What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

[Lordsethonan]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

While i can agree with your points on many levels, there you just said it yourself.Evolution is good but any entity, be it a game or business know that loyalty is where its at.
Get your customer and keep him close and happy, In retail sales 2/3 of customers are repeat customers.
I agree lets move forward, but you cant move foreward without knowing the past and you certainly cant be pig headed against your fans.How far would a rock star get if they started being ignorant?or Target if they started making there previous customer unhappy and feel isolated.

I can see your points though mate and you do make good ones,please see mine:)

Wrong. In a business, the end is to make as much money as possible investing the least you can, or if the investment is big, make the profit margin big enough that it will offset expenses.

Brand loyalty is a consequence of good products, not of cathering to a minority who is very vocal. What you can realistically demand of a company is a working product to their specifications; so far, DICE has improved a ton in this regard. BF3 during its alpha is much more estable and works better than BF2 ever did at launch; game mechanics and options should be discussed after the fact, two or three months in.

They are promising battlerecorder back, tweaking of 3D spotting (wich they shouldn't but that's my opinion) and we should wait until we see an actual conquest map before yelling I AM NOT BUYING.
If you are objective about the game, as a product, it's already better than BF2 ever was and will ever hope to be. I always chuckle when they tell me: BF2 rules so much because it has PR and PoE and FH. Yeah? Those are not the vanilla game, if the vanilla game was so good it wouldn't need mods to promote it; the gameplay is old, the engine is old, it went through all th epossible patches it could and it didn't improve a whole lot.

YES, BF2 is a seminal game and a watershed for the franchise, but you can't let that anchor you and stiff innovation and evolution.

Compared to today games, BF2 is small potatoes, 50 thousand people playing a ten dollar game won't let your company survive and all the BF2 vets should get over it already; BF2 is not making new sales worth a damn and is not attracting new people; where if the opposite was true, THEN you would have an argument against the evolution of the mechanics.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

p.s the boycott worked on getting MW2 dedicated servers didnt it?(like it deserved)

Yeah, it didnt. MW2 and MW3 will not have dedicated servers. Actually, they wont comment on MW3 and, for whatever reason, they are laying low on the news for the game. Their CoD XP show they are giving out free stuff for console players. Nothing for PC people. Even Treyarch only talk about console now and all the news I get about PC comes from pcdev or the intel after the fact.

Also, there comes a point a time where any developer has to put the blinders on from its community. If anyone had to learn that, it was DICE. They nerfed BF2 to oblivion listening to the minority community and messed up both BF2 and BC2. If the devs listened to their community constantly, the games would never get finished and would be garbage when released. I think Lars had an interview about that back at the start of the BF3 thing and how they have to let some things go and change other things to make a better game.

But anyway, 3 more months and a beta to go. Plenty of decision time.

Crunch

[Lordsethonan]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

And I get in two days early cos I ordered in Origin :B

[Anarchy1]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

Me too, and I will probably cancel it and get a physical copy afterwards.

Actually, they wont comment on MW3 and, for whatever reason, they are laying low on the news for the game. Their CoD XP show they are giving out free stuff for console players. Nothing for PC people. Even Treyarch only talk about console now and all the news I get about PC comes from pcdev or the intel after the fact.

Yeah, it's actually really strange. I have heard almost nothing about MW3. Has there been anything apart from the E3 videos? All the info has been focused on CoD Elite, which isn't that important in the long run. I know they are having the XP event, but you would think there would be interviews or something. And regarding the XP event, it only seems like they are just going to do a multiplayer reveal, which was done by BF3 at E3.

[Lordsethonan]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

It's not strange; what are they gonna showcase if they have nothing to showcase and all the perks and achievements have been leaked already?

they have their large cautive audience already; MW3 didn't take 30 million to make and they will make more than that back, why should they bother? It fits perfectly with Kotick's philosophy of marketing games.

Don't fix or innovate on what's not broken; the guys programming it are more likely than not thrilled at having a big shot at a big name game, what they don't know or don't realize is that Neversoft made more money than IW ever did and Acti still shut them down. Any and all programming teams assigned to the cash cow franchise are expendable, just cogs; it's one of the reasons CoD is in the state it is. It's been three separate teams trying to remake CoD4 so they don't innovate at all, they are trying to replicate a previous episode.

I was a big CoD 2 fan, and I liked MW1 when it came out a lot, I really really did. But it's fire and forget gameplay, it's the same as CoD1 and CoD2; not the actual gun mechanics, but the run and gun deathmatch nature of the thing; even in CoD4 the stages were not even 50 meters across; it's ten years old gameplay nowadays.
Console users sucked it up cos it was new for them; Halo was not this fast, it didn't have "real" weapons with "real" mechanics; it let you level up infinetely and showcase skillz as there was no vehicle in wich to camp; just you and you airstrike and attack chopper wich you got by killing several guys in a row; so therefore SKLLZ.

And the sad part? CoD was the MoH wannabe and if I recall correctly MoH on PC was 12 vs 12, nowadays CoD doesn't even do that.

[-Shifty-]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

Isn't it a bad business move to remove dedicated servers? You're removing business for server hosts, and in turn they won't pay for advertisements. I don't really know how it works, that's just my guess.

[Lordsethonan]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

Isn't it a bad business move to remove dedicated servers? You're removing business for server hosts, and in turn they won't pay for advertisements. I don't really know how it works, that's just my guess.

It is a bad business move if your main audience is on PC, CoD audience stopped being mainly on PC since CoD4.

EDIT: ok, maybe someone from MYIS can clear this up, but from what I understand, EA for example, sells licenses to set up dedicated servers; and then the people who buy the licenses set up the actual physical servers and pay for the bandwidth, thus saving EA a ton of money and making a bit of money on the side.

This way you can make the game last more for the people interested in it; remember it's the official EA servers that always go first.

Companies like EA can afford to sell licenses cos there is a market for it; but if your market and % of actual profit from total revenue was larger somewhere else (like on console, where the bandwidth is paid for by MS Live costumers or by SONY) then you'd need a larger fanbase instaled on the PC. CoD4 didn't sell as much on PC as it did on consoles even tough you can argue the PC version was leagues ahead of its console counterpart, wich it was.

And criticize EA all you like, you can't deny the fact they do publish GOOD games. You may or may not like the fact EA kills them rather fast; but the games themselves are good, even the sports one if you like those. (and in the sports thing, you can only make so many soccer, NFL and NHL and etc games before it gets stale by itself; FIFA has been going for some 20 years now, MAdden has been on for a bit longer, the Golf games have been good overall -a genre traditionally composed of gimmick games with crazy shots and RPG elements)

The Lord of the Rings movies IP was excellent overall, with very few weak games; Command and Conquer used to be very hot too.

[-Shifty-]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

I understand why consoles are so popular, and it's for some darn good reasons, but I wish PC gaming was the major gaming industry.

[Lordsethonan]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

I understand why consoles are so popular, and it's for some darn good reasons, but I wish PC gaming was the major gaming industry.

Who wouldn't? Except PC gamers are the most hard to please, whiny bunch of good for nothings for the most part. They only know how to argue with flaming and their only argument is "do this or NO BUY".

Also in general PC gamers don't buy a lot of games every year and that stuff, so in reality PC gaming worst enemy is PC gamers.

Of course, the biggets money maker is web browser games; but that's hardly "gaming" at all.

[Stev0esque]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

I like Lordseth. Its some much needed optimism from the BF community.

But yeah, Crunch is right, you need to balance it out. Listen to the community too little you get an unfinished game that barely functions. listen to it too much you get a game that you broke with no soul or personality from you as the developer. Its a case where we have to let the Artists do the work, then criticize. If My little pony: Friendship is magic has taught me anything from the Episode "Suited for success" (You probably realise now that I am plugging a little kids show) is that you shouldn't criticize a work of art in any form to the point where you make it a bedraggled mess.

[Lordsethonan]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

Well in here and in other forums I have tried to make clear I am a big DICE fan but not a fanboy; I try to be impartial and critical of their shortcomings but appreciative of the stuff they do right.

I was sold on 2142 from the first trailer. I was like "BF? In the future? Hover tanks? ok DICE surprise me" and they did.

With the original BC I was more like "Oook... single player campaign.. mmmm... DICE only ever made Mirror's Edge before and it was kinda sucky in the story; ok DICE show me what you got." And they did. And I ended up loving it even if I barely went online with it. (it blows chunk on the PS3 controller, the first one has a really weird layout for the controller)

With BC2 it was more like Yeeeeeaaaah. And then the beta started and I was like wtfffff I need a new ocmputer. then they put in a last patch before the beta ended and it didn't suck as much so I was like "mmmm... ok buy it and then we upgrade PC". And after launch it improved a lot; but then they kinda dropped it.

And we all knew BF3 was coming, so I was sold already from BC2; but then I saw the first videos and I was like "DICE TAKE MY MONEY PLEASE".

And they are pretty much the only company I really know what to expect from and they never dissapoint.

Capcom is like a passive agressive destructive relationship. They make you feel great one day, the other they punch you in the nuts.

Konami is very much inconsistent. And they drop IPs without warning for years. Lords of shadow was a nice comeback for Castlevania after ditching consoles for years and years and focusing on portables. Annnnd... Metal Gear Solid but that's about it with Konami.

Westwood went under. Blizzard sold its soul to the devil like 9 years ago more or less but they take so long to put games out we are only noticing the extent of the Activision cancer.

Activision... has so far killed two great franchises and its working hard on killing CoD. Oh and they destroyed three studios already, and almost killed Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters; but thankfully common sense prevailed in other people and the games came out.

Lucas Arts has not done anything worthwhile in years. All the good games are either the LEGO ones or the RPGs by Bioware.

Namco is good, but they are kinda lost in space right now; the new Ace Combat looks tasty but not very deep. Awaiting on more gameplay videos. The fighting games from them you already know what they are like: perfect programming, lot of substance, we just want the next chapter in the Tekken soap opera; soul calibur is more a dressing game now. NamcoBandai has to release the new Ace Combat on PC. DO IT.

[-Shifty-]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

LordSeth, if you think computer gamers are bad, you need to check out your average console gamer.

[Infernalis]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

Lordsethonan's=Lordseth on gamefaqs?

[Rambo]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

Lords, if you had another 5 hands you could give Dice a date for every day of the week:)

[-Shifty-]

Re: What I think Battlefield 3 Will Be Like

This is off topic, but that video of Thunder Run sold the game for me.