Battlefield Discussion Thread

[PoorLepRecon]

Yeah, I noticed that the Huey was really weak, but if you're good enough you can just keep repairing it.

[sarg1010]

Electronic Arts is setting the bar high for Battlefield 3.

 

Speaking during the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York City today, CEO John Riccitiello confirm it will launch Battlefield 3 in November of this year and said the publisher has rival Activision's Call of Duty series in its sights.

 

"This November, we're launching Battlefield 3. It's going up against the next Call of Duty, which is presently the #1 game in the game industry," he said. "A game that last year did $400 million dollars in revenue on day one. [battlefield 3] is designed to take that game down."

 

Riccitiello later compared this holiday's battle between the two games to the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry in baseball and said gamers can expect to see massive advertising campaigns for both titles.

 

"There will be a couple hundred million dollars of marketing against these two products going head to head. We think we have the better product," Riccitiello added.

 

EA Games president Frank Gibeau echoed similar comments during GDC last month when he told us: "Everybody loves a heavyweight fight, and that's what this is going to be. We're here to compete."

From Ign.com

Sweet :thumbup:

[PoorLepRecon]

I think they picked the best year to compete with Activision, since Infinity Ward fell apart.

[sarg1010]

An interesting read. It doesn't pertain to Battlefield exclusively, but to the FPS genre as a whole. And it also brings up a good point about Battlefield 3.

[hide]

How Call of Duty Destroyed the World

Has the success of Call of Duty done more harm than good?

Australia, April 8, 2011

 

For centuries, man has been predicting the end of the world as we know it. The Mayans, Nostradamus, R.E.M. they've all been singing the same tune. What none of them managed to predict however, was that the world would be destroyed by Call of Duty. Well, the world of video games, at least.

 

Come on, you've been sensing it for a while. You've looked on in despair as yet another FPS is released that wants to be Black Ops. You've felt the mounting deluge of dissatisfaction that's been building inside you ever since Activision clearly realised Call of Duty 4 was a gambit that very much paid off, and could conceivably continue to pay off year, after year, after year at the cost of an entire genre of gaming.

 

So what do you do about it? Once it's dawned on you that you've been playing the same game with different titles for years now, you look to alternatives. But guess what? They're all uncomfortably familiar; especially when it comes time to go online. At this point your internal reactor reaches critical mass, explodes, and your passion for the act of first-person digital warfare becomes a shadow burnt into the couch where you used to sit for hours and ponder the great quandaries of the 21st century schizoid gamer: "AK-74u w/ grip or FAMAS?" and "Where best to camp?" and, gradually, "Wow, this kind of sucks," and, eventually, "Why is everything trying to be this game?"

 

Call of Duty engineered the destruction of its race, allowing its masters to subjugate the universe, giving them wealth and power beyond anybody's wildest dreams. Now it controls the evolution of any species or technology that it judges to be a potential threat; the greatest FPS scientists and developers forced to work under the supervision of so much inexplicable profit. For that, the global tribunal of gamingdom must put Call of Duty on trial. Intermediaries in this affair include but are not limited to anyone bemoaning the rise of casualised meta-gaming to a seat of absolute power. Hypocritically enough, however, if you play Black Ops then you become part of the problem or, at the very least, you become an unpaid beta tester, according to UK-based consumer advocacy group Gamers' Voice, who've been taking the concept of a trial extremely literally for some time now. Figuratively or literally, it's a trial that's sorely needed.

 

So far every glimmer of salvation has been swiftly snuffed, undone by the very tyrant they each seek to usurp. When the Medal of Honor reboot loomed on the horizon, bristling with bearded promise, hope for a better tomorrow stirred in the weary hearts of gamers everywhere. A new challenger had appeared; EA finally taking the fight to Activision with a game that looked indistinguishable from Call of Duty, and played similarly and might as well have been called Crap Ops, provided that name hadn't already been attributed to Black Ops by certain quarters. Even formerly unique FPS franchises aesthetically outside CoD's jurisdiction towed the line to some extent: Killzone 3's heavier sci-fi tread couldn't escape the prevalence of identically-implemented perks and killstreaks; neither could Crysis 2, despite its dog-tag riff on the former's familiar theme. And Homefront? THQ might be hurling optimistic press release confetti into the air to placate investors, but every gamer knows the truth at the heart of that disappointment.

 

We're seeing the backlash now. Dead Space 2 was criticized by many for its by-the-numbers multiplayer modes, while the upcoming Prey 2 has no multiplayer to speak of at all. DICE is even actively taking to Activision's lackluster modus operandi in the press, with General Manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson recently launching a salvo of unguided missiles in the obvious direction of Kotick's Fourth Reich and its many silent partners: "The competitors are out there, they're established, and they're very, very big. We believe that they are not innovating, that they are treading water. They're using the same engine," he added, "the same recipe for building a game. At some point you need to take that leap. I haven't seen them take that leap since a long time ago."

 

Battlefield 3: Saviour of the Shooter Genre?

 

It's an interesting sentiment given that, by all hands-off reports, Battlefield 3's single-player looks and possibly plays a lot like Black Ops. No one can be completely sure, however, as no-one's been hands-on with the latest Great White FPS Hope just yet. Have you already pre-ordered yourself a Limited Edition copy? Maybe you have. Scared? You should be, but for a much more worrying reason than the fact DICE might be setting you up for yet another hum-drum offering of derivative tin-can target practice (they have brought back prone, you know, and that means dolphin-dives, and wait, is that some quick time events we see?).

 

You now have more in common with Bobby Kotick than is comfortable to admit. The aggressive expanse that is his waistline might swell concurrently with Call of Duty's success, but so too does his receding helmet of ever-shrinking red ripcurls. And how many times has Black Ops made you pull your hair out, either directly or indirectly? It's not just the screaming frustration inherent to a sudden blinding crash whilst you're up 195-190 in the tensest game of Domination ever or being informed in slow-motion that ENCHANTMENT_LOL has nailed you from afar with a frag grenade tossed mindlessly into the ether (again), it's also the fact that everything else not so much wants as needs to repeat this tired montage of firefight fallacies over, and over, and over and the more they decry this increasingly obvious dead-end, they more likely they are to be trapped in it. The first-person shooter has gone nowhere for years largely because of this series' success; in some cases, it's even gone backwards.

 

Why? Money, mostly. Big business savvy will always copy rather than create. It's easier, and the herd at large (you) won't turn dissent into action (by not playing the game), which would in turn either force evolution or result in overdue dismantlement à la Guitar Hero. We're gamers; we have a unique addiction that we love to death yet argue for and against constantly, hoping it will improve itself but feeling more or less powerless either way. It's not wholly unlike being the [bleep] in a relationship. Simply asking gamers not to play the latest and greatest is totally unfeasible. What it really takes is the stumbling of the status quo to fire up the signal flare of change, and while Homefront's crippled offensive is a very disappointing thing indeed for gamers, it is also a means to a much greater end. It is a Call of Duty copycat that ticks all the right boxes, but fails to rise above campaign gameplay mediocrity. Perhaps it will be the last straw?

 

In times of tragedy it does us good to laugh, and laugh we should it's just too bad the comforting comedy we crave is almost as tragic as the tragedy it's supposed to be relieving. The only reason Call of Duty has become such a billion-dollar gaming behemoth is because the franchise at large took a safe but calculated risk back in 2007 with Call of Duty 4, turning 1944 into present day while every other FPS around it pushed forward whilst marching on the spot in a slow wave of identikit WWII-centric ennui. Call of Duty 4 didn't do much to innovate, but sometimes changing your stripes is all that's needed, and the rest will follow. Ironically, hilariously, everyone else followed, and continue to do so.

 

Hope lies with Battlefield 3 but even men with their mouths full of trash-talk need to eat.

[/hide]

 

From IGN.com

 

It does bring up a good point... so far, although there HAS only been one level, BF3 seems like every other FPS out there, even with epic graphics...

[Albel]

Here is the full "Fault Line" Trailer.

"Fault Line" Gameplay Trailer

 

God...it looks SO good!

[demby123]

Here is the full "Fault Line" Trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zw8SmsovJc

 

God...it looks SO good!

fix'd?

[Albel]

Here is the full "Fault Line" Trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zw8SmsovJc

 

God...it looks SO good!

fix'd?

Huh...I guess I didnt post it... da hell?

[Furah]

BF3 is definitely going to be the shooter I buy this year. To be honest MW3 wouldn't be worth pirating for me.

[Zilla]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuLE12riIr0

 

Makes me want to play again. (I have no means at the moment.)

[PoorLepRecon]

That video is awesome. :thumbup:

 

 

 

I was playing some Vietnam earlier today. My new favorite vehicle is the PBR, which is the boat in the Vietnam expansion. I got a 20 killstreak in one of my games just by sitting in the main turret, wreaking havoc on the oncoming opponents. We had stolen one of their boats and the guy driving my boat was doing an amazing job. He just kept doing laps in this small area that they attackers had to pass through.

 

 

I really want to get a PC that can play BF3. My laptop at the moment wouldn't even come close to being able to handle it.

[Maze]

Guys, there's a sale on Steam, you can get BC2 for $7 and BF2 complete for $5.

 

Bought BC2, and am loving it. Engineer's SMG FTW!

[sarg1010]

I really hate when teammates kill you for no reason while you are on the UAV. If anyone does that, I hunt them for the rest of the game, or until I am kicked. Kill them, or just tag them with tracers. Call it over-reacting, but when I'm actually helping the team and have a decent killstreak going, killing me for no reason gets capital punishment.

[H2PM]

Which is why I don't play "hardcore".

[PoorLepRecon]

Which is why I don't play "hardcore".

 

Yeah, hardcore sucks in this game. There's too many snipers and stuff like you just described happen too much.

[sarg1010]

Normal mode takes too many shots to kill someone for me, especially sniping. You don't survive a .50 caliber round to the heart and live. Or a tank shell that blew up right next to you.

 

Hardcore translates to "realism" in my mind.

[Albel]

That video really got me worked up for BC2. Dear lord I need to get a 360 and get back to playing. Does anyone still play on the 360?

[demby123]

Aim for the head. Unlike other games, accuracy is really important when sniping in bc2.

 

And hardcore sucks, removing the radar makes it much harder to work as a team.

[PoorLepRecon]

That video really got me worked up for BC2. Dear lord I need to get a 360 and get back to playing. Does anyone still play on the 360?

 

I've been playing all the time lately.

[Albel]

That video really got me worked up for BC2. Dear lord I need to get a 360 and get back to playing. Does anyone still play on the 360?

 

I've been playing all the time lately.

Might sell my arm for a 360 now... So proud of my lv 34 lol

[PoorLepRecon]

http://bfbc2.statsverse.com/stats/360/PoorLepRecon/

 

 

Here's my stats as of now. My KDR took a nosedive after I let some dorm room friends play on my gamertag. I've been working lately to get all of my patches. I now have only the 100 anti-tank mines patch to get and I'm done with all of them.

[Albel]

http://bfbc2.statsverse.com/stats/360/BeetusKid/

 

I'm not a huge fan of using mines or C4... maybe I needed better tactics?

 

I need to get a 360 and this game again...

[mcneilp]

The BF3 trailers got me back into BC2.

Forgot just how satisfying using the M1 Garand is.

[demby123]

demby1234

 

Sometimes AT mines are useful, sometimes c4 is useful. Every gadget has its uses, it depends on the situation.

There's really no wrong answer.

[PoorLepRecon]

demby1234

 

Sometimes AT mines are useful, sometimes c4 is useful. Every gadget has its uses, it depends on the situation.

There's really no wrong answer.

 

I've been having fun with C4 lately, since when I started playing again I was at 44/100 C4 kills for my patch. I ran shotgun recon using C4 and was just tearing up the other team. I got tons of tank kills by just having the C4 on me when they drove past. It was also fun to lay some C4 and the MCOM bases and blow it up right as someone got there.

 

AT mines are incredibly useful. The best part about them is that they don't disappear if you die. If you're an engineer and you attack an MCOM base, you should immediatly drop all AT mines around the crate, so that when a grenade is thrown in there, you get some damage on the base.

 

I've been wanting to do UAV C4 runs for a while now. Justin and I used to do them. You have 1 person pilot the UAV while another attaches C4 to it. The pilot then takes the UAV somewhere and tells the C4'er when to detonate, causing massive damage. It's really fun. :thumbup:

 

 

I wish that you got points for using the smoke grenades. You hardly see them, but they are one of the most useful items.

[Albel]

I've been wanting to do UAV C4 runs for a while now. Justin and I used to do them. You have 1 person pilot the UAV while another attaches C4 to it. The pilot then takes the UAV somewhere and tells the C4'er when to detonate, causing massive damage. It's really fun. :thumbup:

 

Good times :thumbup: