Battlefield 3 continues to strive to become the leading online competitive multiplayer shooter with its latest feature addition: Matches. Announced via the Battlefield Blog, this is a way for those with rented dedicated servers to set up very specific matches on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
Setting up a match allows you to select the basics like start time, team size and map rotations but you can then set some much more detailed options like friendly fire, health regen and weapon unlocks.
Once the time arrives for your match, all players will have a warm-up phase where kills don’t count before indicating their readiness in the pause menu and starting in earnest. I’m certainly not “in the loop” regarding Battlefield’s online options but this seems to me like a great addition for competitive play.
There’s no release date yet but hopefully it won’t be long.
Source: Battlefield Blog, thanks CNWLShadow
Forrest_01
Nice to have the options, but it sounds like jumping into a random rented server is now going to be a bit like russian roulette.
& considering there are so little official servers left now, it seems like they are trying to get more people to rent so that they can play the game the way that they want to.
So a bit of good & a bit of bad in this news. Now i don’t really know how to feel!
Stefan L
Russian roulette would be fine. This sounds more like chat roulette.
McProley
I like the idea of Russian Roulette better
Forrest_01
Kinda like chat roulette i guess… Just with less penis.
cnutard
I’m not quite sure, but is it not possible to password protect a server? If not then that should be the next addition to the game. I can’t see anyone wanting to set up a (clan) match just to sit and kick all the randoms that join before they finally get all their own team and opponents to join.
yogh_wayne
It sounds like it’s first and foremost a feature for clans to create competitive clan matches. Don’t think the bulk of rented servers will change much (unfortunately in most cases).
The Lone Steven
And thus what remained of my incentive to one day buy BF3 went. It was never seen again.
I hate rented servers as 99% of the time, the admins are right **** and will ban you for very stupid reasons. I can see a server having 100% regeneration speed thus making you heal faster then Wolverine or a generic bald space marine. Dice, just turn back on the offical servers as i don’t fancy buying BF3, wasting 3 hours trying to find a decent server only to get banned for flying a plane. :S
An-dz
Dam right its getting silly, iv started to see ones were they have in caps “CHOPPER FOR ADMIN ONLY”, thats taking it abit far now. Unless its the meets or someone i knows server i just play in the few remaining Official ones.
Forrest_01
I’d give the admin a chopper. Wouldn’t be the sort they were expecting though.
KittDJW
Personally I have lost interest in battlefield after the rented server fiasco, kicked for no reason, 3 hour matches, no filter to only see official servers. Can’t speak for MW3 as I haven’t played it but battlefield isn’t the same game I spent my money on and I feel a little bit cheated.
Hopefully borderlands 2 will be enough to satisfy my fps needs
ohmikkie
Nowt wrong with three hour matches.
Forrest_01
I hope you aren’t being serious & if you are, i hope that you limit those matches to you & your friends.
Nothing worse than jumping in for a quick session just to discover that you will need to kill 10,000 people just for the match to finish.
MuggleMind
I can see the advantage to this. For example, a TSA meet – you have the server ready,and can have a warm up before the match begins. I’m still thinking of running a hosted server – why? password protected, running all the standard options… i could always guarantee to find a server running what i expected, instead of the annoying ones that are out there. Knowing my luck though, there would then be a world of people all wanting to play on my server – I’d never get on it myself!
Forrest_01
Ah, but if you are the admin of a server, you can kick enough people to get you & your squad in.
Not sure what the point of a warm up would be though if i am honest. May as well just jump straight in, no?
the bottler
To get them moist. :)
goodgoa
Took them long enough to help out the competitive scene but is a good addition. Guessing this will be the start for that big Virgin BF3 Tournament that was promised.