Battlefield 3 PC won?t have in-game server browser, Battlelog is the main menu

So will the game launch from within the browser then? If you end a game, you have to exit the game to find another? Or do you alt-tab out, or whatever the system does for you? I only ask, because I frequently have instability issues when alt-tabbing out of a game, Bad Company 2 primarily, and coming back in.

 

Good stuff! All that is missing is GFWL, some form of 24/7 online DRM and an install limit.

 

That's the kind of mentality that dooms us. Battlelog experience is nothing compared to DICE experience. You know battlelog, but do you know DICE? Do you know the progression from 1942 to bad company to this, how sad it is that gameplay innovation and quality has only gone down, and given every inch DICE will take a mile?

I know this, I've seen it first hand, I've seen what they've done with BF2, the potential and failed delivery and this is just a continuation.

It's not the battlelog, it's the consistent decision making process behind DICE that is tainted by EA. Because of this we know that battlelog isn't because it's better for gamers, it's because it's better for EA. It's better for their DRM, ease of development, etc, they don't give a damn about gamers (if they did they would have created both systems, if they weren't too busy focusing on the console version and single player).

It goes back to the first announcement that BF3 would feature a single player, jets, and also console versions. Any true BF player knows these things are slight to the series and simply there to pander to the masses. It was full of fail then and continues to be full of fail and despite any name they give it, will be BC3.

Most people don't care, don't care what EA and Activision is doing to the industry, so long as they get their cheap thrills that's all they want. You can't force people to take up the cross with you, but eventually maybe 10 years later when we're paying $10 per map and a $25 subscription fee for poor-content console ports, those same cheap thrill seekers will look around them and I hope then they realize what they let happen "just because battlelog wasn't a big deal".

 

I am actually excited there is a single player campaign. I loved both of the Modern Warfare ones, and didn't care for MP at all. But the campaign was worth the price of admission IMHO, especially the first one.

 

what's wrong with jets? classic battlefield (2).

 

This is not going to be a console port. I think people are blowing things way out of proportion, also what is so bad about the BC games?

 

It's not necessarily what's bad about it, but what's in it that took away from the Battlefield name.

- 32 player servers
- "Q" Triangle Targeting
- Nerfing of all the weapons so they're pretty much almost all the same
- Hitbox randomness and total inaccuracy
- No Jets
- No CommaRose
- No Commander
- VOIP completely broken
- First BC game was console only
- Console port, and poorly optimized (Vietnam was improved)
- Dart gun targeting of vehicles

Probably could list a dozen other things, but I'm done here.

 

oh ok I see, but I aslo see that DICE with this game has fixed or put some of those features back no dart gun, has jets + comma rose, To fix the hitboxes I just added this

(45 was my average server ping)to my settings file which I agree were atrocious. I am not sure what you are saying about the guns some guns are noticeably more powerful than others. I agree on the Console port one as well. They even tweaked the 3D spotting so it is not so wall hackish.

 

I know, but you asked what was wrong with BC anyways, so I made a list!

It does seem they're taking into account the PC voice though, which is great, and what Battlefield is all about. Consoles can't handle the scope of the game, but at least EA has the cajones to step up and make it work with PC and leave consoles in the dust.

 

I wasn't trying to counter all your points lol . I was just saying that those issues are not present in BF3 which is why I am still confused @ the BC3 references. I to am glad they fixed the VOIP because it is extremely annoying having to run skype. Sorry I came off wrong!

 

I'm sorry if I missed a post here, but I will I be able to launch this through Steam with the non-steam game add option?

 

There's no way of knowing that VOIP has been fixed or not yet.

The references to BC3 were based on Alpha gameplay experience before any other information started to trickle in about the other things they changed. See here:

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pZhG2FzVrJ8?version=3&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pZhG2FzVrJ8?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width='560' height="345" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>

You will probably be able to launch the browser window, but not the game.

 

The BC reference is not so much the game, but the state of the art. BF3 being BC3 means that BF3 gameplay-wise and technology wise will be at what you would expect from a BC3. Put another way, if DICE had focused the BF series solely about BF and none of this hokey-pokey BC/console/campaign stuff, the BF3 we would be seeing I guarantee you would not have mentioned "jets" - they would have been implicit (it would be like mentioning that there will be "infantry"). There would be no mention of "large maps". Indeed, the franchise would have been so far along that the theoretical BF2 max of 128-players would have by now been realized and then some. So much more has been sacrificed so that EA can focus on products that pander to the masses, with eye candy and no substance, nothing of what BF is supposed to be about. I'll leave you with a parable about peanut butter:

You, a man who enjoys his peanut butter, has been buying ABC brand Peanut Butter because it's oh so creamy and smooth. One day ABC says they're going to hold production on Peanut Butter, instead they introduce Soybean Butter, it's just like Peanut Butter... but lite!

You try it a while but as a Peanut Butter enthusiast, it's not to your taste, yet it's a blast with everyone else who's into the new low-fat soy product fad. ABC promises that they're cooking something up special though, and eventually they'll make their new Peanut Butter 2.0 product debut.

Except it just tastes like Peanut Butter, the kind you used to buy 10 years ago, with some fancy new packaging you recognize from Soybean Butter. In fact it's got less real peanuts than before and you can even taste some soybean mixed in there. The kind of Peanut Butter they could have made in that time... it would have been so rich and creamy, and smooth, and all they can come up with is this!?

But "hey" they say, our new Peanut Butter 2.0 features the return of "peanuts", what's not to like?

 

I understand now. Lol, that is just jokes!

 

Hey, don't be so pushy... they'll need some ideas for innovation in the next iteration ...

 

i hope my gt 550m can make it run decently

 

Except BF2 has been available the entire time. BC1/2 doesn't make BF2 any worse. More impotantly, the BF3 engine appears to be so far ahead of everything else available that I'm not really sure the technological improvements could have come any faster, although the gameplay would surely be more refined. Of course- it looks like there have still been refinements from BC2/BF2, which is good.

 

What is the point of that? You launch the game from the browser, not some digital distribution software and it seems you'll have to have Origin anyway. So what's the point of that? None as far as I can tell.

 

I see no indications that EA is leaving the consoles in the dust with BF3.

In fact I see EA taking BF3 to consoles as this all about taking market share from Activision, nothing more. They don't care if they are pleasing the PC players or not, it's business. And if you want FPS market share from COD, you gotta pamper to the console players.

I think it's completely delusional to think BF3 will be focused on PC. At game release, I'm sure PC gamers will discover and realize this is not the case at all.

 

Just one of many:

Battlefield 3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

" Battlefield 3's lead platform is the PC rather than a console."

EA made it clear that BF3 would focus on the PC first and foremost. Maybe it won't leave consoles in the dust but they will get a watered down version of the game. Primarily smaller maps and 24 players max not to mention the visual differences.

 

And EA marketing will probably spend more money than they spent to develop the game. All that tells me is that they are good at marketing.

Really do console players care if it's 24 or 64 players? Big deal. Visual differences? Don't kid yourself. FB 2.0 is a cross platform engine that is made so consoles can run it. Everything is deferred. The lighting system is already being used on the PS3 with other games. The tile based deferred shading is all done so consoles can run it. It will be easily ported for PS3 and 360. I am not impressed by FB 2.0's graphic technology at all, it's not PC oriented at all. It's console oriented. It will look great just like Crysis 2 looked great and so did Witcher 2. But these are all cross platform engines with methods to ensure console graphics is top notch along with PC. DX11 features in Crysis 2 did barely anything and I expect the same from FB 2.0.

Also the maps aren't smaller for consoles. It's just limited scope on foot. For aerial etc, they can fly as far as PC players can. And because they are using the same maps for console and PC, logically means that action will be all funnelled anyway. So it probably won't matter than PC will get to run around further on the map since all the action will be funnelled anyway. Big deal. Same problem BC2 has, players forced down a one route in the end.

 

DICE Talks Battlefield 3 Console/PC Differences

" Bach started to elaborate on the "more or less" aspect, admitting that the team tried to squeeze more players into the console version but realized it required the team to scale down all the graphics, scale down all the destructibility, and in some cases scale down the map sizes."

" Adding more than 24 players also meant removing the vehicles, as they require a lot of data that's shoved through the network and the CPUs. "If you had more vehicles, that would mean less players and vice versa," he said."

" "When we say they (the maps) are smaller, it's not that we have cut them in half," he said. "But we tried to compact them slightly to keep the action up."

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http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/b...d_3_console_differences_detailed_by_dice.html

"What we're showing on PC might look better than on console," said DICE executive producer Patrick Bach to VideoGamer.com in an interview, "but what we'll show on console doesn't look worse than any other game out there. It's probably even better than every other game out there on console."

Bach explained how he feels people will react when they finally see Battlefield 3 running on 360 and PS3. "Most people will be very positive because they might be afraid that it won't look as good as other games and it will, and some people will of course be disappointed that it doesn't look like the PC version."

What will the console versions lack, then? "The higher resolution, the higher framerate, the anti-aliasing, the motion blur, stuff like that. We can't have it to the same quality on the console," says Bach.

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You obviously haven't played Battlefield 2, and compared with Bad Company 2. Action in Battlefield 2 was rarely ever funneled, it required strategy and managing ways to hold control points. In BC2 you up fighting the same battles at the same points every time. But BF2 allowed for a lot more flanking and ways to get from point A to B. Part of that failure in BC2 was the triangle spotting system though.

But my whole point is at least this time a AAA game title uses the PC as the flagship and ported to the consoles, not the other way around like it is 99% of the time.

 

ROFL. Nice marketing ploy to please the PC Gamers. BF3 will be using FXAA which they should be able to have it up and running for consoles. Motion blur and stuff like that aren't even realistic anyway, those are negative imperfections of video cameras. And EA will cannibalize other studios if DICE are too incompetent to get the vehicles number up for consoles, EA will make sure console players drool for it even more than PC gamers will for BF3. The man who is heading the project from EA did a whole interview and the entire time on the interview he talked about their overall strategy to combat Activision.

Of course can go back and forth. You can have faith that DICE will fulfill your fantasies. I personally don't think DICE exists, and it's EA and EA is all about reducing Activisions dominance for FPS gams and the only way to do that is to make a blockbuster hit on consoles, not PC. So far FB 2.0, BF3 will be out on PC, 360 and PS3. And it has been already announced by Nintendo BF3 will be coming for their Nintendu U. 3 consoles vs 1 PC and people think this is some answer to PC Gaming first gibberish. Yeah right...

And as for those banter about porting is just dumb. Frostbite 2.0 is NOT a PC first engine. It's a cross-platform engine that uses more technologies used by consoles than from PC. Deferred rendering, MLAA (FXAA), Tile Based Deferred Shading, Realtime radiosity... these are all CONSOLE technology and these are the big four that DICE has been marketing like crazy for the FB 2.0. DX11 doesn't man anything to me, since it has yet to make a signficiant impact on PC Gaming yet so far, and I can barely tell the difference between DX9 and DX11 in all the DX11 games released so far.

 

In all fairness they said pretty much the same about BC2 -- as far it PC being made paid special attention, and all the stuff.

All the while when BC2 was released it was one of the worst console ports to date -- I understand FB engine was a console engine previously, but they stated they were all about the PC this go around.... It took DICE 6 months to make it an average PC shooter.

I mean really the shading was taxing only the CPU.

This is all well documented and most of us that were there for the Alpha/beta test knew it from the get go.

At this point it will take a lot for me to trust DICE.

 

I never said FB 2.0 was a PC-first engine, only that PC was actually getting the attention it deserves and not gimped like a console version (i.e. 24 player maps, smaller maps, less graphical detail, etc). The console version is probably even only 720p since higher resolutions would just crawl.

 

anyone played league of legend , it use web browser too but you won't notice it , i hope bf3 did the same , however its something new , worth to try something new.

 

In any case, the game looks awesome, just hope it plays as well and is as fun as it seems. Meh, just realized that open beta is only available to Origin pre-order customers. Wondering if I should blow $12 just to get in the BF3 beta and cancel my newegg.com pre-order.

 

It's true you can still play BF2, but it's not supported anymore or in active development, as delicious as stale Peanut Butter (but still m ore delicious than fresh Soybean butter!)

Frostbite 1 was an engine tailored for the console. Frostbite 2 is rumoured to be tailored for the PC, yet can still run fine on the console, and knowing DICE they didn't scrap 3 years worth of work to rewrite a new engine, call it the same name, and rebuild it from the ground up to focus on PC. The BF3 engine is an engine held back by consoles and BC development which is what it was originally intended for. It's why "jets" and "large maps" are such a big deal on this engine, when really those should have been so par as to be mundane on a true PC-tailored engine. While it is wrapped up in a nice presentation, and DICE gets points for that, it's not to say it is leaps and bounds visually ahead of the next iterations of CoD, Red Orchestra, and ARMA. People are primarily interested in BF for the gameplay, not the eye candy, and the engine =/= gameplay. BF gameplay was precisely that: a sprawling online multiplayer-focused battlefield with infantry forces on foot engaging alongside tanks as helicopters and jets soared above taking the battle to the skies. And now? now we're supposed to be salivating when DICE dangle "jets" and "large maps" at the end of a string? Because they know we've been starved for years with this BC CoD-clone crap and most people will take it lying down. Not I, and I hope with more "unpleasentries" like battlelog and the inevitable console grievances (see below) gamers will begin to realize what they're being fed.

The thing with that is you're only as fast as your slowest member. They can say PC is lead, but at the end of the day unless they are making two different games (which both PC gamers and console gamers would love) it's consoles that will have final say. It's the harsh reality of balancing one game on two platforms. There's a tether with a maximum give distance that you can't exceed and so it holds you back. It means that if adding some feature or some map cannot be properly balanced and scaled for 64 players, then that feature will be cut. If some game-critical action can only be performed easily on PC, then that feature will be cut.

Our beloved commander was one such feature. Was it because as DICE reps say it was "too complex" for beginners, and made it too hard to jump in and start playing? Definitely, and definitely also because fathoming a RTS-style commander mode on a console is downright impossible! But apparently DICE is too pre-occupied with the HALO crowd who can't coordinate enough to form a squad let alone command a battlefield and require things like the 3d spotting you pointed out earlier just to be able to figure out what to shoot.
BF3 = BF Neutered.

 

"hey, you know, I'm getting 5 fps in this game, and other games of similar scope get 50 frames... I think they could have done more optimization" vs "this is available on consoles so it sucks and could be better"

I think I'm going to let the game stand on it's own merit and make my judgement on the package that I am delivered. I'm not going to focus on whether or not it's perfect, what it could have been, what the experience is like on other platforms, etc.

I'm going to try and valuate whether or not it is good compared to other games that are available for the price. I'm not sure if there are any other games in existence that have the same scope as BF3.

 

Obviously he wants the overlay and Steam friends. So far all we know is that the game will require Origin, not that Origin has to be running. It could still be possible to launch the game through Steam and alt tab out to find a game through Battlelog.