Battlefield Premium now available costs £39.99(!)

[Aethelwulf]

So Premium on the cheap, I have been watching a few chaps use proxies and so on to set their IP to that of India and purchase Premium for the princely sum of £17 and it's working. Anybody aware of the full ramifications of this and whether it is technically ok to do so without fear of EA coming down on their accounts?

Because if I'm honest I'm tempted. Also don't worry about the credit card over a proxy side of things, proxies that have SSL encryption should be safe to use but it seems that turning off the proxy when on the payment screen actually works as well. Anyway below is a link if people fancy a gander at the comments to see if it's worth the risk and to see if EA get wise and do something, if they can that is.

Linkeh.

[Colonel J]

People who've picked up Premium - are you playing Close Quarters and what do you think of it? Worth getting?

[Goateh]

People who've picked up Premium - are you playing Close Quarters and what do you think of it?

Close Quarters on PC releases on Tuesday for premium people. Sony got an exclusive period for the PS3 version.

[Colonel J]

Ah ok, I thought the PC preview had started before this weekend, didn't realise it's PS3 only at the moment.

[Wengart]

A couple of things I would like to point out as a fairly prolific player of BF3 (150-200 some hours). These first two DLCs came with 10 weapons. From what I've heard the next few will not. They also come with their own vehicles.

In regards to this. The vehicles are not in anyway unbalancing because they are limited to their map. If you bought Karkand you can use the Karkand vehicles only on the maps they appear on.

Furthermore BF3 is most certainly not P2W even though the 10 weapons per pack (20 total) are usable in any server. This is because BF3 has done weapon balance by essentially making a few generic weapons per class and then changing these slightly. For example, as of now there are 5 bolt action rifles. They are divided into two classes. The very long range, heavy hitting sniper rifle (M98B), and the lighter, long range, slightly less heavy hitting, higher rate of fire, higher magazine capacity, sniper rifles (the other 4).

The M98B is a late game unlock for the recon class which gives you a better ability to be a bush wookie. Of the other 4, 2 of them are from the base game and one is unlocked almost instantly. These 4 bolt actions are almost exactly the same gun and you need to go into statistic databases to really see the difference. In short its a case of personal preference. This is how nearly every weapon choice is in BF3. Weapons in a class fall into one or two particular roles and then have minor differences that set them apart.


Heliocentric, Battlefield has gotten rid of the boosters. You can no longer get more powerful ammo or better armor with your perks. In fact the only case where unlocks prove a significant advantage is the air combat and specifically jet combat, and this is essentially the an extension of the same issue that kept casuals out of jets in BF2 and '42 (yes '42 didn't have jets).


Furthermore most critical equipment is quickly unlocked, although there are exceptions (namely the laser designator thing for recon). I can also see how having this equipment locked away initially seems annoying and kinda terrible for players, especially for the veteran Battlefield players. However, I would like to say that I've heard from many new players that not having all the choices at once made them feel more secure as they got used to the game, and helped guide them. Of course this is only anecdotal, but unlocking gear is not always a negative.


Finally I would like to say that it may seem that premium players and high ranking players have an advantage over new guys. Especially because quite often you will be getting killed by these guys more than you will be killing them. However, this advantage is not a material advantage, but rather a qualitative advantage. people who are lvl 50+ have been playing for a long time and they know the game well. The people who buy premium are the people who put in 100+ hours.



Personal note. I've not purchased Premium and I probably won't. I was going to pre-order Close Quarters but canceled it when I started hearing rumors of premium. I may have gone in on Premium or kept my pre-order if EA had done a better job informing players about premium. However they took so long to do it that I kinda lost the commitment to give them money. Also Tripwire's free Red Orchestra 2 update was a breath of fresh air from paying for every damn thing.

[eRa]

Has anyone purchased Premium from Amazon.com and used the code with a European account? It's 50 dollars over there and 50 euros here, so I'd save a little if it works.

[SanguineAngel]

So I've logged back in and had some time dying futilely on BF3 again. I have to agree that it really does get rammed down your throat. There's always constant reminders that you're missing out and that they want you to pay more money. It leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. I've said it before on the topic of DLC but I play games as escapism. I don't want to be constantly reminded about my financial situation thank you very f**king much!

[SanguineAngel]

Yeah but I wouldn't really mind other people paying to be a premium player so much if it wasn't for the fact that I wasn't constantly barraged by reminders. The most annoying is probably the premium player tags on death cam. I think I may leave BF3 behind and move on to Red Orchestra 2 which seems a lot more enjoyable these days than when it first launched.

[coldvvvave]

The most annoying is probably the premium player tags on death cam..

Whats wrong with that?

[ArtVandelay]

People who've picked up Premium - are you playing Close Quarters and what do you think of it? Worth getting?

I've been playing Close Quarters for a bit and overall I have to say I don't like it. It pretty much just plays like a fast paced team death match and takes away the elements that make Battlefield fun. And seeing how these maps are optimized for 16-24 players I can't see mixing them in rotation on normal 64 player servers. I won't be surprised if no one is playing these maps in a couple of weeks.

The maps themselves are very nice looking and have multiple routes to very flag, so you're not getting boxed in or running into dead ends.

I've haven't used any of the new weapons yet, so I can't comment on if they're worth it or not.

[ShowMeTheMonkey]

I was worried that the map pack would be shite.

[BenWah]

I liked BFII lots except most maps were grossly dominated by air.
The most fun maps for me by far were the ones without air units, but there weren't enough of them.

Does BF III have a lot of maps without air units?

Getting a better computer soon, thinking of getting BF III

[duff]

Whats wrong with that?

Well there's nothing strictly wrong with it, it doesn't have any effect on gameplay at all. But it's one of those things that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It cheapens the game, it's almost like playing a f2p game with ads everywhere. I log onto my battlelog account to look for a server and PREMIUM is plastered all over the place.

[squirrel]

Some dishonest storekeepers here try to fool me into believing that Premium includes the main programme. PREMIUM DOES NOT CONTAIN THE MAIN PROGRAMME. YOU HAVE TO BUY MAIN PROGRAMME SEPARATELY to play Battlefield 3.

And I must say that USD50 for the expansion pack bundle (not just map packs, my info maybe incorrect but I heard one of upcoming packs including a few addition campaign missions) and another maybe USD35 (price of this game is dropping too slow comparing to other games). And if you had bought at launch, in total you spent USD100 for one single game since you had paid USD50 for the main programme. Too pricy this time.

And do you mates have any information if there is any proposal to raise player count in one round to 128 players? I played one such round during beta (in Metro, so you can guess how messy that was), so I know it is technically feasible for DICE to implement that.

[ArtVandelay]

And do you mates have any information if there is any proposal to raise player count in one round to 128 players? I played one such round during beta (in Metro, so you can guess how messy that was), so I know it is technically feasible for DICE to implement that.

I haven't heard anything about raising player count above 64 and frankly I don't think servers with more people would be much fun. The vanilla maps seem to be better balanced for 32-48 players but the B2K play well with 64.