After playing a fair amount of the BF3 beta I'm very much missing the commander role from BF2. Unless it's added in to the retail game I don't see any way to do team-level coordination in the game save chat, which is cumbersome and slow and, let's face it, useless on the fly. I'm fearful, too, that a team-wide VOIP channel will turn into something similar to Halo on the Xbox: a bunch of kids or people acting like kids who want everyone to hear them mouth off. Restricting team-wide voice to the commander was a GOOD idea.
I'm kind of concerned about DICE's reasoning, too:
What I hope is that this is not symptomatic of DICE lowering the bar to take aim at Modern Warfare. Teamwide communication was neutered to just the one-button "spot" feature in BC2. I hope they package in some more robust options in BF3 so the game can again be about the team, not just about squad combat.
Above text by JdeFalconr
I'm kind of concerned about DICE's reasoning, too:
Too complicated? So they want to dumb the game down to make it more accessible? Commander mode wasn't something you had to do, it was just extremely helpful for a team. The result is very problematic - in an effort to make the game more accessible they remove the team coordination element and turn it into an individual and small-group game. Their reasoning is pretty flat, too:We could implement it, but the questions is “how do you get the threshold lower?” That’s not by making it more complicated. Our challenge is to make sure that anyone that just jumps into the game will get it.
source: http://bf3blog.com/2011/02/battlefield- … er-feature
So let's get this straight - intentionally they remove options for team-wide communication to decentralize coordination to the squad level while also not putting any other team-wide communication option in? Already that's one big step away from this being a team game and a big one towards being an individual/small group achievement exercise. In fact, let's be clear - with no coordination options it really is not a team game anymore but an infantry squad combat game. There are some other guys around you that are going after the same objective but they might as well be their own team if you try too hard to coordinate your efforts with them.We tried in Bad Company 2 to give that t players, so you could issue orders to your squad, and you could use gadgets like the UAV that only the commander could use earlier — giving the power back to the players so everyone could use it. That made a big difference. More people could enjoy the game. We lowered the threshold for everyone because we gave it to everyone. We now know the boundaries are for keeping the strategic depth and complexity while lowering the threshold to get in.
What I hope is that this is not symptomatic of DICE lowering the bar to take aim at Modern Warfare. Teamwide communication was neutered to just the one-button "spot" feature in BC2. I hope they package in some more robust options in BF3 so the game can again be about the team, not just about squad combat.
Above text by JdeFalconr
