BF4 opening day thoughts and impressions

So I played the PC version at midnight. Other than the fact that I am completely lost playing with a keyboard and mouse, graphically, the game looks better than it does on the PS3 version. I played about an hour this morning and the TDM maps are small but probably bigger than most COD maps that I've played in MW3. Played a game of Conquest and the maps are big. Game play is decent in the sense how your weapons react to being used. I hate having to pay your dues until you open up new weapons and attachments.

So what are your thoughts?

So I manged a couple of hours last night, both on campaign and mp. Here's my initial thoughts. Both look great and play pretty well though but there's a steep learning curve and after 500 hours on BF3 the slightly different controls are going to take some getting used to. It seems to me that the bigger maps definitely need teamwork to get anything done as you can't get shit done with everyone in the squad running around doing their own thing, though it's fine to do that on the smaller maps or modes without vehicles.

You are actually given weapons that work right out of the box which is a bonus. There is a "Training Ground" which I haven't looked at but I assume can be used to learn maps and practice with weapons. The game dynamics are amazing, stuff actually gets destroyed when you hit them with enough force. Capture points can actually move on some maps. Weather, wind, and visuals all work pretty well. Building coming down, Elevators that work. All kinds of good stuff. Mics actually work in the game this time around though it only seems to be for your squad or everyone in the between game lobby. Non-vocal cues and the new com rose helps a lot with communications to... if people would use it once in a while.

Now for the down side, (you knew there had to be something) I find it hard to believe they are doing this but you can't form a party before going into a game. Who the hell thought that was a good idea in a mp squad based game? They still haven't answered my tweet on that one. They do make it easy to join friends through the battlelog tab or the battlelog app, and that does work. Squads are 5 people but it seems that they start the games with 4 so 1 more can join their friends. This seems like it would take quite a few rounds to get 5 friends in the same squad. Their utter reliance on Battle log for everything seems a little over kill to me as well, not everyone has a laptop or smart phone they can put in front of themselves while playing the game.

I'll stick with it and hopefully have some recordings for everyone to see tomorrow.

Thanks Shane.  I've been on the TRAINING GROUND and it's weapon & vehicle familiarization and practice.  I went in with a sniper rifle to work on distance, bullet drop, leading a target, etc.  Good place to practice a little bit.

I got the 1.02 update this morning and I have been having trouble logging into the game servers.  Not sure if its me or something with the patch.  also, to Shane's point about starting a game in a party, I'll look into that as well.  That just doesn't seem right.

This game does require team work so I'm hoping STP can get a group going this weekend.

Okay,here's what we got as an answer on the Battlelog forums. The queue issue they are speaking of, is that if you try to join a friend right now in a full game, there is no queue but you are told there are no commander slots open. Who cares, put me in the damn queue!

TheBikingViking said:
Regarding the queue system: we are working to address that, and trust me, the whole flow will work and feel a lot better once that has been fixed. Fixing the queue system is one of our top priorities right now!

As to why we didn't keep the system from BF3: like it as you may, the group/squad join system in BF3 had a lot of issues that were really hard to fix. Yes, you could join with a squad/group of people, but it was very common that you ended up on different teams or squads.

I'm not saying our solution is perfect, or the best/only way to do it, but try to give it a chance, especially when we've fixed the queue issue.

Excuse me but hasn't every other mp game out there managed to create a party system that works????

That aside, after some strange server issues (I find it hard to believe I was the only one in the world playing any mode at one point online) we manged to get a few people together and low and behold we started winning games and getting ace squad ribbons.

The squad join thing did seem to work last night. A friend joined the server and at the end of the game he was put into our squad, even though we had 5 people in the squad already, bringing us up to 6 for a bit there.

I'll add just a touch to what I said earlier. We actually had a commander who can over see the whole battle and provide support to everyone. It was pretty cool to see in action, though I doubt I'll ever do it myself. I like pounding the ground and blowing stuff up too much.