Sitrep: Analysing the Armored Kill Battlefield 3 Patch
By Toby McCasker on September 5, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Last night, vehicular Battlefield 3 expansion Armored Kill went live, baby — for PS3 owners, at least. Great news for rivetheads, but for those of us who don’t give a care, there is actually a reason to part with said singular care. With Armored Kill’s release comes an udderly massive swag of tweaks ‘n changes to the game proper. The list is long and those PC-centric UI fixes are very welcome, but here’s what immediately struck me in the cataracts with a totem pole:
12 Gauge buckshot close range damage has been slightly increased
What the actual. Didn’t the exact opposite of this need to happen? There’s a reason a whole lot of servers demand a shottie ban: We’re all scrubs. Well, that and the fact these noobsticks impart even the most inept of militant stragglers with terrifying killing power. The Girlfriend Mode of BF3, surely.
FIM92 and IGLA now lock on to air vehicles at both lower altitudes and longer distances
Thank heavens for that, particularly in the case of the humble IGLA. As if it wasn’t hard enough to deal with a fully pimped out chopper, your guys on the ground couldn’t even target them right with the only tools available to them. Fling a missile at long range and it’d just get beaten away with flares (which’d then reload well before you could ready another shot), but now at least you can shunt one right up that heli’s gullet as it buzzes you.
Belt Fed Machine guns are now more accurate when standing and firing while aiming. This affects the M240, M249, Type88, Pecheneg, and LSAT
As a career Support guy (I can’t aim, and letting go of the trigger makes me sad), this is great. Even under ideal circumstances it frequently took a quarter of your extended mag to do the same kind of damage as an Assault or Engi just passing through. Balancing issues sure, but look at my M249. It is a chainsaw that shoots bullets. Now, thankfully, everyone will notice.
Removed flares from gunner position in helicopters. With the right combination of unlocks, an attack helicopter could be effectively invulnerable to lock on missiles. Removing the flares from the gunner balances the attack helicopter against ground fire
TAKE THAT, YOU SONS OF MATERNAL CANINES. For my priceless Faberge egg collection, this is the most overdue tweak to proceedings by far. With two seasoned pilots at the controls, helicopters transcend insanity and instead become a carving knife at the edge of your scrotum. Which makes sense on a practical level (dedicated players deserve to do well) sure, but in the interests of actually being able play BF3 without contemplating the end days, hooray.
Changed how MCOM station defend/attack kill score is calculated. Victim no longer needs to arm/disarm the crate but rather be in a 5 meter radius of the crate. Also increased kills needed for the Crate Defend Ribbon from 2 to 4. Overall, these changes should make it somewhat easier to get the ribbon, while increasing the opportunity for strategic play around MCOM stations
Very interesting and I like this a lot. Rush was starting to get very stagnant indeedily, precisely because everyone had worked out exactly how to troll the objectives to the point of Why Bother Playing This Mode. Ribbons I care not a fig for (I have enough Encouragement Awards from high school), but Zerg swarm firefights > yawnfest spawn-camping.
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The only thing i care about in the patch aside from the m16/m4 nerfing is this:
“MK3A1 now uses flechette rounds instead of Frag rounds in Gun Master mode (in Close Quarters).”
Now gunmaster might not have that choke point that the negotiator creates… frag rounds are nearly pointless.
steverogers42,
I suicided more than I killed with that piece of … …
yea, last few times i played, i got to it, then switched to knife… eventually got some kills with it, but a lot of rage was happening on that server…
steverogers42,
Amen. I hate that bit in gun master. That said it can be the bit that sorts out the men from the less skilled.
Toby,
As if buckshot didn’t need a buff. I think you’ll find that 12g flechette and slug need a slight nerf, or that slug needs a huge accuracy from the hip nerf (personally I think that’s a solution). Perhaps all semi auto shotties need a huge accuracy from the hip nerf and increase in recoil.
Buckshot + pumper has always seemed to be slightly underpowered in CQB imho. With the slight range buff to pump actions (causing buckshot to have a tighter grouping) this now puts them where they should be. Absolutely deadly in CQB. The pumper with buckshot is meant to sacrifice fire rate for short range control and stopping power making for absolute lethality. Makes sense to me.
ivantsr,
Anti-shotgun snob 4 life (because I just can’t deal)
Toby McCasker,
hahaha hatersGoN hate tobes, short range sucked with the pump, mid and far were not bad but the differences will be interesting, i will miss the firing times on the .44, had a LOT of fun with it on cqb recently, johnWayne-ing my way around servers…
also, m417 isnt as bad as i first thought… and using the l96 + iron sights and straight pull is most fun in hc.
also i think with shotguns, people think terry crews in the expendables, but i use them like Anton Chigurh, its all about principals.
<3
steverogers42,
Really gurning for an Anton Chigurh haircut DLC now.
Glad shotties are getting upped, they always did seem to be lacking in CQB.
I’m happy with the G2A launchers being buffed, aslong as Below Radar still works properly.
Letting go of the trigger makes me sad to :(
I’m for and against this attack heli nerf, no i dont want to have a near invulnerable chopper, but with the amount of stuff that can lock onto you, plus the fact that AA vehicles can now shoot clean across the map, helis are pretty buggered, especially when you get noobs (note: not newbs) in the gunners seat or pilots seat and whinge cause your flying low or just fly high cause i have no idea why.
Don’t play rush to much, so i’m hoping its a good thing!
This is all well and good Tobes, but clearly you needed a montage in youtube of all the failpoints of what you’re talking about, accompanied by some of your awesome music… Just sayin ;)
Agree with you on all points except the shotty issue. Being an engineer whore myself I don’t normally care… But there was no point taking buckshot as opposed to slug ammo when they did the same thing, but slug was better over range. Still, I prefer snapping bastards from the other side of a ridge with my AKS-74U anyway *hugs*
ashigaru,
Heeey, there’s an idea. Gosh, I have enough glorious fails to fill up an entire YouTube, though. And by “glorious” I mean “so embarrassing I got dumped.”
Shotguns are far and away the one thing I get killed by the most in BF3. I’m also terrible at using the bastard things because I have a massive Rambo complex and you know how in Snake Eater, if Snake held down the trigger on a rapid-fire weapon for long enough, he’d start howling like a mad man? Yes. I also do this.
What do you think I do when I fire my nerf machine gun? XD
Toby McCasker,
Dude, I couldn’t have worded it better… So thats why you get paided the big bucks… :3
Also, Tobes, if ima not ramboing the place or playing secret service medic, ima sticking my shotgun in weird and various places… <3
This is a great post haha, Toby McCasker you did good.
The only game where a shotgun needed a buff was the original Quake.
Considering how fast you die from a burst at short range from any automatic weapon, you damn well should die from buckshot at close range… it takes like what? a quarter? half a second burst to kill a guy even on normal mode with my G3?
else why the hell would anyone use shotgun instead of the easier spray and pray automatic weapon for close range?
they want to nerf automatic shotgun further? go ahead, but i expect anyone to be hit by a pump action with buckshot at close range to be dead. It’s a bloody shotgun, with a round meant to be effective in game only at close range, IT BETTER damn well kill at that range and do it’s job else it has no place in the game.
Toby McCasker,
Seriously? I think the thing which annoys me the most is getting killed at range by a using slugs and an acog – when you know a sniper rifle would not have got the kill, but say 80-90 dam instead.