EA & DICE to Dial Back Battlefield V's Wacky Cosmetics After Community Backlash - General

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSrVPEZApB0

Love how people wearing goggles also have goggles around their neck...

Always bring a backup

"ze googles, zey do nothing" - German paratrooper mid-teabagging circa 1944.

The way they're handling this feels like it's being set up to be the next Titanfall 2. Or, ********* 2 according to their chat filter. They're seesawing back and forth when they should have just stuck with their original vision. When the game was first announced and shown off they seemed confident in it, but after a little online screeching about realism it's like they don't know how to handle their own game. Instead of pandering they should have had faith in what they were doing, but it's becoming more and more obvious that they don't. I went from wanting to buy BF5 when it was first announced to actually considering buying a CoD game instead because it looks fun, unlike Battlefield this year.

It's because of DICE devs themselves trying to reach out to "shut down" dissenting voices, killing preorders, and now papa EA is pulling the stops. Idk the future of this series, but if a bf6 is made then there will be very little community interaction from DICE's direction.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/265780/a716fb23-16ef-443a-94b6-ada85d7c38eb/zegoggles.PNG Hey now, they look tactiwank as heck Anyway, they sorta killed themselves with this controversy by lashing out as they did after the god-awful reveal. Should've just pulled off a CoD WW2 and ignored it, especially in this day and age where outrage is the new cool hip thing to do as evident by channels like YongYea, Downward Thrust and Cleanprice eating BFV up for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

They secretly starred in animes

They need another around their forehead

nah that's for belts

The funny thing is that I'm 100% certain that all of this content would have totally flown under the radar if they didn't make it such a big deal Having women in multiplayer would have been fine, the prosthetic arm would have been fine, the katana would have been fine. Sure, maybe they would haven drawn some small complaints here and there but the majority of the community wouldn't even care if those cosmetics were unlockables The problem is that they SHOWCASED all of that in a massively anticipated reveal trailer (whose purpose is to display the core design of the game) and lashed out at the community when they complained Their PR team should be fired. Completely clueless

They finally got this memo as evident by the gamescom trailer and This is Battlefield V video, but the damage has been done and no doubt that the game is seen as a controversial joke by the wider gaming community. A shame, but not unexpected given the mega piss poor PR effort.

It feels to me that gaming is dead. I'm sure I sound like I'm whining, but it's this recent (last 5 years) set of games that have been totally lacking of content and full of monetization above substance - at least through EA. I can't think of a single game from DICE that hasn't either killed the franchise, or had massive issues with lack of content or malicious microtransactions/lootboxes. Battlefront 1 and 2 have been complete shitshows, Mass Effect: Andromeda singlehandedly made everyone worried about the future of Mass Effect - and now we are getting Anthem, which still feels like it's a shell of a game. I haven't been excited for gaming or upcoming games for years. What makes it worse is that developers used to make games with fun ideas and passion, and they are forced into simplification for "balance" (like removing enter-able vehicles in the Battlefront series, or having larger vehicles off-rails), but it's probably budgetary. For those of us who wanted to eventually get into the industry, it makes it feel like the fun and excitement has been stripped from all of it.

the problem you speak of is pretty highly specific to EA now though. Idk if there's a single other publisher as anti-consumer as EA there are still plenty of other game devs and publishers out there that still give a fuck about quality and value. it's just unfortunate that some of the best games are exclusives now

I think there's still plenty worthwhile games being released, just not in the AAA space. Like most businesses as of late, publishers and their shareholders have also discovered infinite money printing for themselves and want all in.

I mean I look at games like God Of War or Spiderman and I just go "holy fuck the quality" so idk where people are coming from. There's so many true gems out there in all shapes and sizes now.

I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFIoim5u5ok Speaking of goggles, I got reminded by the first teaser trailer we got. How the fuck was this an accurate depiction of the game at all. It's utter bullshit. I would be fine if they decided to use a cinematic and had clear implications that it wasn't part of multiplayer but they clearly have all the user interface here.

This entire game would make more sense if it took place in 1946, 8 months after Hitler dropped the atomic bomb on London

Too little too late for this trainwreck.

how. it's not even released yet

I don't think so because before, during, and after the beta there was a lot of community interaction from DICE that I don't remember being there for SWBF2 or BF1.

The devs were complete idiots that should've kept their mouths shut and focused on the gameplay first and foremost rather than a weird cinematic showcase that required a large aftermath to even indicate to people what the actual game was like, and devs repeatedly calling anyone that complained at them about the emphasis on female soldiers (right down to the cover art) as "uneducated" and that one idiot proclaiming himself to be on the "right side of history". It's one thing to hype your game up, you know. I can respect Peter Molyneux despite all of his lies, and Todd Howard, because you can tell they're hyped for their games as experiences people will get to enjoy, even if they don't live up to the promises. When a dev goes out of their way to call their fans sexist idiots and get politically charged as if they should be some sorta unsung hero for something that fucking Call of Duty added years ago with basically not even a murmur of drama, you have a problem. And removing the more eccentric cosmetics, the way I see it, is just icing on the cake. They're basically removing content that was intended for the full product, in a game that is already seemingly lacking in content due to going for the live service model, just to do a feel-good gesture and say "hey we ARE listening to fan feedback, see?" Yes, Battlefield was always kind of goofy, but only really in gaming mechanics as the actual world and style took itself dead seriously until Bad Company; but the cosmetics really weren't that big a fucking deal. Meanwhile their attempts to do this are a probable method of trying to distract from the bigger controversies and concerns, which clearly isn't going to work.

At the very least they should make it clear how and where they are getting their information from. I appreciate channels like Levelcap/Westie/Jackfrags for being informative but their opinion of a game that they are compensated highly for means very, very little to me.

I don't know about the other two but Levelcap at least has been very critical of the game's issues in his last few coverage videos.

From a publicity standpoint, the damage is done. Not only have the devs acted like shitheads about the whole “women in WWII” issue by claiming that anyone who dislikes it is racist and misogynistic, the teasers were lackluster, and most people who’ve played it so far have said that the game needs more work before it is up to the Battlefield standard. Pre-order numbers are lower than EA expected so right now they’re on damage control and trying to salvage the mess by delaying the game (presumably for much needed polish as well as to avoid the RDR2 Juggernaut). This is just another part of it.

It just seems kind of unfair. Everyone agrees that the cosmetics shown in that reveal trailer are over the top and when they say they want to pull them its called backpedaling, damage control, and too little too late. Personally I'm just happy to see them go, if pessimistic that they will stay gone. CoD WW2 launched with fairly tame cosmetic options but now people look like absolute clowns in that game.

I should clarify that I’m not against these things. They’re trying to fix their product expressed their dissatisfaction. Microsoft did the same thing after their disasterous XBone reveal, going so far as to fire the head of the division. And I approve. But the key difference here is that change was almost immediate. DICE and EA are only implementing these changes only a few months before release, technically only one month before it was supposed to be on the shelves. They were fine with the product they had and the backlash they were recieving up until they discovered that pre-sales were much lower than anticipated. That is why this is damage control

That's why I like to listen to Luetin on the subject, he used to be a big BF youtuber like them but he fell off the the franchise a while back. His channel shrunk a lot after that, but he still makes vids of his various interest like 40k lore. He probably has the most balanced but critical view of the whole BFV fiasco so I totally recommend him if you don't trust what those guys say.

I love Luetins lore videos but haven't seen his BFV one, I think I'll check that out now.

The game is an abject mess, and it's not the consumer's job eat shit and grin real big for soshul medyas. This is not interplanetary ballistic neural medicinal practices. Your job as a commercial dev is to make a product customers want. That's it. That's all. It is not your job to tell them what to think or how to think it, It is not your job to pressure or influence, despite what google thinks anyone in electronic media needs to conform to. Your job is engage and entertain someone(s), and while that CAN certainly fall under challenging their worldview, it is not a requirement and customers that don't make six figures a year and live in a hard ass place are under no obligation to flagpole your morality. Point of fact your morality isn't any of their business. and vice versa. You make, they decide. That's how it works and marketing is going to have to come to terms with not only do they not control content production, they're going to have increasingly uphill battle telling people what they're supposed to think by customers who are frankly wise to this shit.