Report: Battlefield 3′s bumpy road to success – BETA, Server Problems and Feedback
Richard Newton Investigates; A chance to take a look at the bumpy road towards Battlefield 3's 'Success'.
No-one is denying Battlefield 3 will be a leader among online shooters, more than comfortable slugging it out with the likes of Call of Duty and, well, that's pretty much all we're comparing it to right now.
However, the launch of EA's insanely anticipated modern shooter may not have been as smooth and trouble free as many of the developers (and the customers) had wished.
Any game's launch may have a few bugs that need squishing, a day one patch (which was worth a whopping 100+ mb) may be considered more of a slight annoyance than anything worth writing home about, but Battlefield 3's launch has been slightly smeared by a host of server issues, Origin activation errors and console confusion. A quick look on Battlefield 3's official blog, Facebook and Twitter feed shows the developers are hard at work fixing, or acknowledging problems. More so than thanking anyone for compliments or basking in post-launch bliss.
While it's nice to see a developer so transparently recognize and fix bugs, many of us are scratching our heads thinking "Surely this is what the BETA was for?" It wouldn't be unfair to say the Battlefield 3 BETA split the online community, those who accepted "It's only a BETA" and those who found the bugs and issues too obvious and too frequent to even be in a BETA. Maybe gamers these days simply expect too much? In some ways people do need to be educated about the development process (From Alpha all the way to launch).
What both parties will agree on now, however, is that all the server stress testing, the bug hunting and exploit finding in the BETA should have been used to fix the final product. This doesn't seem to have been much the case. Speaking as someone who played both the BETA and the final product I have noticed that the worst of the worst has been sorted out. No more falling through the map, no more dodgy animations nor character models contorting into shapes unimaginable by the human mind - I have also been lucky not to suffer any server or Origin activation errors. But many are reporting major issues that completely break the game.
Touring the Twitter feed and looking at Battlefield's replies you can see a whole host of problems people are having:
- Not being able to stay in squads with friends
- PCs freezing and disconnecting
- Origin activation problems
- Server browser confusions for console players (console's rarely have a server browser)
- Not being able to join a game
- Server preferences unchangeable
- Major performance issues
There are even some design elements that are usually standard issue for games like Battlefield 3. Without them, certain elements begin to feel tedious and somewhat annoying...
- The ability to honk a horn in a car, a staple in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 "Get in or get the hell out of my way"
- Not being able to quit games during the final score break down
- Not being able to access the load out menu during kill cam
I remember my review for Brink, in which I discussed by admiration for the game for trying something new and how it would benefit from the Team Fortress 2 school of updating and bug fixes. It seems Battlefield 3 may have inadvertently took this approach too, however, I feel less sympathetic towards EA's mega shooter than I did Splash Damage's experimental multiplayer.
Battlefield 3's launch should have been a lot sleeker, smoother and all round tighter. While most of us will eventually all be flying jets around Caspian Border sooner or later, the fellows at DICE and EA are probably learning a big lesson on this one.
It's always interesting to think how the 'opposition' (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3) will cope with the day one server stress, possible glitches/bugs and the inevitable balancing issues. Maybe they're just little bit more veteran to the modern 'warfare' which takes place with server issues and the like.
Links for various issues and bug fixes can be found here,
I do hope it levels out soon.
