Battlefield 3 – A report on the ALPHA [do not repost in public forums]

Started by ArithonUK, July 28, 2011, 11:42:11 AM

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ArithonUK

First base - Origin
Origin is the digital distribution method EA are pushing and the Alpha is delivered using this application. They’ve take EA downloader and expanded it into something like the early Steam client. Whether they will use this as the copy protection (after their well documented divorce from Steam) we’ll just have to wait and see.

The BattleLog
Well, BF3 isn’t so much a game as a web-application. Sounds bad, but it isn’t quite what it sounds â€" certainly it isn’t BattleField Heroes. More like the worlds most awesome Facebook game!
You have a secure website you log into which leads to a blog-like status page with tabs for your game stats, friends and multiplayer, single-player and co-op (yes co-operative online play). The page is nicely formatted and works well. It is AJAX and Java driven (application-like responsiveness for non-web people) so it refreshes parts of the page in real-time. This includes a friends list called “The  Comms centre” which manages out-of-game chat and voice channels, and unlike BFBC2 the voice works well. I tested this with BrotherTobious and we even managed to run it while running TS while he was in BF3 and I was still in BFBC2! I want to see if you can have two voice channels open, one for “game” and one for “team” which would be interesting. I have not yet established if the voice chat is hosted or peer-2-peer.
See screenshots here http://bf3blog.com/2011/07/battlefield-3-battlelog-revealed/
Servers are found in the web-browser and then when one is selected the BattleLog makes contact with the server and reserves a slot for you. This “reservation” is held for up to a minute and a half before timing out. You can check the “Launch game when ready” box and BF3 starts up once the server is joined.
Friend management is a lot better in BattleLog than within BFCB2, and you can view your friends stats and achievements in your blog or their pages. You can see when they log on, when they are playing, which server and can even preview the server before joining. You can sent friends invites to chat, voice & game and can drag-and-drop them as a group into any one.
I can’t begin to describe how much better, slicker and more graphical the stats pages for BF3 are. No existing stats site comes even close. There is an enormous amount of information displayed. I think anyone hacking / cheating would have a hell of a job hiding it.

Into the Battlefield

The Alpha has one 32 player map, “Operation Metro” which is a rush map with four MCOM stages. See map here http://bf3blog.com/2011/07/multiplayer-philosophy-in-battlefield-3/
Starting on offense, you are in an open park in Paris with an LAV-25 armoured vehicle and have to destroy the two MCOMs running anti-air missile emplacements. This involves using the terrain and co-ordinated attack to overrun the MCOMs and blow them. Once taken, bombers blow a hole in the end of the park making three holes into the Metro subway tunnels, there are two train tunnels and an access tunnel. Using wrecked train carriages as cover you can then advance to two MCOMS on the platforms. One in a toilet. ;) From here, it’s upstairs to the ticket area for the next two MCOMs. There are two ways into this using the escalators or side-stairs, but with the open ticket area using cover and coordination is critical for either side to win. Finally into the sunny streets of Paris where one MCOM is in the street and the other inside a boarded up cafe. Most of the building are accessible and there are alleys and side-streets to use and explore. Shooting from the first and second floor windows is effective as a defense or attack cover. That is until someone fires an RPG and blows out the whole wall. Laying C4 to booby trap the room is good too...
Graphically at first glance this is more COD than BF, mainly because of the blue-glowing HUD. However, Frostbite 2 is to COD what Bluray is to VHS. The detail and complexity of the modelling and textures is amazing! This looks great, but doesn’t become truly apparent until you start blowing stuff up. I’ve seen complaints on forums that BF3 is less destructible than BFBC2. Not so. Once you’ve ranked up to get C4, oh boy can you make some holes in stuff. TwoBad will think Christmas has come early! Knock down a tree and you can lay prone in the cover it provides. No, it doesn’t “vanish” after a few seconds, it stays there for the rest of the game! Talking of prone, people are HARD to spot â€" standing, crouching or prone, so COD run-and-gun is a quick route to an early death. You HAVE to advance carefully and check cover for enemy players.
What really blew me away playing was the sound. DICE have outdone themselves here. The game sounds incredibly realistic! Firing each gun is very distinctive, you can tell the gun the guy next to you is using as much by the sound as anything, however enemy players further away, the shots sound different and often the first sign you have that you’re about to die is the bull-whip crack of a passing bullet, follow by death. So, you look carefully and what’s that white flash? Oh, it’s a prone sniper’s scope reflecting the sunlight from the bushes. Spot, shoot, move up.
The four classes are well balanced and they’ve gone for the BF2142 model of having support with the ammo boxes and assault with the health, so there is no semi-redundant medics and assault cannot stand in a pile of ammo boxes. Currently the only “underpowered” class is recon. You can’t hit squat with the basic gun and scope! I suspect this is not an error, but a rank-up-and-your-guns-are-better situation. Certainly I’ve got C4 on Support and I’m working towards Claymores which are fun! I killed a player and took his kit and put claymores in all the good cover around the MOCOM and got a few people who hadn’t bothered to look around. Laser pointers are REALLY well rendered, as a red dot jiggles around as you run with your gun, but it shows where the bullets go! Plus, if you see a blurry red flash, duck as somebody has you in their laser-sights!
Scoring is more even in BF3. E.g. setting the MCOM is 100 points and destroying in 200 points, instead of 50 & 250 in BFBC2. You also get points for suppressing enemies before your teammates kill them (as well as spot points). So if you lay down cover while your squad moves up, you’re rewarded for it. Unlike BFBC2, you get points for getting player dog tags. The end of round screen marches through a points animation sequence, showing where your points came from (each class used) and which badges, awards and so on..
Vehicles and players have health regen. I’m not sure about this, however three RPG hits (or two C4 packs) will “disable” a vehicle and the next hit destroys it.
Destruction is widespread, you can blow a sizeable (jeep sized) hole in the ground with some C4, blow out walls in the Metro, knock down trees and create or destroy cover.
Knife and grenades can selected with a key press (F & G) but can also be equipped and although I’ve only had a couple of stabs, a knife fight is possible! On the downside, weapon switching feels slow, clunky and unresponsive at the moment -  a big gripe on the BattleLog forums.
I’ve managed to rank up to 12, but Ducky is already around 22! The ranks seem to follow BF2, being real military ranks (someone correct me please) but they’ve given them numbers, so you’re private level 1,2,3 & 4 before making the next rank. Unlocks occur at rank ups and point thresholds for each class.

[video=youtube;mrbFoYGDt4U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrbFoYGDt4U[/video]

The Good, the bad and the badly thought out.
There are some bugs (it IS an Alpha) for instance sometimes I spawn with my hands up above my head. This happens a lot on French servers (no really, it does!). And I get some texture flashing and the alpha has no key config or advanced graphics options.
More seriously though, squads are limited to four players â€" yeah, so?. In BF3 you can only spawn on your “squad leader”, so if you ARE unlucky enough to BE squad leader you have to do a LOT of running from the initial spawn point EVERY time. Also, at this point, squad selection is automatic â€" you cannot pick a squad. Or come to think of it, switch team. Squad spawning seems totally random to me. And I don’t like it at all.
You can suicide on the options menu. BUT, the options menu is only available IN GAME. What that means is the only way to quit if you’re between rounds, or just been killed is to wait to respawn! Otherwise it’s ALT-TAB out and click the “close game” button in the BattleLog. Nasty.
Chat in the game hasn’t really been implemented in the Alpha, it’s ugly, and doesn’t work unless no other menu or pop-up is open and it really looks like an after-thought at this point.

In conclusion
Having said that, I am enjoying the game immensely. It has a faster pace, but requires thought and strategy. Stay alert and stay alive. The sound (I’ll keep saying this) is amazing and the graphics are awesome. I am so looking forward to choppers and jets in this game. Certainly despite my misgivings on the squads and the strange newness of launching from a web-browser, this game is a definite pre-order guys! It’s going to appeal to COD and BF players alike. So far Naldo, Ducky, Twobad & BrotherTobius are also in the Alpha test and I’m sure that they can give you their impressions on TS (so’s not to get caught breaching the NDA).

Obviously I’ve posted this in the game dev admin section to restrict its viewing to dMw members and out of the public domain so I don’t upset DICE /EA.

Gone_Away


Blunt

Regards
Blunt


People who blow things out of proportion are worse than Hitler.


GhostMjr

Thanks for the report.

So its like battlefield heroes then.

A web based launcher that sends you into the game to play?

-=[dMw]=-GhostMjr