Battlefield 3 announced

From what I could see the trick with this map is flying over the tunnel with helicopter snatch the enemy flag behind their line. (and commence knifing spree.. )

 

Yes, I saw that, but it often seem to devolve to the little birds just buzzing around each other trying to disable each other's vehicle. It's still a bit wierd for a BF map though to have two channels to progress through.

I can definitely see what they were trying to do. Often on BF2 you'd end up in flag hopping situations, here the action is more defined. You are certainly shooting a lot more. Trouble is it's too narrowly defined for 50+ people, and sometimes a lot less than that. I think that's why there were numerous requests for some sort of dynamic map size change depending on the number of people in a server. Have no idea how that could work in reality though.

/edit
RobertR1 is probably being sensible when not wanting to comment until more time has been spent. First impressions are often quite extreme. I'll leave it at that until I've played another few weeks. Be interesting to hear feedback from DICE about what folks are saying too, there's quite a large thread on Battlelog regarding the maps not being designed for 64 players I'm hoping they respond to.

 

I noticed they changed the order of the capture points on Caspian, I was saying I'd spawn on A (Gas Station) and then run through the forest to E (Radio Tower) but they've traded positions. D = B, B = C, and C = D.

There are some maps that just seem to work less good in Conquest then they did in Rush.
Damavand is campfest as there's just no single reason to try and go trough the main or auxiliary tunnels since there's LMGS + SMAWs on the other side ripping you to shreds. All-in-all that map is in balance, just not in a good way.

A map that IS very unbalanced is Metro Conquest. If you though Rush was already a bitch, wait till you have 32 people defending all the entry points. It says enough that the US best player is the guy that is lying on the tracks of the subway trying to pick defending Rusksi's on top of the escalator.

16 Defenders was a rocket+nadefest, 32 defenders is Armageddon.

So far no other maps have come across as "weak" for me, especially since the experience itself is so much damn fun! Tehran Highway as night conquest with its height difference is great to behold. Tracers fly around, tanks can dominate the higher roads and below squads can make their way around and through all the buildings and objects.

Bazaar: Don't spawn on Alley, that's all I can say. it's crossfire mayhem (even without running CrossFire!)
that seems very unforgiving at first, but soon you'll learn that there are 1001 back alleys, rooftop access points and buildings it becomes an infinitely fun map to play. you can sneak around most of the outside of the map. I got stuck with another squad in a parking lot near (A) and it was truly an epic firefight where everyone did what he had to. I had my suppressing fire set up, assault players had littered the area with health kits and kept reviving and the engineers had an awesome time trying get rid of that BMP that was harassing us like Jack Thompson. The vehicle combat in the narrow streets certainly adds a lot to that most see as an infantry only map since it's a great way to quickly capture a control point, but a static vehicle is a dead one and the streets are littered with mines.


I also noticed I need at least two C4's to blow up a Huey, bummer

 

So i'm playing this on my 4890, can anybody say what I'm missing with no DX11?

I see I can only set the terrain to max of "medium". Is that the only DX11 feature? And how much difference does it make? Any tessellation?

 

Neliz, can you plant 2 C4 at the same time for simultaneous detonation? Not played with it yet.

Rangers, DX11 is a performance upgrade. The terrain uses tessalation for LOD. Not sure if it looks better too or just runs quicker.

 

Yes you can, but C4 in BC2 was generally more powerful. I noticed in the beta already that I needed 3 packs of C4 to blow up a MBT versus 2 in the Beta (Haven't unlocked it in Play4free yet) but choppers now need more as well.

I did had great fun yesterday hiding under a bridge, getting pursued by a LAV when it tried to drive over me, I fell of the bridge into a canal, but was able to climb back up. On its second try to roadkill me, I was able to get C4 charges on its belly, I hid under the bridge and watched the the debris fall all around me as I got a nice squad kill bonus on top of multi-kill I got from destroying the APC.

 

DX11 is only used for more performance except for terrain, which can only be set to Medium on a DX10 GPU. There is more geometric detail on higher settings with a DX11 GPU.

 

Argh... still stuck away from my computer on vacation. Friday I join the fray!

Speaking of too many people for a small map (a problem common to many games), are there no 32-player conquest servers or even less? I typically enjoy somewhat emptier maps where one person or squad can make more of a difference than the random attrition battles of larger games.

 

Do not Fret! there's "Conquest" and there's "Conquest Large"

I was just playing a 64 player game and noticed the radar tower is no longer a control point. What this does with gameplay? all US snipers now line up on the ridges near radar tower and snipe on forrest/hill/checkpoint...

disappointing, but I guess this was better for the.. uhm.. maybe .. eh.. yeah..

 

So, someone with DX11 ultra, on various settings, is different from my ultra?

Because I'm on all ultra except for terrain...is the only difference in terrain or everything geometric?

 

Visually yes, terrain geometry should be the only difference between maxed out DX10 and maxed out DX11. DX11 is mostly used for performance enhancement, especially if you are using MSAA.

 

GTX460@900/4200MHz, Q9650@4.00GHz
1080p, Ultra Preset, ingame Deferred and Post AA Off, Blur Off, FXAA injected..

1 2 3 4

i'll update with other levels later..

 

LOL @ Dresden. Nice post man that had me going.

 

How did I miss that post? Thanks! Looking forward to stepping out of that APC in glorious three dimensions.

Repi, you and your colleagues have outdone everybody, including yourselves with this one. Well done. How about just 3/4 years til BF4 though eh?

 

But how is the single player campaign? I hear quite some bitching about it, being described as heavily scripted, timed events, on-rails. But is it on par with for example Modern Warfare 2? Because even though that was the same, but because of the rollercoaster experience I liked it alot.

 

Are AMD people still using the beta hotfix "version b" driver, or is there a newer driver?

My weak ass 5770 actually ran the beta pretty well (40-50 FPS), so I won't update the driver if I don't have to.

 

That silly lens/rainbow/flare/glare effect needs to go. One of the MP maps is borderline unplayable due to it. If you're facing into the sun, you're are severely handicapped.

I don't get why so many servers are "hardcore" already. I know there's a lot of bravado in "I only play hardcore BROS!" but atleast take the time to play regular, learn the maps, camp spots, choke points before going into HC mode.

 

sweclockers


GPU test

Green is avg fps and red is min fps..

 

AMD Recommends Using Nvidia's FXAA in Battlefield 3

Yesterday AMD sent us a benchmarking guide for Battlefield 3 written by Antal Tungler, AMD's PR Manager. In the guide, Antal recommends using Nvidia's FXAA instead of MSAA.

"You'll notice that we recommend the 'Ultra' preset in lot of our scenarios, without the use of MSAA (Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing). This is a traditional technique to remove aliasing from objects in the visible scene. It provides significant image quality improvements, at least in most cases. But because of its nature, working only on actual geometry, some objects will not benefit at all from this process, like foliage or fences, that are just textures, sprites etc. Luckily DICE implemented a new technique as well called FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing), which is a process that works pretty much on all objects. Another significant difference between the two is that while FXAA has a very small impact on performance, however using MSAA can essentially cut your framerate in half."

source
AMD's benchmarking Guide