One Year of Service in Battlefield 4

“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.” —Theodore Roosevelt

I’d expected to only play Battlefield 4‘s multiplayer intermittently after purchasing it, but back during May, DICE began rolling out the “Road To Battlefield” programme that saw the release of all of the DLC for free: beginning with “Dragon’s Teeth”, the DLC became freely available over the course of the summer, and so, I eventually picked up “Final Stand”, “China Rises”, “Second Assault” and “Naval Strike”. I’ve only played a handful of the new game modes and maps, but the greatest addition the DLC conferred to my experience was the inclusion of new assignments and their corresponding unlocks, as well as new maps. I recall when I’d picked up Battlefield 3 Premium and marvelling at all of the new features — the excitement there had been in gaining access to new maps and unlocks, as well. However, this time, the complementary DLC come from a promotion leading towards Battlefield 1. In the time since my last Battlefield 4 post back in March, I’ve ranked up around twenty levels and add thirty-four more hours in multiplayer, bringing that total to seventy-two hours. “Dragon’s Teeth” had come out in May, and I recall many an hour spent in the Sunken Dragon map armed with the MP-412, trying to get kills on opponents while in the water in order to unlock the Unica 6. Several long and difficult matches later, I’d succeeded, and proceeded to the next assignment, which involved using the Unica 6 to score twenty headshots. After numerous deaths, the Desert Eagle was finally unlocked, and has since become my favourite heavy pistol. Although the road to obtaining the Desert Eagle was a tricky one, it was also marvelously rewarding to succeed.

This is the sort of experience that has given Battlefield 4 such longevity: on occasion, I drop into a match now and equip a new weapon to try out, unlocking new attachments and accessories for it. In the occasional match, medals and awards pop up to alert me that I’ve completed some assignment I’d not even heard of before, unlocking new weapon skins or even weapons in some assignments. The unlock system in Battlefield 4, being a more refined upgrade to Battlefield 3‘s system, always finds a way to give back to players for investing time into the game, as well as for being adventurous, and in doing so, continues to encourage players to return, either to work towards unlocking all of the weapon accessories in order to make the weapon something they enjoy using, or else promote altering one’s playstyle with a new weapon. At this time, I’ve unlocked all of the shotguns, as well as all but one of the assault rifles and pistols. There are other weapons, such as sniper rifles and designated marksman rifles, that remain to be conquered, but even once everything is unlocked, there remains the weapon mastery challenges (get 500 kills with a weapon) to be completed. The sheer diversity of things to do in multiplayer well beyond completing objectives means that there’s always room to play Battlefield 4, and over the foreseeable future, I will likely alternate between Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 depending on whether or not I’m seeking a more modern experience, or Strike Witches in the Frostbite Engine.

Screenshots and Commentary

• I threw down enough resupply crates and ammo pouches such that the resupply medals were my most received medal after the suppression assists. In Battlefield 4, the support class had access to LMGs, along with DMRs and carbines, and for the most part, I particularly enjoy using LMGs for their high ammo capacity. The M249 became my favourite LMG in both Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, handling superbly with low recoil.

• Here, I earn my first-ever chain link ribbon after trying out the game mode for the first time. These screenshots date back to May, during which I would have been in the middle of working for my thesis paper. I did take a few hours off each day to play Battlefield 4 and found out about the free DLC programme while looking up whether or not there would be any events for double XP.

• “Dragon’s Teeth” was the first of the DLC to be offered free of charge; its theme is conflict-ravaged urban settings, and my favourite map is probably Propaganda, which is set in Pyongyang in North Korea. Besides Soviet-style apartments, there’s a statue of the North Korean leader and large billboards. I had a fantastic time on this map, but it appears that games set on DLC maps tend to be more specialised, rather than the conquest or TDM I’m most fond of playing.

• If memory serves, I went nine and twenty-nine during the one conquest match I tried unlocking the Unica 6: the assignment involves getting five kills while swimming and opening the flood gates. Both objectives proved quite difficult, as the other team had superb defense: I was sniped or died to campers hiding out in the towers where the controls where while trying to open the gates. Even after succeeding, the five kills while swimming were a challenge, since players simply shot me out of the water. I eventually succeeded with the fifth kill, finishing the assignment and earning myself much fist pumping and yelling.

• One of my favourite features in Battlefield 4 is the whole notion of “assist counts as kill”, which I find to be a mechanism that appropriately rewards players for dealing a majority of the damage to another target before someone else finishes them off. It is especially satisfying when one is killed before they can get the kill, only to have “assist counts as kill” pop up on the screen, awarding credit for having done the bulk of the work for another teammate to finish them.

• I predominantly play TDM in Battlefield 4, but in general, Conquest is my favourite game mode, bringing large-scale battles to life as teams try to capture and hold objectives in order to deplete the opposing team of tickets. Its smaller counterpart, Domination, is most similar to King of The Hill in Halo, although there is more than one hill and the hills do not move. In this particular game, I’m playing on a remastered version of Battlefield 3‘s “Operation Metro”, which I spent many hours playing during the days of Battlefield 3.

• It was a Herculean task to get twenty headshots with the Unica 6 in order to unlock the Desert Eagle: I normally roll with the MP 412 Rex, which has a higher firing rate and for which I’ve got the green laser sight for to improve hip fire. I count on getting two body shots in close quarters in order to best an opponent while using a sidearm and so, never bother aiming for the head. However, a combination of luck and the occasional unaware player meant that after some effort, I finally unlocked the Desert Eagle.

• I primarily like the Desert Eagle for its aesthetics, and for having the fastest reload of any of the so-called “hand cannons” in Battlefield 4, and my most-used pistol is the MP 412. For the lighter pistols, I used the M9 the most extensively. I am a huge fan of pistols, and typically have a blast on the pistol only servers, but in ordinary servers, a good pistol can be a fantastic complement for one’s primary weapon: a hard-hitting pistol goes great with shotguns or PDWs, while something like the G18 or 93R is a fantastic backup for bolt-action rifles.

• I haven’t gotten a KILLTACULAR since my days of playing Halo 2: Vista, which was defined to be getting four kills, each within seven seconds of one another (or, four kills within twenty-eight seconds) until now: using an anti-tank rocket, I blew up a vehicle carrying four occupants here. In Halo 2 on Lockout, I became so familiar with the spawn points so that I could use a sniper rifle and battle rifle in conjunction with plasma grenades to clear out the opposing team’s players as they spawned, eventually earning me the covetted killimanjaro medal (seven kills, each within seven seconds of one another).

• The engineer class in Battlefield 4, like Battlefield 3, finds most utility on games where there are plenty of vehicles. I usually roll with the repair torch for the sake of being able to rapidly repair friendly vehicles, although I remember chaotic matches where I make to equip an anti-tank rocket, pull out the torch by mistake, then proceed to walk up to the vehicle and begin damaging it with the repair tool, eventually causing it to explode.

• Thanks to the antics of Girls und Panzer, I usually try to flank enemy armour to destroy them, but the main battle tanks in Battlefield 4 are also effective against lighter vehicles and infantry. The combination of double XP events in conjunction with capturing objectives while in vehicles has allowed me to unlock almost all of the accessories for the tanks: I’m only three short at present. My typical loadout for a tank is the default loadout, but it strikes me now as strange that I’ve not altered the tank as the defaults have worked so effectively.

• Dragon Pass in the “China Rises” expansion has some of the nicest scenery in Battlefield, and here, I get a spot bonus as I run through the rice paddies and karst rock formations of the Guilin valley. According to the time stamps on my screenshots, after May and June, I stopped playing Battlefield in July, since I was in Cancún for the ALIFE 2016 conference. After I returned, my goal was to finish revising my thesis such that it was submission ready.

• At the end of July, I submitted my thesis, but during a tense week in early August, my thesis was rejected for formatting issues. However, after three attempts, my submission was finally accepted, and so, in early August, I resumed playing Battlefield, recalling one particularly hilarious match where one fellow going by the name of Mars732 continually spouted profanity when I got him with the SPAS-12.

• Even after acquisition of new DLC, I still think that my favourite maps of Battlefield 4 are Zavod 311: the forest environment and abandoned T-54/55 factory is an excellent environment that suits a variety of play styles. Here, I unlock the RPK-74 as a reward for completing the “Powder Keg” assignment, and further recall another assignment where I had to get one M320 kill, one pistol kill and one defibrillator kill in one match. Players recommend getting the three assault rifle ribbons first, otherwise the kills won’t count, but I jumped in a little late, and neglected to get the ribbons beforehand. So, I hastened to get eighteen kills with the assault rifle, and after a tense match, I unlocked the L85A2.

• After a year of playing Battlefield 4, I finally witnessed the Levolution event naturally occur during one conquest match on “Siege of Shanghai”, when the central skyscaper’s support columns were damaged by tank fire sufficiently for the entire thing to collapse. I was on a mission to finish the “Make a Dent” assignment, which unlocks the MP7. Getting the anti-vehicle ribbons was not a difficult task, but the portable anti-air kills proved more difficult. I was completely unsuccessful with the Stinger missiles, but in a later match, a lucky shot with the Igla netted me a nice double kill, unlocking the weapon.

• Unlike Battlefield 3, the DMRs in Battlefield 4 deal much less damage and require three shots to kill even in close quarters. Quite a force to recon with in Battlefield 3, I found that they’re not as useful in Battlefield 4, being outperformed by higher fire rate weapons in close quarters and lacking the accuracy to be effective sniper weapons at longer ranges. Still, there are some days where I’ll feel up to trying them out, and I’ve unlocked a handful of attachments for the RFB that make it slightly more usable.

• As I hardly ever play the recon class at long ranges, the marksman ribbon is something I’ve not seen during my game time until now. I’m not particularly good with sniper rifles in general, and consequently, have not unlocked many of the weapons. In Battlefield 3, the DMRs and bolt-action rifles were under the same category, so I usually just rolled with the M417 and had a blast two-shotting folks at close quarters.

• After a friend suggested I try out the M240B, I immediately took a liking to the weapon and got fifty kills over the course of two TDM matches, unlocking the support expert title and the associated RPK-12. I’ve now reached expertise for both the medic and support classes, leaving only the recon and engineer classes left to master. However, having spent a “mere” seventy-two hours in Battlefield 4, I’m still a long way from unlocking everything.

• Shotguns see limited utility for most game modes, but on “Operation Locker”, they’re beasts to be reckoned with. Insofar, my favourite shotguns are the SPAS-12 and the 870 MCS: I have been called a “shotgun n00b” before for making use of shotguns in TDM, although I’m unfettered by the remarks; TDM is where I go to focus on farming kills for weapon unlocks, and over the past week, I attempted the “Road to Battlefield” challenge, which asked for twenty-five M1911 kills.

• I’d not actually used the M1911 up until that point, and so, had no attachments for the weapon. Instead, I ran the weapon with no accessories, managing to perform quite well with it and earning me the moniker “pistol n00b” by some players. I’m not bothered, since doing so allowed me to complete the mission, earning me a cool weapon skin and dogtags for Battlefield 1, as well as a gold battlepack for Battlefield 4 (I got two knives from this drop, so I was quite pleased with the outcome of that assignment).

My performance in Battlefield 4 is primarily objective-driven: in most matches, I play to capture points, arm or defuse MCOMs, or else do what is necessary to win a game, even if it means my KD ratio takes a hit. This particular play-style comes from my personal preferences in how I approach problems in reality; it’s acceptable for me to take a few hits here and there provided that the team overall is doing well. Consequently, I will utilise my class to its fullest to assist my teammates in a match, and on several occasions, have reached close the top of the scoreboard despite having what would considered be a poor KD ratio (less than 1.0). This is because I’m more interested in capturing points, healing and reviving teammates, resupplying teammates and repairing vehicles than I am with kills in objective driven matches. To offset this, I play team slayer in order to accumulate kills and unlock weapon accessories. Over the course of the past few months, I’ve also played in a squad with my friends: that was an immensely enjoyable experience where our team won one of the two conquest large matches we played. The first one, we were able to mount a comeback, and the second one was a closer game that we’d narrowly lost. Playing with friends is a vastly different experience than playing solo, although in all cases, I have the most fun where I’m able to help my team out. Now that Battlefield 1‘s out, I’ll probably be dividing my time between this and Battlefield 4, which means that my time in Battlefield 3 has drawn to a close.

Three years since I came back: A retrospective on Battlefield 4

“A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” —Albert Camus

Three years ago, the seventeen minute-long trailer depicting Recker’s mission in Baku was released; during that time, I had just submitted my undergraduate thesis paper and was preparing for the defense. It’s surprising as to how quickly time passes: a year-and-a-half later, I played through the Battlefield 4 campaign during Origin’s Game Time programme, but back during November 2015, I caught wind of another Origin Black Friday sale and proceeded to pick up the Battlefield bundle (which also includes Battlefield: Hardline in addition to Battlefield 4) for 60 percent off. In effect, I got Battlefield 4 for nine dollars, and Battlefield: Hardline for nine dollars, a fantastic deal. This gave me the opportunity to play through the Hardline campaign back in January and experience the police drama that TheRadBrad experienced back in March (when I was watching his play-through videos in between working on a multi-agent rescue simulator), and on some occasion, I’ve been dropping in to play some of Battlefield 4‘s multiplayer. When I first played through Battlefield 4‘s multiplayer, I had around three days left in my trial period, and I only reached rank four after around four hours of gameplay. I was thrilled to learn that the starting weapons came with attachments, and thanks to the “assist counts as kill” system, maintained a slightly better KD ratio than I did in Battlefield 3. However, over the course of the past three months, I’ve logged an additional thirty-eight hours in the game, and thanks to the monthly deployment events’ double XP weeks, I managed to unlock all of the LMGs and all of the pistols, some carbines and some shotguns. As well, I’ve also been able to unlock some cool new dog tags through the community missions (including the Virgo dog tag, which has quickly become one of my favourites for its design).

This extra time has allowed me to gain a slightly better grasp on the differences between Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, which were a little more difficult to pick out with only four hours of multiplayer experience. The most noticeable downgrade is the movement system: my soldier feels a lot more sluggish compared to Battlefield 3, and this has gotten me killed on more than one occasion. Movement in Battlefield 3 was more responsive, and experienced players could find ways of extricating from situations where their opponent fired first, allowing them to escape or even counterattack. There’s also an unusual spotting mechanic that causes the soldier to hold out his left hand, effectively locking one from aiming down sights. At close quarters, the resulting decrease in accuracy translated to bullets not hitting their target, and gave away my position, leading to death. I’m sure than someone will be able to provide the technical term for this or better yet, explain how to break out of it, but for now, I’m simply avoiding spotting unless I’m relatively far away. Negatives aside, there are some elements I’ve gotten used to: the more complex loadout menus and bewilderingly diverse range of accessories no longer intimidate me, and I find that it’s very nice to have all of the different options available. Battlefield 4 allows for more customisation than Battlefield 3, and this gives a bit more personalisation (in this post, I’m running with the Ooarai logo from Girls und Panzer in most of my screenshots). The thing that I’m thoroughly enjoying most about Battlefield 4 is the gun-play: guns feel like they hit a lot harder, resulting in more tactile gameplay. On the whole, while perhaps not quite as good mechanically as Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4 nonetheless remains quite fun and had solid support until quite recently.

Screenshots and Commentary

• Unlike Battlefield 3, where I tend to be quite consistent, my performance in Battlefield 4 seems to vary all over the place; some days, I’ll be doing exceptionally poorly, while other days, I’ll be somewhere near the top of the scoreboard with a KD ratio of 2.0.

• Last I played Battlefield 4, it was back during August 2014, after the Giant Walkthrough Brain had finished its first showing. The project was slowing down, as only minor adjustments needed to be made for the Beakerhead performances, and Battlefield 4 had just become available on Origin’s Game Time programme. My goal was to complete the campaign at the time, and I managed to play several hours of the multiplayer, reaching rank four.

• So, when I returned back during December 2015, I was quite unaccustomed to the control mechanics in Battlefield 4, but fortunately, I had unlocked the M249 for the support class and also had access to the SCAR-H for the assault class. These weapons proved quite effective and I used them frequently to play matches.

• The assault class improved yet again once I unlocked the M416: my favourite assault rifle in Battlefield 3 (I have 10 service stars with it), its reasonably high rate of fire, controllable recoil and short reload times makes it one of the most versatile rifles in Battlefield 4.

• I’ve been predominantly playing TDM matches ever since I bought Battlefield 4: it’s the best option for just entering a match for fun and also to experiment with different weapon setups. Most matches have a hundred tickets, so they can be completed over relatively short periods of time. Here, I’m experimenting with the carbine weapon class as an engineer: I’m not too fond of the reorganised weapon setup in Battlefield 4, where PDWs became an engineer-exclusive weapon, while carbine and DMRs became all-class weapons.

• Looking back, I’ve actually gotten quite a fair portion of the Battlefield 4 arsenal unlocked such that I can play to my preferred style for each class (not shown in this post is the fact that I’ve become somewhat competent with the M40A5), and so, I might start stepping out of my comfort zone to play more conquest and rush matches, provided that I’ve got the time to do so between my existing backlog (more on that in a few figure captions) and other commitments.

• A section of the Dragon’s Valley map was re-imagined as Noshahr Canals, although the widths of the different pathways in the map means that it handles nothing like the original Noshahr Canals. The charm about the original map was that everything was very tightly packed together, and while there were just enough open spaces such that all play-styles were possible, the map favoured CQC engagements.

• I think I’m only rank 25 at the time of writing: while I played quite a bit of Battlefield 3 after picking it up in 2013, these days, my gaming backlog is nontrivial and presently, I’m slowly making my way through Valkyria Chronicles, as well as Sniper Elite V2. My workload’s dropped off a little, now that I’m back from my first-ever conference, the next big thing on my plate are the series of presentations our lab will be doing over the next month or two, plus yet another conference publication with a deadline in three weeks.

• I still have strong memories of playing conquest on this map on a rainy Friday evening after returning home from a lab meeting. I’ve just unlocked the FAMAS in this here moment, a French service rifle that I’ve never used frequently in Battlefield 3. The iron sights are atrocious, blocking out one’s entire field of view and I’ve lost opponents quite frequently as a result. Fortunately, unlike Battlefield 3, the RDS is unlocked after 10 kills, so one need not endure the iron sights for too long.

• The PDWs are now limited to the engineer class, and here, I’m rocking a pimped-out UMP-45. A careful glance at the image shows that the weapon is sporting the Pure Pwnage logo, and in most of my other images, the Ooarai logo of Girls und Panzer fame can be seen. As I’m not a premium member and have no intention of joining the premium ranks this time around, I don’t have access to some of the special shapes that allow me to reproduce Miporin’s face, so I’ll stick to the Ooarai logo.

• Besides the M416, the SCAR-H also has performed admirably in my hands as a mid to long-range weapon: I fondly remember a match where I went on an 11-killstreak and ran out of ammunition for my weapon, and was eventually forced to pick up the kit from another player, managing to get some kills off that before running out of ammunition and dying.

• Ever since I played Battlefield 4 through Game Time, I’ve been using FRAPS to capture all of my in-game screenshots. Thus, when moments such as medals arise, it’s become a simple matter of mashing the screenshot key to permanently record the memory into an image file. Of course, one has to stay alive long enough to capture the screenshot, lest the medal disappear upon death.

• The assault rifles, LMGs and pistols are my most-frequently used weapons in Battlefield 4 at present simply because of how much infantry-oriented game types I partake in. Battlefield has always been about large-scale battles with 64 players and plenty of vehicles, but I’ve a propensity towards enjoying combat between foot soldiers rather than vehicles.

• Back during December, I was farming pistol kills during double XP events to unlock all of the pistols, knowing that outside of pistol servers, I would be unlikely to use my sidearms frequently enough to unlock the others. The pistols are actually quite fun and can be split into two camps; there are the lighter-hitting, faster-firing pistols and the so-called skill cannons, which fire slowly but hit like a truck. My favourite pistol is the MP412 REX: ever since I acquired a green laser sight for it, it’s become my preferred sidearm for being able to down any opponent with two shots.

• I die at the hands of someone using the AEK-971 far more frequently than I do any other weapon precisely because I am a close-quarters player. Cited to be a “tryhard” weapon, the AEK-971 is one of the fastest firing assault rifles in Battlefield 4 and once players learn the recoil patterns, the weapon is highly effective at close to medium ranges. I’ve only a handful of kills with it so far, preferring the M416 because it’s got a faster reload time.

• While Operation Locker was a map I was not initially fond of, I’ve since grown to appreciate it for its combination of close-quarters environments with longer hallways, making it a highly chaotic environment that is well-suited for shotguns. This map’s dark corners also make it well-suited for ensnaring enemies with M18 claymores (provided that the server will allow them).

• I’ve been hearing all sorts of rumours concerning Battlefield 5, with some of the more interesting ones suggesting that the game was going to be WWI themed. Some of the more notable YouTube channels (notably, Matimi0) counter that since most of WWI was trench warfare and featured bolt-action rifles and some pistols, it might not accommodate the weapon and accessory diversity that most are used to seeing from a Battlefield game.

• Official sources state that Battlefield 5 will return to the military from Battlefield: Hardline‘s law enforcement setting, and that is about it for what is reliably known. I was personally hoping for Bad Company 3– the reason Bad Company 2 stood out for me was the insane destruction in the multiplayer and a highly memorable, colourful cast of characters in the single player campaign.

• Quite recently, I’ve taken to playing with shotguns during some TDM rounds in close-quarters matches such as Operation Locker: the 870 MCS is among the first of the shotguns unlocked, and it is absolutely beastly. It has the highest pellet count of any pump-action shotgun, and proved lethal in the confines of Operation Locker. Later, I returned to Noshahr Canals of Battlefield 3 to try it, and it turns out that the 870 MCS is just as potent a shotgun there.

• Now that I’m done reminiscing about my memories of Battlefield 4, and with the month of March coming to an end, it’s time to remark that regular programming will resume in April. I’ve gotten the drafts for Aokana and Haruchika now, and those posts should be coming out within the next few days. After that, I’ll be discussing She and Her Cat: Everything Flows and Anthem of the Heart.

I probably won’t play Battlefield 4 with the same frequency that I did for Battlefield 3, but it will be quite fun to join the occasional game and see what happens, especially during events. The XP bonuses are particularly nice, allowing me to unlock weapons and class-specific equipment more quickly, and even though I’m far from reaching the higher ranks, I’m nonetheless making good headway in terms of unlocks. Ever since unlocking the M416 for the assault class, Battlefield 4 feels less foreign than it did when I first played through it during August 2014; in fact, going through Battlefield 4 and unlocking the different weapons and equipment leads me to recall when I first picked up Battlefield 3, where, despite being completely terrible at it, I had great fun with the unlocks. I’m experiencing the joy of unlocks again with Battlefield 4. This time of year is also when news of a new Battlefield typically come out: from the sounds of it, Battlefield 5 is going to release somewhere later this year, and three years ago, a 17-minute trailer was released following the Baku mission. No such trailer was released this year, but it will be interesting to see what the latest battlefield will entail.

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.

The Infinite Zenith’s Firing Range: Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C³-style

“Dude, did that guy just headshot me?!” —FPS_Doug

The latest installment of Firing Range deals with Karilia Hatsuse’s load out from Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C³. In Stella Women’s Academy, Karilia is a boisterous member of the  C³ Club and is seen frequently wielding a P90. As one of the C³ club’s most effective performers, Karilia enjoys close quarters combat and prefers to outmaneuver her enemies at high speeds. Her choice of the FN P90 is well-suited for this role: in service since 1991, the P90 is a compact bullpup personal defines weapon with a unique top-mounted magazine and is chambered for 5.7×28 mm rounds. In Battlefield 3, the P90 is unlocked at level forty. Overall, it has one of the largest ammunition capacities of any of the PDWs, even without extended magazines, and also has a good rate of fire and low recoil. This is offset by its slightly lower damage, but overall, the higher magazine capacity means that players can equip the PDW with other attachments rather than being forced to rely on the extended magazines. Thus, the P90 can become highly versatile, and can be outfitted for stealthy combat by means of a suppressor, as well as slightly longer range engagements with the flash suppressor. This weapon is a beast in Karilia’s hands, but the question now is…how it perform in my hands?

• The P90 is designed solely for close-quarters combat and is useless at long ranges. I’m running with the bare-bones loadout to mimic Karilia’s loadout, which stands in contrast with my usual preference for having the laser sight and a holographic sight. The iron sights are quite tough to use, and there is no improved hip fire bonus, so the default P90 was a little more difficult to use compared to the setup I’m most familiar with.

• With that said, the default P90 isn’t a poor weapon, and its accessories can be unlocked fairly quickly. Even without a laser sight to further improve hip-firing accuracy, the weapon can deal out a massive amount of pain at close range owing to its insane firing rate, which compensates for a low damage from individual rounds. Here, I manage a double kill on two individuals who were close together in a Close Quarters Domination Match on Donya Fortress

• Karilia’s speciality is (no surprises here) speed, and in an accurate setting, I would equip squad sprint. However, since one of my squad-mates has squad sprint equipped, to improve the diversity amongst our group, I’ll typically go with squad ammo so everyone can last longer without needing additional rounds. If I am playing as a support class, then additional frags or flak protection is also useful, but the choice of specialisation is strictly determined by what other members in my squad have equipped.

• Whenever I get headshots with a PDW, it’s either because I’m firing on an enemy who’s unaware that I’m there, or else dealt enough damage to him and the recoil from the gun led the killing shot to be a headshot. Such moments are only possible in close-quarters matches, as the P90 is useless at longer ranges: to compliment it, one might be inclined to carry a scoped .44 magnum to have some effectiveness at longer ranges.

• Karilia also runs briefly with an airsoft replica of the M60 in the second episode of Stella Women’s Academy. The M60 is quite powerful and superbly effective at laying down a large amount of suppressive fire, but is also quite difficult to use in its vanilla form. Nonetheless, I managed to get some kills with it. This post is the last of the Firing Range posts for the time being: through covering Sword Art Online II, Sabagebu!, Upotte! and Stella Women’s Academy, I’ve covered almost all of the major weapons in Battlefield 3 (except for shotguns and pistols).

The answer is…surprisingly well. Generally, I love personal defense weapons because of their amazing hip fire accuracy: I remember back in the days of older shooters before Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare popularised the notion of aiming down sights, and one could always fire with perfect accuracy from the hip (aiming down sights usually involved zoom optics and was for longer range weapons). Without worrying about decreased hip fire accuracy, players could run around maps like Lockout (Halo 2) and Dust2 (Counterstrike: Source), engaging in frenzied, high-octane combat. There’s an accuracy penalty in Battlefield 3 for hip firing, but equipping PDWs allows one to play a high-paced, “up-in-your-face” approach. For this reason, I tend to do quite well with PDWs equipped even though they deal less damage than the other primary weapons. Close-quarters frenzies mean that as long as one’s aim is true, one can come out on top: it doesn’t matter if an assault rifle or carbine is more powerful if those rounds aren’t hitting anything, and the PDW’s good hip firing accuracy allows one to maintain a full field of vision, allowing one to gain a good bearing on where their opponents are. While they may try to aim down sights in close quarters, there’s also a delay to bring the sights up. The P90 has the added bonus of a large default magazine size, offsetting the lower damage output and making it better suited for taking out groups of enemies compared to other PDWs (like the MP7 and MP5-K). The P90 is an excellent weapon all-around, and while one can’t realistically expect to outgun assault rifles and carbines at long range, the weapon is suited for firefights inside buildings and the container mazes of Noshahr Canals. Thus, Karilia’s P90 winds up being a solid PDW all around, and one can perform quite well with this as their primary weapon in confined spaces.

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).