BF4 first impressions

[Jokerle]

For the poor souls that cant play the beta now, please write down some impressions

[matsif]

thoughts from the 1.5 hours I played this morning (went to bed early, woke up at 3:30, made coffee, work is gonna suck, w/e):

-hip fire sucks. I don't think I got a kill with it in the 1.5 hours I played this morning, and that was using every kit outside of recon.

-tank play feels much more dynamic and driving is much more fluid, I don't feel like I'm sliding around aimlessly or not able to drive over large portions of maps anymore because of a rock or car (I drove over plenty of cars actually). Tanks feel properly strong and the new disable mechanics make actually aiming worthwhile (going to flank for the engine or aiming at tracks/wheels). APCs also no longer feel completely OP, although there is no alphabet shells in the beta so can't make a real comparison there to see if they are OP again. RPGs are super-effective as well, probably nerf worthy actually.

-speaking of tanks, I didn't notice a huge difference between the abrams and type 99 (china tank). They seemed fairly well balanced against each other, but I didn't get into close up 1 on 1 fights that often because RPGs are OP. Spent a lot of time backing into buildings and using angles to cover my ass-end so my engine wouldn't die, and took a lot of tread shots (and wheel shots on APCs) to make them slower and allow more shots on my end while I peeked out of cover. With more destructable buildings in urban maps, there is cover for your tank everywhere, just drive through the wall and make a hole for yourself.

-I hit a chopper with a tank shell multiple times and nothing happened . Probably just buggy cause beta, whatever. Choppers don't have as much splash on the gunner seat, rockets don't feel OP, didn't fly to check flight mechanics so can't say to their ease of flying or not. Was only in gunner seat for a short while before the idiot flying crashed into the falling skyscraper

-other than 1 CTD that happened when I was alt-tabbing and recording, everything was really stable and I had no stuttering or frame rate issues while recording with all ultra, vert-sync, no aa, with the amd beta driver released yesterday. not uploading the footage I have so far as it was more of just a test of recording and system performance, might upload some later tonight.

-the xm25 for support is kinda strange, I haven't figured out the whole "lock on and airburst over cover" thing from the trailers, but it's essentially a noob tube with no arc fire and a 5 round mag.

-as to other weapons, I didn't play a lot of assault so I can't speak there, but having a support is a necessity in squads because ammo is low. support gun seemed much more balanced against the AR, but the gun you get is more like the M27 in bf3 than an actual LMG. we'll see how it goes once I get the type 88. Engy PDW eats ammo and isn't really that accurate, without good weapon control you won't kill anything from a distance and with horribad hip fire good luck up close. Probably will swap out to carbine once I unlock it.

-the skyscraper falling is quite impressive, especially from a chopper view as it falls on your head

-CQ Domination is the same thing as it was in BF3, no point spawning but squad spawning is there. Didn't try obliteration but it is listed in the filters list on battlelog. CQ and CQ large are both listed giving me the impression that there are 32 and 64 player sizes to maps.

overall it's pretty impressive, but it's by no means BF2 reborn, much closer to BF3 but with some added destruction and map items like closing chain gates over windows in a store and using elevators. Basically, think of what BF3 could have done, add it in, don't improve the graphics that much, taadaaa BF4. Didn't explore "levelution" that much, but did see the skyscraper drop which was impressive. Will add more after I get more play time in tonight.

[Hgx]

Played for around 2.5 hours

TANKS:

-I played most of the time with the MBTs and they seem quite more balanced than before, tho I'd like to see a change in the damage indicators, sometimes it's hard to notice you're in really low "HP" now that you don't get disabled 100% of the time when being with less than 50%.

-It's also really nice that the tank aim is not perfect as in BF 3, sometimes your shots go around the main circle, so no more firing from behind 9999999% cover where only 2cms of your turret shows up.

-Repair bar for rep. monkeys is also better.

-Collision system needs some tweaking of course, but it has been improved a lot. No more 60 tons tank that can't break a 5cms wall, and also the horse power is better, just with shifting and "W" you can climb up stairs. (I've been under Bravo flag with the tank most of the rounds, just using the stairs)

-Basic tank shell WON'T destroy atk or transport heli in 1 hit. Already shot down both with 2 shots each. Im that good, bitch.

-I don't recommend guided without a 2nd gunner. Killing infantry becomes a nightmare.

[zorplex]

Played a few hours. Mostly Dom since I was trying to power level to unlock commander mode, which apparently isn't in the beta... RAAAAGE!!!!!!!11111one

I'm happy with the infantry play so far. The defibs take some getting used to. They are MUCH slower than in BF3. The SCAR-H is amazing, possibly a bit OP. It felt like I was playing on a hardcore server with how easily I was taking people down. Parachuting is actually snappier. It's like before they nerfed it in BF3 to keep people from jumping off of short buildings. The starting LMG reminds me of BC2. The sniping is... odd. The bullets seem to travel slower or something. The drop is very evident at mid range. I'm loving the starting pistol. Perk system seems as great as I thought it would be. Although it is a little sad not to have full customization over perks to select. Something we noticed, the SL gets some big points for a full squad following orders. My SL always beat my score when I would regularly have 2-3 his kills. I think this is a good thing. It will encourage SLs to be more active at leading their squad.

I was planning on staying up and rushing to lvl 10 to unlock commander. But since commander isn't in the beta.......... I'm going to go for now. I look forward to playing with you guys in the coming weeks!

EDIT: I'm very happy with the performance. At first I was getting terrible frame drops, but closing all other programs and giving BF4 CPU priority fixed that. I then installed the AMD beta driver which gave me another 10 frames or so. I'm hitting 60 FPS on medium settings with 5770s crossfire.

[A Docile Sloth]

Play as SL in Domination and rake in the points As Zorplex said, I got up to 50% more points with 8 kills to his 20 something.

Domination was as it was in CQ but you can't random spawn if your squad is up, or at least it seemed that way.

Defib has a charge up. It's something like 20% health per "Rub" of the defib so five rubs before a 100% revive. I think the man down time is too short for this though, as by the time you clear out the baddies and 5 rub, the guy is unrevivable a lot of the time.

The spawn menu is awesome. You can easily click on who, what, or where you want to spawn and it makes it really obvious what you selected. Plus, if you click on a squaddie, you get a first person view of what they can see in real time, which is nice.

The big tower in the Shanghai also destroys frames as it tumbles, regardless of where you look. It may also hit frames after it's finished but that may have just been my lappy getting too hot.

As for servers, NFO one was good for domination but there were only 24 or so people on. The Multiplay one seemed to lagg a lot but this was when my comp was getting hot, so it may have just been that.

[knorren]

One thing I noticed about the LAV (might be with the tanks as well) is that you don't have unlimited ammo, you have 3-4 reloads tops and then you probably need to get more from a support guy or maybe an ammobox, never lived long enough.

[A Docile Sloth]

One thing I noticed about the LAV (might be with the tanks as well) is that you don't have unlimited ammo, you have 3-4 reloads tops and then you probably need to get more from a support guy or maybe an ammobox, never lived long enough.

I don't know if this is just for choppers, but when I was gunning there was a cool down for reloads. So after x amount of seconds, I gained 30 new rounds in the reload pool, probably up to a cap.

[Jokerle]

One thing I noticed about the LAV (might be with the tanks as well) is that you don't have unlimited ammo, you have 3-4 reloads tops and then you probably need to get more from a support guy or maybe an ammobox, never lived long enough.

I don't know if this is just for choppers, but when I was gunning there was a cool down for reloads. So after x amount of seconds, I gained 30 new rounds in the reload pool, probably up to a cap.

there is a small bar next to ammo counter that indicates..how to say it.....time until ammo respawn

[elchino7]

I´m part of that 0.5% of the players who cant play because the game wont load up. This is going to test my patience till a fix.

[.Sup]

I played for 10 mins until I got a "blue screen" (latest Nvidia drivers). Its less of an arcade than it was before, Bf5 will probably be like Arma. I had to lower graphics to low to get 35 Fps (bf3 I could play on Ultra) but thats something they will surely fix and optimize. Squads now allow 5 players.
Lots of roof camping. Hard to see whos who. Hard to tell when you kill someone.

[mrBLUE9]

Played for a little bit and it was really fun! Specially hearing random voices when my sound volume was on 100%. But it seems I'm also one of the lucky ones with fps drops, played with 20-30 the entire thing on 720p-Low. I will try to revert to the old drivers.

[FisherMan9999]

You pretty much said everything but I would like to add that Type99 is more maneuverable than Abrams.The Abrams has more armor,though.That's my experience and I managed to glitch the gates on the bridge with my tank.You can't shoot through objects with your turret anymore like you could in BF3.I really like the game so far.They need to fix the underwater glitch and PERFORMANCE.

[Jokerle]

I´m part of that 0.5% of the players who cant play because the game wont load up. This is going to test my patience till a fix.

same for me, but I have currently only my laptop with an intel HD4000 and kinda old drivers, so I really didnt expect anything.

[A Docile Sloth]

After more playing, needs more performance fixing. I managed to nuke my FPS to 5 trying to boost it from just under 20 by lowering resolution...

[Gonzo]

The low framerate makes it almost unplayable for me. 20-30 usually, but with drops into single digits, no difference between high and low settings. conquest seemed to run better, but i've only played one round each, so i can't say for sure. i've got a gtx 560 ti, btw. let's see if they fix it so i can at least get a workable fps count.