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Battlefield 3 beta 9/29-10/04

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purbeast0 said:
this game is pretty terrible. slow and boring and has pretty awful graphics.
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How much time did you put into it? I just played it for about 30 minutes and I'm pleasantly surprised. I think it looks fantastic (played on the 360), it's definitely not slow nor boring IMO.

As said before, the sound really makes the game. It's what attracted me to the Bad Company series and I'm glad to see it's still here. I think the speed and feel of the controls are very, very close to CoD. I love having the destructible environments in multiplayer. I was underneath and some teammates and I were shooting at a guy hiding behind a tile column. As we were shooting at him, the tile was chipping off in chunks and looked absolutely awesome. Someone else later shot a rocket outside and took one of the trees down. Just thinking about playing CoD with it's static environments is a turn-off for me now, and it only took 30 minutes of BF3 to do it.

I also think the animations are great. Jumping over stuff while running is awesome and I don't think it'll ever get old. I think the movements from/to standing/crouching/prone are very well done and feel realistic. Running and immediately going prone while scoped appropriately jars your view quite a bit for a couple of seconds.

There are a lot of graphical glitches going on while outside though. It's readily apparent and I'm sure it will be cleaned up in launch code. I also got killed quite a bit without ever seeing anybody and not knowing where it came from, which sucks. It also seems like once you get hit, you have to be lucky to get away. Typically, I was dead within a second of getting that first hit, it's pretty quick. I also can now see why people hate the ability to push your teammates. I accidentally pushed a prone teammate down onto the subway tracks when he had good position up top, and I barely touched him.

Needless to say, this beta pushed me from a 25% chance of pre-ordering it to a 80% chance (I feel those percentages to be very accurate 😀). I'm not sure how I'll feel about maps with vehicles since I'm so used to the CoD formula.
 
Yeah, the sound is absolutely phenomenal. The best I've ever heard in any game, period.

I'm still getting it either way despite how it's basically the same battlefield as ever with just a few tweaks. Sometimes, that's enough. 😛

But I'll just say that for those new to the series, if you think metro is too slow, the vehicle maps are not going to change your mind. The vehicle maps are way, way slower and a total snooze for everyone but the 2 guys hogging the air support. People are thirsty to see the "real" battlefield, but inevitably it'll be the small infantry focused maps that are running 24/7 servers, and the huge maps making people groan. This has been the case for every battlefield ever, especially BF2.
 
I guess Im going to have to give it another shot. I played for an hour Friday night, and must of just been on a bad server (after spending 20 minutes trying to find a server).

To me the sound was terrible, and Im using Turtle Beach X32's. I kept hearing footsteps behind me, turn around, and nothing there... constantly foot steps all around even when I was by myself. The graphics were glitchy, and the matrix style steam coming off bullets were just random and showing where there were no bullets being fired. Sometimes staying suspended in mid air and not going away.

I was so dissapointed it was the first time I regretted preordering a game. Im not a COD fan boy,.. I have played everyone, from day one until MW3. I refuse to keep paying for a game I've played for the last 4 or 5 years. I've always been a Battlefield fan as well, and still have high hopes for BF3, but my initial impression wasn't great. I'll give the beta demo another go, and still looking forward to day one because I will be playing reguardless,.. unless its completely glitched like BF:BC2 was when it launched.
Then its wait for them to fix it, and enjoy later.
 
Playing last night was frustrating. Every server I tried had me falling through the map in certain areas in that first rush objective, both teams. Looked like everyone else was having the same problem when I watched the dead cam.

A few times my aiming mechanism wouldn't work until I either switched guns or reloaded. I also didn't notice any lag last night, but a few times my point blank shotgun blasts didn't kill a guy...so that was weird.

The sound really is great though. Bought some Turtle Beach x12s the other day and the sound effects are quite immersive. Battlefield has always done this part well vs other franchises, imo.
 
Gooberlx2 said:
Playing last night was frustrating. Every server I tried had me falling through the map in certain areas in that first rush objective, both teams. Looked like everyone else was having the same problem when I watched the dead cam.
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You were most likely seeing a bug in regards to the dead cam. Currently in the beta, if someone kills you and then they are killed, the dead cam doesn't know what to show and will place the camera way under the map. They've already cited that as a known bug that is fixed for retail release. As far as falling through the map, from what I understand, DICE is aware of most of the spots and they say they are fixed in the retail release. How many they know about is the real question.
 
I gave it another hour or so today. Overall Im a lot happier then I was the other night. I found that for the most part the game runs a lot smoother, however there are still some glitches in it but I can live with those..


One thing THEY MUST FIX, is not showing who is keyed up on the mic. We had a person who's mic was totally f'ed up and the entire team couldn't hear each other. No way to see who's mic is keyed, so I don't know who to mute.... very frustrating. No matter in squad view or scoreboard, it doesn't show who's mic is keyed up.
 
I found the graphics and physics to be stellar, but overall my experince wasn't that great. Although this is my first Battlefield experience, I won't pass full judgement on it until I have tried the complete game.
 
cyphilis said:
One thing THEY MUST FIX, is not showing who is keyed up on the mic. We had a person who's mic was totally f'ed up and the entire team couldn't hear each other. No way to see who's mic is keyed, so I don't know who to mute.... very frustrating. No matter in squad view or scoreboard, it doesn't show who's mic is keyed up.
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Was this a party chat, squad chat, game chat? I haven't heard a peep from anyone in the BF3 beta at all.
 
I played yesterday for about 30 minutes and it is a really bad experience. The sound and graphics are great, by the way, but it was really buggy. In the first level where you are outside in the city, there are spots you can run into which basically are pits. You suddenly "sink" into a hole and you are stuck in there. Most of the time it's impossible to get out. You half your body is inside the ground (lots of graphics clipping as you can imagine). It's like in MW1 when you "hide" in that rock in the desert level.

Aside from that, the game has a weird slowness to it. For example, after you get killed, instead of a killcam (which I like), it shows video of your killer from the angle of a camera facing him. So imagine he was wearing a helmet cam but pointed at his face. It shows whatever he's doing but it's not interesting at all because it's a nauseating POV and usually he's just running somewhere. I supposed if you are really good and familiar with the maps, you can surmise where he is by seeing what's behind him. There's also a delay of about 5 seconds, while you are watching this live view, before you can respawn. I have no idea why there's this delay.

On the same screen, when you die, you have some options for respawning, but I couldn't figure it out. You can pick attacker or defender sides then I think you can also pick squads once you choose a side. I have no idea how squads are formed or if you can join one without permission. Can you not be in a squad?

When you go over a weapon, once you are way past it, like it's already behind you, you'll see an X (on 360) icon appear. It's saying you can pick up the weapon, replacing the one in your hand. The problem is you have no idea what weapon you are picking up. No icon or picture of it. You suddenly are like "oh shotgun?"

The jumping/climbing is annoying. If you run towards a short wall and press jump, you will do this flying feet first slide over it. It's very dramatic and yes, more realistic than the way climbing is in MW2 but it's jarring. It's not a smooth transition.

Took me a while to figure out that the D-Pad is for switching accessories, like the rocket launcher for the engineer.
 
sygyzy said:
In the first level where you are outside in the city, there are spots you can run into which basically are pits. You suddenly "sink" into a hole and you are stuck in there. Most of the time it's impossible to get out. You half your body is inside the ground (lots of graphics clipping as you can imagine). It's like in MW1 when you "hide" in that rock in the desert level.
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From what I've read, this is one of the things that's already been fixed for retail release but wasn't fixed in time for when they made the beta build.

Aside from that, the game has a weird slowness to it. For example, after you get killed, instead of a killcam (which I like), it shows video of your killer from the angle of a camera facing him. So imagine he was wearing a helmet cam but pointed at his face. It shows whatever he's doing but it's not interesting at all because it's a nauseating POV and usually he's just running somewhere. I supposed if you are really good and familiar with the maps, you can surmise where he is by seeing what's behind him. There's also a delay of about 5 seconds, while you are watching this live view, before you can respawn. I have no idea why there's this delay.
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I hated this at first and didn't understand it, but it's really just a reverse method of CoD's style. Instead of showing you the exact viewpoint of the enemy, you have to have a little more knowledge to pinpoint exactly where you were killed from. I liked it once I got used to it.

The delay until you spawn is like any other game's spawn delay, I don't see the issue here.

On the same screen, when you die, you have some options for respawning, but I couldn't figure it out. You can pick attacker or defender sides then I think you can also pick squads once you choose a side. I have no idea how squads are formed or if you can join one without permission. Can you not be in a squad?
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I don't think you can pick attacker or defender after you've entered the match. If you can, I've not noticed. On the spawn screen, you can pick to spawn on a squad, a spawn point that someone's dropped, or a normal spawn point that seems to be based on which two targets are active at that point.

I honestly have no idea how the squads work though and from what I've read, they're completely broken in the beta.

When you go over a weapon, once you are way past it, like it's already behind you, you'll see an X (on 360) icon appear. It's saying you can pick up the weapon, replacing the one in your hand. The problem is you have no idea what weapon you are picking up. No icon or picture of it. You suddenly are like "oh shotgun?"
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I've noticed this too, the weapon text just isn't there. I never pick stuff up because I don't know what it is.

The jumping/climbing is annoying. If you run towards a short wall and press jump, you will do this flying feet first slide over it. It's very dramatic and yes, more realistic than the way climbing is in MW2 but it's jarring. It's not a smooth transition.
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I love that animation. I think it's a perfectly suitable transition and I love that running through an environment feels fluid. In fact, all of the subtle animations in this game are great, really puts you "there".
 
Thanks for your feedback blurredvision. It's nice seeing other people's thoughts on the game. Some more from me:

I think the sound production is very very good. I agree with some of the posters here on that point.

I find it very hard to spot targets. I am not just complaining that some guy shot me and I have no idea where he came from (which is also true) but I would say 80% of the time, when I died, I had no idea. I look all around and the people are tiny/hidden.

When you die, it's very jarring. I mean it's always crappy when you die but in MW2, it's a different 'feeling.' This is very hard to describe but the best way I can explain it, is it's like the old Rainbow Six games on the PC. They tried to make it really lifelike/realistic so you would hear a 3 round burst and then you were dead. It's like you don't even have a chance to react. It's not that bad in BF3 but when you can't see your attacker and you seemingly die very easily, it's extremely frustrating. I think MW2 has the perfect balance in this regard.
 
sygyzy said:
I find it very hard to spot targets. I am not just complaining that some guy shot me and I have no idea where he came from (which is also true) but I would say 80% of the time, when I died, I had no idea. I look all around and the people are tiny/hidden.
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On my first match on the 360, I shot at a tree stump from about 80 yards away for around 7-8 seconds until I realized what I was doing. I bitched the entire 8 seconds about the shitty shot detection, too. 😀

When you die, it's very jarring. I mean it's always crappy when you die but in MW2, it's a different 'feeling.' This is very hard to describe but the best way I can explain it, is it's like the old Rainbow Six games on the PC. They tried to make it really lifelike/realistic so you would hear a 3 round burst and then you were dead. It's like you don't even have a chance to react. It's not that bad in BF3 but when you can't see your attacker and you seemingly die very easily, it's extremely frustrating. I think MW2 has the perfect balance in this regard.
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Yeah, it's really hard to survive after that first hit. Usually if you get hit, you're going down because it's really quick. However, I think this is due to the hit box bug that is already fixed for release. Currently, if you're moving, the head headbox somehow dips down in to the chest, so most people will get you down pretty quickly.
 
I have very mixed feelings on this. I've put about 2-3 hours into the beta and will try to get some more time in over the next few days.

Likes:
I like the feel of the weapons and the overall sound quality. The graphics are pretty decent as well. I like the game types and variety of weapons & add-ons.

I can see how this game is AMAZING when playing with a proper team. And that is why it is so popular on the PC: collaboration with the same players on the same servers, huge team counts (64 players!!!), and of course gorgeous (high performance) graphics.

It's a change of pace from COD and I like that.

Dislikes:
I'm not so keen on the mini map. At least in this demo, it's rather difficult to spot an enemy from a distance and I generally have trouble being able to mark them for other players without getting killed. I imagine this is easier for snipers.

I'm not terribly impressed with the graphics or performance on the 360. It's sufficient, but when combined with my other complaints.

Camp or be camped: being even remotely aggressive is a good way to get killed and I seem to always lose a lot of ground after dying, even with the squad spawn system. I hate playing the attacking team in the demo, but I also hate sitting around.

Maybe I'm not used to BF3, but hit detection seems like a mystery.

While the audio SOUNDS great, I don't think you can sound-whore at all. Hearing someone sneak up on you? Very difficult. The sound seems more appropriate for a movie than a video game.

If I can get this for cheap or as a gift, I will give it a go in the full version. Maybe when the full game gets out we can start an ATOT team and give this a go. It would be a nice change of pace from COD if I can get into it...
 
fbrdphreak said:
Camp or be camped: being even remotely aggressive is a good way to get killed and I seem to always lose a lot of ground after dying, even with the squad spawn system. I hate playing the attacking team in the demo, but I also hate sitting around.
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That's the damn truth. Running around is a good way to get killed. I'm wondering if that will differ on the more open maps though. I actually hate defending because it seems near impossible. It seems to take more teamwork which is not present when playing in randoms, I also imagine that many people still aren't intimate with the maps. I've put about 2 hours into the map and I still get turned around unless I'm in the 3rd section of the map. I've not yet looked to see how many tickets the attacking team has to start the match, but I've matches last 25 minutes with the attacking team still winning. Maybe that will change in retail.
 
This game seriously needs a mute option. I am sure they just left it out of the beta but boy is it annoying.

Speaking of muting, can someone explain to me why people have so many audio issues to begin with? I can understand someone who might be talking shit to other players (not on a private team/chat). At least, that makes sense to me. But everyday in MW2, I hear people who are just talking to their parents or friends in the room. I mean I am confused more than upset here. What exactly is going on? Some guy sits down, is not going to join a squad/team, yet decides to put on an uncomfortable headset and plug it in? I mean who is he talking to? I don't even know where my stock headset is. I never plug it in. The only time I use a headset with a mic is if I am playing late and don't want to bother people. In that case, it's for the audio. I often mute the mic.

Other times there's crazy feedback like I can hear them dying or leveling up or choosing a new class. I mean how is this happening? I work with audio at work and when you see this issue it's because someone is in a conference with an open mic an their speakers are on so the mic picks everything up. I don't think anyone is playing 360 with an open mic.
 
Tried playing again for about 15 minutes tonight. That's all I could stomach. 2 kills, 12 deaths. You'd think I was a terrible player huh? I do really well in MW2.
 
I've played the beta for about 4 hours total and have loved it! Sure there are bugs and glitches but thats what a BETA is for. Assuming they get to work and work out all of the kinks, I think it will be a great game.

For everyone that is good at COD but has struggled, play the game with a more tactical mindset.. I'm not saying camp, but the typical run out in the middle and shoot is generally not very effective for this game.
 
sygyzy said:
This game seriously needs a mute option. I am sure they just left it out of the beta but boy is it annoying.
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Check out this official FAQ:

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2826564925962155306/

Since you seem to have to login to view the page, I'll copy/paste here if you don't have a user/pass:

HOW WILL SQUADS WORK IN THE RETAIL VERSION OF BATTLEFIELD 3 ON PC/XBOX 360/PLAYSTATION 3?

Since the Open BETA we’ve added more advanced functionality to manage your squad. You will be able to browse and join specific squads through the squad screen. You can see all players that are in a specific squad as well as who’s playing as lone wolf. As a squad leader you can set your squad to private as well as kick players from the squad.

On console you will also be able to choose if you want the active VoIP channel to be team or squad and invite friends to your squad. You will also be able to mute any player on your team through the scoreboard.
 
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