Last night was...

As a preemptive strike, I'll get it going. Last night was torture knowing I have this on the way but not in my hands.

LOL, I played it and need help!!!!!

With some luck, I'll be there sometime tonight.

So I manged a couple of hours last night, both on campaign and mp. Here's my initial thoughts. Both look great and play pretty well though but there's a steep learning curve and after 500 hours on BF3 the slightly different controls are going to take some getting used to. It seems to me that the bigger maps definitely need teamwork to get anything done as you can't get shit done with everyone in the squad running around doing their own thing, though it's fine to do that on the smaller maps or modes without vehicles.

You are actually given weapons that work right out of the box which is a bonus. There is a "Training Ground" which I haven't looked at but I assume can be used to learn maps and practice with weapons. The game dynamics are amazing, stuff actually gets destroyed when you hit them with enough force. Capture points can actually move on some maps. Weather, wind, and visuals all work pretty well. Building coming down, Elevators that work. All kinds of good stuff. Mics actually work in the game this time around though it only seems to be for your squad or everyone in the between game lobby. Non-vocal cues and the new com rose helps a lot with communications to... if people would use it once in a while.

Now for the down side, (you knew there had to be something) I find it hard to believe they are doing this but you can't form a party before going into a game. Who the hell thought that was a good idea in a mp squad based game? They still haven't answered my tweet on that one. They do make it easy to join friends through the battlelog tab or the battlelog app, and that does work. Squads are 5 people but it seems that they start the games with 4 so 1 more can join their friends. This seems like it would take quite a few rounds to get 5 friends in the same squad. Their utter reliance on Battle log for everything seems a little over kill to me as well, not everyone has a laptop or smart phone they can put in front of themselves while playing the game.

I'll stick with it and hopefully have some recording for everyone to see tomorrow.

Wow they really fucked up on that one!

Okay,here's what we got as an answer on the Battlelog forums. The queue issue they are speaking of, is that if you try to join a friend right now in a full game, there is no queue but you are told there are no commander slots open. Who cares, put me in the damn queue!

TheBikingViking said:
Regarding the queue system: we are working to address that, and trust me, the whole flow will work and feel a lot better once that has been fixed. Fixing the queue system is one of our top priorities right now!

As to why we didn't keep the system from BF3: like it as you may, the group/squad join system in BF3 had a lot of issues that were really hard to fix. Yes, you could join with a squad/group of people, but it was very common that you ended up on different teams or squads.

I'm not saying our solution is perfect, or the best/only way to do it, but try to give it a chance, especially when we've fixed the queue issue.

Excuse me but hasn't every other mp game out there managed to create a party system that works????

That aside, after some strange server issues (I find it hard to believe I was the only one in the world playing any mode at one point online) we manged to get a few people together and low and behold we started winning games and getting ace squad ribbons.

The squad join thing did seem to work last night. A friend joined the server and at the end of the game he was put into our squad, even though we had 5 people in the squad already, bringing us up to 6 for a bit there.

I'll add just a touch to what I said earlier. We actually had a commander who can over see the whole battle and provide support to everyone. It was pretty cool to see in action, though I doubt I'll ever do it myself. I like pounding the ground and blowing stuff up too much.

With GTA V still holding my attention and spare time still being short until the end of November i think it makes sense to hold on getting this and COD Ghosts until i get my PS4.

I know you can upgrade the games and if i didnt have such a big backlog of games i would probably get them now and do that but waiting for the PS4 seems the most sensible thing to do at the mo.

Dazz this is gaming.... there's nothing sensible about it.

don't rush, the ps4 is suppose to be good anyways

madd_rocker wrote: the ps4 is suppose to be good anyways

     Understatement of the YEAR    

The last couple of nights have gone pretty well overall. We are still plagued by the usual BF issues (getting shot while in cover is my personal peeve) but now that we have a few more people joining us, we can at least have some fun with it. Oh and Zem, I think I have some dogtags with your name on them

I'm still kind of fuzzy on why they can't seem to create a party system, it's a general pain in the arse to try to regroup when you don't like the server you're in. I do have to say I've had a lot less problems than I did with BF3. I've only lost connection once and not had any freezes. I know that isn't the case for others but so far it's worked pretty well.... except for that stupid party thing.

Shane wrote:. I've only lost connection once and not had any freezes. I know that isn't the case for others but so far it's worked pretty well.... except for that stupid party thing.

My PS3 constantly freezes.  Sometimes I'll get in a handful of games before a freeze, other times it'll freeze several games in a row.    IDK
It is a bit frustrating though and has had me running solo rather than trying to team up with some of you as often as Id like.

On another note -

I have to say I'm blown away by this game.  The mechanics, gameplay, graphics - everything seems to fall into place.

I just finished a game of Rush.  We were attacking and down to 11 tickets.   I was some how able to destroy the 1st Mcom (at the last base) and fight my way to the second one.   My entire squad save one person was sniping.   I had been bitching at them to switch classes and lets win this damn game - they finally did.  

I suggested they redeploy and spawn on me at the last Mcom to provide defense (this was risky, because we were now down to 7 tickets and a redeployment of my entire squad would have brought us down to 4 tickets).   To my surprise, they did redeploy just as I was arming the last Mcom.   I was praying that nobody would die - half way through the arming, I glanced at the HUD . . . 1 ticket left.   As soon as the station was armed, we lost our last ticket.   The plan did pay off and my squad was able to defend the Mcom and win the game.  

Not only was this the best game Ive played in terms of fun, but it was also my highest scoring BF game ever - 101,000 points for a SPM of 4800.  Friggin insane!

Shane wrote:The last couple of nights have gone pretty well overall. We are still plagued by the usual BF issues (getting shot while in cover is my personal peeve) but now that we have a few more people joining us, we can at least have some fun with it. Oh and Zem, I think I have some dogtags with your name on them

I'm still kind of fuzzy on why they can't seem to create a party system, it's a general pain in the arse to try to regroup when you don't like the server you're in. I do have to say I've had a lot less problems than I did with BF3. I've only lost connection once and not had any freezes. I know that isn't the case for others but so far it's worked pretty well.... except for that stupid party thing.

Nope you don't but I do attest to your ability to survive more than 10 rounds to the face.

It was a long weekend of grinding away. As the time change threw me all off I was up way to early yesterday so I finished up the campaign. Now I need to go back and find all the goodies I missed. It was an action packed story though so I don't really mind doing it again at some point.

Mp was kind of hit and miss but it went pretty well, especially when a few of us could get together. I've decided that Flood is the absolute worst map for any game mode going. And never ever, let Gravy get in a boat when when he's on the other team. I still can't figure out the whole sniper rifle thing, even with the new vapor trail thing, I can't figure out drop on those things, and still hating their stupid ass idea of dropping sights to chamber a round.

The highlight to yesterday had to be when I gave up trying to snipe as they seem to know right where I am every time and most of my sorry excuse of a team was doing who knows what. So I got in a buggy by myself and drove all over the train map running down anyone I saw. I must have gone close to 10 minutes doing that and had a nice kill streak going when they finally took me out with a TOW missile.

I also think it's time to have a short discussion of Rocker's map reading skills and/or sense of direction. Here's what we have, 1 bomb left to pick up and deliver to the site for the win. Rocker and I are near it so we wait for it to drop and the 3rd guy in the squad is near the plant site so I tell him to stay there and keep it clear as best he can.

Bomb drops, Rocker gets it and starts running. I take point to draw fire and try to clear the way for him. I'm 50m away, we have the plant site secured, so I turn around to cover Rocker's approach. Just a few second ago he was behind me. He's gone!!! I check the heads up and he's 150m up in the next building over on the roof trying to find the plant site and there isn't a damn thing we can do to help him. I thought he was going to parachute down but in reality, he was just lost.

We got it in the end but it didn't end up being as pretty as it started out being.

Sorry, but I'm old and easily confused, and some of those maps are just mind boggling. But, I did wipe out a nest of three roof snipers before I jumped down

There do seem to be great numbers of them flocking to the rooftops lately.

Like pigeons  

Shane wrote: And never ever, let Gravy get in a boat when when he's on the other team.

Yeah. Sorry about that. For some reason, that boat just clicks with me. Funny thing, just a couple days ago, I was in the boat the entire game. Went 17-0 in core with several vehicle kills to boot. Unlocked 16 vehicle upgrades in that one game.

Also, never be in a boat on the opposing team when Rocker has his launcher.

We may take a little time to get there, but sooner or later we'll figure out a way to take care of those pesky little problems. At least once, both he and I were hammering on your boat with launchers.... it's all about the teamwork.

I will, and I do mean I will do what ever it takes to get rid of pesky vehicles/boats/aircraft. My favorite way is to drop all of my mines right behind them and then throw a grenade on the pile.  

Last night was kind of hit and miss. Sketchy servers, getting shot around corners, trouble joining friends, all the usual stuff but.... in the end I decided to play one last game of Obliteration and what an epic battle it was. We won in the end but when I joined we had lost 1 station and just picked up the second bomb. It went back and forth, as a running gunfight through Locks (an underground prison complex) for an hour but it felt more like 15 minutes, it wasn't until I looked at the clock that I realized how time had flown. I ended up with almost 35,000 points and 21 ribbons/ awards in the end.

Now having said this, it seems that with BF4 there's a lot more action in all game modes than there were in previous versions. I can't remember any of the time sucking runs to get to the action, just to die and start over like I remember from BFBC2 or BF3. Now if we could get a party together life would be complete.