Battlefield 3

[Mr Happy]

Squirrelofwoe said:

Fabric said:

Squirrelofwoe said:

Guvernator said:

Some very good changes and some very dumb ones.

Flares now work on lazer guided missiles! Really?? What is the point of even equiping a Javelin over a stinger of RPG now?

This is the one that puzzled me. I thought they had the JAV/Soflam pretty spot on. YES it could be a powerful combo, but it took teamwork to implement AND tied up a whole squad to be effective.

Not to mention they could quite effectively be over-run by infantry.

I'm a bit confused to that as well, although it does say "can" be distracted rather than "will" be distracted, so perhaps there's stipulations? Maybe if there's multiple AA ordnance fired, only the first airborne one will be affected by flares? I'm interested to see how it plays out first, with the new AA balances in effect before I pass judgement though. I do fear both heli gunners and pilots will equip flares as a workaround though, if this is the case.

I'm not quite sure I like the sound of "-AA Missiles should no longer detonate before hitting their target or a Flare/ECM chaff cloud" either - I thought the sole purpose of the ECM was to counter missiles that were already airborne?

For airborne targets I can only see multiple Javs (or Stingers) being the way forward. Have several firing at the same target with the hope that at least one gets in during the tiny 'flare-reload' window. However for this you surely may as well just use Stingers as they require no Soflam, and you can carry twice as many if not more- at the expense of a bit of range.

Looks like it will make Soflam somewhat redundant.

The thing is, you have ECM/chaff to confuse laser guided missiles, and flares to confuse heat seeking missiles. That's how it is IRL, so why make "super-flares" that can interrupt a LGM lock on????

If it works as it sounds like it will, it's going to end up on some maps (Canals for one) being a case of engi team vs engi team all rocking stingers, while helicopters circle jerk all over everyone... again.

[Oakey]

TEKNOPUG said:

crocodile tears said:

As much as I find people who sit in their base constantly mortaring 'annoying'.. They might aswell remove mortars from the game now.

It’s easy to combat with your won mortar though. I really don’t see the need to patch this.

To stop people on Metro sitting in the building with their mortar probably.

[anonymous-user]

Oakey said:

TEKNOPUG said:

crocodile tears said:

As much as I find people who sit in their base constantly mortaring 'annoying'.. They might aswell remove mortars from the game now.

It’s easy to combat with your won mortar though. I really don’t see the need to patch this.

To stop people on Metro sitting in the building with their mortar probably.

Never sit in a building with a mortar, it's very bad practice

[TEKNOPUG]

Oakey said:

To stop people on Metro sitting in the building with their mortar probably.

But you can only actually hit A, it seems of very limited use

[FUBAR]

I've seen people sitting in the tunnel below B using the mortar and just thought they had been smoking dope. Then I realised the other day (and I employed this tactic yesterday, so I know it works to a degree) that if you are downstairs and fire M320s at certain parts of the floor/wall, you can kill players in the hall above. Now I'm wondering if the dope smoker wasn't so stoned and you can do the same with mortars?

[Mikeyboy]

Squirrelofwoe said:

After a bit of research it seems that laser-designated aircraft still won't get a warning tone to let them know a missile has been launched. So this means it will be up to the skill of the pilot to time the correct moment to deploy the flares. Or they will just spam flares every 11 seconds...

On that I wondered why they allowed flares to block Jav/guided? Couldn't they have written a new unlock of chaff? Then the pilot has to make a choice like in other kits which way he wants to protect himself.
Now this means that helis and jets in the hands of good pilots can just keep making hell for ground troops and there isn't much you can do about them. Certainly the SAM improvements don't seem to be much of an improvement.

The forums on Battlelog were always full of people complaining they were getting shot down too easily by missiles, whereas I've always found the opposite. Now they have made it even easier to avoid missiles.

[Mikeyboy]

Fabric said:

Mikeyboy said:

Why does everyone want horns on jeeps? Never understood that.

Horns are useful for alerting your gunner, who's facing the complete opposite direction doing god knows what, that there's things/troops infront of the keep needing shot at. Worked pretty well in BadCo2 I thought - if the driver's mashing the horn, turn to face whatever he's looking at.

Ah, but again more easily solved by a better VOIP system on a supposedly team based game.

[milner993]

milner993 said:

need some help please people I fly the jets in BF3 all the time and on occasions my cockpit view changes it looks like I have changed seat the target is allot smaller and I prefer flying like it I know how to free look and change the view so I can see the plane but not the cockpit view in the manual it says press x to change seat but nothing happens PLEASE HELP I’m going mad at it. PLEASE

any ideas people

[Squirrelofwoe]

Mikeyboy said:

On that I wondered why they allowed flares to block Jav/guided? Couldn't they have written a new unlock of chaff? Then the pilot has to make a choice like in other kits which way he wants to protect himself.
Now this means that helis and jets in the hands of good pilots can just keep making hell for ground troops and there isn't much you can do about them. Certainly the SAM improvements don't seem to be much of an improvement.

The forums on Battlelog were always full of people complaining they were getting shot down too easily by missiles, whereas I've always found the opposite. Now they have made it even easier to avoid missiles.

Yeah that would have made more sense to me too. I thought that any counter that required good teamwork to use (Jav/Soflam) was a good thing for the game. Now that each target will now need multiple missiles to overcome the innevitable flare spamming, it will surely lead to both teams comprised solely of engineers with RPGs/Stingers, as Mr Happy pointed out above.

I think it depends what side of the fence you are on- all the 'career' helo/jet pilots are continually moaning that they get shot down too easily and that the Javs are overpowered, where as my experience (as playing mostly infantry) suggests it is all too easy for a couple of good helo pilots- with all upgrades- to completely dominate a map and the Jav/Soflam was the only effective tactic to counter it.

I wouldn't have even have minded seeing flares being given a finite amount of uses before requiring a return to deployment to reload- at least this would give ground troops a chance to regroup etc.

But anyway it will be interesting to see how this change pans out.

[The Black Flash]

"-C4 will no longer be detonable after a player respawns, if the player is revived within 5 seconds he can still detonate his C4. "

Booooo


"-The IGLA and Stinger now lock on much more quickly and disable an attack aircraft in 1 hit, but have significantly reduced range. This should allow Stingers to mount an effective close range point defense, without dominating an entire airspace. "

Yaaaay! It was getting tiresome loosing off half a dozen, to get 2 or 3 hits, which don't kill the darn heli anyway.

Unless I'm flying the heli, in which case, Boooooo!

[The Black Flash]

crocodile tears said:

TEKNOPUG said:

crocodile tears said:

As much as I find people who sit in their base constantly mortaring 'annoying'.. They might aswell remove mortars from the game now.

It’s easy to combat with your won mortar though. I really don’t see the need to patch this.

counter mortaring people who are mortaring is the sole reason I have 96 kills with mortars

Exactly! See motar on the mini map = free motar kill for me

[The Black Flash]

Sway said:

When is the patch out?

I think its too early to comment on a lot of the changes - the language they use isn't the clearest, and its always difficult to predict the impact/change in style that balance changes bring.

Doesn't say, the blog post just says:

"...While there still is no ETA on the patch..."

[ZeeTacoe]

so can I go back to sticking C4 on the MAV and EOD bot yet?

[crocodile tears]

ZeeTacoe said:

so can I go back to sticking C4 on the MAV and EOD bot yet?

I think sticking c4 on a mav was overpowered but sticking c4 on a EOD bot is fair game

[crocodile tears]

milner993 said:

milner993 said:

need some help please people I fly the jets in BF3 all the time and on occasions my cockpit view changes it looks like I have changed seat the target is allot smaller and I prefer flying like it I know how to free look and change the view so I can see the plane but not the cockpit view in the manual it says press x to change seat but nothing happens PLEASE HELP I’m going mad at it. PLEASE

any ideas people

never heard of anything like this/experienced this in a jet before... But do you constantly hit the select button to view the scoreboard as you fly? it might be a bug similar to tanks/humvees/etc where it makes all the crosshairs/vehicle view suddenly tiny or 12x super zoom as you've hit change view a split m/s before you've hit the scoreboard?

[FUBAR]

The Black Flash said:

"-C4 will no longer be detonable after a player respawns, if the player is revived within 5 seconds he can still detonate his C4. "

Booooo

And have a boooo from me too. That was one of my fave bits of the game (however unrealistic it might be)

[Glade]

NO MORE OF THIS...

[anonymous-user]

FUBAR said:

The Black Flash said:

"-C4 will no longer be detonable after a player respawns, if the player is revived within 5 seconds he can still detonate his C4. "

Booooo

And have a boooo from me too. That was one of my fave bits of the game (however unrealistic it might be)

I'll miss that too, but it was ridiculous

Great to hear that mines must be spotted to appear on the map, maybe my mine kills can reach BC2 levels

[militantmandy]

Symbolica said:

I'll miss that too, but it was ridiculous

Great to hear that mines must be spotted to appear on the map, maybe my mine kills can reach BC2 levels

it makes sense to me. You stuck c4 to it, unless someone takes it off, why wouldn't it still be there. Alas, it's not that big a deal.

Just had some epic fail\win on wake island. Got in an F35, tried to dive bomb attack a tank. Crash landed beside it, managed to get out. C4'd said tank. Was hilarious. Can't believe the guy didn't notice a jet crashing right beside him.

Any tips for the jets? I'm at a point now where I can fly about reasonably happily, but still struggling to kill stuff and getting shot down a lot. Just unlocked stealth but not tried it yet.

[TEKNOPUG]

I think that it should still be there but you shouldn’t be able to detonate it.