2XP Bonus \ Double Experience weekend for battlefield 3 vs purchasing unlocks, double the xp double the fun!

Update 2!

Australian Times

May 26th, 2012 – 5:01PM in Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane/Canberra (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
May 26th, 2012 – 4:31PM in Adelaide/Darwin (Australian Central Standard Time)
May 26th, 2012 – 3:01PM in Perth (Australian Western Standard Time)

Its this weekend people, get excited for double experience. Apparently Dice do not really think much of their playerbase and have posted how double XP will actually work. You know here I thought it was going to be doubled, but then they come along and say this.

In a nutshell. Remember order of operation kids – brackets first!

You will first see these points added in their original values. They will then get doubled as “ADDITIONAL POINTS” (600 new points). Your sum total for this round would then be (200×2)+(200+400)x2=1600 points instead of the 800 you would have received on a normal weekend.

I can understand wanting to drum up some hype about double experience weekend because at the end of the day it is a marketing initiative. I am not sure showing how to multiply your score by two is good content, or even content. Maybe as mentioned previously Dice are catering to their player base? Yes I just called you stupid.

Update. A message on battlelog welcomed me this morning. It appears that Dice failed to implement this correctly so instead of this weekend PC players get the bonus XP later in May.

NOTICE PC players: Apologies for delay in your 2XP event. To give you a full weekend as planned, we’re rescheduling this for May 26-27

So clear your schedule and get ready for a hard out weekend of unlocking stuff!

I think it is great that Dice allowed players to purchase unlocks. Most of the weapons are side grades from each other so I don’t really see the problem. But if bob who can only manage to play a few hours a week wants to try the last unlocks on classes he does not play, and has no experience for, well all the more power to him! Also remember that attachment selection goes a long way to making average weapons awesome.

However, allowing players to purchase unlocks then a month later giving double XP weekend seems a little too bait and switchish for my taste. I mean really! Suckerpunch for you.

So how would you spend your weekend of double experience in Battlefield 3?

Extra Experience for those useless classes I don’t play

I have only played assault and engineer.

So I would level the fk out of your recon for the only item worth playing with (apparently), the M98B. This gun is meant to be the ants pants of aggressive recon – I have the SKS but the M98B is better. Or you could like, snipe with it. Whatever floats your boat. I would suggest playing some 32ish player TDM. Make sure to drop TUGs somewhere not stupid each spawn, in the middle of a high traffic area. TUGs will feed you free points, help out your team mate and give you surveillance (i think its that one) ribbons for more experience! I would aim to use one of the PDWs or shotguns over the rifles and get in close and personal for maximum experience. The M98B is unlocked after 146,000 XP for recon. If it is double XP you only need the equivalent of 73,000! Score!

I have also not unlocked anything in support but would like to have it all done for the sake of completeness. I am taking the metro 64p route here as support can rack up the points simply by giving out ammo. As US I would stick to the stairs side when the stalemate is at escalators/stairs. By hanging around the stairs you get maximum exposure to players reloading – every time they reload you get resupply points!

You have two options on play style. You can play to kill if you like, however if you do so make sure to put your ammo box close enough to give you experience but far enough away to not need replacing every 5 seconds due to death from grenade/m320/RPG/goats. I think babying the ammo box will be the fastest way to get XP so I am gonig to be right at the front line with most players. I will drop my ammo pack and make sure it is always down. Then I will go and kill the ammo boxes of any of the other support players nearby. Sneaky yes? If you are some sort of nub who has not unlocked the full assault kit you could do the same with medpacks. Just make sure to kill all the nearby packs to get the points for yourself!

Finally if you need experience in assault, support and recon you can do the following.

Spawn as assault and lay down a medpack near a choke point. Go to get some points killing and die.
Spawn as support and do the same with your ammo pack.
Finally spawn as recon and TUGs it up at the front lines.

Make sure to place your ammo and med packs back far enough so they are not destroyed. Play recon around the same area as your support and assault drops so you can monitor them; maybe even destroy competing packs if you wanted to. Rinse and repeat 1 – 2 – 3 when the front line moves. An example of a place that is bad to drop your med and ammo packs would be the flag at the middle point on metro. This is because grenades are frequently thrown from stairs to the flag.

Actually not that frequently but often enough to make it annoying. Tip: if you are throwing grenades from stairs try to chuck them at the flag. The extra distance means they will detonate shortly after landing; hopefully in a cluster of players; compared to the top of the stairs where they are easy to avoid.

Double Experience for the Vehicles I never drive

The heading says it all. I don’t drive vehicles often but would like to get canister shell in the tank.

However after all this I will not be playing much this weekend because of other obligations. Everyone that does get extra experience, enjoy it! But remember you could save yourself the time and just purchase the weapons you want.