E3 2012: A View to an Armored Kill on Battlefield 3

[News Portal]

Our coverage of E3 2012 continues, with Patrick Stafford checking out the huge maps, new vehicles, and new tactics afforded by the massive scope of Battlefield 3's 'Armored Kill' expansion.

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[realOne]

Armored Kill DLC is what I've been waiting personally, Massive open maps for the full Battlefield experience. This is the closet thing to the Armored Fury DLC or Highway Tampa map both of which were my favorites from BF2. Would be nice if DICE remade all those maps and even some of the maps from Euro Force & Special Forces as well.

[Kinky Kel]

No matter how many DLC's they release; Battlefield 1942 will still be their crowning achievement.

[SA soldier]

BF3 is still a good game but I would have liked them to have this scale of map in the original maps and less of the bathroom battles. The main focus point for them was clearly to soak up all the COD punks and looks as if they did that. But they ditched core BF players, the fans, the real dedicated players of this series to simply make more coin. Now I can't see a lot of people being excited about paying more for something that should have been included from the start. I guess sales will show us how many people will reopen their wallets to EA for content which does look good but will infuse yet further hatred of the company.

Yet again corporate greed at its finest.

[DarkMellie]

le sigh, the same old crappy argument. How is it corporate greed? It costs money to develop games and to keep the doors open they need to make as large a profit as possiblt to keep shareholders happy. If shareholders are unhappy they'll vote out the board and replace them with people who will return a profit.

It's the simplest of big economics.

And besides, you're absolutely in the minority in your views (but perhaps not on a gaming forum). Millions enjoy BC3 for what it is and the developers will continue to shape the game based on the needs of the greatest number of paying customers.

And as a hardcore bf2 fan, I'd like to see big open maps with no vehicles so I'll choose the servers that cater to that.

[tacitus42]

Mellie, did you just call it bc3 for a reason?
I'm definitely holding out for armored kill, and will go premium when it comes out.
what I'm really hoping for is a commander like bf2.
anyone else think the AC130 is starting to sound like the titan from 2142? I loved the titan games.

[Artful-dodgeR]

Needs moar Desert Combat.

[Fenryrbr]

As much as I loath the way DLC gets handled most of the time I could end up buying.

I well and truly got my money from the first release. It's not like this is some crappy COD map pack with half of them remakes and all still in the same tiny boxes.

[phewcha]

My issue with the 'corporate greed' debate, is it is corporate greed and people cry about it so much it ruins the legitimacy of the arguement. The reason for not giving mod tools is not because "its too sophisticated an engine" like they originally claimed.. it is so they can release maps like this and charge for it. The truth is, everything they are releasing would of been done by modders at some point or another, and also done a lot better. In my opinion, mod tools should of been released, modders should of done what these DLC packs are and the community would of got it all for free, and then DICE/EA should of given the community something that a small team of modders can not accomplish, and then charged for it and i would be happy to pay. Especially given the the development time for the DLC would not even be 1/4 of dev time for the original packaging, yet they make more money from the DLC than what they do on the game. It is definitely upsetting and capitalism at its finest.

[Yurtles]

And somehow I bet the maps will still contain a billion little hidey holes and consist mainly of spammy infantry gameplay.
My wish is for the BF games to return to more of an expansive rather than intensive game design. COD influences, loss of identity, etc.

[DarkMellie]

Yeah, BF2 maps had such clear and clean lines which made advancement and teamwork so much more tactical. In BF3, you force points through weight of numbers... keep shooting and dying until one side takes the advantage. In BF2 I think of Mashtuur and that gully between the Mosque and Hotel flag (can't remember if that's the correct title for each). Long range engagements held off the other team while your close combat guys ran across.. rather than hundreds of pieces of (admittedly gorgeous) destructive cover that turn it into the 'no angle is safe' world of CoD.

Sure, that map design was influenced by what they could do in the engine, but it still carried lessons that have largely been lost in translation. I far prefer the BTK maps in their original form than with all the destructive ****.

Has anyone done a size comparison of BF3 maps to BF2?

[ChainsawMcP]

I'm looking at the images in that article and wondering how far back the map goes...

There is a shoreline, beach, urban area, main highway, small hillocks, desert, a camp of some sort, another road and then some high hills... with some incidental areas along the sides - if it goes back in to the mountains then it is a big map - but if it stops at the camp... not so much.

[|3lack|)eath]

Needs moar Desert Combat.

Agreed.

They brought in the gunship, AC130. Now if they also bring back being able to control naval aircraft carriers and destroyers to be able to have full on naval battles and give support for land troops, I will be very happy

[Bronze_D]

You know that's not gonna happen,

the focus seems to be on well... what else, armored warfare, and the map seems to reflect that (dessert map? in infantry? you are asking to be shelled by the tank with their thermal cam)

besides, modern naval ships don't even use gun support for landing anymore... (Iowa was retired long ago).

I'd love naval warfare, but i don't know how exactly we're supposed to conduct naval warfare using modern assets considering naval warfare of the modern era consists of ships shooting each other with dozens of missiles from several hundred miles away at each other.

not that BF3 been fully authentic or what not, but i am not quite sure how exactly modern naval warfare would translate into a fun conversion into BF3.

(note: MGS??? an they call that a tank destroyer???, errr.... right...)

[SaNE]

not that BF3 been fully authentic or what not, but i am not quite sure how exactly modern naval warfare would translate into a fun conversion into BF3.

We'll never know because the engine and it's tools are too complex to enable modding... (that's sarcasm, just to be clear)