Thoughts from an old gamer

Battlefield V General Discussion
21

Great write up, @lustvig

I’m 51 (be 52 in less than a month) and I’ve been gaming on the PC since the early DOS days on an 8086 that didn’t even had a hard drive, ran off of two 360K floppy disks. (I built it, but couldn’t afford the $300 for a 10 meg hard drive at the time)

At any rate - I agree with much of what you said. To sum it up in my own words:

The soul of Battlefield is disappearing.

To me, the soul was the clan / community built around the game. I was one of three, and then later two, leaders of a clan that went on from the late 90s (starting with the Counter-Strike beta) through Battlefield 3. We were in active amateur competition for most of that time, CAL, OGL, and a couple others. We also had in-person gatherings, as a lot of us were within about 4-5 hour drive of the Seattle area, so when someone from out of town would come in, we’d plan something. Later, when I moved to California for almost 10 years, we got together when I’d come back up to visit.

I’m still in contact with many of them. We have a private Facebook group, and a couple still play Battlefield on the PC - though most have switched to console for simplicity since the reason we really started disbanding was because a lot of the younger guys started getting married and having kids.

What made the game for me was the teamwork. Whether it was pubbing, practice, or in competition, that was what was fun for me. In our servers, we almost always had admins on, and we’d handle a lot of the stuff that either isn’t handled anymore (cheaters) or they’re trying, very poorly to control (the chat filter, though we’d just kick for racist / bigoted / hate speech, not swearing). For a long time we had four servers - once Counter-Strike (I think it was Source by then) and three Battlefield. At another point, just before Desert Combat, we even had a Day of Defeat server.

So to me - the removal of the rental servers was a huge deal. The cheating is an even bigger deal. The lack of team balancing / ability to switch teams is a big deal. (We used to require our guys to switch teams in a steamroll to help the losing team so that the steamroll would even out a bit.) The lack of hard core mode is a big deal.

What you said - about Battlefield becoming a COD clone with few vehicles thrown in - that’s how V feels to me. So did BF1 for that matter. I’m glad that so many people enjoyed BF1 - I truly am, and I’m fully aware that my opinion of it isn’t popular, but it’s how I feel. Not going to change that just because people think I’m wrong, as it’s my opinion. I didn’t enjoy BF1. BFV I still play, though, but likely not much longer. As I said in another thread, the community in-game is getting WAY too toxic. It’s starting to feel like a sub Reddit in there, where the bad behavior is rewarded.

The game also has degenerated with the way people play the game. SO MANY people camp spawn with sniper rifles and/or tanks, and do NOTHING to advance the team. In a game that relies heavily on a balance between defense and aggression for conquest, or heavily on aggression / heavily on defense depending on the team you’re on for Breakthrough - having people camp spawn and cower behind a sniper scope trying to pump up K/D ratio is awful. There’s no teamwork there, no one is playing PTFO - just stat padding. It’s ridiculous.

Between these things, and the complete lack of any sort of interest in working on anti-cheat and team balancing by DICE/ EA - likely this is going to be my last EA title for anything. I’m tired of the toxicity, the lazy game play, the lack of support from the studio and publisher, and the fact that they’re slowly changing Battlefield into a COD clone and attempting at a Battle Royale that - quite frankly - the BR games all suck, IMHO. Whether it’s the Battlefield flavor of it, Fortnight, Apex Legends (don’t get me started on what EA has done to the Titanfall franchise), Player Unknown or whatever it’s called - I’ve tried one or two of them outside of Battlefield, and then the Battlefield one - and they’re just, to me, awful.

I hate saying that after having Battlefield being such a fun part of my gaming life for so long. I just can’t, in good conscious, keep throwing money at EA when they don’t care about their player / fan base.

22

I think Battlefield should always strive to deliver best of both worlds - smaller infantry focused maps/modes and those for epic large scale warfare.

Also agree with previous poster regarding clans/rental servers. Even on hardline we had a server up 24/7, many players not even in our clan would exclusively play on it - we recruited some of our best players there. That’s all gone with last two Battlefield’s - why such a backwards step??

23

Yeah a lot of the disappointment and boringness is just from so many players not caring about the outcome of the round.

Without that, it’s just more of a grindy PvE game where you just are randomly farming and that just doesn’t engage me like trying to win the game as a team.

That fighting over a flag or mcom or over the bomb in Obliteration in BF4 is what keeps the game fun. IT’s the gift that keeps on giving.

It makes it more interesting because you have to apply your killing skills to the objective at hand and that adds is a lot of nuance to the killing. It requires you to prioritize targets. It requires you to make a quick calculation whether it is worth it or not to risk your life for the sake of an objective or to hold back for your teammates to spawn. It requires to think about the best position to be in in order to attack/defend objectives. It requires you to spread out some. To be aware of teammate positions and play off of those positions.

Whereas pure farming is always "fall back at the slightest threat. " And that just is so much more boring.

24

@Magikf1ngers :

This is OT but I can top that :smiley: Been gaming on computer since a childhood friend got a ZX81. Later my late dad bought a Commodore 64 in 1983 and an Amiga 1000 when it was released around 1986, I think it was.

Sorry for OT :smile: Got nostalgic.

=>

*I’m 51 (be 52 in less than a month) and I’ve been gaming on the PC since the early DOS days on an 8086 that didn’t even had a hard drive, ran off of two 360K floppy disks. (I built it, but couldn’t afford the $300 for a 10 meg hard drive at the time) *

25

Great. But what do you think of BFV?

26

You guys are 50? I see… then Im not quite an old gamer at 35.

One thing though that no one mentions is gore. Can we have a better gore?

There was a game called Soldier of Fortune 1 that 15 years ago implemented realistic body reactions to every bullet…can we have better than that now days?

27

34 here, played every BF game except Hardline wich I dont see as a proper BF game.
And to bee honest I kinda like BFV, alltough it could be so much better, I manage pretty good in BFV compared to BF4 for example.

Whenever I go back to BF4 I get insta killed by everything as soon as I spawn, there´s RC-planes, flir and infra scopes for every gun so no matter how hard you try and flank someone spots you, and don´t get me started on 3d Spotting, hate it.
In BFV when everyone relly on soly their eyes and ears I can still do good and average a 2.3 KD.
But the main part for me with the Battlefield franchise has been the community as I played in a clan with BF1942 in Clanbase, also created some maps for the mod “Silent Heroes”.
That´s also one thing I miss, custom maps and mods.

I understand that we might not ever see mods again, but a map editor would be nice.
I also understand that it might get tricky with al the destruction and gamemode mechanics but hear me out:
Keep the map editor simple, keep the modes to TDM and conquest with reduced destruction. All custom maps could be played on unranked servers.
If you wanted to you could send it to Dice and they would have a look at it and verify it for a official custom maps servers with ranking.

But back to BFV.
The things that I like with BFV is:
No 3D spotting.
Attrition, no auto heal.
No infinite bullets/shells for tanks and planes.
Movement
Revive animations.
Enter vehicle animation.
TTK
Fortifications and destruction
The cosmetic system where you change the looks of each part so you can mix and match whatever you want.
The sound

The things I dislike:
No anti cheat
No team balancing
No Custom servers at launch and the one wee have now I really lacking.
The gund specialization, just give us parts like BF4
Few maps and even fewer good maps.
The combined arms Battlefield feel in the maps is gone with mostly only 1 tank on many of the maps.
Vehicle exit animation.
Game released with weird cosmetics for soldiers, the realistic one released 2 years later?

28

Oft I can remember the dismemberment effects in that game very, very well too. Really visceral at the time.

29

yes and if you asked a gamer at that time how would games look like 20 years later Im sure he would say “games will be hardcore amazing as far as graphic and effect”

But they aren’t really. The only effect that is new to me is you hit a building with a granade and it colapses. And thats it!

You hit a soldier with a granade and body stays in 1 piece. Come on…I was wondering if they have some restrictions regarding gore…Thats the first thing Id ask developers if I could.

30

Yeah that has really stuck with me all these years and I’m pretty sure I had that exact thought at the time. If memory serves one of the COD games (maybe World at War) had similar gore effects.

My thinking is that gore has been toned down significantly and suspect it’s related to ratings and online play. That’s just based off single player games seemingly not being as effected, such as the VATS system in Fallout 4 being quite gory and the recent Doom games, so I could be way off mark.

31

I realized the only way to enjoy the Battlefield franchise in its current state is to expand one’s horizons and play other games. Don’t be exclusive to Battlefield. I went 6 months this year not playing Battlefield and when I came back the first couple of weeks felt as enjoyable and addictive as the very first time I played Battlefield.

32

For me the new playlists helps a lot, only playing mostly infantry-focused maps made the game a lot less frustrating to play. BFV is not perfect, but in small portions it can be a good experience.

33

123loreni grenades IRL are actually quite disappointing and very far from the mini-nukes portrayed in game and film media.

34

Great thread!
Almost 51y.o. veteran here, started with Unreal Tournament 2, then changed to Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror (a CS clone bases on Unreal engine) , then changed to BF2. Only missed BF2142 (bought it, but didn’t like it) and Hardcore (had bad reputation early, so I didn’t buy it).
Love BFV in general, gunplay is great (again), but i my eyes the game is overloaded and over-complicated. Maybe the young generation needs all this BS (500 ranks, silly skins, too many guns with almost no difference, silly assignments…) to stay interested in the game, but I dislike it, i want a clear, straight shooter, not a virtual dollhouse.
Reasons why I still would not recommend BF to anyone anymore is the lot of bugs, the rampant cheating and the fact that only 1 of 10 games is passably balanced, missing hardcore mode.

35

Haha -no worries. My first exposure to computers was a PET and a TRS-80 in our computer club in junior high school. Learned to program BASIC on the TRS-80. Sounds like we chewed a lot of the same silicon along the way!

36

Good old days of soldier of fortune. The typical ragdoll effect was always fun after killing one of the punks and dismember it piece by piece. Ofcourse there was the occasional baddy that came half a minute later around the corner, like the devs anticipated people would keep on shooting at the dead body at that spot.
The pools of blood from shogo mobile armor division, that dripped away or got bigger when you looked at it. The enemies behaving like being electrocuted when you emptied your uzi into them. To stop when you stopped firing.

Ofcourse the perception of 20 years ago is the same as today in games, with the exception that we are now used to better graphics and more natural movement.

As for gore and brutality in general, that crown is still held by mw2 airport scene, at least on my list. After that it got toned down bit by bit by most games, I suspect companies realised adults that play these games have kids, that play too on dad’s pc.Ofcourse we also had the carmaggedon thing back then, which also didn’t help on the gore department.

37

Yeah their damage in general came from many painful shrapnel piercing peoples bodies.
Their blast damage is probably pretty small.

38

There are international regulations (not in the US that I’m aware of) that limit the gore, and that’s why it got toned down. Many games delved into the the gore in the late 90s / early '00s and found that countries outside the US would block their sales, as well as some bigger chain stores (Walmart and a few others) wouldn’t sell them because of it. So they toned the gore down. This all came about when stuff like GTA first came out, etc., and I do remember that Soldier of Fortune game, and there was another one that was really visceral.

39

Could not agree more with this

40

I’m not sure if you’re asking me, or him - but I’ll make my opinion absolutely clear.

The Battlefield V experience is a mere shadow of the predecessors. Yes, other versions all had their issues. Yes, I may have complained about them long and loud at the time. With the exception of the network issues of BF4, though, none were so bad as to detract from the game as they do with 1 (IMHO - I know many don’t share that) and V.

To me - I equate it to watching one of my favorite pitchers. I remember watching him as a rookie - dude was a FIREBALL when he was on the mound at the time. Then - I watched him “win” his 300th game later on. To this day, I still firmly believe that the other team let the Mariners win so that the guy would get that 300th win and retire. His arm strength was gone, he had trouble getting it in the zone without getting hit, and he was slow in the infield.

Yeah, it was the same guy, and I still respected him as a player, and it was still great to see him achieve that milestone, especially with a losing team like the Mariners were, especially then (1982)

That’s how BF:V feels to me. It’s a shadow of it’s former glory. You can still see some of the brilliance of the franchise, but compared to how the game play was in earlier versions (not comparing graphics, etc because advancements have made them better without a doubt), it’s just not on par with what it was. Not in team play, not in gun play, not in movement - none of it is as good as it used to be. Add to that the removal of features, the blatant disregard of the rampant cheating in the game by EA and DICE, the stupid chat filter that people take more of a challenge instead of letting it work, the asinine micro transactions and doll-house skins - it’s just not what it was.

I won’t be spending another dime on an EA product until they can bring Battlefield back to it’s former glory, and bring back the other franchise I loved playing that they completely hosed the fan-base over on by ending support WAY early, making endless promises about a new version, and then the studio dropped it in favor of a stupid BR game.

DICE used to be awesome - but I think their spine to stand up to EA has left them long ago.