About The Beta Important

[mishatjuh]

Hi all,
I saw the topic can u run BF3 high?
well just read this The beta settings and whats included and not!

Welcome to the BF3 Open Beta
And welcome to a regular whine fest.

The forums here are meant for general feedback, constructive suggestions, bug reporting etc.
Unfortunately it seems most of the participants here don't really understand the concepts of the beta.

I'm writing this thread ( and it will likely drown and I've likely missed aspects ) to clarify some limits on the beta so at least some of the complains might be..well..limited.

Most of the below information has either been derived from information from DICE or directly stated by DICE. Due to not wanting to spend my entire day hunting for references I will not be providing links to the statements but they can mainly be found on twitter and in posts on this forum or the UK battlefield forum.

The Main thing is:
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Purpose of Beta:
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- Large scale infrastructure testing, battlelog testing and general feature / feedback gathering.

The purpose of this beta isn't to demo the game pr say, it's to ensure that the server can handle load and that logins, game crashes ie. the overall architecture can handle itself. This has been stated by DICE.!!

So please limit the complaining about all the aspects you're not testing and focus on what's actually needed.
- Constructive Feedback. ( not just This sucks. State what doesn't work, what might work and why ).
- Report Bugs: State all facts about them that you can, and try to describe what you did to cause the error / if you can reproduce it.

This beta is here to provide everyone a good experience when the game actually DOES go retail.
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Beta Build:
- The build -ie the edition of BF3 we have that is available is, to the best of my knowledge around 1 month old and it's NOT a fully blown edition of BF3. See more below.


Limits on Beta:

Maps:
- OM ( Operation Metro ) is freely accessible. It's been changed a bit since Alpha and serves as the primary testing grounds, likely due to stability ( CB still has a few issues there ).

- CB ( Caspian Borders )- password protected. This is likely done so DICE can control when testing is done on these and to do controlled testing. Password is shared with select individuals ( and sometimes with the entire community ).
Do a google / search the forums if you want to try them. At current time of posting I suspect it's limited access again. Do note that CB is EA server controlled, which means that DICE might have more information fed to them by these servers which makes them a bit more special.


Game Settings:

- Graphics are limited to low. You can change the settings but it wont change anything.UPDATED: ( It's been pointed out that for graphic settings to change you either need to restart the game or go through a map change. I've tried changing it from low to high and then restarting. and I can confirm there is some difference. I dont get any difference from high to ultra tho, so it does seem like some of it is disabled ).

- Key Bindings. In Alpha there was no way of changing your key bindings in game. It can be done now but has some limits. In Alpha it could be done in game files and I still think that's doable - as such the current bindings shown might not be the fully featured list but provides enough "basic changes".

- Server queuing: Currently queuing is disabled on servers. It will be in for launch.
Game Features / bugs:

- Destruction: Both maps features full destruction both OM and CB both for buildings and terrain. During Alpha some "extensive" testing was done with "digging" with C4 ( can be seen on youtube ) which would show you exactly how extensive it is. That being said the destruction IS limited to keep the layout of the maps somewhat intact for game play reasons.

Currently destruction of terrain is turned off ( as far as I can see in forum, haven't verified it yet ). This is due to issues with terrain tearing which then causes players to fall through. It should be noted that this is fixed in the retail ( according to DICE ) and this did NOT occur in the alpha, or occurred very rarely. I've only seen it in OM Beta, likely due to the remodeling done on stage 1.

- Bullet Damage, Recoil, Progression, Camping etc:
Remember all these things are variables that can be changed rather easily and they might NOT reflect the retail edition. As far as I know DICE has stated the bullet damage might be a bit on the high side ( resulting in faster kills due to better hit recognition ). It's worth commenting on of course. But these are still "minor" issues from a "getting the game platform" ready and consolidated for retail.


EDITS:

Added some comments and additional info I stumbled over.