Battlefield 3 Patch Discussion

[LiquidSolstice]

Gasp! A thread that's not about the decline of the gaming industry or Mass Effect 3! Well, I figured it might be nice to discuss the slew of fixes and changes the patch has brought us. (This is from the 360 point of view). So I'll just run down on my thoughts about it.

Official List of Changes [http://blogs.battlefield.com/2012/04/xbox-360-patch-going-live-april-3rd/]

Acquiring the Patch
This was a bit irritating to me. I had the 170 MB patch prompt me in the beginning when launching the game, but then I was prompted with a 1 GB patch that claimed to be the Multiplayer server renting patch. There wasn't any indication that I needed both, but I wasn't able to find any servers without applying the new patch. This is stupid; if I need both, tell me that I need both. But fine, whatever, I'll go through the motions.

My Observations

~ Holy !@#$, they mercifully added a Quit button to the end-of-round screen. I can't even begin to explain how badly I've wanted this.

~ Staying with your squad appears to be now a part of matchmaking; not a single game I played today with a buddy was I put on a different side than him.

~ The game in general appears to be more responsive, I suspect that's partly due to the increased speed of being able to aim after sprinting, which is a really common occurrence for me.

~ The custom server thing is confusing. I somehow managed to hop into a game that had 200 Rush tokens for attackers. I wasn't using the server browser to do this, and it was annoying, I find 75-100 tokens to be a well balanced number, the higher the Rush tokens, the harder it is for the defending side to win and the more appealing it is for Defenders to camp.

~ There's no indication of whether or not these modified servers have an effect on Rank. Through the server browser, it's easy to filter out Ranked and unranked, but through Quick Match?

~ I absolutely love the ability to see the map rotation from the Pause menu during a game. It's nice to know what's coming up.

~ I haven't gotten a chance to really experiment with guns enough to know any specific changes, however, there's two things I note with great interest; The MG36 no longer appears to have an Extended Mag, and for some what-the-eff reason, the original 46 Round RPK (which is supposed to be the equivalent of the M27) now has a whopping 200 round magazine with the Extended Mag. What the hell? It takes less time to reload than an AEK...

~ Map icons appear to be sharper and now have drop shadows. Great update there!

~ Maybe it's just because I played it after playing copious amounts of MW3, but I found myself dying quite a lot.

~ Every single one of my preset classes was reset to default.

~ The changes to weapon attachments are noticeable and now it's not just as simple as getting the Foregrip and Extended Mag/Heavy Barrell on each gun, you have to consider how it changes the characteristics

~ Mortars can no longer be used in protected spawn. THANK YOU.

~ I'm happy to report USAS/12G FRAG is no longer abused because it's no longer anywhere near as a effective.

Bugs and Remaining Complaints

~ Way to fucking ruin Sharqi Penninsula by adding in a Chopper to a previously one-tank map. We now have idiots using the Choppers to get on the tops of buildings that are completely inaccessible to a defender, on a map that was never designed for aerial support.

~ Certain maps no longer have Conquest mode. What gives with this?

~ On Sharqi Penninsula, I was unable to destroy a tank with 3 C4s (oinly disabling). Seeing as before, only two were needed, this is annoying to me; there's only one class apart from support that can directly deal with vehicles, and I hate Engineer.

~ The laser sight on the L96 is horribly off.

~ This is small, but it annoys me that the end-of-round screen doesn't tell us what map is next and what side we'll be on; BC2 did this and it was nice to know ahead of time what strategy you're going to use.

~ The Squad Menu is laggy as all fuck. Seriously, it brings the whole game to a crawl.

~ Twice, me and my friend had our XBoxes freeze completely (something I've almost never seen before) in one day, consistently when quitting a game.

Anyways, that's about it for me, at least for the time being. Feel free to add your thoughts

 

[mezorin]

Its worth noting that "suppression" essentially will shut down enemies now, especially if abusing a gun like the M240B, PKP, or the M60 which feature crazy good suppression values on the gun. Aiming becomes stupid unreliable while under the effects of suppression, even when nothing is physically hitting you. It does, however, open up possibilities for support players to play as you would expect a machine gunner would, ie by keeping enemy heads down. Just don't expect to be able to pop up and "boom, head shot!" the guy who has been hammering shots into your cover for the last 5 seconds.

AA take a major hit, and air craft now run rampant on any map that spawns them. You can literally hurl a rock further than a stinger missile launcher/AA tank missiles can lock on, while jets/choppers just destroy ground vehicles from half way across the map. Homing missiles are also glitched on hitting jets right now too, although I think that will be fixed. I agree with the lock on Javelin behaving the same as regular lock on in theory for flares, except for the fact that one guy with flares can ignore two people working together as a team on the ground w/ specialized gear. AA verses air craft seriously needs an overhaul, as this is OP jets from BF2 all over again (and no, one guy being able to have god mode while the rest of the server are his bombing targets are NOT the "good old days").

The gun recoil changes and re-balancing is great, as the M60/M240/PKP are all equally viable now, and other gun categories getting cleaned up. The G3A1 rifle is no longer a piece of crap but an actual viable gun (provided you can aim it), the SCAR-H also got fixed. The frag round nerf on the shot guns was needed, as the jack hammer with frag rounds was an unholy abomination that could wipe out entire squads just by holding the trigger down and spraying. The evening out of the way the guns behave was good this patch, with not too many undeserved nerfs.

MBTs now have paper thin frontal armor, which basically forces you to use reactive armor or die to random speed bumps. This combined with the aforementioned problem with jets running rampant means life sucks for tankers. On the bright side, the HMG is pretty awesome now as the minimum damage over range got buffed along with its fire speed, so there's now a point to using it, as well as being able to reverse when crippled being faster.


TL;DR version: infantry weapon balance got cleaned up, tanks got nerfed a bit, and Jets/Helicoptors are now the unkillable Spawn of Satan that make Conquest or Assault on vehicle maps unplayable for anyone not a jet or chopper.

 

[twistedheat15]

you had me at usas fix. Fcking finally every reject who couldnt aim ran around spamming that thing.

 

[tendaji]

My poor tanks are made out of paper now that they can be disabled with a single side shot with an RPG ;~;. They took the tank nerfs way too far in my opinion, by lowering armor, increasing RPGs/Javelins, and reducing repair speed.

 

[teqrevisited]

Vehicles don't really seem worth using now. Dogfights are usually unsatisfying because noone gets any kills from it and they take far longer than they used to.

Tanks just make you giant "Rocket me" targets now. Maybe javelins do cripple tanks in one go in reality, I don't know, but I don't play Battlefield for realism.

I am grateful that the USAS isn't an all-powerful death cannon now though. People didn't even have to aim with that thing because it shot round corners so they spammed shells in the hope that they'd hit someone.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

Ever since I started playing I loved the tank. I'm a tank guy. I almost never play infantry.

Thus, I can't really tell what guns were changed and whatever.

But my tank. My precious tank. It's like it's tinfoil now. It's awesome in tank vs tank fights, which lasted too long before the patch. But infantry vs tanks are now beyond overpowered. Someone managed to one-shot my 100% tank with those mounted rocket launchers you have at certain spawns. Random dudes with RPGs went from a dangerous annoyance to a mortal enemy. Healing my tank also seems to take way longer.

Atleast the new sounds are cool.

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

My only problems are that AA missiles on jets at least are bugged, MG36+RPK mixup, and Stinger/Igla that go WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAy to fast. I am fine with 1 hit diables but their new speed is ridiculous. I can pop flares instantly from the max stinger lock on range and they still hit me.

As for tanks they are fine. First full day playing the patch I went on a 25+ killstreak at the beginning of a match on Gulf of Oman. 6 Helicopters done in with the main gun alone for around 16 kills. I seriously love the insta kill on aircraft with the main cannon. Shot down a couple of jets with my tank too.

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

I find all the changes good. Attachments are more balanced, guns are more balanced, and the game in general feels more responsive and less laggy. The only big problem with this patch is that tanks are now made out of paper mache and be destroyed by one good engineer in 2 hits.

 

[Kathinka]

most of those things are console specific..why would you play something like bf3 on a console anyway D:

i really like the patch. sure, there are a few bugs here and there, like the PKR 200 round mag (the confirmed this to be a bug), but all in all a great improvements.

now, if they would do something about the god awefull client side hit detection..

 

[meepop]

It's funny, because I played this patch for a total of, oh, an hour. I've been experiencing incessant freezing for a while now, and I don't know what the problem is! I know you guys aren't tech support, but really EA fucked something up a while back. My computer used to be able to run Battlefield 3 fine on Ultra settings, but I turned it down to High/Medium to get smooth gameplay. Now the game freezes when I try to join a server, before returning me to desktop.

But anyway, yeah, I've seen a lot of complaints about the AA being nerfed. Also, suppression seems to be a problem for quite a few people too, as it means they actually need to work with others. Don't get me wrong, I do the lone wolf play too, but it's much harder to do now. Personally, I do like Battlefield 3, but EA...Not so much. I have spoken to Live Chat, emailed support, and even posted on the EA community forums! No one knows what the issue is!

 

[LiquidSolstice]

I'm a lazy bastard, could you provide a link for me to see all the changes in their exact form? What I'm reading doesn't exactly make me want to play BF3 again.

Also, a question. Did they finally fix the idiotic "feature" of not actually putting you in the squad you're in in Squad Deathmatch (as in you need to switch teams to join squads, bloody annoying)?

Here you go: Official List of Changes [http://blogs.battlefield.com/2012/04/xbox-360-patch-going-live-april-3rd/]

I don't play squad DM, so I wouldn't know. Although I do share your frustration when it comes to staying in a squad. BF's biggest flaw in this aspect is that unlike CoD, it has no "pregame lobby" in which to have players join up and sort them onto teams before the game.

 

[Wolfram23]

I only played once since the patch came out (played for a couple hours). I'm on PC.

I noticed a few things:

-Viper helicopter seems to take way more damage. Used to take at least 3 rockets to drop it, and if an engineer was repairing it could just go on and on. Now it's basically crippled after 1 hit, and 2 is a kill.

-More points for chopper pilots getting assists. As someone who generally really likes flying the Viper, this is great. I can work with 50pts/kill.

-SOFLAM auto targeting is nice. I don't know why but my SOFLAM's seemed to go down unusually fast. Maybe just bad luck.

-I love tanks, and have unlocked everything for the MBT. Even with reactive armor, it seems weaker than before. Considering how many people play engineers, it's a real crap shoot now to hop into a tank.

Just one note on ranked servers. As I understand it, it means your rank on that server and has nothing to do with your overall player rank/score. I know on PC if I type !rank it will show me how I'm doing on that server.

 

[octafish]

Weapons, eh I still get killed by almost everything, although there are a lot less FAMAS and USAS noobs. They buffed my favourite weapon, the one that served me the best. I can't wait to try the L85A2 again after I get my 500 kills on the KH2002. It seems a good patch to me, but then again I'm an Infantry guy, I tend to play Assault with an m320. The m320 is even better at harrassing vehicles now.

Oh and horns are awesome and the commo rose is much improved. The game still needs team wide in game voip though.

snip
~ Way to fucking ruin Sharqi Penninsula by adding in a Chopper to a previously one-tank map. We now have idiots using the Choppers to get on the tops of buildings that are completely inaccessible to a defender, on a map that was never designed for aerial support. snip

Sharqi has always had choppers, one at attackers spawn and one at the TV station. Are you playing Rush or something? Because playing rush on BF2 maps is a crime.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

All maps still have conquest mode, servers have changed around, it'll be harder to find servers with all the maps on, you'll have to use the server browser.

Ah. I was referring to Quick Match, if you choose Conquest, certain maps aren't there anymore.

The tank had reactive plates on, one of your C4 bricks was absorbed by it, stick all three on the rear of a tank, even with reactive plates, it will almost always die, or, go for a side without plates on. C4 damage has not changed in the patch.

Ahhh! I see. Yeah, I knew that C4s weren't listed as nerfed in the patch list, this is good to know. I normally hit the back anyway, Thanks for the heads up, I completely forgot about Reactive Armor.

Squad menu has sped up for me, but perhaps I've just been lucky.

For me, moving the selection up and down was very laggy, and I consistently kept picking the wrong Squad for that reason.

My Xbox froze pre-patch disturbingly often, it no longer does so, sorry to hear you have the opposite problem

Hopefully it gets resolved.

On the patch itself, the game has never been better, especially for tank and IFV drivers, to the people talking about increased RPG damage, they haven't changed vs tanks, RPG's still do the same damage they did pre-patch, javelins do more though.

Tank vs tank combat is no longer the slog it once was, and infantry are no more of a threat now than they were before, however, helicopters if they catch you, will turn you into a burning wreck in seconds.

Stingers though, wow, almost no lock on time, and 1 shot disables, fantastic, but their range does suck quite a bit now.

I love this. Stingers are really useful now, and the Viper doesn't dominate on Wake Island anymore. But yeah, I suppose the lack of range is an acceptable trade-off.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Weapons, eh I still get killed by almost everything, although there are a lot less FAMAS and USAS noobs. They buffed my favourite weapon, the one that served me the best. I can't wait to try the L85A2 again after I get my 500 kills on the KH2002. It seems a good patch to me, but then again I'm an Infantry guy, I tend to play Assault with an m320. The m320 is even better at harrassing vehicles now.

Oh and horns are awesome and the commo rose is much improved. The game still needs team wide in game voip though.

snip
~ Way to fucking ruin Sharqi Penninsula by adding in a Chopper to a previously one-tank map. We now have idiots using the Choppers to get on the tops of buildings that are completely inaccessible to a defender, on a map that was never designed for aerial support. snip

Sharqi has always had choppers, one at attackers spawn and one at the TV station. Are you playing Rush or something? Because playing rush on BF2 maps is a crime.

Eh. Conquest used to be amazing and all I ever played in BC2, but in BF3, it's just so boring. I usually only play Rush.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Also, bit of a side-note on tanks; having been at the wheel of a tank that was unfairly pummeling the final MCOM on Grand Bazaar (inside the ROOM, not the one by the stairs on the right), I think Tanks very much needed gimping. The other side simply could not disarm the charge, because there were only two ways to get to the MCOM, one was in front of my tank, the other is the hallway to the left of the MCOM, and no matter what, because of the time it took to disarm, I could fire.