Firstly, let me clarify the title. The Battlefield 3 Beta code was indeed of beta quality. Rough edges and riddled with bugs. What the Battlefield 3 Beta wasnt, was a Beta Test. This was obvious from moment they started making testing slots available only to those who bought another product from the publisher.
A publisher doesnt run beta tests, a publisher is not a technology firm but a media firm. Their responsibility is to drum up enthusiasm and sell the product (taking a large slice of the profits as they do so). Publishers are essentially large marketing departments that bridge the gap between the developer and the general public. Unfortunately with EA, they bridge the gap with mines and toxic chemicals. Traditionally developers may be considered incapable of talking with the money-spending public, but then look at Valve theyve gone and done it, and done it better than EA could ever hope to achieve. Why? Because Valve are a technology firm full of people who get the product and the end-user EA on the other hand is full of media folks with trendy haircuts who understand the completely wrong market.
Beta tests are about gathering information from testers. This can vary from show-stopping bugs, minor enhancement of eureka ideas. The first thing to do when implementing a beta test is to provide a framework in to which testers can feedback. This, the other clear sign that this was no beta test. Where do I go to post my feedback? Those bugs and issues that Ive identified (and sometimes resolved)? Yes thats right, I ramble about it in a dark corner of the Internet on the off-chance that somebody reads it, along with the thousands of other people complaining about the very same issue.
Issue tracking isnt complex; it doesnt even have to cost much. The development team could have gathered a lot of valuable information from the swarms of testers by providing a bug-tracking system and employing a temp or two to provide triage and root through the inevitable duplicates.
The Game
Catastrophic marketing attempts by EA were to be expected, theyve been failing at it for a long time and nobody expected them to do anything but. On to the game itself; every few years there is a game that makes me go "Wow", they are often accompanied by a new game engine. I certainly wow'ed when I dropped into my first skirmish at Caspian Border.
The game has evidently been geared as a sequel to Battlefield 2 and not Bad Company 2 - which makes sense; although there seems to be a lot of gamers who are expecting a polished version of Bad Company 2. I hope that DICE/EA resist their cries as it will likely result in a duller game.
The action in the game has more emphasis on strategy than BC2; with the far increased bullet damage, running across an open space guns-a-blazing doesn't cut it anymore. Still, this is no Operation Flashpoint and realism is left at the door in favour of a balanced game experience; something that DICE have a tendency to tweak with patches. More real-life tactics are required to make progress, such as supressing fire as you can be damn sure that there is somebody camped out in a bush waiting for you to make your move, and there are only so many times you can sneak round the other way before the hole is plugged.
There are several omissions too, the apparent lack of a Commander role resulting in a battlefield that is reduced to an unorganised mess of bullets with each group of people working entirely independent of each other which often results in just two or three different multiplayer games happening in parallel on the same server, with gains only made when one group notices that there is nobody playing in a certain corner of the map and can get through uncontested. This is made more confusing by the lack of a decent map overlay, the in-game radar/map can be expanded, but it gives you no wider field of view and no real information on the terrain. There is no method of examining the map layout in or out of the game meaning you have to spend a good few hours running around the map trying not to get shot at before you know where everything is. If youre naff at directions or orientating yourself in a 3D environment then youre at an immediate disadvantage.
There are some new additions to the toolset, such as the mobile spawn point. Gone are the days of picking on a member of your squad to sit behind a rock behind enemy lines while the rest of you go off on suicide runs. Dropping a radio saves on all that trekking over vast terrains to get to the battle; its not without risks though it only takes a marginally bright gamer to notice whats going on and setup camp next to your radio for endless free kills.
Player classes have been tweaked, which reflects more closely what people actually play-as in the existing games. Whilst this should keep things simple the weapon load-out screens are buried under a complex menu system. Each weapon coming with a myriad of enhancements, drastically changing their effectiveness; this results in lots of wasted time reconfiguring your load out for the next few metres on the map. By the end of the beta I was using a sniper rifle as an assault weapon to great effect; resulting in lengthy reconfigurations if the need ever arose to actually snipe.
Unlocks.
There is thermal imaging available too, something which most recent games have noticeably lacked. DICE have made attempts to reduce the effectiveness of the scope by limiting its effective range and not working in smoke etc. Even with this attempt at balancing it, it is still an immensely powerful tool; which leads on to the fundamental and major barrier to the Battlefield series of games.
Unlocks are a great way to tap into that addictive nature of humans; give a reward for sticking at it. This keeps people playing. Unfortunately this means experienced players have an unfair advantage over the newer, less-skilled players; the learning curve is made steeper by the fact that you do not have the flexible tools to apply to the situation. If you get in at the release of the game then you should be able to rank up with the masses, but drop in 6 months down the line and you'll struggle against all the snipers with thermal-imaging and silencers.
User-interface
Something has to be said about the new style of interfacing. Instead of loading a game and being presented with a menu we now find ourselves with EAs origin client and a browser plugin. You first load Origin and find Battlefield, you click to play, which launches your browser and you can then search for multiplayer games to join; once an appropriate server is found the game is then launched and you join immediately.
I can understand a media company making this move, it allows rapid deployments with no client-patches to update the server browser and of course, its all webby. This though presents several issues; whenever you load your browser, for Battlefield or not, another plugin is loaded exposing your browsing session to a wide attack area for hackers, using more system resources and inevitably breaking the next time your browser is updated. Then there is the little issue of how to configure the game, with no in-game menu system you are launched straight into the heat of battle, with your controls and graphics all on default. Not to fret, you can change this from the game, but only when spawned. You shouldnt have to worry about restarting when changing fundamental settings as youre likely to find yourself kicked out of the server (and subsequently the middle of your configuration process) due to being idle. Being keen on freeing up resources for games, I set my game executable to disable Windows Aero features; but this is somehow magically transferred to the Origin client, meaning when I quit the game Im thrown into an environment worryingly similar to Windows 95.
This method of interfacing with the game represents a major fail, one that I find it hard to believe that the developers have missed. Hopefully once the game is released there will be some adequate workarounds.
We seem to have taken several steps back in terms of UI with Battlefield 3. ID perfected the ability to change your game settings from a text-file which you could take about with you and drop on any computer to play how you liked. We even had colour-blind settings in BC2 but once again I have my fellow squad member shooting me in the back as he cannot tell the difference between a green squad member and a red enemy.
Conclusion
The Battlefield 3 beta provides a tasty insight into what is looking to be an awesome game. It is overshadowed by EAs involvement, which is to such an extent that it may make the game too frustrating to give the time-of-day. How much does increased texture resolutions mean to you? £30 and a browser plugin?