The future of battlefield/DICE.

Art

Art

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DICE are trying to make BF3 mainstream and peeing off the core fans of the franchise in the process.

It's not even "mainstream" that's the problem, BF has always been popular and fairly mainstream. The issue is really that they're taking a game renowned for one type of gameplay and trying to crowbar in a different style of game while still calling it a Battlefield game. If they'd branded it as something completely different people would generally be fine with most of the differences (except the incompetent patching etc. ).
 
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I've never enjoyed an FPS game more than 2142.

I played 1400 hours of it, and maintained top 200. The community was great and teamwork was everywhere, people played for fun and didn't give a damn about stats.

All I see in BF3 are these poorly designed maps, that all end in the same outcome, Grenade, Mortor, RPG spam over 1 point. People are too busy worrying about their K/D ratio, SPM to even care about what's going on in the game.

It feels more like CoD than BF to me.

The only other FPS game that I've been able to play and enjoy since 2142 has been Tribes Ascend. Which I urge people to go ahead and try, if you don't like the direction modern FPS games are going that is.

100% agree. 2142 was an incredible game. It had issues at the beginning, but they fixed those, and in doing so managed to make a very good game. DICE also listened to fans in the feedback, and what did they get, praised. The problem with setting a game in the present is that everyone will whine about realism. Online shooters work far better when you can balance the game well without the restriction of actual weapons.
 
Caporegime
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Sorry I don't play BF3, what's happened here? Is everyone boycotting DICE or something? :confused:

dice sold out BF3 and made another COD clone....

consolised everything so pc users got stuck with tiny maps..... games a joke its not battlefield without massive maps and tons of vehicles
 
Soldato
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They confirmed BC3 ages ago shortly after the release of BF3. FB2 will be used on next generation consoles.

That's all we know.


dice sold out BF3 and made another COD clone....

consolised everything so pc users got stuck with tiny maps..... games a joke its not battlefield without massive maps and tons of vehicles

Makes no sense considering BF3's maps are far bigger than BF2's with more vehicles and the game plays nothing like COD.
 
Caporegime
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basically all the pc nerds got hoovered up by dices spin so they lept aboard the faith train to laugh and cod the console game :D

then the game came out and it was exactly the same but prettier :p
 
Soldato
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dice sold out BF3 and made another COD clone....

consolised everything so pc users got stuck with tiny maps..... games a joke its not battlefield without massive maps and tons of vehicles

What? :confused: :rolleyes: lol. They're nothing alike apart from the obvious fact that they both involve killing people with guns.

Battlefield 3 has small maps and a distinct lack of vehicles? Couldn't be trolling more..

I'm still playing the game, love it and cannot fault a thing, honestly i can't.
 
Soldato
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BF2 vs. BF3 - By The Numbers

They confirmed BC3 ages ago shortly after the release of BF3. FB2 will be used on next generation consoles.

That's all we know.




Makes no sense considering BF3's maps are far bigger than BF2's with more vehicles and the game plays nothing like COD.

As much as I've been enjoying Battlefield 3 the past few weeks, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I was playing a game set on a much smaller scale than its incredibly successful prequel. This ate at me for a good while until I finally broke down today and pulled my Battlefield 2 and 3 strategy guides off the shelves to do some number crunching and comparisons. It was time to find out once and for all if my woes were a result of nostalgia for a game I'd once played for so many hours or if Battlefield 3 truly just didn't live up to the size of its prequel. I started with the statistics for the number of vehicles on each map. Please note that for both games, I took into account literally every vehicle that could possibly exist - even the ones that only spawned if a particular faction occupied a control point.

---------------------------------------------------
BATTLEFIELD 2 - Number of Vehicles

Dalian Plant: 35
Daqing Oilfields: 51
Dragon Valley: 50
FuShe Pass: 58
Songhua Stalemate: 42
Gulf of Oman: 30
Kubra Dam: 37
Mashtuur City: 14
Clean Sweep: 54
Sharqi Peninsula: 19
Strike at Karkand: 13
Zatar Wetlands: 42

MINIMUM: 13
MAXIMUM: 58
AVERAGE: 37
---------------------------------------------------
BATTLEFIELD 3 - Number of Vehicles

Caspian Border: 28
Damavand Peak: 10
Grand Bazaar: 6
Kharg Island: 26
Noshahr Canals: 25
Operation Firestorm: 22
Operation Metro: 0
Seine Crossing: 4
Tehran Highway: 10

MINIMUM: 0
MAXIMUM: 28
AVERAGE: 14.5
---------------------------------------------------

The first thing that stood out to me was the maximum number of vehicles you could possibly have on one map in Battlefield 2 in comparison to 3. The difference is absolutely staggering. In Battlefield 2's FuShe Pass, there are nearly 60 vehicles to drive or ride in! Obviously, all 58 of these vehicles won't exist at once because some only spawn if a control point is owned by a particular faction, but it's still an insanely high number. When you factor in the 64-player limit, this means that nearly every player on each team can have a vehicle to himself. Battlefield 3's answer, Caspian Border, features a measly 28 vehicles. That's literally fewer than half the players on a team in a full 64-man server. Intrigued by the stark comparisons with vehicles alone, I decided to do even more number crunching. This time, I went back and took note of how many capturable flags each game's maps had. Keep in mind that I did not count any uncapturable flags or bases for both games.

---------------------------------------------------------------
BATTLEFIELD 2 - Number of Capturable Flags

Dalian Plant: 6
Daqing Oilfields: 7
Dragon Valley: 10
FuShe Pass: 8
Songhua Stalemate: 8
Gulf of Oman: 7
Kubra Dam: 8
Mashtuur City: 7
Clean Sweep: 7
Sharqi Peninsula: 6
Strike at Karkand: 8
Zatar Wetlands: 7

MINIMUM: 6
MAXIMUM: 10
AVERAGE: 7.4
---------------------------------------------------------------
BATTLEFIELD 3 - Number of Capturable Flags

Caspian Border: 5
Damavand Peak: 5
Grand Bazaar: 5
Kharg Island: 5
Noshahr Canals: 5
Operation Firestorm: 5
Operation Metro: 3
Seine Crossing: 5
Tehran Highway: 4

MINIMUM: 3
MAXIMUM: 5
AVERAGE: 4.7
---------------------------------------------------------------

Although these results weren't quite as shocking as those that came before, at this point it was clear to me that my feelings were not just fueled by nostalgia. Even taking into account the number of capturable flags, Battlefield 3 simply falls short in comparison to 2. It is here that I'll make my conclusion. As much as I enjoy Battlefield 3, I feel that DICE is still stuck in what I like to call "Bad Company" mode and is struggling to reproduce the same gigantic maps and experiences we once had. I don't know if it's a matter of being limited by the technology or catering to consoles, but I do know one thing: It's very disappointing to me that even the big, bad Battlefield 3 can't get us away from small-scale stuff when Battlefield has always been about huge maps with tons of vehicles and plenty capturable flags. One of DICE's employees made a statement earlier this year that Battlefield 3 features the "largest maps" they've ever created. I think these numbers speak for themselves and show just how misleading that statement really is. If these maps are the largest they've ever done, why are the average numbers of vehicles so down from Battlefield 2? And why are there nearly three fewer capturable flags on average in Battlefield 3, even with the flags clustered so closely together now?

That being said, I hope that you enjoyed these comparisons and found them as interesting and shocking as I did. I also hope that this will open some eyes and perhaps lead the way for bigger, better Battlefield maps in the future - not just for Battlefield 3, but also its inevitable sequels. DICE is improving, there's no doubt about it, but Battlefield as we know it is far from what it used to be.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654347718561928/
 
Soldato
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Makes no sense considering BF3's maps are far bigger than BF2's with more vehicles and the game plays nothing like COD.

lol bigger maps and more vehicles than BF2, you play BF2? obviously not :rolleyes: try looking at the actual play area and not the whole map where in BF3 60% of it is out of bounds to anything but jets and choppers. BF2 maps actually support 64 players brilliantly where the whole map is the play area, in BF3 it's a cluster ****.

And yeah the game was rushed out to compete with MW3 and the next DLC just goes to show how much BF is going down the COD root. Consoles are the lead platform for BF3 as well, confirmed by Dice, it's embarrassing.
 

HR4

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I’m a big Arma series fan (A2 in particular), sorry it’s true.

I looked at BF2 when it came out, not bad open world, could really be a runner..

However;

BF3 is a winner from the manu’s point of view, but for all the wrong reasons when it comes to the serious BF player, yes it will be loved by players who never used BF2 to its full potential, but on the other hand those who did love BF2 for its full potential will not like BF3 that much.

They have done what is dreaded may happen to the Arma series ‘Arma 3’ and that’s aim at the mass FPS market, which after all its business and they will win out cash wise…

Unfortunately for the serious mil game player, thats bad news..


.
 
Caporegime
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Makes no sense considering BF3's maps are far bigger than BF2's with more vehicles and the game plays nothing like COD.

Sorry but you're just wrong.

There is no way in hell any of Battlefield 3s current maps can match the 64 player versions of Fushe Pass, Dragon Valley, Zatar Wetlands, Daqing Oilfields and songhua stalemate.

However, some of the most played maps (Strike at Karkand, Mashtuur City, Sharqui Peninsula, Dalian plant) are actually in BF2, or have maps in BF3 the same size. I'd say that Caspian border is almost on a par with Dalian Plant for example.

But the larger maps like those above, BF3 has no answer for them. DICE's answer is obviously because they were less popular the game doesnt need them to suceed. And they're right. BF3 has sold in huge numbers despite the protests. From a purely financial point of view, the game is about more than the tiny minority of hardcore BF2 fans complaining on the internet.

But herein lies DICE's problem. They've chased the sales, made the game mainstream and accessible to all. At the expense of upsetting the franchise's most devoted fans. Only armoured kill can save them from salvation.

They have done what is dreaded may happen to the Arma series ‘Arma 3’ and that’s aim at the mass FPS market, which after all its business and they will win out cash wise…

Unfortunately for the serious mil game player, thats bad news..


.

This is exactly there problem. The shareholders will see BF3 as a great success. Which from a purely financial point of view, it was, having sold large numbers and beaten previous battlefield sales records etc..

So EA win, the shareholders win, DICE win, but the true battlefield franchise fan loses out and has a game thats comprimised in order to make it mainstream and more popular. BF2 sold 11 million copies in its entire lifetime.

BF3 sold 5 million copies in its first few weeks.
 
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Caporegime
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Thats pushing it at a bit far. If you haven't even played the game enough to have tried all the maps, you can't have experienced that much of the game.

Incompetent patching, games that don't work properly on release, are all the norm for DICE. Anybody remember titan mode on 2142 at release ? it was unplayable and glitched you through walls and floors and all sorts.

And we best forget the first patch for BF2 (1.01) that had a memory leak in it and DICE had to tell everybody to uninstall the game and re-install to get back to version 1 !!

I concede that the playable area and map sizes in BF3 aren't what they were in BF2, and find it equally laughable that the current DICE employees have little to no knowledge of the franchise's history (including some epic tweets about no 2 seat bombers in BF2, not to mention tweeting that bugs on the PC version didn't exist after somebody tested the bug on the PS3 !)

But overall the game isn't that bad. You run about, shoot people, capture flags, drive tanks etc.. same as in BF2. Its just a different sort of experience thats all.
 
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Played BF1942 to death when I was younger, offline against bots mainly (used to just sit in the pill box overlooking the Omaha beach landing and wipe out bots continuosly)

I really did try to get into BF2 in the run up to BF3, but I just couldn't enjoy it. Not saying it's a bad game, I think I just came to the party late. Like me with Deus Ex 1.

But I can just boot up BF3, have a couple of matches and really enjoy it. But I can apprectiate that things have really been scaled back. I have noticed that with a lot of games recently. Compare Mass Effect 1 to 2, of which I have recently played through both, and there is so much missing in the sequel. Played Morrowind (with mods) in the run up to Skyrim (which didn't really do it for me) and that really just showed me how watered down the Elder Scrolls games had become.

Yet those sequels (BF3, ME2+3 and Skyrim) have all been very successful, it just seems that games are becoming more and more "casual" to me, but I am still able to thoroughly enjoy them 95% of the time.
 
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