The DICE team are hard at work supporting Battlefield 3. To date, we have implemented several server updates to improve stability and performance. Next week we are publishing a significant Battlefield 3 client update for the PC. Console patches take a bit longer due to the certification requirements for console content, but it will follow shortly after the PC update.
So what’s in the PC patch? You’ll see improved polish, stability, weapons balancing, squad control functionality, user interface enhancements, and several feature enhancements that address feedback the community has provided to date – plus we’re removing the so called “negative mouse acceleration” that some of you have experienced.
Regarding cheating and boosting, we continue to analyze data to identify and hold accountable (ban, wipe stats) players that cheat or boost. We’ve received questions about what to do when faced with unsportsmanlike conduct in Battlefield 3 – the best course of action is to click the warning sign next to their profile name in Battlelog, or head to the EA Help Desk and report your issue. These leads will enable us to follow up on the report.
We appreciate all the feedback. Keep it coming to help us with future improvements. Check back next week to confirm the patch launch date and the detailed fix list. Thanks for playing and sharing your feedback with us!
Hopefully there is a update to quick match as well.
2. Something must be done with the anti aa mobile vehicles, they seem to be too much overpowered, I recently played a large conquest game with 1500 ticket count on Kharg Island and one guy sat in that anti aa vehicle throughout the whole game and he went on killing spree with a score of 25 000 and 72 kills to 9 deaths (I killed him five times so you probably get the point). To put it simple, he unlocked almost all the unlocks for anti aa vehicle in one round, and that shouldn't be.
As promised, DICE will be rolling out a big Battlefield 3 patch tonight, and they’ve released the full change log/fix list, which you can find below:
Visual and performance fixes
General performance and loading time improvements
“Black Screen” fix for an issue occurring on some PC Configurations
Stereo and Rendering Support for Nvidia and AMD Graphics Cards
Adjusted the “stuttering” encountered on some PC configurations.
Fixed several Crashes when joining MP and Co-Op sessions
Fixed multiple problems when using multiple monitors (Eyefinity / Surround).
Fixed visual corruption issues on certain Nvidia Cards
Improved loading times for certain textures
Added console command “GameTime.MaxVariableFps” to limit max FPS
Added console command “UI.DrawEnable” to hide UI for screenshots / videos
Balance and gameplay adjustments
Fixed a problem with high speed mouse movement
Added back some missing Growlers on Kharg Island Conquest Large
Added back EOR sound for SQDM and TDM
You should no longer be able to damage a friendly vehicle when sitting in an open position
Grenades now drop to ground if you get killed while attempting to throw it(note the affect this will have on Hardcore mode!)
Spawn protection now should work in Conquest. You should no longer spawn on points too close to enemies
You should no longer spawn too close to enemies in TDM and SQDM
Combat areas on Kharg Rush tweaked in order to disallow defenders to access the carrier ship after 1st base is taken and being able to enter the AA gun
Fixed a problem with revived players not suffering suppression
Fixed a problem with the camera when being revived in COOP
Added joystick deadzone setting
Fixed sound for when climbing ladders
Fixed an issue with some weapon sounds in first person
Fixed a swim sound loop error
Increased the damage of Helicopter Miniguns, AA guns, and Jet Cannons against infantry
Increased the damage of Helicopter Miniguns against jeeps.
Reduced the physics impact of AA guns and Jet Cannons, players under attack from these weapons should no longer lose control.
Increased the damage of the 44 Magnum slightly.
Increased the range and minimum damage of the .357 Round from the MP412 Rex.
Increased the range of all .45cal and 9mm weapons.
Slightly increased the range of the P90 and MP7 and PDW-R.
Slightly increased the range of the 5.56mm PDW-R and decreased the minimum damage at long range.
Slightly increased the minimum range of the Mk11, SVD, and M39 EMR 7.62mm rifles.
Decreased the maximum damage and maximum range of the G3 and SCAR-H 7.62mm weapons.
Reduced the damage from FIM-92 and SA-18 IGLA missiles against aircraft.
Increased the damage and range of the 40mm BUCK rounds.
Reduced the damage .50cal weapons do against Helicopters.
Updated T90 canister shell tweaks to match Abrams canister shells
UI Changes (PC)
Added round duration and ticket summary at EOR
Advanced squad polish – should be more intuitive
Significant changes to the Join Squad functionality (see below)
Fixed a problem regarding keybindings while playing
You should now get a better error message when being disconnected via Battlelog
Server updates
EOD Bot exploit fix
Several crash fixes
Anti-stat padding measures taken, disallowing ranked servers to run obscure settings
Improved team kill kick configuration
Support for unranked servers. Unranked servers do not report players’ scores to Battlelog, but server administrators can freely control all settings
Squad changes
Removed FIND ME A SQUAD option
Allow players to join empty Squads alone, thus having 1/4 squad members
Change order of options to LEAVE SQUAD, INV A FRIEND, SWITCH TEAM
Disable Privacy flag when 1 man squad
Reset Privacy flag from Private to Public when squad drops to 1 player
All occupied Squads will now show up colored blue on the Squad Selection screen
Players who choose not to join squads will also show up as Blue in the “Not in a Squad” line
Squads that are currently empty will display as white — if you wish to join an empty Squad, you can choose the first one marked with white text
The patch will be released on Nov. 22nd 7:00 AM UTC / Nov. 21st 11:00 PM PST. You can find the full patch release note and changes on Battlelog.
I tried to update 3 times today. It kept going in some weird loop then saying "ready to install."
I rebooted, and the install went away and it said "ready to play." I clicked Play and it said that bf3.exe is not a valid win32 executable.
I uninstalled and now I have to re-download the whole goddamned thing again. Probably the patch too, just to add insult to injury.
What are you complaining about then Beav? How has the patch negatively impacted you in-game? The SCAR was the only thing I associate with you that I saw in the list.
Swanny-CG wrote:I tried to update 3 times today. It kept going in some weird loop then saying "ready to install."
I rebooted, and the install went away and it said "ready to play." I clicked Play and it said that bf3.exe is not a valid win32 executable.
I uninstalled and now I have to re-download the whole goddamned thing again. Probably the patch too, just to add insult to injury.
What are you complaining about then Beav? How has the patch negatively impacted you in-game? The SCAR was the only thing I associate with you that I saw in the list.
It was the server side patch i was complaining about.
They've made it so we cant disable idle kick, and made the minimum start player count 4. The player isnt too much of a problem, its the stupid idle kick thing.
Specs right, i like complaining, i still want my Dr. Pepper dog tags. lol
The latest release (R9) of the BF3 PC game server introduced, among other things, an unranked mode.
At the same time DICE locked down some settings for servers running in ranked mode.
The most prominent ones were:
- PunkBuster is forced active on a ranked server
- Game password is forced off on a ranked server
- Pre-Round player count is forced 4 or higher on a ranked server (default is 8, but can be lowered to 4)
- idle-kick is forced on on a ranked server
Most servers out there run in ranked mode, and there has been a fair bit of negative sentiment regarding the ranked server lock-down.
It seems to be centered around these three things:
- 4 players on a server needed to get out of pre-round
- When in pre-round, players cannot move
- Idle timeout will kick anyone who doesn't touch the mouse/keyboard within 5 minutes
These three in combination are perceived as too restrictive by people. Particularly smaller communities complain that it is much more difficult to populate their servers than it used to be.
Most communities that do not have a large number of members get a good game started on their server by "seeding"; that is, having players hang out on the server - sometimes being idle/away - with the intent of attracting other players. This works because other players are more likely to join a server with players on it than an empty server. Before R9, the server could be set to start the round with just 1 player, so the seeding players could move around on the server and play the game. With R9, the seeders can no longer move. A single person could also seed a server previously. With R9 it is ineffective; other players will learn to avoid servers with <4 players on them as they will also have to wait in pre-round.
Adding the the 5-minute idle kick means that having less than four people seed is not effective, as they will get kicked out of pre-round with regular intervals.
Seeding is positive from a community perspective. More people playing on the community's server equals a happy community. Seeding with idle players is however negative from a pubbing player's perspective. It means that there are servers with players on them, some of which are idle for a long time. To put it bluntly, players that are seeding while idle are false advertising for the server. Seeding is still done because it is one of the few means which communities have to attract players to their servers. There are more people who want to run BF3 servers than is justified by the player base. Therefore, communities use any methods at their disposal to affect other players' to choose to play on their servers.
DICE is not particularly fond of seeding-when-idling as a method of attracting players to servers. This is the main reason why the idle-kick was forced on.
DICE is not particularly fond of stats padding either. This is the main reason why the game password is forced off, and the pre-round requires 4 players.
However, the combination of all the restrictions at once is too restrictive. We will not lift the pre-round min player count restriction, but we will allow ranked servers to disable idle-kick in Server R10. There is certainly more that can be done to improve the game in this area, but I prefer not to make any promises which I cannot personally hold.
So there. I mentioned Server R10. It will be a small update. We'll post about it here once it is available.
It's a completely different feel than DC. Graphics are the TIT tho!
