After the hackers had their fun and the servers finally calmed down, we’ve all had a good few days to enjoy DICE’s latest adrenaline-fuelled online shooter in all its glory. Battlefield 1 lets up to 64-players loose in a very idealised version of The Great War, battling for territory using an array of land, sea and air vehicles.
For the Battlefield 1 open beta we’ve had to make do with just the Sinai Desert. A sand-filled barren land, Sinai desert has a circle of five or so checkpoints in the top half, along with a lone capture point down near the bottom.
I love what I’ve played of the beta so far but I’m not overly enamored with some of the map and mode design choices DICE has applied. Sinai Desert itself is bereft of cover between any but the ‘C’ capture point. A decent sniper can hold A while freely attacking B.
Likewise the ticketing system does Battlefield 1 no favours. The ticket count flows upwards rather than downwards, rising quicker the more capture points a team holds. The team with the most points at the end of the 20 minute matches wins. Not only is 20 minutes too short, but getting no team reward for killing a player means there is no incentive to go to a contested flag. Just circle around in a jeep hoovering up all the uncontested flags and you’ll scoop an easy victory. Fun for the first lap around, but not by the third or fourth. Sinai Desert’s design doesn’t help here either; the circular layout seems to encourage players to flow from point to point in a circle rather than encouraging strategic advantages or key choke points.
But despite all this I absolutely adore the spectacle. Every match there’s one or two moments which full like they’ve been plucked from a full-blown cinematic experience. Where that’s shooting a fighter plane out of the sky which then lands on and destroys a bomber of the way down. Or holding out an outpost almost single handedly as two tanks roll in, blitzing it to smithereens in the process.
I’ve played about 10 hours but for now I’m going to stop. I like what I see but I don’t want to burn out on the single map that’s available. An injection of variety is certainly needed, but it’s always worth bearing in mind this is just a limited beta test. I also believe Battlefield 1 will drastically change when more players get their hands on gear like the anti-tank rockets. From the start tanks are OP as hell, but there are methods to decrease their potency further down the line.
For now I think it’s a promising start, although the mish-mashing of traditional Battlefield with Star Wars: Battlefront certainly won’t be for everyone. It’s chaotic, dumb fun, and I just want more of it.
Over to you now, what have you made of the BF1 beta so far? Has it affected your decision to buy Battlefield 1 at launch or not? Anybody disappointed? Let us know!
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Neither of the poll options, if i had to name my own option, it would be "Might not skip this installment of Battlefield"
It has been very enjoyable for a Beta, since my last BF experience was vanilla BF3. FPS has been slightly lacking in Sandstorms, as those drop me to 25, compared to clear weather 58 FPS average.
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I keep hwinfo64 up and running, to check temperatures, voltages, etc. I've noticed with this game that I get GPU memory errors while playing it. I don't get those errors with any other game (including Deus Ex Mankind Divided). I haven't played any Battlefield game since 2142, and I didn't have hwinfo running when I played Battlefront beta, so I'm not sure if it's maybe this game engine that's doing this... I'm not overheating, and I'm not not overclocked on my GPU, aside from factory overclock, and I thought memory errors only occurred on a GPU...
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...if you had overclocked the VRAM past a certain ratio (-1.25-1.4) over the GPU core clock. Anyway, it doesn't crash, although I do notice weird texture stretching/artifacting sometimes. Aside from that, it seems to run fine at ultra settings, 60FPS, at 1080, 42% resolution render scale, which is, from what I read, actually the full native resolution, although it's confusing to read that as 42 when it's actually 100%. My temperatures seem okay, although it does seem CPU heavy, pushing my normal load temperatures. My GPU temps had been around 65 degrees,
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..but playing yesterday, they shot up to 68, even my VRM temperatures shot up past what they had been. It shouldn't be my GPU fans acting up, either, because I just recently replaced those and redid all the thermal compound/pads... It's weird, it's like it was just during that one game yesterday, which is also when I had that item spawn bug..
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So far my favorite part of Bugfield is deploying with no weapons at all. Oh, deploying right in the middle of gunfire is awesome too.
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did you get the one with the jeep? its my favorite. You are all driving merrily and suddenly it dissapears and you are all walking xD
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I've heard about that happening on the official forums, lmao
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Hahaha I had this happen to me yesterday when I played. I'd heard of the "no weapons" spawn bug, but I had the one that gave me some of my weapons... I was playing medic and had my primary weapon, but apparently my sidearm didn't some with me. So when I emptied the clip on my rifle and went to my sidearm, it wasn't there... Also, my medic's syringe wasn't there, so you can imagine my frustration when I tried to revive someone, only to come up empty... Also my grenades and apparently the ability to melee had also disappeared (no melee weapon, either).
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You need to buy a weapon on customize menu when before playing, it happened to me.
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Ah okay, thanks I'll try that
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Get revived and then your weapon will bug. Disappearing and appearing rapidly XD
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It's more enjoyable to play than BF4, for me.
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kills more than 40 people and not have death...tanks are so pwerfull...you cant throw grenade because 1 out of 5 guys in tank will kill you...overall air balance is good compared to bf4...and horses are so good for capturing points:) 7/10
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The 1 person light tank is over powered. I played rush with 2 other friends, they had both the light tank and got a 40/0 and 36/0 k/d while I was struggling with my medic rifle
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Agreed, hahaha I was getting killed continuously by one of those somebody had parked up on that stone archway, I think near Objective F. Granted, it was my fault for running into its line of fire... But he definitely had the advantage with area denial vs. infantry.
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I'll most definitely get it. But I havent been enjoyng the beta all that much. The map is quite mediocre (I only enjoy play on 2 or 3 objectives at most) and there are still are a ton of bugs. Not being able to revive people or ,my favorite, capturing a point and getting the car that spawns there only to have it dissapear on you 30 seconds later and you and all your friends are suddenly walking in the middle of the desert without having any idea wtf happened lol xD. I think this happens when the car is still alive somewhere else but the game spawns it again anyway on the flag you captured and then realises its mistake and takes it back. Also I'm not really digging the guns but I just need to get more used to them probably. I'm curious to see if I will like this more than my beloved bf4 in the end.
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Gameplay gets stale after about 5 hours, most probably due to having 1 map.
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That wont be a prob with the game
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EA are doing a great job with this game and it's evident through the beta. For a beta, it's well polished and optimized already. The gameplay is really fun. I had my doubts but i'm having more fun than I already have with BF4. I really love the new(?) weapons and how they reload. They seem to have really done their research. Definitely buying on day one.
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you must first of all keep in mind this is a beta ! beside the optimisation ( fps drop...) the beta is a huge success no disconnection/fast joining / no hanging ingame .. pre ordered the game already.i dont know how am i going to spend the 45 days till the launch of the game -_-
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Buy on Day 1, no pre-orders.
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preordered it because our currency is getting lower every day XD
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Yea right. When i started on day 1 i had lag something like my ping is high. And the server kicked me out cuz of poor connections when my ping is 34. Great game...
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@Mm123456 My ping has never been under 120 in any BF game :(
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i have a poor cnx : dowload speed 260-400 ko/s my ping is around 60-70
try changing your dns server, usally google servers are the fastest
try a dns bench to see which one with the lowest respons time
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the lag depends of the weather ingame, when it is extra sunny with winds and sand it lags as hell, when it gets cloudy we notice an fps boost.
there are two types of day one : insider members started to play since 30/8
other people started from 31/8 :at that day ea servers got stormed by ddos attack, that might
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explain why you got kicked
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The game is great, amazing graphics I will definitely purchase it. However one map is getting seriously annoying but it doesn't changes the fact that it is a good game. I just wish they could give the map they showed in the alpha as well../
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Might not buy because of what EA is doing with nations and DLCs.
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Look at it from the bright side, you won't have to kill soldiers of your nation when you are in the other team.
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That is true though :D
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Lets say that the complete game is 130 euro and comes in parts over the next years.
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Ah you wish. They are going to give us those premium DLCs and a couple of free maps if we're lucky and they are going to move on to the next game
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The game is great so far and i will most definitely purchase it once i gather enough $ :) I enjoy destroying everything and the new ragdoll :)
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I'll buy a couple days after release so I can be sure it's actually a stable release. The beta has tons of bugs that remind me of battlefield 4. nobody wants to be reminded of the battlefield 4 launch
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this game is perhaps the best in the series....with that being said....i really hate the "no-weapon" bug...when you spawn in a car, jumps out and find urself in the middle of a warzone with no weapons drawn
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how old are you? probably never played 1942 or bc2?
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I've played both of those and still think BF1 could be the best so far.
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I just cant get how you can guess someone's age based on ''this might be the best in the series'' comment.
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i didn't mean it like that!!! I just ment that bf 1942 is an old game and they were amazing for the time... but there goes my rep.
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I dont think it was an agressive comment, but asking for an age can be seen as passive agressive. No worries, your rep is back on track ;)
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Played no BF exept for bf 1942, really enjoy the beta. Gonna be the first game that made me wanna break my "only games that don't require gaming clients" rule (steam is an exception ofc.)
Runs like a dream on my rig, but the game always crashs if I click before the game has finished loading the main menu.
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Disable Origin overlay. Right click on game in Origin, the go to properties. I don't know if you're too late or not.
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Started out with a black screen and some flashing. Had to edit a profile to get up and running!
The biggest issue is NON-team players! Nobody cared about trying to take over control points! They just stood around Sniping! And one or 2 were in tanks camping at spawn points.
So no, did not enjoy it at all!
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Same. I prefer tdm or ffa instead rush abd conquest.
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I'm really enjoying this game but it does not feel like WW1. It feels like WW2. Gameplay is solid though, but the tanks are just soooo OP. The only thing that puts me off is the DLC bs... i don't think i can put up with that.
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PS
Don't you guys feel like it's Battlefront reskin?
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It definitely has a battlefront feeling to it but idk about a reskin. I think they were made on the same engine which might make it feel that way.
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yep, they were made with the same engine, frostbyte 3, which both bf4 and battlefront was made, although I wouldn't say its a reskin of BF4 and battlefront, due to the fact this game features some new vehicles that play differently then in previous Battlefields, the new reconfigured classes, new weapons (I never get why people say the weapons are similar to BF4, how do you want guns to function? its the traditional shooting mechanics.)
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It kind of is a reskin to me. The animations are the same apart from the get in/get out and bayonet charge.
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the desert map
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I know i'll get downvotes for this but can you explain how you know what world war one feels like??? I'm sorry but some comments are really off...
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No, its probably from the fact that WW1 was mostly a trench war, certainly not as active as the game makes it look like. Although, it makes it a lot more fun to play in my opinion (this is subjective). And no, no downvotes for a question that makes sense to ask :)
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Never planned on buying it, and still ain't, not a huge fan of BF or COD, hoping titanfall 2 comes out good, but not gonan pre-order any game this year.
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I had the chance of playing St Quentin Scar and now Sinai desert and I like it. Maybe Sinai is not the best map ever but it is fun globally. And it runs very smooth for me (so far). Definitely will buy it.
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First impression? Star Wars 2. Nothing special really and certainly not worth pre-ordering.