Battlefield 3 Veteran: Two Years of Service, and Looking Ahead

“I only do this because I’m having fun. The day I stop having fun, I’ll just walk away.” —Heath Ledger

It’s been two years to the overcast day where I had picked up Battlefield 3 during Origin’s Black Friday Sale, and around one-and-a-half years since I upgraded to Battlefield 3 Premium. I’ve logged around 125 hours in the campaign and have reached the rank ten colonel milestone. According to this blog’s archives, I had around ninety hours as of last year, so a quick bit of subtraction shows that I’ve played a comparatively paltry 35 hours this year. That I’ve been going through other games, like Wolfenstein, Metro 2033: Redux and Sakura Angels, accounts for why I’ve put in fewer hours into Battlefield 3 this year. With that being said, the sporadic games I have played in Battlefield 3 this year have been quite fun, and after two years, I definitely feel that I’ve become accustomed to the mechanics. This is reflected in my stats: while I’m not a competitive player by any definition, the stats have helped me track my progress, and it’s fun to see how far I’ve come since playing my first few games and finding myself being decimated by more skilful players. When I started, my score-per-minute and KD ratios were quite underwhelming: a month after picking up Battlefield, I was averaging a KD ratio of 0.48 on most games, and had 226 points per minute. At present, I average around 530 points a minute and my overall KD ratio is 0.86 (although I consistently average around 1.5 to 2.0 in most games I play, so these numbers are more reflective of my current performance). It appears that I’ve plateaued in Battlefield 3 performance now, and indeed, a quick look at my performance history shows a graph not dissimilar to that of a Michaelis-Menten plot. So, after two years, where do I stand on Battlefield 3?

While I played much less Battlefield 3 this year than I did last year, the matches I did partake in had a greater frequency of amusing and epic moments. I’ve earned all of my combat efficiency ribbons within the last year, and have gone on some impressive streaks with various weapons. I’ve also begun experimenting with different loadouts just to see how those handle, and to see whether or not they work well. Thanks to my premium account, I’ve also been unlocking new weapons and completing assignments, albeit at a much slower rate this year. With that being said, it feels as though I’ve fully gotten my Battlefield 3 experience over the past 125 hours: while I’ve not reached rank-100 colonel, nor have I unlocked everything yet. Nonetheless, it’s been an immensely entertaining journey. I remark that I do not play with a dedicated microphone, and I am fully aware that communication is core to the Battlefield experience; all serious players make use of good communication to keep one another going in objective-oriented matches, so I cannot say that I’ve fully experienced the team-driven aspect of Battlefield. This is perfectly okay with me, since I’m quite happy to enter a random server, play a few matches and then go on my way. In the end, for the total cost of Battlefield 3 and the Premium upgrade (20 CAD), I definitely got a fantastic deal out of the sale.

Screenshots and Commentary

• I spend around half my time in Noshahr Canals, Battlefield 3‘s equivalent of Halo 2‘s Lockout, but I’ve done my best to ensure that not all of my screenshots in this post come from Noshahr Canals. I’ll start with a screenshot of me getting a kill using the defibrillator. In most cases, such kills happen because I’ve just finished reviving someone and an enemy rushes me at close range, too quickly for me to switch back to my primary or secondary weapons. There are some cases where I’ve gone and sought out a single player such that they could be humiliated with the defibrillator or repair tool, owing to their attitudes or actions, but that’s quite rare.

• Until this year, the M16A3 was not really a weapon I used: while a superb weapon in all regards, I did not wish to use it until it was available for both factions, such that I could more efficiently unlock attachments for it. Thus, I stuck with the M416, and it’s presently still my most-used weapon, although I’m definitely learning the joys of the M16A3.

• Battlefield 3 is a team-based game, and so, despite lacking a microphone, I still do my best to help my team out where I can with objective captures, resupplies, healing and revivials. I imagine that with a microphone, I could ask my teammates where the opposing team’s players are, and then flank them more effectively to avoid deaths. Part of the reason why I wind up near the top of a scoreboard despite having a large number of deaths is because I play very actively, but otherwise, do not have full knowledge of where the other players are.

• Combat efficiency ribbons were definitely a rare sight for me: last year, I got my first one while doing the Sinon loadout challenge, where I was rocking a setup similar to that of Sword Art Online II‘s Shino Asada. It proved quite effective at extreme long ranges, and a combination of bad spawns with a bit of luck meant I was able to take out eight in a row.

• Despite being quite proficient with the bolt-action rifles and bullet drop now, I nonetheless prefer close-quarters combat. My tendencies in Battlefield 3 are perhaps more akin to that of a Call of Duty player, where run-and-gun techniques are more viable, and consequently, I accumulate more deaths than most players of my rank.

• In a particularly one-sided conquest match, I capture an objective with limited assistance from my squad. It’s actually quite surprising as to how rarely people will equip squad ammunition or squad sprint, so if a squad I join lacks either, I will pick squad ammunition first to ensure that players have an increased ammunition pool to work with.

• While I typically roll with the MP-412 as a secondary weapon for its balance of stopping power and firing rate, there are some cases where I’m equipped with a close-quarters primary weapon and need a scoped pistol for versatility’s sake. Unlike Battlefield 4, pistols can’t be customised, so I usually pick the scoped .44 magnum if I’m running with a PDW or shotgun as a primary weapon. By this point in time, I’ve finally become acclimatised to aiming accurately with a chevron crosshair, although I still prefer the precision offered by a red dot/holographic sight.

• Back at Noshahr Canals, I put the SCAR-H to the test and got a combat efficiency ribbon out of it. Firing the 7.62 x 51 mm NATO round, it hits harder than most carbines at longer ranges and is balanced with a twenty-round magazine, making it suitable for matches on Caspian Border and other larger maps. At closer ranges, an accurate shot means downing opponents in as few as three rounds.

• The MP5-K is phenomenal at close ranges when equipped with extended magazines, plus the laser sight. The extended magazines are almost mandatory, since the high firing rate means the gun will burn through 21 rounds in no time at all. Already possessing high hip-firing accuracy, the laser sight means that the MP5-K’s hipfire is as accurate as its aiming down sights accuracy. I used it to absolutely wreck other players and earned yet another combat efficiency ribbon.

• The Heckler and Koch MG36 is a derivative of the G36 with a heavy barrel, fulfilling the role of an LMG. One of my reasons for picking up Battlefield premium was to fire this weapon: ever since seeing it in Enter the Matrix, I’ve wished to use it elsewhere. While it’s not a fantastic LMG, it’s got a reasonably fast reload rate. With the extended magazine equipped, it can hold 100 rounds, allowing it to reload faster than the belt-fed LMGs even from empty (although the L86A2 reloads faster overall, it only holds 60 rounds with extended magazines).

• During one particularly hilarious match on Davamand Peak, I spent most of my time with the M224 mortar near the map’s back, fulfilling the role of a counter-mortar. Some players on the enemy team were incessantly spamming their mortars, so I decided to help my team out by taking out the mortars. I wound up going on a ten kill-streak, since the opposing team’s players never took a hint and continued to set up their mortars after getting killed.

• Thus, it became a simple exercise for me to move around, locate the enemy mortars, take them out, and then move to a different position. The main disadvantage about mortars is that they are stationary, and consequently, are excellent targets for snipers (or players with repair tools). Here, I blow away a persistent mortar player whose name vaguely resembles Super Sonico with a taste of their own medicine, but the impact was apparently so intense the Frostbite Engine registered it as an environment kill.

• The M39 EMR is a marksman rifle chambered for the same round as the SCAR-H, dealing similar damage as the Mk11 Mod 0 and SVR. In TDM, I only play the recon class if there is a need for a counter-sniper, and admittedly, it feels great to take down someone camping on the crane. Because they’re nearly stationary targets and must expose themselves to fire, it’s always fun to counter-snipe them. Some of my longest range headshots come from taking out crane campers, and it’s surprisingly entertaining to watch them spout profanity in the text chat after being taken out.

• Whereas I typically do not use C4 because most servers will kick players for using them, there are some servers lacking such rules. Consequently, defending an objective becomes as simple as planting some C4, waiting for indications that it’s being taken, and then blowing said C4. To counteract against this, players can fire a tank shell, rocket or grenade to destroy the explosives.

• Of all the DLCs, I’ve played the Close Quarters maps the most frequently, and Armoured Kill with the lowest frequency. I feel that, even though I never really played any full matches on Armoued Kill (or Endgame) all that often, the discount meant that it was quite nice to have all of the different game-types and weapons available to me.

• I don’t play vehicular game modes very often, preferring infantry-on-infantry combat. However, there are some cases where some hilarious moments arise as a result of using vehicles. Last time, I shot a scout helicopter out of the air using a well-timed cannon round, and here, I somehow manage a headshot on a target 400 meters out using the heavy coaxial machine gun in the M1A2.

• Spoiler alert: I bought the Battlefield bundle during this year’s Origin Black Friday Sale. I had learnt of it while looking through the Origin store with a plate of Opa fries in hand on the 25th, and picked the bundle up later that evening. It turns out that the 25th was the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s presentation of his world-changing General Theory of Relativity. I was watching a NOVA special that succinctly explains the differences between Special and General Relativity: it’s consistent with my simple explanation and would’ve been useful for Cocoa and Chiya‘s discussion, where they bring this up in an effort to impress Chino, Megu and Maya.

• One of the more recent strange loadouts I’ve been experimenting with is the suppressed P90 with a laser sight and Kobra sight. With a larger base magazine compared to the MP5-K, this setup is surprisingly effective, as the suppressor keeps me off the mini-map, and the larger magazine allows for some error, allowing me to go after groups of enemies without being spotted.

• I recall that my last Battlefield 3 post featured a greater number of screenshots with medals. Because I’ve been playing Battlefield 3 for a nontrivial period of time, medals are more frequent, appearing in low-light locales, and I don’t make quite as large an effort to take screenshots at present. However, I’m still only around halfway to unlocking the class and faction medals.

• In some of my last few games, I decided to finally give the scrub gun AEK-971 a try: it seems like the go-to weapon for lower-level players who favour the spray-and-pray tactics. Its insane firing rate makes it downright lethal at close quarters, but its balanced by a slower reload time. I imagine that this will be the last Battlefield 3 post that I publish for the present, as I aim to finish Crysis 3, Valkyrie Chronicles, and get into Sniper Elite II, plus the Battlefield: Hardline campaign.

The question thus becomes: where do I go from here? On Wednesday, I picked up the Battlefield bundle during this year’s Origin Black Friday Sale; the package includes the base Battlefield 4 and Battlefield: Hardline games. There was no debate here, given that I was getting two triple-A titles for the price of an IMAX movie. I enjoyed Battlefield 4 when I tried it on Game Time, and was hoping for a chance to go back through the campaign and find all of the unlockable weapons. Moreover, I’ve been looking for the occasional game on maps like Zavod 311, and there is some free DLC content that would make the base game sufficiently feature-rich, considering that in the upcoming year, I likely won’t have too much time to play competitive multiplayer titles like Battlefield (making the other DLC unnecessary for me). With the understanding that Battlefield Hardline‘s multiplayer community is very limited, I nonetheless wish to explore the campaign even though it’s considered to be quite short: through TheRadBrad’s videos, I feel that there’s enough to do in the campaign so that I could get at least two play-throughs.  I think that my time in Battlefield 3 is largely over, and it’s been a phenomenal experience over the past two years. I’ll keep the game installed for the days where I sure could go for some TDM on Noshahr Canals, although I foresee that I will not be playing Battlefield 3 as frequently as I have previously.

One Year of Service in Battlefield 3

“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” —Greg Anderson

I’ve come a full circle from the Thursday afternoon that I purchased Battlefield 3 on: it had been a grey, overcast day, and after the game had finished loading, I played through the first two missions of the campaign to see if things worked. After that, I set the game aside for until after the Fall term had ended: when I began, my performance was terrible, and I recall that my first ever kill was a frantic close-quarters melee as the recon class during a conquest match on Caspian Border. Since then, I’ve reached Rank 3 Colonel, and according to my BattleLog, I’ve logged some ninety hours in Battlefield 3 so far. All ninety hours have been a journey that has seen everything from rough patches to days where the stars seem to align and I won every game I played. A year later, I can say that Origin’s Black Friday sale was probably one of the best deals I’ve had the opportunity to capitalise on, and that Battlefield 3 has fulfilled the same role that Halo 2 had in previous years, being a top-of-the-line shooter that’s entertained for hours.

• After many hours, I’ve finally unlocked the Colonel rank, and here, I’ve also got the MG36. Despite being one of the lower-performing LMGs in Battlefield 3, I enjoy it for its appearance. It appears in Enter The Matrix as the G36 and is mis-classified as an assault rifle. Seen most frequently in the nuclear power plant, the MG36 in Enter The Matrix was one of the best assault rifles in the game (second to only the SG-552) and had a 60-round capacity.

• I hardly ever get behind the cockpit of a jet because I’m still prone to being shot down by helicopters. However, ever since playing Ace Combat: Assault Horizons, I’ve noticed that I’m much more comfortable with flying and have unlocked several of the upgrades for the jets, through playing air superiority, although sometimes, I will get the odd kill in a jet while playing through conquest.

• Even after getting Battlefield 3 Premium, I still spend most of my time on Noshahr Canals. There are occasions where I’ll be wanting to play different maps, and this protracted round on Death Valley was one of them. By this point in the game, I finally had enough experience to play through conquest games with a positive KD ratio (typically, the extreme ranges mean I hardly encounter players on foot and will be shredded by players in vehicles).

• The Assault class is my most frequented class owing to the assault rifles’ versatility and the presence of health packs and defibrillators. After that comes the support class, which gives me the role of resupplying my teammates. Here, I’m fighting in an underground parkade on Operation 925, which, as was kindly pointed out to me, is a pun on the phrase “nine to five”, referring to typical hours for an office position, and with this being an office building…

• Back in the old days of Halo 2, I would go grab a Ghost and splatter players on Coagulation until someone stopped me with a rocket launcher or sniper rifle. In Battlefield 3, getting splatters (or roadkill) is much more challenging because a large majority of the vehicles are slow, and many of them have weapons that some passengers make use of to blow away infantry units long before the driver can splatter them. However, here, I splattered a low-level player with a bike during a pitched conquest match.

• It’s quite rare that I get kills with the Stinger or Igla, since most pilots choose to bail out the instant their vehicle was destroyed. This will required a bit of patience: I kept the lock on him until after he dumped his flares, and fired while his flares were cooling down. The Stinger tracked him and blew out his helicopter to earn me this kill.

• I’ve finally settled on a sight that I’m truly comfortable with: the holographic sight was once something I hardly ever ran with, but after trying it for the Sabagebu-style Firing Range, I discovered that the holographic sight was versatile enough to be used for medium to long ranges, and that firing from the hip would suffice in extreme close-quarters.

• I don’t typically go for knife kills because they tend to leave one vulnerable to attack while one is carrying the knifing and taking of dog tags. I cannot count the number of times where an enemy player had knifed someone on my team, leaving them open for me to unload upon them. The knife should only really be used when one encounters a lone enemy completely unaware of one’s presence. Here, I got the drop on another player and knifed him, earning me my second service star for the ACB-90.

• Inspired by Matimi0’s terrible weapon challenges, I did play a few rounds where I would attempt to kill players with unusual weapons such as smoke grenades and the repair tool. The smoke challenge was quite amusing, and although my aim is nowhere near as sure as Matimi0’s, I still had a lot of fun with the smoke grenades: to score kills with the smoke rounds, one has to treat them as M320 buckshot rounds and attempt to land direct hits on the enemy players: a successful hit is a one-hit kill.

• One of the things about the scout helicopters is that it’s possible to repair it while acting as a passenger, thereby providing a source of reliable vehicle repair while one is occupying the passenger seat. This is what the repair tool should be used for, but I rarely get maintenance efficiency ribbons because vehicles get destroyed faster than I can repair them.

As entertaining as the standalone version of Battlefield 3 is, by around March, I found myself itching to try the new weapons and maps offered by the expansion packs: on their own, they’re not a particularly good deal, but by chance in late April, another sale arrived, and I picked up the Premium expansion at the cost of one DLC pack. I’ve now played matches on all of the maps and have most of the new weapons unlocked (save the MK3A1, which requires some four hours of gameplay and kills from vehicles). I’ve also become quite comfortable with the bolt-action sniper rifles and the engineer class: while the assault and support classes remain my go-to classes for most matches, it is quite surprising that my first and second combat efficiency ribbons come from the recon and engineer classes (and more amusingly, both ribbons were from my sessions to capture gameplay footage for the Firing Range series). In previous posts, I’ve already given my take (an overwhelmingly positive one) for Battlefield 3, and as such, any further words from me about the game itself would be redundant.

• Repair tools have a more insidious and amusing use to them: they can deal damage to enemy players and kill them, making for some hilarious moments. As with the knife, attempting to kill someone with the repair tool is best done on an unsuspecting player who is relatively isolated. It takes a few seconds for this to work, and while most players will realise that something is draining their health and react (usually resulting in one’s death, since all the weapons in Battlefield 3 hit harder than the repair tool), there are some players who don’t even notice and end up succumbing to the power of the repair tool.

• The only thing more embarrassing than dying from a repair tool is dying from an EOD bot. The repair tool still affords one the full control of their soldier, but the EOD bot has terrible steering and suspension, bouncing around the map if not properly driven. It was remarkably difficult to get this kill so I could unlock the MTAR-21, and given how tough the EOD bot is to use, anyone who dies at the hands of an EOD bot had it coming to them.

• The M5K has quickly become one of my absolute favourite PDWs because of its high hipfire accuracy. Like the Deutsche M9K form 007 Nightfire, the M5K initially comes with a 20-round magazine that runs dry in a flash because of its 900 RPM firing rate. However, after sixty kills, one can unlock the extended mags for it, which bumps it up to 30 rounds (plus one in the chamber) and gives one a longer operational time.

• Of all the DLCs, I most often play the Close Quarters Maps, and at the time of writing, I’ve unlocked everything except the MK3A1. Gun master is a particularly fun game to play, and while most days, I’ll stick to the objective and level up for the best possible score, other days, it’s fun to hide in a corner and knife everything that has an orange triangle over its head: in Gun Master, being knifed typically causes a demotion in weapon rank.

• This is one of the longer range shots I’ve made, although it was not a headshot. On an unrelated note, I occasionally encounter some cheaters in Battlefield 3, who are characterised by low levels in conjunction with an uncanny ability to move far more quickly than what is normally possible, or else are able to score headshots from across the map with a pistol. They make the match a little tiresome, although some cheaters only have one or two enabled and can still be killed. While documentation states that reporting cheaters to EA is the recommended course of action, in actuality, bans are hardly given out, and most servers just kick suspected cheaters.

• The melee medal is given to players after twenty melee ribbons are accumulated. I typically play on knife-only servers to accumulate melee ribbons, but one TDM round on Noshahr Canals lent itself to knife kills, and I wound up getting the medal while capturing screenshots for the Sabagebu! Firing Range post. I decided not to share this moment for that post, since this was a melee award, and that post was about the M4A1.

• Curiously enough, my first ever sniper medal came from the vanilla M417 (no barrel attachments and iron sights): this DMR’s combination of a large magazine size and damage output makes it well suited for medium range firefights.

•  I imagine that Gun master is probably the best game type in which to get pistol ribbons, as players typically start with pistols and work their way up to more powerful weapons. In regular game types, the pistols are intended as a backup weapon for the hectic moments in close quarters when one’s primary weapon runs dry. I typically roll with the G17 or REX depending on my primary weapon.

• I don’t intentionally go out of my way to target a single player, so when I start going on nemesis streaks, I just consider the other player unlucky. With the day almost over, I played through a TDM round today and was placed on the losing team, but 45 minutes later, my team somehow came out on top (and I scored second for my team). It’s a little surprising to recall that it’s been a year since I picked up Battlefield 3, and although I did not purchase anything from Origin during this year’s Black Friday Sale, I did pick up Crysis: Warhead, Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~ and DEFCON on Steam for a total of 10 USD.

• The stationary emplacement medal is one of the easiest to unlock: all one needs to do is sit in a TOW missile launcher or the C-RAM (US)/Pantsir-S1 (Russia) for an hour. Getting kills with the stationary weapons is a challenge: despite their unlimited ammunition and high rate of fire, their rounds travel relatively slowly, and most targets are out of visual range even when zoomed in. With this obligatory Battlefield 3 post now over, I have one more Battlefield 3 post in the works (dealing with a Stella Women’s Academy loadout). There are a handful of posts coming out for December (such as a talk on my journey to level 10 Borderlands 2 and my verdicts on some anime I finished but never reviewed over the past two year), but before I get to those, I’ll kick the month off with a talk on Bokura wa minna kawaisou, which I’m about halfway into.

Perhaps it is not surprising that I am presently more comfortable with Battlefield 3 than I ever was with Bad Company 2, and looking into the future, I’ll probably continue to drop by into team deathmatch on Noshahr Canals if a sufficiently long break presents itself, and close quarters is where I happen to excel. Over the next year, I’ll probably unlock the service medals for the US and Russian teams, as well as the service medals for each class. Of course, there’s also the long road to reaching the level-100 colonel; I see those players from time to time, and they’ve spent thousands of hours in-game. I don’t have that kind of dedication (it lies elsewhere, for the same reason I’m prone to falling behind in anime), but this also means that there is quite a bit of Battlefield 3 to finish. With this said, I’ll be playing less Battlefield 3 in 2015 compared to 2014: a pile of games from Steam sales still need to be completed, and I still need to get further in Skyrim (at the very least, I should finish the main quest line).

Battlefield 3: Life in the Premium Club

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.” — Warren Buffett

It was a warm spring evening last week, and news had reached my ears that Origin was having an Easter Sale that saw titles go for half-off. A sale paired the fact that I was looking to further my Battlefield 3 experience meant that fifteen dollars and an hour later, I would become the proud owner of a Battlefield 3 Premium account. I admit that, as fun as vanilla Battlefield 3 is, I was growing a little bored of playing team deathmatch on Noshahr Canals and Seine Crossing for almost three-quarters of all my matches. Coupled with the fact that I was nearing rank 45 (after that, I’ll have unlocked all of the all-class specialisations, shotguns, pistols and personal defense weapons), I was looking for something to extend my experience. Originally, I bought Battlefield 3 on its own to give the game a shot, but after all this time, I realised that Battlefield 3 is something that I genuinely enjoy, and as such, purchasing the Premium edition was not a particularly difficult choice. So, as the evening sun was setting, and the honey-glazed Easter ham was baking, I stepped into my first-ever premium match on Scrap Metal. Fortunately, all of my previous experience carries over here, and even though I would lose the match, I ended up with a positive KD ratio. Sprinting through the dark, crumbling remains of a warehouse, I suddenly felt that this is something I’d wished to do for a long time: fight in a haikyo. Battlefield 3 Premium won my heart over, and for the past week, I’ve been messing around with Gun Master and Scavenger, two incredibly fun gameplay modes that add spice to Battlefield 3. Whereas I only played Conquest Large and Team Deathmatch, there were now new gametypes to keep things going. The fact that I get 75 dollars worth of DLCs for fifteen dollars, plus Premium perks, is an incredible deal that I won’t soon forget. Thus, Battlefield 3 Premium does indeed deliver something special, and now, they’ve got my business.

• Opinions about Battlefield 3 Premium have generally been positive, and now, there is one extra person who is enjoying the perks that come with this edition. My inclinations to play Premium began somewhere back in March, when I was watching LevelCapGaming’s “Loadout” series and began wishing I had more maps to experience.

• I thus resolved to buy Battlefield 3 Premium if either condition was satisfied: I either reached Rank 45 before May 28 (a half-year after I purchased Battlefield 3), or a sale happened that would allow me to net all of the DLCs all at once for a great deal. The original intent was actually to wait until Origin did another summer sale, but through a strange twist of fate, a sale ended up happening during the Easter Long Weekend.

• Thus, despite being Rank 38 (at the time of purchase), I ended up picking the DLCs up. After waiting a short while for the 11 GB worth of content to finish downloading, I logged back into Battlelog, but the effects had not taken place yet. Fortunately, the fix was simple enough: uninstall the Battlelog browser plugin, update Battlefield 3 in Origin, and re-installing the plugin will set things right.

• After the game was ready to roll, I found an empty server and spent several moments exploring Ziba tower, before deciding to play an actual game. I landed in Scrap Metal, and despite fighting on a losing match, this turned out to be the moment I realised that Premium had been well worth it. I must’ve been getting quite close to the resupply medal because I ended up getting another one (my third, I think) after dropping off numerous ammo crates for my teammates, who were surrounded.

• The M249 makes a return here as I re-equip it with a Kobra RDS: it is my third most-used weapon and has roughly 300 kills. My favourite weapons is the PKP and the M416, although I am experimenting with different weapons now that I’m in the premium club.

• A lucky grenade kill here, paired with some M249 fire, nets me a double kill here reminiscent of the days back when Halo 2 Vista was big: I used to busy myself with getting Killtaculars and Killimanjaros, although since the Games for Windows Live servers have shut down, Halo 2 Vista has largely become dead, and servers are now largely privately hosted. The fact that Battlefield 3 has now filled Halo 2‘s niche is a big deal: I’ve long been looking for a game to do that ever since last year.

• I’ve unlocked the L86A2 through finishing an assignment; said to be a highly accurate, magazine-fed LMG, I still have yet to try it out, but for me, there were numerous weapons that I found myself wishing to try out in Battlefield 3, including the AUG, MG36, MTAR, QBU-88…some of these weapons made an appearance in Bad Company 2, although I’ve since slowed down my time spent there and likely won’t unlock them. Assignments add a new dimension to Battlefield 3, and really give players the incentive to play in styles that may be outside their normal preferences. The L86A2’s s “imouto“, the L85A2 (informally known as “Elle”) requires that I win five squad deathmatch rounds, and since those happen to be in short supply, I doubt I’ll unlock this gun for the time being.

• While there have been criticisms directed at the Close Quarters maps, I personally find the game style to evoke memories of the tighter maps in Halo 2. At these ranges, it’s nearly impossible to run too far without leaving the combat, whereas on larger maps, emptier servers mean spending more time getting from point A to point B. While Close Quarters may not be channeling the original Battlefield  spirit of large maps and vehicular gameplay, the frenzied chaos is much welcomed and offers a change of pace from long-distance battles in Conquest games.

• “Strike at Karkand” is an old classic from Battlefield 2, but has been given an update and makes a return in Battlefield 3‘s “Back to Karkand” expansion, which came free with pre-ordered versions. I decided to play a round of team deathmatch here after winning a conquest match at Ziba tower, and given the map’s layout, I equipped an ACOG sight for my M416, eventually putting on quite a good performance. As I was running through the alleys and lighting up anything that moved last week, the aroma of honey-roasted ham began wafting downstairs. Outside, the sun was setting, and I suddenly realise that it’s been almost a year since I finished my last thesis defense.

• I am now enrolled in the Master’s of Science in Computer Science now, so another thesis is on the distant horizon. Things are going to gear up, and I have a special announcement that I’ll make concerning this blog once Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: Over the Rainbow is done. Insofar, I’ve only spent around 33 minutes in this map, but I’ll need two hours to finish one of the objectives required to complete the “Familiar Territory” assignment, which will unlock the PP-19. Over the course of this summer, I will have several goals that I aim to accomplish: I will be returning to the lab and assisting in the Giant walk-through Brain, which will be a concert performance that will make use of the simulation tools the lab has developed to assist in visualising structures and events in the brain.

• Besides the Giant Walk-through Brain (I’ll probably have to learn Unity and see how to hook it up so that I can control the Unity simulation using an iOS device), I’ll also need to think of a good thesis project over the course of the summer.  I believe that my research is significantly more productive and meaningful than “researching” Japanese tanks for World of Tanks: even if one needs connections to get access to the original blueprints and whatnot, I completely disagree with Sumeragi’s sentiment that this position is worth five thousand dollars and will counter that on the other hand, the sort of work I do is worth five thousand dollars.

• On the mention of Sumeragi, it looks like he has indeed been permanently banned from AnimeSuki: Sumeragi’s poor attitudes at AnimeSuki, and the fact that people at AnimeSuki held him in high regard despite their abrasive and hostile attitude, as well as Sinophobic and revisionist tendencies, had pushed my patience to the brink. I reported one of his posts back in January precisely for being Sinophobic and to my great surprise, Sumeragi was banned. I’ve long wanted this individual deprived of an audience, and with Sumeragi gone now, I can partake in Girls und Panzer discussion in peace. Back in Battlefield 3, I’ve finally unlocked the Javelin for my engineer, allowing me to disable armour with more ease compared to the AT weapons, although one unfortunate tendency is that the Javelin sometimes locks onto unoccupied vehicles instead.

• Gun Master is a remarkably fun game type, and although I’ve yet to actually get good enough to make my way to the top and end the game, I have ended up in the top five before. This map here is Operation 925, an office building under construction. Players get to fight through office spaces, a coffee shop, and the building’s parkade.

• Kiaser Railroad is a part of the Endgame expansion, featuring verdant fields and a vast lake in spring. The Endgame maps are seasons themed; my earlier image with the Javelin was captured on Operation Riverside, an autumn map. While I’m not doing anything impressive in this image, I decided to take a moment to enjoy the lake view after capturing an objective from someone who was camping there. I originally had spawned in a tank, but after my driver couldn’t get any kills on the guy, I exited and removed him from the flag before capturing the point while the tank driver covered me.

The question now becomes: what is life like as a Battlefield 3 Premium player? In all honesty, it’s actually not too different than being a regular player. I still win and lose like everyone else; other Premium players can be felled as quickly as they did before I upgraded, and I still die at the hands of ordinary players as I always have. Beyond having a plethora of awesome new maps, weapons, assignments, server queue priority and slick new dog tags for my opponents to steal, I’m still an ordinary player, and that’s the point. Being a part of the Premium Club doesn’t give me an unfair advantage over my teammates and opponents: my weapons are only as good as I am, and different weapons don’t confer a combat advantage compared to weapons of the same class. This point becomes particularly important because Battlefield 3 Premium is, although far from the ideal concept for distributing DLCs, able to remain as a reasonable setup for how premium accounts in general should work. Paying extra for the content doesn’t reward players from a combat perspective, and choosing not to pay won’t hurt combat per se, keeping it fair for those without the premium accounts. There is a way of how not to do premium accounts: in Wargaming.net’s World of Tanks, premium accounts yield 50 percent more experience and silver currency per match. This is prima facie equivalent to gaining 50 percent more experience per action in Battlefield 3, but when factored in with the mechanics in World of Tanks, it means ending up with more profit per battle, in turn translating to having more resources to train tank crews, buy new tanks and maintain higher-tier tanks. The increased experience rating allows players to spend less time with stock tanks, improving overall performance and ultimately leads to an improved win rate. If we were to convert this into an equivalent in Battlefield 3, it would be like saying that every round I fire deals 50 percent more damage, and I can absorb 50 percent more damage, allowing me to survive longer to complete objectives and turn battles in my favour. Doing so by paying, then, would defeat the purpose of improving in Battlefield 3: if my wallets were deep enough, I’d rapidly ascend. Thankfully, this isn’t how Battlefield 3 Premium works: premium here confers no advantages to the gameplay itself and follows the model of adding new features, content and customisations, which is precisely what payments should be conferring.

• I decided to play a few more matches on Monday before hitting the books: this was a conquest match I ended up winning, and as of late, I can hold my own against reasonably skilled players, ending up with a good KD ratio for most of the matches I play. At one point during that match, a motorbike was rushing towards me, although a quick trigger finger allowed me to wipe the driver and passenger out.

• I’m about to tell a familiar story: after I got comfortable with the engineer class in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, I decided that, with the right weapons, I could probably make the engineer class work in Battlefield 3, as well. That weapon turned out to be the A-91, which has a good rate of fire and low spread, but unpredictable recoil at longer ranges. Since I happen to prefer CQC, the recoil doesn’t affect me as much. After unlocking the A-91, my performance with the engineer improved.

• Here is an amusing moment: a scout helicopter passed overhead right under my tank’s cross-hairs, and I instinctively fired, blowing the helicopter out of the sky. Ordinarily, this doesn’t work, since air vehicles travel very quickly and are oftentimes out of the barrel’s range of elevation, but this was a particularly lucky moment. Much laughter from both sides ensued after.

• I’m now back at Donya fortress, playing some Gun Master, and my practise exam was done. Gun Master is fun, although I do have a great deal of difficulty using the revolvers and the 93R burst-fire pistol. Owing to the circumstances surrounding co-op, I now doubt I’ll get to unlock any of the weapons there, and so, I’m considering buying the co-op unlock shortcut later on should I decide to try those weapons.

• Of course, the fact remains that there is a pile of weapons to unlock and other maps to try mean that I am likely to see my Battlefield 3 experience as complete, co-op weapons or not. What I like most about the Close Quarters maps is the incredible amount of destruction that happens: while rooms and parts of the buildings might not collapse, the damage and ravaging done by weapon fire is very convincing. The details in the environment, whether it be the dining tables or bars, allow me to fight in a locale as opulent as Kaffarov’s mansion in the campaign.

• Sabalan Pipeline is the winter-themed map in the Endgame expansion. I will take a moment to admire yet another carbine ribbon; since getting the A-91, these have been more frequent. The snowy landscape evokes memories of some of the Bad Company 2 maps; there were more snowy maps in that game, but thanks to Endgame, I now get to experience winter combat in Frostbite 2.

• I am particularly proud of this moment: after using the Javelin to disable this vehicle, its operator exited and made an attempt to repair it, leaving him open to attack. However, rather than using my trusty A-91, or knifing him, I decided to break out the repair tool, resulting in this moment. I have no hard feelings to the guy at the receiving end, especially since this helped me unlock the G53.

• Here, I’ve defended my flag from two guys who were trying to rush this objective in the match’s final moments, earning me a double kill. There used to be an oil refinery that was visible from my place on the horizon; after I got my first-ever pair of binoculars (10 x 25 Bushnells), the refinery and neighbouring gas plant were my favourite subjects, although I would also turn these binoculars to the sky. It’s been some thirteen years since I got them, but I still have them, and they still work just fine.

• Talah Market is part of the Aftermath expansion and feels a little like Counter Strike: Source‘s Dust II, which is one of the more famous maps. Mentioned by FPS_Doug in Pure Pwnage, Dust II is where FPS_Doug gets most of his headshots during episode five of the web series’ first season; this video got me into Pure Pwnage, and presently, I share jokes with my friends that were inspired by this series, especially teh_pwnerer’s reactions to victory. In fact, this was my reaction to various announcements this year, and my performance in Halo 2 after playing for the first time in over a year.

• Aftermath features maps following a large earthquake in the Tehran region, adding the XBOW crossbow and a scoped variant to the game, as well as the Scavenger gametype. This DLC’s theme is post-earthquake survival and combat.

• Thanks to the fact that most gun master matches begin with pistols, I’ve accumulated several more pistol ribbons now. In an ordinary match, I tend to stick to my primary weapons more, and use the pistol only if I ran out of ammunition in a firefight. With that said, I do like the pistols, especially the Glock 18C, which comes with a laser sight.

• The QBU-88 semi-automatic sniper rifle makes a return in Close Quarters: Bad Company 2 veterans will know this as the Type 88 rifle, and I call this the Slenderman rifle, although in Battlefield 3, the lack of a distinct set of optics and firing sound means that the QBU-88 doesn’t really feel like its Bad Company 2 counterpart. I unlocked this earlier today after laser designating a jet in a match of conquest (and subsequently watching a Javelin-equipped teammate blow it out of the sky). Because I hardly play as the recon class, sniper rifle ribbons are an uncommon sight. I typically play recon to spot enemies and, on Noshahr Canals, fulfill the roll of a counter-sniper, blowing away snipers on the crane.

• The Scavenger game mode brings back memories of Halo 2, an age when players could pick up a diverse assortment of weapons off the map if default settings were enabled (most games, the Battle Rifle and Covenant Carbine or Sniper Rifle are the only available weapons). The aim is to make use of the various weapons scattered on the map and hold the control points long enough for the enemy team to run out of tickets: even weapons that I haven’t unlocked, such as the co-op weapons and the XBOW, are available here.

• Scavenger is surprisingly fun, and of the two games I completed, I’ve won both, so I’m now one win away from unlocking the XBOW. Battlefield 3 Premium is an incredible experience, breathing new life into a game that was becoming a little dull, but now that my year is drawing to a close, an entire summer awaits me now. We’ve come full circle since I exited summer 2013, and this summer, besides hanging out with my friends more often (think wings nights, Irish nachos and movies) and reading the backlog of books I’ve accumulated, I am looking to pick up three old hobbies again: building Gunpla, pencil sketching and mountain biking. I will also aim to learn some C#, the .NET framework, finite automata, context-free grammars and Turing Machines in preparation for the upcoming year.

• With all of these things going, I’ll probably end up playing less Battlefield 3 (but not too much less): as noted previously, the specific details behind what’s going to happen will be explained after Over the Rainbow is done airing. Given that the Gundam Unicorn finale is airing on the day of Otafest, things could get interesting; as per usual, I’ll try to get the review out ahead of other anime blogs. In addition, a little bit of perseverance and skill has allowed me to build a subtitled copy of the AnoHana movie, which means I’ll be reviewing that at some point in the future (as well as the original TV series: I may have forgotten most of the plot elements, so I may just have to rewatch that). For now, though, the BioShock Infinite post is up next, followed by Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (which I just beat yesterday). Because I imagine the anime news aggregator I’m linked to is also looking for anime posts, I’ll do a post on Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabu Kome wa Machigatteiru so I’m not flooding them with gaming posts: this is a series worth recommending.

Battlefield 3 Premium comes with all of the content from Back to Karkand, Close Quarters, Armoured Kill, Aftermath and End Game. This means that, besides having twenty spectacular new maps and some twenty new weapons, new vehicles and gametypes are also included. As mentioned earlier, I get to take a break from Caspian Border and Noshahr Canals. Don’t get me wrong: I love those maps, and some of my finest moments happen here, but every now and then, some diversity is nice. Some days, I’d love the old-style CQC that Ziba Tower, Operation 925, Donya Fortress and Scrap Metal gives. Other days, I may itch for a map under winter conditions and play Sabalan Pipeline, or else wish to be air-dropped onto the battlefield from the air in Nebandan Flats. Assignments also give incentive to try out new things: just recently, I unlocked the G53 for the engineer by killing someone with the repair tool. Thanks to my overwhelming affinity with the support class, I’ve unlocked the QBB-95 and L86A2 already. Because the PP-19 (a weapon that I’ve been itching to try since watching TheRadBrad’s playthrough of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3) requires that I arm ten M-COMs, I’ve diversified a little, and so, played a few more rush matches I ended up winning. I still have a few more M-COMs to arm before I get the weapon, but I will get there. The new maps are very scenic, and sometimes, I wish that they were empty so I could just run around and explore. I recall another article out there about another player’s experience in Battlefield 3 Premium; he concludes that “it’s a better idea to hang back and only buy the expansions you really want to play”. Said article was written by someone with vastly more gaming expertise than myself, and is dated back to June 2012, when Battlefield 3 Premium started taking off. Back then, there were more unknowns than knowns, and while some might have been disappointed with the way some expansions turned out, now, everything is now known: I’ve seen all the maps, weapons, vehicles, game types and perks, allowing me to make a better decision. My verdict is that the normal cost of premium (thirty dollars for those who currently own Battlefield 3) isn’t worth it, but when sales happen, one can get everything imaginable for the price of one DLC. So…how’s life in the Premium Club? It’s allowed me to experienced a new side of Battlefield 3 that I’d never seen before, with Easter Ham under a spring sunset that manages to evoke a mid-summer feeling. I’d say this is quite the club 🙂