New Battlefield 3 Details: Hardcore Mode Health, Weapons, and more

As Battlefield 3 picks up steam for its October 25th launch, we’ve uncovered new details for the DICE-developed shooter including information on multiplayer bots exclusion, potential LAN support, and much more.

When asked by a user if “Hardcore mode has reduced health”, Alan Kertz – Core Gameplay Designer on Battlefield 3 – said on Twitter it’s 60% of normal. Another fan then asked “So 50% more dmg and 60% as much health? Makes it 2 shot for ARs?”, to which Kertz replied with:

Damage doesn’t change. Only health.

Kertz then confirmed there are no current plans for displaying numerical damage values of guns within Battlefield 3. Additionally, the gameplay designer told a fan:

I think you over estimate the power of the gunner’s cannon, and underestimate the ATGM

Finally, when a fan posed the question of “be better, with the 7.62 keeping their advantages over 5.56 by retaining their stoping power much better over distance?” the developer said:

Generally 7.62 generally doesn’t have as much distance loss.

During an interview with AusGamers, Battlefield 3 producer Patrick Liu had this to say on the possibility of LAN support:

When we ship the game, we won’t have any LAN support. The main reason there is for security — we want to have a secure game with less cheating and less piracy and all of that. With control of the servers, we have more control over that stuff. That said, we are investigating different solutions to that, where it doesn’t require as much bandwidth for example — that may be one solution. But we most likely won’t have pure LAN support.

The producer didn’t completely rule out some form of LAN support, though:

Yeah certainly, whatever clever idea we can come up with, we’ll look into what we can do. But at launch, it won’t have LAN support.

Never say never.

Liu then commented on dedicated servers for the PC version of Battlefield 3:

We’re running a similar program to the one Bad Company 2 had, the RSP program where you can rent a server from select providers that we authorise. Once you rent a server, you have much more control over what you do with that server compared to Bad Company 2. If you want to have a ranked server, you have to follow certain rules and if you want to do your own thing, then you can run an unranked server, but that’s what we’re going to offer.

With all the new details pouring out for the shooter, we can’t wait to see what the final version of Battlefield 3 entails come October 25th.