So as you can see from the above screenshot, the game looks lovely. There are however some serious flaws in the multiplayer game.
Overall it's still first and foremost a Battlefield game, it requires strategy and teamwork to complete and win a round, what ever flavour you play: Rush, Conquest, Squad Rush, Team Deathmatch, or Squad Death Metch. Big maps and upto 24 players per server can make for some astounding games, myself and RavingZombie have had some excellent rush and conquest games this weekend. Sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating, but never boring, and thanks to mine and Raving's excellent gameplay, we've usually won.
The Game Godes:
Rush - my favourite
Gold Rush in Battlefield: Bad Company and Rush in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 are game modes introduced in the Bad Company series. The objective of the game is for the attacking team to destroy the defending team's crates (gold crates in Battlefield: Bad Company, M-COM Stations in Battlefield: Bad Company 2). Attackers receive reinforcement tickets at the start of the game and will lose if they run out of tickets. The reinforcement tickets are restored by destroying both crates at one defending base. Each defender team's base has a pair of crates, and when both objectives have been destroyed, the map is expanded, making room for a new base with a new set of crates where the defenders have to fall back. This process is repeated until the last defending base is lost.
Conquest:
The aim of the Conquest game mode is to capture neutral (usually white or no-flag) or enemy flags and hold them. Once captured, flags serves as a spawn point for both infantry and vehicles. Teams must hold flags and kill opposing team members to reduce the enemy ticket count. Once a team ticket count is reduced to zero, the other team wins. In Battlefield 1942, ticket loss depends on the type of Conquest mode:
Head-On - Enemy tickets start reducing once a team holds over half of the map's flags
Assault - Enemy tickets only reduce once every flag on a map has been captured by a team
Ticket Loss
Ticket loss, also referred to as ticket bleeding, is the state where a team constantly loses reinforcement tickets due to the opposing team holding more or all flags. This is a strategy employed by many teams in order to avoid lengthy periods of fighting, although if the current team re-captured flags, the ticket loss may be incurred on the opposing team.
History
Conquest mode made its popular debut in Battlefield 1942 and featured as a staple online game mode, featuring in every Battlefield game. However, this trend was broken with the release of Battlefield: Bad Company, although a conquest mode was quickly released as a free downloadable content. It returned in Battlefield 1943 and as one of the many game modes of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Along with rush, it is the premier game mode for Battlefield 3. Also, Conquest Assault will be included for maps in the Back to Karkand map pack for Battlefield 3 in December.
Trivia
Conquest was the only game mode in Battlefield games until "Capture The Flag" was introduced in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, although there were several variants in Battlefield 2.
A variant of the Conquest game mode called "Titan" was introduced in Battlefield 2142, in which both teams compete to take and hold missile silos instead of flags. This change added a more story-like appearance to the gameplay of the Conquest game-mode, with desperate fighting inside the Titans ensuing once one team gains entry to the opposing team's Titan.
Conquest mode in Battlefield Play4Free works much more differently than previous games. Instead of having "ticket bleeding" as in previous games, now there's a score limit that one team must reach just by holding any number of flags, in which more flags held by one team earns them more points.
Squad Rush: My other Favourite
Same as Rush but smaller...
Up to 4 players per team (1 Squad).
1 M-COM Station per base.
Maps are much smaller than on Rush.
Only 20 reinforcement tickets for attackers.
Exclusion of any vehicles
Team Death Match:
This mode has a player cap of 24 on all platforms, meaning there will be two teams of 12 pitted against each other. The mode is entirely isolated from use of any vehicle, like Squad Rush. The objective of the game mode is to reach a certain amount of kills, like in Squad Deathmatch.
Squad Deathmatch:
In this game type, 4 squads (labeled Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta) will fight each other on a map. The first team to achieve 50 enemy kills wins the match. Instead of spawning in a set base like in Rush or Conquest, Squad Deathmatch has players spawn in either a random spawn point around the map or on their squadmates. There is also an IFV - always an M3A3 Bradley - in the center or near the center of the map and it is labeled on the HUD and the minimap with an icon marking its location.
Gameplay relies on good teamwork for each team to play their best. A well balanced squad that communicates well has the best chance at winning a round, where as a team full of Recon Kit wielders may suffer, but this is not always the case. The light tank proves very useful to the squad that decides to capture it as it has three machine gun (the top mounted M2 Browning and the two side-mounted firing ports) positions to cover the vehicle as the driver moves about toting the main 30mm chain gun. It is recommended that each squad-mate has a different Vehicle Specialization, with the driver having an active Specialization like the Alternate Weapon Package or the Smoke Countermeasures Package.
So now the important bit: The Problems With Battlefield 3
1. Unlocks:
The unlocks are great and add a huge amount of choice to the game, but it's flawed and in a bad way.
You start out with a simple main weapon in all the varying classes, both the USA and PLR have different weapons too, making the range of availabe unlocks absolutely massive. The problem is that when you play as one side (USA assault for example), you'll start to unlock some goodies like heavy barrel (increased damage and vertical recoil), red dot, holo scope, acog 4x scope, grenade launcher, sniper scope and more.
The problem is when you change sides to PLR, you have to unlock everything again! Change main weapon - yep you guessed it, you have to unlock everything again, change class... unlock everything again.
This makes for tens of thousands of weapon combinations, but it also makes changing weapon type or class very very frustrating.
2. Squad System:
Finding a decent server with space for one or more friends is a nightmare, try finding a server with free space for four people where you are all in the same squad, hell, getting on the same team is a challenge on it's own. This is where squad play falls down, DICE would be better advised to rent servers to console owners, at least this way you can kick or switch players and make room for you and friends.
3. Voice chat:
Some improvements have been made since the realease of the game, but talking to friends in the same squad is sometimes impossible.
4. Lag:
Again improvements have been made by DICE to reduce the rubberbanding, but it's still not entirely perfect, and the more players you join with (squad play) the more lag you will get.
5. Helicopters, Jets and land vehicles:
Helicopters were difficult to master (EDITED) in Bad Company 2, and in BF3 they're even harder. It's a common sight to see a pilot take off with a chopper full of people and crash within seconds killing everyone on board. Jets are easier to control, but are severly limited to basic weapons and gadgets until you get enough kills to add extra's. It's a similar system to the unlock system for various classes and loadouts. You have to unlock as much as you can for one vehicle, then do it all again for other vehicles. Same with tanks and IFV's. The unlocks take time, then you have to do it for the other team.
6. Bullet Damage:
This is far too high, and more often than not you'll die and not know where the kill came from, let alone have time to react and defend yourself. So be prepared to die... A LOT.
This causes a problem in that people will camp rather than run/rush around trying to support team members.
Overall:
While the game is still fun to play, it's very frustrating for all the reasons listed above, and the biggest problem... issues 1, 5 and 6 will never be fixed, DICE wanted the game this way and this is how it will stay.
This wont stop me from playing the game, but I definitely wont play it as much as Bad Company 1 or 2, and if I dont play it as much, most other people will loose interest too.
Over and out. Dazbobaby: Die hard battlefield fan.
