Battlefield 3 announced

[NRP]

Oh so whats this? I only knew of Battlefield 1942 and that futuristic version. Are you guys saying that some other Batlefield series existed?! WOW.

You can't be serious.

 

[Neb]

FB2 seems very very impressive. PC version getting 64 player support is also great though I wonder if they will have a substitute for tracergun from BFBC2. I sure love to use the tracergun and each round bring down lots of helis with it.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Very cool. A proper single player campaign means I'll probably get it where I otherwise wouldn't bother.

I hope the destruction is greatly advanced from BF:BC 2. While interesting in that one, it was still really basic, wooden, and completely unconvincing.

Hopefully this will be the first game that does destruction well with convincing physics. Red faction came close, but their buildings seemed to all be made of balsa wood when parts went flying and bouncing around.

Regards,
SB

 

[homerdog]

Destruction in BFBC2 may not be impressive tech wise, but it allows for some interesting strategies. It's also really intense to be sniping out of a 2nd story window only to see the tank turn on you at the last second, blowing out the foundation from under you.

 

[Neb]

Yeah it opens up for tactical opportunities and also makes camping a dangerous act. You can also deform terrain at camp entrances to make it hard for tanks to plow ahead.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I don't know. I find the destruction in Bad Company 2 pretty much makes every other shooter seem boring. It's not incredibly complex, but it looks cool, and it really does change strategy on a lot of maps.

 

[Bludd]

I love the destruction in BC2 and I am salivating at the thought that it may be even better in BF3.

 

[green.pixel]

Battlefield 3 won’t include Commander feature

To be honest, mod tools isn't a big deal to me anymore. Vaporware mods are pretty common, because to make a mod that's of the same quality as a professional studio takes an incredibly long time. If they feel they cannot properly support them mod community with free tools, then it's probably best they skip that. The last thing you want is some crappy free tool set that can't properly deliver the same quality as the tools they use in house. If they can divert those resources to making the game better, then I'm ok with that.

People are still playing BF1942/Vietnam/2 mods. Mod tools give games a lifespan. Developer has a game with a community, gets free marketing in the form of fan sites and high profile status, content and ideas to draw upon in next projects if they want, and potential new talent to recruit. What DICE is doing here is in complete contrast with Tripwire and RO2, for which there is 3 mods in development, each of which is nearly a new game in itself.

The previous editorial didn't touch much on the subject of mods and community-created content, but that's another area where the success of console games is threatening the open-ended nature of the PC gaming experience. Combine increased broadband connectivity with the existing payment structures already in place for the consoles and you have an easy avenue for publishers to make money from selling post-release content directly to the consumers.

PC modders and content creators don't fit into this system, so their efforts are pushed aside to make room for five-dollar content packs that can quickly turn a $60 game into an $85 or $90 game. Compared to the nearly endless succession of free Neverwinter Nights modules or Civilization scenarios, it's tough to see much value in more centralization and greater publisher control.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/106/1061221p2.html

 

[repi]

I summon repi to this thread! Tell us about Stuff (tm) and Things (tm) that relate to the tech in this game.

Your summon spell was successful!

We have 5 talks at GDC'11 about tech details in various areas, so try and hold on until then

 

[NRP]

Very cool. A proper single player campaign means I'll probably get it where I otherwise wouldn't bother.

You know, it wouldn't kill you to man up and play some MP every once in a while (well, it might actually ).

 

[Mobius1aic]

Battlefield 3 won’t include Commander feature




People are still playing BF1942/Vietnam/2 mods. Mod tools give games a lifespan. Developer has a game with a community, gets free marketing in the form of fan sites and high profile status, content and ideas to draw upon in next projects if they want, and potential new talent to recruit. What DICE is doing here is in complete contrast with Tripwire and RO2, for which there is 3 mods in development, each of which is nearly a new game in itself.


http://pc.ign.com/articles/106/1061221p2.html

Why not give developers the ability to buy mod tools if they want to get into it? Yes, it's a barrier in a way, but it does make modding possible. Charge $100 or something like that for complex mod tools, with a free mod tool for those who want to do very basic stuff. DICE could also create a "BF marketplace" that could give mod developers an outlet for their talent, and with a royalty, an extra way to make some money for DICE as well as those mod makers, if the mod creators choose to sell the mod. While I'm sure the idea would put some off people, I could see it working quite well, especially for high quality mods that are worth $5 or even more. Project Reality, Forgotten Hope 2, and AIX all come to mind for very high quality BF2 mods, with First Strike being a very notable and highly successful BF2142 mod.

100,000 mod downloads x $5.00 cost = $500,000 x {hypothetical 20% royalty fee for DICE} = $100,000.

Bump the mod cost to $10 and DICE's 20% royalties jump to $200,000. I don't see why modding can't be lucrative for both the modders and the original game developers, especially when the mod tools could be sold for a higher amount of money.

 

[RobertR1]

Wow at removing the commander feature! The level of depth it added to BF2 was amazing. It's redistribution efforts in Bad Company are very poor and simply dumb down gameplay so the reasoning given is quite mind boggling.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Commander was a pretty cool feature, but to be honest, I rarely ever saw it used properly or effectively. I was hoping it would be there, but there are a lot of other things I'm way more excited about than the return of the commander position.

 

[Scott_Arm]

People are still playing BF1942/Vietnam/2 mods. Mod tools give games a lifespan. Developer has a game with a community, gets free marketing in the form of fan sites and high profile status, content and ideas to draw upon in next projects if they want, and potential new talent to recruit. What DICE is doing here is in complete contrast with Tripwire and RO2, for which there is 3 mods in development, each of which is nearly a new game in itself.

I guess I don't care about mods because I'm usually onto something new and different by the time the mods are ever released.

 

[green.pixel]

Why not give developers the ability to buy mod tools if they want to get into it? Yes, it's a barrier in a way, but it does make modding possible. Charge $100 or something like that for complex mod tools, with a free mod tool for those who want to do very basic stuff. DICE could also create a "BF marketplace" that could give mod developers an outlet for their talent, and with a royalty, an extra way to make some money for DICE as well as those mod makers, if the mod creators choose to sell the mod. While I'm sure the idea would put some off people, I could see it working quite well, especially for high quality mods that are worth $5 or even more. Project Reality, Forgotten Hope 2, and AIX all come to mind for very high quality BF2 mods, with First Strike being a very notable and highly successful BF2142 mod.

Or they could follow the Valve model of growing the community and which would keep people buying the full game for years instead of nickle and diming people with DLCs and map macks.

"You buy the product, you get the content," Team Fortress 2 designer Robin Walker told us. "We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers."

"[In multiplayer games] the content you're playing is being created by the players you're playing against, so the more people that get into the game, the more content you're going to have," Valve's Charlie Brown concurred.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/valve-wont-charge-for-dlc

 

[green.pixel]

I'm usually onto something new and different by the time the mods are ever released.

That's exactly what these companies want.


If they really cared, they could release mod tools before the game is even out, like Tripwire.

Recently you announced a rather unique program for the game's first expansion pack, Rising Storm, where members of the Red Orchestra mod community will be in charge of developing the expansion. Can you tell us why you wanted to do this?

John Gibson: Given the way we got our start as a mod team we've got very deep ties to the mod community, and believe some of the best innovation comes from the mod community. Over the past few years we've also developed a really symbiotic relationship with the mod community for our games. We've held several mapping competitions where we've put up prizes to reward the best community mappers. We've even taken some of the best maps and mods and included them as official content for our games. This is good for us as it keeps our games in peoples minds and keeps them selling, it is good for the modders as they get to hone their game development skills and possibly get jobs in the industry (we recently hired two developers out of our mod community), and most importantly the fans win because they get a lot of additional free content. The modders for our games have created some really great stuff with a lot of it being professional quality. Right now for instance 30 percent of all the players playing the original Red Orchestra are playing one of the mods called Darkest Hour. That says a lot for the quality of work coming out of the community.

As we were developing Heroes of Stalingrad we came up with some ideas on how we could take these concepts even further. So we came up with the idea for a crazy experiment we called the "All Star Mod Team." We would reach out to the mod community for Red Orchestra and the modding community at large and try and assemble a team of the best modders in the industry. We would then offer them the opportunity to work on a project under the guidance of Tripwire Interactive with an opportunity to actually earn some real money for their work. These guys would get early access to the modding SDK and actually be developing the expansion in parallel with Heroes of Stalingrad. One problem that often plagues mods is that it takes so long to make a quality total conversion mod that they often don't get released until a couple of years after the original game is released. This means a lot of a game's player base has moved on to other games by the time the best mods get released, and a lot of really great mods get overlooked (Mare Nostrum, NeoTokyo, Insurgency, Carpathian Crosses just to name a few). So we wanted to engage a mod team early on so that they can get something out the door while Heroes of Stalingrad is still fresh.

Alan Wilson: We wanted to be able to expand on the original theater for RO. We also wanted to get behind the modders who have done so much work on RO over the last few years. This way, a bunch of them get a great opportunity both to show what they can do AND earn money – and we get extra material for Heroes at a reasonably early stage. Most good mods for games take a year or two to make and we wanted this material available a lot sooner than that..

http://news.bigdownload.com/2010/06...ore-from-tripwire-about-red-orchestra-heroes/

 

[Scott_Arm]

I definitely prefer valves model of free content to extend the life of the product. I think it's a smart, rational approach, where you still have people buying the game years after release, rather than getting a smaller user-base and trying to squeeze money out of them.

That said, conversion mods seem to take two or three years to come out. By that time, I'm already playing a different or new game. You can say that's what "they" want, but that's also what I want. I like to play new and different games. It's very difficult for the mod community to release a conversion mod with the production quality near retail in a timely manner. They just don't have the time or resources to do it. If Frostbite 2.0 really is incredibly complex, I can see how they might feel it would not be suited to the mod community. Obviously, there are financial reasons to try to limit free content, and I imagine those are in play as well.

 

[green.pixel]

It's very difficult for the mod community to release a conversion mod with the production quality near retail

Why, is that requimerent for enjoyment of them? Not every games needs to have high production values, which is the main reason for dumbing down of games these days.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Why would it need? Not every games needs to have high production values.

That's true. I'm not a huge graphics whore or anything. But I could see modders struggling to produce quality animations for a new animation system, etc, and there will be a point where gamers will feel the difference between the quality of the retail product and a mod is too great, and will not play it.

 

[RobertR1]

Counter Strike started as a mod....Oblivion modded is a much better experience than OEM. I'm not talking graphics either. Balance changes, gui and inventory system overhaul.

Sure as games get more complicated, so will the mod tools but giving people the option to mod is generally better than no option at all esp if the mod tools can be used to help balance the game or tweak gameplay. The findings form the mod community can also be added to the OEM product by the developer depending on the community feedback.