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In the Name of the Tsar and the CTE


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o9xiq35.jpgIn the Name of the Tsar is the latest DLC for Battlefield 1 players. This new expansion takes us to the eastern front and introduces the Russian Army. Although it actually introduces us to the Russian Empire, the White Army, and the Red Army. More on these different armies later but I would like to give Dice a nod as they are drawing on some history showing us these three “different” armies from the same country during the first world war.

The new DLC drops 6 (yes, that’s 6) maps for players to tackle. Lupkow pass, Albion, Galicia, Brusilov Keep, Tsaritsyn, and Volga River. To be fair I haven’t had a whole lot of time on the new maps, but I can say they have a slightly different feel compared to the vanilla maps. I didn’t want to do a breakdown of all the maps like I did for the They Shall Not Pass DLC. I did want to point out a few things about some of these maps.

Tsaritsyn

This part of Russia most people have actually heard of before… sort of. You know this area by the name of Stalingrad and it’s bloody fighting between Germany and Russia in the second world war. Today we know this city by the name of Volgograd. In game this is a small map with three objectives. The B objective is inside a huge Cathedral that acts more like a fortress than a church. One thing I did notice on this map is the destruction is turned down a bit, so if you think you are going to demolish the church with a tank, think again.

If you are paying attention on this map you will notice that this map features Russians fighting Russians. The battle of Tsaritsyn was a real battle and it was waged during the Russian civil war. Ironically the Bolshevik Revolution was fueled by anti war sentiment and yet the revolution fueled a civil war that raged for 5 more years. In game the two sides fighting are the White army (anti communists) and the Red Army (communists): note that I simplified what armies represented which side, history is a little more complicated than that.

The Cathedral that dominates the map is loosely based on drawings and art of the real cathedral that stood in the town. Sadly, this cathedral was demolished in the 1930’s by the communists. The battle lasted 1 year and 6 months. The future leader of Soviet Russia, Joseph Stalin, would gain great fame as one of the leaders for the Red Army in this battle.

Albion

This map faces German forces against the Russian Empire. A game of conquest starts with the germans having to launch an assault from the sea. With 7 capture points the map features hills, naval guns, and LANDING CRAFT presenting players with multiple ways to attack, defend, and hold objectives. No land vehicles are present but keep your eyes open for those enemy planes setting up bombing runs.

I wanted to talk about this map because well landing craft (the front doors drop and everything once you get to land and stop!) but also the naval guns are a smashing good time to use. They do have a somewhat long reload time and are very vulnerable to bombers, but they can be repaired.

In the actual war Operation Albion was an odd operation to launch. This area was of no tactical advantage yet the German Empire thought it would be a perfect place to launch an invasion to setup a flanking maneuver against St. Petersburg. The Bolsheviks stormed the winter palace thus ending the post Tsarist Provisional Government 5 days after Operation Albion was considered a success by the Germans. Just a few months later the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed with Germany and hostility between the two nations ceased.

The Fedorov Avtomat

Departing from the maps I wanted to include a gun available for unlock with the new DLC, the Fedorov Avtomat. This is the first fully automatic high capacity gun for the medic class. That’s right folks the medic class gets I viable gun for close in firefights. This was the first gun I unlocked…. Well the trench version anyway, and it is fantastic up close and mid range. Long range shots are a touch harder with this gun but if you’re a medic using this gun you can and should be playing a little more aggressively. 25 rounds in the detachable magazine make reloads much quicker and enough rounds to take down 2 or three enemies before you need to reload (providing your aim is good). The Avtomat is available in two variants, the trench and the optical.

The Perino 1908

I also wanted to go over this gun because it seemed the Parabellum MG 14/17 was getting a lot of attention. The Perino is an italian gun (not sure why it was part of the russian DLC) with a very unique feeding system. This gun features a hopper that holds a 120 rounds, and the gun goes into the overheat animation after 60 rounds of sustained fire. Even more interesting is this gun is feed by 20 round clips set into the hopper. This system means that you can just keep adding clips to the hopper without entering a long reload animation. Combine that with an ammo crate and in theory you can hunker down in a fixed position and mow down the enemy all day long without having to hide to wait out a long reload animation. This gun comes in two variants the low weight and the defensive. Both variants have a tripod while the low weight has iron sights and the defensive has an optical sight.

Supply Drop

With the new DLC comes a new gamemode, Supply Drop. In this game mode supply crates will be randomly dropped. With the supply drops on the ground, both teams can battle it out to capture the supplies at the drop. The team that captures the supplies are rewarded with points and an elite kit once the supplies are captured. The first team to collect 500 supplies wins the match. This gamemode is smaller supporting 24 players total. The gamemode is very objective focused and winning can only happen by collecting supplies not getting kills.

The CTE

Some things are being tested on the CTE right now that I think are worth mentioning. When Bf1 launched the first thing everyone noticed was just how long it took to kill an opponent. This has alienated (for lack of a better word) a lot of core Battlefield players as the game felt more “casual”. I will say that while I enjoy BF1 this has caused some frustration especially as a support player. The CTE has been running some changes to gun mechanics, more specifically Dice has reduced the TTK (time to kill). While all the guns (except sniper rifles) are getting a buff Dice has also tweaked some of the recoil effects. This means that guns like the Automatico will be a little more difficult to control.

Another change that I am eagerly awaiting is to the shotguns. All shotguns will have 12 pellets per shell. The pellets will be confined to sectors in the cone of fire (this is a little hard to explain and I have not found a graphic to properly show it). The changes will mean the shotgun is still deadly up close but will allow for more spread at distance so the 10-A can’t one shot from 50 meters away.

Another change Dice is testing out on the CTE is a fix for “A D A D spam”. Simply. This is when someone spams the A and D keys moving from side to side. They player spamming can still aim and shoot effectively but anyone shooting at them will have a harder time hitting the “spamer”. The fix for this is a slight decrease in lateral acceleration making the player model movement a little slower.

So far the DLC has been fun for me (that Perino!!!!!). If the changes that are being tested on the CTE are released to the game, it will change the way the game plays for the better! At the time this article is being written no timeframe has been given for these changes to go live on the game servers.

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

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Guest JimAlmeida
Another change Dice is testing out on the CTE is a fix for “A D A D spam”

T H I S -I S- G O L D E N

 

Thank you for your article, SSG.

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