Rooster90

MAV + C4 was so fun, lol.

@Gunthar: u mad bro? XD jk, but I wouldn't want BF any other way. I have other games for more mil-sim/tactical play. I want my BF game to be a BF game. However, our team has been discussing what 2142 be like in the new engine.... drool. Like it or not, twitch gameplay will always rule the FPS world, always has since Counter-Strike/Quake. It's where the money and tournaments are as well as the largest audience. No offense, but a very select audience would actually watch a tournament in ArmA 2. Definitely looking forward to the competitive scene in BF3 though, B-Team will be in as many major ladders as we can be. We'll also be hosting some open tournaments of our own (likely an entrance fee as well, 5 bucks tops). We're waiting to see what our income for this month will be from livestreaming, as we will be giving away a free BF3 Limited Edition with that money and the tournament winner. @Batwing: There's one word that sums up why they sent out a month old version: consoles. The reason it was a month old is because that's when they sent in the software and paperwork to Sony and Microsoft for them to approve the Beta on their systems. It was mostly Microsoft's fault, since the amount of red tape in their approval process literally took them over a month to pass that version of the beta. In that time, DICE made a ton of fixes that couldn't be applied. The game's code also had to be chopped up for consoles to be able to reasonably download (which causes unforeseen problems in and of itself). And within that license agreement, DICE likely couldn't send out new clients or updates (to any platform), lest consoles had to re-download everything and would have to be re-approved by Microsoft and Sony.

Mostly Assault. Has the weapons I enjoy the most while being able to revive and heal. Plus smoke nades later on. After that, Recon is my second favorite. 1-3 shot kill weapons, very easy to use that class aggressively without using a scope. Mobile respawns are HUGE. SVD + ironsights = OP, lol. I'll probably play engineer a lot on vehicle based maps though.

There should be a filter in the server browser where you can designate what region of servers it will search. Plus, if one of your friends from the US joins a game you can join him from the Com Center (basically, your friends list, located in the lower right of Battlelog). Seems odd that you'd be region-locked since I remember playing on a few UK, French, and even Japanese servers. I guess I will never find the appeal of OGR. It always felt really stale and unfinished the few times that I've played it. I enjoy me some ArmA 2 every now and then, and to me is a far superior product (despite it's many bugs). Plus it being an FPS and not even being able to see a gun on your screen? Was that just laziness on the part of Red Storm? I've always wondered that. I just don't see what's so great about OGR that ArmA 2 can't do leaps and bounds over it.

Well, like you said, BF3 is an arcade shooter and always has been. It is a very different kind of game with very different goals. There's also a lot of complex things happening in games these days compared to 10 years ago. It's not just player locations, AI, and triggers being tracked. There's tons of stat tracking logging every player's bullet being shot, the trajectory and physics behind that bullet, a random set of damage and penetration (within a certain parameter), there's vehicles moving everywhere in the air and on the ground, all high poly with physics data to track of their own. There's destruction happening on every piece of land fired upon across the whole map, wind blowing trees, and on and on. I'm certainly not giving excuses for poorly optimized net code (which they stated in their blog has been much better optimized for release already), but seriously give them a break. They may have had huge funding but nothing is ever perfect. For an arcade shooter, there's a lot of incredibly complex things being generated and sent back and forth between clients and servers. And like I said, I have not experienced any of the problems with lag or hit detection. That sucks that those in SPARTA seem to have experienced it, but I nor B-Team have at all. The only thing netcode related we saw that was negative was rubber-banding on Caspian during high-traffic times. That's nice you had a game experience you really enjoyed in the past. Complain to Ubisoft who raped and murdered the Ghost Recon series. DICE had nothing to do with it. For me personally my favorite online game experience was CoD:UO, had the perfect balance of intense and tough gunplay, fast action, and vehicles that weren't overpowered, but fun to drive. I've moved on though. But honestly, what's stopping you from going back and playing Ghost Recon? Why blame the BF series, a totally unrelated franchise, for not living up to that very specific experience? It seems really odd to me you would judge BF3 negatively because it doesn't play the same as a 10 year old game you really liked. I personally found GR really boring and uninteresting. Sure, it required a lot of teamwork and was very brutal, but that's not always fun for me. I play games that are team-oriented and fun. Everyone's definition of fun is different. In pub games of BF, lives have never been of the greatest importance, it's all about team coordination to capture or destroy objectives to either kill your enemy's ticket count or to move on to the next set of objectives and reset your team's tickets. Competitive BF is a totally different game. You play with 1 or 2 very tight-knit squads keeping eachother alive and constantly having to be on top of situational awareness. Teamwork has always been a key element of winning in BF. If you have a team of lone wolves, you lose, plain and simple. Sure, some might get a great K/D, but BF has been a game where K/D means nothing and objectives and teamwork mean everything. I like having unlocks and rewards in my FPS games. It gives me even more reason to keep on playing. It may be a "carrot on the stick" tool to keep me playing, but I'll be damned if it doesn't work and isn't fun for me and my buddies. Rather than handing everything to the player from the start, there's always something new to work and strive for to play with. Some people don't like it, some people do. All a matter of preference/opinion. As always, I encourage fellow SPARTANS to hop on our Mumble and come play with B-Team. It might change your perspective on how much fun of a team game BF3 can really be. It truly shines when you have 2 or more full squads of coordinated friends fragging and maneuvering with eachother and absolutely dominating a server. BF3 isn't hyper tactical or hyper real, but it was never meant to be. I compare BF games to TF2 more than any other shooter, since it's a team-oriented, objective-based arcade game in a "real world" setting with classes that accomplish specific things for the team. That's all BF was and that's all it will ever be, but it is damn fun. Oh, did I mention one of the maps that might be in BF3 is a remake of Omaha Beach (from 1942, set in modern time).

It was more or less what I was expecting, and a big improvement over the Alpha. It's certainly not a BF2 clone, but I also think it's unfair to call it BC2 with bigger maps and more vehicles. It's definitely a hybrid of ideas over the span of every BF game to date, and I'm sure DICE will be vigilantly fleshing out that balance over the coming months after release. I haven't personally experienced any lag or hit detection problems myself, but I won't say they weren't issues for others. New server back-end, re-written netcode, all will be fixed in a matter of time. The netcode and hit detection already beat the hell out of BC2 imo. To this day there's still a good .5 - 1 second of delay before somebody drops when you shoot them on that game. That and it takes at least half a clip per enemy. BF3 already feels more solid than the past few FPS's I've bought on release. The two main negatives of the beta are the server crashes (they crash, despite saying you "disconnected") at the end of a lot of games that hinder progress or ruin a good score you had going. I'm hoping in the future things like your SPM, K/D, and unlock progress are updated periodically through the game, rather than having that info wait to be gathered and sent to your profile at the very end of a match. A pipedream, but it would be nice to not lose EVERYTHING you worked for in a match. And, of course, squad management better be fully fleshed out on release. If it isn't simple and easy to squad up with friends, they screwed up quite possibly the biggest element of the game besides the shooting and the maps. They will never hear the end of it if the game releases without basic squad functions.

I say Recon and Engineer are the main viable classes on that particular map because A ) Engineers are vital to keep all the vehicles alive, a very key element on a big map like that. They are also the Anti-tank / Anti-air class, incredibly important. B ) Recon really shine on this map due to the wide open spaces to easily pick enemies off from a distance (usually enemy engineers with limited range weapons) and they are a great ambush class. The Forest objective in particular. One Recon can hold back an entire squad on the right elevated rock or prone in the right bush. Not including that they will have airstrikes in the full game as well. I'm not saying the Assault and Support classes aren't important even on that map, but their role seems very diminished unless you restrict yourself to one of two close-quarters objectives (Checkpoint, or Hilltop). Healing and reviving doesn't seem all that important since at least half your team is in vehicles and the other half are spread out across the map. There isn't really any central point that either two forces collide upon, it's just a very sporadic push and pull battle (mostly due to the circular design of the objectives, rather than a more linear approach). Support would probably be the third most important on that map, only due to the fact that he can keep fellow engineers firing their rockets with ammo resupplies. The verdict my comrades and I have come to on Caspian is that 64 player battles don't have enough vehicles and 48 player battles don't see enough action (on Caspian). I'm hoping on full release each map will have different sizes (16, 32, 64) like BF2, but idk if this has been confirmed or not for BF3. As always, squad-play will make or break the game for anybody. A coordinated squad of friends on any map in any game type will be twice as likely to be victorious and have a good time overall.

You'll be able to join your friends in their respective squads, but DICE hasn't fully elaborated on how it's going to work across Battlelog and in-game. I find Caspian to be a bit boring personally, and probably won't be a Conquest map I'll play much in the final release. But the basics are there and the gameplay is solid. A true BF experience. Just not a fan of the map itself. If you aren't Engineer or Recon, you aren't playing it right. I like playing big maps, but they either have to have a lot of vehicles to make up for it's size, but also good spacing and balance so that all classes have significant importance. Can't wait for Karkand and Sharqi to come back...

Only time will tell. I'll still always prefer Steam over Origin. Everything is redundant in BF3's case anyway, since everything you need is hosted from Battlelog. Origin has merely been bloatware that launches the application when the browser tells it to. My guess is if they do release a Steam version, they'll update their plug-in that launches BF3 to find/detect the BF3.exe in Steam folders as well. Which MAY mean that Steam versions don't need the Origin application to run. But again, we'll see when Oct 25 rolls around. Viiiper makes an equally sensible point (from a fiscal/business point of view) and was one of the main reasons I was upset about Origin exclusivity in the first place. It makes sense, but I wish EA would just come right out and say it.

I remember hearing rumors a while back that EA just didn't want pre-orders to be made on Steam. I had an inkling they would allow BF3 to be purchased at/post-launch with none of the DLC or physical warfare rolled into the price on Steam. Remember, Back to Karkand is only "free" when you pre-order. My theory: Once the game launches, that DLC you'll have to pay for separately, it will no longer be rolled into the price. Just a theory, but I think it's a pretty good one.

Dumbshit Island was my fav. XD All of this is dead on.

That's pretty epic! Haven't unlocked the USAS yet, frag rounds don't work well on the 870. Usually run slugs with Acog, or just buckshot with iron sights. Frag does drastically less damage and has enormous bullet drop. The main benefit is supposedly a higher suppression rate. I suppose frag shells make more sense with an auto-shotty.

We took over a server last night and had MAV and Wall-E fights. C4, repair tool, and knives only as well, good fun. All depends on how you play the sniper class. BF3 gives Recon way more options to be an offensive member and plays a key role to victory. Mobile spawnpoints are invaluable to the team, and most of us are CQB Recon. Rarely run with anything more than a 4x scope. However I will say i'm not a huge fan of the MAV in a serious game. It's a little too fast and hard to kill. I've never actually seen anybody ride the MAV yet, but I'm sure it'll be fixed if it hasn't already. Again, month-old build, gameplay not representative of the final game.

Yes, but it's also a bolt-action rifle, so of course it will do more damage to make up for slow bolt pulls. There isn't a .50 cal rifle in this game at all, the largest caliber size is a .338 magnum on the M98B.

You can just have your crosshairs on them, but that really only works at close range (within 50 feet or so). Also, if a dude is spotted and lying behind a rock, shoot below the dorito anyway. Edges of rocks have no-clip in the beta, can shoot right through the top foot or 2 of them. Fixed in full version obviously, but it's fun to kill camping attackers behind rocks.

You've always been able to do this in past games, not really THAT OP. Silly, yes. But people lined up for me with the .50 cal in BC2 all the time. .50 cal + red dot = ghetto shotgun. XD

Amazing how many people are horribly unaware of their surroundings. http://www.twitch.tv/thronewolf/b/296571055 My buddy Allen dishing out some pistol rage!

Well, we haven't seen how the squad implementation will work in Battlelog yet. It's entirely possible you could join a friend's squad from Battlelog when he/she is already in-game. I'll wait to pass judgement until I see it in action. I'm skeptical, but optimistic. And no game can ever "make" anybody play as a team. ArmA is hyper-realistic and teamwork is a must, but that still won't stop anybody from lone-wolfing or not helping with objectives. Even TF2 or L4D series, the most simple of all team-based games, can't force others to play as a team. As with any game, you have to form a team of your own before you even enter a server if you ever wish to have that tactical/teamplay satisfaction. B-Team has been playing as a team from day 1 of beta and has been steamrolling most games we're in. Our win/loss ratio is well over 2:1, nearly 3:1. I really don't see how self-play is completely encouraged, because it certainly won't win you a game. Sure, we have guys with K/D's upwards of 1.8 and SPMs of 800-900. They easily go games 30-40 kills to single digit deaths. But just because they kill well doesn't ensure the game will be won. The team still has to work together to defend/destroy objectives. Same will go with Conquest game-modes. You can sit back and snipe all day but it won't win you games. It's the way FPS's have always been and always will be.

Batwing: Nailed it on the head my friend! It sounds good on paper, let's hope it'll work in practice. Some people may think it's convoluted, but who knows, there's got to be a good reason they went the web-browser route. For all we know the game could be saving a lot of resources by keep the back-end server/stats/browser code in an easy to manage website rather than in the game itself. We'll see how it all plays out, I'm sure platoons will have even more purpose when squad management and platoon games are implemented.

http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlefield_bad_company/archive/2011/10/03/battlefield-3-open-beta-update-2.aspx ^ pretty much confirms/justifies everything I try and tell people. It's a feature-stripped beta running on old code meant purely to stress test servers and test out Battlelog. Knew it.

Well, EA is just a publisher. They don't actually MAKE or design the majority of games under their label. They set standards and deadlines for their developers, but beyond that the quality of the game falls on the developer (in this case, DICE). Of course, they are the major funding for their devs, so they have strings to pull on them. @Medic: We've been affectionately calling that 'raffin. Short for giraffen', lol. We call it out everytime we spot somebody's model doing it. "Look at Syn, he's raffin, he's raffin!" XD

The map was playable/less bugs in Alpha because full destruction wasn't implemented in Alpha.... The main cause for most of the map bugs is the new destruction engine and the destructible ground. They've already stated they have a solid fix for full retail, we just wont see those fixes in the Beta. Their in-house build is much farther ahead than the Beta build. The build we're all playing on is a few weeks old. Most of the changes they're making at this point is in Battlelog, but of course they're taking in feedback from the map(s) atm as well.

Yeah, one of the updates the did last night/early this morning had compatibility issues with people's passwords that used special characters. Had to reset mine as well.

Yeah, I've noticed pretty much everything negative people have to say gameplay-wise disappears after their first experience on Caspian. A true BF experience, and a spectacular wonder to behold. Main beef with it atm though: 64 players = not enough vehicles. 48 players = not enough action. Hopefully they will give us more vehicles on release, or at least a server option to increase vehicle count. Or even better, a map that scales down to accommodate 48 players better. Keep in mind that even though this is a "medium" sized map, it is massive. I'd say it's about the size of Heavy Metal, if not bigger.

I think you guys took my noob comment a bit too seriously/personally. I was just stating, in general, that's how those arguments come across to me. It certainly isn't exclusive to anything said here, it's all over the Battlelog and EA forums too. Complaining about menu options (in a Beta, mind you) is just a really trivial issue that doesn't really relate to the actual gameplay at all, which is far more important imo. If you wish to discuss actual flaws in the gameplay, that's one thing. But getting hot and bothered about how the menu is set up or that the stock key binds aren't what you're used to? I almost never change my key bind for any game, i just learn how it's mapped. Only key I've ever mapped differently is my push-to-talk button in Valve games. But I digress, I'll drop it. To each his own. I just don't have the unreasonable expectation that the game will be flawless on release. I've yet to ever see an online-based game have a strong release in the first month for years. It is absolutely impossible. Thing of it is, the bigger and more ambitious the game, the bigger and more ambitious the bugs. I fully expect the first week of this game to be a nightmare. Hell, maybe even the first month or two. It's just the way things are in the days of highly complex and technical software. I pay for it ahead of time anyway because I have confidence that by the end of the year, the game will be amazing. DICE has shown great initiative in getting things fixed in the past. With each new game comes new problems. BC2 was absolute garbage in it's first 3-4 months. For different reasons than BF3, obviously. Black Ops... don't even get me started on how much of a hassle that game was for the first months. BF3 however shows promise. There aren't really any awful game-breaking bugs that I've experienced (CTDs, stuttering, freezing etc). The worst culprits are server crashes hindering unlock progress, occasional screen flicker, and rubber-banding in large servers. Feature-wise, I will hold my tongue until release day. I will admit, there are a lot of things missing this late on that should be obvious to have in (joystick support, key binding, squad selection, etc) but until I see the final release, that's not anything I'm going to lose sleep over. I'll be right with you guys if those are still not implemented on Oct 25. Clearly we all went into this with very different expectations. I'm just glad to be a part of the process of making BF3 the best FPS experience out there.