Battlefield 3 Controversy

[spoodie]

How about the controversial server browser outside of the game that I've been hearing about? According to testers it's fine, but I'm sure people could get themselves worked up about if they tried.

[Thompy]

As long as it really does take as little action and time as in game (supposedly much less) then it'll be fine. But it's not a procedure normally done, and with alt-tabbing being so broken/unsupported in many games it's easy to see why people will complain despite the positive reports.

[mrbobbins]

Perhaps they could put in killable civilians but make you sit through a lengthy unskippable court martial cut scene after each round.

[buzzmong]

How about the controversial server browser outside of the game that I've been hearing about? According to testers it's fine, but I'm sure people could get themselves worked up about if they tried.

Considering DICE's inability to write server browsers, if it works half decently in the first place I'll be happy.

[deject]

The web server browser does work fine, I've used it. It's a complete and utter non-issue.

[spoodie]

Do you quit the game to join a new server from the browser or is it a alt-tabbing type thing?

[deject]

Do you quit the game to join a new server from the browser or is it a alt-tabbing type thing?

I didn't try alt-tabbing at all but I am pretty sure that works just fine.

The thing is the game starts up really really fast. I was loading up and joining games from the web server browser just as fast or faster than I can in Bad Company 2 from the in-game browser. It really isn't an issue. The only thing I didn't like was there was no offline options, so you had to join a server to even change the resolution or graphics details.

It works better than any previous Battlefield game and the game loads up really quickly.

[buzzmong]

The only thing I didn't like was there was no offline options, so you had to join a server to even change the resolution or graphics details

Seems strange, especially as some options will probably require a restart.

Hopefully if that's the case for the retail version then the settings are in a plain text file somewhere.

[spoodie]

Hmm, that could be a bit fiddly initially. Especially if you like to check and tweak the settings for optimal FPS with the shiniest settings your system can handle. Only if any of the settings require a restart of course, like buzz said. Still, not a big issue and perhaps they'll do something about it in the meantime.

[deject]

The only thing I didn't like was there was no offline options, so you had to join a server to even change the resolution or graphics details

Seems strange, especially as some options will probably require a restart.

Hopefully if that's the case for the retail version then the settings are in a plain text file somewhere.

Nope, no restart needed for any options, just like in BC2. It's more just that it would be nice to be able to do that sort of stuff while not on a live multiplayer server counting against your stats. Since it was the alpha test it wouldn't surprise me if that changed to give you a little options dialog that you can mess with things outside of the game, like a lot of games have these days.

To be honest y'all be surprised at how many of you can just set it all to MAX DETAILZ (except for anti-aliasing possibly) and just run with it.

[deject]

The point I really want to make about BF3 is that a lot of the assumptions people will want to make just don't apply and it's not going to be apparent that they don't unless you see it for yourself. Either through changing the structure of the game engine so that you can change every option in the game on the fly or a total paradigm shift so that there are almost no in-game menus, what you're used to is gone, generally for the better in BF3's case. From what I've seen, it's a bold step forward and I think DICE is succeeding in it. The beta test is coming later this month, so by that time most of the game will probably be sorted exactly how it'll be in the release version but even in the alpha version it's looking quite good.