This should come as no surprise: DICE has trolled teased us Battlefield fans once again with a brief mention on Twitter. This time, it’s DICE gameplay designer Johan Andersson who Tweets:
“I have a “slight feeling” next week will be a very, very… shall we say, rewarding, week? ”
Coincidentally, next week is the Game Developers Conference, where a few DICE staffers will be present. Last year, DICE used GDC to talk about the Frostbite engine and we got some of the first peeks at Battlefield 3.
What will be announced/revealed is up in the air, as usual when it comes to DICE. Expect a few more vague “teasers” on Twitter before something is finally unveiled. New DLC? New Battlefield game? A new community manager? Who knows…
A few days after EA pulled the mobile version of BF3 — Battlefield 3 Aftershock — due to quality issues and user complaints, they’ve now announced that the game won’t be returning to the iOS App Store. EA released a statement, saying:
“In the interest of bringing consumers only the highest level of quality mobile entertainment, EA Mobile has decided to suspend development and support of Battlefield 3: Aftershock and refocus its resources on other titles.”
According to the statement, Aftershock multiplayer servers will remain online until March 31, where after the game will be taken offline. RIP, Battlefield 3: Aftershock. We hardly knew you.
Nvidia has released a new driver (version 295.73), which brings the usual array of fixes and improvements. Among those is a new Battlefield 3 texture fix, which affects those who run high/ultra settings on video cards with 1GB or less video memory. This often results in artifacts and texture corruption, which the new driver fixes. Nvidia patch details state:
Fixes instances of texture corruption/artifacts in Battlefield 3 when memory constrained (typically 1GB or less graphics cards running Ultra settings and high resolutions).
After much criticism about lack of a Battlefield 3 patch or even some information about a patch, DICE has now released a big list of confirmed fixes that the new Battlefield 3 patch will include. There’s still no ETA on when we’ll see the patch, but at least now we know what it’ll include. The list, via Battlelog:
GENERAL GAMEPLAY FIXES:
-Players should no longer take fall damage from short falls.
-Players now get up from Prone slightly faster, allowing better odds of getting away from a grenade or threat when prone.
-Fixed some situations that would unintentionally make a player unrevivable.
-Reduced the black screen fade in time on spawn. The fade is still necessary for properly streaming in loading content at spawn, but it has been substantially reduced.
-Increased the spawn protection time from 1sec to 2sec. The protection will still be immediately canceled as soon as the player moves or shoots.
-Spawn protection will no longer be canceled by the player looking around.
-Increased the speed at which a player regains accuracy when aiming after moving for a more responsive experience. Firing before fully zoomed will still result inaccurate fire.
-Increased the inaccuracy and recoil added when a player is fully suppressed.
-Shotgun Buck and Flechette rounds now have a less suppressive effect at medium to long range.
-Tweaked the damage levels of Buck and Flechette rounds to balance them with other weapons.
-Improved the suppression of the .44 magnum, .357 magnum, and the 5.8x42mm DAP88 rounds from the Type88 sniper.
-Attempting to Crouch (like Prone) will now properly interrupt Sprint.
-Increased the effectiveness of Suppression Resist Specialization.
-Parachutes now respond to turn and throttle inputs more quickly.
-Switching from primary weapons to sidearms and back now takes less time.
-Increased the effectiveness of explosive resistance.
-Tweaked bipod deploy settings so players can no longer deploy a bipod in places higher than chin level.
-The bipod should now be more reliable when deploying on top of sloped objects like cars and rocks.
-Fixed several issues with vaulting objects, especially for thin railings.
-The Knife now only takes two swipes to kill when attacking from a position where a takedown is not possible.
-CRAM weapons on Carriers now count towards stationary weapon awards.
DICE is working on tweaking a lot of weapons in the next Battlefield 3 patch, and we’ve now gotten some kind of idea what those changes will be. Battlefield 3 designer Alan Kertz (who supposedly left the BF3 team?) has released a weapons change list to the guys over at Symthic.com. The list shows that almost all weapons will get some sort of adjustment, both damage and accuracy wise. Here’s a roundup of the changes (you can see the full list here).
All assault rifles get min damage raise from 17 to 18.4
All sniper rifles get “one hit” kill in distances under 15 meter
All bolt action sniper rifles will get min damage raise from 55 to 59, and max damage raise from 75 to 80.
Shotgun buckshot max damage from 20 to 12.5
Pump action shotgun frag rounds max damage from 60 to 67
Auto shotgun frag rounds min damage from 10 to 5 (not 100% certain)
SMGs and PDWs: all have increased min. damage
.44 magnum now has new “1.25x upper chest damage multiplier”
G18, M9, M93R pistols get recoil reductions
All LMGs get min damage increase (varies from weapon to weapon)
Note that this is still preliminary data and that not all changes might make it into the final patch. We recently reported that the patch that was originally scheduled for February has likely been pushed to March.
We’ve been expecting a big Battlefield 3 patch in February, but according to DICE’s community manager Daniel Matros, the patch was never intended for release in February. When asked on Twitter where patch was, Matros responded by revealing that the date was apparently wrongly announced. Matros said:
“It was announced by someone who got the dates wrong”
A few more Twitter users inquired about the date, to which Matros responded “The date was never really correct anyway”.
There you have it guys, no patch this month. Hopefully we’ll see it sometime in early March, and hopefully with a bunch of changes. For more on the upcoming patch, check out our full rundown.
We’ve witnessed plenty of Battlefield 3 glitches so far, but this one probably takes the cake as the creepiest we’ve seen. To put it short, a Recon soldier somehow appears as a giant to fellow players. Take a look and see what we mean.
EA boss John Riccitiello recently spoke to analysts regarding Battlefield 3 — which sold 10 million copies — where he hinted at Call of Duty Elite, the paid subscription service for Modern Warfare 3. Riccitiello said:
“Frankly, I gave a compliment to one of our competitors. It’s got a subscription on the back end of an FPS title. I think that’s a best-in-class performance.”
He went on, saying that EA has been toying around with something similar, called Ultimate Team for its FIFA series. Riccitiello added:
“The reason this is such a fast-growing revenue stream for us is we’re identifying and implementing best practice across the range of our products, and you’ll see lots more to come including an announcement near term that Peter just alluded to.”
This “announcement” is supposed to be the new DLC announcement for Battlefield 3 which is supposed to happen this week. Could we see a paid subscription model akin to Call of Duty Elite? It could be a premium version of Battlelog, with access to all future DLC, much like Activision’s model.
In a conference call with analysts yesterday, EA revealed their financial numbers for the third quarter of the current financial year, and it looked pretty good for Battlefield 3: the game has sold 10 million copies worldwide, across all platforms. What’s even more impressive, the sales numbers only include until December 31, 2011.
During the same conference call, EA’s Peter C. Ausnit chipped in regarding upcoming Battlefield 3 DLC, saying that EA will have an event in New York next week. He said:
“You’re going to hear some announcements from us on Battlefield actually as early as next week in an event we’ve got in New York.”
It’s looking pretty good for Battlefield 3 — it’s already the best selling Battlefield game of all time, and we can’t wait to see what EA has in store for the next DLC.
There have been many bits of information surrounding the upcoming Battlefield 3 patch, and we’ve taken to task to compile all the expected fixes and tweaks that DICE has confirmed will make their way into the new patch, which should be released in early February. The list of confirmed additions:
Commo Rose 2.0: a complete overhaul of the “Q”-button communications interface, with new commands, voice overs, and more.
Weapon specific accessory tweaks: accessories such as silencers, foregrips etc. will now be tweaked on a per weapon basis and not globally. All accessories are expected to be tweaked in this patch. For more, see a full list of accessory tweaks.
A fix for MAV riding will be applied
Random “Bad Luck” deaths will be fixed across all platforms.
PlayStation 3 users will see a VOIP fix
Drivers will now get 50 points for “vehicle assist kills”. Pilot assist points will be increased as well.
Sniper rifles will get increased accuracy after aiming-down with Red Dot or Holo sights.
And a few unconfirmed patch notes, but issues/features that DICE are looking into:
The USAS-12 with Frag rounds will be balanced (unconfirmed: DICE has said they are looking into it).
The resupply speed on the M320 grenade launcher might get increased, according to DICE.
Horn sounds will be added to Humvees and other transport vehicles.
BF3 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
This should come as no surprise: DICE has ”
We’ve been expecting a big Battlefield 3 patch in February, but according to DICE’s community manager Daniel Matros, the patch was never intended for release in February. When asked on Twitter where patch was, Matros responded by revealing that the date was apparently wrongly announced. Matros 
