Battlefield 3

I have to say that this game has the best multiplayer infantry combat I've ever experienced. I think the sweet spot seems to be 20-40 players on Conquest. Seine Crossing is a cluster**** with 64 players but with 15 or 20 it really opens up. I've just had some incredible moments... when you get into the swing of the game, you know, and you find yourself on one of those servers where both teams seem to have some clue as to what's going on, and the next thing you know you're fighting desperately back and forth with an enemy squad or two over a control point. The immersion is just incredible, and I think they've really accomplished a strong tactical aspect that was sorely lacking in infantry combat of earlier titles. What you do really matters - if you hang back and provide covering fire for your two squadmates to advance, you might save all three of you from getting mowed down by a single guy with one magazine. There are strong advantages to flanking, there are infinite tactical uses of cover and lanes of fire, etc.

Last night I was defending the East Bridge objective (C) on Seine Crossing more or less on my lonesome (I had one squadmate with me) against two full enemy squads (their team was much better than ours, I was fighting basically over the single point our team could control). They took it from me but not before the most blistering two minute firefight of my life. When I spotted them moving up towards my position, maybe 100m out, I opened up and got suppression on 2 or 3 of them at least, but no kills. Clip ran out and I fired an M320 in the direction and got a kill. Reloaded quickly and fired another; another kill.

At this point I saw the other squad moving up a couple dozen meters to the right of the remnants of the first squad, trying to get out of the single lane of fire I had that covered both directions and flank up the bridge to kill me. I tried to deny them with suppression but the odds were too great - I emptied another magazine in their direction, killing the most exposed guy but narrowly diving back into cover with my life as they all returned fire and chips blew out of the concrete wall I was sheltered behind. At this point my heart is pounding in my ears and I'm breathing heavily, and I'm pretty sure I physically ducked my shoulders when diving to prone just then. I feel pretty good about myself since I've already killed three of them and that's pretty awesome given the odds. But now I'm worried, because I only have two rifle grenades left, I'm running low on ammo (about 2 full magazines left and some change), the enemies I killed are either being revived or respawning right now and every single one of the bad guys down at the end of the bridge know exactly where I am to within a couple of meters. Help from my team is nowhere in sight... they're all camping in random parts of the map hoping for a turkey shoot.

I stayed prone and crawled around the edge of the wall, so that I am looking down the sidewalk on the bridge with the concrete wall immediately on my left covering me. In order for them to come take the point and get me, they have to come around the corner I'm aiming at, which is only 50m away at the most. I was worried that they would guess my plan and send a grenade or two in my direction (which is the best counter to my strategy) but the one grenade they did toss ended up short. I panicked a little bit at the lack of visibility and fired my last two rifle grenades a bit wildly, injuring somebody with the second one but no kill. Moments later I spot an enemy coming around the corner down at the end of the bridge, and I open up with tight, controlled bursts. He falls almost immediately, within the first few shots, and the rest of my magazine tears into his two squadmates directly behind him, both of whom also fall almost immediately, all three dead within a few seconds. I quickly reload and heave myself off the ground and charge towards the remaining bad guys down at the end of the bridge, firing wildly in their direction. There were still three or four of them down there and I was instantly riddled with holes... but damned if I didn't make them fight for that objective.

Got a little carried away there, but moments like that are what makes this game phenomenal to me.
 
Not gonna lie - my asshole puckered in fear at least twice as I read that. And I agree with everything you said.
 
Alright, based on what Ennui just said, I'll have to try some 32 player maps tonight. I've been almost exclusively playing 64.
 
Ever played any of those maps like 64 player Gran Bazaar and it's just a mortar cluster****? Well... I just recently unlocked my mortar and I've been operating on solely Anti-Mortar teams. Whenever you fire your mortar, you are revealed on the map that is shown to other mortar users. So when an enemy mortar fires... I be sure I'm close enough to them that I can quickly respond in a second and fire on their spot thus killing them. I quickly relocate nearby to avoid any retaliatory mortar strikes. I just keep doing that and eventually the enemy is denied mortar usage completely.

Most players it seems haven't caught on to mortar vs mortar warfare... and they're getting greedy just going after easy infantry kills while they stay in the background. Whenever I come across mortar bitches just sitting back and living the good life, I'm going to be sure they have a couple of hot shells up their asses every time they fire.
 
Van of DOOOOOM!!!1!!



Good times, guys. Lets do that again tomorrow.
 
New Catalyst AMD drivers out.

Don't uninstall your previous drivers (CAP 4 from 4.9 is actually helpful).

Nice writeup, Ennui - you nailed what I enjoy most about the game too; the large scale infantry combat.
 
Van of DOOOOOM!!!1!!



Good times, guys. Lets do that again tomorrow.

It's MEEEE!

Oh man, that moment was so awesome. We were holding off like 15 guys as they were too scared to come around the van. Frigging hilarious, we were getting peppered.

Definitely do it again asap.
 
I've pretty much exclusivly been playing on 32 player rush servers although my usual servers throw in the odd conquest map which is always a nice break.

I just find the rush mode far better then conquest as you can end up just chasing each others tails around and just running around a lot in conquest where as the n-coms tend to draw people together. Though I should go out of my way to play a little more conquest just to get my ass in choppers some more.

Overall though I gotta agree with Ennui. Its bloody brillent, the feel of the guns and damage is spot on. I love being able to drop a squad of 4 guys in one clip but also being able to pick off guys at a distance in a few rounds. Its super satisfying. The maps at first I found a little too open but now having played have really got a feel for them and love running from one piece of cover and diving behind rocks to get out the way of wizzing bullets.

It sounds like the few grips I have are getting looked into with patches such as the sensitivity issues and hoping the choppers get a buff. I'm finding this engine fire stuff pretty annoying as your veichels tend to go out of action at 50-60% health but other then that frigging awesome. Just wish I had more time to play it!
 
i am now at home, my copy is next to me and i am positively itching to play. however, a house to clean from a halloween party, a hangover to shake off and, y'know, work to do are in my way, but come 8 o clock when i leave the studio... i am ****ing on this.

****.

edit: caved, played some before i went in the studio. loved it. still itching now to play some more but i must do some more work first. some initial thoughts on the three rounds i played:

luckily my good pal was online so we squad'ed up and pretty much dominated as a team for all three maps - seine crossing, operation firestorm and damavand peak, all rush. pretty amazing how all three were unique, really managed to sink into the flow of the game just fine despite being a weekend too late to play at launch but i guess i did play a lot of of the beta. interesting to see how much the game has changed and i'm so thankful for that.

seine crossing was a bit of a meatgrinder in parts, but that does mean hundreds of points if you play medic or support which is me all over. really enjoyed the close quarters mixed with medium sight line combat, had no idea where our lines and the enemies lines were meant to be in some parts because a city is just a mass of grey buildings with very little unique characteristics to take reference from, but i'm sure i'll get the hang of it in time, it was my first map afterall.

firestorm was a bit slow, not a huge fan of it being in a straight line from attacking base to final defenders point, perhaps conquest is a bit more fun. otherwise alright, just kind of played the map as the enemy coming straight towards you and if not that, either straight from the left or straight from the right. not the most fun, but whatever.

damavand peak is everything you expect from a level involving a base jump - exhilarating. i really, really liked falling back as the defenders to the base jump, rifle rounds and shells falling short at your feet as you pound across the surface to make the jump. that's pretty intense. played a pretty high-scoring round on this as i was playing a very offensive medic role - ended up leading or being at the forefront of near enough every attack as the US, felt a bit like dick winters in the replacements episode of band of brothers where he bolts across that field unaware that his troops are pretty far behind him, but ends up being successful/lucky all the same.

good game.
 
I hope they improve the commo rose, right now its completely useless and clumsy. No radio commands or text chat commands via command rose. It's incredibly dodgy at the moment, and also I rarely say this but... NERF THE ****ING MORTARS!

Hopefully BTK and future maps will have space between flags, that's my other complaint. Seine Crossing can be a clustered as **** with mortars and snipers overlooking the bridge and river.
 
Van of DOOOOOM!!!1!!



Good times, guys. Lets do that again tomorrow.

That was quality, though sitting amidst the enemy in plain sight shelling them with a mortar for about 8 minutes unmolested last night was LOL worthy. Even more so that you and Shaker were on the opposition at the time ;)
 
That was quality, though sitting amidst the enemy in plain sight shelling them with a mortar for about 8 minutes unmolested last night was LOL worthy. Even more so that you and Shaker were on the opposition at the time ;)

Dat knife kill. Lolled so hard.
 
Dat knife kill. Lolled so hard.

I think you must of been suffering from shell shock. I recall being shot, but not knifed.

BTW ppl if you're Euro based I have a 30 slot mumble server in Amsterdam which is presently under-utilized (it's principally for my Milkshake clannies, but it's relatively quiet at present). Add me as a friend in battlelog (Name - Kadayi )and I'll zap you the details (I'm generally around after 7ish GMT on an evening). Shaker and Dynasty have them as well. Needless to say with me running things we've already hit our asshole quota, so don't abuse it as I don't want to be banning people for acting up (I play games to chill out from RL).
 
i had a hilarious run in with the strange non-animated knife system the other day. i was lying down watching over a point on damavand when i heard footsteps behind me and, upon glancing at my map, came to the conclusion it was an enemy as there were no friendlies near me. i got to my feet just as he slashed me with the knife and i guess he must of been anticipating it to be a one-swing kill like in BC2, but it isn't. i get up and he's just standing there, opposite me, knife in hand and by design/reaction i go for my knife and slash him - nothing. we're both now standing facing each other just as confused for what must of been three or four seconds of tension... and then i just brought up my rifle and sprayed him full of rounds ala bruce willis killing john travolta in the apartment in pulp fiction.
 
I've been playing for a few days now and I really regret buying this... All servers only rotate conquest and the maps are so damn boring. Either walk for 10min and get sniped, or wait for a vehicle for 10min. People were saying Metro was bad, but I haven't seen a better map yet.

Haven't seen many bugs, only one crash.

Performance is about the same as in beta, 4GB ram, ATI 4870, E8500 @ 4.1GHz runs the game ok with everything set to low, no AA or AF, 1680*1050 resolution. Haven't used fraps or anything but I'd say average is about 30, drops to around 10 at times.
 
Hey Pitz, sorry I couldn't play last night buddy. We should soon though, once my exams are finished. Also, I was showing my dad some pointers how to play the game.

Yes, my 59 year old father has bought Battlefield 3 - which is a shock to me, not because of his age, but because he loves to play Modern Warfare. He bought Bad Company 2, but he never really was able to get into it. Surprisingly, he bought Battlefield 3, so I've been trying over the past few days to show him some pointers on how to play. It's pretty awesome! :D
 
I think you must of been suffering from shell shock. I recall being shot, but not knifed.

Didn't you knife Dynasty at the start of the evening? I can clearly recall him screaming like a pig. :)
 
Try ticking the rush box in server filters.....
 
A couple of times now I will knife a guy and it will just swipe. Knifing is also bugged and is hit or miss. Also the server updates did something to BF3 as I get disconnected or whatever from the server now. PB is updated as well. I do love a good knife kill though. Sometimes the guy will be like :O "Oh I got anally raped and I'm shocked".

 
Didn't you knife Dynasty at the start of the evening? I can clearly recall him screaming like a pig. :)

I can neither on confirm or deny that I may have been in the vicinity of a knife related homicide involving dynasty.
 
A couple of times now I will knife a guy and it will just swipe. Knifing is also bugged and is hit or miss. Also the server updates did something to BF3 as I get disconnected or whatever from the server now. PB is updated as well. I do love a good knife kill though. Sometimes the guy will be like :O "Oh I got anally raped and I'm shocked".
This is because knife kills are only one hit kills when you attack from behind. If you attack from the front (or some side angles) you will just do a little swipe / knife slash which takes 2 or 3 hits to kill.

Bakurei, use the server browser's filter like Stormy said. If you aren't liking Conquest then playing Rush or TDM should be more to your taste. TDM in particular is awesome, nonstop infantry action on condensed versions of the maps.
 
Bakurei, use the server browser's filter like Stormy said. If you aren't liking Conquest then playing Rush or TDM should be more to your taste. TDM in particular is awesome, nonstop infantry action on condensed versions of the maps.
I've also played on a few servers that do a Rush/Conquest rotation. Like any game, it's about finding servers you like.
 
Yeah the quick swipe knife kills aren't bugged, they're just used when you approach at certain angles.
 
That was quality, though sitting amidst the enemy in plain sight shelling them with a mortar for about 8 minutes unmolested last night was LOL worthy. Even more so that you and Shaker were on the opposition at the time ;)

Oh god, we all laughed so hard. I was running around the corner and heard the *thunk* of a mortar, stopped and was like 'where the hell did that come from?', looked left and there you were right infront of one of those iron banister things in frigging plain sight, in the open, right by A. So I shot thee! Big time laughs.

Yeah guys, Kadayi has a mumble server that Shakermaker, Kadayi and myself have been using over the past few nights. Makes the game SO much better.
 
This game.

This game plays at a nice 90-110 frames on my below average pc. However after about 30 minutes of game play (and a map change) it becomes extremely sluggish. Each death follows a good 15 seconds of stuttering that simulates what you would expect if you're doing intensive background HDD activity or burning a cd while playing. After I quit because of it, the computer remains slow until a reset. I can't even open documents in Photoshop without a reset.

What the flying **** is this game doing to my system.
 
JIniI.jpg


Kadayi caught in the act of mortaring. :O
 
This game.

This game plays at a nice 90-110 frames on my below average pc. However after about 30 minutes of game play (and a map change) it becomes extremely sluggish. Each death follows a good 15 seconds of stuttering that simulates what you would expect if you're doing intensive background HDD activity or burning a cd while playing. After I quit because of it, the computer remains slow until a reset. I can't even open documents in Photoshop without a reset.

What the flying **** is this game doing to my system.

Have you run Task Manager when that happens? Or better yet, Process Explorer? Might shed some light on what's chewing up CPU or memory. How much RAM and what OS? It could be a paging/thrashing issue if you have lower memory specs.
 
This game.

This game plays at a nice 90-110 frames on my below average pc. However after about 30 minutes of game play (and a map change) it becomes extremely sluggish. Each death follows a good 15 seconds of stuttering that simulates what you would expect if you're doing intensive background HDD activity or burning a cd while playing. After I quit because of it, the computer remains slow until a reset. I can't even open documents in Photoshop without a reset.

What the flying **** is this game doing to my system.

This used to happen to me when I tried playing games with a way sub-par system (w/ GPU and processor that were a couple of generations old). Found out it was an overheating issue. Figured firmware or hardware was purposely holding the processor and GPU back so that they wouldn't fry.
 
JIniI.jpg


Kadayi caught in the act of mortaring. :O

It's a fun game. Like wack-a-mole. Very handy for when you're on Daravand peak rush attacking for the first 3 stages, also Seine and Grand bazaar, as they are reasonably compact and it's a good way to soften up entrenched opposition, as well as keep tanks on their toes.
 
Would some one play CO-OP with me? I really want to unlock the G3A3 and M39 EMR! :D
 
Does anyone else get a sound bug where most of the in-game sounds shut off? At random times either the gunshots won't sound off, explosions, ambient noise, etc.
 
Got my first Assault Service Star and all the Assault weapons that are unlockable through regular multiplayer. Time to level another class now and it will probably be Support. I've got to get my hands on a mortar before they nerf it.

KERNF.jpg
 
I find I'm TK'ed way more in this game than in any other game! People just shoot as soon as they see someone regardless of who they are. A lot of the time A teammate has been shooting someone, I've gone in and killed them only for them to follow me and TK me! I don't know why they don't remove points for TK's anymore! It might make people think twice before shooting.

Anyway, like Raz, I love to play anti-motar with my motar.
 
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