1581

Yeah I was going to mention that. Maybe that should be factored in. But since you can’t check the scores before you join a server, it kind of sucks to run into a hopeless situation. I don’t play the same game mode or server for long stretches so I have more chances I’ll stumble into an overmatched team.

There must be some way to game quit percentage too. Maybe it doesn’t count if you quit before deploying. Because I think mine’s at 11% and I feel like I must have quit more often than that.

1582

Just holler if you want to wipe those bastards out, I’m actually pretty handy with a helicopter. I learned back in crazy physics days on Desert Combat, the helicopters in BF3 are like riding a bike.

H.

1583

My quit % is 11%, same as you Tim ;).

But it’s true i will switch servers if i see a team is losing badly. The game is fun when teams are balanced, because I play to win. It’s less fun if I don’t even see an opportunity to win.

1584

Yeah let’s try that sometime. I can be a gunner and unlock a few more perks before I get serious about flying.

I’m going to wait until I hit 400 SPM first since it will drop like a rock when I move to air vehicles. It keeps ticking up a few points every few games so I should be ready after one more solid weekend.

Speaking of which, it’s weird to me how SPM keeps ticking up like that. I don’t feel like I’m getting slightly better over the last few weeks, just playing my normal game. Maybe it’s the medals (10000 points at 50 hours is 3.3 SPM) or maybe it just takes time to drag it up after my first 20-30 hours at low score.

1585

Something still needs to be done about AA.

On a server where only one side has good pilots, you might as well just leave. Like Karkand itself - no decent AA except way back at the base, where no pilot is stupid enough to come too close. I don’t want choppers or jets nerfed even though they’re deadly with everything unlocked (planes mostly to other fliers), I just want ground troops to be able to do something.

I have no idea why the Russians were so afraid of Stingers in Afghanistan, here they’re as effective as throwing rocks. You can kill noob pilots, but noob pilots can’t hit shit, so in that case there’s no need to waste a slot on AA.

1586

I can’t believe they gave them VTOLs on Oman. The second you leave base in a tank you start getting ticked for damage, then you finally spot them loitering in with missiles. It’s fun to jump in the static AA and fuck 'em up every so often, but the constant back and forth of priorities is numbing.

As for Stingers, they’re still effective in vehicles that have 2, fire one and get flares, immediately lock and fire the other and you’ll get a hit. For ground troops without a full team coordinating they’re useless, though.

1587

I think you’ve confused Karkand with Sharqi. Karkand has no airpower.

It’s pretty much useless now

1588

That’s interesting. I’ve played almost 150 hours of BF3 so far, and it’s rare in my experience to get totally owned by airplanes / helicopters on a map. It was way, WAY worse in Battlefield 2 where there was no infantry AA and they could blow up the fixed AA emplacements in an endless repeating loop.

I can only count a handful of times in ~150 hours of play I’ve seen total air domination to the point that it actively caused us to lose (or win). Planes and copters are great at suppressing infantry and destroying armor, but they do nothing to capture and hold points, which is how all battles are ultimately won.

1589

I am unhappy with the total IRNV nerf, but the mortar nerf I think I can support. Mortars just aren’t that fun as a gameplay device. Every time I get killed by a mortar player halfway across the map, it feels cheap and unfair.

Yes, you can counter mortar vs mortar, and you can learn to keep moving after firing so you can’t be targetted as easily. And I do like mortars as an important anti-sniper and hardcore entrenched camp breaking, but I’d argue that SMAW and sniper scope glare does enough toward that already.

1590

This is silly. I can personally affect the game result in a tank, but not if I’m getting destroyed by air power (or great tank teams, but that’s part of the game). And certainly fewer tanks on your team means the other team has an advantage at each of those capture points.

I’m not sure I’d automatically quit a server when the enemy team dominates the air war, but I certainly would if I wanted to drive a vehicle.

It doesn’t happen very often like you said. It’s just frustrating, and anything that has mostly hard counters tends to be that way.

1591

It might be different on the new maps – I can see air being a big deal on Wake, Sharqi, and Oman. Not sure we’ve played those new maps long enough to really know yet. But I stand by my original statements for the built-in BF3 maps, air dominance isn’t a real problem.

(And as far as tanks go, since half the team is always engineer, vehicles don’t survive that long – or at least, SMAWs and Javelins are carried by many, unlike stingers, and they are quite effective, unlike stingers. Stingers are carried by almost nobody and mostly effective as deterrents instead of dangerous threats to survival.)

1592

I haven’t spent much time in a tank lately, but it only seems really bad on Gulf of Oman near the open points. (My guess is it’s the same on Wake Island.) I’d say it’s similar to Caspian Border, Firestorm, Kharg Island.

Again, good attack helicopter pilots are about as rare as dominant tank teams with perks designed to kill tanks, but it’s still frustrating and at least affects the final result in the games I’ve played.

If I really cared, I’d just practice hitting them with tank weapons. But I’m not sure it’s worth the time when I can just lose and then change servers.

1593

There is a little thing different in the new maps that I don’t like and it’s the vehicle spawn . In the new maps they appear mainly in the flag points while in the old maps and in bc2 they appeared in base.
This have 2 consequences: to have something to fallback if your ass is being kicked, and also you have to appear from the farthest point if you want to use the vehicles. Apart from that, with the new system the team with most of the points will have even more advantage as it will have the vehicles.

I preferred the old way, it was more balanced. In fact I am seeing already some really unbalanced games in Oman and wake.

1594

Fuck the F35. Seriously. It’s the most useless jet I’ve ever played with. It sucked in BF2 and it sucks in BF3.

1595

Ah-HA! I’ve figured out the problem, I can’t play on Normal. At first I was using it as a crutch because I was at the start of the learning curve, but it eventually turned against me since I can’t process the fact that everyone knows exactly where I am nearly all the time.

I started playing Hardcore and suddenly I’m MVP more often than not. That damned glowing thing above my head sucked!!!

H.

1596

Holy cow, someone explain PDWs to me. Are they inappropriate for TDM? I had terrible games with them, but got enough kills to unlock red dot, laser sight, and silencer. I just held the trigger down until the enemy died, but lost every single head on fight. They killed me in 1 or 2 shots, and I was still shooting at them.

Does anyone use them for Rush offense? Do you use a silencer for that?

Also, it’s scary when an enemy sniper sounds like a machinegun in the distance. I can’t quite say he was hacking, but he dominated the match 60-8 or something. I could never get close enough to him.

1597

Eh? Can you explain this? I’m a total newbie when it comes to BF3 online play. Are you saying that if you play on Normal difficulty then you walk around with an icon above your head that gives away your position to everyone? Really?

1598

No, he means that on normal mode the spotting mechanism? Yeah, it adds a glowing icon to people and vehicles that are spotted. This icon is visible to everyone on the team of whoever did the spotting. On hardcore, there is no glowy icon. It’s a server setting.

1599

Turin I see you’re whoring the tanks again. Perhaps to get your vehicle score per minute up high enough that you’re in the top 1% with me.

http://bf3stats.com/leaderboard/pc_vehiclescorepvm#start_3000_tooler975

Haha just teasing. I remembered bf3stats.com and checked it out again tonight. I wish I had manually updated it every night so I could watch the charts go up, but it’s too late now. Two data points don’t make very compelling charts.

I’m also in the top 15% for SPM, KDR, W/L, etc. I think that’s plenty good enough for me. I’m satisfied.

1600

Damn I am only in the top 2%! :P
And what is this nonsense of “again”? I always use the vehicles as much as I can! :)

@Houngan, maxle. It’s not only the orange icon when you are spotted, when you fire (with a non-surpressed weapon) an icon will blink in the minimap for your enemies. It’s my main tool of where to go and how to plan my attack.