BF3 Rent-A-Server Update

I think I'm a bit behind the times in posting on this update to the console version of Battlefield 3, but I needed to weigh in on it today due to the amount of BF3 that I played, or rather tried to play, over the weekend.

For those of you that don't know, the Rent-A-Server update basically took all of the servers that were publicly hosted and placed them on a list for private users to rent and use as they see fit.  So for x amount of Microsoft Points you can rent a server, that you customize the games on, for a day, week, or month.  This is a great deal for anyone that wants to shell out the money to play the game they already paid for, but for the rest of us it blows.

The first time that I attempted to do a quick match to get back into playing BF3, I ended up on a server with a description of, "snipes or pilots only."  When I spawned as an Engineer I was immediately booted.  To avoid this type of garbage I was able to go into the Server Browser and pick and choose what I wanted to play there, but with a controller that takes about 15 minutes and feels like a waste of my time.  I want to be able to jump into the game and play within ten minutes, not look around for a server that I'm going to be able to tolerate.

A few other issues that I've had with people and their servers are games having too many tickets and lasting too long, no variations in maps, and a lack of players.  When a game has 900 tickets the game is just unbearable.  After the first half hour, you're weeping to just have the thing finish.  You'd leave, but then you'd have wasted that much time for no points.  Even if you're dominating the match, the amount of tickets that owning all of the capture points bleeds from the other team is too minuscule to speed up the end.  Combine that with playing the same map over and over, because you don't want to leave a decent server that won't kick you for no reason, and you end up with a pile of shit. 

Finally, the lack of players on some servers is disturbing.  I started a few games where it was just me and my friend, and some where it was just me.  I think that the lack of players just sums up how awful this whole update experience has been.  Like myself, I would bet that most players are getting fed up with how this whole game has been handled.  If the servers are going to continue to be set up like this, Battlefield 3 is going to suffer a huge lack of me, not to mention other people that are pissed off at the changes.

Why Most of Today's MP Modes are Awful

I was playing some Battlefield 3, for the first time in awhile, the other day and realized why I don't play it as often as I do Halo: Reach.  Not only do I enjoy Halo: Reach more, but there is a skill difference that it has from those other "modern" multi player games.  For the purposes of my explanation, let's pit Call of Duty against Halo.

Call of Duty's ranking system and it's guns, kill streaks, and death streaks to buy makes for a pretty fun game if you're looking for something where your ranks allow you to develop your MP experience on a hierarchical level.  The higher your rank, the better stuff you can buy and the better you will end up being at the game. 

Halo's ranking systems are just to group comparable players together in matches.  Rather than allowing you to buy better and better equipment, this game has you rely on only your skill and wit when playing against others.  The ranking system may have higher numbers than others, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a greater chance at beating a lower number than that lower number has of beating you.

Since both of those are pretty terrible explanations I'll solidify my point here:  Call of Duty's ranking system allows the best to get better.  When you have large amounts of credits, you can buy the best equipment and start with the best load outs, most of the time.  So when you start a game on whatever map, those players with the best stuff have a greater chance of winning than those players just starting out.  Skill can be beaten out by better equipment or a chance kill streak from a care package.  When you look at a game like Halo, without the option to buy better stuff or get a random, awesome kill streak reward you can see a huge difference.  Since everyone starts off with the same weapon and the better stuff is lying on the ground, where all players have an equal chance to get at it, the game is much more balanced.  The only division between players in Halo is skill, and that's what it should be across the board.

Balance is the key word here: Halo is balanced and CoD isn't.  Halo stays balanced all of the time while CoD can only have brief moments of it when all of the players have the same load out, and that mostly happens never.  If we take the load outs out completely and eliminate that factor, we still see that CoD allows the best to get better.  How is that?  Because of the damn kill streaks!  It's ridiculous that the best player on the map is allowed to call in an air strike and just increase his/her lead.  Shouldn't the least effective players be getting death streaks that are huge air strikes and the best player get kill streaks that aren't as effective to balance the game out?

So as you can tell, I'm horrifyingly biased against CoD, but for good reason.  I don't want to play a game where there's no balance.  That makes for a flawed game experience.  To tell you the truth, I'm not even half-bad at CoD, I just can't stand the game based mostly on principle.  It just makes me sick...Makes me fucking sick!