Because although politics and bad PR may have been part of the cause of the initial poor sales figures (others may be a bad calendar, or the fact many may have not liked BF1) , DICE has also been seeing, by their own admission many dropoffs and refunds for the game itself after purchase.
Which is to say, in game matters (difficulty being one issue they cited) are causing refunds, and word of mouth of such, also impacting sales currently. And that being said, i’m one who may have not liked at all the trailer, or the direction they were seemingly going, and did not buy it at launch, but just a few weeks ago on sale for a good deal.
And although the campaign was as terrible, and not even as much for political reasoning, the MP is actually better than i thought in that department.
In fact, i think it’s a shame they put themselves in that box, in that there’s no hook hands, or kratos, or any of the sort, and in fact, they look conservatively like soldiers, probably even more so than their past titles. In short, the problem they have now is bad gameplay that seems to be impacting them now shedding players and sales.
I’m not saying that its there fault. I’m saying that I have to tryhard. I like playing well but from time to time its nice to just have fun playing a game.
Most of my friends that stopped playing were good players but didn’t seem to be having fun. There should be a middle ground between BF1 taking no concentration to do well in and this game taking a lot of concentration to do well in.
One thing I will say though is that once I learned the maps and player patterns this game isn’t quite as challenging as it seems. There is a very steep curve to get to a comfortable level however and I think that is what is turning people away. Now most of my concentration goes to trying to pick out campers from the scenery.
Yeah that’s what I mean. I felt the same. Once you learn the maps it takes less effort, less concentration. I find myself now looking for the usual camping spots rather than wandering aimlessly and getting frustrated if die from an angle where I didn’t spot an enemy coming.
Please don’t make people think we only use gender neutral words in our kindergartens, we don’t. You are correct about a number of things though. However. Almost all of the political parties have modeled their policies on immigration after the SD’s because they don’t want to lose votes to them. The main reason the other parties don’t want to work with them are because of their roots in the white power movement (of sorts). This will likely change in the near future if our neighbor countries are anything to go by where parties like SD have made it into government.
This post was not intended to discuss politics but only to clarify/add to “the context” of the post I was responding to.
Hi,
From the posts of people here on the forum, it seems that there are many small issues with the game, rather than a few issues which could be worked around.
As still reported by many people, there are issues with seeing people, gun balance, sound, obstacles etc.
I do not see that the political aspects will put people off. Although, the politics are something a corporation has to consider for internal training, policies, and understanding, not something you force upon your customer base in a game which is meant to be enjoyed.
From memory, there were people of all colours in BF2:MC, so why they had to make it an issue for BF V, just seems to have back fired.
I do not think this is the cause of the bad sales. If the game was excellent, it would be selling.
Politics definitely played a role in how the game sold. Plenty of people noped out of here after the controversy over the summer. I find the core gameplay loop to be very satisfying and I am pretty confident that if DICE went with a more traditional (aka accurate in terms of visuals and customization) WWII look the game would have flown off the shelves.
Battlefield 5 is a classic example of a company making a product for themselves and not for the average consumer. Any amount of market research would have made it obvious that turning common conceptions of WWII on their head in a video game wouldn’t have gone over well.
Hi,
I was not in the second world war, but i am aware that there were no zombies - as per CoD WW2. That game sold very well - as do any other games with fantasy modes that are fun to play - does not have to be realistic/accurate.
BFV fails because it is not fun and has too many issues.
I still don’t get why people point to zombies, a separate game mode that is independent of the rest of the core game, as some argument that you can take everything about WWII and turn it on its head. Also your comparison to CoD is flawed simply because you are talking about two different markets and two different audiences for the game. CoD has more brand recognition than Battlefield does. Also, Battlefield’s brand is more associated with realism than Call of Duty’s. Battlefield doesn’t have the luxury of trying weird stuff in a WWII game simply because of the brand involved.
This is basic market research and understanding. If you need any more proof, just look at the comments on Battlefield posts across social media and the whole historical accuracy thing is everywhere. This isn’t isolated, it’s a result of DICE not understanding their core market and trying something that goes against what a lot of their core market expects. Then they compounded the whole issue by insulting portions of their core market.
Battlefield 4, despite it’s major flaws at launch, sold like hotcakes.
Agree 100% and modified the quote slightly. If they had invested as much effort into say the server browser and weapon balance as they did giving themselves pats on the back to make the character selection as diverse as possible it’d be a different game. They seem to have lost focus on what was important in favor of the flavor of the week. They can feel good about themselves in the unemployment line…
Hi,
The point is, it is all to do with poetic licence, an interpretation of history. There are many films that are about history but get it wrong - where being wrong is just the directors point of view on how they want to present the events.
Who cares what Battlefield or CoD represent in terms of artistic direction. They are both FPS’s and people buy them because they are FPS’s.
If they are not fun and full of bugs, then people will not play or purchase them.
The only reason i purchased BF4 was because it came out at the same time as the PS4 (and XBOX One). If it came out a year later, i certainly would not have bought it given the issues, and would have waited 1 year or so, for the bugs to be corrected. I did this with BF3 - waited nearly 1 year before i purchased. Got it cheaper and in a better working order than at release.
I’ve commented on those things before because I’m a history nut and I see no good reason why the weapons and vehicles couldn’t have been accurate to the time of the battles being depicted. However I realize that most players couldn’t care less about such historical accuracy. I’ve thought in previous BF titles that faction-specific weapons would be great, e.g. in BF3 if I was on the Russian side I used Russian weapons so far as possible, but again most players couldn’t be bothered, so grumbling about it appears pointless. The cultural engineering DICE attempted is a separate issue for me as that extends beyond game design, however the reaction against it often took a very ugly tone and IMO a lot of people self-identified as bigots during that debate. However that subject has already been chewed over many times, no need to get into it again. So let’s just agree that it would be nice if the weapons and vehicles matched up to the time frame of the battle in the game, because why not?
The point that people keep ignoring is that Battlefield doesn’t have the luxury of being CoD and Battlefield also has the reputation of being a more realistic and authentic experience. I don’t know why that’s the case, personally, but it’s probably from the debates between CoD and BF and between the two Battlefield certainly comes off more realistic.
The fact remains that DICE gambled with their artistic liberties and it didn’t work out in their favor. It caused a controversy that was made worse by their own statements. There is zero reason to believe that didn’t impact sales. The bugs and issues people are complaining about weren’t common knowledge leading up to release, the historical arguments were. The game went on sale one week after launch, that’s not something that happens because of bugs. That’s because the game sold poorly out of the gate and the only reason a game sells poorly out of the gate is bad public perception before launch. People weren’t flooding forums and social media to complain about bugs before launch, they were complaining about historical accuracy.
You’re more than welcome to believe that DICE’s vision of WWII has nothing to do with some of the sales drop, but you’re 100% wrong in that regard. DICE’s decision to try some less than conventional ideas in their WWII game most certainly turned some people off.
One already needed to put in a good amount of time to get good in every prior BF game. Not sure why they thought people wanted to put in even more time.
Already had plenty of challenge in BF1 when on the crap team.
Hi,
Or maybe people who played the beta did not like it (as per myself) and they decided not to purchase the game.
There is another thread on this site indicating the most vocal people as per social media are the minority of players. Did 12.45 million people take to social media to complain ??? No.
BF1 sold 12.45 million copies for consoles - they are predominantly casuals. Maybe they played the beta too - found out it was crepe - could not see people, easy deaths, bad gameplay etc., so did not purchase.
Look at how many posts on this site where people are obtaining a refund.
For casuals, and i would estimate them to be 10 million, they do not care about politics. They just want to play the FPS and have fun.
If BF V is not fun as per the beta - then they will not purchase.
Did you really just reference a post on social media as a source to why social media posts are not a good metric?
lol
I mean all signs are pointing to this game selling well below expectations and if the flood of social media posts about historical accuracy should be ignored then so should the minuscule (by comparison) posts about whether or not the core gameplay is fun. I see far more posts praising the overall gameplay than criticizing it. From what I gather, people find the game to be very fun. So that doesn’t seem to be what’s turning off a lot of people.
This is of course using the logic you are presenting which articulates that social media posts aren’t a good metric and since social media posts criticizing the core gameplay are very few I drew that conclusion.
Hi,
Ok- what you say is not fact. What i am saying is not fact.
You act as if what you say is fact. I used the term “maybe” to indicate an alternative reasons why people did not buy the game.
For every statement by you that the attitude of EA/DICE is the cause of bad sales using social media outcry to support you, there is supporting evidence that people played the beta, did not like, and so did not purchase the full game.
Who cares - it is an FPS that people do not like as per the beta, so did not purchase. That’s what i did with BF3 and BFV.
Casual players/people do not care about politics. All they care about is having fun. BFV fails because it is not fun.