Quick Look: Battlefield 3 Beta

I had a blast playing this on PS3 last night. It was down on XBL all night...

Battling American True Tough Latter-day Eternal Friends Ideally Executing Lowly Degenerates To Heroically Refute Energetic Enemies

super

Been playing this. Loving it so far.

I've been waiting for this.Yes!

yay, battlefield!

I thought it was a lot of fun, I need to get more of it tonight.

Played this at 5am before my son woke up for his feeding. Being the first time I'd played an online fps in quite some time, this was pretty refreshing.

GET OUT OF THE WORLD, JEFF

5 minutes in and the beta is already showing it's chops with a hole in the world at the lack of ADS.

Edit: Holy shit at the guy at the 20-minute mark. I love videogame bugs sometimes.

Thank you for using the PC version, the console versions are great looking for console shooters but you can really tell the PC is the focus, in controls and engine.

The server browser deal is a must-have, because it allows server browser fixes to happen without having to patch the entire game. I'm all for this method - loads in only a few seconds too.

And this game requires you to stay in cover (manually), even then you will be hit by suppressing fire screwing your vision up etc, you also die stupidly fast in beta - turns out there's a bug with rapid firing weapons and sniper rifles often instagibbing people on the first bullet no matter the distance or where it hits the target.

TL;DR BF3 is brutal, it took nearly ten hours of beta play before I felt okay with the game and found my place and started kicking ass.

Supression game mechanics work wonderfully and make sense. Happy for the game as a whole.

Ugh, just put your shit on steam EA. Why are you just trying to be a dick for the sake of being a dick?

On another note, this game looks good, but eh, it's another battlefield game.

Despite the issues I'm loving BF3 (playing ps3 version)

I'm playing in the xbox and it looks like the ADS issue is cross platform.

Looks sort of a lot like Modern Warfare and sort of a lot like Bad Company 2. No thanks, skipping this.

Man, I been spoiled by GB videos lately.. this is a short 24 minutes.. lol

The Caspian Border map on the PC beta is absolutely amazing, a real Battlefield experience. Metro feels a bit different, but still good. Loving it so far.

I've loved the Battlefield series ever since I got BF 1942 free with my Geforce FX 5700. With the way Origin collects way to much personal information for my liking, server browser is in a god damn web browser, ect. Its sad to say but I'm gonna sit this one out.

Source for Origin: http://www.ea.com/1/privacy-policy

4. Analytic Metrics Tools and Other Technologies

"These tools and technologies use server log files, web beacons, cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies to collect and analyze certain types of information, including cookies, IP addresses (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), mobile or other hardware device ID, browser types, browser language, information passed from your browser (if any), referring and exit pages, and URLs, platform type, the number of clicks, information about your media, software and/or applications installed on your machine and/or device, domain names and types, landing pages, pages viewed and the order of those pages, the date and amount of time spent on particular pages, other Internet and website usage information, game state and the date and time of activity on our websites or games, information about how your game is used, including game metrics and statistics, feature usage and purchase history, as well as MAC Address, mobile unique device ID (if applicable) and other similar information."

I looooove the sound design/quality for the BF series, so good!

Note to self: Throw heal pack to get right mouse button to work after falling in to the ground. Got it.

They should have only shown Conquest. Rush is confusing people on the potential of BF3.

@Gliz9 said:

Some of that is part of the anti-cheat system, hardware bans. Have fun not playing BF3.

Seems glitchy

Just played COD4 last night for the first time to see if I was interested in picking up this or MW3. I guess I am just past that phase in my life where I want to shoot dudes with guns. I just get annoyed that most of the time you can't even see what you're shooting at if it's anything for more than a short range. I'm glad they did this video. Couldn't get the XBL to work last night.

Couldn't be more annoyed by this game even if I tried.

Man, Jeff is bad at this game. Was anyone else screaming at him when he would just casually walk out into the open at the front line?

Nerd rage is real.

@SomeJerk:

You do live up to your username. I'm simply pointing out that they collect quite a bit of information that does not seem at all relevant to BF3. Why should it need to know how many clicks I do on a website, or how long I spend my time there? I know BF3 will probably be a good game, DICE puts out quality games, but there's to much bogging this down for me. Maybe in the future when I see that Origin is just fine I'll buy it and thoroughly enjoy it, but not right now.

Loving the beta on 360, couple of glitches and dropped connections but nothing game breaking. Lighting and sound effects are top notch and the overall design is supreme.

Modern Warfare Beta Beta.

And Jeff, those people in the chat room complaining about players not playing their game properly... they're Battlefield fans. Have fun with that...

WOw, their PC is super fast or mine is fucked. The game loaded up so quick!

We are strong! Heartache to heartache we stand! No promises no demands!

Anyways, Battlefield is always a weird series for me. I love the idea of it, but it usually ends up kind of disappointing. I just prefer the more fast-paced multiplayer of CoD and the fact that I don't have to rely so much on teammates. Might give it a shot if it has as awesome of a single-player game as the Bad Company games had.

I'll check it out, I like Battlefield.

Although, the Origin stuff is really pissing me off. I mean, why can't you put your stuff on Steam EA? You can't just create a service that sells only your games, if everybody did that, I'd just say "Screw you PC gaming I'm outta here."

Looks like Bad Company 3 to me. It is rush mode however so I'm not surprised. The conquest maps are hopefully bigger and open and not just redesigned rush maps. I don't mind if it's BC3 at all actually since I always preferred infantry combat more than vehicles but I still prefer conquest maps. Don't get me wrong, I like the vehicles but I like it when they work like support or boss units. Not a fan of huge tank vs tank or air vs air maps even though I'm really good at flying helicopters if I may say so.

I get why they added rush mode to BC. It's because they introduced destructible environments.

Kinda nice to hear that they are still workin on the game, gives me hope they can fix some of the glitches I've encountered (ps3). Overall though Im really enjoying it. I played nearly 200 hours of BFBC2 and this feels much different but better. Excited to see bigger expansive maps with vehicles though.

I don't like it...

Enjoying the beta so far, even if it is Rush mode. Still no sure about the Battlelog. Too long winded way to access the game really.

I've been playing since Tuesday evening (when I had time), and I've not run into most of the bugs mentioned in this thread so far.

Generally, my play experience has been great, even on my 3 year old pc (core 2 quad @ 2.4Ghz with 4gb of ram and a Radeon HD 6870 running on Fios 25/25). The game runs smoothly for me on High settings (default) and looks fantastic.

With that said, on *MOST (but not all) servers, once the player count reaches around 26-28 the game gets laggy for me... some servers are worse than other. Unfortunately, i'm not talking about framerate issues type of lag, or latency... but some sort of weird input lag instead. Confused? So am I, I've never had an experiance quite like it.... where you input a bunch of commands (say... run forward, strafe left, prone, crawl forward, come up to crouch, zoom in...) and they spend the next several seconds, even after you're removed your hands from the keyboard & mouse, playing out. For awhile I thought it might just be me, as I couldn't get anyone to respond over the wretched in-game chat system as to weather anyone else was seeing it... then my buddy with a shiny new computer (core i7 2600k, 8gb of ram and an Nvidia 560GT) let me know he was experiencing the same thing on full servers. Hopefully this gets fixed, soon, as it's certainly a deal-breaker.

Now with my main issue pointed out... I've been having a lot of fun with it (when it's not laggy as crap), despite the beta servers crashing and kicking me from time to time. The gameplay is fantastic (for me)... much less run & gun and more tactical. Getting a good, behind the enemy lines position for your squad to spawn on you works wonders. The guns feel, and sound great. The radio chatter is informative and pulls you into the battle. The animations are smooth and look (mostly) finished, with a glitch here and there.

About the server browser / Battlelog. Personally, I think it's pretty cool. I like having all of my stats, and my friends stats, right at my finger tips... it's fun to see. I didn't have any issues getting the plugins for battlelog in the latest version of Chrome (didn't try anything else, as Chrome is my default) and it loads quickly (as does the actual game when I launch). My hope for the Battlelog being in a web-browser is that it will be significantly easier to patch and update, without having to update the entire game (as someone else pointed out). I think it gets a lot of flak for being so different, currently, and while I am generally against a Server Browser being separate from the game itself, this one seems to work fairly well (although it needs some updates on functionality).

The party system, so far, has worked for sporadically, at best, for me and my friends. There doesn't seem to be a way to guarantee that you'll be on the same team (or in the same squad if you are) as your friends... hopefully this is something that gets fixed before launch.

So far, my experience with Orign has been less than stellar. It has worked alright, with no bugs or crashes for me, but the design decisions (like not being able to change your in game name, at all, or pick anything other than the Master Account name to use) are terribad. On top of that, I was unable to add a friend who made a new Orgin account until the next day (we only tried a few times that night, over a period of 2 hours). Of course I'm already against Origin, to begin with, as I much prefer my beloved Steam... so my opinions could very well be Biased... and it's hard to compare a "new" (lol, okay... rebranded) service to one as well established and polished as Steam.

It seems to me that this beta is still very buggy, and could use quite a bit of polish. I understand that it's a beta, and betas are by definition buggy and not finished... it would still be nice to see EA take some more time to polish up the game before having a public beta (which is traditionally used for some form of stress testing) as many people are going to treat this like a Demo. In comparison (although not fair), Beta's from the folks over at Blizzard (say, the latest beta for Diablo III) tend to feel, look and play like games that are ready for release (which is wonderful for the image of the game). What scares me here is that a game like Diablo III... Blizzard has several months at the LEAST to polish up the game and make their changes... while Battlefield 3 looks to be in far worse condition and it releases in under a month.

Well, that was longer than I intended... thanks for letting me rant.

Watching the QL as soon as it buffers a bit (I'm at work where our pipe to the Internets isn't quite so robustly gigantic as I have at home) ; )

TL;DR: Gameplay is fantstic, but unless the bugs are squashed (client & server) it's definately a wait till it gets fixed and drops in price game.

Be advised: this is not real Battlefield.

Battling American True Tough Latter-day Eternal Friends Ideally Executing Lowly Degenerates To Heroically Refute Energetic Enemies

Shoutouts to being able to PRONE again. A sniper's life has a new meaning.

Aww, man, no love for the Opera browser. I use it for everything except using the Giant Bomb site.

Jeff you gotta be more methodical when navigating the map!

sprint to cover to cover

No Steam, No Sale

@TheChaos said:

Be advised: this is not real Battlefield.

Play on Caspian Borders and it's very much real Battlefield.

@Thuggish said:

even on my 3 year old pc (... Radeon HD 6870 ...).

mhhm

I think everyone is forgetting that DICE have NEVER managed to make a server browser that wasn't a colossally broken piece of shit.

Removing the server browser from the game and making battlelog is the best thing they could have done. Combined stat tracking and server browsing is great once you get over your prejudices.

Been playing this on both PS3 and PC, its great! Can´t wait for the full game to come out!

I've played a couple of hours of the PS3 Beta so far and I'm absolutely LOVING it! I hadn't played my copy of Bad Company 2 for a while so there was a brief period of "What buttons am I pressing!?!" panic, but after that it all came back to me. Looking forward to experiencing some vehicular combat at some point.

One thing I'm worried about is that, by the time the game comes out, the Metro map will become the Port Valdez of BF3 in terms of over-familiarity and all that entails.

I do also worry that, between the heatwave we're having here and this 'ere game, my PS3 is going to melt into a shiny lump (accompanied by one of the fans bursting out of the innards "Alien-style" and embedding itself in a passer-by).

The Beta played too much like Black Ops and the bugs were ridiculous AND game-breaking at times. Why EA would release a Beta at all if this is all they can offer is beyond me, because surely this has put people off buying it.

A big pass from me.

Caspian is so much better.