Also in!
Wow, this desert map is really, really great. Got a totally dramatic The English Patient vibe going on.
I’m enjoying this a hell of a lot more than the Generic Small European 1910 Town zeppelin map of the closed alpha. Definite thumbs up, I recommend giving this a go if you have any interest at all.
I got one as well, for PS4. Is that why you guys signed up for? I’m holding out for PC.
When I signed up for Battlefield Insider, it asked me what platform. So I chose Xbox. I could have chosen PS4 or PC as well. But that’s just to get your beta access a day early. I think it’s available to everyone in another day.
From the little I watched today, I can tell I am going to really miss Flashbangs and ULTRA HALOGEN Flashlights. :p
I wonder if you can kill with the flare gun?
Saw a few comments over on GAF, game is running @720p on Xbone , @900p on PS4.
Graphics are great!
Sound is great!
Performance is great!
Gameplay is BF… but there something about the balance of vehicles vs infantry that I’m not liking it. For a 64 player, Conquest map there are very few vehicles. Power wise they are fine, they are slower and clunkier than in BF3/4 but infantry have less options against them.
I like horses! It seems I’m strangely good killing people with the sword, or maybe it’s just that people haven’t learned how to avoid them.
I’m not convinced with this map, it’s a bad start if it’s supposed to show off the game to the public. It’s a bit too open for my tastes, except in the little town area, and obviously being a desert it doesn’t have trees and vegetation to help you advance without being sniped to hell by snipers (and tanks).
But perhaps what I’m disliking more it’s the vehicle side of the game. If you like vehicles like me, well, there are around half less available than in past BF games, tough luck. In exchange of being less frequent, they have made them more powerful, as there are much less options to destroy them, not RPGs (there is a rocket which seems to use a bipod to be deployed, so I doubt it will be super useful) and the new C4s, the dynamite, seems to be around 1/3 less powerful than before, 3 of them wouldn’t kill a tank, not even close! I dislike both changes, less vehicles to play with, and less ways to attack them efficiently as infantry. Also I don’t like that they can be repaired from inside, one of the aspects of dynamic battle than BF games had going was killing a dude who was repairing his tank after a long drawn out battle with him, and then taking his tank and turning it against the enemy.
Of course there are some positive sides. I like Rush being limited to 24 players, I like you can use the objectives to call artillery (though I’m not sure how it works), I like the AA turret, it’s great (in general fixed positions seems buffed, though again maybe it’s the open map). I like the animations to enter in vehicles and fixed weapons.
edit: epeen
edit 2: why there are phases in Rush where only the attackers have tanks, wtf, you can’t do shit against them.
Turin, you are too good at Battlefield!
You were already better than me in BF3, and I’m sure it’s only gotten worse at this point.
So what is the deal on the open beta? I would not mind trying it on both PS4 and PC to get an idea on look and performance on each. Will it just be an option to download once the early in time is done?
Only played 2 rounds, but I am sold. Its a refreshing change of time period. And its very satisfying to club someone to death.
Not sure if I am gonna get it on Origin at full price for the early access, or save $10 and get it over on GMG.
Bah, obviously that screenshot doesn’t tell the whole story :P. From several games I played that was my best result, in others I did much worse, but of course I only uploaded that one ;). And it was more an example of the problems of tank vs infantry balance I talked before, in that game I was 90% of the time in the same light tank that I picked at the start of the round, owning soldiers in the open who had no methods to defeat me.
Tank vs tank game is interesting, all MBT were the same in previous BF, but here the choice of three types of tanks is pretty interesting, they have their own pros and cons. The light tank can out-turn and beat heavier, more powerful tanks, for example, but only have space for the driver. Others don’t have a normal 360º turret, or have the heavy guns in the side and only an infantry autocannon in the front, so they all play differently.
I don’t know what happens with Rush, I played several rounds and it always chose me for the defender team. I want to attack too!
edit: oh yeah, one cool thing, you can ride a light tank as infantry, it’s a bit like surfing.
This is … quite good. I take back all my original reservations about the setting. Of course, this is also (Ricardo Montalban) FANNNNNTASY WORLD WAR ONE! But it is truly its own experience, a fully realized environment, far from the clumsily constructed cops n’ robbers BF4 veneer that Hardline was. My overall prediction of “vehicles are primitive and less powerful, infantry more powerful” was correct. It’s a good direction for the series.
Fair warning, the weapons are super duper situational now. No more plinking away at dudes at fair distance with short bursts from a modern weapon. If you have a SMG you ain’t gonna hit jack squat at distance, so you have to close the gap before fighting.
Protips:
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Do NOT change the resolution scaling from 42%, apparently 42% is “native”. Weird, but whatever. I changed it to 100% and uh, bad things happened on my 4k monitor.
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Pick up the flamethrower near B point, it’s so much fun. I sprayed some snipers with it on the edge of a roof, from below them on the ground looking up. That was awesome.
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The anti-tank option is quite good on assault, be sure to equip it. It requires a bipod which gives it weaknesses, but it sure is nice to be able to force people out of cover at a distance by blowing it up ;)
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Oddly you can carry both anti-tank and regular grenades as assault. Press G to throw the regular ones.
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It seems that spawning on a horse gives you a weird scout loadout? That was unexpected. I know when you spawn on a tank or plane you get those dedicated character loadouts, which is new to BF1 … but a horse? Whatever. It’s still awesome to run people down on the horse or press 2 and slash them to pieces, 1910 calvary style!
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Way less blips on the radar. I don’t know if people just aren’t spotting, or if it’s an intentional design thing to make it less “modern” but it’s super rare to see enemy blips on the radar. I got killed a lot by people I couldn’t see that were near and firing, but not on my radar.
Was there ever a Battlefield where the 'death 'count would stop at 1?
The early in-time is done. Everyone should have access to it now on all 3 platforms.
The lack of CQ servers that aren’t 64 players, the fewer options in the server browser, and the fact that sometimes, the server browser doesn’t work?? isn’t making any favors to the game.
Some other things I like about BF1:
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They have actual weather events, and each map can be played in a variety of weather conditions: day, night, fog, storm, etc.
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The “special event” for each map seems to be a powerful juggernaut type weapon that goes to the losing team. On the alpha map, this was the zeppelin. On the beta map, it’s the armored train. This helps alter the balance of power back toward the losing team, and it’s actually interactive (the train can move back and forth, the zeppelin flies) and can be destroyed by the opposing team with enough concentrated fire.
Levolution was … not a great idea in practice. Adding insult to injury, DICE said getting levolution right was the source of big delays in BF4 development. I still remember huge crashes after BF4 launch when people blew up the skyscraper, or the game would continue after half the players mysteriously dropped. TL;DR what they’ve put in BF1 to replace levolution, is way better than levolution.
Also, I love the new and highly detailed animations for people climbing into the tank (this is visible to the tank driver), shooting the stationary guns, the horse, and of course mantling obstacles. You don’t just magically disappear when you press a key to enter a vehicle, your character does it.
It feels like they slowed down gameplay a bit from the alpha in terms of running speeds; I no longer feel like the Benny Hill theme should be constantly playing in infantry combat. Another welcome change.
I think I am going to use a cropped version of this picture as my new Origin avatar, in honor of BF1.
Damn. Just got home from work. I have about 20 minutes before it’s full on family time for 3 hours, BF1 Beta has been loaded and installed, and… some jerky hacker group has DDOS’d the EA servers so I can’t play. Wah.
Yeah, I got in a couple rounds yesterday afternoon, but that evening when I really wanted to dig in the game was offline all night. Battlefront was down too, so I couldn’t even fall back to that.
Well that was not a great first impression for B1. Find Conquest game…server down, find conquest game…server down. Okay fine I’ll try Rush. Hey that worked I’m in. Wait, why don’t I have any weapons? Hey does anyone know why…damn I’m dead maybe the respawn will help. Nope, still no weapons, I guess I’ll just run at that tank like a jackass, yup dead again. And game over. Okay done for the night with that maybe try again later.