Beta First Impressions:
1.) The game is REALLY well polished for a beta. Much better than that Charlie Foxtrot we had for the BF3 beta.
3.) There's now a Lean and Peek system (finally). It doesn't work as well as I'd like, but my fingers are crossed that that will constantly be improved until it becomes a viable option and will work as well as it did in Far Cry 3.
4.) VOIP IS BACK!
5.) UI improvements all around. It's still not perfect, but it's better than what we had in the past.
6.) Most of the Levolution stuff is really subtle and doesn't add as much to the game as I would've hoped.
7.) The graphics improvements are there, but they're small improvements. Things I've noticed were Sunshafts, (REALLY Subtle, like you only see them when it's dusty sort of subtle. Much more refined than Crysis' beautiful ridiculousness.) More animations, Improved draw distance, and Per-Pixel motion blur (Unlike that atrocious Per Object Motion Blur in BF3) Supposedly there are supposed to be more improvements like Bokeh DOF and more Dynamic Lights with shadows, but I never saw them.
8.)Massive maps. You can play through an entire round without even seeing the other side of the map, and still win the round with a high squad score.
9. I haven't been able to counter knife yet after getting knifed about half a dozen times, so don't expect that it'll be much of a crutch.
10. I think the rotor blades are lethal now. My idiot pilot jumped out of our helicopter and when I bailed, the first thing I saw was his dead body falling with me, arms and legs trailing comically behind him.
11. There's a much greater consequence for death this time around. You risk losing the support bonuses your squad has stacked up if your squad gets eliminated, and vanilla Reinforcement spawn time has been doubled.
12. High powered Anti-material rifles are map pickups and cannot be holstered. They also have a range finder built in now.
13. Even with VOIP, communication with 31 other people you don't know is as abysmal as ever. Oh well.
14. Support now can have an airburst projectile gun in place of C4 or a Mortar. Seems like giving the lead wall a smart shotgun is a bit OP, but someone a bit better at Support would have to judge that. I couldn't get a kill with it.
15. The game runs really well. The GTX600 series is going out of date, but my GTX670 had no problem running the game, and it defaulted to Ultra settings. Someone else in my match complained that the game was a frame hog, but the game ran like butter for me.
15. POINT AT ALL THE THINGS! Youtube.com
nice list, agree with most of them. mainly not with 8.
it was ok but i find that there are too many things you need to pay attention to right now.
especially on siege of shanghai Domination. you need to keep an eye on 2 stories of buildings, whats in front of you, people spawning behind you an and pretty much all directions.
in conquest its a little less but its still a bit too much for a map of that scale.
speaking of, the scale of that map is quite pathetic, and once the building collapses it seems even more empty. and conquest large there are way too many tanks and i dont think that map should even have AH.
i'm glad i didn't buy the game yet and i doubt i will for some time. wasn't very excited when it was announced, got pretty excited when i saw that i could try the beta, now i'm even less excited.
RiP true BF since BF2(my opinion, deal with it)
I have to agree with Chompster on this. I always was sceptical about BF4 from the start, but I tried to go into the Beta with a clean slate and open mind. I can at least say I wasn't disappointed because (A) I wasn't hanging out to buy the game and (B) My expectations were really low.
Here's a list of small but irritable things:
(1)The new style of "warm up" sprinting really throws me, gun positioning on my screen when sprinting can end up really putting my target acquisition out if it's in the wrong place.
The same goes for the (2) new spot mechanic which well and truly hinders my gameplay as I am almost constantly spamming the spot button.
(3) The Shanghai tower... damn that thing was disappointing both when standing and when on its destructive path downward. Coming out of a lift and being derped by about five guys got a little irritating, and watching the tower come down got old by about the second time for me, as it did not look or feel like a full on skyscraper hitting the ground. (I understand this is Beta so I'm not going to destroy the game from a Beta perspective.)
And here are some major irritable features.
(1) The whole aiming/hitbox system seems to have been changed, so much so that I went about 2-15 k/d on my first round and did not improve much for the entire next ten. I'm finding that chest and head seem to be the only areas registering at the moment, which is a little more hindering than you'd think.
(2) Sniping, I mean really? They have significantly decreased bullet drop to a more realistic and acceptable range, but the bullet travel time is utterly horrendous! For a class that desperately needs accurate high damage quick travel rounds the new sniper mechanics are devastating.
There are more but I feel like I'm griping about a game that is only in Beta, so I'm going to stop there for now.
I will restate. It's BF3 with model and texture enhancements and more destruction. The biggest problem I could see about that skyscraper from the start was that if one team couldn't cap C, the skyscraper would come down. Tell me please, did everyone stay near each other of they were in a squad?
I wouldn't think so. There needs to be a HUGE shift towards a team-based game, not repetitive anarchy.