* I "pre-purchased" the PC download in the store and redeemed the corresponding Impulse key instead of buying through Impulse directly (the "serial number" in Impulse was actually an Origin key), so I got a $10 GameStop gift card instead of a "$10 Impulse gift card towards future purchases."

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Nothing attracts engineers (read: rocket troops) like my tank in enemy territory. Luckily thermal view and proximity sensors make short work for them unless I'm being careless. It's doubly hilarious when they come around the corner thinking you can't see them and then get blown away by a tank round.

[weemadando]

I've never had the stats update problem. Every time I've crashed or been disconnected (which is about half of my matches, it seems), my things still update in a few minutes. I know I've gotten a couple service stars, crashed, been worried if they'd get updated, and sure enough in a few minutes they showed up on the battlelog.

But yeah, in general I share Nephtys' assessment of the idiotic PC interface. Some of the battlelog ideas are good, but heaven forbid someone should want to configure the game's settings and keybinds before they're actually in a god damn match. And fuck Origin.

Well, you're fucking lucky as I've had it happen to me on 3 or 4 occasions now over several days and those stats HAVE NOT updated when I get disconnected before a round is complete. Which fucks me off as I've "unlocked" stuff multiple times over.

Except I haven't apparently.

*edit* Interesting. Origin is saying that some items have unlocked from last night's ones now, but it has no record of my stats, ribbons for those rounds or even me playing in those games.

[Stark]

The log doesn't tell your 'friends' (ps only origin friends in the additional layer of crud) about vehicle unlocks. Ingame it doesn't even tell you what the unlock was; just 'unlocked something on the gun'. You cant even HOOAH ingame!

[weemadando]

Heh.

Apparently the latest punkbuster update includes stuff for BF3 steam edition.

WHO KNEW?

[Stark]

Are you saying the guys at the top of the leaderboard with a score per minute of 25,000 are cheating?

[weemadando]

No, hadn't looked at that. More talking about how there's apparently (according to this PB release) a Steam version of BF3 coming, after all the hoo-hah about "Only on Origin" etc.

[Jade Falcon]

Agreeing with what Stark said, the much vaunted Frostbite 2 engine has had its destruction massively scaled down. I know the maps in Bad Company 2 were significantly smaller, but two of the prime one, Panama Canal and the snowbound village map, they at least looked like they had had a battle in them after a significant time.

Caspian Border meanwhile seems to be the new Strike at Karkand as there are servers running it 24/7 with no map rotation.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Okay, this is some misleading advertising here. You CANNOT destroy the large antenna tower in Caspian Border shown in this video (2:34 minutes in).

[Stark]

It's destroyed in single player. Is that where the video comes from?

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Really? I remember the tower in the Singleplayer to be black, not red and white.

[Stark]

Sorry, I'm not sure. I just remember Los saying 'why can't you destroy the tower like you can in singleplayer'. I'm pretty sure the SP one wasn't red and white.

[Mr Bean]

Which is a shame since Capsian is kind of a garbage map. The action is to spread out to be exciting and even on 64 players it's very much a thing of attacking wherever the tanks are not. The best maps to date are Operation Metro (On Conquest if only because of how insane the fights get at the Ticket booth) Grand Bazaar which is just good Tehran Highway (same) and Noshahr Canals which offers interesting vehicle combat unlike Capsian and Kharg.

[weemadando]

[PC Whore] Apparently the destruction had to be scaled back a) because of the size of the intended maps and the associated console limitations and b) the graphics that they wanted to achieve and associated console limitations. [/PC Whore]

I believe both of those excuses, but they aren't really a reason. Can you really not make a 64p size map and have buildings fall down? Is it genuinely that hard?

Or is it option c) DICE were lazy/rushed and didn't know how/couldn't be bothered to design and balance maps with a large amount of destructable terrain.