Other General Battlefield 3 discussion thread

[Bede]

Originally Posted by Tibby

I think it's a good feature as it encourages players to be tactical and spot people before engaging them. It really makes being a Recon class enjoyable as you can sit further back and spot players for your assaulting team mates.

Lolwut? Recon players need no encouragement to sit further back, I cannot remember the last time I saw anyone but myself play as an offensive recon. Spotting is a terrible feature, it lacks any grounding in reality whatsoever and encourages camping and other such unmanly behaviour.

[Krazeh]

Originally Posted by Bede

Lolwut? Recon players need no encouragement to sit further back, I cannot remember the last time I saw anyone but myself play as an offensive recon.

I have a sniper rifle, it's not much use up close.

Originally Posted by Bede

Spotting is a terrible feature, it lacks any grounding in reality whatsoever and encourages camping and other such unmanly behaviour.

Spotting lacks any grounding in reality? I accept that in reality you don't end up with a triangle over your head but at the same time we're not actually part of a trained military unit who are able to quickly and concisely transfer specific information about spotted targets. It's a game so concessions have to be made. The only problem with the spotting system in BC2 was that it continued to mark a target even after they had gone back into cover which afaik will no longer be the case in BF3.

[Sloth]

Originally Posted by Bede

Lolwut? Recon players need no encouragement to sit further back, I cannot remember the last time I saw anyone but myself play as an offensive recon. Spotting is a terrible feature, it lacks any grounding in reality whatsoever and encourages camping and other such unmanly behaviour.

What part of spotting lacks reality? Soldiers informing each other of enemies or the little orange triangle it puts on the target?

If it's the latter you're already playing normal mode, in which case how do soldiers magically heal bullet wounds by sitting around? How do they constantly have a map floating in their peripheral vision? For that matter, how do they have a constant and perfectly accurante ammo count in their vision?

Even in hardcore mode, how do soldiers see when their weapons hit based on a little "X"? How do they see a name pop up in their vision when they get a kill? In real life if you throw a grenade in through a window there's nothing telling you that anyone was hit inside other than what you can see or hear.

Why are APCs, jeeps, tanks, helicopters and jets just laying around for untrained footsoldiers to hop in and pilot? How do they magically pop up from time to time and, this one really confuses me, if they're capable of teleporting vehicles onto the battlefield why can they only use it to replace destroyed vehicles?

As Krazeh says, concessions have to be made. It's a thin line between reality and acceptable impossibilities, a line which is drawn by fun. No one wants to deal with the difficulties of a real battlefield, just the fun part. One of those fun aspects is coordinating with your comrades through spotting targets with your advanced communication tools.

Originally Posted by Krazeh

I have a sniper rifle, it's not much use up close.

Expect someone to say you're supposed to use an all-kit weapon such as a shotgun.

Non-sense if you ask me. Sure, it's an option and can make a really fun kit, but the bottom line is that all of the standard items are scoped rifles and it's entirely optional to use an all-kit weapon.

[MiNiMaL_FuSS]

Originally Posted by Krazeh

I have a sniper rifle, it's not much use up close.

obviously you dont play on the bittech/cpc server....point-blank no scoping is the name of the game!

[Dwarfer]

Originally Posted by Sloth

What part of spotting lacks reality? Soldiers informing each other of enemies or the little orange triangle it puts on the target?

Spotting where the enemy will appear on the map is fine but when you get a great big fluorescent triangle above their or your head is a CHEAT if you ask me.

Where's the fun is knowing the enemy is just round the corner because that stupid triangle allows you to see through walls i.e. a wall-hack as per my first post!

[Krazeh]

Originally Posted by Dwarfer

Spotting where the enemy will appear on the map is fine but when you get a great big fluorescent triangle above their or your head is a CHEAT if you ask me.

Where's the fun is knowing the enemy is just round the corner because that stupid triangle allows you to see through walls i.e. a wall-hack as per my first post!

Except it doesn't work like that in BF3.

[Sloth]

Originally Posted by Dwarfer

Spotting where the enemy will appear on the map is fine but when you get a great big fluorescent triangle above their or your head is a CHEAT if you ask me.

Where's the fun is knowing the enemy is just round the corner because that stupid triangle allows you to see through walls i.e. a wall-hack as per my first post!

Remember that everything you can do the enemy can do as well. You'll see them around the corner, but if their team has spotted you they will see you as well.

It's a tactical sharing of information, one player informing the team of the enemy's location. The teammate standing outside of a building spots and enemy inside. You, while rushing through the front door, are now updated of the presence of an enemy within the building. The magic of teamwork.

I miss 2142's spotting system, marked units stayed visible through objects like in BC2, but also showed the unit's linear distance from the player. And it even made sense because it was all new technology of the 22nd century.

[Dwarfer]

Originally Posted by Sloth

Remember that everything you can do the enemy can do as well. You'll see them around the corner, but if their team has spotted you they will see you as well.

It's a tactical sharing of information, one player informing the team of the enemy's location. The teammate standing outside of a building spots and enemy inside. You, while rushing through the front door, are now updated of the presence of an enemy within the building. The magic of teamwork.

I miss 2142's spotting system, marked units stayed visible through objects like in BC2, but also showed the unit's linear distance from the player. And it even made sense because it was all new technology of the 22nd century.

2142 did not have 3D spotting.

There was a gadget upgrade that a support player could use, like a small PDA computer and he could still it to a wall and nearby enemies would become visible to his squad mates only, and it only worked within a small area, like 100 meters, that's totally different to 3D spotting.

If the support guy in your squad did not use the PDA upgrade then nobody could see the enemies 3D, plus you also needed the upgraded helmet to be able to see the spotted 3D enemies in the first place, it worked really well and was pretty well balanced.

Real 3D spotting like BC-2 sucks big time.

Its fine for the enemy to ''see me'' , its a different story all together when the enemy is ''told i am there''.

If somebody sees me with their eyes then they deserve the chance to kill me because i broke cover and give myself away.

The whole team should not be told in 3D where i am, tell as many people as you like where i am, just on the mini map and not 3D, BF2 never had 3D spotting and it worked really really really well, BF3 is the sequel to BF2 and not the sequel to BC2.

[vdbswong]

Here you go NaloaC :P.

No comment with regards to the Recon debate :P.

[Bede]

My objection to spotting is two-fold.

First is what it does to the gameplay. Snipers feel justified in sitting miles back from the objective, failing to kill the enemy and failing to complete objectives. It means that you know when someone is coming round a building, or out of cover, because some bush-wookie has painted a magic floating triangle above their head. It means that if you flank, there is a chance that, because someone caught a glimpse of you 5 seconds ago from a hundred metres away, the people you were flanking know exactly where you are.

Second, the inconsistency aspect. This is where I freely admit I am on more shaky ground. Regenerating health, ammo boxes, vehicles etc I think are worth having because they make the game fun and it is a game, not a sim. But these mostly fit with the universe it is set in. Like Sloth said, 2142's spotting system fits because it was the 22nd century and they all wore targeting monocles or somesuch. In a game where you don't have implants or any means of having a HUD it grates slightly. A crosshair is fair enough because it makes the game better and isn't too jarring (though I prefer to play HC without the HUD). The magic triangles just take it too far.

More like it would be an Arma-esque (ENEMY-MAN-GRID-E4) called over the radio (but better ). That I think would be better for the game, and better fit the setting.


If you want to play bush wookie, that's your lookout. I think you're an unhelpful waste of space ingame, but don't ignore the fact that with a RDS sight on your gun (or an all-kit weapon like the G3) you can be immensely helpful with c4 on MCOMs etc, or just camp closer to the target. You can also snipe with the RDS on a sniper - I did sometimes.

[Sloth]

Originally Posted by Dwarfer

2142 did not have 3D spotting.

There was a gadget upgrade that a support player could use, like a small PDA computer and he could still it to a wall and nearby enemies would become visible to his squad mates only, and it only worked within a small area, like 100 meters, that's totally different to 3D spotting.

If the support guy in your squad did not use the PDA upgrade then nobody could see the enemies 3D, plus you also needed the upgraded helmet to be able to see the spotted 3D enemies in the first place, it worked really well and was pretty well balanced.

Real 3D spotting like BC-2 sucks big time.

Its fine for the enemy to ''see me'' , its a different story all together when the enemy is ''told i am there''.

If somebody sees me with their eyes then they deserve the chance to kill me because i broke cover and give myself away.

The whole team should not be told in 3D where i am, tell as many people as you like where i am, just on the mini map and not 3D, BF2 never had 3D spotting and it worked really really really well, BF3 is the sequel to BF2 and not the sequel to BC2.

What about being on the map and not on 3D makes it so much better? A player can still look at their on screen minimap (assuming normal mode) or hit "M" and see where you are. The 3D aspect is just a visualization of that map marker and in some cases makes more sense, such as a soldier saying "Enemy in the upper left window of the yellow house" where a 3D marker more accurately relays such information.

Where I do agree with BC2's 3D flaws are it moving with a character who isn't visible. Once they're out of sight it's not exactly reasonable to know their movements. Going back to the house raid scenario, if the enemy inside moves out of LoS of your teammate outside it doesn't make sense to have the 3D marker follow the enemy, rather it would remain where the enemy was last spotted (again simply as a 3D representation of your map).

There's also some issues such as not having to aim very close to an enemy to spot it, and bushes not counting as objects which block spotting. They're a little less fundamental and more engine limitations/balance issues.

[[ZiiP] NaloaC]

Originally Posted by vdbswong

Here you go NaloaC :P.

No comment with regards to the Recon debate :P.

You heathen! Nice on fella

Jester and Takagi sent me some keychains/neck thingies from the DICE stand in the post which was nice of them.

We actually just finished a community build for Jester. To say thanks for keeping the forums up to date and everything running for the last 7 years, we pooled together and got him a monster i7, 580 superclocked rig He should be able to run BF3 on it

[wuyanxu]

quick, lookie here:
http://www.own3d.tv/live/126950

couple things i've noticed from that livestream:
-FF isn't on.
-the player doesn't know meaning of burst fire, or revive
-killcam is back
-tunnel lighting has been tweaked compared to alpha
-chatbox still at a very bad position.
-metro first stage has been heavily tweaked

surprisingly, his hold-down-trigger approach works well, me no likey

[vdbswong]

Originally Posted by [ZiiP] NaloaC

You heathen! Nice on fella

Jester and Takagi sent me some keychains/neck thingies from the DICE stand in the post which was nice of them.

We actually just finished a community build for Jester. To say thanks for keeping the forums up to date and everything running for the last 7 years, we pooled together and got him a monster i7, 580 superclocked rig He should be able to run BF3 on it

Nice, i've got one of the lanyards as well and a pretty large BF3 poster too (as well as SWTOR ones >.>).

Awesome /with regards to the Community Build and "wow", that's a rather awesome thank you present.

However you'll need an extra GTX580 if you want to meet the specs for "Ultra" .

[Hamfunk]

"Enemy Boat Spotted"

This hardcore vs. vanilla pisses me off - In BF2 there was no HC mode because the game was absolutely solid and brutal out of the box. There was a steep learning curve associated with the game and there was no need to make things 'more hardcore'.

This 'softening' of the game and making it more accessible gave us a more reasonable damage model and 3D spotting, then people demand HC mode to bring back the skill and encourage team play.

I'd prefer map spotting (BF2) to 3D spotting (BC2) as it's too easy to mash Q in a general direction and light people up to the whole team in 3D. It's fine on a minimap as you can only see a small section at once and it's your disadvantage to full screen it so see a sniper at the other side of the map!

-All that said... roll on the beta!

[Neogumbercules]

I wasn't in the alpha so this really does feel like Christmas eve to me. Can't wait!

[Kernel]

There have been some early beta keys chucked out at the Gamespot Battlefield 3 event.
Some of them are here, but they can't be used until 12:00 PST which is 20:00 GMT

http://www.enterbf3.com/

Good luck for the scramble to get to use one of them :P

[spectre456]

Originally Posted by Kernel

There have been some early beta keys chucked out at the Gamespot Battlefield 3 event.
Some of them are here, but they can't be used until 12:00 PST which is 20:00 GMT

http://www.enterbf3.com/

Good luck for the scramble to get to use one of them :P

FFS. That's right when i'm at work goddamn it. Goddamn it to hell.

[splatdeath]

Well accouring to EA forums UK pre-order access keys will be sent out around midday. /sigh

[Parge]

Literally map spotting is totally pointless, there is never any time to be looking at the map. Spotting is a way to communicate enemy location to the rest of your team without everyone being on the same chat server, and promotes great team work.

You know, there is a similar game without spotting you can play!