Battlefield 3

[CaptainNapkin]

Pre-download 25% completed 
*checks calender. 6 more days to go* 

What's the size of the download? Considering switching my box pre-order for the chance to be ready for action when I get home from work.

[snowwy]

11,4 gigs. That's a euro-install though, and from Origin, so the 300megs day1 patch is included i belive

[waffel]

I preordered with Amazon, downloaded with amazon, and registered/installed with Origin. Was kind of an interesting process but I ended up saving a nice chunk of cash by cancelling my preorder with EA and going through a secondary retailer.

[CaptainNapkin]

Ah, I thought I heard the patch was going to be huge. But at only around 300meg I'll stick with purchasing the box, so I can stick it in the box with all my other boxes in the closet.
And since my system winced when I clicked the pre-order button, I ordered a 6970 to get up to snuff.

[stu]

Uggggghhhhh I was gonna wait a month to purchase this, but Amazon is giving a $20 pre-order credit. How am I supposed to split time between this and Dark Souls? I don't really expect BF3 to be as terrible as the beta experience.

[ffc]

The PS3 beta map had no vehicles and no destructible environments and my enthusiasm dwindled but a sweet sweet $20 credit has me enthused again.  Hope there's a way to skip that map.

[tgr]

So, no LAN support at launch?

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/17197-battlefield-3-wont-have-lan-support-at-launch-maybe-later/

[WayAbvPar]

I preordered with Amazon, downloaded with amazon, and registered/installed with Origin. Was kind of an interesting process but I ended up saving a nice chunk of cash by cancelling my preorder with EA and going through a secondary retailer.

Thanks for the heads up- didn't realize I could pre-download. Will have to cancel my box order with GameStop tomorrow =)

[climbjtree]

I preordered today so that I might preload overnight. I placed my order an hour or so ago, and still no charge to my bank account and no confirmation email.

No doubt they're overloaded, but if any of you are thinking of purchasing right now I'd wait until after the release day craze is over.

[WayAbvPar]

I am at 43% already 

[climbjtree]

Well, now I've got it in My Games, but I can't preload. 

[rk47]

i'm playing already. Fun times. unlocked defib after 3 rounds....before having to leave for work.

[climbjtree]

I've got just under an hour left on my preload, but I thought we couldn't play until tomorrow?

[rk47]

Duno about you guys, but I'm in S.E Asia and it's running just fine this morning.

[Azazel]

So, no LAN support at launch?

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/17197-battlefield-3-wont-have-lan-support-at-launch-maybe-later/

"Later" from DICE pretty much means "never". Onslaught would have totally made my day month year with the other 3 I play these games with.

[Azazel]

Crap.
I better pre-order this thing from the UK when I get home so I get all the extra crap.

[climbjtree]

Well, this game fucking rules.

Looks like I'll be up all night.

[tgr]

"Later" from DICE pretty much means "never". Onslaught would have totally made my day month year with the other 3 I play these games with.

Yeah, that's how I was taking it as well.

PS: don't read the comments. Whatever you do, don't read them. Dear god.

[WayAbvPar]

Apparently the Amazon pre-order didn't qualify me for the Karkand pack, so I had to order that separately. Just spoke to EA and they basically told me they are too busy making money hats to process the order and that the expansion would be available in my Origin account 'soon'. It has already been 12 hours FFS.

OTOH- holy SHIT is this game pretty. I have had a monitor issue (I hope) where the middle of my screen is really washed out when there is a lot of flare/white, so I will be headed to Costco in an hour to pick up a new monitor. Also have a lead on a GPU I can get cheap, but I am not sure how much of a bump it will really be so not sure it is worth it (from ATI 4870 to 6870).

Can't wait until things settle a bit and it gets more playable. Had a fucking BLAST for the 45 minutes I got in last night.

[ffc]

Also have a lead on a GPU I can get cheap, but I am not sure how much of a bump it will really be so not sure it is worth it (from ATI 4870 to 6870).

Worth it.  Plus you DX11 and terrain tessellation in BF3.  In reality you may not notice the extra depth to the pebbles on the ground but the other performance gains to relatively low power consumption are worth it.

[Sky]

One thing I hate about getting a system upgrade is now I want games like this 

My (not so) inner graphics whore is screaming that it would look so nice on my new system. I shouldn't be watching that kid benchmark 460 SLI at 1080p...

[sinij]

Question - anyone found a way to skip browser and join matches from the game itself?

[sinij]

Apparently the Amazon pre-order didn't qualify me for the Karkand pack

I went to local game store and picked up "preorder" copy, they had extras and were giving away to anyone at a regular price.

Graphics - nice to see my now almost year-old PC running everything at max settings, HD 5970 here. I had to download new video drivers (AMD has non-WHQL 10.11 VER3 drivers with BF3 profiles) but aside from that no issues.

Game is not as pretty as I expected it to be, but I guess I had my hopes up too high. I yet to connect my joystick and fly it. Tank feels about right. Deploy interface is annoying and Origin/Browser game starting is PEAK OF IDIOCY.

TL;DR After 30 minutes of playing 6/10, would be 9/10 if not for Origin/Browser launch. Still, it actually WORKED on DAY 1.

[NiX]

Question - anyone found a way to skip browser and join matches from the game itself?

I'm sure there's a console command, but outside of that, Battlelog replaced the server browser in-game.

[WayAbvPar]

Looks like the monitor was the display problem- picked up one of these from Costco ($50 rebate at the register + regular Costco price= $80 cheaper than listed at Amazon and NewEgg). GODDAMN it is pretty. Can't wait it get in game and try it out. Will probably still add the vid card as well. Now I need an HDMI cable so I can run both monitors (or I could get a splitter or whatever).

[rk47]

Gunplay seems easier nowadays. I felt there's a slight degree of auto aim or something even on PC version. Cause there's no way I could rack up kills by just emptying a clip by just holding down the trigger full auto in Bad Company 2 at mid range. Not complaining, ranked up to Lance Corporal and taking a break after trying all the maps.

Biggest change I really want is a 10-second respawn timer. 64 players with 5 second default respawn timer is complete bullshit. There's really no incentive to cap and risk your butt if you're with a small grp. Better to just camp and rack up kills from those hapless spawners since there's at least 4-5 of them coming every 5 seconds in game.  400 tickets just kept disappearing in less than an hour due to the excessive spawn camping. Like it or not, you'd better park your ass in a vantage spot while neutralizing cap points, since defenders just keep spawning.

[climbjtree]

The only real improvement I want is for servers to stop running Tehran Highway. What a painful map.

[caladein]

The Battlelog thing has taken me a bit of time to get used to but I quite like it now.

First off, filtering servers and the like is really fast.  Second, I like how once I've joined a server and gotten my slot it doesn't bring up the loading screen until the last few moments of loading.

[sinij]

I played about an hour of single player, on normal difficulty. I am decent FPS but single player completely kicked my ass. It takes about 2-3 deaths "per room" to figure out WTF they want from you, then another 2-3 death to get it done. Killing other guys is easy, figuring out what to do is not.

For example - they want you to grab machine cannon on the bridge and start shooting at advanced enemies, but doing so is absolutely suicidal, you get destroyed if you linger on the bridge. So you are expected to grab machine cannon and retreat to safety. Until you figure it out you get repeatedly creamed. Or you have to move through enemy lines, until you get to a bus, you can't get around this bus, you have to go inside of it, wait for it to get blown up then kill bad guys from burning wreckage.

Single player get 10/10 for atmosphere, it get feeling of chaos of combat down extremely well, but it gets -10/10 on gameplay. Until you figure out exact loops mission designers want you to jump through you will get repeatedly and unavoidably killed.

Overall - skip single player missions. It is not fun.

[HaemishM]

You should not buy a DICE game for single-player.

[rk47]

I laughed when the IGN video review gave a 9 because 1 point was deducted due to the campaign. Yeah, that's because COD did it better, am I right?

[sinij]

You should not buy a DICE game for single-player.

I 100% agree, but if option was there I wanted to see what it is.

I played about 4 hours of multiplayer. To say I am disappointed is understatement. This is all around bad game.  MP mostly consist of spawn point camping, any mostly-infantry map you ether farm people or get farmed around spawn points and as a result this is outright unplayable. Base weapons are _SIGNIFICANTLY_ weaker than some farmed/upgraded/bought (?.?) versions I have seen, to the point of you need to unload full clip into someone with engineer starting weapon while someone with farmed weapon would get 2-3 bullets kills on you.

Maps... uggh, dear god maps are awful. They were designed to be pretty and no though was given to have any playability.

Overall - game is moderately pretty, stable and completely unfun. I planned to play it for next 3-6 months, tonight I logged off in disgust after about 2 hours.

[Ginaz]

You should not buy a DICE game for single-player.

I 100% agree, but if option was there I wanted to see what it is.

I played about 4 hours of multiplayer. To say I am disappointed is understatement. This is all around bad game.  MP mostly consist of spawn point camping, any mostly-infantry map you ether farm people or get farmed around spawn points and as a result this is outright unplayable. Base weapons are _SIGNIFICANTLY_ weaker than some farmed/upgraded/bought (?.?) versions I have seen, to the point of you need to unload full clip into someone with engineer starting weapon while someone with farmed weapon would get 2-3 bullets kills on you.

Maps... uggh, dear god maps are awful. They were designed to be pretty and no though was given to have any playability.

Overall - game is moderately pretty, stable and completely unfun. I planned to play it for next 3-6 months, tonight I logged off in disgust after about 2 hours.

While I've had more fun than you seem to have had, I have to agree with most of what you've said.  I fucking HATE launching the game form that web browser, the starter weapons do feel weak, maps are mostly camp-fests, the SP campaign is meh and objectives/goals are often unclear.  Overall, I enjoyed BC2 more than this.  Its very pretty though.

[Azazel]

I found the SP campaigns in both Bad Company 1 (console) and Bad Company 2 to be fun enough that I completed them at least twice each. I'd compare either of them well enough against something like CoD: World At War, and BC2 played pretty well compared to CoD:MW

[Nightblade]

Negative mouse acceleration, we meet again. 

I never learn. Oh well, at least keybindings work now.