BF4 first impressions

[Jokerle]

Had an amazing gaming sessions yesterday.

Went on a 9 kill streak with the 50 cal sniper rifle. Very low bullet drop and that sound of the thing! Wow! Also crushed a jeep with it. pew pew pew boooom.

Flew chopper one round with a good gunner. Almost went perfect (22 -1), but crashed into a building at the very end while running from lock-ons. Popping tanks is A LOT of fun. Having restricted ammo, strongly reduces the impact of the chopper on the overall game. If you focus on killing armor your team should still be able win. You can try hiding your tank in the streets, but strafing runs are quickly made and kill your tank if you took any damage before. Still, chopper have much less damage output than in BF3, simply because of low ammo.

[Hgx]

ROUND TWO

*Sees Obliteration mode "update"*
*Smiles*

YOU GOT DC FROM EA ONLINE

*Breaks monitor*

Quality updates brought to you by DICE 2.0

[Sarantini]

I actually managed to play the beta without installing the update, 10 fps ftw

obileration is quite fun, hectic when the bomb spawns. Only thing i dont understand is the spawn beacon that is always active for some reason.

The AA gun sound is amazing, but I got destroyed with 35hp by a tank from the front.

[matsif]

some AA stats:
-1 seat like BF3 AA vehicles (not 2 like BF2)
-1 overheat of the main gun takes 6-8 seconds. 1 overheat kills both choppers fully, 3 for a tank. about 5 seconds to kill a jeep. infantry dies fast.
-both (US and china) are amphibious
-3 missiles kill attack chopper, 5 for transport
-650 lock range for missiles
-both take approx. 2 attack heli strafes to kill. did not test tank shots or RPGs, can't test LAVs right now.

coupled with the longer flare time, the things are pretty OP again.

playing more obliteration, preliminary I think it will be nice for black ops. the fight over the bomb is fun in the couple rounds I played.

[matsif]

obliteration wall of text, some is specifically for shanghai some for the mode in general:

-similar scoring to rush for planting/defuse/destroying objectives, which makes sense as there are plenty of rush elements in it. Note though that only the bomb carrier can plant the bomb (fairly obvious), but anyone can defuse.

-each team gets attack and transport chopper, 1 tank, 1 AA, a jeep, and a jet ski. There is no boat that is on conquest. All vehicles spawn in the same spot as in conquest main bases. I did not notice any intermediate vehicles, but they may have been there and I just didn't notice them (jet skis around the A/E flags mainly I think).

-the bomb will respawn if left idle for enough time. Had it die in the water a few times and no one grabbed it in time, so it disappears and resets as if someone just killed an objective.

-main spawn (other than vehicles) is a paradrop in near the C main road. It makes roof camping around the C building even more prevalent than it was already. gets annoying fast, but also makes fights over the bomb when it spawns in interesting. It also makes moving the bomb away from the spawn location difficult as with the drop in you can always assume someone (or more than 1) is behind you at any given time. Much worse after the C tower goes down as at that point the bomb always spawns on the ground, so there is no elevation difference. I found myself almost always pulling my chute early and drifting somewhere away from that road because it's just a death zone for anyone there.

-the bomb always spawns around the C road or on the roof of the C tower (if it's still up), and with the main infantry spawns there, it's always hectic around that spot, unlike on CQ where the fighting is generally a bit more spread out, especially after the tower falls. As stated above, with the paradrop spawns that area is always highly contested and there are random team mates and enemies all over the place, making the drop in quite perilous if you try to HALO in.

-MCOMs (or the equivalent) spawn where flags are in CQ and in between them. So, there's one where A/B/D/E are, and one in between the respective flags on each side. Some are easier to defend than others. US seems to have an advantage because their first point is in the underground area right next to the spawn zone, but I've seen both teams win. Due to this layout of objectives, there is some strategy in selecting your target, as killing the close objective makes taking the other ones a longer run but relatively easier to attack because the enemy has to run there as well. Going for the back ones (A/E CQ flags) makes the run to the other ones shorter (and farther from their vehicles), but with where the bomb spawns they are generally more difficult to get to in the beginning.

-the AA is OP. Haven't tested RPGs or tanks on it yet but if you can protect the thing at all it shreds infantry and helicopters and does decent damage to tanks (see above post).

-when you have the bomb, multiple things occur. You get team points for controlling it (like 20 or something). The bomb carrier is lit up on the whole map for both teams with the bomb icon, and SLs can set that player as an objective. The carrier gets a red flashing light on him and a beep noise, meaning you can hear him approach around corners. In pub play, unless people were camping roofs they basically all swarm to the bomb, and with the carrier constantly lit it makes defending the bomb relatively difficult. You can still get in to all vehicles, swim, and parachute with it. Did not notice if you moved slower or not, I don't think you do though.

-the bomb explosion has a large radius that will kill anyone within the radius, not just the little baby poof that the BF3 rush bombs had. It is at least 10 meters, but with the MCOM locations basically if you are in the room when it goes off you are dead. Not sure if there is a damage drop off at ranges or if it damages any vehicles that are close by.

overall impression is that it will work here quite nicely for BO tuesdays, but I can't see it working for a main battle. It is balanced for 32 people, so not sure how 64 would affect it either (probably would make the fight over the bomb even worse). Basically think of it as a mix of rush with a VIP game mode. It's nothing special in my eyes but it's a decent mode overall all things considered, I still prefer conquest for objective-based mode or TDM for a goofing around time.

[elchino7]

Basically great for Black Ops.

MAA OP.
Eventhough now the respawn timers on most vehicles are extremely high in comparison to BF3. GOOD.

[Darkrider312]

I wonder why they don't have a timer for obliteration mode. Obliteration mode can end pretty quickly due to the quick detonation time compared to rush. However, it could be possible to camp and stall in this game mode when a player has the bomb. I doubt it will matter much though.

[cairdazar]

Basically great for Black Ops.

MAA OP.
Eventhough now the respawn timers on most vehicles are extremely high in comparison to BF3. GOOD.

AA is fun, it is good vs choppers and jeeps but it is not OP, it goes down to 2 rocket salvos from the attack chopper to kill it and if you don't see the AH until after it has fired the first rockets you are dead.
Just ask Sgt_Tailor he killed me multiple times like that.

The spawn is really short in obliteration, almost instant, but the AA and AH spawns random and often out of bounds.
Only to burn down and respawn oob once more and only every 5th spawn or so is actually in the base.

Edit:
Have any one else notice that the mcom explosions are real now?
They will kill you from a fair distance, even destroying vehicles (killed me while in the CH MAA)

[Hgx]

Edit:
Have any one else notice that the mcom explosions are real now?
They will kill you from a fair distance, even destroying vehicles (killed me while in the CH MAA)

Yep, I saw that before with gamescom footage etc, but I just heard from a EA community manager "It's not like rush, these don't have a small explosion..." (translated to english ofc). Didn't know it could destroy vehicles too tho.

A few hours ago, I got into a server with the bomb stuck into a light neon or whatever, the round was 874mins long.

[elchino7]

Basically great for Black Ops.

MAA OP.
Eventhough now the respawn timers on most vehicles are extremely high in comparison to BF3. GOOD.

AA is fun, it is good vs choppers and jeeps but it is not OP, it goes down to 2 rocket salvos from the attack chopper to kill it and if you don't see the AH until after it has fired the first rockets you are dead.
Just ask Sgt_Tailor he killed me multiple times like that.

The spawn is really short in obliteration, almost instant, but the AA and AH spawns random and often out of bounds.
Only to burn down and respawn oob once more and only every 5th spawn or so is actually in the base.

Edit:
Have any one else notice that the mcom explosions are real now?
They will kill you from a fair distance, even destroying vehicles (killed me while in the CH MAA)

Yep, you can get kill by 2 strafing runs from the chopper but the dps you can deal after his first salvo is pretty nasty.
I didnt take into account the random spawning OOB but once an asset is down, it takes a while for it to come back. MAA almost dissapears after it taken down, i´m not sure about the attack chop but it could be the same 3 mins like in CQ, tanks take a while also. (Compared it to the 20-30-40-60-90s timers of BF3).

Regarding the time of OBLITERATION: i´ve seen a match end at the 1 hour mark due to no team being able to plant the bomb after like 30mins. The round was 2-0 but the last bomb was on the D flag making it almost impossible to plant with all the parachute guys.

[Chemical2]

bf4 should have been bf3. Should be fun tho

[Necromancer]

seems to me like the MBT and all other vehicles are pretty good in terms of armor, its just that they do so much less damage vs infantry right now because small and weak splash radius. The armor's LMG seems to do the same damage as in BF3, but now suffers from high spread --> lower effective damage.
once they fix that vehicles should be much better.

The attack boat seems pretty cool. It has good weapons/damage but i wouldn't say its OP simply because it has almost no cover in the sea and weak armor. fine trade off IMO.

[RazY70]

All you tankers might find this interesting if not already aware

phpBB [video]

[Hgx]

ROUND THREE

*Sees new update that claims to fix performance and crash issues*
*Smiles*

CRASHES AFTER 20 MIN EVERY SINGLE TIME

*Breaks monitor*

Quality updates brought to you by DICE 3.0

[undrt0w]

I find this funny:

http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield- ... gle-player

Next campaign I am going armor! Teach me Fisherman & HGX!!