Battlefield 3

[Changeling]

Saw on Twitter that one of the main things theyre re-working from the alpha is the 3D spotting. There is hope.

[Destro777]

Thank god. There wasnt this kind of internet wide outcry against the 3d spotting in BC1 and 2's time. Hopefully theyre finally listening. They make these insanely detailed maps with Frostbite that are basically rendered useless because youre just shooting at red dots.

[Destro777]

The character models look cool as hell. I hope there's more than 2 factions though. Im assuming a mid east faction would be in based off the campaign - plus I hope they bring back China and the British SAS.

I find it funny that just from a single public alpha so much from the game appears to either tweaked or completely changed and yet they included just 1 vehicle to test - no airpower, notoriously DICE's biggest balance problem thru the series. From BF3's gameplay designer twitter just today after the close of the alpha: "Time to tweak every gun in the game. Again. For the 4th time this week. Polishing is fun. Really." If the inf guns were that FUBARed and it took a public alpha to realize this - how are they going to get the vehicles right? People still complain about BF2's jets to this day.

[Changeling]

Make the call now... more or less bugs than BF2. Bad Company 2 was surprisingly decent, bug-wise.

I say less. BF2 was notorious for all the crazy stuff that was wrong with it.

[Destro777]

Place your bets folks hehe. I will probably say less too in terms of critical bugs. Balancing is a whole other ballgame - its in every Battlefield. Look how many changes BF2 and BC2 went thru - entire modes were altered in BC2's case.

BC2 and BF1943 didnt have the legendary bugs that BF2 had - BUT they had massive server problems at launch. I couldnt join rush in BC2 for a few days and I couldnt join friends in 1943 for like a week. No way in hell BF3 is going to be any different. If youre planning vacation time to play some BF3 - best make it a week or longer post launch.

[sedition]

Severs in the BF series are always hellish at launch. Launching games from the shitty separate Origin interface is going to make me want to kick my computer out the window.

[Changeling]

I keep forgetting about Origin. That'll suck.

Destro, I may take my birthday week off in november to get some quality time with the game. DEFINITELY not any earlier though. I know far too well whats in store for us. Lots and lots of server issues im sure.

[Destro777]

"Battleblog #5: Years worth of unlocks and rewards in Battlefield 3"
http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/batt.../08/05/bb.aspx

Rank/reward stuff sounds awesome. But my fav bit of the article:
"With your Engineer, do you bring your anti-tank or your anti-air RPG launcher?"
Infantry AA launchers ala Desert Combat confirmed.

Slightly disappointed that it sounds like top rank is somewhat achievable with star ranks on top. I liked BF2 how if you saw someone at top rank - you KNEW they truly put a lot of time into the game. If im not mistaken, I have over 1000 hours on BF2 and got barely halfway thru the ranks. Bad Company 2 top rank is too quickly achieved.

[Changeling]

Hopefully the anti air works more like Desert Combat and less like 2142's AA on foot.

[Chux]

Surprising nobody, EA is keeping BF3 off of Steam.

Sucks imo.