Battlefield 3 announced

That will sour the fuck out of enthusiasm for BF3 is they try to pull that stupid stunt. People will still buy it but they will see a lot more sales if Steam is involved. Assuming they care about PC sales that is.

 

I highly doubt the small amount extra they'll make on each sale will equal the larger amount they could make on Steam. I've hated EA's clients and download services and vowed never to use the damn things again. I don't want 5 different digital game clients on my PC thanks.

I bet repi and the devs are just groaning right about now.

 

Some people maybe but I sure as he'll won't buy it if they do that. Not really worried though, they can't be that stupid.

 

Not the only one doing it :

We're blackballing any sites that don't love banana pancakes from reviewing Serious Sam 3: BFE. You've all been warned. #BetterBetOnSam

 

I disagree. Are the dev's that stupid? Definitely not. If anything, DICE has shown themselves to be all kinds of awesome this entire generation. Clever and innovative, among the best.

Are the suits over at the parent company\publisher that stupid? Most certainly.

I'm sure there are others here who remember the botched attempts by EA and their download services. Cumbersome, annoying, and counter intuitive. I also believe that many PC gamers remember Microsoft's continued flailing with Windows Live.

Really, the only service that has kinda sorta taken off is Blizzard's. And that's only really because their portfolio is stocked with classics they've managed to make downloadable and linked to your profile (Diablo, SC), present super mega hit (also known as E-heroine) WoW, Starcraft 2 and the ever glorious carrot Diablo 3.

Even then though, I do not actively compare it to STEAM. It just isn't anywhere near as competent a service. It's just a Blizzard DL client.

 

And now if Battlefield 3 doesn't meet sales expectations, we all know what reason will be given...Piracy

I hope a HD4870 and 5770 can have some settings towards the higher levels(snälla Dice!), I want to play with the visuals I've seen

 

repi: RE how best to expose the pc configuration options. I suppose having default quality rungs helps but decouple them from resolution and AA. Personally I'd rather have more "game" details while having lower resolution and those max FPS tweakers would also probably like to have max resolution and lowest game details.

Tipically I'd expect just three widgets: resolution, AA, quality setting. With an "Advanced Settings" button to bring up the custom settings. You said auto-detect isn't always helpful but if you have time throw in a built-in benchmark like F.E.A.R./SF4/RE5/etc. have. Choose a representative scene and model the default quality rungs to that benchmark. At the end suggest the closest rung (choose conservatively) whilst presenting the average and especially minimum framerate in an out-of-the-way place for tweakers. Going the extra mile would be suggesting hardware upgrades to overcome the most imediate bottleneck. Just don't do what SF4 which is recommending I increase quality settings when I'm already running at max settings.

I agree with the suggestion of not exposing high performance impact with dubious IQ improvement settings in the menu and instead leaving those to a config file. Do provide settings for all the major quality changers (shadows, draw distance, lighting quality, etc.) but don't go overboard. Oblivion really went to town with that, as if the guy who created the slider UI widget wanted to have his creation used everywhere. Do give us control, but I don't need 1/100th precision over the "grass shadow quality" setting or whatever. I again agree that for most people the particular kind of AA is meaningless, I'd also expect in this day and age that I don't have to choose between bilinear/trilinear filtering. I also believe VSYNC should be an advanced setting (in case you're going for a separate screen). People don't know what it means.

Another thing a few games have is a performance hit hint for that setting ("this will slow down the game if your CPU is not very good", "you should have at least xMB video card ram", etc.). Don't worry about being precise with these hints but do give out a general idea what the bottleneck will be. This is very important should they have any impact on the network.

An idea (will take a bit of effort): take a before screenshot and let the user compare to the new settings while he hits apply, get rid of it when he hits ok to close the settings screen and commit to the new config. Maybe show this before shot in PinP mode or maybe alternating with a button/key. Having a live display works when changing one setting but not when you are setting it up for the first time or when changing more than a few settings. If you do this, watermark the before pic with the then current fps, show the current fps on the settings screen.

 

Yes we do have gamepad support on PC, no autoaim. So only very brave people would dare to try and play it in MP


Oh and thanks guys for all the feedback and confirmations about settings!

 

A realtime view of what actually changes would be nice. I believe Hellgate: London actually tried to do this.

Going with eliminating features that have a negligible IQ benefit is a slippery slope however. For example, up until this year ALL shadows in ALL games were of negligible IQ for me and thus the first thing I turned off in all games (Metro 2033 is on my shitlist because you can't adjust shadow settings independantly of other settings). What is negligible to some may not be so to others. DoF is another one of those that not only is negligible most of the time for me but actually seriously detracts from the game when it is overused as it is in 99% of games now days.

This I like. If it is provided as a seperate download with a warning that you could seriously tank your performance and thus should "not" be used for reviews of anykind nor will be supported in any way should allow for only those seriously wanting to tweak their system to enjoy the benefits knowing the potential performance hits they may take.

If this happens I WILL NOT be buying BF3. I only tolerate Blizzard doing it because I've loved all the games they've ever made. But that tolerance will probably wither and disappear the moment they release a game I don't like.

EA doesn't have that cachet with me and I'll have no part of using their DD service.

Hate this option. I hate wading through .ini files when those options could have just been included in graphics config (AA, Resolution, etc. are all some really bad examples from quite a few games).

IMO, only game breaking options should be hidden within .ini files only. Such as Zoom levels for say third person viewpoint games or RTS games. I love that Civ5 for example has a .ini setting that lets you zoom all the way into the units faces.

I've always liked it when game options menus presented the potential performance impact of a setting in a tooltip. Bonus when it also differentiates between potential CPU and/or GPU performance impact. Bonus when it also describes what the setting actually does, as in how will the user notice it's on or been changed. Bonus when it also describes relatively how well an increase might be perceived.

I see this mostly in MMO's as performance impact can vary greatly between solo gaming, group gaming, and raiding. And thus knowing how much of an impact and what type of impact a setting has allows people to easily adjust settings depending on what in game situation they will find themselves in.

But I think this would also be hugely beneficial in single player games, yet I rarely see single player games take the time to provide any of this information.

Regards,
SB

 

Thank you!

 

They could always try a settings audit mode. So it times the game with everything maxed, then turns off one setting, times the same thing, re-enabled that and turns off the next setting, times that, rinse and repeat. Then you could see your frame rate with everything at max, and how each individual setting affects performance. Might take 10 minutes or so for the audit to complete but it would still be a useful way to instantly spot the major settings performance offenders.

 

I especially liked Buddha's suggestions about telling what part of the hardware one setting is dependant on, and Joker's suggestion too

I hate messing around outside of the game's options when I can just have them there

I think people always will be pissed and say something is unoptimised if they can't play it at almost maxed on the latest and best hardware though...I know for sure it wasn't fun when Crysis was released and the then new Geforce 8 series with DX10 support were much better off playing in DX9

 

Are we talking about the same EA here? I assure you, they can be that stupid.

That said, I'll buy it if it is available through steam or possibly if available through unencumbered physical media, but I'm not bloody likely to add origin to my system. I have steam, I have a ton of games on steam and it just plain works. EA not so much.

 

Maybe it has been asked before as well, but for multiplayer, what system will be used.

1) Freely available dedicated server binaries, so that the community can run its own servers. Like most Valve games for example.
2) EA operated dedicated servers.
3) Distributed yabedieyab-crap like Modern Warfare 2.

And I am with aaronspink on this one. I don't know who is actually at fault here, but Battlefield 3 not being available on Steam (or in retail without to shitty DRM) is a big let down. It'll have to be mind blowing if I'd install Origin.

 

http://www.gamesthirst.com/2011/06/...sappointed-over-ps3-footage-of-battlefield-3/

repi needs to be careful. He might enrage the discerning console crowd and cause a boycott. This is what happens when people have gotten used to developers producing crap on the PC just to match the capabilities of console hardware.

*repost from console forum*

 

http://www.vg247.com/2011/06/15/crysis-2-now-only-on-origin-d2d-impulse-more/

Oh oh, Valve is finally starting to do the inevitable and start throwing their weight around. Geez, I don't want to be using multiple download services but I guess it was too much to ask to expect Valve to keep playing nice forever.

 

The way I understand it is that EA intentionally violated some aspect of Valve's publisher agreement, thus "forcing" Valve to pull the game. That way, EA could blame Valve for it instead of them simply pulling the game from the store (which was well within their rights anyway). It's a marketing thing, to try to make people see how "bad" Steam is and how "good" Origin is.

 

the best part about steam is you can pop onto your friends list, and join them in whatever game theyre playing.

and the games are super cheap, theres that too.

so convenience and price.

im upset.

 

All these different digital download services are getting kind of annoying to keep up with to be perfectly honest. While I love DD availability and what not, I don't like the idea of having to manage so many goddamn different services, each with their own little program that I might have to run in the background just to play. It's not at all unifying. At least D2D doesn't require Comrade, and Origin isn't required to run games downloaded on it.

 

With regards to the quality settings. I'd like to see plenty of configurability within the in game menu's including explanations of what each setting does and how it might effect performance. The maximum for each of these sliders though should only go to the point where the graphical return is reasonably obvious and doesn't result in severe performance impacts on high end hardware. i.e. don't go past the point of accetable diminishing returns. I realise thats a subjective point but the developers should be able to pick the right balance. What I wouldn't want to see there is a settings which has a slight impact on shadow resolution (for example) but which halves performance. This gives the game an overall "unoptimised" feeling. The maximim in game settings should still feel pretty well optimised, i.e. the game might slow down but the graphics at least reflect why. Maximum should also be playable at a solid 30fps on the 2 highest end single GPU's available at time of launch.

All that said though, I think the option to increase various settings well beyond the point of diminishing returns should be available in config files for future/SLI users and those that like to play around with settngs. No-one can complain is a game runs poorly if they have messed around in the config files.