Battlefield 3 announced

[cjo]

I've not played FPS games much for several years (I think Perfect Dark on the N64 was the last I spent much time playing) , and I think this is the first Battlefield games I've spent more than 20 mins on.

I started with the single player, and rapidly got bored with the 'Man the LMG' followed by 'boom! RPG' regardless of whether you crawled, crouched or ran to the LMG.

Multiplayer is good fun, bit of a learning curve. I still have large variations in performance - some rounds I'll seem to be invincible with the other team getting mowed down incredibly easily, other times I seem unable to hit a tank from 5m away and die every time I turn a corner. I've spent a few hours playing it now, and it is good fun and slightly addictive. I desperately need to sort out my AA settings though, as all of the crawling lines are driving me mad.

 

[sonix666]

About the single player, I like it a lot. It is an acquired taste, since you have to like a roller coaster type of FPS. I happen to like roller coaster type FPSes and open world FPSes.

Like Modern Warfare 2 it has a nice story in my opinion, but that is personal taste. Unlike MW2 they do a decent attempt to link the missions together by some cut scenes of you being interrogated. Much better that the bla-bla-bla-with-some-stick-figure-cut-scenes from MW2. Graphically and sound wise this is far beyond what MW2 has to offer.

Personally I don't mind the on-rails do-this-do-that-style as long as a game like this and MW2 offer me a interactive action movie style gameplay. Both deliver on that. What I do dislike is that sometimes it is not clear why you keep on dying over and over, because the game fails to give you better pointers (I'll explain in the spoiler below). But MW2 has the same problem.

Spoiler

For example, early in the game where you have to defend the walkway with the machine gun, I kept on dieing no matter how many people I actually killed. It took me over 10 tries to finally figure out that I shouldn't kill the people on the street but on the roof of that low building on the right of me.

The multi player is very well executed, but at the moment the Conquest Large servers seem to be lagging. It does have a learning curve. And although the maps are very wide and open, certain gameplay styles seem to be more rewarding than others (camping and staying in a vehicle). I can understand that this game will be a lot of fun for a lot of people, and I will gladly play it as well. But for me personally it isn't a replacement for multi player FPSes like Team Fortress 2 and Natural Selection 2. BF3 may be more realistic, but for me a game isn't about realism, but about fun. And for me an unrealistic but balanced set of classes and weapons beats realistic.

[Edited]
One thing I forgot to mention. Man, for me this is the best looking game I have ever seen. Especially the particle and lighting effects are outstanding (although lighting can be overdone in a lot of places).

 

[tabs]

If you mean the glare effects I'd agree with that.



Has anybody else been amazed by how good peoples teeth look in this game?

I don't mean what great dentistry they all have, just that for the first time ever in a computer game do people's mouths open and actually still look like real mouths, without wierd black bits on the teeth, strange shadows or no shadows, or clipping, which were all real immersion breakers for me any time I'd look at a face with an open mouth. The fact that this is done so well, and in multiplayer is quite amazing to me.

Never seen another game come even remotely close to acceptable. I'd love to know how DICE finally beat the problem (in reasonably understandable terms). I know brute-force will always find a way, but it can't be that - not for such a small thing and in multiplayer.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Awesome game, maps need some work 64 player conquest Subway is a spam fest, flash light is annoying, especially on a Sunny map like Caspian getting blinded by an enemies flashlight is not reality unless we have been able to generate more watts than the sun recently.

 

[Dresden]

Has anyone been able to base jump yet, in Damavand? I don't even know how to get up there.

 

[homerdog]

Nope, but I haven't played Rush there yet.

 

[tabs]

I played Rush there as Attacker one time but we were held back in the first phase. From what someone on TS was saying it sounds like it's in the second phase.

 

[neliz]

flash light is annoying, especially on a Sunny map like Caspian getting blinded by an enemies flashlight is not reality unless we have been able to generate more watts than the sun recently.

Dude, have you never seen the Ninja Glock?

I played Rush there as Attacker one time but we were held back in the first phase. From what someone on TS was saying it sounds like it's in the second phase.

Third actually.. on conquest it's point C I think, on top of the escalators, if you're terrorists.. I mean, russian, you auto win.

 

[3dcgi]

I've not played FPS games much for several years (I think Perfect Dark on the N64 was the last I spent much time playing) , and I think this is the first Battlefield games I've spent more than 20 mins on.

I started with the single player, and rapidly got bored with the 'Man the LMG' followed by 'boom! RPG' regardless of whether you crawled, crouched or ran to the LMG.

I haven't tried multiplayer yet as I wanted to beat single player for practice, but I also got stuck at the LMG on the walkway. I eventually beat it after a lot of frustration.

 

[Dresden]

Wait, the base jump is for rush only?

Has anyone tried co op? It's IMPOSSIBLE. Mainly due to random players inherent stupidity. If you get shot down they don't seem to know how to revive you, without their back to a wall of bullets. I need some B3D party members.

By the way, repi, I watched your keynote. You guys are reshaping the industry with every step you take. Seriously, man. Major kudos.

 

[fellix]

Apparently the engine have some chronic problem with the occlusion of surface reflections from static light sources, even in completely obscured pathways:

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/1992/bf32011103123412150.jpg

 

[tabs]

Wait, the base jump is for rush only?

Has anyone tried co op? It's IMPOSSIBLE. Mainly due to random players inherent stupidity. If you get shot down they don't seem to know how to revive you, without their back to a wall of bullets. I need some B3D party members.

You play coop with randoms? Didn't know that was even possible. I've completed the first 4 missions on Medium with a buddy on TS. It's pretty intense stuff and quite hard unless you've got your eyes peeled and you hold defensible positions.

Other times it gets very sneaky and you're better off using suppressed weapons so alarms don't go off. Haven't managed to do one of those sequences completely suppressed yet, but I'm looking forward to trying again.

You need to get on voice chat to have a good chance at winning a coop round IMO.

 

[tabs]

Apparently the engine have some chronic problem with the occlusion of surface reflections from static light sources, even in completely obscured pathways:

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/1992/bf32011103123412150.jpg

Is that on LOW settings? What an awful screeny. What's the opposite of cherry picked?

 

[neliz]

Is that on LOW settings? What an awful screeny. What's the opposite of cherry picked?

ditto, plenty of color banding etc. worst shot I've seen so far.. can you point where it is? looks like a piece of the single player campaign, no?

 

[homerdog]

Well it's possible to cherry pick bad screenshots as well. Happens all the time actually

The problem he is addressing is actually something that Epic solved in their Samaritan demo, if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps Crytek is the only dev to implement a solution to that specific problem in a shipping game with Crysis 2 and their Screen Space Reflections effect.

 

[tabs]

Nah it's not ssr, it's to do with the light not being occluded from the specular reflection properly. From the looks of it it's on the canals MP map. Can't say I've noticed anything like that in game yet.

 

[homerdog]

Hmm well check this out.
http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/GDC2011/Epic.pdf

Pages 26-28 show what I'm talking about.

 

[tabs]

Looks good!

I'm just thinking that if Crysis 2's SSR (AFAIK the only game to use it) is what it takes to get rid of those light bleeding artifacts, then you'd be seeing it everywhere on BF3 and every other game with deferred lighting.

I'm no graphics programmer, but I'm willing to bet there's another method of occluding the light source from that specular highlight that for one reason or another isn't being employed properly in the instance shown in that screenshot.

Regarding the settings that was taken at: There's no AO at all which means unless it's a custom setting then it is indeed on low. Medium uses SSAO, High + Ultra use HBAO. If I can be arsed I'll find that spot tomorrow and take a screeny from my PC at the recommended 'high' default settings I play at.

 

[neliz]

You play coop with randoms? Didn't know that was even possible. I've completed the first 4 missions on Medium with a buddy on TS. It's pretty intense stuff and quite hard unless you've got your eyes peeled and you hold defensible positions.

I had my first try with a random on Hard, we missed the last tank (didn't even know where was an ammo point on the roof.
played the first two on hard just now with a colleague. voice is essential all through the game

You need to get on voice chat to have a good chance at winning a coop round IMO.

^dat

 

[fellix]

Is that on LOW settings? What an awful screeny. What's the opposite of cherry picked?

Everything is on Ultra on my setup, while taking that screen.

Looks good!

I'm just thinking that if Crysis 2's SSR (AFAIK the only game to use it)

Dead Island also uses some form of SSR for the wet floors, but with evidently much lower precision/quality -- lots of depth occlusion errors.