Battlefield Franchise Megathread v"Seriously, nobody made a new thread yet?" - Games

The cannons are great considering bombs take 5 days to reload. I chose mines too and was flabbergasted when it replaces the fucking bomb. Thankfully the latest balance patch allowed me to respec back to the smaller bombs and reset back to cannons.

Switch servers until you see it start to track, it's the only way to fix it.

I think the best point of the article is about the release cadence. It's a pretty good point that, if needed, they can revert and change on the fly if this is the need (however console players will always get the short stick in this regard). But I don't htink this is a matter of "DICE disagreeing". I know for a fact that people on the design team of DICE are not happy with this change. So DICE unilaterally isn't disagreeing with us. Some sort of internal office politics got us here. My personal speculation is that analytics department (maybe from EA) noticed this and was scrambling for a solution to keep players in the game (considering the monetisation model they're going for, user retention is 100x more important than user acqusition), so the changes they made will always be to further that goal. So Ultimately i think this TTK change should be like some others have said a bit limited at first to test the waters, rather than sprung upon. Esp if their architecture allows changes big and small to turn on a proverbial dime.

played TDM for the first time since BF4 for daily order, figured it was probably going to be a bad idea given my fps and the general state of the game literally both teams had one very blatant cheater on each side

The fact that we can literally find twitter posts from DICE EMPLOYEES who think the changes are stupid just makes them implementing them with zero testing absurd

I'm pretty convinced that there's an internal clusterfuck going on within DICE/EA with all the rocky schedules and general disorder.

PIAT nerf when.

One question, for the last part of the tides of war thing, you need to be squad leader and get the 2 kills with the v1? or just be a part of the squad on that moment? it isnt counting for me, and i dont know if you need to do it on a specific map

My friend got it while he was leading a squad. Others have said that it doesn't work but it may just be a typo on the description and you have to be squad leader to get it. There is a shitload of typos in the assignments so its more than probable.

It feels like getting this game right after release is going to be an endless cycle of fixing one thing and breaking another. This probably has a lot to do with trying to get rid of BF1 mechanics that shrunk the skill gap and removed you from control. I can't imagine how much it complicates making a balanced, replayable, and accessible game all in one. The problem I've long noticed with BF after BF2 is how it's been trying to revolutionize gameplay given new technology, while also making a game that's simultaneously competitive and with a diverse range of viable playstyles based on choice of class, solo or teamplay, etc. When I look back at simpler FPS games from the 2000s and how solid their gameplay could be as a result, it feels like DICE is juggling too much and just disappointing everyone. Maybe we can map it on spectrum, with the low ttk, combined arms BF mosh pit on one end and unforgiving, inaccessible arena FPS on the other. Maybe it's the way the game industry has matured is part of the problem, that we have overinnovated while also trying to cater to a mass market. It doesn't actually feel like BF has been refining itself towards one, robust formula. . To me something like this is golden mean on that spectrum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X7g2W_lWN0

I've done it twice myself, the only time the V1/JB2 kills counted was when i was squad lead.

It's hard to argue the point about this shift being made in the name of accessibility, which is what DICE is claiming, without having the data on player levels that they do. But personally I find it hard to believe that there is a significant chunk of potential players out there sitting out because they die too fast. The prior TTK was no shorter than BF4 or BF3, which were both highly popular. Black Ops 4 was a huge success and the TTK in CoD games is practically instant. I feel like Wolf ET is way too far to the side of "unforgiving arena FPS". The degree of genuine teamwork it required far surpassed the average Battlefield mode, and I think this was reflected in some of the reviews of Brink that specifically cited how "imbalanced" some of the maps were for attackers. The only reason Overwatch works so well with this formula is because it goes above and beyond to make the game as accessible as possible and even then it's had a hard time retaining players since pretty much release.

The baffling thing in the entire ordeal is not just the fact that this is their supposed 'fix' for TTD and not a proper netcode fixing effort, but that they looked at the data and thought; "wow people are dropping the game, I wonder why???? Is it the max level CC bug???? Lack of content???? General bugginess or whack balance????? Nah it must the TTK!!!!!!" I'm no statistics expert, but I don't think you should under any circumstance pin down a statistical trend to just a single factor, let alone in a sample that's as large and dynamic as Battlefield or any other video game in that regard.

Mechwarrior Online had a similar ordeal with the last big balance patch. The devs put up a test server that ran two different versions. The first one was met with lukewarm reception but the second one was met with almost universal acclaim. There were several threads talking about how great it was and how they should stick to that and prominent streamers talked about how great it was. Then the devs decided to go with a third iteration that didn't make the test server and fell well short of the widely-liked second iteration. I'm not going to pretend game design is easy but lately between Battlefield V, Fallout 76, MWO, and Diablo Immortal I feel like devs are more than ever just completely insulated from the people who actually pay to play their games.

It probably is more than TTK. Maybe it's map design, because with both BF1 and BF5 I spend a tiny portion of my time using it to my advantage. Most of the time I can't obscure the lower half of my body or secure my flanks. Retreating to a better position isn't usually an option and I never really have a lot of situational awareness. I'm constantly looking for craters, hills, waist-high walls. I don't find them often and when I do, I usually don't use it very long. My games play like a trade I'm entitled to for buying the game. In exchange for kills that I get because someone was unaware or had the wrong weapon at that range, I die to other players for the same reason. It feels like we feed each other in an equal opportunity way, because we're all lemmings in the end, instead of exchange skill. I don't know what it is, but my friends dropped off and my dad, who has like 3000 hours between BC2, BF3, BF4, and BF1 (not a huge amount but decent), played BF5 a few times, said it needs a patch, and went back to BF1. You can probably add WoW's latest release to that list.

i just unlocked the mg 42 and i completely forgot the last update happened

1 extra round doesn't matter much when you shoot 20 a second

the only real unforgiving arena fps part of Wolf ET was the shooting. With the standard SMG it took like 5-10 shots to kill based on headshots, combined with the breakneck speed of sprinting and strafing and the slow firerate of the guns, it took some darn good skill once good players settled into the game. Otherwise, I think the reason it worked so well for picking up and playing was its 64 players so you can always just hope somebody else on the team is competent, and the explosives. Everyone got 4 grenades, each team got a panzerfaust, and field ops could call in arty and airstrikes quite often, and each of these had a large instakill radius so all it took to push forward was landing a good rocket or grenade and pushing as fast as you can to secure your new ground. The reason Brink was unbalanced for attackers was the lack of good explosives to help attackers push, and the low player count per game meant that the importance and required competence of every given player was so much higher, alongside the lack of custom servers meant you couldn't lower wave respawn time, so if a player died they were gone for like 20-30 seconds I think it was. That and despite the parkour system nobody actually went fast, yet the maps had almost no random cover in them, so if you stuck your head out for a second you'd get your head knocked off by the high rof smg's and die instantly. k sorry we can get back on topic to bf now I just have to sperg every time I see Wolf ET mentioned, its my favorite multiplayer game ever and I've been playing it since release day, and I really wish devs would copy it everywhere

Not the main issue really is the netcode, it's not the maps or TTK. The latter two just exacerbate it.

Its weird seeing ET mentioned out of the blue like this. I've sunk over 2000 hours into it. Played A LOT for about 2 years during which I managed to exile my social circles and climb to the worldwide number 2 spot (splatterladder) Man I miss that game, you should check out ET Legacy. Its a fully new client that makes everything a biter nicer (not graphically) Sorry for going a bit off-topic. I mostly see negative reactions on here regarding the new bf. I've been wanting to pick up a new game for a while now but reading through here makes me hesitate.

I can't believe that they've soured me so quickly, even with the utter shit launch and lack of content, the gameplay was still fucking fantastic, why. Why did they have to ruin this.

Is it clearly defined what counts as as kill 'while attacking an objective'? Do I need to be actively capping the point? Or does the enemy need to be on their own point? Or do we both need to be on the point, or even in the vicinity? Struggling to get consistent feedback on this. I'm up to the Level 6 mastery assignment for the STG-44 and need to get either 10 kills in one life, or 20 in a round 'while attacking'.

You need to be on a point currently owned by the enemy, doesn't matter if the guy you kill is on it or if you are the only friendly on the point and its not currently got enough people to start cap.

Gave the new TTK a healthy amount of playtime, here's my findings I guess; As I've said before, zerging has returned in full force. Instead of remote skirmishes happening around the map with only 1 or two squads going zerging, I'm now seeing 3 or more squads just piling up as one gigantic mass of players going ring around the rosy in the map in CQ. The increased TTK has basically made the average player who's not a headshot machine to not be able to pull off flanks as well or kill others fast enough to discourage moving as one big blob of players that can heal and revive each other under the safe net of a long TTK. This is the most notable change I've seen and its definitely made the game feel more like BF1, which is bad. The increased emphasis on headshots is good, but the immediate consequence of weakening bodyshots at ranged combat is that it has basically reduced that sense of mortality and vulnerability when doing risky movements in the open which imo was one of the best things about the game. The game felt like a watered down Red Orchestra with how fast you died at range in the last TTK and it was legitimately intense and rewarding when you would position and move yourself in a way that would allow you to survive in ranged combat. Now, I can just pull off my old BF1 tricks of just hopping and sliding around at range to easily avoid that one extra bullet needed to kill me from that poor SLR Recon, it's genuinely amazing on how it actually works. Lastly, the intent of giving casuals a chance just doesn't work. All I'm seeing are good players just stomping the mediocre players even more than before as mistakes made by the better players are less punished by the slower TTK while they still drop casuals like flies with headshots. I've had some of my highest games lately with the new TTK and I can feel and note the amount of times I should've died, but didn't in the new TTK. Single frame deaths still happen as well which means this update hasn't done anything at all other than to downgrade the general flow of the game in its entirety.

Thanks for clarifying

Now that I actually have the game, I played a couple hours of Core before hopping onto a normal server. This is right here is I think the worst part of the changes. I think the most damning part of the change is that I personally don't feel like I die any slower, which was the whole point. Having played both, I honestly don't notice that much of a difference, but that's probably because I mostly play medic anyway. The TTK/BTK reminds me of Bad Company 2, which I really enjoyed (and so did a lot of others) but that was also a very different game. I still think the game is too fast in general, but messing with TTK is the wrong approach. The Core servers do feel good, and I'm pretty sure launch BFV already raised the TTK from the beta anyway to a point that I think works.

Nothing says fun like your moron team throwing it in the last 100 tickets. after having 200+ ticket lead.

I hate the unlock system. I know you cannot make a game without these now, but I really hate that I can't just select guns and specializations without grinding for them. It's just such a waste of time and makes your weapons objectively worse until you grind them out. What I think gets me killed most is that my framerate is pretty inconsistent. It'll be 80, but then drop to 30-40 when it matters and I just can't aim accurately at those framerates. Battlefield games have historically driven all my major computer upgrades and it might be that time again.

just one more off topic post since this me and my dad's favorite game. My first FPS experience ever was the RTCW multiplayer demo on mp_beach in like 2001 The shooting was my favorite aspect of ET. Later in the 2000s when we started seeing that CoD formula I really started appreciating it. In ET, you don't sprint until you see the enemy and when combined with the overall higher mobility of the quake engine it means the gameplay actually speeds up during a fight, the opposite of modern shooters. The higher TTK means shooting skill has a chance to even the odds when attacked from the side outside of your FoV, whereas the lower ttk of modern fps emphasizes positional skill (I think so individuals can punish bad team movement in today's bigger player counts and maps). A lack of ADS and use of hitscan means twitch-y gameplay and a totally different medium range gameplay. Today you have this meta of sprinting around, making contact, both parties ADSing and slowing down even more, aiming for the chest with little recoil and ttk, and having the fight partially decided by weapon choice or who was at a positional advantage (two rather random variables). I remember when playing RTCW there was this submod for banimod called gold rush or something similar. It was a low grav, instagib kar98k mode where fragged players drop gold you bring back to your team's 'cow', who is really slow and stands next to the capping point until the game is about to end. It would get really intense when the other team kills your cow, picks up all the gold, and tries to run all the way back to their cap point. At like 25% speed. It made battles in the middle of the map this ridiculously fun, but slow tug of war. That was one the best experience I've ever had in an FPS, unfortunately I never saw it ported to ET.

As a medic main who was fine with having the weaker weapons at launch, this new TTK renders it borderline unplayable. I can't win one on one gunfights with virtually any other gun and trying to shoot outside of 20 meters or so is laughably bad. They are probably collectively the weakest guns in any Battlefield game released since Battlefield 3. The Suomi and Thompson are salvagesable as hipfire Automatico clones in close quarters but any of the "accurate but shoots slow" SMG's are unusable.