Battlefield 3 Beta on PS3

[PayNSprayBandit]

The pathetically short draw distance means that you can't see enemies or even scenery a lot of the time. The control scheme is idiotic, unintuitive, and not customizable.

They (EA) keep telling me that I should get this instead of MW3. So, I tried it. But instead of a kill-cam explaining what went wrong in your strategy, so that you can improve, they just zoom in obnoxiously close on the face of the person that killed you. Throwing grenades is like throwing dice. The worst part is that the fuzzy visuals on their wonderful new engine make both spotting the enemy and aiming accurately a matter of luck. Which, in a shooter, is a pretty big problem.

The only things which are of any value are instantly negated by everything else being awful. You can jump over cover like you are actually in a hurry, instead of whatever nonsense COD is going for. But it doesn't matter, because getting out of the way of enemy fire in this game is a fool's errand. You can alter your class in a match. But class creation is stiff and ultimately a joke.

At the end of the day, it's a shooter where you can't see or aim. I don't care what else you come up with if your shooter doesn't work as a shooter. As someone who plays every major shooter that comes out, I continue to be disappointed that only one of them is any fun, because it's certainly not perfect.

Come on, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

UPDATE: Right now we can only play one game mode and on one map. The game mode is Rush (which is not unlike Demolition in COD) and the map is called Operation Metro.

 

[Vrach]

You don't sound like a person who enjoys what Battlefield is as a game. The fact you characterize it solely as a "shooter" displays that pretty well right off the bat and the further fact you compare it with CoD and Counter-strike confirms it (disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with your preference, I just don't think it's indicative of the quality of the game as much as what types of games you enjoy).

Incidentally, have you picked up the latest video drivers? Both NVidia and AMD have released a hotfix for the BF3 beta. You can grab the AMD drivers here: http://www.amd.com/bf3driver

 

[Waaghpowa]

It's in beta, a lot of the issues could be fixed by the time the full release is out.
So far I have no problem with the game other than some of the graphical errors with the new Nvidia beta drivers.


Oh, also battlelog not letting me change settings outside the game, yet not allowing me to go into the game WITHOUT battle log is annoying.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Wait a minute, bad draw distance, in a Battlefield game? That is a serious mistake on Dice's part. Infantry battles frequently take place at a distance of a quarter mile or more away, and vehicle battles occasionally wind up even further apart, so I'm not sure how pop-in is going to work here.

By the way, I'm not a CoD fanboy -- I'm a Battlefield fan who is concerned about how the series' core gameplay is going to work on a system that can't even do the draw distance properly. They probably should have turned down shading and lighting options more, so they could get a decent draw distance -- it wouldn't have looked as pretty, but the look of the graphics are a bit less important than their actual functionality.

 

[PayNSprayBandit]

You don't sound like a person who enjoys what Battlefield is as a game. The fact you characterize it solely as a "shooter" displays that pretty well right off the bat and the further fact you compare it with CoD and Counter-strike confirms it (disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with your preference, I just don't think it's indicative of the quality of the game as much as what types of games you enjoy).

Incidentally, have you picked up the latest video drivers? Both NVidia and AMD have released a hotfix for the BF3 beta. You can grab the AMD drivers here: http://www.amd.com/bf3driver

Other than a shooter, what would you say BF3 is? Are you talking about the vehicles?

 

[Vrach]

You don't sound like a person who enjoys what Battlefield is as a game. The fact you characterize it solely as a "shooter" displays that pretty well right off the bat and the further fact you compare it with CoD and Counter-strike confirms it (disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with your preference, I just don't think it's indicative of the quality of the game as much as what types of games you enjoy).

Incidentally, have you picked up the latest video drivers? Both NVidia and AMD have released a hotfix for the BF3 beta. You can grab the AMD drivers here: http://www.amd.com/bf3driver

Other than a shooter, what would you say BF3 is? Are you talking about the vehicles?

In a large part yes, but also how the game is constructed.

You jump into Counter Strike or CoD, there's only one thing to do - go out there and kill the other team. Kill them and try hard not to die. Your performance measure is your K/D and your kill-streaks.

You jump into Battlefield, it's all about the team. You win together or not at all. You can get the perfect K/D and no one's still gonna care if your team is the losing one at the end of the round - and that scenario is nowhere near uncommon. Your performance measure is a mix of your kills as well as any other team assists - spotting, taking out vehicles, capturing flags, defending/attacking objectives, healing, resupplying, etc. It'a also a class based game, which further differentiates it.

All in all, it's just a completely different game than CoD/CS. Yes, there's a Team Deathmatch mode now, but it's hardly even close to being the core/heart of the game and even there, the various differences make it a unique experience compared to the competition.

Once again, there's nothing really wrong about enjoying CS/CoD. I know plenty of people who did, plenty who do and I myself played CS for some 1.5 years like crazy. But it's just not a comparable experience.

Wait a minute, bad draw distance, in a Battlefield game? That is a serious mistake on Dice's part.

No offense to the OP, but this is an issue on his end. I've seen plenty and I mean PLENTY of users praising every graphical bit of Battlefield 3, including the draw distance over and over again. Besides, there are gameplay videos out there, go and see for yourself.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

You don't sound like a person who enjoys what Battlefield is as a game. The fact you characterize it solely as a "shooter" displays that pretty well right off the bat and the further fact you compare it with CoD and Counter-strike confirms it (disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with your preference, I just don't think it's indicative of the quality of the game as much as what types of games you enjoy).

Incidentally, have you picked up the latest video drivers? Both NVidia and AMD have released a hotfix for the BF3 beta. You can grab the AMD drivers here: http://www.amd.com/bf3driver

Other than a shooter, what would you say BF3 is? Are you talking about the vehicles?

Good question. I'll be the first to admit that the vehicles are a huge part of the series, but they handle like vehicle sections in a shooter, not like a full blown vehicle sim. I will say that dying really easily and for seemingly random reasons has always been a part of the game; it's frustrating when you keep dying as soon as you respawn, but the fact that any group of players can die at any time makes the whole thing that much more intense. Besides, if you're getting base-raped and you can't do anything about it, that's a sign that the game is going to end soon, and you lost; better luck next time.

Edit: Huh, there's a Team Deathmatch mode now? If that's what you were playing, it's not representative of the main game. That would be like playing Nazi Zombies in CoD and thinking that was all it had to offer. Conquest mode is actually the core of the series. If you weren't playing that, or if you were, but you were focusing on killing the other team instead of capturing their points[footnote]each soldier you kill costs the enemy team a ticket, whereas having more than half of the flags under your team's control costs the other team a fairly large number of tickets per second. Killing the enemy team helps, but it's not going to efficiently win the game for your team[/footnote], then you aren't seeing what the game really has to offer.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

You don't sound like a person who enjoys what Battlefield is as a game. The fact you characterize it solely as a "shooter" displays that pretty well right off the bat and the further fact you compare it with CoD and Counter-strike confirms it (disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with your preference, I just don't think it's indicative of the quality of the game as much as what types of games you enjoy).

Incidentally, have you picked up the latest video drivers? Both NVidia and AMD have released a hotfix for the BF3 beta. You can grab the AMD drivers here: http://www.amd.com/bf3driver

Other than a shooter, what would you say BF3 is? Are you talking about the vehicles?

In a large part yes, but also how the game is constructed.

You jump into Counter Strike or CoD, there's only one thing to do - go out there and kill the other team. Kill them and try hard not to die. Your performance measure is your K/D and your kill-streaks.

You jump into Battlefield, it's all about the team. You win together or not at all. You can get the perfect K/D and no one's still gonna care if your team is the losing one at the end of the round - and that scenario is nowhere near uncommon. Your performance measure is a mix of your kills as well as any other team assists - spotting, taking out vehicles, capturing flags, defending/attacking objectives, healing, resupplying, etc. It'a also a class based game, which further differentiates it.

All in all, it's just a completely different game than CoD/CS. Yes, there's a Team Deathmatch mode now, but it's hardly even close to being the core/heart of the game and even there, the various differences make it a unique experience compared to the competition.

Once again, there's nothing really wrong about enjoying CS/CoD. I know plenty of people who did, plenty who do and I myself played CS for some 1.5 years like crazy. But it's just not a comparable experience.

Wait a minute, bad draw distance, in a Battlefield game? That is a serious mistake on Dice's part.

No offense to the OP, but this is an issue on his end. I've seen plenty and I mean PLENTY of users praising every graphical bit of Battlefield 3, including the draw distance over and over again. Besides, there are gameplay videos out there, go and see for yourself.

But were they talking about the PS3 version? Because everything I've heard about it up to this point has been PC centric.

 

[PayNSprayBandit]

You don't sound like a person who enjoys what Battlefield is as a game. The fact you characterize it solely as a "shooter" displays that pretty well right off the bat and the further fact you compare it with CoD and Counter-strike confirms it (disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with your preference, I just don't think it's indicative of the quality of the game as much as what types of games you enjoy).

Incidentally, have you picked up the latest video drivers? Both NVidia and AMD have released a hotfix for the BF3 beta. You can grab the AMD drivers here: http://www.amd.com/bf3driver

Other than a shooter, what would you say BF3 is? Are you talking about the vehicles?

In a large part yes, but also how the game is constructed.

You jump into Counter Strike or CoD, there's only one thing to do - go out there and kill the other team. Kill them and try hard not to die. Your performance measure is your K/D and your kill-streaks.

You jump into Battlefield, it's all about the team. You win together or not at all. You can get the perfect K/D and no one's still gonna care if your team is the losing one at the end of the round - and that scenario is nowhere near uncommon. Your performance measure is a mix of your kills as well as any other team assists - spotting, taking out vehicles, capturing flags, defending/attacking objectives, healing, resupplying, etc. It'a also a class based game, which further differentiates it.

All in all, it's just a completely different game than CoD/CS. Yes, there's a Team Deathmatch mode now, but it's hardly even close to being the core/heart of the game and even there, the various differences make it a unique experience compared to the competition.

Once again, there's nothing really wrong about enjoying CS/CoD. I know plenty of people who did, plenty who do and I myself played CS for some 1.5 years like crazy. But it's just not a comparable experience.

To be clear here's some of the games I've played which I naturally compared it to:

Spoiler

Medal of Honor (1999), Tomarrow Never Dies (1999), James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire (2001), James Bond 007: Nightfire (2002), Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005), Reservior Dogs (2006), Resistance: Fall of Man (2006), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (2007), Warhawk (2007), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), Time Crisis 4 (2007), The Orange Box (2007), Turok (2008), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (2008), Bioshock (2008), Resistance 2 (2008), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), MAG (2010), Bioshock 2 (2010), Medal of Honor (2010), Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010), Killzone 3 (2011), Homefront (2011), Duke Nukem Forever (2011), Crysis 2 (2011), Resistance 3 (2011), and Modern Warfare 3 [@ CODXP] (2011)

I suppose Homefront is the closest in that is has the vehicles. And I enjoyed Homefront, particularly the targeting drone which I hope they pull off in MW3, but while the helicopter and the tank were rather finicky, I enjoyed the vehicle aspect of the game. It's worth noting that the Beta don't have the vehicles yet, but I remember it being a little iffy in Bad Company.

WRT game mode, in COD I play Domination, Demolition, and CTF. I also enjoyed my time with Brink and TF2. TF2 a little more so, but at any rate I like to play support roles in these sorts of games. I'm not as into my K/D R as you might think. In fact, in MW3 I'll be playing the new support class, I'm sure.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

You don't sound like a person who enjoys what Battlefield is as a game. The fact you characterize it solely as a "shooter" displays that pretty well right off the bat and the further fact you compare it with CoD and Counter-strike confirms it (disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with your preference, I just don't think it's indicative of the quality of the game as much as what types of games you enjoy).

Incidentally, have you picked up the latest video drivers? Both NVidia and AMD have released a hotfix for the BF3 beta. You can grab the AMD drivers here: http://www.amd.com/bf3driver

Other than a shooter, what would you say BF3 is? Are you talking about the vehicles?

In a large part yes, but also how the game is constructed.

You jump into Counter Strike or CoD, there's only one thing to do - go out there and kill the other team. Kill them and try hard not to die. Your performance measure is your K/D and your kill-streaks.

You jump into Battlefield, it's all about the team. You win together or not at all. You can get the perfect K/D and no one's still gonna care if your team is the losing one at the end of the round - and that scenario is nowhere near uncommon. Your performance measure is a mix of your kills as well as any other team assists - spotting, taking out vehicles, capturing flags, defending/attacking objectives, healing, resupplying, etc. It'a also a class based game, which further differentiates it.

All in all, it's just a completely different game than CoD/CS. Yes, there's a Team Deathmatch mode now, but it's hardly even close to being the core/heart of the game and even there, the various differences make it a unique experience compared to the competition.

Once again, there's nothing really wrong about enjoying CS/CoD. I know plenty of people who did, plenty who do and I myself played CS for some 1.5 years like crazy. But it's just not a comparable experience.

To be clear here's some of the games I've played which I naturally compared it to:

Spoiler

Medal of Honor (1999), Tomarrow Never Dies (1999), James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire (2001), James Bond 007: Nightfire (2002), Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005), Reservior Dogs (2006), Resistance: Fall of Man (2006), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (2007), Warhawk (2007), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), Time Crisis 4 (2007), The Orange Box (2007), Turok (2008), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (2008), Bioshock (2008), Resistance 2 (2008), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), MAG (2010), Bioshock 2 (2010), Medal of Honor (2010), Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010), Killzone 3 (2011), Homefront (2011), Duke Nukem Forever (2011), Crysis 2 (2011), Resistance 3 (2011), and Modern Warfare 3 [@ CODXP] (2011)

I suppose Homefront is the closest in that is has the vehicles. And I enjoyed Homefront, particularly the targeting drone which I hope they pull off in MW3, but while the helicopter and the tank were rather finicky, I enjoyed the vehicle aspect of the game. It's worth noting that the Beta don't have the vehicles yet, but I remember it being a little iffy in Bad Company.

WRT game mode, in COD I play Domination, Demolition, and CTF. I also enjoyed my time with Brink and TF2. TF2 a little more so, but at any rate I like to play support roles in these sorts of games. I'm not as into my K/D R as you might think. In fact, in MW3 I'll be playing the new support class, I'm sure.

Unfortunately, none of those games actually compare to it well, with the possible exception of Mag and certain elements of TF2. If you've ever played the Star Wars: Battlefront games, those were basically Battlefield 1942, but set in the Star Wars universe. Otherwise, imagine the vehicles from Halo, the maps from Mag, and the win condition of TF2's control point modes -- although the win conditions are actually a bit more complicated than that.

Edit: Okay, I just noticed Battlefront II was on the list. Like I said, that's basically a Star Wars version of 1942. If you add in troop transports (which allow you to get a squad quickly in and out of points) and a voice chat system that splits people up into squads of six, each of which has a leader who acts as a mobile spawn point and can communicate with an overall commander, and then add in destructible buildings, you've got a pretty good idea of how a modern Battlefield game works.

 

[sleeperhit79]

I really wonder if people that claim to prefer Bf over COD even play COD. Some of the arguments make me wonder. Saying that COD isn't a team game is just wrong. I play black ops constantly with a group of great people. How do we win, teamwork and communication. If we all just ran around and worried about killing people as our only goal we would probably end up with decent KD, but we would lose everytime. Of course there's those guys that don't play as a team, but the same remains for BF, the little I played of BC 2 was pretty much the same experience, run around and try to kill and someone always fighting for helicopters, no spotting and definitely no communicatoin, but of course I was not playing with people I knew were team players.. Get in a team have a great time and win, sure there's some details in BF that encourage team play, but MW3 will also have those. In the end it's not the game but the players that determine a team game or not. it does suck to hear that the console version has some serious issues, and it's a shame that people keep blaming the beta status for graphical glitches that probably have nothing to do with it, the game's weeks from release, what you see is probably what you'll get. i hope this assessment is wrong cause I'm really looking forward to BF 3 since COD is getting a little stale to me.

 

[PayNSprayBandit]

Actually, when it comes to teamwork, I just picked up an XBOX and a new mic for MW3, because all my friends have 360s and I'm looking for better teamwork in multiplayer.

 

[Vrach]

But were they talking about the PS3 version? Because everything I've heard about it up to this point has been PC centric.

They is users, not DICE and yes. Also, pretty much every single presentation to date has been done with PS3s. Again, look it up for yourself if you're concerned, but if you want the short version, no, draw distance is not an issue.

It's worth noting that the Beta don't have the vehicles yet, but I remember it being a little iffy in Bad Company.

WRT game mode, in COD I play Domination, Demolition, and CTF. I also enjoyed my time with Brink and TF2. TF2 a little more so, but at any rate I like to play support roles in these sorts of games. I'm not as into my K/D R as you might think. In fact, in MW3 I'll be playing the new support class, I'm sure.

On the "no vehicles in beta", yeah, that's a huge part of why it's not a great map to judge a whole game on. I mean any map would be bad to judge a whole game on, but Operation Metro is definitely not representative of the entire Battlefield experience.

And apologies on my ignorance about CoD game modes (really not an expert, played it a bit, saw it was built on a CS model and I simply prefer the Battlefield one), but if I'm not mistaken, all 3 of those support lone wolf gameplay just fine. Same on the K/D thing, don't think I'm talking about you or saying there's no such thing as team play in CoD, I'm just saying, it's not the core of the game as a whole whereas it is in Battlefield.

Just look at something like the BFBC2 feature of spawning on your squad mates and you'll know what I mean - assuming you know what you're doing, you just don't tend to go around alone for long unless you're a long range sniper covering your team - and even then there's a good chance that you'll be running to or have an Assault guy dropping by once in a while to resupply you.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

But were they talking about the PS3 version? Because everything I've heard about it up to this point has been PC centric.

They is users, not DICE and yes. Also, pretty much every single presentation to date has been done with PS3s. Again, look it up for yourself if you're concerned, but if you want the short version, no, draw distance is not an issue.

It's worth noting that the Beta don't have the vehicles yet, but I remember it being a little iffy in Bad Company.

WRT game mode, in COD I play Domination, Demolition, and CTF. I also enjoyed my time with Brink and TF2. TF2 a little more so, but at any rate I like to play support roles in these sorts of games. I'm not as into my K/D R as you might think. In fact, in MW3 I'll be playing the new support class, I'm sure.

On the "no vehicles in beta", yeah, that's a huge part of why it's not a great map to judge a whole game on. I mean any map would be bad to judge a whole game on, but Operation Metro is definitely not representative of the entire Battlefield experience.

And apologies on my ignorance about CoD game modes (really not an expert, played it a bit, saw it was built on a CS model and I simply prefer the Battlefield one), but if I'm not mistaken, all 3 of those support lone wolf gameplay just fine. Same on the K/D thing, don't think I'm talking about you or saying there's no such thing as team play in CoD, I'm just saying, it's not the core of the game as a whole whereas it is in Battlefield.

Just look at something like the BFBC2 feature of spawning on your squad mates and you'll know what I mean - assuming you know what you're doing, you just don't tend to go around alone for long unless you're a long range sniper covering your team - and even then there's a good chance that you'll be running to or have an Assault guy dropping by once in a while to resupply you.

I really wonder if people that claim to prefer Bf over COD even play COD. Some of the arguments make me wonder. Saying that COD isn't a team game is just wrong. I play black ops constantly with a group of great people. How do we win, teamwork and communication. If we all just ran around and worried about killing people as our only goal we would probably end up with decent KD, but we would lose everytime. Of course there's those guys that don't play as a team, but the same remains for BF, the little I played of BC 2 was pretty much the same experience, run around and try to kill and someone always fighting for helicopters, no spotting and definitely no communicatoin, but of course I was not playing with people I knew were team players.. Get in a team have a great time and win, sure there's some details in BF that encourage team play, but MW3 will also have those. In the end it's not the game but the players that determine a team game or not. it does suck to hear that the console version has some serious issues, and it's a shame that people keep blaming the beta status for graphical glitches that probably have nothing to do with it, the game's weeks from release, what you see is probably what you'll get. i hope this assessment is wrong cause I'm really looking forward to BF 3 since COD is getting a little stale to me.

To both of you: Battlefield is very much not built on the Counterstrike model. It's about taking control of a map -- it compares much more closely with TF2 than with any of the other major shooter series on the market. Conquest mode, which is the meat of the game, gives each team a set number of tickets (usually 300). The first team to get down to 0 tickets loses. Each death costs the team a ticket, but it takes forever to actually whittle them down this way. The method that actually wins games involves capturing control points. If one team has control of more than half of the points, the other team starts to rapidly lose tickets. If one team manages to capture all of the points (this is only possible on some maps; others give each team an un-capturable point), the other team can no longer respawn unless the players that are still alive manage to capture a point. If all of the players on that team die before capping a point, they lose the game.

As for the way team work is encouraged more than in CoD, it's not that CoD doesn't encourage it at all, it's that the scale is smaller. In Battlefield, players are divided into autonomous squads of six, each of which has a squad leader. The squad leader acts as a mobile spawn point, allowing people on his squad to spawn near him, instead of making the hike from the nearest point. Voice chat only works within the squad, except for the leader, who can also speak with the commander, who is a player who pays attention to what's going on in the overall battle, and directs the different squads to where they need to go.

I'm not saying that teamwork isn't important in CoD, but it's on a much smaller scale -- an entire CoD team is equivalent to a single squad in Battlefield, and their goals are very different.

Edit: And I just realized Vrach was agreeing with me about how Battlefield is played, not disagreeing. Sorry about that.


Edit Edit: By the way, Sleeperhit: when you tried Bad Company 2, did you join a squad, or did you just start playing? Because if it works the way Battlefield 2 works, you aren't automatically assigned to a squad, you have to go to the squad menu and join or create one. If you don't do that, you won't actually be able to talk to anyone.

 

[PayNSprayBandit]

But were they talking about the PS3 version? Because everything I've heard about it up to this point has been PC centric.

They is users, not DICE and yes. Also, pretty much every single presentation to date has been done with PS3s. Again, look it up for yourself if you're concerned, but if you want the short version, no, draw distance is not an issue.

Just as an example, I was (on Metro, obviously) walking toward a bridge and looking past it at a hill with a tree on it, when suddenly, next to the tree a bit of cover and a sniper appeared. Bam, I was dead.

 

[PayNSprayBandit]

Okay, so I gave it a second chance. It still failed, but I'm trying to pin down why. I'm a very aggressive player. When I see a problem, I run at it. The sprinting, however, wasn't very consistent and, as I said, the movement controls make dodging rather difficult, which makes it easy to get picked off and hard to be aggressive. Getting picked off brings me to sniping. I'm not a sniper. I carry an assault rifle, unless I can find a shotgun. In Mass Effect, I'm a Vanguard. I like fighting close range. I still enjoy giant maps, so long as there's a reasonable amount of cover thru which to move. However, after being hit by quite a few snipers, I gave it a shot. I enjoyed sniping in MAG, so maybe that's the class to play here as well.

While sniping meant that I could see much further while looking down the scope, the lack of cover and so the inability to be stealthy (snipers don't wear guile suits as a fashion statement) made it a game of luck (which sniper won in a duel). Also not helping is a problem that all shooters seem to have, which is that sniper bullet damage doesn't make sense. Someone surviving a headshot in BF3 is as ridiculous as someone dying from a single bullet to the foot in COD. But what annoys me most is that sniping isn't like this; if you're going to unbalance gameplay, at least do it for realism.

Finally there's spawning.

Just look at something like the BFBC2 feature of spawning on your squad mates and you'll know what I mean - assuming you know what you're doing, you just don't tend to go around alone for long unless you're a long range sniper covering your team - and even then there's a good chance that you'll be running to or have an Assault guy dropping by once in a while to resupply you.

First, incidentally, MW3 has a support class killstreak reward for resupplying your teammates, though it's not quite like Brink or BF.

I hate the spawning system in COD and most other shooters. The fact that we've had shooters for nearly two decades and spawn camping is still a thing, is just depressing. Some games try to fight it with safe zones or spawn protection, but in some modes COD doesn't even try (i.e. CTF). In deathmatch, COD spawns you on your own guys too, but why would I assume that they're anywhere safe? At first, BF3 had me going. The spawns were fantastic, and then I suddenly started spawning in the middle of the map, in enemy fire. I don't mean near the enemy, I mean actually being shot. I also once spawned far enough back that even though I ran as fast as possible, I couldn't get to the objective in time to even try to help. Incidentally, I was then shot by someone I couldn't see.

I played the first BFBC and really enjoyed the campaign. But the multiplayer I found lacking. I felt like it had potential, but it just didn't quite get there. The campaign for BF3 may still be good and the things I've heard about the coop are pretty cool, but the beta is just the multiplayer and again I'm underwhelmed. The spawning may be fixed in the next month, but I have some serious doubts about the rest of this stuff. I would love to see BF3 reach its full potential. I was really excited up 'til today. I still have the game on preorder, mostly because I'm unusually into this sort of thing, but for now I'm disappointed.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Okay, so I gave it a second chance. It still failed, but I'm trying to pin down why. I'm a very aggressive player. When I see a problem, I run at it. The sprinting, however, wasn't very consistent and, as I said, the movement controls make dodging rather difficult, which makes it easy to get picked off and hard to be aggressive. Getting picked off brings me to sniping. I'm not a sniper. I carry an assault rifle, unless I can find a shotgun. In Mass Effect, I'm a Vanguard. I like fighting close range. I still enjoy giant maps, so long as there's a reasonable amount of cover thru which to move. However, after being hit by quite a few snipers, I gave it a shot. I enjoyed sniping in MAG, so maybe that's the class to play here as well.

While sniping meant that I could see much further while looking down the scope, the lack of cover and so the inability to be stealthy (snipers don't wear guile suits as a fashion statement) made it a game of luck (which sniper won in a duel). Also not helping is a problem that all shooters seem to have, which is that sniper bullet damage doesn't make sense. Someone surviving a headshot in BF3 is as ridiculous as someone dying from a single bullet to the foot in COD. But what annoys me most is that sniping isn't like this; if you're going to unbalance gameplay, at least do it for realism.

Finally there's spawning.

Just look at something like the BFBC2 feature of spawning on your squad mates and you'll know what I mean - assuming you know what you're doing, you just don't tend to go around alone for long unless you're a long range sniper covering your team - and even then there's a good chance that you'll be running to or have an Assault guy dropping by once in a while to resupply you.

First, incidentally, MW3 has a support class killstreak reward for resupplying your teammates, though it's not quite like Brink or BF.

I hate the spawning system in COD and most other shooters. The fact that we've had shooters for nearly two decades and spawn camping is still a thing, is just depressing. Some games try to fight it with safe zones or spawn protection, but in some modes COD doesn't even try (i.e. CTF). In deathmatch, COD spawns you on your own guys too, but why would I assume that they're anywhere safe? At first, BF3 had me going. The spawns were fantastic, and then I suddenly started spawning in the middle of the map, in enemy fire. I don't mean near the enemy, I mean actually being shot. I also once spawned far enough back that even though I ran as fast as possible, I couldn't get to the objective in time to even try to help. Incidentally, I was then shot by someone I couldn't see.

I played the first BFBC and really enjoyed the campaign. But the multiplayer I found lacking. I felt like it had potential, but it just didn't quite get there. The campaign for BF3 may still be good and the things I've heard about the coop are pretty cool, but the beta is just the multiplayer and again I'm underwhelmed. The spawning may be fixed in the next month, but I have some serious doubts about the rest of this stuff. I would love to see BF3 reach its full potential. I was really excited up 'til today. I still have the game on preorder, mostly because I'm unusually into this sort of thing, but for now I'm disappointed.

Well there's your problem; you're trying to play it as a close combat game. It's not. Even with an assault rifle, a good player should be able to pick off targets from a considerable distance. If you're close enough to use a hand grenade, forget about a knife, you'd better hope you have backup and your squad happens to be positioned right to have the drop on the other squad, because if you're alone or they have the drop on you, you're already dead, you just don't realize it yet.

Edit: This thread shows exactly why EA is barking up the wrong tree by trying to directly take on CoD with Battlefield. While they're superficially similar, the actual game mechanics are so different that they might as well be trying to take on TF2 or Serious Sam for all the sense it makes. The EA property that is positioned to take on CoD if done right is Medal of Honor. Just because the most recent game wasn't good enough to dethrone CoD doesn't mean they can try again with BF3; it's just not in the right subgenre of shooters to do it.

 

[Vrach]

and then I suddenly started spawning in the middle of the map, in enemy fire. I don't mean near the enemy, I mean actually being shot. I also once spawned far enough back that even though I ran as fast as possible, I couldn't get to the objective in time to even try to help. Incidentally, I was then shot by someone I couldn't see.

Um, unless something was changed from BFBC2, and I seriously doubt that's the case, you can look from the third person at where the person you're gonna spawn on is and what he's facing. Spawning on a guy who's getting shot is generally not a good idea and definitely not the game's failure but your own.

That said, this happens a lot more often before you and others are used to the maps. We're still talking beta here and some people have only been playing this game for a day. As they get used to the map, they'll be a lot more careful, move with cover and therefore get you shot on spawning a lot less. But it's still up to you to view the person before you spawn on them and make sure they're a safe spawn point (or be very ready to react, I sometimes intentionally spawn on a player getting shot so I can help and maybe revive them)