One wonders why EA/DICE have completely broken the design of the game? There is the old addage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". EA/DICE should really have taken that to heart. Instead we are left with a horrible mess that is known as Battlefield 3, or by some, "That piece of crap".
Oddly enough, even on 'Low' settings, the game runs very well at Full Screen on my 8800GT SLI rig at my default desktop res of 1680x1050. It looks better, and performs better than Battlefield Bad Company 2 at the same settings. In fact, some of the visuals are quite breathtaking - just don't look in the direction of the sun, though, lest you be blinded with Photoshop-esque lense flares. That effect is terribly overdone. I wouldn't be surprised if JJ Abrams didn't have a hand in the design aesthetic somewhere. In fact, "running around blind" has become a core part of the game play. If it's not the sun blinding you, then it's idiots - pardon me, I mis-spelled team mates - running around with torches or red laser sights blinding you, or - the horror - running in to an enemy who deftly blinds you and shoots you dead.
Gameplay aside, one wonders what the architect of Battlefield 3 was smoking, when they decided in order to play the game, you need to have the resource hog called 'Origin' running at all times. On my system, this beast consumes around 80MB of ram, considering that it does nothing for me but lets me launch Battlefield 3. Oh, and not to mention allows people to bug me with inane messages while I'm lying dead on the floor, blinded and shot by a team mate. To add insult to injury, you are also required to have your default browser loaded at all times (thanks Firefox, you memory hog of note - I love you, but do you have to consume 400Mb of ram on my system while I'm trying to play Battlefield 3?) This does nothing for me apart from displaying silly "You have been disconnected from the game" messages, or "The Server is full".
It just occurred to me why they have done this. Battlefield 3 is so unstable that it is completely impractical to have it running all the time, so they have delegated the primary tasks of logging in and browsing for servers to your web browser. So the only time the actual Bf3.exe is running is while you are physically playing the game. Even then you can only play the game for a few rounds before you are unceremoniously dumped to the desktop with an above mentioned error message, or an apparent freeze, where if you switch to the Task Manager, you are able to view a small dialog that says "Bf3.exe has stopped working". Genius.
I was reading the EA FAQ, and one of the questions asked was "Does BF3 have VOIP". The cheery answer was "YES! - It is handled by Battlelog!"
The not-so-cheery truth is that it is in fact handled by a plugin called ESN Sonar. It only works for "Party Chat" which allows an apparent maximum of 20 people, and does not allow you to communicate with your squad or team mates, unless they happen to be in the party chat with you. So stuff the camaderie that Battlefield 2's brilliant VOIP solution brought you, and suck up the crap that EA/DICE force you to have. Or not. We have gone back to using mumble.
An incredibly puzzling decision on the part of DICE, is to freeze players in place before a round starts. You are also required to have 8 players before a round starts. So no more exploring on an empty server. No more learning to fly jets or choppers. What the heck, DICE?
So instead we have to wait, frozen in place, for somebody to realize that there are people trying to get a server going. There's 1 person left to join, get ready, get read... oh. A few people got bored and left. Now we have to wait for more people to join. Sigh. Really?
And once you finally get a game going, it seems the squad management has issues... or at least, nobody really seems to know how it works.
You try join a particular squad... and for some reason there is no join button. So you have a ton of difficulty joining a squad with your friends. There are tons of squads available, plenty of empty slots in squads, and the game helpfully tells you that there are no squad slots available. Pardon? If you're lucky, you either run around the whole game not in a squad, or you get shoved into a random squad with people you don't necessarily know. That wouldn't be so bad if you could actually talk to them, though. Wait! You can! Oh, no, you actually can't. Liars.
Speaking of communication... for some reason, again ignoring the previously mentioned addage, the chat dialog that pops up IN YOUR FACE, blocking your view, every time there is an inane utterance from some or other tool. I mean player. And, thankfully, the dialog disappears before you can figure out just what happened to you, and why are you staring at your hand? It also seems, that there is no way to bring up the chat dialog to see what has transpired once it disappears after it's brief 3 nanosecond appearance. So, in order to follow a conversation happening in chat, or see which knob it was that uttered a foul word so you can go kick his bottom off the server, you need to type something, or wait for somebody to type something, and heck, you can no longer see what's just been said because it has disappeared off the top of the screen.
Sample of chat dialog (it pops up at the middle right of your screen):
===========================================
TOOLKNOB SAYS TO ALL:
blah blah blah-de-blah, I'm a knob.
ADMIN SAYS TO ALL:
SOMEDOUCHE BANNED: GAMEHACK
T0rchF|asher SAYS TO TEAM:
wahhhh torch in your face wooo!
TheFl4533 SAYS TO ALL:
wth? get that thing outta my face!
ADMIN SAYS TO ALL:
NOTHERDOUCHE BANNED: AIMBOT
===========================================
And that's all you can see, for 3 nanoseconds at a time. It's quite difficult to follow what the heck is going on most of the time.
I really don't know why they didn't create the chat window in exactly the same place and format as in Battlefield Bad Company 2: At the top left of the screen, ALL channel in orange, TEAM channel in blue, and SQUAD in green. There is no need to waste an extra line telling us what channel is being broadcast to.
Regarding the voice overs - does it really need to have so much swearing? Yes, it's an adult game. But not all adults appreciate swearing. Especially when it appears to be in every single voiceover line. And there's no option to disable it. At least in BF:BC2, one could mute the voiceover audio channel. In BF3, no such luck, Charlie! The mind boggles.
There are many things wrong with this game. And yes, there are many things right with it too. Some things will most likely be fixed in a patch, and some things will most likely not. It's hard to say at this juncture; the game has only just been released. We need to get used to the quirks - until they are fixed, at least.
I must say, though, that I am enjoying the game, despite the quirks and annoyances.
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