Will
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Post by Will on Jan 26, 2012 21:31:34 GMT -5
Hi bros!
I have been a long time Call of Duty player, staying loyal to the franchise since COD2.
But with a complete lack of innovation in the franchise since COD4, I am sick and bored with it, so I finally decided to pick up Battlefield 3.
First impressions: I LOVE THIS GAME! I won't go into too many details, but let's just say this is what I have DREAMED Call of Duty would be!
But here is my one problem: The only reason I play video games is to play with my friends. We would always form full parties in COD games and work together with teamwork. Working together with teamwork seems to be the BEST part about Battlefield 3, being ever so much more vital than the more "lone-hero" gameplay of COD.
So I convinced a couple other of my friends to also purchase Battlefield 3, after I told them how much fun I was having in it. Let's just say this: the nightmare has now begun! EVERY time we form a squad (2, 3 or 4 people), and join a game, it splits us up onto opposing teams!
I did some searching on the internet, and apparently this is done ON PURPOSE by EA to keep the teams balanced? What the Foxtrot kind of bulldoo-doo is that? Why can't it match up lobbies like COD does, pitting squads against squads, allowing people to stay with their friends?
Afterall, isn't PLAYING WITH YOUR FRIENDS the entire purpose of an online, teamwork-based game?
Waiting for players to back out and then pressing "switch team" one by one is complete bulldoo-doo, and not an option for us. Sometimes we only have an hour to kill and want to play a quick game or two, but the way it is now we need to commit 3 Foxtrotting hours just to GET ONTO THE SAME TEAM???
I tried contacting EA customer support to see if they plan on patching this, or if I (and my friends) can get full refunds for our games because of this false advertising, but of course I got some foreign guy with broken english who knows nothing about the game.
Such a gosh darn golly gee whiz headache. Such a shame too, because I REALLY liked this game.
(EDIT: Oh yeah, and this is on Xbox360, if that means anything)
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Post by didjeridu on Jan 26, 2012 22:15:57 GMT -5
If you're referring to forming a party in Battlelog, then yeah, it's a crapshoot whether or not you'll actually be in a squad once the game loads. If you mean between rounds, then some servers will autobalance/shuffle, and it doesn't care about splitting squads. One of those great mysteries of BF3. To be fair though, not splitting squads between rounds would be pretty broken for when one team is repeatedly spanking the other. It would be too easy for clans and the like to ensure they fight nothing but randoms every game.
Edit: I see you're on Xbox. I have no idea how parties/squads work there, so no comment I guess.
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Post by rubionubio on Jan 27, 2012 2:02:29 GMT -5
Yea, I had a long post typed up to explain a bunch of crap that totally doesn't relate to 360, so...
Hey, what's that over there?!
/runs
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Post by pankrazius on Jan 27, 2012 3:21:06 GMT -5
you can try joining games with less people...
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Post by SheWolf on Jan 27, 2012 7:31:24 GMT -5
didjeridu, i was looking into the r-con-tool stuff for servers a bit, and there is a setting that you ca use that essentially shuffles squads arround after each round, but doesn't split up squads. it's a mystery to me why not more servers utilize that.
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Post by didjeridu on Jan 27, 2012 13:49:16 GMT -5
Neat. That would be great for balance too. Most people in parties/preformed squads don't balance on their own (who can blame them?). Unless they're the only reason their team is winning or whatever, I doubt many of them would mind switching as long as they get to stick together. Then again, if I'm stuck in a wookie squad on the winning team, then all of the sudden I'm on the losing team with the same squad, that would suck hard.
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Post by SheWolf on Jan 27, 2012 15:00:24 GMT -5
well, you are always free to switch squads at least..
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GoHarvard
True Bro
It's not that serious.
Posts: 390
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Post by GoHarvard on Jan 27, 2012 16:39:54 GMT -5
Sometimes I wonder whether Dice even tried to do something about this, because it was an issue in BFBC2 for 360 as well. You form a party with friends, go into matchmaking and often times you end up getting split up on opposite teams! The worst part is you can't even back out until the match starts (from there you have to go to quit game), so you sit around waiting for that 45 sec count down to end, then the load screen...
After a few attempts we just end up going back to CoD.
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Will
True Bro
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Posts: 1,309
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Post by Will on Jan 27, 2012 21:13:27 GMT -5
Sometimes I wonder whether Dice even tried to do something about this, because it was an issue in BFBC2 for 360 as well. You form a party with friends, go into matchmaking and often times you end up getting split up on opposite teams! The worst part is you can't even back out until the match starts (from there you have to go to quit game), so you sit around waiting for that 45 sec count down to end, then the load screen... After a few attempts we just end up going back to CoD. Yep this has pretty much summarized my experience with this game. Already got MW3 back in my disk tray. Can't believe I wasted 60 bucks on BF3. It had so much potential...
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Post by raxcoswell on Jan 27, 2012 21:48:01 GMT -5
hi whatsup i play xbox and almost never get split up from my squad.
join via server browser, pick a server that isn't almost full. Even if it does split you up, because the server has gaps and is still getting new players, it's very easy to quickly switch before anyone spawns. Even with big groups. We had 10 of us in the same team yesterday, it didn't move any of us on to the other team between matches or anything (although it does sometimes do this whenever you have more than 4 players.)
It's often a bit of work to get into a game on bf3, but once you're in there you're set, even if you dominate and the other team all quits, new guys come in thick and fast. And once you know to use the server browser and join games with just 12-14 people in, it gets much easier. The first server I join is normally the one I'm in the whole session these days. The matchmaking is not good (primarily 'PC' developers seem to be really, really bad at doing it for console. Valve are so poor you can't really justify paying money for things they make. And Halo, all xbox, has perfect matchmaking. Well, a very slow kind of perfect), but once you get in to a server that stuff slips out of my mind and I have forgotten anything by the time I boot up the game again. Also don't act like you haven't played the lobby game on MW2, sitting there for hours waiting for it to match your pubstack.
Also they have said they're 'aware' of squads being split up and they're going to do something about it, but it doesn't seem like they're really doing a whole lot of anything atm.
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GoHarvard
True Bro
It's not that serious.
Posts: 390
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Post by GoHarvard on Jan 27, 2012 23:45:54 GMT -5
Well on CoD you could at least keep your party intact when you back out of the lobby/match. In MW2 the party leader would have to back out first and then on BLOPs and MW3 there's an option to back out with the party. Halo had similar functionality making the whole process easier.
I'll definitely avoid quick match from now on and stick to the server browser.
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Will
True Bro
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Posts: 1,309
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Post by Will on Jan 28, 2012 5:49:40 GMT -5
Thanks raxcoswell I will try that. It's still rather dumb though. I think the problem stems from players being unable to join/leave a lobby during the intermission between matches.
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Post by raxcoswell on Jan 28, 2012 8:25:49 GMT -5
Yeah, the server browser is clunky but it's there for a reason (the reason being DICE are absolutely awful at matchmaking).
It's annoying that it splits up the squad on quit, but to be honest the squad thing is so messy anyway it's not a huge deal. If you're really struggling to get in to games together, the best thing to do is actually just one person to go into a game, then everyone join him (via server browser>friends servers).
But yeah, it is dumb, and quick match is awful (when it should be good, and server browser shouldn't need to exist). Not quitting between games is just, why. I mean it doesn't bother me to stay an extra 45 seconds before I quit out and turn my xbox off, but what does annoy me is 45 seconds of nothing, then the games up, all their team quits because they got beasted last round, and now the game has given itself 12 seconds to sort out a 12 v 3 clusterfkkk after it already balanced the teams.
Like I said, once I'm playing it doesn't bother me, but you can't ignore the fact that it's a really poor system. I could go on. I don't get why there isn't a law, an actual international law, where if you released a game with matchmaking worse than halos, then by law halo's matchmaking system was to be inserted in to your game in favour. No excuse for doing something wrong after someone else has done it right.
But yeah, try not to focus on the awkward 5 minutes (I do this mostly by always making someone else find a game for us while I pretend to be v busy looking at my dogtags etc) and, once you're in a game, stick with it. Even if they empty to almost nothing, after 2-3 mins they'll back to full and you can keep trucking
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Will
True Bro
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Posts: 1,309
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Post by Will on Feb 1, 2012 17:20:10 GMT -5
Ok so after waiting an hour stuck playing against each other, my friends and I FINALLY managed to get onto the same team. After the game ended, the VERY NEXT GAME, we got fucking SPLIT UP AGAIN WHAT THE FUCK ELECTRONIC ARTS??? WHY IS YOUR GAME SUCH FUCKING SHIT? GIVE ME A FULL FUCKING REFUND IF YOU WON'T LET ME PLAY WITH MY FUCKING FRIENDS
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Post by didjeridu on Feb 1, 2012 18:37:51 GMT -5
Not laughing at your situation, but the concept of an angry rant on Den's boards makes me giggle.
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Will
True Bro
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Posts: 1,309
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Post by Will on Feb 1, 2012 21:44:31 GMT -5
Not laughing at your situation, but the concept of an angry rant on Den's boards makes me giggle. Hehe, looking back at it and reading what you said makes me giggle too. Oops. But fortunately I will be angry no longer, because I traded this game in to the store, so adios it's back to the COD boards for me.
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Post by raxcoswell on Feb 2, 2012 6:06:05 GMT -5
....If you'd joined the same squad it wouldn't have split you up
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Post by rubionubio on Feb 2, 2012 10:01:37 GMT -5
Wow, I really don't get the rage regarding this. Probably I'm just inured to it though. When I would play BC2 I was always playing on our clan server, and there was probably 12 of us on in the evenings, so obviously we spent a lot of time playing each other in the interests of keeping the server balanced. I honestly had just as much fun playing against my friends!
Then, after griefing each other for a round, we'd usually just come together again after it got rebalanced. Good times either way.
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GoHarvard
True Bro
It's not that serious.
Posts: 390
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Post by GoHarvard on Feb 7, 2012 4:00:51 GMT -5
I'm visiting this topic again after what happened today. Kept getting split up again! And from my experience browsing servers, all I usually see is a bunch of 23/24's and then 0/24's, the chance of finding one that's half full is rare. I spotted one that was 19/24 and we still got split up. Later another friend joined and it was the same dilemma. I even tried joining an empty server and it would randomly place one of us on the opposing team for balance reasons.
Once we finally get on the same team and same squad everything's fine, but man it can be brutal getting there.
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Will
True Bro
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Posts: 1,309
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Post by Will on Feb 7, 2012 10:20:28 GMT -5
....If you'd joined the same squad it wouldn't have split you up Nope I've had it where we finally all get on the same team, in the same squad together (4 of us), then after the next map loads it splits us up again onto opposing teams!
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GoHarvard
True Bro
It's not that serious.
Posts: 390
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Post by GoHarvard on Feb 7, 2012 14:08:46 GMT -5
....If you'd joined the same squad it wouldn't have split you up Nope I've had it where we finally all get on the same team, in the same squad together (4 of us), then after the next map loads it splits us up again onto opposing teams! I've never had this happen, in my cases once we finally get in the same team+squad we're good until we leave that server. It seems these issues all stem from the team balance feature. If I'm in a party with friends, whether I use match making or server browser, I'd prefer being placed on the same team and then waiting for others to join if there's not enough 'balance'.
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Post by raxcoswell on Feb 7, 2012 21:54:55 GMT -5
Yeah I've never had a squad split up, and you'll often go 5+ matches without it messing with the teams either.
The level of team balance in this game is a joke, what's there isn't helpful/doesn't actually do any balancing, but just gets in the way
I also saw a 6/4 squad today. I've seen a few 5 man squads, but 6, baby. As good as the game is, matchmaking etc is genuinely some of the worst I've seen.
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