Battlefield 3

[Engels]

Got into some early beta for having bought the turd Medal of Honor back in the day. Not sure if I should bother with it, hoping others will let me know how it goes.

[Surlyboi]

Playing it now. Wondering how the fuck some people catassed so high already.

[tgr]

Apparently they are having quite the meltdown with the PC version.

Some moderate DICE comedy so far, with being unable to change any settings until you join a game, like video settings, so servers are filled with people fucking around on first time configs. Apparently the matching website thing is also imploding and people can't join servers that have people.

I'm staying away from this because of origin unless it's truly the second coming. I'll give it a while to even out.

Sigh. Clownshoes. You'd think they'd learn.

One thing I began wondering about, however, is whether or not the beta has SP in it, or is it just MP? I'm assuming it's MP only.

[TripleDES]

So yeah, I was just trying to find out about the release date of BF3, landed on Wikipedia via Google, started skimming the article and read about the web browser MP launcher. I thought what-the-fuck, came here and see it confirmed. What in the fuck!

What was this about DICE and EA hailing this as the return to PC gaming with their 1337 DX11 engine, just to fuck it up this way?! 

[snowwy]

According to people that use it it's fabulous. Make a group, join a server, friends and you put in same squad, no worries. Just got back from work. Time to fire this thing up 

[stu]

I'll be waiting for a sale before I purchase. BC2 still has a ton of game breaking bugs on the console.

[NiX]

So yeah, I was just trying to find out about the release date of BF3, landed on Wikipedia via Google, started skimming the article and read about the web browser MP launcher. I thought what-the-fuck, came here and see it confirmed. What in the fuck!

What was this about DICE and EA hailing this as the return to PC gaming with their 1337 DX11 engine, just to fuck it up this way?! 

Try it before bashing it. It's not some shitty java web version of a server browser. Apparently the time from website to being on the server is the same as doing it in-game. I don't know why they made this change, but getting caught up in the "THE FUCK IS THIS STUPID SHIT!?" nonsense isn't needed. Also, why was/is this an issue for people? I have yet to touch a DICE game with a decent server browser.

[Pennilenko]

Even though I pre-ordered before the 25th on origin, I still don't have my beta key email. Dropped repeatedly from the live chat customer service queue during my 6 hour wait. I get to within a couple of minute wait time of actually being able to talk to somebody and they bring the chat help down.

[NiX]

For some odd reason DICE decided they would release Caspian Border with the beta, but limit to a select group of testers with the server password. The password leaked last night and now DICE is blaming the community for possible ruining their chance at having the map unlocked for the rest of the public beta.

Serious business.

[tgr]

Babbies.

[Surlyboi]

How is babby leaked?

[snowwy]

How is babby leaked?

The babby was leaked by the CM himself apparently.

[Pennilenko]

Handle is Pennilenko if anyone wants to add me.

[Hawkbit]

Played on by PS3 and my 4-yr old PC (q6600, 4gig, 8800gtx).  My PC blows it away, looks better in every fashion.  I'd prefer to play on my couch, but the PC version is *that* much better.  Two things:

1.  Visually, this is one of those games that comes along and reminds me of how far we've come since Pong. 
2.  I suck at these games.  I think I went 0-8 each game.

[Xuri]

Tried playing the beta just now, and it turns out that I won't be buying BF3 any time soon since they're trying to force me to change my fucking browser just to play their game. 

"Your web browser is not fully supported, soldier!
You will be able to look around and talk to your friends, but not join their game."

[AcidCat]

1.  Visually, this is one of those games that comes along and reminds me of how far we've come since Pong. 

I think this is really contributing to how effective/frustrating camping seems to be from my experience tonight. There is just so much going on to visually process, it is really hard to spot some dude laying down in the bushes, even if you have a general idea where he is.

[kildorn]

This strikes me as another game where lowering your graphical settings improves your gameplay, because it's far easier to tell things apart. Like player vs bush.

It's fun, but dear lord the entire open origin for patching, open battle log for playing, open game itself for adjusting shit thing seems like there were three different dev teams with goals set before them, and nobody ever stopped to go "so does this IMPROVE the user experience at all?"

[Pennilenko]

It's fun, but dear lord the entire open origin for patching, open battle log for playing, open game itself for adjusting shit thing seems like there were three different dev teams with goals set before them, and nobody ever stopped to go "so does this IMPROVE the user experience at all?"

Battlelog will update the game and manage your social interaction and you have to mess with settings ingame in most games that have ever been made. You continue being dramatic though. I only used the origin software once. To download the beta.

[kildorn]

As far as I can figure out, BF3 will not properly launch without Origin running in the background.

I have never before played a game where I cannot change my video settings without actively being mid gameplay. It's made even funnier in BF3 in that you cannot change settings while dead, and if you die while changing settings, it cancels you out of the menu. I presume that will be fixed.

It's a three tier process for no reason. It's entirely obvious it was intended to be a two tier process, but Origin was stapled to the side to give people a reason to actually start Origin.

I just validated it actually. If you exit Origin, go to battlelog and join a game, it starts Origin so it can start BF3. Origin is doing the BF3 patching as well. Which makes sense, but begs the question: why the fuck isn't Battlelog just part of Origin? One of these pieces is completely useless and not improving the customer experience at all.

edit: it's not a bad game at all, it just seems like the team wanted to make a really neat game, and decided that interfaces are for pussies. Why exactly can't I choose my squad anymore? Why isn't there any obvious form of "here's the freaking mission map" besides the rather tiny mini radar thing? This is more a complaint on the 64 player sized maps, where it can be a bit hard to figure out how to get somewhere when you first start. A map would be awesome! Why doesn't battlelog have any form of connect timeout?

Basically: this is a DICE game through and through. Wonderful core gameplay. Everything else leaves you scratching your head.

[rk47]

[tgr]

I'm at the point where I'm tempted to troll the everliving fuck out of everyone who has to emphasize that they're "gamer girls".

[Hawkbit]

I suspect that people will use the single player campaign to edit video settings, so this will be less of an issue in a month.

[sinij]

Why are they pushing Origin so hard? To compete with Steam? With just 1 game?

If it forces origin to be always-on, there must be a reason - DRM, spyware or stealing your idle cycles... so what is exactly are they doing and why?

[Pennilenko]

If I log into the battlelog site, I don't see it starting origin up anywhere on my machine. As far as i can tell though you do use your origin credentials to log into battelog. The settings thing I am sure will get ironed out, or at least I hope so.

Edit: Nevermind I was wrong it does open origin. Sorry for calling you dramatic Kildorn.

[KallDrexx]

Some random forums are saying that the 360/PS3 demos intentionally have lower graphics for time the time being so that the demo was a smaller file size, and the full version will be better.

No clue on the validity of it.

[kildorn]

If I log into the battlelog site, I don't see it starting origin up anywhere on my machine. As far as i can tell though you do use your origin credentials to log into battelog. The settings thing I am sure will get ironed out, or at least I hope so.

Edit: Nevermind I was wrong it does open origin. Sorry for calling you dramatic Kildorn.

I am being dramatic about it, really. It's less offended by Origin and Battlelog, as much as this triggers my "Raar, this is blindingly inefficient for no reason" personal peeve. Like I said, the gameplay is great. It's everything about the interface(s) that just makes me twitch.

[Speedy Cerviche]

are they gonna open up that caspian map? infantry only maps are a very poor way to show off battlefield.

[Malakili]

are they gonna open up that caspian map? infantry only maps are a very poor way to show off battlefield.

They have a little, maybe only to some testers.   TB did a 2 part video on it yesterday, it looks pretty decent.

[HaemishM]

1.  Visually, this is one of those games that comes along and reminds me of how far we've come since Pong. 

I think this is really contributing to how effective/frustrating camping seems to be from my experience tonight. There is just so much going on to visually process, it is really hard to spot some dude laying down in the bushes, even if you have a general idea where he is.

I installed the beta on my work machine, which would be the only place I can play it until I can afford a new PC. Holy shit, is it visually dense. This is one of the reasons I suck so bad early on. Training my eye to distinguish some camoed dude in that much realistic looking stuff is really hard.

[sinij]

In a month everyone will be running with modded models, where everybody will appear bright pink.

[HaemishM]

Everyone but me.

Stop being a fuckhead.

[kildorn]

are they gonna open up that caspian map? infantry only maps are a very poor way to show off battlefield.

They have a little, maybe only to some testers.   TB did a 2 part video on it yesterday, it looks pretty decent.

For some odd reason they're running two betas. One open beta, and one closed. Caspian is the closed one, and the password keeps getting leaked. But I agree that Metro is a horrible map to show off Battlefield.

::DICE:: I guess.

edit: more clownshoes complaints about the system, and a quick update:

"We are currently having issues with passwords containing
special characters (such as &%<>).

Until we have fixed this, you can change your password to
only use alphanumeric characters at http://profile.ea.com"

Yeah, battlelog cannot handle Origin passwords, so they're blocking anyone with special characters. Amusingly, they worked last night when I was playing..

But more beta update-y, they appear to have pulled down the Caspian servers completely and made the beta only Metro. Because apparently using the open beta to pimp out your combined arms game is silly?

[Speedy Cerviche]

You'd think they'd know better since showing off their best map in the bf1942 demo helped make it such a huge success.

[Nightblade]

My N52te doesnt work properly with this game, for whatever reason. Everytime I change directions my character just comes to a complete halt.

[Miasma]

If I log into the battlelog site, I don't see it starting origin up anywhere on my machine. As far as i can tell though you do use your origin credentials to log into battelog. The settings thing I am sure will get ironed out, or at least I hope so.

Edit: Nevermind I was wrong it does open origin. Sorry for calling you dramatic Kildorn.

I am being dramatic about it, really. It's less offended by Origin and Battlelog, as much as this triggers my "Raar, this is blindingly inefficient for no reason" personal peeve. Like I said, the gameplay is great. It's everything about the interface(s) that just makes me twitch.

Ah, so with this and the other complaint about it forcing a type of browser can I assume it's making people use IE with a crapton of activeX garbage like battlefield heroes?