Written by Citizen Alpha Saturday, 31 December 2011 19:23

Seems like a lot of my BF3 posts have been a little negative but I do assure you when I managed to get on a server and play with friends I have an absolute blast.  However to get to those moments I have to whether a storm of non-descript error messages and insanity that is definitely not limited to me.  Battlelog as a whole is pretty neat, as Penny Arcade put it a "Facebook for murderers".  Requiring it as a needed component of gameplay is aggravating.  Least it's not Origin I suppose.

If you're going to make something a core requirement to play and force it on your players, you better make damn sure that thing is flawless.  Battlelog is far from it.  Last night I attempted to play with a friend as we do most nights.  He couldn't see me online but I could see him.  I tried joining a party in an attempt to connect with him however the party window never opened for me.  It did show on his screen that I was in a party, but still offline.  Now I'm in a party and offline on his screen.  Online but not in a party on my screen.  

Not that parties are useful anyways, in the latest patch to battlelog they got rid of the party join which was pretty much the only tool that allowed us to join a server at the same time.  Now you drag your friend from the coms center into the "Joining..." box thing which doesn't always work.  Like in the above comic it's a crap shoot whether or not you make it on to the server at all let alone able to squad up with friends.  I think as a pet project I'm going to keep a little notepad by my desk and put a tick for every failed attempt to join a server and crunch the numbers for a later post.  I'm a pretty avid player and I absolutely hate being run through the ringer every time I want to play with friends.

Finally, take the damn "Playing with friends has never been this easy." quote off the front page.  In over a decade of gaming, I've never had so much trouble.