Remember its a big download so get your PS4 - set it up - and on the connectivity / power options there is a setting that basically puts it into a 'low power' mode where it will sit there and pull down / install updates while its not doing anything else.
If you get it tomorrow you can play around with it - leave it going overnight and then play it on Sunday
They do often 'extend' the betas a little (SFV although a mess at the start extended its beta so did BLOPS3 and Bloodbourne) so the 12th may not be a 'hard' finish date.
It dawns on me that I hate Battlefront/Battlefield's unlock system. It's so. Fucking. Slow.
You start off with one gun. One. I played for about two hours and I had two guns. Two. Just two.
CoD knows that the key to sustained interest is the joy of unlocking; lots of unlocks in fairly quick succession, and leaving the top tier weapons or attachments for a long grind which is never that grindy. Battlefront/Battlefield is like pulling your fucking teeth out. You can almost feel EA chuckling as you finally level up to Rank 3 (fucking rank 3), rubbing their filthy hands together, knowing that they have microtransactions brewing so you can buy the top tiers without having to commit tens of hours to unlocking a few more ranks. "And we didn't even have to make a campaign! MWAH HA HA HA HA. £55 quid please." ... "AND ANOTHER £30 to save you a 100 hour grind to get a nice assault rifle. MOOOOHAAAA HAH HA HA."
Joined: 27th Mar, 2008 Posts: 55715 Location: California
Saturnalian wrote:
It dawns on me that I hate Battlefront/Battlefield's unlock system. It's so. Fucking. Slow.
You start off with one gun. One. I played for about two hours and I had two guns. Two. Just two.
CoD knows that the key to sustained interest is the joy of unlocking; lots of unlocks in fairly quick succession, and leaving the top tier weapons or attachments for a long grind which is never that grindy. Battlefront/Battlefield is like pulling your fucking teeth out. You can almost feel EA chuckling as you finally level up to Rank 3 (fucking rank 3), rubbing their filthy hands together, knowing that they have microtransactions brewing so you can buy the top tiers without having to commit tens of hours to unlocking a few more ranks. "And we didn't even have to make a campaign! MWAH HA HA HA HA. £55 quid please." ... "AND ANOTHER £30 to save you a 100 hour grind to get a nice assault rifle. MOOOOHAAAA HAH HA HA."
Oh shit, I'd forgotten all that (haven't played Battlefield since BF3 sucked all the joy out of the series). Remember when you couldn't even have chaffs on the planes until you'd killed enough people to unlock it? It basically meant you just flew around until someone shot you. Absolutely pathetic.
Count me out of this.
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Joined: 30th Mar, 2008 Posts: 48607 Location: Cheshire
Future Warrior wrote:
MaliA wrote:
Future Warrior wrote:
Really struggling to muster up much enthusiasm for this at all. I think I'm finally over Star Wars.
It is about time your generation stopped co-opting stuff from mine. Yours has Howard the Duck to cherish as it plays silently on a flat screen in a cafe in fucking shoreditch whilst you eat your Rice Krispies after using a selfie stick to take a fucking photo of yourself in a onsie raising a fucking spork to your idiot lips you bunch of Web 4.0 fucking twats and your blue trombones.
You're three years older than me.
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Mr Chris wrote:
MaliA isn't just the best thing on the internet - he's the best thing ever.
Yes its just a Star Wars skin on a shooter , but thats fine.
I played maybe an hour and a bit - level 4 , unlocked stuff each time i finished a match (not great stuff but got 'something' - and played the co-op mission which is ripped straight out of COD (1 or 2 players on a level with basic items - survive waves of enemies)
Yes at the start you will get shot by people who have been playing it a long longer - but so what ?
I've found this jolly good fun. The hoth map is all out chaos, some people I've played against are getting way too good with Tie Fighters and you don't have a chance with the rebels. Some of the spawns (Rebel cave system) are bloody frustrating as you can get pinned down there and be unable to do any damage to the ATATs. But apart from that it's great fun, there's lots going on all the time, but not too much. A nice amount of powerups and vehicle pick ups and whatnot. The Heros aren't too over powered, yes, they're one hit kill, but everyone just piles on them as soon as they see you. I definitely think I'll be getting this.
This is the kids' first FPS, and they've absolutely loved it. I've been told I have to buy it...
I'd agree with you Nik - the flight is a bit finicky to get used to, some people have clearly been practising. The Hoth map is good fun - fairly frenetic silliness, with lots of vehicle pickups, emplacement weapons, powerups etc, and the ability to share your partner's cards means you can play with some of the unlocks for a bit. The unlock progression has seemed fine for me.
I read some commentary on the Hoth map, and some chap said that the rebels lost every single time - a few games I've been in, where players actually properly defended the uplinks, and then all poured the fire on the AT-ATs when the y-wings deliver their ion blasts, we've won. But that relies on people not being campy snipers (which the current weapon mix dissuades, which is good).
The feel and sound of grenades going off nearby is brilliant, the weapons are proper star wars pewpew - absolutely loving it.
Yeah I've won with the rebels a few times. The key is going for the ATAT that is on the right of the map first, as that one is a hell of a lot harder to take out with the snowspeeder as there's lots of rocks and whatnot in the way and the one of the left is easy to bring down if you get decent support. I've managed to do it two times. It's a nice feeling to bring one down on your own!
Joined: 30th Mar, 2008 Posts: 48607 Location: Cheshire
Mr Kissyfur wrote:
This is the kids' first FPS, and they've absolutely loved it. I've been told I have to buy it...
I'd agree with you Nik - the flight is a bit finicky to get used to, some people have clearly been practising. The Hoth map is good fun - fairly frenetic silliness, with lots of vehicle pickups, emplacement weapons, powerups etc, and the ability to share your partner's cards means you can play with some of the unlocks for a bit. The unlock progression has seemed fine for me.
I read some commentary on the Hoth map, and some chap said that the rebels lost every single time - a few games I've been in, where players actually properly defended the uplinks, and then all poured the fire on the AT-ATs when the y-wings deliver their ion blasts, we've won. But that relies on people not being campy snipers (which the current weapon mix dissuades, which is good).
The feel and sound of grenades going off nearby is brilliant, the weapons are proper star wars pewpew - absolutely loving it.
I might be tempted by this. Would there be a single player tacked on as well?
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Mr Chris wrote:
MaliA isn't just the best thing on the internet - he's the best thing ever.
Joined: 12th Dec, 2008 Posts: 11767 Location: On Mars as an anthropologist...
Well that's me not sold then. Ah well, IIRC Fallout comes first any way so no matter how good it wouldn't have been something I'd jump on on day one any way.
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Released today for Americans , we have to wait until the 20th :-(
Digital Foundry frame rates for the PS4 and Xbox One versions - PS4 is basically solid 60 FPS the whole way - the Xbox One occasionally has some stutters
The beta was impressive - the launch code is even better.
Star Wars mania is in full effect this year, making 2015 the perfect time for a rebirth of the beloved Battlefront series. This time the Battlefield veterans at DICE are taking point, hoping to deliver an experience that avoids the plethora of issues that plagued the release of BF4 two years ago. Based on what we've experienced thus far, the firm seems to be on the right track - Battlefront's showing during its beta phase was impressive, but the evidence suggests that the final game features an even smoother level of performance.
We have direct feed capture of both console versions of the game, and can confirm that while frame-rates are improved on both systems, the resolution differential remains unchanged. As with Battlefield 4 and Hardline, Battlefront operates at 1600x900 on PS4 while Xbox One is limited to 1280x720. In both cases, improved anti-aliasing does a better job of masking upscaling artefacts resulting in a soft, yet cleaner overall look. On PS4, the 900p resolution combined with the excellent anti-aliasing solution results in something that manages to look surprisingly clean for a sub-native game. Even in the foliage-rich world of Endor, the game remains temporally stable in a way that Battlefield 4 does not. However, similar to its showing during the beta, Xbox One does not fare as well on this front.
While the improved anti-aliasing technique clearly helps, the resolution is just too low to fully appreciate the detail in the game. That said, it still manages to look cleaner than both Battlefield titles as a result of improved image treatment - but there's still the sense that DICE is packing too much detail into some scenes for the limited framebuffer to fully resolve it: foliage and specular highlights in particular shimmer heavily, leading to some scenes looking a little unattractive. There are gameplay implications too - for example, when fighting on Endor in particular, with its lush forest environments, it can be difficult to pick out enemies at a distance as a result of the lower resolution.
Onto performance then, where we have some impressive metrics for both console versions - albeit captured in different circumstances. On PlayStation 4, our video was acquired at DICE's review event in Stockholm, where we were limited to 30 players rather than the full 40. It's not quite the full stress test we were hoping for, but performance hiccups in the beta seemed to be GPU-related, whereas the full complement of online players is much more likely to affect the CPU.
Regardless, the results in this situation are promising: looking through all of our captured footage, we have just a small number of dropped frames in total - Star Wars: Battlefront manages to deliver a very steady 60 frames per second for the vast majority of the duration. Even when particle effects are filling the viewport, the game just doesn't slow down. It's a level of performance on par with the likes of Halo 5 and Metal Gear Solid 5 - no mean feat.
On Xbox One, we were able capture footage with gameplay at the 40-player limit, thanks to full access to final code via EA Access. In this case, performance is somewhat less stable than PlayStation 4 but ultimately still very smooth - and a substantial improvement over both Battlefield titles. Areas that gave both consoles issues in the beta, such as the hangar bay on Hoth, continue to challenge Xbox One with dips into the mid-50s. However, there's still a positive to take from this - looking back at our footage from the beta, the minimum recorded frame-rate was in the 40s - something that we never ran into in the final game, no matter how much we tried to stress it.
Aside from resolution, one of the clear sacrifices made to achieve this level of performance comes from its level of detail system. Battlefront aggressively culls objects and crumbs from view while level geometry is dynamically adjusted based on proximity - a situation that applies to both console versions of the game. It can appear distracting at times, particularly with a higher vantage point, but it's the kind of trade-off necessary in order to hit the target frame-rate. We saw many of these same limitations in the aforementioned Halo 5 and Metal Gear Solid 5 as well, it's just the reality of targeting such a stable level of performance.
In closing, we should stress that this is a preliminary analysis with more to follow, but we can confirm that performance and visual quality are looking highly impressive in the final code. We're impressed to see DICE continue to optimise and improve the game right up until launch, when there was already little to complain about in the beta. The only question remaining is how well the netcode and servers will hold up given the inevitably extreme pressure likely during the launch window.
BF4 was well known for its connectivity issues, but our experience with Battlefront on Xbox One in a live environment has been positive thus far. Outside of a brief empty period early on Sunday, we've been able to quickly find full games to play with no problem, and no signs of network instability in-game. Of course, only Xbox One owners subscribing to EA Access are able to play the game right now, which means a much lower overall player base - not exactly a full stress test then. We won't really know more about this aspect of the game until it officially launches in all territories, but netcode stability during the beta stress test was good - so fingers crossed that this will extend into the crucial release period.
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