Battlefield 3 Discussion Thread

Just got a notice from Origin that an update is available.

It adds support for Cloud saving and also making it possible to import your Origin friends list into compatible games.

Guess they be preparing for Battlefield 3.

 

I will be getting a physical copy of the game on Tuesday!!! Bam. I'm so excited about the Return to Karkand maps!

 

I think Masterchef makes a valid point about the arbitrary statistics; apart from the number of players who played the beta they are basically all just nonsense that has nothing to do with the game. They had the same sort of statistics in COD Black Ops if I recall correctly, so it seems EA is once again trying to copy COD.

Also, I haven't gotten any email yet...

 

same bro, im soo excited!

 

Pre-load starts tomorrow...hopefully should be able to finish during my 8 hour shift assuming it's available to start before I have to leave.

 

Pre-Order Bonuses and Pre-load Available
Pre-order Battlefield 3 - Limited Edition and you will be able to pre-load the game starting at 7am PST on October 21, 2011. To learn more about pre-load, Click Here!.

 

just to clarify, this doesn't change the fact that i'm excited about the game. i just thought it was really dumb marketing. has nothing to do with the game itself.

 

i think that's true except for the headphone settings, which I'm pretty sure is a stereo mix.

Work with me here. I was just trying to express my thoughts on the ad. Do you really think there is some amazing connection between 1.5 billion kills in the beta and 3 billion liters of beer consumed in the USA for 2011? They thought it was important enough to put it in an ad and show that 1.5 is, in fact, 50% of 3. It's pretty much brilliant.

 

Will the UK version of BF3 work on a USA Origin account? I assume it would but want to see if anyone else knows.

I found a fair price from a UK seller with decent feedback.
Preorder BATTLEFIELD 3 Pc Cd key ea origin uk seller (not steam

 

If anyone would like to change their Origin ID name (which presumably your in game soldier name will be based upon), you can now do it from the link in the first post of this thread:
(Offocial) Change your Origin/BF ID Here! - Electronic Arts UK Community

It will ask you for your login info but it IS legit; it was confirmed by Crash7800 (BF3 community manager for EA). I did it and it did in fact change my origin name in Origin itself.

 

Be aware that this type of thing is gray-market resale from countries where the product can be purchased at a lower price. These types of keys have been banned in mass before, with no recourse for buyers. Be warned. No telling whether or not this will happen for BF3, but I think large budget games have a higher chance of running into issues. The other issue is that you may be forced to use a localized version of the game that does not match your language. There's really no telling until the game is released.

 

I realized it not the limited version so I decided to pass.

 

Did anyone ordered BF 3 from Amazon , it says included 10 dog tag :O

 

What he said

Also this would be a safer deal
http://www.amazon.com/Battlefield-3...rt_myd_asin_block?t=slicinc-20&tag=slicinc-20

Besides BF3 wont be released to the UK until the 28th while anyone that is from the USA can get it on the 25th

 

The PC version has "Amazon Exclusive Dog Tag Pack Plus Limited Edition Bonuses" not sure if its true , kinda like Collector Edition.

 

so apparently BF3 is going to be available to preload tomorrow morning, and available October 25th at midnight pacific time. That is monday night / tuesday morning, correct? Or is that tuesday night / wednesday morning? Sorry for being stupid in advance.

 

25th 12am, so the night of the 24th when you go to bed. Ie Monday at Midnight.

 

Monday night. Awesome. Pacific time. 3:00 AM eastern on the 25th. Probably not worth staying up for on the eastern seaboard.

 

Its a scientific fact that most people can't really visualize numbers above 7 (numbers larger then 7 are processed by a different part of the brain).

Those numbers just give some grounding for those facts. People may not be able to visualize a number greater then 7 but when you say words like "known universe" they are like "wow that is a huge number".

Its interesting that they recommend a 6950/GTX 570. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the highest ATI mobile GPU 6990m is based on a 6870 core. That means the only people who are going to max out this game are people on desktops and/or maybe CF 6990m set ups. Regardless Battlefield 3 is the first game I've seen in a long time that demands a lot. Its probably because it isn't really a console port.

 

A. you're thinking of something else with the number 7 (read psych section below)
B. in the EA comparisons, they matched up two equal numbersand ignored the units of measure. If you couldn't understand the meaning behind the first quantity because the number was too large, what makes you think you would be able to understand the same number with a different unit tacked on? Keep in mind there is no physical similarity between the two quantities.

The entire point of units is to assign meaning to numbers. You could make any two measured quantities share the same number by affecting the units. "If bullets were light years", "If peanuts were watts", "If snow cones were PSI". None of that means anything, and if you happen to have 47 snow cones and your tires happen to recommend 47 PSI, you don't gain understanding about the quantity of snow cones due to the number that is shared with the PSI rating, because there is no physical, comprehensible relationship between these two things. Worse, if you were looking at a number that we don't have a good feel for in the first place (it's hard to imagine what 47 billion of anything looks like) then comparing 47 billion bullets to 47 billion light years still leaves you in the dark. Yes, it's one trip across the universe, but we don't have a feel for how big the universe is, or even a light year (5.8 * 10^12 miles), so it doesn't give us any sense of how many bullets 47 billion bullets really is.

If, instead, they compared 47 billion bullets to some quantity that was both physically related and that we understood, we could get a better sense of it. The number in front of the units doesn't need to match. In fact, since 47 billion is a little hard to imagine, it would help if it didn't match. I wonder how many stadiums it would take to hold 47 billion bullets if you dumped them in and filled them to the brim. I bet that would illustrate very clearly for us how many bullets 47 billion is, since we already understand the concept of the size of a stadium and of a bullet, and we can match them up in the physical world by volume.
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Info on psychology and the number 7:
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is a psychological phenomena where we start to fail to distinguish consistently between categories when they exceed 7 dimensions (not dimensions in space, just categories of choice). Most people can visualize individual numbers much higher than 7. The 7 dimension thing is why survey's often have questions that ask about your agreement with some statement, and the choices are:

"strongly disagree, disagree, slightly disagree, neutral, slightly agree, agree, strongly agree"

We do a pretty good job of being consistent when presented with 7 distinct options as above. With more options, we start failing (marking inconsistently). We also do better (more consistently) with 7 than we do with 3. We really think categorically in terms of 7. If I ask you some controversial question and you are on the fence, but you have a slight preference to disagree with me, you'll mark slightly disagree every time. If I only present you with three options, you'll mark disagree sometimes and neutral sometimes.

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I feel a sick day coming on already.

 

I agree that it makes no sense to analyze units without numbers, and that you are right there. Units are what give any quantity basis. I disagree slightly about the visualization. Ask a normal person to visualize a room with 99 bullets and then visualize a room with a 100 bullets. I don't think very many people can do that and maintain the visualization for a long time. If I show you a jar with a 100 beads and a jar with 99 beads you probalby can't tell which one is which. If I show you a jar with 7 beads and 6 beads you can probably tell which one is wich.

When you get into millions people are even worse. Most people really don't understand what a million years means. They understand it from a mathematical perspective, but very few people understand what it means beyond that. So if you tell someone numbers in billions and/or millions it helps to match it up to something that they can understand more easily. They are pretty much just trying to compare the numbers to large things without a sense for units.

If this was a physics essay it would make no sense. But its advertising, they are just trying to associate those numbers with things people associate with large objects, like the universe for example. That is all it is. Its a psychological play which is what the purpose of advertising is. You notice of course that they didn't decide to say "well if we looked at all of the subatomic particles in a room, we would have less then the number in your pencil". They chose comparisons meant to evoke "large numbers". That is all advertising does, it misleads the truth and gets people to think in a certain way, in this case the focus being large. They could have just as easily focused on "small". The units idea makes sense in any rational paper based on the scientific method, doing a comparison like that would make no sense. But when the purpose of your medium is not to present ideas rationally but to subconsciously influence people, well you get advertising and using numbers without units.

 

Let's focus on talking about the game, not debating whether or not their stats comparisons make any sense. Thanks.

 

for the record, one awkward ad from the perspective of an engineer is not going to ruin the game for anyone, including engineers.

also, the rest of their ads and trailers have all been epic, including the new trailer from yesterday.

 

Ok well, it's coming down to crunch time... I was waiting until the last possible time to decide on a day 0 purchase or not, just going to barf my thoughts all over this post re: preordering.

pros:

• karkand for free, preorder bonus
• preload the game tomorrow
• get to play BF3 right away
• game is slightly cheaper to preorder w/ certain retailers

cons:

• typical day 0 launch expected, not expecting to be able to play online properly for a week
• possible bugs (see bc2 launch)
• no word on a possible steam release later on
• missing features on launch (commarose)

gah. Still stuck!

 

Yeah launch day is never fun. But since it seems to have a decent single player campaign, will probably play through that first.

 

Commo Rose coming to Battlefield 3 in day-one patch - Battlefield 3

The lower price by preordering and back to karkand free would be enough to get me to preorder.

 

I'm totally with you. I went through the same turmoil. I ended up preordering a digital copy when it was (relatively) cheap.

Pro list you seem to have down.

I'll talk about why I made my choice even though I considered your con list almost verbatim.

1. Day 0 launch woes - likelihood: 50%

The beta test was open to all, and there were a massive number of players on their servers - and their servers did have issues, at first. They were able to fix it during the beta. I'm guessing that was a large part of why they did the beta. They wanted a live test of their servers. That also explains why the beta build was relatively old. It was, in large part, a live server test. None of this changes the fact that their servers are still going to be hammered, but they might have prepared themselves. Another good thing is that the game goes live at 3am on the eastern seaboard, so if you are intending to hop on later in the day, at least they will have had 12 hours of scramble time already. Still very possible to be an issue.

2. possible bugs - likelihood: 99.9%

There's no way Dice is releasing a bug free game. This game will probably have bugs (and patches) for years. Rumor on the streets is that post-beta builds have been very good, but definitely not bug free.

3. possible steam release later - likelihood: 5%

I also really want a steam release, but it just isn't happening for BF3 in my opinion. Maybe if we complain enough they'll release BF4 on steam, but I think it's too late for BF3. The game uses a web page as the main menu, and requires a web browser plugin to work. I think we will be lucky to be able to use steam *at all* (add a non-steam game feature). Of course this bothers me, but not enough to cancel my preorder. There are some benefits to using a web browser as the server browser, but I still am hoping that they find a way to wrap it up inside a single executable program. That would probably be a prerequisite to existing on steam.

4. missing commarose on launch - likelihood: 99% / confirmed?

I think this is confirmed. Doesn't matter to me, I'll be doing VOIP. At least they fixed the spotting. It's becoming a talked-about joke in BFBC2 server (it was always an issue, but people used to not talk about it).

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if you can get it for $50 with karkland, you're doing pretty decent. the expansion pack is probably gonna retail for 15 when it is released. It's basically 35 with a commitment to buy the exp pack, which many of us would anyway. If you can get it for about $40 (I think many of us were able to via d2d or amazon) you're doing really good. If you bought it gray market, hopefully you didn't spend anything you weren't willing to lose.

 

BC2 blew on day one and it wasn't until 6 months later the game was playable. I'd wait on the zero day purchase, I don't trust DICE, since it doesn't exist, it's just EA.

 

I think it makes more sense to accept that DICE does exist, but that it's just a development studio (which is owned entirely by EA).

 

I already requested 2 days off from work to play this game, lol.

 

Yeah I don't see myself having enough time to play BF3 for more than about 10 minutes until at least a week after launch...

 

Battlefield is outselling MW3 on amazon. So much BF3 marketing win. Haven't seen a MW3 ad in a while.

 

Everyone has been saying that BF3 will have no chance of outselling MW3, but I think they might actually be wrong. A LOT of people have heard of BF3 (it seems to me that most of the people who have heard of MW3 have heard of BF3 too). Friends of mine who previously swore by COD (I know, I shouldn't be friends with them) cancelled their MW3 pre orders and ordered BF3 instead after playing the BETA; even though this game might not be everything us BF fans had wanted it still offers quite a bit more than MW3, and I think most people are realizing it now. The endless barrage of TV and online ads didn't hurt either i'm sure.

 

outselling in terms of PC? = Probably yeah
outselling in terms of PC and Consoles = thats an iffy, a big iffy. MW3 is more fluid on console and its practically "anyone can play and own".

I know its comparing apples to oranges but BF3 is geared towards PC gamers, and to truly enjoy BF3 you need to drop more than $200-250 (price of consoles now) on components just to play where as people can just buy the console and pick up the game.

Im not trying to instigate a pc vs consoles war here or any war for that matter. Im stating what each game is geared towards and what each games "targetted audience"

Then again I might be wrong.

 

I'm not theorycrafting about which markets each game caters to, I'm just saying BF3 is outselling MW3 right now on amazon on PC and consoles.

 

One of the friends I was referring to actually played the beta and pre ordered BF3 for XBOX360, not PC. He has Black ops and the other recent COD games, but liked the BF3 beta more than COD, even on consoles. I think you will find that even the somewhat limited console version offers a much more feature rich multiplayer experience than MW3 will (destruction, for one). Of course MW3 now has BREAKING GLASS EFFECTS!!! How realistic!

 

If you're sure you plan on playing it at some point, might as well pre-order. You get it cheaper depending on your retailer, and you get the free DLC. It's not like if you pre-order then you can't play later on.

 

Guys I missed out the beta. So what specification can a ATI 5870 operas under 1600x900? Cos I heard all kinds of rumors out there.

 

You'll have no trouble running it on good settings. My desktop with a GTS 250 (renamed 9800GTX, very old GPU by now) ran the beta quite nicely at 1680x1050 and most settings maxed except AA, AF, shadows and ambient occlusion.

 

I run it at 1920x1080 same gfx card, I put it on auto which specs me at High settings, getting 20-30 FPS outdoors and 35-45 fps indoors, I would say you would get better performance @ 1600x900.

I can't wait to play retail already. A lot of maps to play!

 

Battlefield 3 official launch trailer will be aired later today:

Twitter

Be prepared!

 

MW had breakable glass before iirc. However, the thing about glass breaking, is that it has zero tactical impact. You could see through the glass in the first place, and you can shoot through it. Glass in modern warfare has about the same tactical properties as open space or an open window. Destroying the glass doesn't change anything.

In BF, you can destroy many solid walls and other points of cover.

I was doing higher resolution fine on a 5830. Final release should have higher performance.

 

I can't say any MW3 ads I've seen have had as much of an impact as the 99 Problems commercial during MNF. I really like that commercial, even if the song choice is a bit odd.

 

I feel like BF3 definitely stole that idea from modern warfare 3 (licensing rap music for their ad)... and for some reason activision doesn't seem to be producing any ads or hype for MW3... the only hype is the title. I smell an extremely small budget, I think they are well into the "milk this" phase of modern warfare. Generally advertising and development budgets scale together, so it's a bad omen in my opinion.

 

One of the military science professors at the institute i go to always used COD at some point in his class to teach tactics and what-not to ROTC before they went on an FTX (its kinda cool, they play COD as a team in a huge room that has about 13 projectors, so each person usually has their own screen, if not, its split screen). Well, i told him about battlefield 3 on how realistic in game play it is as well as how much better it is in teamwork. i showed him a few trailers and he was sold saying hes gonna buy a bunch of copies for his class so that they could practice tactics on that since it has tanks,jets helos, etc.


i feel accomplished.

 

you should bring up arma, then you'll really start rolling in the kudos

 

but is arma on the 360? i didnt know if it was on console or not.

 

Battlefield 3 Launch Trailer just released:

Battlefield 3 Launch Trailer - YouTube

 

Oh, maybe not.