1st Stop - E3 Event 

HD Multiplayer Teaser: 

HD Stage Demo "Thunder Run":

• Bla bla bla about the dynamic lighting, the divine new Frostbite 2 game engine, the smooth grafix, and all that crap we've been fed for four months. If you haven't been keeping up with the news, that's not my goddamn problem!
• The tank setup seems much more satisfying for the player from past BF games, both control-wise and feature wise : 

1. You can zoom in/zoom out in the tank view, turn on thermal vision, shoot both shells and a machine gun. 
2. The tank has it's own built-in console that controls a  laser-designating aerial vehicle of some sorts. Will that be used in multiplayer? We don't know yet, but DICE seem very fond of the player-deployed artillery and UAV, so that could be one of the new ways to deploy UAV in-game. 
3. The shooting precision is looking a lot tighter than previous BF games, with shells hitting their target and not being too hindered by bullet drop mechanics. Also, the tank driving seems a lot more responsive, whereas driving a tank in a Battlefield game is usually a bitch, because they're too slow and heavy to control.
4. When a tank takes a hit, the tank vision/view gets distorted in a black&white color, rather than just showing the red hit detector [It also has a limited health regeneration]. Will that be added to the multiplayer in some way? We don't know, but a new "vehicle-disablement" feature has been added to the multiplayer, which basically means that when you keep GUSTAVing a tank and it gets badly damaged, it doesn't immediately explode, allowing the passengers to get out and flee/fight back before the vehicle explodes. 

A) PixelEnemy's frame-by-frame analysis of the multiplayer teaser  (in collaboration with the Don't Revive Me Bro staff):

• Weapons spotted-  

1. M16A4 
2. SVD  sniper
3. AK74M   
4. AKS74U
5. Beretta M9 pistol
6. MP443 pistol 
7. M249
8. M16
9. Pechenag (PKM type of weapon)
10. M67 Frag Grenade
11. ACOG
12. Combat Scope (a certain type of ACOG)
13. Flashlight attachment [Confirmed]

• Maximum number of players in a squad: 4 [Confirmed]
• Squad Leader makes a comeback - has a star by his name [Confirmed]  
• Classic Rush Mode is back [Confirmed]   
• Health bar is back, in the form of a "100%" bar [Confirmed] + Light health regeneration
• On-screen compass    
• A certain type of missiles can be launched (Possible return of the Anti-Air vehicle)  
• LAV-26 APC [Confirmed] - Details:  

1. 6 Seats 
2. Shell cannon
3. 50. Caliber M2 machine gun  
4. 100% tank health bar
5. Tank view magnification indicator (1x, 2x, etc..)

• Powerful recoil on the guns [Confirmed] 
• 3D spotting is returning [Confirmed]   
• Alot of flashing and myst caused by the bullets
• New/Updated kinds of XP points:  

1. Enemy Down (you killed an enemy) - 100 points
2. Double Kill - 200 points
3. Kill Assists - 50 points
4. Suppression bonus - 50 points
5. Avenger bonus - 10 points
6. "Comeback" XP (when you get a kill after several deaths in a row) - 40 points
7. MCOM Attacker Kill [???]

• On-screen Base indicator   
• MOH-like Objective updates/notification on-screen 
• ANT animation capable of mixing several simultaneous animations in a dynamic way 
• When you aim down your gun scope you can still see the sides of your gun
• Huge explosions caused by Mortar Strikes or Artillery or UAV
• Scripted events after every MCOM wave gets demolished 
• multi-level mini-map (when you go into a new area, a specific mini-map of that area/section is viewed on-screen)
• Everytime you stealth knife/get stealth knifed, there's a quick animation [Confirmed]
• The killfeed says "Knife" when someone gets knifed.
• Chokepoints might be a problem
• Dynamic light sources - You can camp in a room (for instance) and take out the lights to stay in the shadows [Confirmed]. Could be a great gameplay tactic going along with the use of night vision goggles
• MCOMs are attached to things, like vans for example [unconfirmed]
• Falling debris can kill you. Not confirmed if it can damage vehicles.

B) GamerSpawn's 10-minute comprehensive analysis of the multiplayer teaser:  

• Weapons spotted-  (Look Above)
• Tactical Reload: When you have a bullet in the gun chamber and you reload, you keep the chamber bullet and gain the 30 rounds of the magazine, hence the "31" bullet indicator (as opposed to having to lose the chamber bullet to have 30 bullets max)  
• Multiple firing modes selection makes a comeback from Battlefield 2  
• When you headshot-kill someone, a crosshair icon appears by their name in the top left corner KillFeed 
• After fan/expert feedback on the view through the ACOG scope from the Fault Line series of trailers, DICE corrected it by moving the view somewhat closer to the player  
• When looking through your ACOG scope, the entire player view zooms in, not just the view from inside the scope (since that's the way it should be, because of the scope magnification). But hey, screw realism for all i care, we want balance and polish 
• The Russian players are all wearing NBC suits. Does that mean BF3 has Chemical Warfare? 
• The US uniform has Desert Marpat Camouflage. But Paris is no-where near any desert, so... ??

2nd Stop - BF3 Multiplayer Demo at the EA Showfloor Booth:

Live Stream Archive: 

Another 5-minute video from the booth:

• Equippable grenade (no more quick tossing)
• Two types of knife: Quick knife (button tap) + Equppable knife (like a weapon) 

1. Rifleman (or Combat Medic): Assault & Medic put in one (main weapon = assault rifles). You can either choose meds/defibs (medic) or replace them with a grenade launcher (assault) 
2. Support: main weapon = heavy machine guns, your job is to lay suppressing fire and give your teammates ammo 
3. Engineer: main weapon = SMGs, your job is to disable vehicles with your rocket launcher and to repair friendly vehicles 
4. Recon (or Sniper): main weapon = sniper rifles, your job is to snipe / blow shit up with C4.  Motion balls are gone, and the ghillie outfit has been replaced with a jihadist-looking outfit with a bandana

• You can opt-out of being revived. If do so, the revive symbol above your body will disappear (in order not to confuse medics) 
• Medpacks and Ammopacks are fucking huge. they're like mini fridges  
• No pre-recorded voice communication tool whatsoever.. We need a god damned Command Wheel to thank each other and say important things to enhance communication and teamplay! 
• Support class can go prone, deploy bipods and suppress enemies efficiently.  
• When you get suppressed, your screen goes a little dim/blurry, shakes violently and you're unable to aim very well  (called "The stress effect")
• Whenever you jump/vault over an obstacle, there's a quick animation showing your feet 
• Invisible Walls (You heard me.. unless they fix it) 
• Customizable dog-tags [Confirmed] 
• No Kill-Cam: When you die, you lay on your side and see the name and dogtags of your killer, until you get revived or respawn 
• Real military ranks are back, along with real military ribbons and pins (replacing the silly golden stars from BC2) 
• Going into prone has been taxed - it takes a moment and feels quite heavy. Prone too much and you'll get killed doing it (you won't be as quick)

 3rd Stop - Hands-On information:

 A)  DRMB Hands-On Recap:

• Weapons spotted - 

1. SMAW rocket launcher

• The foundations of the buildings don't seem to be easily destructible, so the destruction is more focused on the walls themselves  
• You get 100 points for disabling/immobalizing a vehicle (about this feature, read above)  
• Sway has been added to sniper rifles. Snipers now have to "hold their breath" in order to focus their aim  
• The SVD sniper rifle is a 3-shot kill 
• The suicide screen now says something along the lines of "You committed suicide" ("Epic Fail" screen is gone) 
• Knife information : 

1. When you tap the auto-knife button [as opposed to equipping the knife as a weapon], the knife doesn't stick in your opponent's body, it just swipes/slashes them 
2. It takes two swipes to knife kill an enemy (auto-knife)  
3. You can only get a knifed opponent's dogtags by "stealth knifing them", which means knifing them from behind while undetected 

• Prone position is very smooth, even when strafing, but when you prone as Support and deploy your bipods, the field of vision is limited (90 degrees) 
• The game seems to make the non-support classes more dependent on the support class for ammo. Going Rambo seems to be hindered by the amount of ammo a player has 
• The reload system is the same as BC2, if you have 10 bullets in your mag and you reload, you don't lose the 10 bullets (No need to reserve ammo and reload carefully. It's like your gun is picking up the bullets from a pool)
• The new suppression feature (The Stress Effect) seems like a good way to discourage camping, since you can't camp and poke your head out to shoot. If you get suppressed while camping in a corner, you're pretty much no longer able to fire back properly. 
• Apparently, after you revive somebody, they go into some sort of "last stand" mode where they choose to get up or die and respawn 
• The MCOM arming/disarming button and the kit-picking button have been separated. No longer will you pick up random kits left and right while arming/disarming an MCOM 
• Apparently, MCOMs can only be armed/disarmed from one side

•  3D spotting:
• Very responsive 3D spotting
• There's a chance that when you spot a squad leader, his entire squad gets spotted
• There doesn't seem to be a significant cooldown yet

• Flashlight can be turned on/off
• It takes several bullets to shoot out a light
• Flashlight might be exclusive to the engineer class
• "L" to turn flashlight on/off
• Single shot, burst fire and fully automatic firing modes
• "V" to switch fire modes
• 3 gun add-ons to the main weapons: barrel, ammo and optics
• Snipers can unlock the bipod

• There should be an animation for entering/exiting vehicles which will stop vehicles from becoming a safe fortress that you teleport into

• The knife is faster and more efficient 

• basic weapon keys:

1. 1 is rifle
2. 2 is pistol
3. 3 and you throw out a medicpack/ammopack instead of equipping a box and pressing fire to throw them out. it switches you back to your last equipped weapon.
4. 4 defibs / ???
5. F is knife melee
6. G is for grenades (which used to be for grabbing someone elses kit if I remember correctly)
7. Shift to sprint
8. Ctrl to crouch
9. Z to fall to prone

• When you get revived you get an option to accept the revive by pressing space bar (while in this "last stand" state you are revived with your pistol out in a prone like position) When you accept the revive you get back on your feet and have to press 1 to equip your primary weapon otherwise you're still rocking the pistol.

4th Stop -   Official Information:

• Consoles will not have a server browser 
• PC requirements will not be anything beastly or Crysis-like 
• About the commo rose - "I’m not exactly sure how we’ll be doing the command rose. " Which means it's not entirely out :D 
• Thousands of weapon customizations 
• No day and night cycles in MP, instead we'll have day and night maps. 

• There will be no enter/exit vehicle animations in MP (Zh1nt0 statement in BFO chatroom)  
• No Hybrid scopes. They want the player to make the choice between CQB and range (Demize99 tweet)   
• No respawn immunity, and a reduced spawn time if you get instakilled on revive, since you already went down once.(Demize99 tweet) 
• The HUD is still being enhanced (Demize99 tweet) 
• The Squad Leader is the person who created the squad. He stays until he leaves (Demize99 tweet & tweet) 

Thanks for reading :) .

1st Stop - E3 Event 

HD Multiplayer Teaser: 

HD Stage Demo "Thunder Run":

• Bla bla bla about the dynamic lighting, the divine new Frostbite 2 game engine, the smooth grafix, and all that crap we've been fed for four months. If you haven't been keeping up with the news, that's not my goddamn problem!
• The tank setup seems much more satisfying for the player from past BF games, both control-wise and feature wise : 

1. You can zoom in/zoom out in the tank view, turn on thermal vision, shoot both shells and a machine gun. 
2. The tank has it's own built-in console that controls a  laser-designating aerial vehicle of some sorts. Will that be used in multiplayer? We don't know yet, but DICE seem very fond of the player-deployed artillery and UAV, so that could be one of the new ways to deploy UAV in-game. 
3. The shooting precision is looking a lot tighter than previous BF games, with shells hitting their target and not being too hindered by bullet drop mechanics. Also, the tank driving seems a lot more responsive, whereas driving a tank in a Battlefield game is usually a bitch, because they're too slow and heavy to control.
4. When a tank takes a hit, the tank vision/view gets distorted in a black&white color, rather than just showing the red hit detector [It also has a limited health regeneration]. Will that be added to the multiplayer in some way? We don't know, but a new "vehicle-disablement" feature has been added to the multiplayer, which basically means that when you keep GUSTAVing a tank and it gets badly damaged, it doesn't immediately explode, allowing the passengers to get out and flee/fight back before the vehicle explodes. 

A) PixelEnemy's frame-by-frame analysis of the multiplayer teaser  (in collaboration with the Don't Revive Me Bro staff):

• Weapons spotted-  

1. M16A4 
2. SVD  sniper
3. AK74M   
4. AKS74U
5. Beretta M9 pistol
6. MP443 pistol 
7. M249
8. M16
9. Pechenag (PKM type of weapon)
10. M67 Frag Grenade
11. ACOG
12. Combat Scope (a certain type of ACOG)
13. Flashlight attachment [Confirmed]

• Maximum number of players in a squad: 4 [Confirmed]
• Squad Leader makes a comeback - has a star by his name [Confirmed]  
• Classic Rush Mode is back [Confirmed]   
• Health bar is back, in the form of a "100%" bar [Confirmed] + Light health regeneration
• On-screen compass    
• A certain type of missiles can be launched (Possible return of the Anti-Air vehicle)  
• LAV-26 APC [Confirmed] - Details:  

1. 6 Seats 
2. Shell cannon
3. 50. Caliber M2 machine gun  
4. 100% tank health bar
5. Tank view magnification indicator (1x, 2x, etc..)

• Powerful recoil on the guns [Confirmed] 
• 3D spotting is returning [Confirmed]   
• Alot of flashing and myst caused by the bullets
• New/Updated kinds of XP points:  

1. Enemy Down (you killed an enemy) - 100 points
2. Double Kill - 200 points
3. Kill Assists - 50 points
4. Suppression bonus - 50 points
5. Avenger bonus - 10 points
6. "Comeback" XP (when you get a kill after several deaths in a row) - 40 points
7. MCOM Attacker Kill [???]

• On-screen Base indicator   
• MOH-like Objective updates/notification on-screen 
• ANT animation capable of mixing several simultaneous animations in a dynamic way 
• When you aim down your gun scope you can still see the sides of your gun
• Huge explosions caused by Mortar Strikes or Artillery or UAV
• Scripted events after every MCOM wave gets demolished 
• multi-level mini-map (when you go into a new area, a specific mini-map of that area/section is viewed on-screen)
• Everytime you stealth knife/get stealth knifed, there's a quick animation [Confirmed]
• The killfeed says "Knife" when someone gets knifed.
• Chokepoints might be a problem
• Dynamic light sources - You can camp in a room (for instance) and take out the lights to stay in the shadows [Confirmed]. Could be a great gameplay tactic going along with the use of night vision goggles
• MCOMs are attached to things, like vans for example [unconfirmed]
• Falling debris can kill you. Not confirmed if it can damage vehicles.

B) GamerSpawn's 10-minute comprehensive analysis of the multiplayer teaser:  

• Weapons spotted-  (Look Above)
• Tactical Reload: When you have a bullet in the gun chamber and you reload, you keep the chamber bullet and gain the 30 rounds of the magazine, hence the "31" bullet indicator (as opposed to having to lose the chamber bullet to have 30 bullets max)  
• Multiple firing modes selection makes a comeback from Battlefield 2  
• When you headshot-kill someone, a crosshair icon appears by their name in the top left corner KillFeed 
• After fan/expert feedback on the view through the ACOG scope from the Fault Line series of trailers, DICE corrected it by moving the view somewhat closer to the player  
• When looking through your ACOG scope, the entire player view zooms in, not just the view from inside the scope (since that's the way it should be, because of the scope magnification). But hey, screw realism for all i care, we want balance and polish 
• The Russian players are all wearing NBC suits. Does that mean BF3 has Chemical Warfare? 
• The US uniform has Desert Marpat Camouflage. But Paris is no-where near any desert, so... ??

2nd Stop - BF3 Multiplayer Demo at the EA Showfloor Booth:

Live Stream Archive: 

Another 5-minute video from the booth:

• Equippable grenade (no more quick tossing)
• Two types of knife: Quick knife (button tap) + Equppable knife (like a weapon) 

1. Rifleman (or Combat Medic): Assault & Medic put in one (main weapon = assault rifles). You can either choose meds/defibs (medic) or replace them with a grenade launcher (assault) 
2. Support: main weapon = heavy machine guns, your job is to lay suppressing fire and give your teammates ammo 
3. Engineer: main weapon = SMGs, your job is to disable vehicles with your rocket launcher and to repair friendly vehicles 
4. Recon (or Sniper): main weapon = sniper rifles, your job is to snipe / blow shit up with C4.  Motion balls are gone, and the ghillie outfit has been replaced with a jihadist-looking outfit with a bandana

• You can opt-out of being revived. If do so, the revive symbol above your body will disappear (in order not to confuse medics) 
• Medpacks and Ammopacks are fucking huge. they're like mini fridges  
• No pre-recorded voice communication tool whatsoever.. We need a god damned Command Wheel to thank each other and say important things to enhance communication and teamplay! 
• Support class can go prone, deploy bipods and suppress enemies efficiently.  
• When you get suppressed, your screen goes a little dim/blurry, shakes violently and you're unable to aim very well  (called "The stress effect")
• Whenever you jump/vault over an obstacle, there's a quick animation showing your feet 
• Invisible Walls (You heard me.. unless they fix it) 
• Customizable dog-tags [Confirmed] 
• No Kill-Cam: When you die, you lay on your side and see the name and dogtags of your killer, until you get revived or respawn 
• Real military ranks are back, along with real military ribbons and pins (replacing the silly golden stars from BC2) 
• Going into prone has been taxed - it takes a moment and feels quite heavy. Prone too much and you'll get killed doing it (you won't be as quick)

 3rd Stop - Hands-On information:

 A)  DRMB Hands-On Recap:

• Weapons spotted - 

1. SMAW rocket launcher

• The foundations of the buildings don't seem to be easily destructible, so the destruction is more focused on the walls themselves  
• You get 100 points for disabling/immobalizing a vehicle (about this feature, read above)  
• Sway has been added to sniper rifles. Snipers now have to "hold their breath" in order to focus their aim  
• The SVD sniper rifle is a 3-shot kill 
• The suicide screen now says something along the lines of "You committed suicide" ("Epic Fail" screen is gone) 
• Knife information : 

1. When you tap the auto-knife button [as opposed to equipping the knife as a weapon], the knife doesn't stick in your opponent's body, it just swipes/slashes them 
2. It takes two swipes to knife kill an enemy (auto-knife)  
3. You can only get a knifed opponent's dogtags by "stealth knifing them", which means knifing them from behind while undetected 

• Prone position is very smooth, even when strafing, but when you prone as Support and deploy your bipods, the field of vision is limited (90 degrees) 
• The game seems to make the non-support classes more dependent on the support class for ammo. Going Rambo seems to be hindered by the amount of ammo a player has 
• The reload system is the same as BC2, if you have 10 bullets in your mag and you reload, you don't lose the 10 bullets (No need to reserve ammo and reload carefully. It's like your gun is picking up the bullets from a pool)
• The new suppression feature (The Stress Effect) seems like a good way to discourage camping, since you can't camp and poke your head out to shoot. If you get suppressed while camping in a corner, you're pretty much no longer able to fire back properly. 
• Apparently, after you revive somebody, they go into some sort of "last stand" mode where they choose to get up or die and respawn 
• The MCOM arming/disarming button and the kit-picking button have been separated. No longer will you pick up random kits left and right while arming/disarming an MCOM 
• Apparently, MCOMs can only be armed/disarmed from one side

•  3D spotting:
• Very responsive 3D spotting
• There's a chance that when you spot a squad leader, his entire squad gets spotted
• There doesn't seem to be a significant cooldown yet

• Flashlight can be turned on/off
• It takes several bullets to shoot out a light
• Flashlight might be exclusive to the engineer class
• "L" to turn flashlight on/off
• Single shot, burst fire and fully automatic firing modes
• "V" to switch fire modes
• 3 gun add-ons to the main weapons: barrel, ammo and optics
• Snipers can unlock the bipod

• There should be an animation for entering/exiting vehicles which will stop vehicles from becoming a safe fortress that you teleport into

• The knife is faster and more efficient 

• basic weapon keys:

1. 1 is rifle
2. 2 is pistol
3. 3 and you throw out a medicpack/ammopack instead of equipping a box and pressing fire to throw them out. it switches you back to your last equipped weapon.
4. 4 defibs / ???
5. F is knife melee
6. G is for grenades (which used to be for grabbing someone elses kit if I remember correctly)
7. Shift to sprint
8. Ctrl to crouch
9. Z to fall to prone

• When you get revived you get an option to accept the revive by pressing space bar (while in this "last stand" state you are revived with your pistol out in a prone like position) When you accept the revive you get back on your feet and have to press 1 to equip your primary weapon otherwise you're still rocking the pistol.

4th Stop -   Official Information:

• Consoles will not have a server browser 
• PC requirements will not be anything beastly or Crysis-like 
• About the commo rose - "I’m not exactly sure how we’ll be doing the command rose. " Which means it's not entirely out :D 
• Thousands of weapon customizations 
• No day and night cycles in MP, instead we'll have day and night maps. 

• There will be no enter/exit vehicle animations in MP (Zh1nt0 statement in BFO chatroom)  
• No Hybrid scopes. They want the player to make the choice between CQB and range (Demize99 tweet)   
• No respawn immunity, and a reduced spawn time if you get instakilled on revive, since you already went down once.(Demize99 tweet) 
• The HUD is still being enhanced (Demize99 tweet) 
• The Squad Leader is the person who created the squad. He stays until he leaves (Demize99 tweet & tweet) 

Thanks for reading :) .

Wow that just got me even more hyped for this game. /fan girl scream!

Nice. That pixel enemy video was entertaining.

This is great man thanks a lot.

6-10 hr single player experience too. 

Diggin it!

I feel like I'm in the minority being super hyped over the new suppression feature. I'm almost sure the tanks in MP won't have that kind of tech to play with.

Great work you did here. Will read it in a bit.

If the light will be more realistic, that would be an awesome feature to explore when in MP to use to your own advantage. Also to kill RB some more. :P Great blog man, keeping an eye out for the next one!

The one thing that worries me is the suppressive fire.  I hope it's not too ridiculous of an effect, because I could see situations where there are so many supports covering MCOMs that it would be near impossible to kill anyone once you're up near the MCOM if the effect is completely terrible.
 
Also, they confirmed that falling debris can kill you.  The guys just said they weren't sure if the debris damaged vehicles (they thought it didn't, but weren't sure).  Unless those two guys were dumb and lied for some reason or were mis-informed.
 
Edit:  Great job gathering all this into one place by the way!

pumped for this game. nice read.

I'm really looking forward to this game, It looks like they are taking some serious steps to balance the multiplayer. 

@Ahmad_Metallic said:

No pre-recorded voice communication tool whatsoever.. We need a god damned Command Wheel to thank each other and say important things to enhance communication and teamplay!

Fuck no. The sound design sounds awesome, I don't want it cluttered up with random bullshit as in BF2.

@Ahmad_Metallic said:

No pre-recorded voice communication tool whatsoever.. We need a god damned Command Wheel to thank each other and say important things to enhance communication and teamplay!

Fuck no. The sound design sounds awesome, I don't want it cluttered up with random bullshit as in BF2.

@Ahmad_Metallic: Awesome post. Thanks for putting this together.

@Ahmad_Metallic: Most players won't jump out of your helicopter just because you asked them. Most players won't notice a flashing question mark in their mini map when you guess-spot someone. Most people won't give a shit about you needing ammo. Call me pessimistic, but you give humans too much credit.

The people you need to communicate with are your squad, and you have voice chat/ventrilo/teamspeak/skype to help you with that.

But to each his own. Personally, I think it would be a damned shame if DICE destroyed the awesome sound design with repetitive prerecorded crap. Throw in some awesome text too further cludder up the screen and you have a winner.

And good job with collecting all the info, thanks.

Most players won't jump out of your helicopter just because you asked them. Most players won't notice a flashing question mark in their mini map when you guess-spot someone. Most people won't give a shit about you needing ammo. Call me pessimistic, but you give humans too much credit.

The people you need to communicate with are your squad, and you have voice chat/ventrilo/teamspeak/skype to help you with that.

Personally, I think it would be a damned shame if DICE destroyed the awesome sound design with repetitive prerecorded crap. Throw in some awesome text too further cludder up the screen and you have a winner.

@Ahmad_Metallic said:

No.. i'm no optimist and i give no one credit.
I'm positive that that's the way it would go down only because i've been playing BF2 for 3.5 years on random servers with random players, most of which did exactly all the things you deny they do..
Why would i lie? Why would i want the Commo Rose if it never did me any good?

And I, also, have played BF2 for several years on random servers with random players. I can honestly say the Commo Rose have done more bad than good. Sure, someone will listen to it. But when I have to spam "I need a medic!" five times while firing in the air around a medic for him too notice, it's too much of a bother.

I'm not saying your lying and what not, I'm simply saying I think the prerecorded commands fucks up the sound design and there are better ways to relay the information. And no matter how many lines there are, it will get repetitive after tens/hundreds/thousands of hours.

Again, you don't seem to be fond of running with strangers. That is your choice and I respect it, so please respect my choice to jump into a random server and have solid pre-recorded commands to pull of amazing teamwork with people i've never met before.. That's what makes Battlefield games fun to me.
Those few strangers around me understand how it is, I understand how it is, result = perfect communication. We thank each other, apologize to each other, and more..

What's stopping you from voice-chatting with strangers and people you've never met before? No matter how good a prerecorded messages is, direct communication is always better and will lead to better teamplay.

And about the text cluttering up the screen, and the fear of spam, you and I both know that many cooldown elements can be used to prevent spam in both voice and chat. If i ask for medic 3 times before i get a cooldown, the game can show only one on-screen "i need a medic" line. If a dude is too far away for me to help him or actually hear him, when he hits a command i won't be able to hear him (limit command reach to the area around you) There are tons of ideas to perfect the system and make it convenient, dude.

About the text log, I wouldn't want anything other than messages from other players there. Reading "I need a medic!" don't tell me anything. Neither does "I need ammo!", "Sorry!" or "Enemy Boat Spotted!" All of this is better conveyed audibly, with the mini map and 3D Map. It seems DICE agree - because it's exactly what they've been doing.

I have yet to see a good system implemented in any game. Why couldn't your in game avatar just automatically say thanks when getting revived? Not over radio, but just audibly so the reviver and anyone close heard it? What would you loose? Same system for sorry, shoot a teammate and your avatar shouts sorry. Honestly, what do you loose/gain by being able to say sorry?

@Ahmad_Metallic said:

There are tons of ideas to perfect the system and make it convenient, dude.

I don't doubt it. But there's also tons of ideas on how to get the same functions, without sacrificing the audio and HUD. But this is enough drunk internet arguing for my part, you have your views, I have mine and DICE have theirs. Honestly I would trust DICE over both of us. Peace.

Here's a 10 minute analysis of the multiplayer trailer. Pretty interesting. 
 
  

I would like to start off by saying I am not a bad company fan, I am an OG Battlefield 2 player

http://bf2s.com/player/44391552/

So believe me when I say I am nothing but stoked for this, people think I am stupid for waiting to play the game. But obviously they don't know how much I love this game.

I am posting my personal experience with the demo I waited yesterday from 10:30am till 4pm to play the game. The line was slowed constantly by the "cut line" for media people so basically right around 10-15 minutes to cycle a group of people from the presentation to gaming room about 10 or so journalists would magically show up to cut in line about 2 minutes before the next batch of people who actually gave a shit about the game.

I am copying what I put in another forum.

We got to play 1 round of rush we won btw. I got 4th place overall.

@easthill said:

And I, also, have played BF2 for several years on random servers with random players. I can honestly say the Commo Rose have done more bad than good. Sure, someone will listen to it. But when I have to spam "I need a medic!" five times while firing in the air around a medic for him too notice, it's too much of a bother.

I'm not saying your lying and what not, I'm simply saying I think the prerecorded commands fucks up the sound design and there are better ways to relay the information. And no matter how many lines there are, it will get repetitive after tens/hundreds/thousands of hours.

What's stopping you from voice-chatting with strangers and people you've never met before? No matter how good a prerecorded messages is, direct communication is always better and will lead to better teamplay.

Not everyone wants to use voice-chat, that's why. It also doesn't show you on the mini map when you yell in a microphone. We need some form of mean to get our icons flashing with the needed support action, and being able to mark a point on the map and tell the squad to go there, instead of "attack that flag" or "defend that m-com station".

You find the command rose a bother. Well I find it very much needed for smaller things that was a annoying as hell in BC2. Instead of triggering a "I need ammo!" from a command rose, which works every time, I had to look at some Assault's name tag and HOPE that I got an ammo logo on it and then MAYBE it will trigger a "I need ammo!" when I press Q. But that could be overrided by the fact that I was a medic and the guy was injured, so instead he yells "Hey stop so I can fix that wound!".

You're so focused on the ruined sound design and that's fine. But that doesn't take away from the fact that Voice chatting will do that exact thing as well. I take some pre-recorded yells of orders that sounds out of place, accompanied with visual queues on the map, over Voice chat and text chatting any day. If tactical additions to the game is stripped away because of the risk of ruining some need of perfect sound design, then I feel they'd be doing it wrong. Might just go watch a movie instead then.

@scarace360 said:

Wow that just got me even more hyped for this game. /fan girl scream!

This ^^

Looks really good! And yes, that is one of the best voices i'v heard in anything for a long time (GamerSpawn's analyzing vid)

@PhatSeeJay: What's stopping DICE from making the system from BC2 simply better? And I haven't seen anything about how the squad orders from BF2 will work in BF3 yet. They had a separate tactical rose in BF2 - but the best place to issue orders were from the caps-lock tactical map, and I too want to see this in BF3.

The system from BF2 could be improved, sure - but so can the system from BC2. The system from BF2 works, but it's too open to abuse/spam with questionable effect. You say it works perfectly, I say it doesn't. We both base it on personal experiences... The system from BC2 works sort of - but it's not precise enough - then again, BC2 wasn't a 64 player game where you absolutely needed the precision.

Can we at least agree that neither system is perfect? The multiplayer ain't done, and we don't know what the final thing will be. Let's wait until the beta to see what does and doesn't work in BF3.

My problem ain't the actual requests you're able to make, I just don't think they're necessary. Automate that shit, low on ammo/health? Mark the players icon that's floating overhead and on the mini map. I don't see what you'll loose.

Damn, all this talk of Battlefield made me re-install BF2.

@easthill: I don't think BF2's systems are perfect at all. But I prefer them over BC2 because I really dislike everything being automated and stripped out because, and let's be brutally honest here, it has to work on a controller.

I think it's fine with a "Hit Q to mark or make a quick order to a flag icon". But I also want a "Hold Q to yell more complex things" like Ammo or Health or "Go to that point" or "defend from that spot." or to say "Understood" or "No can do" or something like that. I don't want to empty all of my clips to get an automated indication that I need ammo. I want to alert that I need ammo when I feel I need it. I could use an extra grenade or more ammo to the pistol but the automated system wouldn't request ammo because of that. I just never felt like I could get what I needed where I wanted it in BC2. Also, the command rose could be throttled if you were spamming. Like you tried to yell for the fifth time in a second, the commander's pre-recorded voice would yell "Stop japping and get off this channel!" or something like that. Not sure what controlled the throttle, though, but that's also a thing that could be looked at closer to not make that system spammy.

In BF2, I could give my squad (I was usually a squad leader) a point I wanted them to run to so we could plan a flanking maneuver on a flag without having to write it out. "Go where I say and we'll fuck them up together." In Bad Company 2, I was lucky if I had my entire squad because the only common point we had, was a marked flag. Most just ran to the direction they found the best and we weren't together, which pretty much nullifies the point of being in a squad. Oh and BF3 need the ability to kick people from your squad and so on. If a person can't work as a squad member, he can find a different squad.

I'm not against automating things and streamlining what just didn't work. But, as with the helicopters if DICE is to be believed, there should be a more accessible system for the beginners, and have more complex features once you get a hang of your stuff. I'm quite sure BF2 had that as well.. Simpler commands but then you could change to a more complex one.

Shit won't break the game for me, I'll still play it. But I would just raise an eyebrow to the moon in confusion, if the game they claim to be PC focused were to be streamlined in the likes of how it's played on a controller. I don't think complexity and "unnecessary things" as you call them should be mandatory, but I neither think it should be stripped away because of it. Because that eliminates the depth in my opinion.

But I am definitely on your level on the Caps Lock map. If that makes it into the game, it would definitely level out the lack of a command rose (or whatever they would figure out for this).

i heard that arming MCOMs was 100 points and 200 if it explodes. 
should be higher imo

All of this sounds fucking awesome!  Especially day and night maps if that means every map will have day and night versions.  I've ALWAYS wanted that in a shooter.  Thanks again for gathering all this - glad this got stickied!
 
@Ahmad_Metallic said:

4th Stop -   Official Information

Here i'm including all the info gathered  DICE interviews, staff tweets, staff forum posts, live Q&A's, and even some answers from community manager Daniel "Zh1nt0" Matros on a live chatroom that i witnessed myself.
 

• About the commo rose - "I’m not exactly sure how we’ll be doing the command rose. " Which means it's not entirely out :D 
• Thousands of weapon customizations 
• No day and night cycles in MP, instead we'll have day and night maps. 

• No respawn immunity, and a reduced spawn time if you get instakilled on revive, since you already went down once.(Demize99 tweet) 

 

Well done.

Awesome thread thanks for the info. 

updated the third section

•  
• No pre-recorded voice communication tool whatsoever.. We need a god damned Command Wheel to thank each other and say important things to enhance communication and teamplay! 
• 
  

•  
• No pre-recorded voice communication tool whatsoever.. We need a god damned Command Wheel to thank each other and say important things to enhance communication and teamplay! 
• 
  

Does that mean when I call out a target or target a medic my character won't yell? Or do you mean manually selecting commands? Because that first one is really, really useful when playing without mics with strangers. 

3D spotting is returning [Confirmed]

So, I know what spotting is, but what's "3D spotting"?

3D spotting is returning [Confirmed]

So, I know what spotting is, but what's "3D spotting"?

No pre-recorded voice communication tool whatsoever.. We need a god damned Command Wheel to thank each other and say important things to enhance communication and teamplay!

Enemy boat spotted!

Enemy boat spotted!