Battlefield 1 Catch-All: It is LIVE!

Localgod54 wrote:

Thanks for posting, pikey. You said a lot of things I agree with.

One thing I'll disagree with is that the needed class is almost never recon. I like to play recon with flares and iron sights + pistol as a closer combat type scout. If nobody on your team is running flares, the other team will always be invisible on the mini-map. Since camouflage is actually fairly effective in this game (as is evidenced by the trench people lying still and being nearly undetectable, especially if you're forced into a gas mask), the flares can make a huge difference in taking a point. I do miss the universal weapons, as I much prefer the option to run with an smg or even a marksman's rifle like the medics have this time around. Especially on console, it's very hard to headshot consistently inside 40 yards with a bolt action. Switching to the pistol seems to take an ungodly amount of time this time around too. And the range of the pistols isn't what it was in bf3/bf4.

I understand you're probably right in terms of how most people play, though. A lot of people play recon sitting back and taking pot-shots, which rarely does much good.

Does it seem to anybody else that the grenade spam is bad at the launch of EVERY battlefield game? Like, can't we learn this lesson and maybe plan for it a bit? I hate being forced to play assault all the time because of the gas spam. (Agreeing with Pikey here that gas is the worst offender, since it effectively cripples scout/medic weapons while leaving support and assault basically unmolested).

You're a snow flake. I don't mean that in a condescending way, your kind of Recon players are simply just that rare.

Recons did slip my mind (most serious leagues, the NA 10v10 league I used to play in until just recently, simply outright-ban any minimap-assistance gadgets, so I forgot about them). Yes, the Recon's minimap spotting tool is very powerful (this time in the form of magical flares), and sometimes very directly-deadly too since it can light you on fire. While I'd also say that their weapon "IN-effectiveness" in CQC makes them that much more undesirable in competitive (which is where I feel we can best observe/discuss balance), maybe with the new Recon mechanics they'll be more viable, if not VERY viable.

Granted, we probably won't see that happening because competitive scenes will eventually wind up banning such things. In case you were curious, competitive scenes normally ban gadgets like these (flares in BF1, TUGS, MAVs, and Motion Balls in BF3/BF4... actually MAVs aren't banned in certain formats), because how INCREDIBLY huge the advantage of simply having someone on the map is in CQC and how these gadgets trivialize getting someone to show up on the map. It's basically wallhacks, you have the power to know EXACTLY when someone will peak or someone will get hit by the pre-firing. That said, once again, SINCE the new Recons no longer get to carry about things like Carbines (slightly-gimped assault rifles) anymore, perhaps they will be allowed again on a much greater scale.

Just one more note on the gas thing... I don't think it's simply just area denial. The Fire Grenades are area denial. Gas Grenades are effectively stun grenade (the animation prevents you from doing anything else AND also slows your movement down), extreme visual/auditory impedance, and easy-bake mode radius all-in-one. You could argue it adds a 'tactical element' but I'd rather argue it's less tactical and more of an arbitrary equalizer. There's absolutely no tactical response for the opponents, except to whip out the pistol hoping they won't suffer as hard.

The more time I put in, the more I get the feeling that the game is not nearly as bad as so many people I knew in comp believes it to be (that said I haven't really touched conquest yet), but then things like gas nades/masks, the new mortars, the pick-up kits, map design issues, the behemoths, eh... those things really don't help those sometimes preconceived notions held by.

I played a rush game a couple nights ago. We rolled through the first six points easily, before the enemy team got a tank and a sentry kit at the last two points. My squad managed to plant the far point first by sneaking/rushing the back. When the timer was almost up, the sentry elite rushed the building and literally cleared out everybody in our squad. (We were watching different entrance points so we couldn't focus fire on him, and since he looks just like a heavy, we didn't really know what was happening until it was too late).

After a couple more failed attempts to take over the building by my squad, I switched to gas grenades for the first time ever and lobbed a pair of them into the building's two floor. I killed 3 people including the sentry. I don't know that I've ever felt less satisfied with a 3-kill streak in my gaming career. The sentry has literally no defense against gas other than to get out of it, but even though elite classes are cheap, the kills still felt cheap. Yuck. (By the way, our tickets had been whittled down to the point that we still lost on the last point while attempting to arm the last spot. 5 more tickets and we would have had it.

Edit: Oh, and yes. I'm the only person that I play with that plays scout/recon the way I do. I don't play competitively (and am likely not good enough to do so), so it's just what I do for my own enjoyment, so I'm aware I'm a snowflake. Hah!

Localgod54 wrote:

Edit: Oh, and yes. I'm the only person that I play with that plays scout/recon the way I do. I don't play competitively (and am likely not good enough to do so), so it's just what I do for my own enjoyment, so I'm aware I'm a snowflake. Hah!

Not quite young one... not quite...

ranalin wrote:
Localgod54 wrote:

Edit: Oh, and yes. I'm the only person that I play with that plays scout/recon the way I do. I don't play competitively (and am likely not good enough to do so), so it's just what I do for my own enjoyment, so I'm aware I'm a snowflake. Hah!

Not quite young one... not quite... :P

Oh good! Then I'll spawn support. Gotta keep your flares/pokeballs up!

Well competitive was pretty much shanked in the gut at release, with DICE not bothering to even put passworded servers in the release pipeline.

It's allegedly in the works now, but something tells me too little too late.

That said if the competitive scene comes back you should give it a go. As far as I am aware there IS a scene on consoles, at least there was for BF3 and BF4. And competitive does generally offer different tiers. it's a lot more accessible than you might think.

Pikey26 wrote:

That said if the competitive scene comes back you should give it a go. As far as I am aware there IS a scene on consoles, at least there was for BF3 and BF4. And competitive does generally offer different tiers. it's a lot more accessible than you might think.

It's more scheduling and commitment that keeps me from competitive gaming in general. I like playing games until I "have to" play games, and then I hate it.

Any tips for improving aim on Xbox One? I tried changing sensitivity and is a bit better, but still miss a lot of shots. Maybe some tips or guide on how to improve aim (from a PC to Xbox One transition je)?

setrio wrote:

Any tips for improving aim on Xbox One? I tried changing sensitivity and is a bit better, but still miss a lot of shots. Maybe some tips or guide on how to improve aim (from a PC to Xbox One transition je)?

Come back to PC. >:P

Probably too general a tip to take much away from, but muscle memory. Trust in the power of muscle memory and just keep trying to get into the right habits, and also try to refine your non-aiming based approaches as much as possible as well, so you're not nearly as reliant on being successful with aim.

Is it weird that I actually got sucked back into BF4 so much that I haven't purchased BF1 post-trial? I forgot how fun that game was.

Waiting for a friend to join me for a play session on Saturday, I whiled away a few minutes in the options screen. One of the settings that I changed was the colour of the crosshairs when I scored headshots. I subsequently discovered - to my surprise - that headshots weren't aren't an automatic kill. Using the BAR in the Support class, a headshot isn't an immediate kill at short- to medium range.

I was a little disappointed by this, as I discovered that I was getting more headshots than I expected, but wasn't receiving the traditional 'reward'.

Once again, I am left bemused by Dice's weapon-balancing decisions. 30-06 is a pretty hefty calibre, no?

detroit20 wrote:

Waiting for a friend to join me for a play session on Saturday, I whiled away a few minutes in the options screen. One of the settings that I changed was the colour of the crosshairs when I scored headshots. I subsequently discovered - to my surprise - that headshots weren't aren't an automatic kill. Using the BAR in the Support class, a headshot isn't an immediate kill at short- to medium range.

I was a little disappointed by this, as I discovered that I was getting more headshots than I expected, but wasn't receiving the traditional 'reward'.

Once again, I am left bemused by Dice's weapon-balancing decisions. 30-06 is a pretty hefty calibre, no?

This has been standard for BF games since the beginning. Only marksman rifles have a chance to do 100% damage to the head within a certain range.

It's why hardcore servers are so popular.

I'm still fairly new to Battlefield (I dabbled with Bad Company 2's multiplayer, and played a reasonable about of BF4), so 'thank you' for that info, Ranalin.

I just find some of the weapon-balancing choices strange. My bête noire is probably comparative the weakness of vehicle-based heavy machine guns. However, the fact that a light machine gun doesn't do 100% headshot damage is now a pretty close second for me.

Pikey26 wrote:
setrio wrote:

Any tips for improving aim on Xbox One? I tried changing sensitivity and is a bit better, but still miss a lot of shots. Maybe some tips or guide on how to improve aim (from a PC to Xbox One transition je)?

Come back to PC. >:P

I can't ($$$ constraint) but I miss PC so much....

Pikey26 wrote:

Probably too general a tip to take much away from, but muscle memory. Trust in the power of muscle memory and just keep trying to get into the right habits, and also try to refine your non-aiming based approaches as much as possible as well, so you're not nearly as reliant on being successful with aim.

Thanks!

detroit20 wrote:

I'm still fairly new to Battlefield (I dabbled with Bad Company 2's multiplayer, and played a reasonable about of BF4), so 'thank you' for that info, Ranalin.

I just find some of the weapon-balancing choices strange. My bête noire is probably comparative the weakness of vehicle-based heavy machine guns. However, the fact that a light machine gun doesn't do 100% headshot damage is now a pretty close second for me.

It's still my biggest complaint for any shooter i play that does this.

I'm still a fan of the old school style of headshot=dead varieties.

Actually, there is one more thing that's annoying me about BF1: the fact that there is no indicator for a weapon's fire mode. I have died countless times because I couldn't remember whether I was in single fire mode or not. Got a bead on someone at close range? Guaranteed that I'm in single shot mode, and unable to secure the quick kill. Got a free long range shot? Guaranteed that I'm in burst fire mode, and that most of my shots soar over the target's head.

detroit20 wrote:

Actually, there is one more thing that's annoying me about BF1: the fact that there is no indicator for a weapon's fire mode. I have died countless times because I couldn't remember whether I was in single fire mode or not. Got a bead on someone at close range? Guaranteed that I'm in single shot mode, and unable to secure the quick kill. Got a free long range shot? Guaranteed that I'm in burst fire mode, and that most of my shots soar over the target's head.

It's there... Small but it's there. A single bullet will show single shot and 3 bullets for burst.

setrio wrote:

Any tips for improving aim on Xbox One? I tried changing sensitivity and is a bit better, but still miss a lot of shots. Maybe some tips or guide on how to improve aim (from a PC to Xbox One transition je)?

Use your movement to assist with your aim as much as you can. If you watch really good console players you can tell they are always aiming as much with their "legs" as they are with their "arms". Also work towards smaller flicks / movement of the thumb sticks. New console shooter players always seem to overcompensate with aim. It's easier to recover your follow up shots from an initial under-aim than a over-aim (if that makes any sense).

EvilDead wrote:
setrio wrote:

Any tips for improving aim on Xbox One? I tried changing sensitivity and is a bit better, but still miss a lot of shots. Maybe some tips or guide on how to improve aim (from a PC to Xbox One transition je)?

Use your movement to assist with your aim as much as you can. If you watch really good console players you can tell they are always aiming as much with their "legs" as they are with their "arms". Also work towards smaller flicks / movement of the thumb sticks. New console shooter players always seem to overcompensate with aim. It's easier to recover your follow up shots from an initial under-aim than a over-aim (if that makes any sense).

Turning on Uniform Soldier Aiming may also help. If I'm not mistaken it makes aiming any weapon from the hip or down iron sights exactly the same in terms of how stick input affects cross hair movement. It helped me. Here's an explanation .

Oh neat. I will have to try that out.

I dislike universal soldier aiming.

Having the zoomed in speed slower allows you to spin fast, when not ads, but still make fine adjustments while zoomed in.

Of course, a mouse will always be faster than any stick movements, but I find the default method superior. You can adjust how much difference there is in the options.

Localgod54 wrote:

I dislike universal soldier aiming.

Having the zoomed in speed slower allows you to spin fast, when not ads, but still make fine adjustments while zoomed in.

Of course, a mouse will always be faster than any stick movements, but I find the default method superior. You can adjust how much difference there is in the options.

I am not a big fan of it either. People that used to nerd out over game mechanics, especially those on the forums and reddit, got pretty stoked about the customization-aspect of it on release... but I don't think it really increased anyone's performance. I remember playing around with it myself, I observed no noticeable difference after I got accustomed to it, maybe even slight inefficiency in some aspects.

Maybe it's the fact that having very defined muscle memory is pretty much a given for upper half of the competitive players, but in general I knew almost nobody that used Universal Aiming nor liked it. All it did when introduced was mess with well-established muscle memory for snaps and recoil control.

THAT SAID, if you get used to having it turned on right off the bat, there probably isn't that much down side to it, if any at all.

Though personally, I'd argue having two different steps of aiming isn't such a bad thing. It allows two very different sets of freelook/aim to exist in your toolbox giving you a tad bit more versatility for different kinds of situations, like snapping/tracking a guy that just glided past your waist, as opposed to a guy that is gliding/slow-strafing 40 meters out. Your having to make a lot less drastic movements physically, even if you're on the mouse. With a stick where after a point you're just 'waiting' (I could be absolutely wrong with this), this could be not just physically stressing but potentially affecting effectiveness.

THAT SAID, above could be regarded as a bunch of 'bullocks' as brits would say, because you could theoretically argue you can simply train your muscle memory to have a wider movement pattern, which is true and I've done so for a while during experimentation... I just didn't think it was worth it. Plus, I was having to couch a couple people who didn't use it at one point, so I wound up dropping it completely since then.

In short, it's basically a surprisingly complex set of tweaking options for someone who wants to achieve something simple without just learning the game the way it is... which is a bit weird in concept to me.

Sounds like we're on the same page regarding that, Pikey, which is interesting considering I mostly go the console route these days and you're pretty strictly PC. (To be fair, though, I started out playing fps's on pc and loved Counter-Strike in the CS ~1.3/1.4 era - so maybe our pedigrees aren't so different in that regard).

As and aside, sort of tangentially related to this conversation, I've been having some issues with aim since tweaking my settings, and may just reset them all to default and start again. I do use a headshot indicator. Bright green for headshots, red for kills.

As a console player, I felt uniform soldier aiming helped me due to the fact that I typically use strafing movements to fine tune my aim and this mechanic made transitions between hip firing and down sights more seamless. I feel it also helped better establish muscle memory for aiming down sights, as well.

Localgod54 wrote:

Sounds like we're on the same page regarding that, Pikey, which is interesting considering I mostly go the console route these days and you're pretty strictly PC. (To be fair, though, I started out playing fps's on pc and loved Counter-Strike in the CS ~1.3/1.4 era - so maybe our pedigrees aren't so different in that regard).

As and aside, sort of tangentially related to this conversation, I've been having some issues with aim since tweaking my settings, and may just reset them all to default and start again. I do use a headshot indicator. Bright green for headshots, red for kills.

Yeah I was a big fan of those customization options too. Kind of sad to see a lot of those customization options go out the window. One thing that's currently bugging me is the lack of the ability to customize the size and the visibility of icons, they're too damn huge for me, and obstruct a whole lot of vision.

Evo wrote:

As a console player, I felt uniform soldier aiming helped me due to the fact that I typically use strafing movements to fine tune my aim and this mechanic made transitions between hip firing and down sights more seamless. I feel it also helped better establish muscle memory for aiming down sights, as well.

Yeah if it works or that's kind of what you're experimenting with from the onset before your muscle memory sets in, it could work.

I think they do still have the opacity customization options for the icons. I didn't check to see if they had the zoomed transparency options. Those were nice too. If I am ads, I don't need to see a big blue blob obscuring the screen telling me where the Duff point is. K thanks.

Some info on the first DLC coming out that includes the French!

Localgod54 wrote:

I think they do still have the opacity customization options for the icons. I didn't check to see if they had the zoomed transparency options. Those were nice too. If I am ads, I don't need to see a big blue blob obscuring the screen telling me where the Duff point is. K thanks.

The worst for me, and I've found no way to change this, is when I am medic, and a dude dies in front of me, and the big ass friendly icon is RIGHT over the enemy. My opacity is down to like 15 percent, it's still wayyyyy too thick.

That new Frontlines mode looks really fun!

I'm not sure that the new DLC represents good value for money... for me. I didn't spring for the Season Pass, so I'm being quoted £39.99 on PSN for it. That's too much for four new maps, one new class and an additional hybrid game mode. It costs almost as much as a game, but offers nowhere near as much content.

An additional single player mission (or two), and I'd be tempted. However, I can't justify that much.

How do other GwJers feel?