f13.net

Yes, I read Joystick. Fuck off and watch the trailer. (http://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/27/battlefield-4-confirmed-to-launch-this-fall/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Fjoystiq+%28Joystiq%29)

Or to put it more correctly, skip through the trailer once you see the pretty visuals and realize the whole goddamn thing is 17 minutes of the single-player game for Battlefield 4. Which doesn't look all that different from Battlefield 3 other than more detailed with more brown. Having started playing BF3 again just this week, I must say this drains a lot of my desire for any new BF games. And that's a damn shame because BF:BC2 was one of my favorite multiplayer shooters ever. I never touched the single-player in it nor do I plan to. I've never touched it in BF3 and don't care to. I don't want the gaming equivalent of Michael Goddamn Bay movies in my Battlefield. I want big-ass multiplayer maps with modern weapons, a series of unlocks that aren't too grindy (looking at you BF3) and that's it. Fuck off phone booth COD-style maps. If I wanted that, I'd buy COD. The DLC for BF3 has been a disappointment. You had one (Close Quarters) that was ALL ABOUT phone booth COD-style maps. The second (Armored Kill) was all vehicles which meant it was all air power and I can't fly for shit. The last two DLC's have what looks like one new weapon between them - a fucking crossbow with multiple variants. Fuck that noise. What am I, the Huntress?

Yes, I realize bitching about an EA-owned dev house traveling further down the inevitable sequel death spiral is old hat, but it still pisses me off. It's not even that they are putting out a sequel less than 2 years after the last version, it's that they are completely forgetting what made the fucking series great in the first place. Multiplayer is turned into the cash machine of grindy unlocks and the single-player is being touted as a new experience in gaming - which it most certainly isn't.

Also, the dubstep theme sounds even more wub wubbed.

EA.

Die die die!

_{(and no I didnt play 3 games of FIFA last night, I really didn't.................I hate myself)}

I no longer buy from EA so I won't be able to be very disappointed in this title.

pfft

keep walking

Hey, Armored Kill was alright and mostly focused on APCs/Tanks/Tank-killers in the better maps for it! Aftermath was alright and had some okay maps. I haven't tried EndGame shit yet.

I'd say something about close quarters, but literally no one plays it.

Let's just go back to BC2. That game was so good.

Yeah, sadly that seems to be their best use of Frostbite to date.  The Vietnam expansion oozed style too.

BF, once a revolutionary combined-arms large scale FPS game, is now basically just a product to compete with Call of Duty on consoles. I can't blame EA cuz it is just so lucrative I mean these 2 games have like 1$ billion sales revenue (or more?) combined in past 2 years and they have an obligation to their shareholders to go after this market.

What they should do is just stop releasing versions of the same game across all platforms, cut out PC, focus on console. It's just a waste of resources to try and square the same game onto both console and PC, takes a lot of effort and PC gamers won't be happy anyway with the console geared UI.

The Frostbyte engine is pretty nifty have a different development studio/team work on a PC-only multiplayer game with the engine, or hell just license it out. Don't have to worry so much about scaling, about controller UI, etc.

This. It really has been the pinnacle of the series.

1942 was just such a stellar game for its time, I haven't been a huge fan since.

I think part of what made it great was the slower pace, more of a tactical thing.

Downhill since imo, but I'm not Joe Mainstream.

/agree

I loved me some BF1942.  It was the last FPS that I really enjoyed. 

BF2 is still my fav. 1942 is close behind, however.

Vietnam was so damn good. Down to even the music selection.

Damn you, you have forced me to re-download just to hear the music.

Yeah, hearing a chopper blaring some CCR is just visceral.

This was probably the best song in Vietnam...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTBwS8doqy8

I re-installed BC2 last night after watching the trailer.  BF3 was ass compared to BC2.  How the fuck can you call it "Destruction 3.0" when in BC2 I could literally drop a fucking building on someones head and BF3 had ZERO destructible buildings.  Not to mention the seemingly EA endorsed cheating.

I've no fucking clue why they're even showcasing the singleplayer, given how UTTER FUCKING SUPERSCRIPTED TRIPE the previous one was.

Where's the 2142 love?

Don't get me wrong, I liked BC2 (megrim trying to get me to keep playing it, don't see it happening with MWO being my focus at the moment) and I still have 1942 installed for LANs... But 2142 was le awesome??

BF42 is the only multiplayer shooter I've ever - EVER - enjoyed. The place I worked at in 2003, we'd all go into the office on Saturdays and play all day. Even my wife.

Vietnam was a huge disappointment to me, because when it was released, I had no one left to play with. Playing against bots was an exercise in frustration and (arguably) historical accuracy because the bots could see through foliage. I was constantly getting killed by enemies I couldn't see.

If I was more into games, I would've banned all mention of EA when Origin launched.

I bought and played some BF3 a couple of years ago.

Uninstalled after one night which included shit like me leaning around a corner and getting shot by a vehicle that was pointing the other way. I know I suck at fps's but come on...

I liked 2142 a lot, but it was short-lived before everyone moved on and the expansion never worked for me either.

Battlefield 1942 + Desert Combat mod was epic.

Man, I don't think BF3 is that bad outside of the obnoxious amount of unlockables. There are some pretty fucking huge maps too, but I play on the PC. I wonder how bad Armored Kill is on consoles now...

Desert combat was garbage. All they did was up the speed & lethality, super weapons mod. Much less thinking required, just point and kill, no reaction time possible. Spamming and camping encourged.

Then those guys were hired by DICE and BF2 was basically the same thing.

BF3 isn't BAD... but it isn't as good as previous games in the series. The unlockables grind is a bit heavy but I don't mind it as that's what kept me playing BC2 for so long. Where BF3 falls flat on its face is in 2 areas: 1) level design and 2) art direction.

Level design is so inconsistent and in some cases outright bad. The maps that they ported from BF2 (Karkand, Sharqi and others) are all stellar. There are a few good maps in the base game (Noshahar, Caspian, Kharq). But there are all too many maps that target the COD crowd with idiotic choke points and spawns that are designed to be camped to fuck and back. It's all too often that one team starts to lose and they spend 25% of the game or more getting spawn camped to fuck and back. Both Paris maps are utter phone booth grenade spam spawn camping shit. The entire Close Quarters DLC is a fucking achivement/leveling whore pile that it's only good for completing certain assignments and leveling. The Gun Master game type is fun but shallow fun - it gets old quick. The rest of the DLC is fucking awful COD style phone booths. The Armored Kill expansion so far has been an exercise in seeing why air superiority is so important in modern warfare. Instead of being spawn camped by machine guns, tanks are shat on from a great height by choppers and jets. If you can't fly, you die and I can't fly. Even at 50%, I feel like I wasted my money on that DLC.

The art direction is something that really bugs me. EVERYTHING IS FUCKING BROWN. EVERYTHING. Camo works too well in the game because generally speaking, the only way you'll see someone at a distance is if they have a laser sight or tactical light, or they shoot. Usually that muzzle flash is the last thing you see before death. I'm not saying they should go away from the photorealistic attempts (which based on BF4 they aren't) but fuck me, GIVE MY EYES SOME CONTRAST. Give me a chance to spot the guy that's about to perforate me before he does so. Literally the only way to see someone from distance on most of the maps is if someone has spotted him, so I'm often spamming the Q button to hope I get a clue about the spergy death merchant on the other side of the map.

I saw nothing in the BF4 trailer that would lead me to believe either of those things is going to change in BF4.

And yes, BF2142 was the tits and it's a goddamn shame they dropped that arm of the franchise.

I predicted it would happen when EA bought DICE way back when and I see them folding up shop in about 3-5 years or sooner based on how tired the market gets of COD shitting out Madden-like versions of the franchise every 9 months.

For the love of god +1.

Our 1942 clan used to compete in leagues and ladders and did pretty well. Then DC came along and they switched our server over to the mod and that was pretty much the end of it.

Really? In armored kill the air support is fucking meat on all the maps I've played. Helis make it like 30 seconds before a chain of stingers bring them down. What sucked in Armored Kill was being in a tank without IR smoke or being on foot and not being an engy with a SMAW/Javelin. If you didn't have IR smoke or a competent gunner you'd roll 20 feet and get hit by 30 fucking javelins, and if you were a groundpounder and not an engy you were in good shape until someone in a tank/tank killer rolled up on you and blew you up.

Close Quarters sucked shit; on PC at least no one plays it anymore. I mean like no one. I fell out of the game for a couple months after QC released and I could only find like 3-4 full servers when I got back.

I also don't see the brown thing outside of Aftermath and Karkand really. I've never had trouble seeing anything on firestorm.

Loading......


Sweet mother of God...why can they not fix this!?!?

I'll find a server, start a game, play, then I can't go to the next round! The same damn bug from when it was released is still fucking there! So, I'll end up having to disconnect from that server and re-apply to the server or another one, it is bullshit that they can't get that under control.

I could rant about how CoD, BF, and Planetside, have kinda morphed into different niche's of FPS's, they all have good and bad, some are better on consoles, some better on PC, all seem to have things that drive people crazy.

CoD has gone the route of the Xbox or Playstation, where it has small maps, not able to choose servers, can group with friends, some control over the maps that are played, but it is set up to be easy to get into and easy to play.

Battlefield was okay on Xbox, but shines on the PC. But, that comes at the problem of finding a server, staying on that server due to the crazy bugs.

Planetside has a nice ability that you only have a couple of choices on servers and easier to connect. It is still working the bugs out, so crazy stuff happens, but they seem to be keeping it cleaned up.

What drives me nuts is how the people that play these games seem to fall into a rut on the same damn map or area over and over.  In CoD it was "hey vote for this map! Ya we fight in the village again!", in Battlefield I see the same "24 hour of blow each other up in the subway! Who cares if they made 30 other maps, we are gonna play this one only forever!!!!!", and then on Planetside, "hey guys lets go and try and take over Indar!!!! Someone has to capture that territory someday!"

Will I get Battlefield 4? Don't know. It really seems like a big ass money grab. I got Battlefield 3 Premium, so I got all the expansions for cheaper price, and I did pay to unlock the weapons from co-op, but I never played the single player game or the co-op game. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1 had an awesome story, and I watched my son play it. I know I could have done it maybe on the easy setting, but watching it was awesome with him. Halo 1 we did co-op together. I know DICE has it set up for single player story so you can do it by yourself and co-op with random people if you like, but that isn't why I buy Battlefield games.

Well, I can only speak from my own experience. And that experience was that we never played as much Battlefield at our LAN parties as when we got hold of the Desert Combat mod. *shrug*

Well, you don't HAVE to play the stupid meat-grinder Metro 24/7 servers. Caspian never really gets old to me since it's a really good map and a lot of servers run that.

You also don't have to go to indar :)

Sorry to interrupt, but...where is my Mirror's Edge 2?  :dead_horse: :cry2: :cry2:

https://twitter.com/BenjaminCousins/status/271202320606457856

Much appreciated  :yahoo: :yahoo:

Aka Nausea Simulator 2.  No thanks.

Actually vomited once playing the demo.  Bleh.

Don't celebrate too early, it's still being made by EA, so they'll probably manage to completely assfuck it in some ludicrous way.

I'm kinda glad I'm immune to motion sickness as far as I know.

It's the main reason I can't finish Half Life 1 or 2. Those games make me rather ill.  Kinda sucks, but I'm not really into shooters/fps in the first place. So, not much of a loss.

Oh man, you, too? HLF2 kills me. I've always wanted to finish it but I always hit a certain point where I start feeling godawful.

Have you tried tinkering with the FOV?

I'm glad I don't get motion sickness. The Navy would put us in there small boats and beat the hell out of us Air Force medics to see if we would puke, but I kept it down :)

A possible fix and it seems to work, when you get the "loading" bug where your game never connects and starts (usually after playing a match), remember to run the game in administrator mode instead of regular. Seems to have worked.

The motorcycles are fun as all get up!

Still not sold on getting Battlefield 4 pre-order even if I get gear and beta...which means I'll probably buy it for Christmas.

I got the game, pretty good so far, able to log in, find a server, and play w/o crashing. I do have to set everything to low. I'll post more next week, I'm actually off a bit and can play it.

Fired this up tonight. It looks great and runs darn good on my aging 6970 with everything on high @ 1900x1200. I am rusty as hell but it's got my attention enough that I'm already considering adding Premium. Crashed once after an hour or 2 of multiplayer. I began with the single player campaign a bit and thoroughly enjoying that so far, though I may attribute that to not having playing a military shooter in quite some time so I was due.
Origin still blows as much, if not more, than ever.  :oh_i_see: I know, I know, EA evil whatever blah blah, I don't care this game is rockin' so far.

Not familiar enough to know the map names yet but the MP map that's a bunch of small islands and there's a massive storm happening... sideways rain, clouds of gloom and doom, insane ocean waves... it's just visually stunning to me for a MP FPS.

That's the one where the ship washes up on shore, I think. Yeah. Badass.

Battlefield Friends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQw65XZ9Tm8

And now in BF4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6I27mJyZi0&list=PL5EFADE5F1A6F7492

Can't wait for the Easter Eggs to appear.

Those are great.

How many here are playing this? Is it fun?

Its a battlefield game, it's fun if you like that stuff.  So far it seems pretty good, the destructible environments are crazy.

Well, of course. But with BF 3 the common consensus was "Not as good as BF 2 BC" so I was curious if there is a similar judgment out about it already.

Better than BF3, still not as good as BC2.

Sooo... for the PC version... does one still need to use a web browser to select/switch servers, as in BF3?

Yes  :uhrr:

On the positive side the single player campaign (on pc) looks very impressive with all the environment getting destroyed etc.

Okay, then I'll stick with BFBC2 for yet another couple of years. I refuse to reward EA for such silly features (though I doubt they'll notice my silent protest).

Thats pretty much why I stopped playing.  It was stupid, unnecessary and annoying.

Hell, it uses the browser for the single player campaign.

Was a dealbreaker for me in BF3, still a dealbreaker in BF4. I know it is a minor thing, but I find it irritating and I don't want to deal with it. Not buying.

The campaign in BF4 is somehow more asinine and stupid than BF3's which I didn't know was possible.

Game itself is fun. I dunno why people hold BC2 on such a pedestal when BF3 was still better and this is moreso.

I've only watched some videos of this game, but I love the dude with 20 American flags sewn on his uniform. They must be doing it on purpose.

If anyone's on the fence still, be warned that it's server crashy as fuck, and you lose/re-earn a ton of progress due to that. Right now I'm at about a 30% chance of the server randomly crashing during a map.

Wub wub.

I'll wait till next year, when the better game comes out.

Yeh it crashes.  sometimes you get sound bugs.  clipping on walls is a little funny at times, what would be an easy vault in bf3 sometimes takes a couple of attempts because your character can't get his feet up.

but this game is better than bf3, and less grindy (ie unlocks quicker it feels).  when they patch the bugs out i'll be happier, but for now i'm really enjoying myself, some of the maps aren't fun (locker) but mostly they are large and fun (hainan, rogue trans, paracel storm are my favourites).

haven't touched singleplay.  maybe at some stage i'll do it to get the weapon unlocks... but... probably not.

I'd be all "oooh lets play together" but i'm in aus.  anyone in aus looking to play, hit me up (on origin i'm 'avalacos').  I hate battlelog.

I never got to play BF 1942 or BF Vietnam, played the hell out of BF2, BF 2142, BF BC 2, and BF3. Even played the BF 1943, BF, and BF BC 2 on xbox 360. Battlefield Bad Company 2 was okay in that on pc we had some big battles but the fucked up the vehicles and started dumbing down the classes. BF3 got the vehicles and big maps right, but made it dull looking with all the tan and gray colors...miss the jungle or green look of BF2.

All Battlefield games are buggy as hell on release. It doomed BF2142 with all the freaking bugs. Got like a great review of like a 9 out of 10 by a alot of sites, but then when you would play it the bugs would drive you crazy!

Oh, if you wait and buy a Playstation 4 or Xbox One, you can now have battles of 64 players. Pretty cool that the new make up is 5 man squads x 6 (30 players in squads) and 2 commanders. I've not tried the commanders slot out yet. I've not tried all the play styles out, conquest is still there, haven't had a chance to try team deathmatch or rush yet. Not sure if capture the flag is in or not yet.

The freaking weather is sweet! That islands map with the shipwreck is sweet, especially as the weather goes nuts as the tickets grind down.

I have never played the single player campaigns in these games. I get the BF games for the multi player.

Oh DICE is developing the Star Wars version called Battlefront. Another fuck ya!

I've been having tons of fun with this.  Don't even mind the unlock scheme or the battle packs or all that.

But holy fucking shit, there's so many crashes.

You should give BC2's SP a go. It's pretty good and doesn't take itself seriously. It's not a COD-alike like BF3's SP is (I never finished BF3 SP, but played through BC2 more than once)

I may be getting too old for these games. Everything seems so fast and overwhelming. I have been having fun when I play, but I am not terribly effective  :cry: :cry:

They always feel that way until you learn the maps and the weapons / mechanics.

playing very aggressive helps if you don't know the hundreds of sniper nests of each map off by heart. I was getting annoyed playing BF3 at all the camping when I was trying to carefully advance with an assault rifle, so then I grabbed a shotgun and just started sprinting into houses and getting the jump on all the guys who liked sitting by those windows. It really boosted my scores.

Some of those automatic shotguns are beastly, even the pump ones too with stuff like explosive shells. Sub machine guns can do the job too.

PS2 is free and the battles are bigger.  Just saying.

PS2 is not nearly as fun as BF3, much less BFBC2. Just saying.

BF isn't just about the size of the battles. DICE can't code for shit, but they are really good at making a compelling combined arms experience.

For once the BF server browser isn't shit! This time it's the servers themselves <3

So there's a bug where if you use a specific gun and put a silencer on it, when you fire it you knock out sound for everyone on the server. No joke.

Great job on Q&A Dice!

Best silencer ever, imo.

If the sever or game crashes do i lose all my points for that round?

If BF3 was the measure, yes.

Yes, which wouldnt matter except they put in all these progression gates to stretch out the game.

Wow, spent the day yesterday playing the single player and finished it. Replayed the last segment (there are 7) to get a different unlock for multi player. It unlocks 2 knives, 1 pistol, 1 pdw (smg), 1 assault rifle, and 1 lmg if you play the last episode with different endings. Not bad, but not great. DICE quality control is freaking wonky!

The M249 SAW that I unlocked is a beast after I upgraded it.

Unfortunately, the code is nutz. Levelcap was commenting on it too, where you can be hidden but then get killed. Almost as crazy as Planetside 2 spazm when you can have great days and bad day of internet lag/code/who knows what else. Where you can be hitting everything from insane ranges and killing them easy, to wtf, why am i dumping a full clip into them and not killing them.

I'm pretty stoked on buying a playstation 4 now, just because of this game and Planetside 2, plus Sony does have a big production factory in my town, so I guess I should root for the local team.

Why would they make unlockable knives? It's already a one-shot kill, what do the unlocks add?

A bipod?

Dual wielding!

The knives that you unlock don't do anything different other than look cool. I'm running around with a machete!

My sound for my M249 is cool, it is the sound the mini-gun makes. I'm sure that is a bug, but for right now it is pretty cool, it starts off like the whirl then buzz! Doesn't affect the bullet speed or damage, just has a wrong sound on it. YA! DICE sucks at QA.

Figures the one match i play like Rambo is the one that crashes right near the end.

Yup.

The BF4 Axiom.

Went 8800 as Assault, unlocked tons of stuff, got a star, tons of ribbons, 30 tickets left - CTD.

(http://i.minus.com/imtwnfuAPtilV.gif)

Video shows only a person who doesn't understand cone of accuracy, or spread while holding down a fully automatic spray.  It's not hit scan, just because the cross-hairs are on something doesn't mean that's where the bullets are going to go. If you pay attention to the background you can see the ridiculous spread caused by moving without stopping and then launching right into a fully automatic spray.

The game has many issues that people can use to tear it down. With everything that is actually broken, I get frustrated seeing videos like that, that illustrate only that the person doing the recording is retarded at shooters.

I've been playing, and yeah hosing is bad but there is no fucking way on earth that guy missed with every single shot. The netcode is shit.

Yeah, I agree with you. I re-read my post and I didn't mean for it to be super defensive.

(http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Knife-With-Scope-And-Red-Dot-Sight.jpg)

Video shows the enemy had 13 health at the end. Makes sense to me. The recorder was one shot short of winning that sprayfest.

Speaking of which, I've been rocking a .4 K:D ratio in this game so far while learning (rank 4 now). But last night I jumped into a map and killed 6 people before my first death, 4 of them with a pistol. Man did I feel awesome about that.

(http://i.imgur.com/9DtyXjm.gif)

I'll wait for this to (inevitably) reach the 5 dollar bargain bin.

Yay, more screenies of pubbies being bad!

Picked this up a couple of days ago; seems fine so far. Apart from the occasional crash, and the visual clutter, game is pretty decent. If anything, hit detection seems more crisp than BF3.

Having said that though, class balance is just a little bit wonky. Assault gets an incredibly good automatic right off the bat, with the support coming in second, whereas the other two classes are stuck for a while until some unlocks. Also, the 'battlepack' and unlock systems are arse.

I keep reminding myself of this when these new versions come out. I don't have the time to put into learning all the crap you need to know to enjoy a video game anymore. It's not like I'm single with a big sack of weed and all night to play BF1942 with a clan of buddies anymore.

Know thyself.

Heh, I realized that years ago when I first started getting my ass handed to me.  It's one of the primary reasons I'm not happy with the push for multiplayer everything and single player nothing in games. New hobbies await.

So, uh, is there some trick to the server browser? It's giving me about three servers that have anyone playing.

edit: finally found a good UK server. Why is it that the Germans always want to play infantry only on cramped maps and everyone plays like they're on drugs?

Couple of hours in now, I seem to be doing better than in BF3. The mechanics of the thing are still completely retarded and a whole lot of weapons completely useless for no apparent reason, but flanking still mostly works and the game is quite a spectacle. Might even go single player this time, given that there's burning warships and stuff.

The single player campaign looks great but the story is terrible. I've been having a lot of fun in multiplayer, but I'M terrible.  :grin:

I don't think I'll ever be great at FPS games. My reflexes are just too slow these days. Still, I'll happily handicap our team if I'm having fun.

That's why tanks are good. It's like they were made for us old people.

Oh man, I tried the campaign and it immediately slapped me in the face with two major bugs. One, accidentally hitting the console key can lock up the game. Two, there is no way to use binoculars even though get a pair in the first five minutes. This partially stems from a bug also present in multiplayer where if you change the default keybinds, it breaks the key prompts. But I also discovered that there is no way to use the binoculars even on a 360 controller.

I'll stick to multiplayer.

Oh wow. I just unlocked mortars...

 :ye_gods:

Just finished a match 12:0... Feels like cheating.

(http://www.gotokyo.org/shared/templates/free/images/contents/info/pseat_01.jpg)

Should put those signs on the tanks. ;)

The Mobile AA is great too (even I can get a bunch of kills on that). As a bonus I quite enjoy taking out helicopters and planes.

Hey Satael, it was nice squadding with you! Even though I constantly got lost. That one tank run was epic.

On the subject of AA tanks, seems to me the aircraft are made out of adamantium, 36 hits from the vulcan and it's still not down.

Some further observations, all negative because fuck EA:

- map structure is really incoherent, you often can't sit still for 30 seconds without someone sneaking up behind you. I don't like this run-in-circles game design. BFBC1 or 2 had it much better with shifting battle lines.
- spawning is dumb. Why does the game plant you at a random spot looking in a random direction? It's not uncommon to spawn with you back to the enemy.
- netcode is still shit. Some players seem to have death rays for guns and others can't hit anything. The one time I snuck up on a sniper, I spent 30 seconds wildly flailing at him with my knife and nothing happened. I ended up having to shoot him.
- tanks and IFVs are way too mobile. They're more like battlesuits the way they function right now. Did the devs see Titanfall or something?

edit: also, can't play after 10pm. All the nolifers come out at that point and the "noobs" start flying in the chat. Probably in the voice chat too but I don't know how it works.

Go to Game Options (or something) and set the "Network Smoothing" slider down to zero. Should help.

Oh right, I had forgotten about that feature of BF. Thanks!

I did it and five minutes later I headshotted a helo driver. Is such a thing even possible?

Yes it is.

Ugh, the honeymoon is over even before it begun. Tonight's been utterly unplayable. It shows I have ping of around 15 but I can't run without stuttering and whenever I die I either warp back several meters or alternatively the shot comes from out of LOS on the kill cam.

I knew I shouldn't have bought anything made by DICE/EA.

edit: also, the game is full of invisible walls and vaulting over obstacles fails most of the time. These were not present in BF3 to me, so I guess they're regressing with their netcode?

I'm not seeing any invisible walls, and whilst vaulting is 'iffy', it works more often than not for me - is this is a particular server you've been having problems with perhaps?

Naw, it's all of them. Seriously, I just ragequit because I ran through some branches, then tried to come back and got stuck in the same branches and got killed. Though the real reason for raging was the spawn system, which I hate. On many maps you can't spawn anywhere with an enemy presence, you'll just end up next to the enemy looking away.  

edit: and on the flood map, I literally was unable to run to the park with the bridge. There was a line in the sand my dude wouldn't cross. Had to circle around and come from the water.

It does seem to sound like a server issue. I know personally the vaulting can be a bit glitchy, but it tends to happen in fairly specific places - such as the low rubble walls of a collapsed building. I know, for example, that I won't be able to cleanly vault over those. Rubberbanding issues can be either server (likely), or an unstable connection on your end.

Well I've only played on like three servers, so might be that. I searched for a bunch of new ones just in case.

It still has horrible netcode. They made it way different then BF3. In BF3, I could actually play the game, in BF4 is sure seems like, spawn, killed by a sniper from behind cover from across the map. The support LMG suck, you can't move and flank people with out exposing yourself, that could be a map design or net code (or both), it just doesn't feel right.

I'm glad they made some changes, like not making you rez with full health (as medic trains could rip apart a rush map), giving recon the ability to counter armor with c-4 or other gadgets, improving the camo and weapon attachments. How it plays is horrible compared to other Battlefield titles.

Maybe when they do the patch for the netcode it will be better...hopefully.

Haha, I shot my sniper at a player who was afk. First round hit, pull the bolt, second round in the exact same spot, no hit. It's like you have to test the waters when playing, if you can't hit then it's bail out time.

edit: another thing I learned, everything flying is basically immune to the Stinger because it can stay at range with impunity, or fire flares and go out of range. The AC-130 flies higher than the Stinger's max range. I can't believe this stuff. I can maybe see Stinger getting some use if you voice coordinate a whole team of Engineers, but that's once again games design for catpissmen.

The Battlefield 4 ipad app is out now that lets you play commander.

I have been playing sporadically, but it really isn't grabbing me. Part of that is the sheer magnitude of all the unlocks and progression. I didn't spring from premium, so I it takes fucking forever to unlock anything. I can't decide on a path I want to concentrate on, so I end up bouncing around and unlocking approximately dick.

Made aiming a bit easier for myself today. The game has mouse acceleration on by default, and to remedy it I found this:

Commander in BF4 is actually really well done (especially when I can do it in bed on my iPad). BF2142 had commanders, but it was bullshit. You could "command" squads around and hoped they did shit for you, which they never did. In BF4 you can direct squads around if you want, but it's equally impotent. Instead, the commander has a bunch of actually powerful and game-changing abilities:

* Scan UAV: you can choose an area where all enemies will be automatically be marked. It has a short cooldown and you can keep it up 95% of the time.
* EMP UAV: Blocks enemy Scan UAV, prevents spotting, blows up cruise missiles that cross its path
* Cruise Missile: Takes like 10-20 seconds, depending on map, to arrive. But when it does it blows every enemy up in a large area, regardless of cover and altitude.
* Evac Order: When the *other* commander launches a cruise missile, you can always see its trajectory. If you plop an Evac Order where it will land, anyone within kill radius gets this incredible on-screen red ass warning GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE plus ear piecing warning alarms. I've found this to be pretty effective in making people GTFO
* High Valued Target: if an enemy gets a 6+ kill streak, you can plunk him with this which makes him perma-spotted and gives bonuses to anyone who kills him (and you)

There's other shit like ammo drop, squad upgrade, scans, etc. Those are all details. Point is, they made commander an actually really intense, constant action thing which has real impact on the game. On the other hand, it really depends on certain gameplay modes and only gets better with more people. Given a good map, good gameplay mode, and 48-64 people, you can expect to end up in the top 1-5 score-wise, so it's rewarding. Gameplay mode: only play commander on Obliteration or Rush. The skills available to Commanders greatly depend on HIGH concentrations of people in one spot. Tighter maps are better due to higher density. Operation Locker and Flood Zone are great in either mode due to the incredibly limited area. I've managed #1 scoring a few times on that map as Commander. If you're good at landing cruise missiles then most maps on Obliteration can be pretty high scoring.

Note on iPad: it requires a ridiculous amount of dragging shit around. Commanding on PC is way easier. But there's also this kind of visceral rewarding feeling of dragging shit on people... so whatever. Also iPad goes to my bed and my PC does not. Further problem: there's no server selection on iPad. You just keep hitting PLAY and CANCEL until you find a server with the right game mode and players and map and whatnot. I suspect this is just a "we rushed this shit out the door and will fix it soon" thing, so I'm not angry. I can usually find an Obliteration or Rush with a fuckload of people within 10 tries (in bed) so I'm not about to uprise just yet.

Looks like the mouse fix worked, I no longer have trouble hitting people. I was on a new server though, so maybe that has something to do with it as well.

I must also take back a lot I said about the Stinger. Shot down a dozen or so aircraft with it last night, the trick is to make people panic and launch their countermeasures by locking on but not firing. Even so, a good player can hang back and kill stuff without risk.

 

Not sure if you can do it with the stinger, but with IGLA you can fire at them, hit reload and look away, then relock on them and fire again which causes first missile to re lock and second missile to hit them simultaneously.  Usually after they've blown flares on first lock.

Ok, I think my problems are server based. The one I used to play on most, Webhallen 1, superficially has a really good ping, but it's no good to me. I get instagibbed (ie. damage doesn't show on screen until it's fatal) and opponents mysteriously avoid getting hit even when I get the drop on them. Just now a dude warped forward while I shot at him, then warped right back to shoot at me. None of this happened on the random German server I found.

A real pity, since those servers get a lot of play.

edit: which reminds me of my "favorite" cheat on Counter Strike back in the day. If you get jumped, spam the screenshot button and the game will chug badly, making you move really erratically from the opponent's POV.

jakonovski, should I get this?

It seems the "Ehh! Bargain bin 2015" faction has the right idea about this game. But then I log into BF BC2 and it's all  lvl 100 colonels with their shitbuckets (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR4s4QswGS4) that slaughter the opposing team. Feels like in BF4 might be easier to swim with the unskilled masses.

Welp, this was clearly released way too early because of all the terrible bugs, but the core is still good. Casuals always tend to play the latest game, so I'm starting to think buying the yearly updates is just part of the price of admission for fps multiplayer unless one is a poopsocker (is this the f13 approved term?).

Also, for all the whining I've been doing, my gameplay clock shows I've put in 16 hours in one week.

Had a massive lol today. Someone accused me of aim botting because I went 21 and 0. The catch... I was playing commander, on my ipad, in bed. I guess they just saw my score and assumed. I have to admit, was having a hell of a good time with cruise missiles and did end up as top scorerl. Hilarious.

I've seen people use cruise missiles maybe three times, probably because you have no way of knowing they even exist unless you go digging for information. This game has hands down the worst documentation ever.

They're really hard to use. You launch them to a given spot and it takes 10+ seconds for them to reach there and blow up, so it's hard to hit people (and you only get one try per 3-5 minutes). You have to either guess where people are or guess people will stay where they were. I've had the best luck launching at spawn beacons, which squads tend to congregate around (you can see the squad beacon icon). To get 21 kills as commander in one map is basically ridiculous... it requires getting multikills every time. This is part of why I say you need to do commander only on obliteration or rush... you need a lot of people close together to get the points. Also, you don't always have access to launch missiles in other modes. On rush and obliteration you start off being able to launch missiles (depending on map), but on conquest your team needs to own the middle node, which is always contested.

I'll have to withdraw any recommendation I may have had for this game. DICE did something and now I can't play more than five minutes without crashing. The game is simply unplayably broken.

Jakonovski - the crashing could be a host of issues but i found that the last patch reset my video settings from borderless to fullscreen, changing it back stopped the crashes (like it did in beta).

There was also talk of updating drivers for graphics card, a windows update and old realtek drivers all contributing to sporadic crashes.  But yeh, not happy with this last patch, sounds like it broke the people who weren't broke and fixed some of the people who were...

I was fine until this afternoon then it's about the same - 5 mins or so then crash.

I've narrowed things down, the Shanghai map is a guaranteed crash within 5 minutes, others I've tried are often stable until new map, at which point it usually crashes.

Got this too. First crash after an hour. It does seem nice (I like the sound, improvement over BF 2)  although not really a game I'd enjoy playing alone all time. Time to find some friends, I guess.

If you're west coast or play on central servers, add me: Nijasan

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/user/Nijasan/

Same. http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/user/Nessanie

(Someone took Calapine before me. *sad*)

Yay, a new problem! DICE once again "fixed" something and now my ping is fucked to the hundreds on at least two servers that used to work fine. The best part of this shitfest is that the game's own ping counter shows normal latency, all the way until the server boots me for high ping.

edit: funny thing, I tried being a medic for a while. Currently it's pretty much more convenient to respawn than to accept a revive on most maps. Really dumb.

edit2: tried a third server. Was shooting at a dude with my APC HMG, got a kill assist before the dude was dead. Quit immediately. Right now the game's been absolute dogshit for a third of the time I've had it.

 

I think you have officially earned the coveted "punching yourself in the dick" masochism award for the thread Jak.

I wonder did they optomise for consoles.

I know right, I have this dysfunction that if I buy something full price I feel obligated to "enjoy" it even if it's dick punching. Venting about it on forums is the best part.

Anyway, from what I hear the (new gen) console versions are worse in terms of bugs, although I suspect EA will concentrate on fixing them first (been 2 weeks now without a pc patch, no problems fixed). Old console versions are slideshows on top of all the other problems.

edit: I guess one has to count their blessings, the PS4 version launched without a working Conquest mode and still has save corruption bugs that wipe progress in the single player.

editforthenewday: found yet another bug, on some maps the graphics break if you do the levelution thing. My game suddenly became a slideshow for no apparent reason and I had to reset all the graphics settings to get it working. Also, the graphics options are labeled wrong. Medium is ultra and vice versa. DICE hasn't even fixed that.

yetanotheredit: the latency/desynch problem seems to have become a permanent feature for me. I often just plain cannot hit anyone, even if they're standing in front of me (usually they kill me before I see them, making it look like a dude appears and I die from a single shot that is never fired). These games have essentially become a scam, they hope to catch you by making you pay up front before you realize the game is broken. After that, you're no longer a customer.

BF4 is a buggy piece of shit. Through and through.

However. There are moments. There are moments.

(http://i.imgur.com/iCsnE2S.gif)

That is the final engineer class unlock. The SRAW, a wire guided thing that will travel to the last aimed-at object in your view finder. Affectionately known as the RAWDOG to my friends and myself, it's a high skill weapon that has devastating results when used correctly.

In fact, how due to how the view finder / last lock works, you can fire a projectile straight up in the air (while zoomed in) and then reload it. After the reload completes, aim at your target and fire a second round. If the target is stationary, put the launcher away. Your work is complete. You should now have two hits on that vehicle, with the later one streaking in seemingly from outer space.

It's amazing when performed correctly. As featured here: http://www.twitch.tv/thesnomann/c/3272349 (http://www.twitch.tv/thesnomann/c/3272349) That guy calls is a wombo combo, which is the incorrect name. The correct name is the DOUBLE DOG.

I'm nowhere near getting that, I just got to try canted sights for my Recon, after unlocking it without actually being able to use it for like three games.

Anyway, those moments are indeed why people play this terrible abortion of a game. But that launcher thing sounds like something I'll be never able to do. Just today I learned that the airburst launcher is supposed to actually airburst. Someone raved how great it is to shoot past roof tops to get at the snipers hiding. Welp, doesn't work for me. The thing won't lock onto a building matter how many times I try.


 

Airburst doesn't lock. It detects flesh within something like 3m and explodes. Simply aim above where the enemy is hiding. You also have to account for drop, as it's a projectile not unlike a 40mm grenade.

You can clearly see the projectile arc while aiming with its NV scope.

Are you sure? The wikis seem to support the lock on theory. Anyway, this is what happens when a complex game has no manual. Anything can be fucked because you have no way to know if it's meant to do that or not.
 
http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/XM25

edit: found a video. Seems like you have to lock in hip fire mode for some godawful stupid reason.  :uhrr:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aII-uCZoxSQ&feature=c4-overview&list=UUic79WdIerj8RpcshGi5ZiA

I'm a sucker and an idiot. This was on half off so I bought the Digital Deluxe Edition and it's downloading now. I'm sure regret will be my middle name.

I can't believe that me squealing like a stuck pig has made multiple people buy this game.  :ye_gods:

Call of Duty: Ghosts does not have dedicated servers so that rules out that game for latest-gen MP modern military shooters.

It might say lock, but did you see how he simply aimed above him? It's not like a lock on rocket or anything. It slings grenades at things. Figure it out!

I didn't want to correct you earlier because you were fairly close in your assumption about how it operated.

It works in two different ways. The first way is a standard grenade launcher (this method is lower damage) to use this method you do not look through the scope. This method it just explodes on impact and does not burst.

Method two:
1. Before you look through the scope, put the top of the marker on what ever cover the enemy is hiding behind. (pretty sure the minimum range for locking in the distance is like 30ish meters, but may be shorter)
2. While holding the sighting line on the cover, look through the scope and verify that it says "Locked"
3. Now, while looking through the scope, move the sighting lines slightly beyond the point of cover you are aiming at and pull the trigger, the airburst round will travel 3 meters beyond the distance that you have locked it and it will detonate with the higher damage air burst.

The difference between knowing how to use this and just firing it assuming you know is night and day.

It being half-off and a bunch of my buddies in real life getting it is what made me get it. At least I didn't pay full price.  :oh_i_see:

I managed to get it for the super-discounted US-amazon price of $25, which works out to about 70% off the local price. Not sure if it was money well spent, since it's buggy and simply not as fun as BF3 (or BFBC2 by a mile). Dunno. I'll play a bit for the double-xp week and after that I might let it sit and get patched for a month or so... It seems even more COD-spammy than BF3, though. Which is not awesome.

Tonight was terribad lag for the whole server, so I did pretty much the best I've ever done. Welcome to my world, bitches!

I've been playing more Planetside 2, but you all can add me, it is jahayne1969 http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/user/jahayne1969/

Is planetside 2 fun? Been thinking of giving it a whirl.

Just playing this with jakonvski. I feel absolutly useless. I run around, suddenly get shot and die. Rez and repeat. Seems I have zero situtional awerness... Best tactic so far is staying behind someone and tossing them health packs. I run into 85% less ambushes that way.

Tech wise, BF 4 is having a nice huge memory leak for me. After an hour gameplay my task manager looked like this

(http://i.imgur.com/xAYawGG.png)

17,2 GB commit, 100% usage on my SSD as it's try to keep up with swapping. Closing BF 4 does nothing, only a complete PC reboot fixes it.  :uhrr:

That was great fun Calapine, despite DICE doing their best to prevent us from playing.

I just discovered mortars in those last couple of games, they're pretty rad. It's truly an old person's weapon!

edit: have to post this, the best error message ever!

It is nice to be able to sip tea with one hand, while playing a point-and-click adventure with the other.

That's because battlefield is used to working against Ze Germans.  :awesome_for_real:

Well, it is free to try so give it a whirl.  The download is about 9gb I think, if that matters to you.

Also, Station Cash is 25% off today (Cyber Monday).  Having a bit of cash to buy beyond the default weapons can help the fun, if you aren't adverse.

TR is the best faction to start with - as much as it hurts me to say it.  Feel free to PM me with any questions about weapons.

I played a bunch of this over the weekend. Goddamn it really is buggy (though that gets fixed eventually with DICE - so glad I didn't pay full price). But, it is a damn sight better than BF3. The maps are just plain better. On BF3, at least half the maps were unfun. I haven't found one map I truly hate yet. Even the close quarters type, Operation Locker, is fun, with multiple paths to and around chokepoints. It is SO much better than a map like Metro that it's not even funny.

Don't worry, DICE is re-releasing most BF3 maps in a couple of months as DLC.  :why_so_serious:

Is that the China Rising expansion? If it's the Karkand maps, those are good. Stuff like Metro and all the Close Quarters maps? They can fuck right off.

No, it's the one after China Rising. All I know is that Metro is confirmed to be in there.

I will cut a bitch.  :mob:

Oh man, Dice is really putting on the clownshoes. My lag has randomly started spiking to 500-800, which is of course unplayable. I've been trying to search for solutions online, but in the retarded vernacular of our day, "latency" and "lag" are synonymous with framerate.

Is that to all servers? Start an infinite ping while playing and watch what happens there. ping -t 4.2.2.2

So the game seems like it could be fun...if it didn't take so long to load in, and then Origin gives me shit about my account being logged into another device.

I have 2x authorization enabled, changed all the passwords - I think it's just something weird with my apartment's shared internet.

Also, indoor maps are shit - just devolves into grenade spam.

I take it you met Metro Mk2. That map is actually well done, but unplayable with more than 24 people or so because all the attack routes become clusterfucks instead of flanking routes.

And dear god, I can't believe they're bringing Metro itself back.

It was a cold prison map - not sure of the name.

Also, part of the problem is that we picked a server with a ton of regulars stacking one side.

Without the intention of downplaying everyone's poor experiences, I am super happy that for me the game play has been amazing and the game's actual performance has been good.  I know there are some people though who have horrible problems.

I think it makes a huge difference that I have several clans I have been in and friends with for almost twenty years.

Was discussing this last night w/ a bud.

This game is super fun when it works.  I've had less problems now, but its still super frustrating to get a 12000 round and get D/C near the end.

If you get disconnected, do not reconnect to the server until it changes rounds. You keep your points that way. You can even connect to other servers while you wait.

Only two things cause point loss. Server crash and reconnecting before the round is finished.

My connection melted down late last night, so I'm chalking this one up to the ISP.


edit: looks like EA has split the player base early. I bought the Digital Deluxe Edition with China Rising, but because I didn't buy Premium for double the price, I can't play the fucking thing for two weeks. And guess what, just about every good server is running China Rising as of today. Yeah, my 60€ apparently lasted two weeks. Fuck this bullshit game.

edit2: I guess I'm not missing much. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EobFvNEVzQw

edit3: aaaaand 5 minutes into the new patch, my game crashes. Fuck you EA and Dice, truly, fuck you.

editoftheforever: PS4 users get the short end again, patch is delayed. There are people who paid €120 (160usd) to play China Rising today, and EA is pulling a fast one on them. That is hardcore.

Noticed that today too.  Guess I'm on an extended break from the game.

Whee, the whole thing is utterly fucked, with China Rising maps running on non-China Rising servers, making stuff crash even more. So looks like an extended break for me as well, and at that point I'll most likely have moved on. Such a scam this game was, never thought they'd actively attempt to destroy the playerbase a month in, in order to get people to pay double for the game.

Explain that video.  Why is no one getting hurt from point blank shots?

Broken geometry boundaries probably. The game thinks the dude is inside a rock.

Really starting to enjoy this. The starting guns are utter shit for the most part, but now that I'm unlocking things, kill counts are going up. One big change from previous versions is that defibs and repair tools are UTTERLY FUCKING WORTHLESS. You might as well paint a big "KILL ME" sign on yourself when you use one because tanks aren't going to stand around for your repairs and anyone that needs a defib is usually in a position where rezzing them will just result in your own death AND THEN the guy you rezzed will die again. I don't even bother bringing it anymore.

Operation Locker is the prison/grenade spam/close quarters map and unlike Metro (FUCK YOU), I really enjoy it. There are at least 3-4 ways into and out of any choke point that gets clogged, so long as your teammates can remember not to keep running down the same hall they've been blown up in five times previous.

For the linguists:

(http://abload.de/img/betalkrdm.png)

Haemish, play engineer until you unlock Carbines. Carbines can be used on all classes.

The first carbine, the AK 5C, is one of the best guns in the game. Play locker using carbines (with every class) until you get the ACE 52 CQB.

The ACE 52 CQB is the best gun in the game, and in the middle of the carbine unlocks.

This mean speaks the truth.

ACE 52 CQB ftw...

The China Rising maps are pretty meh overall.  Pretty disappointing given how good the base maps are (minus Locker which can go fuck itself).  Golmud Railway on rush is probably the most fun I've had in battlefield since Bad Company 2.

That's not how you spell AK12-U .....

I don't mind Metro - though not as a map but a place to grind unlocks. I've since found that Noshahir Docks is better, though..

That seems to be true. Running around solo among 64 people, stuff blowing up around you everywhere, starts to feel to pointless pretty quick. Going in as a team, coordinating, probably feels like an entire different game.

Time to make friends, I guess.  :oh_i_see:

I had pretty bad stability until I switched over from the 64 to the 32 bit game client.  The game has been rock solid for me since then.  If there are any differences visually I'm sure not noticing them and I have everything cranked to the maximum.

How do you choose which client to use?  Battlelog seems to do what it pleases.

Well, these days all western forces look pretty much the same (and even the Russians, etc are almost entirely there as well). The main points of differentiation are the weapons (which are also very similar - and irrelevent in BF anyway) and the little flag patch on your shoulder, which you can custom-make anyway.



Add me guys, I've played on a German server recently, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected lagwise.

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/user/Azazel_AU/

Origin > Rightclick BF 4 > Game Properties

Or using the different .exes directly (bf4.exe and bf4_x86.exe)

Battlefield Mythbusters (Youtube): German (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlhDMnLzCKk&feature=share&list=SPMJkKpsLm2JOUt48sm6XuObP9Vx9pbpeq) / English (http://youtu.be/YtrI-IbVz7g)



(http://i.imgur.com/z72Dj2N.jpg)

 :awesome_for_real:

DICE has halted development/release of all expansions to work on resolving the issues with BF4. Probably having literally 5 versions of the same game is the problem. Also DICE.

And the netcode is fucking horrible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai656sdq8rc

If levelcap is complaining about it, it's bad.

Betafail 4

Finally unlocked a sniper rifle beyond the default one. Holy shit, what a difference.

Article about this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/12/05/electronic-arts-tanks-after-hitting-reset-on-battlefield-4/



I haven't been seeing any issues that people are talking about (on the PC) aside from servers occasionally crashing on map rotation.

One thing that was pointed out to me -- levelution is missing in the China Rising maps. Kinda weak and a sign of how much of a rush job this whole thing is.

edit: oh my god, I just read up and when the devs put in "HE shell" they mean HEAT shell. And it's apparently the higher damage than AP shell. I guess such idiocy is par of the course for pseudo-military enthusiast games, but damn.

The China Rising expansion is now available for everybody. I played all 4 maps once last night and it was spectacular. The game is still buggy but it's gotten a lot more stable and I am having an absolute blast with it. It was everything I had hoped BF3 would be but wasn't.

By "everybody" do you mean only premium players with the limited edition crowd having had their weeks or whatever of exclusivity or actually everybody (as an apology?) since the launch and game have been such a clusterfuck as usual?

I think "everyone" is everyone that wasn't dumn enough to pay double the price for beta-ing the maps for a couple of weeks.

This. If you bought the Deluxe Edition but not a Premium membership, you got it today. It's also available for sale to everyone today as well.

42 hours played and counting. Having a blast.

EA is having a sale of Battlefield 4 Digital Deluxe edition on Origin just for today for $34.99. This is different than the ongoing sale for BF 4 DDE on their regular sale page which is at $48.99. You have to add the game from the special "Featured Today" popup that opens when Origin launches -- you can't get to this special sale any other way that I've found thanks to their horrible UI design.

That is actually tempting. I loathe to give EA money but I already skipped BF3 and my PC might even be able to run this smoothly now.
And if they are really on their way to improve the game/swat the bugs, I can write this off as positive reinforcement.

How long is "today" ? I am at work right now so I can't pull the trigger for the next few hours at least.

EA is in California so I would think it will run till midnight Pacific Time so another 4 hours.

(http://i.imgur.com/nuV3Xcl.png)

btw, you Really need to to something about that other guy...

(http://i.imgur.com/lVOs09W.png)

:ye_gods:
 :heartbreak:
 :awesome_for_real: