Guns and MMOs

New PATCH!!!

2011-11-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Battlefield blog...

As always, if you have any feedback or want to discuss these changes head to the Battlelog forums. We appreciate your feedback!

PATCH NOTES
Selected improvements in the Nov 22 Battlefield 3 client-side update
A full list of changes is available on the Battlelog
• General performance and loading time improvements
• "Black Screen" fix for an issue occurring on some PC configurations
• Stereo and rendering support for Nvidia and AMD graphics cards
• Fixed several crashes that occurred when joining multiplayer and co-op sessions
• Fixed a problem with high speed mouse movement (aka "negative mouse acceleration")
• You should no longer be able to damage a friendly vehicle when sitting in an open position
• Grenades now drop to ground if you get killed while attempting to throw it (dangerous in Hardcore mode!)
• You should no longer spawn too close to enemies in TDM, SQDM, or Conquest
• A large number of damage and range tweaks on a number of weapons to fine-tune overall balance in the game
• Added round duration and ticket summary at End of Round screen
• Fixed a problem regarding key bindings while playing
• Significant changes to the Join Squad interface, detailed at the bottom of this post

Selected improvements in the Nov 22 Battlefield 3 PC server-side update
A full list of changes is available on the Battlelog
• EOD Bot exploit fix
• Several crash fixes
• Anti-stat padding measures taken, disallowing ranked servers to run obscure settings
• Improved team kill kick configuration
• Support for unranked servers. Unranked servers do not report players' scores to Battlelog, but server administrators can freely control all settings

Newly added Battlelog functionality – Share your stats
• Ability to share your Profile and Stats pages to Facebook, Google+, and Twitter
• User Profile and Stats pages on Battlelog can now be accessed without being signed in to Battlelog if you know a user's URL
• Single sign on from Battlelog to Origin. If you're not logged in to Origin and join a game server, Battlelog will automatically sign you in to Origin in the background and join the game server

Quick notes on Squad changes in the Nov 22 update
• Removed FIND ME A SQUAD option
• Allow players to join empty Squads alone, thus having 1/4 squad members
• Change order of options to LEAVE SQUAD, INV A FRIEND, SWITCH TEAM
• Disable Privacy flag when 1 man squad
• Reset Privacy flag from Private to Public when squad drops to 1 player
• All occupied Squads will now show up colored blue on the Squad Selection screen
• Players who choose not to join squads will also show up as Blue in the "Not in a Squad” line
• Squads that are currently empty will display as white -- if you wish to join an empty Squad, you can choose the first one marked with white text

A detailed look at Squad refinements
Today's PC client patch features numerous tweaks to Squad functionality and is part of our ongoing efforts to make it easier to play with friends and Platoon mates. These changes will also be implemented for consoles when we release the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 updates shortly. Stay tuned for the exact date of the console updates.

First, we need to look at how joining with Squads and Platoons affects the balance of teams. Initially, servers are commanded to equal out each side, so joining with friends can impact that balance while joining with Platoons further hinders this. As a result we have made some adjustments to the in-game Squad management screen.

For PC, you are now able to highlight the various Squads and select which one you wish to join by selecting a Squad and then clicking the Join Squad button. Please note that the Squad Privacy option still allows 2 man Squads which, during 64 player sessions, can lead to players with no squad position –- the number of people with no Squads will be shown at the bottom of the Squad selection list.

After the patch is applied to consoles (in the near future) you will be able to join Squads by cycling through the list and selecting which Squad you wish to join.

That's it for this latest set of updates. Let us know what you think of the changes in the Battlelog forums. Thanks for playing, and see you on the battlefield!

New NVIDIA Drivers are out! Good bye corrupted Shadows!

2011-11-10T21:31:00.000-08:00

Finally the new drivers from NVIDIA that should take care of the Corrupted Shadows issue.

I still appear to be stuttering a decent amount, but at least the corrupted shadows are gone now.

Looks like I will be getting back to finishing my singleplayer playthrough videos.

Link to the 32-bit Version: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-32bit-285.79-beta-driver.html
Link to the 64-bit Version: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-285.79-beta-driver.html

PC Gamer ‘puts off' Battlefield 3 on Review?

2011-11-04T02:02:00.000-07:00

I am going to kick this off with this preliminary statement. 8/10 is by no means a score to scoff at. Especially given the usual freak-out that fan boys have whenever a game that they subscribe their life to receive anything below 9 (sometimes even 10), I DO want to emphasize that point. 8/10 is NOT a bad score by any means. That said this is certainly not a winner for DICE/EA.

“I’m going to play it to bits – eventually. Right now, it’s broken, and I’m going to wait. Buy it when it has been patched.”

That’s the kind of statement you usually see in games that receive a 6 or a 7. Battlefield 3, being the next big (and gorgeous) Battlefield game however, does get away with an 8. PC Gamer is one of the few remaining high-profile gaming publications that don’t treat PC gaming coverage as an afterthought, and does a fair job of representing the barometer of what the PC audience expects. And their surprisingly condemning review, despite the decent final score of 8/10, is not something EA will be putting down as a Victory in their checklist for its self-proclaimed PR war against Activision’s COD franchise (see here for the ‘Above & beyond the CALL’ trailer that sums it up). Read on after the jump.

Now the first thing that comes to my mind having said that is the general score that the Call of Duty series have lately been privy to. COD’s average critical receptions have been no less condemning due to the series’ lack of innovation through its annual releases and its ever aging engine (now going on 6 years without a major update since COD2). However, despite the critical receptions that have been on a constant and annual decline, the CoD franchise has also been fortifying its place as the top seller and the benchmark of the FPS genre. Ever increasingly ridiculous single-player campaigns and the aging graphics are completely irrelevant to its growing army of fans. Because the game WORKS. And now, much like the Madden franchise, COD is a franchise that the majority of its fans pretty much take as granted purchase on a yearly basis.

On the other hand, Bad Company 2 / 1943 games aside, Battlefield 3 is relatively a new player to the much larger market with the consoles, virtually non-existant players during the days of Battlefield 2/2142, dictating the rules of the game. With the release of COD’s next Modern Warfare 3 just less than a month away and as the non 'day 1' reviews start trickling out, the flood of lash-backs citing stability from both its fans and now critics are starting to point to something that’s becoming a little more than a ‘shaky launch’.

I've only recently been able to start getting a proper taste of the Battlefield 3’s multiplayer myself, thanks to only recently having fixed all my issues that prohibited me from ever starting a proper multiplayer game (turning off uPnP and my Anti-Virus did the trick for me). When you CAN play it, Battlefield 3 is a fantastic game with very few flaws. It’s just so sad to see one of few games that still remembers and sticks to its roots in PC gaming stutter so hard in its launch with its main competitor (that remembers anything BUT its roots in PC gaming) lurking with anticipation just less than a month away.

Seven ways 'Battlefield 3' is currently being fixed (Allegedly)

2011-11-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

Admist the shitstorm that's been pummeling the launch of Battlefield 3, DICE/EA were kind enough to give us an update on all the fixes that are currently in the works. Here's the supposed list of issues that have been fixed or are about to be after the jump.

In my experience, most of these issues are still very much there. We'll see about the rest that are labeled 'Fix Pending'.

Quick Match Functionality

Status: "Improved" - Is it console people? We don't use this at all on the PC.

Creating and Joining Squads in Matches (Console)

Status: "Fix pending in the very near future"

Hardcore Servers not staying Hardcore after a certain amount of time

Status: "Improved"

Lag and rubber banding

Status: "Fix just rolled out."

Default Region Setting in Browser conflicting with Battlelog (PC)

Status: "Fix pending in the very near future"

Stability

Status: "Greatly improved!" - I don't think so, it's gotten WORSE for some people.

Origin-related Issues

Status: "Fix pending in the very near future"

The original post from the Battlefield 3 blog, the official source of all PR for everything Battlefield 3 related, is here.

Some big updates.

2011-10-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

Added a video section for any videos I create and upload to YouTube that pertain to this blog's content.

Added a BUNCH of updates and fixes to the Weapons/Unlocks section. Almost all information is now listed except the Vehicle / Specialization perks.

I will finish the rest of the information page later after I am done working on the tutorial of the stealth component of 'Exfiltration' on HARD difficulty (NOT a guide for the 'NINJA!' achievement, which btw is nowhere near as difficult). The Current uncut version is below.

Battlefield 3: The weird crappy shadows in my BF3 videos?

2011-10-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

To the couple of you that saw my video and asked this question, here's the answer after the jump.

TLDR - It's the NVIDIA drivers that allegedly caused this issue. It is currently known to affect 8, 9, and the 200 series.

According to the article released by DSO Gaming, it seems the 285.62 drivers released by NVIDIA causes the shadows to be corrupted and the frames to stutter on certain older series of cards, the 8, 9, and the 200 series cards to be more specific.

I've been seeing weird shadows on these cards in the past, but I must say the shadow corruption in BF3 is particularly bad. As opposed to simply turning off advanced shadow effects to mitigate the flickering/corrupted shadows as I had in the past, there is no option in Battlefield 3 but to completely disable ALL shadow effects to bypass the problem if you're an unlucky owner of these series of video cards.

It's a shame, because NVIDIA's latest 285.62 drivers excel otherwise on my relatively aged/outdated GTX 275, which is now sitting at well over 2 years old. I've been getting away with High, sometimes even Ultra settings and on my TV/monitor resolution of 1920x1080 WHILE recording via FRAPS.

I've not seen these corrupted shadows in the little time I've spent on multiplayer so far (not enough time sink my teeth into them between WoW raids, recording/encoding/uploading singleplayer videos, and etc). And this is worrisome to me, cause I've got a sneaky feeling this issue just might stick around as long as the problem stays limited to singleplayer, despite the NVIDIA employee stating otherwise in the article linked earlier.

It'd be nice to see a fix for this before I get around to some of the more epic segments of the campaign before I finish uploading my playthrough series.

Battlefield 3: SP Playthroughs Parts 1-3

2011-10-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

I would have the whole campaign uploaded by now if it wasn't for A. my crappy time warner cable's upload, and B. my tiny tiny hard drive that prohibits me from recording 8 hours of video capture at once.

The system settings are mixtures of Ultra, High, and a single setting on Medium and captured in full 1080p (1920x1080 on PC).

Here are the first two levels divided into three parts after the jump.

Battlefield 3 Playthrough - Ep. 1: Semper Fidelis (1080p)

Battlefield 3 Playthrough - Ep. 2: Operation Swordbreaker Pt. 1 (1080p)

Battlefield 3 Playthrough - Ep. 3: Operation Swordbreaker Pt. 2 (1080p)

Battlefield 3: Assault Kit + Engineer Unlocks Revealed/Summarized

2011-10-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

EDIT1: Just finished and added the Engineer Kit Unlocks page.

Finally got around to summarizing all the Assault Kit unlocks.

I will be posting the unlock information for the rest of the Kits as well.

No multiple pages and links for you to bounce around through, even though this means less clickity clicks for me (SO CLICK ON MA ADS GIMME MOAH WOW MONEY).

All of the the unlock kits will be available as a non-blog post on this site under the navigation bar.

Enjoy.

"Battlefield 4" Trailer

2011-10-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

Freddie Wong of the YouTube fame has created a fan-made 'trailer' for 'Battlefield 4'.

It's no different than the other fantastic videos he's released so far, but this time it's with a touch of Battlefield instead of the usual inspiration from the COD/CS series.

Battlefield 3: Launch Trailers

2011-10-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

The launch of Battlefield 3 is only a couple days away, here are the three newest trailers EA has released so far.

TV Commercial - Oct 22, 2011

The multiplayer and singleplayer trailers are after the jump.

Multiplayer Trailer - Oct 18, 2011

Singleplayer Trailer - Oct 21, 2011

Yet another set of old videos.

2011-10-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a set of PRE-NERF Firelands 25-man boss videos on Normal Difficulty from my guild (we're recruiting btw).

Kinda made these at the last minute the week they announced the nerfs were coming (the week after!!), so sadly I didn't have the leverage of picking fancy/clean kills. It was one sloppy ass week.

These are older than the 1080p test session I did, so they only go up to 720p.

5 more videos after the jump...

Occu'thar (10) - Holy Priest Solo Healed (1080p Fraps/YT Stress Test)

2011-10-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

This is a test post.

Enjoy a test video (for 1080p FRAPS stress/YouTube codecs).