News articles
DICE is working on tweaking a lot of weapons in the next Battlefield 3 patch, and we’ve now gotten some kind of idea what those changes will be. Battlefield 3 designer Alan Kertz (who supposedly left the BF3 team?) has released a weapons change list to the guys over at Symthic.com. The list shows that almost all weapons will get some sort of adjustment, both damage and accuracy wise. Here’s a roundup of the changes (you can see the full list here).
- All assault rifles get min damage raise from 17 to 18.4
- All sniper rifles get “one hit” kill in distances under 15 meter
- All bolt action sniper rifles will get min damage raise from 55 to 59, and max damage raise from 75 to 80.
- Shotgun buckshot max damage from 20 to 12.5
- Pump action shotgun frag rounds max damage from 60 to 67
- Auto shotgun frag rounds min damage from 10 to 5 (not 100% certain)
- SMGs and PDWs: all have increased min. damage
- .44 magnum now has new “1.25x upper chest damage multiplier”
- G18, M9, M93R pistols get recoil reductions
- All LMGs get min damage increase (varies from weapon to weapon)
Note that this is still preliminary data and that not all changes might make it into the final patch. We recently reported that the patch that was originally scheduled for February has likely been pushed to March.
According to august engineering journal the EE Times, solid state storage specialist SanDisk is working on bringing a new form of system memory known as ‘ReRAM’ to market, a fact apparently revealed in a job ad posted on the company’s website last week.
Why is this interesting? Because ReRAM, or ‘resistive RAM’, is one of those disruptive technologies like wireless power or 4G that’s been under development for years, but is suddenly looking like it might happenin our lifetime. ReRAM could, if manufacturing kinks are worked out, replace both system RAM and hard drives in PCs of the future.
ReRAM is being touted as the successor to both current system memory chips and hard drives. And it’s not just SanDisk that’s been showing an interest in this super-storage of late.
The importance of ReRAM is that it combines the read/write speeds of DRAM – the stuff on those memory chips in your PC – with the non-volatile nature of flash memory. In other words, they don’t forget stuff when you turn the power off. Potentially, it’s the best of all existing technologies: bulk storage that runs at system memory speeds.
Theoretically, a PC with enough ReRAM memory in would mean no more loading times, ever. All your data would always be kept in the equivalent of today’s system RAM.
On top of that, ReRAM is expected to require little power, and it can be manufactured on tiny manufacturing processes with high yields.
As if MechWarrior Online and MechWarrior: Tactics weren't enough, another mech game has been announced. Called Reign of Thunder, this is yet another free-to-play mech combat game.
The platforms its being developed for are currently unknown, but, as RockPaperShotgun astutely pointed out, F2P games and PC go together like two peas in a pod.
Even if we don't know what platforms its for, the developer's pedigree is reason enough to be excited. Reign of Thunder is being developed by Day 1 Studios, makers of the beloved Mechassault games.
Enough of our chattering, though, check out the teaser trailer below.
Are you new to the Battlefield? Need a few tips to help you get your squad to victory and your name to the top of the leader boards?
Take this stellar advice for the Assault class. It’ll get you cranking out more kills, revives, and heals than ever before!
UnitLost has this great video covering the basics of the assault class to help get you started with your fantastic career in healing and reviving!
A few days ago, EA posted something that seemed too good to be true: pre-order Mass Effect 3 on Origin by March 8 and get a free copy of Battlefield 3. Well, it turns out it was too good to be true: EA has canceled the pre-order bonus. No reason as to why the pre-order bonus has been canceled, but to make matters more interesting, just before the bonus was cancelled, EA Origin assured gamers via Twitter that the bonus was valid until March. Go figure…
This isn’t the first time EA ventures into these territories — they’ve made quite a few false promises over the past year (like the free BF1943 for PS3 owners scandal). We can’t say that we’re surprised. And let’s not forget that something similar happened when EA offered a free copy of Dead Space 2 with a Battlefield 3 pre-order last year.
At least they could make up a story and say that they ran out of the allocated free copies of Battlefield 3 instead of just canceling the pre-order bonus out of the blue.
We’ve been expecting a big Battlefield 3 patch in February, but according to DICE’s community manager Daniel Matros, the patch was never intended for release in February. When asked on Twitter where patch was, Matros responded by revealing that the date was apparently wrongly announced. Matros said:
“It was announced by someone who got the dates wrong”
A few more Twitter users inquired about the date, to which Matros responded “The date was never really correct anyway”.
There you have it guys, no patch this month. Hopefully we’ll see it sometime in early March, and hopefully with a bunch of changes. For more on the upcoming patch, check out our full rundown.
Thanks to our avid reader Implied for the tip!