A new Battlefield 3 update for the PlayStation 3 version of the game has gone live and offers options that are disturbing some players. From the
official blog:
Today, we are also offering 10 different shortcut items for sale for Battlefield 3 on PS3. If you’re new to the game, this is the perfect way to gain some ground on the veterans online. Or if you’d love to get some more air time in the jets but want to equip those AA missiles straight away, this is for you.
The 10 shortcut items are available now from the PlayStation Store and the in-game store and include these:
Kit Shortcut Bundle: Immediately unlocks all items unique to the four playable classes
Vehicle Shortcut Bundle: Immediately unlocks all items for all vehicles
The Ultimate Bundle: Immediately unlocks all items from all other available shortcut packs
It is expected that this option will soon also make its way to PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game, however a date has yet to be specified.
As you would also expect, many Battlefield 3 fans are furious about the move, feeling that it cheapens how hard they have had to work for their unlocks. What do you think?
promoted/edited forum item
Posted 08:40am 28/3/12
Posted 08:40am 28/3/12
+1
Posted 08:53am 28/3/12
Posted 09:01am 28/3/12
Posted 09:30am 28/3/12
I give a f***. Some of the unlocks i have i worked damn hard to get. To me, being able to unlock everything through payment instead of hard work, undermines the long term player base and any sort of sense of achievment that people get from putting in time and effort. And i'm not the only one who feels that way either if the rage on the interwebs is anything to go by...
Posted 09:42am 28/3/12
Posted 10:07am 28/3/12
I agree. If some COD noob (talking COD cause i have very limited experience with BF3 unlocks) wanted to buy a gold AK, i dont see the big deal. Yes, it takes away from people who actually took the time to unlock it but at the end of the day, if they wanna cheat their way, let them. IMO its pretty sad to buy the unlock, instead of earn it but i remember a mate who hated BFBC2 because he didnt start out with a revive kit and said he couldnt level without it.
I always thought most of the unlocks were pretty lame anyway. The guns dont vary by much and apart from a few helpful additions (silencer for stealth as an example) its just a cosmetic change. Same as those special skins people happily pay for.
As i said, it does take away from those who earnt the unlocks but coming in late to the game and seeing everybody with sweet unlocks would make somebody more likely to rage quit or purchase them thinking they were missing an advantage.
Minecraft for example, i think playing creative mode is cheating as they havent taken the time to find all the loot you have access to from the start. However, when you wanna make some epic big structure, having access to unlimited blocks as you please make sense.
Posted 10:11am 28/3/12
I am completely unsurprised by this move though. Remember these sorts of games are about one thing now and ANY opportunity to make money will be not be ignored.
Posted 10:18am 28/3/12
Davo i disagree that there is no advantage with some of these unlocks. Some guns are a lot better than others and suit different play styles. So do the unlocks for them.
BF3 unlocks aren't the same as COD cosmetic camo or Gold AK's. They make a difference to handling, accuracy etc and rightly require a bit of work before you can unlock and own with them.
Posted 10:23am 28/3/12
Allowing the entire kit unlocks is too much, they should be unlocked to half way, that gives more then enough player support to play among veterans (not that stock weapons don't..)
As tRog said above, this has nothing to do with giving players a leg up, it has everything to do with making more money.
Bring on Kickstarter games please...
The ability to buy unlcoks is a MASSIVE F*** YOU to all the players who unlocked them legitimitally. You are basically allowing the purchasing of achievements..
last edited by Tollaz0r! at 10:23:53 28/Mar/12
Posted 10:38am 28/3/12
Posted 10:42am 28/3/12
If a developer does it right, unlocks will serve as another means to completing that objective, but not the only way. In CSS I can still rack up some kills with the Glock or the Galil, and some people even prefer the lower tier weapons. Really they are just aesthetic looks, and seeing the recent weapon list and their associated features, they all stay within a certain range, and no one gun is better then another.
Actually, last night I was playing some rounds of BF3, and I decided to use the original gun you unlock for Engineer, the very first one (M4 I think). By the end of the round, I had at the very least 20 kills. So is it skill or is it the gun?
Posted 11:01am 28/3/12
Still dont see the unlocks making much difference. Torch is annoying but most of the time, its the person with better skill who wins. I even prefer iron sight as i think aiming down scope is faster with iron sights than some sort of scope.
Exactly. Skill IMO matters more than the unlock. When 2 players are the same skill then unlocks would probably make a difference but a noob with all the unlocks will still be pwned by a pro with no unlocks. Often knowing the map makes a f***laod of difference as well.
Taking away from difficult achievements is a d*** move, but giving the noobs some unlocks wont matter IMO. In fact, will probably make them more likely to play cause they feel like they arent missing out as Eorl said above.
Again though, ive played heaps of cod4+5 and bfbc2 but my bf3 experience is lacking so maybe the higher unlocks matter.
Posted 10:52am 28/3/12
Posted 11:05am 28/3/12
Posted 11:16am 28/3/12
Who cares if noobs can buy their way to unlocks, you can still be proud of your achievements and know you did it the hard way, that hasn't changed.
Hell, depending on the price, I might even buy some of them myself when it comes to PC, cos I just can't be bothered playing enough BF3 to unlock everything but I wouldn't mind trying out some of the other weapons. Not going to pretend it makes me a better player though or the equivalent of someone who earned that stuff and unlocked it the hard way.
Posted 11:30am 28/3/12
Posted 11:39am 28/3/12
Thats what i was thinking. All the noobs raging cause they think a red dot scope makes a weapon more accurate.
Posted 11:44am 28/3/12
Well actually some guns are slightly better.
Posted 11:48am 28/3/12
Posted 11:55am 28/3/12
Does a scope really help? I dont think it matters much. Maybe for long range accuracy but close range or hip fire scope means nothing. I played medic tonnes in BFBC2 and never used scope. Was always iron sights, even @ range without problem. Maybe BF3 is very different.
Sniper scope obviously is an exception.
Posted 12:36pm 28/3/12
Posted 01:07pm 28/3/12
The way I see it with things like this is you have a choice, you can spend your time to get the rewards, or you can spend your money to get the rewards, so it becomes about balancing how much you value your time (or I guess the satisfaction you get from doing it yourself) with a dollar value. For me, if its like $5 or something small like that, I'd probably buy it just cos the time it would take to grind that out myself is worth a lot more than $5 to me, and I probably wouldn't enjoy the grind anyway.
If its like $20, then f*** that.
Same deal as the real money AH in Diablo 3, if things go for reasonable prices, and its something I want but couldn't otherwise get without a significant time investment, I'd probably buy it off the real money AH for a couple of bucks. But I wouldn't drop $20 on some legendary weapon just for the sake of having a bigger e-penis. I'd only pay for stuff which I consider "quality of life" improvements
Posted 03:02pm 28/3/12
I don't understand your or anybody's stance on that. It's should be a personal achievement. Who cares if JohnnyNotSoGoodAtGames buys or hacks his stuff, it shouldn't change the fact that you know that YOU have worked for it. It's doesn't make JohnnyNotSoGoodAtGames any better at it. This is why rank hacks have never bothered me in COD. Everybody would b**** and moan about it, but I know that I worked for my way to my rank. Sure it would make me smirk a bit when I would wipe the floor with that person, but for the most part it never changed a thing. Only thing I ever was concerned about were aimbotters and wallhackers.
I think we should get all up in arms if the AAA AUS$100 titles end up going for the F2P microtransactions model, but otherwise if people want to waste their money on this then let the idiots do that. Let them not get better at the game as they unlock these things.
Posted 03:10pm 28/3/12
People who buy the game and invest time in getting the achievements and getting high rankings do so because for them, there is payoff in the honor of being at the top of a skill-based leaderboard, and having all those achievements, medals, and other virtual gewgaws.
They have paid money for the game and invested significant amounts of time and effort in getting to that point, collecting all the virtual goodies, and achieving their position.
For some noob to come along and just buy them all for pocket change doesn't diminish their achievement, but I can certainly understand why people would be pissed off about it, especially if it gives the noobs access to stuff that normally would have only been possible to get by hours of labour.
As an analogy, it is f*****g hard to climb to the top of Mount Everest. When you get there, it's probably nice to sit there in silence and enjoy the view and enjoy the achievement. To actually get to the top and find a bunch of rich kids who borrowed their parents helicopter sitting around taking photos of their own asses would not diminish the achievement of actually having climbed the mountain... but you'd probably be pretty disappointed to see that once you got there.
Posted 03:21pm 28/3/12
Everyone is happy in that instance, except EA because they have less money in the bank. We all know EA only cares about EA.
Posted 03:28pm 28/3/12
Posted 03:33pm 28/3/12
Posted 03:42pm 28/3/12
Posted 04:57pm 28/3/12
Posted 05:10pm 28/3/12
it's not like they're letting people pay for any of the _actual_ prestige. You can't front up some dollars and suddenly have all the medals saying you have 1000 kills with every weapon. And you won't be at the top of the leaderboard for tank driving or whatever.
For the actual unlocks items themselves, there really is nothing to be really proud about from an achievement perspective. Any idiot can get them all just by grinding away enough. They're simply there as one of several auxiliary incentives for people to keep playing more and more matches.
IMO, at this late stage of the game's shelf-life this is totally acceptable. If I was a new player coming into a BF3 server now, I would absolutely f*****g loathe it. All of these players that not only have an advantage over me by virtue of experience, but also all the equipment that I have to unlock as well.
Some of the unlocks really make certain playstyles much easier.
Posted 05:39pm 28/3/12
Posted 06:00pm 28/3/12
Posted 06:10pm 28/3/12
Anyway, yeah, buying all the unlocks wont suddenly make you good, but I'm with Tucker, I enjoyed bf3 but I just don't have time to play it much and I'd happily pay a few bucks for the chance to use the guns and gadgets I never got around to unlocking. All due respect to the people who did it the hard way though, I'm not under any pre-conceptions that I'm good at bf3, I suck balls :P But its fun, and I'm all for anything that might let me have some more fun with it.
Posted 07:35pm 28/3/12
Posted 08:24pm 28/3/12
I couldn't handle a Grind with BF3 so i just never did it
There is no way i was going to sit there in the bushes picking people off in tehran Highway map or something to get some bloody sniper unlock.
I would say im a pretty heavy gamer.
But come on i just cant bring myself to grind like that.
Im just on everynow and then have a few hours in the game then log on again a few days later for another 45 minutes
I do pretty well always get more kills then deaths.
Ill buy it if it comes to PC for sure.
Posted 01:28pm 29/3/12
Posted 01:35pm 29/3/12
I read an article late last night about an ex employee from EA saying the company is going under fast. And by article I meant 4chan.
Posted 01:48pm 29/3/12
Posted 02:04pm 29/3/12
Posted 02:10pm 29/3/12
Took me a while to get on the bandwagon though.
I can use other guns so not worried about the nerf.
Posted 02:24pm 29/3/12
Now if they start offering s*** like new ammo types, better med boxes, better repair tools etc. I'll be like "Oi c****! No".