Battlefield 3 First Thoughts

[[ES] RandomHero]

Well I suddenly realized it's 12:30 AM on 10/25 and....well I'm already preloaded so what the hell.

I jump into the gay ass browser interface to quick join a match....and promptly waited....and waited.....and waited.....and waited some more.  Ok well it's a half hour after midnight EST and it's opening night...they're busy, I get it.  So I go to the server browser and BAM...first server on the list, lowest ping..guess what...half full! I try to join..game loads...black screen....more black screen....even more black screen...hard disk flickers a little....still nothing.  "fuck this" I thought and killed the game..tried again...loading screen! yay....so far...this game blows.  I'd been trying to get into a game for 15 minutes at this point and now I'm finally at a loading screen.  Ok, it's launch night...I'll try not to hold it against them.  So after 3-4 minutes of loading...which is crap btw...I've NEVER had a game take longer than 45 seconds to 90 seconds to load on this computer...even the beta.  I'm finally in.  What is the first thing I do....controls! It kept my video settings from BETA looks like, or maybe it auto chose, who knows, who cares, those settings are fine for now.  Lo and behold! I can change my controls now...FUCKING AWESOME.  But wait...my skepticism  tells me it's not supposed to be this easy.  Yea I was right....I can't bind my ALT key to anything...ok fine, I can kind of understand that in a weird sort of fucked up way...so I figured what the hell, I'll try "T".....nope can't bind that either.  so after trying a dozen other keys I find that I can only bind the keys immediately surrounding the awsd keys....yes because that makes sense.  In game where you have 3 different sets of controls...they limit you to about 10-12 keys....awesome...oh and my mouse buttons...I can bind 3 of the 5 (counting the screen wheel button) of them.  But wait, there's more, the whole time I'm trying to bind keys, if I move my mouse it tries to bind the X or Y axis to the function.  Wait...I can bind X axis movement on my mouse to weapon zoom...or crouch...or prone...reload...yea...this isn't going to cause issues and all sorts of gayness.  I seem to recall there being an issue in BF2 with the knife and scroll wheels?  hmmm

Ok so game play...now that I've got at least a playable set of controls, which took a few tries and saves before everything stuck...which reminds me....can anyone think of a good reason to ALWAYS prompt if I want to save my video settings when I change controls or ANYTHING other than video settings?  Anyway, game play in the next installment.

[[ES] RandomHero]

Alright so...after a less than stellar first round, I've at least figured out my keybinding situation.  Turns out you have to click on just the right spot to bind keys...go figure.  Of course I still can't get it to recognize all my mouse buttons...never had that problem before.  So by the time I got that straightened out, round's over....in the middle of me finalizing my settings..so goodbye, try again next time.  Which brings me to a common point...WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE TO DEPLOY TO CHANGE SETTINGS!?  Ok, anyway, moving on...for the moment.  Game looks good...VERY good....and the nighttime maps just might be my favorite so far....looks pretty damn sweet.

[[ES] RandomHero]

Oh...and we thought 32 player servers were oversubscribed......try 64...wow...just WOW

The server browser is a joke....have the buttons you click take you to a generic error page where you can either "go back" (which doesn't work) or go to "home" where you have to go into the browser all over again.. and do NOT, I repeat...DO NOT....try to refresh the list...you'll regret it.

[[ES] RandomHero]

Uploading gameplay videos to youtube right now.  Will post them when I'm done.  All in all, they've fixed alot of the UI bugs and such.  The guns are still stupid, the physics aren't great...you can still suicide from a grenade that bounces completely over a wall or rock and somehow ends up underneath you.  Game looks badass.  You can tell which people obviously played the beta alot, and could ...

http://www.youtube.com/user/ScorchedHands#p/u

#9 seems to be the most complete so far

Videos aren't completely done converting it seems so fullscreen isn't working right

[[ES] RandomHero]

So today it seems they've fixed most of the issues with the server browser.  I've not  tried the quick match again yet...I'm dreading it.  I was able to refresh the server list without getting an error...awesome.  I've got my controls just about matching my bf2 controls, which is cool.  The graphics are pretty good.  The guns are still horribly unbalanced and just wacky.  I'm not quite sure about the class changes yet..assault with med packs and paddles...hmmm  Wouldn't be a bad thing except almost nobody is playing support.  I guess they haven't figured out yet that the support class is basically what everyone was doing with the medic class in bf2:bc2.... but now instead of not dropping med packs for other people, they're not dropping ammo packs....i'm not sure which is worse.  I find myself running out of ammo CONSTANTLY and not being able to find a resupply.  I'm not a sprayer, never have been, I'm sure I'm wasteful of my ammo right now, but I don't see this issue going away.  If I manage to stay alive long enough that I've spent all of my ammo and I'm down to my knife....well, why the fuck should I be punished because of my dickwad teammates.  It's easier to just pick up guns from your kills to be honest.  And the knife...oh  boy....the knife has never really been great to begin with...but they've gone and fucked it up even more.  If you approach someone who is standing with their back to you, it's no different than bf2..looks a hell of alot cooler...takes a HELL of alot longer...the animation is...let's face it, it makes you vulnerable for a god awful long time (10-15 seconds, I counted).  But that's where the annoyance stops and the fucked up shit begins.  Try to knife a guy who is prone....just TRY it...I dare you......bet you can't.  Or how about a guy who's crouched.....you MIGHT be able to pull it off, but the animation takes even longer cause you've got to stand the guy up...which exposes you even more...fun stuff huh?  And yet, somehow..there's something I'm missing because I've seen people just RUN through a group and knife them....perhaps it's the scroll wheel? I don't know.  I don't care.  If you're not going to spend some time and get the knife to a reasonable point, it should just be removed from the game.

Now of course, I could come back home and play again tonight and things could be different.  They could have fixed that you can't knife prone people....despite the fact that really...they didn't notice that during BETA?  Really guys?  And what WAS the point of a BETA that was obviously a month or two behind the release code?  What exactly was being tested there?  It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

[[ES] Mindflayer]

They'll need to ramp up the points you get for promotions and score to be significantly higher for people dropping usable ammo (i.e. where your teammates will actually replenish). That's an easy fix to encourage people to drop ammo. Will it be 100% reliable? Hell no - all other games with similar mechanics, and most players are self-centered, selfish pricks. Probably all Northerners raised without the manners Southerner* mothers teach their boys.

*Southerners, military brats, or people from other nations.

[[ES] RandomHero]

I don't think you can generalize like that considering how many Brazillian servers and players are out there that do the same or worst.  But if it makes you feel better ... 

[[ES] RandomHero]

Just want to mention, when you're setting your bindings.  If you set a binding to a key that is already in use, it does NOT unbind the previous binding.  What this means is for example, I rebound "space" to my knife...good fine...it works nicely.  However, "space" by default is bound to "jump" and if you don't unbind it you will knife AND jump when your press space.

[[ES] Semicidal]

FUCK JETS AND CHOPPERS

[[ES] NEMESIS]

i got on today and punkbuster is fucked i get kick off after a minute or so i can only join non punkbuster servers hope thay fix this soon

[[ES] RandomHero]

Did you actually install the new punkbuster when you installed the game?  I would uninstall and re-install.  As many issues as I've heard about the game, I've not heard anything about punk buster issues....surprisingly.

[[ES] HD GLOBI]

Well bought my copy today... same problem as vinny... after a few minutes i get kicked... either by admin or then by some unkown error... well might be punkbuster. But i like the game so far!

[[ES] Rooster]

The Boss tells me I can purchase my copy next week...

[[ES] Semicidal]

The first day it was available, xbox live shit the bed when primetime came along (6PM onwards).
I can't recall a time in the last 5 years when XBL took a hit like this.
EA servers are still being dicks, which sucks because the only other game I like on my 360 is NFS hot pursuit.
My quit rate is 12%, I lost 2 dog tags, my chopper flares. God.Damn.It.

[[ES] RandomHero]

The first day it was available, xbox live shit the bed when primetime came along (6PM onwards).
I can't recall a time in the last 5 years when XBL took a hit like this.
EA servers are still being dicks, which sucks because the only other game I like on my 360 is NFS hot pursuit.
My quit rate is 12%, I lost 2 dog tags, my chopper flares. God.Damn.It.

Half your problem is you're playing on a console