Other General Battlefield 3 discussion thread

I've commented quite a few times about this on both articles/occasions when Crysis 2 and DA2 were pulled from Steam.

Firstly, i wouldn't say i'm less cynical, just that i think people are viewing this from the "wrong" (subjective) side simply because Valve have a reputation and/or are known for being "better" than other devs with regards to PC gaming. Also that EA is viewed as a big corporate mega machine out to bleed everyone dry of all their money and after that expect people to pay with the blood of dead kittens... or something similar.

In the previous threads it was pointed out to me that EA's statement obviously isn't the whole truth behind things (in-game DLC stores etc.), however it's still more of a statement than Valve have provided.

Let's also not forget that Battlefield 3, nor any game apart from "Star Wars: The Old Republic" is Origin exclusive. Battlefield 3 can still be purchased on Direct2Drive and Impulse, it's only Steam who have refused to accept BF3 (or in EA's words, they've not bothered offering because they known Valve will reject it).

Personally from my point of view, it's Valve who are pulling the hissy fit (they're the ones who removed Crysis 2 and DA2) because they want a slice of the DLC pie or at least, more money than EA are willing to give them.

In fact, if i was more cynical/paranoid i'd say this is a perfect move on Valve's part by kicking up a fuss just as Origin has gone live, creating "drama" with regards to the new platform. People may not like Origin, but nothing i've seen or read has actually implicated it in any of the incidents that have happened. News sites just see that it's been recently released, put "2+2" together and assume that's the case.

Anyhow, rant over.

 

OK, looking at the way you put it, and being a little more subjective, I can see the light this puts Valve in and I can see why people are getting irritated by people like me throwing Origin around.

If I knew the sort of money that Valve are wanting to charge EA I might be a bit more sympathetic but EA seem to be the only ones kicking up a fuss about how much Valve want and it makes me have less sympathy for them than I had, and that wasn't much.

I'll watch this with interest, and I will buy it because I loved BF2 (Despite being shockingly bad at it) so long as this 'in-game' service isn't what I suspect it is.

 

Or Valve are the only ones kicking up a fuss about how much EA wants to pay them .

But i don't think the issue actually lies with Valve's cut from the actual sale of BF3 on Steam. The only thing in common with Crysis 2 and DA2 when they were pulled was the release of new DLC not available through Steam but via an ingame store or website. That's not the whole story however, as it was pointed out that DiRT3 uses GFWL for DLC and hasn't been pulled, but that's all i've seen so far.

Also, EA have stated that they want more control over how their players update the game, rather than relying on Steam to push out a patch (i believe Steam verifies all patches first before releasing it on the platform).

What "in-game" service were you referring to/suspecting? :S.

I'm still deciding where to pre-order from... Origin does look like it has the best deal atm, with Back to Karkand, Early Beta Acess and the PWP DLC. However only the former is actually important to me and that can be gotten with any preorder.

I admit it's a shame that it's not coming to Steam though, as much as i'm "defending" Origin/EA atm, Steam is practically the only place i buy all my games from these days.

 

I wouldn't say you are 'defending' Origin or EA.

The in-game services I'm referring to are the delivery method (whatever that may be) for the DLC and patches. Fallout 3 was such a huge ballache because of GFWL. I had to actually fool GFWL in to thinking I'd signed in so I could play the game...every time. Regardless of how I installed or updated the GFWL platform it would not allow me to log in. I was just presented with some random error and then booted out.

So I'd cancel just as it was attempting to contact the server and it would load all of my content and show me as signed in, even though I wasn't. I've had similar hilarity with EA-link with both me and the missus.

I find that the more layers of BS are put between me and a game, the less I want to play the game, and talk of ‘in-game content delivery’ sniffs of more logging in which means my info is on more servers in more places and more vulnerable to theft through hacking the likes of which have been clearly demonstrated of late. It also means that said services are more vulnerable to being ‘switched off’ by the providing companies, which isn’t something I am aware of Valve doing with Steam yet.

I can tolerate having to login to a character/player account that’s part of an online game not developed by Valve (ala Bf2). That makes some sense to me as you can’t expect the kind of cooperation that would allow a non-valve games to use Steam user account details as access to a game profile (even though smaller companies have managed just this…might be a complexity issue or something).

I’d love my worrying to be totally unfounded and it turn out to be paranoia and me just being a nerd raging at the corporate machine, but, we’ll see I suppose.

 

I've said it elsewhere, wherever it was that I don't really care how the game is delivered to my machine, Steam, Origin, Pony, leper. So long as the game works.

From what I have seen with Origin, it works fine. You click once on the icon and the BattleLog site loads, end of hassle. That's a grand total of 2 clicks more than I would need with Steam.

That's how I look at it. If people want to have BF3 on their Steam Games list, just add the damn thing from the "non-steam game" option. Origin will still keep it up to date and use minimal amount of memory or resources.

I still think the Steam/Origin thing is, yet again (I don't mean in this thread, just in regard to things in general), being blown out of proportion for what it actually is.

Does Steam need some competition, yes. It's healthy.
Should EA be allowed to have their own distribution service, why not, they own the games anyway.

Does it make even the slightest difference to my playing and enjoying the game? Not at all.

Anyways, I just pre-ordered BF3 on the ZiiP Gamestore, €5 cheaper than here in the shops, download code and box, happy days.

 

does add BF3.exe to Steam actually work?

BF3.exe must be launched by a website plugin (in my case, Firefox). i thought for Steam to have overlay and game status, you must launch the game from Steam.

 

Agree. I'm not too sure what the fuss is all about to be honest. I suppose the key will be what the overheads on performance might be from having to go through Origin. As long as these do not have a major impact, then so be it.

 

Eh, I am just assuming to be honest

Is it a deal-breaker though in all fairness? Does it ruin the experience? All the friends contacts and all that is through the BattleLog as far as I am aware and that ran fine and it was through FireFox, not Origin.

 

as long as friends list work better than BFBC2, there shouldn't be any problem.

with BFBC2, both people have to be online to actually add the other person. if it's done through BattleLog, then a simple steam message before starting a game would be fine.

 

The friends list was all through the battleLog, this included adding friends and it seemed to be fine. I received about a dozen friend requests and I was not online at the time and all worked well.

The game friends list is separate to your Origin/Steam friends list, although that could change perhaps later on.

I like the game friends list though, damn useful that you can create squads of friends and join a server en-masse. It was a bit finicky, but it did work.

 

I'm really hoping that browser based interface in the Alpha was just a way of distributing the Alpha and not an actual sign of things to come.

I hate having Firefox open in the background (stupid memory hog) and hope that they implement an actual... "Game".

 

I always leave my programs like ff open when I play BFBC2

 

For me, everything is closed off on my system freeing up memory for games!

 

How much ram are you running?

 

I agree, I really didn't like launching the game from my web browser.

 

i never close programs!

except when i begin struggling to find a window.


the squad join system in BF3 will rock. but im worried that it might unbalance a server when clans with voice com mass join a server public server. hopefully server admins have choice to disable squad join, or make them on different teams so that it doesn't unbalance a server.

the website also doesn't even require you to have Origin running to visit. IMHO it's very good way of doing things. especially with live updating profile and unlocks page. there are ways to make a webpage feel like it's a separate program with its own browser window and desktop icon. (saw it on lifehacker......)


Edit: way to make a program out of any website:
http://lifehacker.com/5823857/webrunner-turns-webapps-into-desktop-apps

 

Another reason why i usually close browsers etc. is because if i alt+tab out of the game, it usually swaps over to the browser. With some games it's fine, in fact i use it on some SP games to look up a walkthrough or something similar, however on other games it just glitches out if it can't tab out to the desktop.

Nothing major and it's somewhat easy to sort out, however it's just another layer of hassle i usually can't be bothered to deal with.

 

I didn't mind the browser part. I found waiting for origin to open and log in before loading the game a PITA. So, you have to sign in twice before you can play the game which is not ideal. I'm sure it will be better on release though.

 

Battlefield 3 will require origin...

Dont know if im going to purchase now are not

 

Source

That's definitely the first "valid" reason for bringing up the Origin issue . And it's certainly the reason why they'd get rejected from Steam (having to install Origin on top of the Steam client).

However it personally doesn't bother me and to be fair, it's exactly the same stuff that Valve pulls when you buy any Steamworks game... except now that because it's super-mega-ultra-global-faceless corporation EA, people seem to be more pissed (not referring specifically to you, other comments elsewhere).

It's certainly interesting however, since the devs. at SW:TOR stated that despite it being Origin exclusive (for digital downloads), Origin was not a requirement and that disc based users would never have to touch Origin if they so wished.

I wonder why Battlefield decided not to go down the same route.