Battlefield 3's Pre-Order Firepower Upsets Gamers

Trust EA to find a way to fuck up and taint the release of a game everyone seems to be looking forward to. Cumshot publisher FTL.
 
castun said:
Wasn't it just for show anyway?
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Yes, but it was this step which legitimized the concept of monetizing piddly extra content which used to be made available for free or created by the community.

All the apologists uniformly declared that this was innocuous and that you simply did not have to buy it if you didn't want to, whilst all the cynics and detractors argued that this would lay the foundations for the industry to move towards a model where profit is maximized by breaking up a game and selling it to users in pieces.

Look how far we have come since that day. :(
 
No mod tools
No proper server software; server rentals only.
Ever-growing list of launch DLC months before release.

Aside from graphics, BF3 appears to be falling short of Battlefield 1942 in every way.

images
 
The dev's already discussed the modding tools. It would take them significantly more time to work on releasing modding tools for people to use and add a lot to development time. Some might argue they just release their internal tools but whatever.

It does suck, good news is that I heard id is still planning on releasing tools for Rage and source-code for the engine when they can.
 
From the Battlefield 3 thread here:

sirmonkey1985 said:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/hy24b/battlefield_3_preorder_dlc_boycott_coordination/

looks like DICE is working with reddit to nip this crap in the butt on the DLC content EA is trying to force on them. they have all the links needed to send in letters to EA to make them change this crap.
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I think EA should just make it like the SPECTAT DLC or the pre-order deals for MOH and BFBC2 if they insist on putting this shit in the game...pre-order to get the content unlocked at launch while letting those who don't pre-order unlock the weapons/ammo/hats through levelling up as normal.
 
Blazestorm said:
The dev's already discussed the modding tools. It would take them significantly more time to work on releasing modding tools for people to use and add a lot to development time. Some might argue they just release their internal tools but whatever.

It does suck, good news is that I heard id is still planning on releasing tools for Rage and source-code for the engine when they can.
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People who mod are nuts anyway. They could and would use the same tools the original devs worked with, as has been proven more than a few times and with more than a few games, where the dev tools were leaked on the net.

Hell, this goes all the way back to the original doom, and those tools were primitive at best. And yet, we still had a lot of free mods, because the mod makers were just that crazy.
 
spugnor said:
People who mod are nuts anyway. They could and would use the same tools the original devs worked with, as has been proven more than a few times and with more than a few games, where the dev tools were leaked on the net.

Hell, this goes all the way back to the original doom, and those tools were primitive at best. And yet, we still had a lot of free mods, because the mod makers were just that crazy.
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Problem is that the tools aren't always sufficient for mods. I mean they could release the level design tools, and whatever is needed to pack and unpack the files and all that, but that might be all the more tools they have.

See for a moddable engine, you have to design it so that a lot can be changed without access to the source code. That means implementing some kind of powerful scripting system. UnrealScript would be a good example. Lets you mod up the game in major ways with no source.

Well the problem is that takes more time to develop than to just do everything in the engine itself. There are reasons to do it aside from mods, but those often lose out to the fact that it is easier, quicker, and cheaper to just do everything in your development environment directly.

So if they don't make it moddable, well releasing their internal tools could do very little other than allow for new maps to be made. I'm not saying that is worthless, but isn't really what people are wanting when they talk modding. They mean changing how the game operates. For that, you have to do some fundamental different design on the engine.

That's why you'll see games that do no DLC at all not bother with modding. Because it isn't as easy as it sounds, and few companies are ever willing to give away their source code.
 
Blazestorm said:
The dev's already discussed the modding tools. It would take them significantly more time to work on releasing modding tools for people to use and add a lot to development time. Some might argue they just release their internal tools but whatever.
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I've seen those interviews before...one guy said it the tools were "too complex" for the modding community to use.

Saying modders are a bunch of dumbfucks who are too stupid to use DICE's tools and/or saying they couldn't release their own tools is just a smokescreen by DICE/EA. It's clear to everyone that they just want to sell as much DLC as possible.

Sucks, too. They came out during the initial development phases acting like they were bringing back the good old days and garnered a lot of goodwill doing it, cheating their way into a positive light. But as development continues, they've slowly been revealing that they're every bit as uninterested in their gaming community as Activision. Maybe their strategy was "break it to them slowly".
 
This is a new milestone for DICE though. They fucked up the game balance 5 MONTHS BEFORE RELEASE.
 
0mega said:
You children pay extra to pre order games? Maybe Canada has some law that makes people less stupid (Retailers specificially) But everything I've ever put towards preordering a game has gone towards PAYING for the game, not the right to buy it...
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Nobody pays extra to pre-order. It's an incentive.
 
fattypants said:
I've seen those interviews before...one guy said it the tools were "too complex" for the modding community to use.

Saying modders are a bunch of dumbfucks who are too stupid to use DICE's tools and/or saying they couldn't release their own tools is just a smokescreen by DICE/EA. It's clear to everyone that they just want to sell as much DLC as possible.

Sucks, too. They came out during the initial development phases acting like they were bringing back the good old days and garnered a lot of goodwill doing it, cheating their way into a positive light. But as development continues, they've slowly been revealing that they're every bit as uninterested in their gaming community as Activision. Maybe their strategy was "break it to them slowly".
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I've been waiting for when this would slowly dawn on the gaming community clamoring for BF3. I'm surprised how short memories are regarding how badly we got screwed with BF2.

You guys don't remember the weapons and vehicles that were promoted on the tv ads and even the retail box art for fuck's sake that never made it into the game?
the major blow-up when EA/DICE dragged their feet to release mod tools...not that it mattered given the points and awards that could only be earned on ranked servers thereby guaranteeing empty mod servers?
the incessant crashing that made every BF2 player I know of re-install the game weekly or monthly, I don't even know. But the joke was if you installed it something *always* broke...sometimes you would get blank screens, sometimes you'd get missing sound, sometimes you'd get bluescreens. A virtual grab-bag of crapola.

and the best (and funny given this thread's content) was the total fiasco of air balancing? Nerfing the blackhawk into uselessness after the first patch, refusing to fix the jets until the last patch, never giving soldiers hand held AA, the list of complaints against BF2 is endless.

there's a reason people still hearken to BF1942 as the highlight of the series. Sometimes I think it's simply nostalgia and hope that keeps people wedded to the BF series because the following iterations have never lived up to the original. Well that and the fact it's one of the few games that incorporates (almost--'42 was best in this regard, as well) all the tools of warfare and spits 64 players onto the battlefield at once.
 
No it isn't nostalgia. BF1942 had awesome airplane fights....prop-driven planes aren't so fast that they traverse the entire map in seconds.

Along with multiplayer aircraft like the B17, pre ENEMY INFANTRY SPOTTED bullshit, I can keep coming up with reasons. This is easy.
 
Lengradde said:
No it isn't nostalgia. BF1942 had awesome airplane fights....prop-driven planes aren't so fast that they traverse the entire map in seconds.

Along with multiplayer aircraft like the B17, pre ENEMY INFANTRY SPOTTED bullshit, I can keep coming up with reasons. This is easy.
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You misread what I wrote.

And I don't even understand how you managed to do so since you did exactly what I wrote--exalting '42 while completely ignoring the ton of fiascos that followed it :confused:
EA is a piece of shit developer and has been for over five years now. This latest example of that should come as no surprise.

It's nostalgia over '42 and hope that the next BF game will shine like the original that keeps people coming back for more abuse.
BF2 couldn't do it, 2142 couldn't deliver, Bad Company 1 & 2 didn't either, so what makes people imagine that BF3 is going to?
 
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Crap. Sorry I just woke up. I guess I'll need a rather large cup of coffee this morning.
 
You are going to have a group of people who will whine no matter what about anything they can find. These are the same people who have been crying for months about lack of commander, commo rose and mod tools.

Maybe Battlefield 3 is not the game for some people. If you aren't happy with the way the game is going stop crying about it and simply don't buy it. I'm still trying to figure out how one weapon, gimped shotgun shells and a flash hider on what will probably be a shit sniper is considered ruined balance..

The drama queens are out in full force!
 
Liqq said:
You are going to have a group of people who will whine no matter what about anything they can find. These are the same people who have been crying for months about lack of commander, commo rose and mod tools.

Maybe Battlefield 3 is not the game for some people. If you aren't happy with the way the game is going stop crying about it and simply don't buy it. I'm still trying to figure out how one weapon, gimped shotgun shells and a flash hider on what will probably be a shit sniper is considered ruined balance..

The drama queens are out in full force!
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Here's one thing you should consider:
Regardless of whether you think the pre-order items unbalance the game, this decision by EA seals the fate against having competitive play in BF3.
 
Well perhaps there is some internal conflict going on between Dice and EA at the moment. All the negative publicity from this could possibly give the Dice devs more weight with future marketing decisions. Or not, I'm not sure how that relationship between them works.
 
_PixelNinja said:
I have a solution to all your qualms:

Stop. Fucking. Preordering. Games.
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I dont see how that solves anything. :p You dont preorder... so you dont get the bonus guns, problem not solved. You dont preorder... it doesn't stop them from making the guns preorder only, problem not solved. ;)
 
Tudz said:
I dont see how that solves anything. :p You dont preorder... so you dont get the bonus guns, problem not solved. You dont preorder... it doesn't stop them from making the guns preorder only, problem not solved. ;)
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You are looking at this from a short term perspective. I am not referring to BF3 in particular but video games as a whole (even though both are related). If people didn't get so pulled in to preordering games we would not have all this 'exclusive preorder downloadable content' in the first place.

I'm being Captain Obvious here but they are not doing this to 'reward' anybody, they are doing this because they want to make sure they get your money before the game is even out and at full price. I just do not understand how people can preorder a game without even knowing what it's going to be like... I understand even less these same people when they complain about being robbed of their money because the game turns out to be a disappointment.

Don't want to endure these day zero DLCs? Don't encourage the companies and don't preorder their games -- be patient and wait and see if they really deserve your hard earned money.
 
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Well, can't say this pre-order deal surprises me any. Things like this are why I won't buy BF3. Medics with M60's spawn camping opposing team was what killed BFBC2 for me, so wasting my money for more of the same isn't in the cards.
 
RW2112 said:
Well, can't say this pre-order deal surprises me any. Things like this are why I won't buy BF3. Medics with M60's spawn camping opposing team was what killed BFBC2 for me, so wasting my money for more of the same isn't in the cards.
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Medics with M60s spawn-camping had nothing to do with pre-orders or DLC...
 
mope54 said:
This article is written by a POE dev and sets the record straight on DICE's historical "support" for mod tools
http://www.battlefieldnexus.com/ind...upport-and-dice-–-setting-a-myth-straight-r33
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I actually thought that was the case, but could not find any concrete evidence to support it. I just vaguely remember very old interviews with Frank Delise about how development of Desert Combat was initially hampered because DICE did not release any official modding tools and therefore they were reliant on alpha tools developed by the community.

Has anyone developed any mods for BC2? What are the odds that they can do the same thing for BF3?
 
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/14/bf3-preorder-dlc/

Following an online campaign that involved many, many upset emails to EA and DICE’s major executives – plus the rather less executive but rather more innocent staff of Rock, Paper, Shotgun – regarding a decision to make a trio of Battlefield 3 in-game items a retail pre-order exclusive, the great machine has settled on a public response to the matter. But not a climb down. DICE have posted a brief reply to the controversy, intended to appease fears that the Physical Warfare Pack (coming soon: the Metaphysical Warfare pack) will grant a frightful in-game advantage.

It’s all done via a rather stern FAQ. I’ve picked out the most pertinent bits for you:

Q: Will Physical Warfare Pack imbalance the game?
A: The three exclusive items in the Physical Warfare Pack were specifically chosen not to be overpowered or imbalance or break the game in any way.

Q: Why do I want the Physical Warfare Pack?
A: Owning these items will give you a more varied arsenal, but it will not give you a significant advantage on the battlefield.

So that’s the promise. I’m inclined to believe them even if I’m not a fan of the practice. Whether that’s actually addressing the main complaint – that BF fans who don’t purchase the game from a specific shop for a specific price aren’t getting the ‘full’ BF3 experience – remains another matter. This will perhaps be contingent on the Funosity(TM) and EpicWarability(R) on the three scoolsive items.

Here’s another bit from the FAQ, which I must confess made me snicker.

Q: Why do you offer pre-order bonus items?
A: Because we believe in rewarding our core fanbase with special offers — such as giving them the Back to Karkand expansion pack at no extra charge.

So nothing at all to do with ensuring more in-store marketing and selling more copies of the game at full-whack pricing, then? Sorry, I must have got preorders completely wrong. Don’t know what I was thinking.

Regarding the Back To Karkand DLC pack, DICE have this to say: “There is no way you can pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition and not end up with the Back to Karkand expansion pack at no extra charge. On top of this, select retailers all over the world will carry the Physical Warfare Pack. Exact details for other countries and retailers will be announced at a later date.”

Which, of course, heavily implies you’ll be able to fork out extra to get your hands on the Karkand pack if you don’t preorder the limited edition. Let’s just hope its maps don’t prove some of the game’s most popular, eh? I can see why people are upset, why they might perceive this as being punished for not buying the game in the most officially-desired way.

This kind of thing isn’t going away, of course. The only real way to reduce its power is for gamers en masse to stop pre-ordering games and thus convince publishers that there isn’t a market for such incentives. Unfortunately, the words ‘limited edition’ retain a terrible, terrible power.
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I hate this "retailer exclusive" shit. It gives the retailers even more power and the lucky ones who get to carry the "bonus content" can pretty much charge whatever they want for it.

I can pre-order BF3 through import for $50 or so for PC, but if I want this poxy content I have to pay $100-$120 for the same fucking game.
 
"With BF3 we are also releasing the Physical Warfare Package. We particularly want recon players to play more tightly with squads so we added a flash surpressor."

you: "Wauw, that sounds cool. I already preordered because I am a big fan of the series. How do I...."

"You cant have it, fuck you"
 
Do we know anything about "origin" the digital distribution system? I assume there is not chance of this being on steam at launch?

I just want all my games in one place.....
 
I don't know why people are saying it will imbalance the game. The items in Physical Warfare pack kinda suck, its only exclusive weapon is the starter LMG in BC2 (yea that thing was so overpowered :rolleyes:).

Back to Karkand Expansion probably will not release when the game releases. DICE has already said plenty of times that they do not have a release date for Back to Karkand Expansion yet. Granted you can also purchase the expansion after the game releases like BC2: Vietnam Expansion.

DICE has always given out its DLC for free a few years after the game has released. They did it with BF2's booster packs, BC1's exclusive weapons (they weren't actually game changing either), and sooner or later BC2.

Exclusive maps (PS they are not exclusive) hardly split the community. Go into BF2 and see how many people still play stock maps vs the booster packs. Go into any CoD game and see how many play stock maps vs DLC maps. You guys need to get realistic here. Just looking for a reason to complain about something that isn't even game breaking.
 
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