Battlefield Megathread

[heedicalking]

Can somebody tell me how to get onto the hacked servers? I have some stuffty product keys, that's all, i bought all my games on origin for like £2 on retail

Search "Kitty" for one of them, currently playing with VEHICLES now :)

[Ad Bot]

[Wehrmacht]

any other hacked servers you can join?

[heedicalking]

any other hacked servers you can join?

there used to be a ton but so far kitty is the only one i can find, the browse thing is really bad i don't think it lists all servers i had to join this one through my history.

[Wehrmacht]

playing on it right now

[Qwepir]

What are the vehicles like?

[heedicalking]

squad dm sucks.

[Shell]

squad dm sucks.

I've always thought of squad dm and squad rush as a bad person's tdm and rush

[Qwepir]

those squad gamemodes are just bad

[blaman]

i thought of something that would kinda suck but would be realistic that when you shoot rockets at the ground they leave small craters

I think that already happens. If you throw a grenade at the ground it blows a dark blackened crater.

It will happen in the full game. But in the beta terrain destruction is disabled due to it being buggy.

[Shell]

The history of Battlefield

DICE, a niche company known for racing and licensed games, shot to the major leagues overnight. Two expansion packs, The Road to Rome and Secret Weapons of WWII, kept players busy while a true sequel took shape.

Gustavsson wanted Battlefield to stick to real-world conflicts, but an over-saturated WWII shooter market ruled out a return to that war. They settled on Vietnam mainly by default -- an interesting conflict in the 20th Century -- and passed work over to DICE Canada. The studio that produced Wham-O Frisbee Golf and Shrek: The Video Game took the reins for 2004's Battlefield: Vietnam.




The setting and a 20-year bump in military technology promised an interesting new take on the Battlefield formula. That didn't happen. Flamethrowers and destructable environments were discussed, then rejected. Players could strafe ground targets in a chopper while blasting The Ride of the Valkyries, Apocalypse Now-style, or watch Viet Cong regulars headbang to '60s rock 'n roll, but it felt like a mod, not a sequel. Dense jungle maps made ground vehicles impractical, even useless, and class balancing went completely AWOL.

A month before its release, EA announced its intention to acquire DICE outright. The company obtained a controlling stake in early 2005, just as the team dug in for the final push on Battlefield 2.

Gustavsson still favored real-world settings, but EA wanted a modern-day Battlefield. The team took inspiration from 1942's popular Desert Combat mod, which added RPGs and fighter jets to the old World War II battles. To this, DICE added a new in-house game engine, a fictional America/China/Arab conflict, a massive array of 21st Century ordinance, and the new Commander mode. One player on each team oversaw the entire map, designated targets, and called in vehicle drops or artillery strikes. Combined with newly refined classes, player teamwork solidified

Single player, however, merely swapped multiplayer buddies for iffy bots, and despite standouts like Strike at Karkand, the fully scalable maps lacked 1942's diversity. Bugs and glitches also plagued gamers despite a two-month release delay.

None of that stopped Battlefield 2 from being the sequel everyone wanted. DICE had planted another flag in the shooter arena...one others would soon follow.

Battlefield itself, however, moved even further forward. Even as B2 expansions Armored Fury and Euro Force dropped, rumors and recurring Easter eggs pointed to a number: 2142.



Having manufactured a conflict for Battlefield 2, Gustavsson -- now DICE's creative director -- decided to create an entire setting from scratch. The team played around with a Russian/American war set on an entirely different planet for about a month before bringing things back to Earth. They wanted something grounded -- no rayguns -- even if skirmishes involved MechWarriors and hovercrafts.

Battlefield 2142's armies fought in the face of an impending ice age. But like Vietnam two years before, 2142 felt like a reskinned version of past Battlefields, only with smaller maps, fewer classes, and a tougher learning curve. Players could knife enemies and permanently steal dogtags, but few connected with the sci-fi setting. Worse, rumors swirled that the pervasive in-game advertisements acted as spyware. That proved false, but the game did monitor which ads players lingered on. Fan outrage and good-but-not-great reviews made 2142 something of a letdown. The Northern Strike expansion didn't provide much remedy.

Meanwhile, EA completed its acquisition of DICE and quickly shuttered DICE Canada. To everyone's relief, EA left the rest alone. But in 2007, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare completely eclipsed the entire first-person shooter genre. If jumping to a future war seemed risky, now DICE had to take even bigger gambles with its only franchise.

Bad Company

DICE had always prided itself on a PC-first approach. Few of its console games impressed anyone, and a stripped-down port of Battlefield 2 for the Xbox 360 failed to live up to its namesake. But with the PC market waning and shooters escalating on consoles, it was time to rethink everything. The new Battlefield would have a dedicated single-player campaign, destructable environments -- thanks to the all-new Frostbyte engine -- and shockingly, no PC release.

2008's Battlefield: Bad Company followed a four-man squad of dedicated screw-ups going rogue to steal enemy gold. Few things could beat collapsing an entire house to rid yourself of one pesky sniper, but vehicle integration felt light compared to past Battlefields, and the darkly humorous cast of crazed rednecks and deposed dictators didn't win everyone over. Bad Company did its part but, financially speaking, hardly rated as a challenger to Modern Warfare.



Battlefield: Bad Company 2 followed suit, ditching the humor to go hunting for a loose WMD. That went hand-in-hand with a renewed focus on vehicles and multiplayer, the franchise's other great strengths. Central to the plan: the all-new Rush mode, an evolution on the old Conquest game that assigned teams to attack or defend key points, advancing or retreating across colossal maps as the fortunes of war changed. DICE even took players back to Vietnam in a downloadable expansion. Flamethrowers came standard-issue, and in response to fan outcry, a dedicated team brought it all home to the PC.

This time, everything clicked. Bad Company 2 couldn't match Call of Duty's stratospheric numbers, but did rival its popularity among online players and sold more units than any other game in the series by a wide margin. Rush became the new mandatory online mode for every shooter. Nominations and awards piled in. Battlefield was back.

Not that it ever really left. Between Bad Companies, DICE and Easy Studios -- another EA-owned developer, specializing in free-to-play games -- released Battlefield Heroes, a cartoony, third-person take on the franchise. While it garnered a strong following and fair reviews, 1942 returned as a stripped-down, $15 console downloadable. Battlefield 1943 remastered the original on Bad Company 2's Frostbyte engine and became one of the most successful downloadable games in console history.

Into the Present



As DICE approaches its 20-year anniversary, the company has only just started to diversify its resume again. It produced a cult hit in first-person parkour game Mirror's Edge, then took on multiplayer duties for EA's Medal of Honor relaunch, closing the circle that began way back with Codename: Eagle. But Battlefield remains the signature franchise and first among its priorities.

In partnership with Neowiz Games, DICE broke into the South Korean PC market with Battlefield Online, a remake of Battlefield 2 built on Battlefield 2142's engine. For Western markets, Easy Studios returned to build Battlefield Play4Free, EA's flagship freemium online shooting gallery, from a BF2 base with Bad Company 2 assets thrown in. Both gave Battlefield new audiences, but more importantly, they freed up teams at DICE to work on what they considered the first core franchise entry since 2005.

In March 2011, EA and DICE invited journalists to an exclusive first look at an early level playthrough of Battlefield 3. It amounted to roughly ten minutes of thunderous sound, intense action, a brutal fist-fight, and several collapsing skyscrapers. For a coup de grace, DICE finished with an old-school William Castle gag: a vibrating floor under the audience to simulate the city-shattering earthquake that closed out the demo.



For a series not generally know for spectacular graphics, Battlefield 3 just might rank as one of the best-looking, best-sounding games of the year. Jets make a welcome return, campaign gets co-op mode, and environmental destruction now works in both macro and micro directions. And in a supreme show of confidence, for the first time, DICE and EA chose to go head-to-head against the Modern Warfare juggernaut that unseated Battlefield as gaming's premiere military shooter. Battlefield 3 releases just a few weeks ahead of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

But even if it doesn't dominate the genre the way it did back in 2002, nobody can dispute Battlefield's role as an innovator. It brought unheard-of scope to first-person shooters. It combined class warfare with vehicular warfare in wide-open environments, and then let players demolish that environment at will. It set standards few other games ever matched, much less exceeded, by sticking to a simple philosophy: Battlefield leads the way.

DICE plans to carry that ethos well into the future.

Read the unedited version  here

[Qwepir]

>ctrl+f "Titan"
>no results
not even gonna read that then

[Shell]

>ctrl+f "Titan"
>no results
not even gonna read that then

It notes hovercrafts which I think is what they mean.

[Shell]

Battlefield 3 is “missing” many features which were in previous Battlefield games, features such as a server browser for PC players. The Battlefield 3 beta is in full swing, and most players have noticed something else missing from Battlefield 3: squad management. It’s not possible to manage a squad in game, or to chose which squad to join — squads are done automatically and players are randomly assigned to squads (so it seems).


PC players in particular have been surprised over the lack of these features, especially since squad management is available to console players of Battlefield 3. And for PCs? According to DICE Community Manager Daniel Matros (via Twitter), squad management and voice chat has been moved to Battlelog. Having to switch to Battlelog to create or join a squad is, to put it mildly, unintuitive. Most PC systems cannot handle the constant Alt-Tab between applications, especially RAM-heavy ones like games.

Matros did add that you will still be able to see your squad in-game (obviously), but shifting yet another game mechanic/feature to Battlelog seems overkill. We’ve been playing the beta via Battlelog on PC for a while now, and honestly, we’d prefer an in-game server browser. Judging form the feedback on Twitter and in EA Forums, Battlefield fans are not too happy about this new way of managing squads.

What’s next, go to Battlelog to change your kit?

[Qwepir]

It notes hovercrafts which I think is what they mean.

They meant the PAC tank and speeder

[Dissolve]

Battlefield 3 is “missing” many features which were in previous Battlefield games, features such as a server browser for PC players. The Battlefield 3 beta is in full swing, and most players have noticed something else missing from Battlefield 3: squad management. It’s not possible to manage a squad in game, or to chose which squad to join — squads are done automatically and players are randomly assigned to squads (so it seems).


PC players in particular have been surprised over the lack of these features, especially since squad management is available to console players of Battlefield 3. And for PCs? According to DICE Community Manager Daniel Matros (via Twitter), squad management and voice chat has been moved to Battlelog. Having to switch to Battlelog to create or join a squad is, to put it mildly, unintuitive. Most PC systems cannot handle the constant Alt-Tab between applications, especially RAM-heavy ones like games.

Matros did add that you will still be able to see your squad in-game (obviously), but shifting yet another game mechanic/feature to Battlelog seems overkill. We’ve been playing the beta via Battlelog on PC for a while now, and honestly, we’d prefer an in-game server browser. Judging form the feedback on Twitter and in EA Forums, Battlefield fans are not too happy about this new way of managing squads.

What’s next, go to Battlelog to change your kit?

STOP ANNOUNCING NEWS DAYS AFTER I SAY IT!

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2826564925947042434/1/
http://tinyurl.com/66ruez2

Why do I always have to be the one with bad news..