I really want to know specific reasons for why BF5 has failed so badly. I know the PR was bad, the CONSTANT BUGS, some of the game modes were a waste of time like the co-op but what I really want to know what specific things that just made the actual multiplayer gameplay much worse than past BF titles. What are the things that needs be improved on for BF6? Obviously, it’s easy to say everything needs improving, but what are specific details including new mechanics, how the maps could be improved or even the customization. Please share your opinions and share what, if anything, did BF5 improve on from BF1. What were the better parts of the main multiplayer you adored in BF5.
This is probably going to be subjective but for me it was visibility (to be fair it’s better now), the upgrade system, the poorly handled attrition system, the lack of what I felt was a clear sense of direction, the missing sense of fun, the over abundance of animations and the limited-time gamemodes.
As for the good I really like buddy revives, fortifications, there are a number of great maps, lots of the weapons are satisfying to use, some of the newer ganemodes were entertaining and I liked the idea behind Tides of War (pity it didn’t pan out).
Live Service as a whole. It was a terrible experience for players and developers alike. We were getting small pointless updates that broke more things than they’ve fixed. Constant drip feeding of content with no meaningful content drops apart from Pacific update and final update. It felt as if nobody knew (Be it players or devs themselves) what was actually going on with post launch support. Lack of management at its finest.
BF5 greatly improved gunplay. I’ve said it many times already, but BF5 has the best gunplay out of any BF games. It rewards pure skill. No random bullet jumps, suppression or other nonsense. It would be a big lie if I said that I didn’t enjoy killing others in BF5. Gunplay was very satisfying.
Visibility, servers quality, speed of movement, so many times looking at an empty street, to turn around and getting stabbed from behind. People still alive hearing from squad buddies they’re dead, and then go down.
Which probably is the same as the magic bullet.
But the major thing, that is really bad for a game, is players getting angry or aggrevated while playing. Not many are gonna keep up with that and choose a more pleasant experience, thus quitted bfv.
Btw, gunplay sucks. Guns in BF3 felt way better. The random recoil is even worse than the bullet deviation from the past.
Besides all that, and with respect to those that do enjoy all these things, the game always had a small player base. Divided over the platforms I estimate they never passed 100k players in a full day.
Maybe in the first month, but after that it was already over.
We just had a thread like this
I think AWS was probably the worst decision. I could tolerate a lot of the game’s shortcomings if I could play on my favourite maps and community run servers without having to slog through all the ‘bad’ maps and all the server hopping whenever the game decided to turn a server off.
No Anti cheat or team balance is up there too.
Weapon class balance and movement/momentum ain’t great either.
What I feel BF5 did right I’ve detailed in the other thread already.
I never played Battlefield 1, or any Battlefield game before V, but for me:
The Best:
- The graphics.
- The action animations (very nice and smooth)
- The destruction - wonderful.
- The music.
- The squad play - signalling other players is something I felt Battlefront II was lacking.
- The sound design.
- The cosmetics… when you could actually unlock them.
Stuck on death bug. Can’t believe that they are not able to fix it.
The Good:
-The live service. Yes, it was overall disappointing, but considering that it was “free” and guaranteed keeping the playerbase together I really want to see that model go forward into future games.
-Character customization. It may have been a little over the top for most, but I generally liked the diversity. However, I’d like it to be class based in the future so we can actually differentiate enemy classes visually.
-The gadgets. There were too few, but at least they all had some kind of use, and none were especially OP or annoying.
-Most of the player mobility additions, like ledge grabbing, rolling, and sliding. Made getting around easier.
-The IDEA behind the inclusion of the hardcore-lite features like attrition etc. I don’t like the implementation at all, but I felt that BF1 went too far in the direction of hand-holdy casual with the addition of things like Behemoths and Elites so that even bad players could go on tears, so when DICE announced that BFV was going to appeal more to the old Battlefield vets I got excited.
The Bad:
-Gunplay. I felt that it was too easily exploitable, cheesy, and unsatisfying. I think many in the community felt that way, which was why DICE tried to fix it with the TTK tweaks, but I think that the issue was far deeper and more difficult to fix than simply increasing the bullets to kill.
-The UI. All of it, the awful assignment system, the literally broken ribbon and medal system, the almost hidden find a server feature etc.
-Attrition. It’s just a bad system that doesn’t really work in a game like Battlefield and made the game truly not fun in many instances. With 32 enemies the potential for getting damaged is very high, even unintentionally, so punishing players is dumb. Also, it made the Medic class, which can spam instant heals a little too good, and punished Recon players with low damaging weapons so one of the great aspects of BF1, the aggressive Recon was absolutely destroyed. Lastly, ammo attrition was so utterly annoying and pointless they basically removed it.
-The lack of proper weapon customization. Specialization trees basically relegated weapons to 2 configurations with slight variations, and many branches were clearly superior so other than cosmetics there was almost not variation between players’ weapons. This system also made weapons feel kind of impersonal to me. This part’s subjective, but I loved how in BF4 I could tinker with a gun’s attachments and make it function exactly they way I wanted. Made me want to use the gun more.
-The ping system. It’s utterly useless and a waste when you can only inaccurately ping things for your squad, I miss the old spotting system even if they toned it down and just sort of left a 2D marker on the last known position. It was a way to both communicate with your whole team and contribute. It sucks that people hate it because some players abused it.
There’s a lot more I hate, but I’m not trying to type a book here.
For me the absolute worse issues in BFV were always performance related:
- Poor optimization causing a huge loss in framerates compared to previous titles
- Poor handling of the synchronization between players so it feels like they kill you faster and they move faster than you. (this is probably one of the main sources of hackusations)
Netcode was the worst by a long way
The best thing was that it looked very pretty
Just going to copy/paste my positives from a similar thread posted a few days ago:
"- Lack of 3D spotting. More opportunities for stealth. You could be more tactical in attacking or defending objectives without having to worry about some random dude spotting you and having 10 guys converge onto your location.
- Having the chance to take control of iconic WWII vehicles like the Sherman, P51, Spitfire, Tiger, Zero. Unfortunately, we likely won’t return to this time period in another Battlefield for a long time, if ever.
- Fortifications, which are especially useful to provide cover in destroyed buildings.
- Ability to revive squadmates
- To a certain extent, soldier customization is a good idea. Just over done to the point where the best squad screen looks like a bunch of comic book characters most of the time. Hopefully the silly cosmetics are toned down in BF6. Otherwise, I like the idea.
- Choosing perks for your vehicles. I don’t like the spec tree system (planes especially, though tanks are more manageable), but I do like the idea of choosing perks for your vehicles while sacrificing others. Helps to make your vehicle stand out from the next guy.
- DLC maps available in normal rotation. No splitting the player-base. The DLC maps are of great quality too. If only we had launch maps of such quality, some of which are forgettable (Fjell and Aerodrome being the worst)."
Also to add another positive, I like how both Medic and Support always have their support gadgets equipped (syringe and repair tool). Hope that returns to BF6.
As for the negatives:
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Attrition. Just not a fun mechanic.
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Over-the-top, silly, and historically inaccurate soldier customization. I like some of the customization options, but there is also much I dislike. It’s because of the absurd customization and the silly elites that it still fails to give me the impression that I’m playing a WWII game. It’s the vehicles, some weapons, and a few maps usually that help remind me that BFV takes place during that war.
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Grinding to upgrade vehicles and guns. Planes are still by far the worst to upgrade given how few chances you have to gain points.
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DLC content though good was released far too slowly. Tides of War was a huge disappointment.
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Many theaters of war were not introduced to BFV. So many missed opportunities for a game that could’ve been great. A modern WWII Battlefield would have so much potential, but instead DICE and EA somehow screwed it up.
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Serious lack of naval combat. Literally only 4 amphibious vehicles in BFV. The 2 amphibious tanks, a landing craft, and of all things, a wooden motorboat. What happened to the naval combat in BF1? It’s a shame that to this day the Battlefield series forgets for the most part about naval warfare. I unfortunately expect Battlefield 6 will be the same.
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Constant and unnecessary changes made through various “patches”. Not to say everything was unnecessary, but things like AA vs plane balance is something DICE cannot decide on.
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Difficulty trying to get into a vehicle. The way it is now, you need to sit at the spawn screen and wait sometimes up to 10-15 minutes to get into a vehicle and hope nobody gets it before you do. In those 10-15 minutes, you and the other players waiting could’ve actually been on the ground helping their team PTFO. I don’t expect this to change unless we get vehicle superiority modes or we get bigger maps with more vehicle slots.
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Unable to customize vehicles unless a slot becomes available during the round or you leave to the main menu.
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Cannot use newly unlocked specs in the spec trees until the next match or you leave to the main menu.
Best things:-
Gunplay
Movement
Squad Revives/team play
Worst things::
Team balancing
No proper rental servers
Not being able to set new assignments between maps
best things:
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The visibility. I realize this is the exact opposite of what everyone else is saying. A youtuber {I think it was good guy gaming or something like that} made a video of his first time playing BF4. He plays BFV all the time and was getting totally slaughtered playing BF4. He was trying to play infantry on Shanghai. He doesn’t know that {with a few exceptions like maybe Strike at Karkand} if you play BF3 or BF4 and you’re NOT in a vehicle you’re DEAD. The visibility is way TOO good in these games. There are no routes to go from one flag to another without being cannon fodder for vehicles. Outflanking an opponent is way easier in BFV compared to past titles. My proof? I have 750 melee kills in BFV and I might have about 200 combined playing BF3 and BF4. I’ll gladly take the downside of having a few more campers here and there. Totally worth the trade off. I really wish they would do away with spotting altogether actually.
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Kind of related to the first one. The invention of walls that are too tall to see over but you can vault over them. Nice touch on maps like Arras that allow infantry to move more freely.
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I always played hardcore on BFBC2, BF3, and BF4. If they can’t have hardcore anymore then they have the TTK about right. Nice balance between hardcore and normal. TTK in BF4 and BF1 is insanely high. In BF1 you can spend a half hour in a tank and get about 4 kills. You sure get a whole lot of damage points though!!
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Starting with one health pack to self heal. Don’t notice it until you’re playing older BF titles and you don’t have it.
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On the same note, ammo and health stations. Really miss them when playing other BF titles.
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The fact you throw ammo and health packs with one button push. Took a little getting used to at first but makes sense.
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Overall smoothness of the game. I’m spoiled by a great internet connection though. When I play BF3 in particular I will often get killed by a guy so fast it seems impossible. I’ll look at his ping and it will be 185. Of all the problems in BFV it doesn’t seem like this is one of them. I still get frustrated but seems like netcode is solid. It used to crash to desktop all the time in the first couple of months but that hasn’t happen in over a year.
The worst things.
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I don’t like the way all the support class machine guns are bipod.
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I think splash damage for grenades, bazookas and explosive is way too low. They should increase them by 33% across the board.
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still feel like like AA could be buffed especially against planes coming right at you.
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machine gun in tanks {not the top but the number two slot} could use a little buff.
Rather than stating what’s good and what’s bad about BFV I am going to say what I think could be improved to make the next Battlefield title overall a better game with better player retention.
The biggest reason people quit a match and perhaps the game entirely is from getting killed over and over again whilst failing to get kills themselves.
Aside from players outright cheating..
Battlefield has always been a very teamwork oriented series greatly punishing a lone wolf style of play which I truly believe needs to be toned down.
Any game experience can be enhanced with players communicating and working together but Battlefield takes it to an absolute extreme.
Tanks can become nearly invincible if they position themselves well and have a dedicated support player repairing them. They can even be repaired whilst taking damage.
Planes can become nearly invincible if they have friendlies as a wingman and/or using a SAA or MAA due to the fact that an “out of bounds” area of the map renders them safe from all threats aside from airplanes.
Vehicles can be repaired back to 100% hp an unlimited number of times. Vehicles can be selected without ever having to play as infantry and earn score making it possible to be a tank or plane “main” hogging vehicles endlessly.
What tends to happen is the most dedicated Battlefield players who play practically every day for hours at a time get very skilled using vehicles. They can go on insane kill streaks even up to 200 kills in a single match without dying or maybe dying once or twice.
This by far is the single greatest reason why players get disgusted with a Battlefield game and stop playing it completely.
First of all, no out of bounds area should exist on any map. In conquest for example, if the enemy captures all of the objectives then the game should automatically select the objective with the least enemies defending it and allow your team to spawn near it to capture it. The “uncap” as people call it breeds camping tank/aa tactics which almost everybody universally dislikes.
I think by forcing players to earn the right to use vehicles by earning score as infantry in combination with enabling a vehicle to only restore 90% of it’s HP lost from damage through repairs the insane kill streaks would cease to exist.
So for example let’s say your tank or plane gets damaged down to 10% HP you from the inside, a support player or both can repair the vehicle up to 90% of 90 dmg taken or 81 HP bringing your vehicle health up to 91% HP. Let’s say you get down to 10% HP again so 90% of 81 dmg taken would mean you could repair back up to 83% HP. And so on and so forth. The end goal is eliminating the ability for vehicles to be invincible monsters making the game more fair and more fun for players less skilled at using or eliminating highly skilled vehicle players.
Basically, vehicles would have unlimited ammo (bombs and rockets would still have a cool down before they can be reused) but as you received more and more damage eventually your vehicle would be so crippled you would either flee from it to prevent yourself from dying or just ride it out until you die. Nobody who enjoys tanking will miss having to drive back to a resupply point to get more ammo.
This style system would mean even if a vehicle killed you if you managed to damage it you didn’t die in vain and did help to reduce the overall HP of that vehicle.
In return, I believe vehicles should take way less damage from infantry gadgets and slightly less damage from other vehicles and stationary weapons making them stronger and more able to push into objectives with way less likelihood of dying instantly due to being swarmed by a squad or two of assault players.
Plane’s primary and tank’s secondary weapons should be more effective at eliminating infantry. Vehicles should be more powerful in general and more fun to use because their overall health is now limited.
Requiring score to earn the ability to spawn a vehicle some would way say would lead to asymmetrical balance but that could be countered by having a cap as to how many vehicles can be spawned in at any given time just like how BFV is set up now.
Anyway I have more thoughts and ideas on how to improve the next title in the series but I’ve already written a small novel here and I truly think this is one of the biggest issues causing players to say f*** it and stop playing Battlefield. Nobody likes being spawn trapped, nobody likes dying over and over again to a single or multiple highly skilled vehicle players on the enemy team that seem invincible.
Over and out.
some good ideas in there. I’ve said the same thing about spreading the love in regards to vehicles. They really should make players play as infantry in order to earn time in tanks and planes and even playing as sniper.
Every BF game has had its share of dying over and over to super great players on vehicles. And while I do agree about spreading the vehicle love, that issue more of a matchmaking issue.
If you match up players who play games as a job with people who dabble in games and aren’t that great at them in the first place, then the latter group is, as a rule of thumb, never going to stick with a multiplayer game no matter what you do - short of implementing a handicap system like in golf so players of different skill levels can compete with each other.
And a handicap system is another possible solution to matchmaking. With vehicles it could be something simple like lower health in vehicles for skilled players or higher health in vehicles for lesser skilled players to help form a more level playing field.
Oh and I do like the idea of 90% vehicle health repair concept. Although I think it can be simplified - like if your vehicle falls below 75%, 50% or 25% health then it can only be repaired to that percentile mark. Or not allowing vehicles to be repaired at all - maybe give them extra health.
The old BF games had no out of bounds areas.
I think if one team owns all the flags then the enemy’s base should be able to be taken over and the round should end if accomplished. And really the round could or should end if you get all the flags. That could be a knockout in and of itself.
“Or not allowing vehicles to be repaired at all - maybe give them extra health.”
THAT! It always makes me laugh when I see a guy reparing a tank =)
And I agree explosives should make a bit more damage anyway…bazookas specially..
It was just better when you or you gunner had to get out of the tank for repair
play popular games like pubg or warzone, then you know.
I think visibility is the biggest problem with the game, on xbox anyway. You get used to it if you play a lot, you start to know all the spots where people will be and start to recognise that grey blob as an enemy and not a piece of rubble. I think it’s one of the big reasons for people abandoning ship at the beta stage. Lots of players don’t have the time to learn maps this size or the patience to die over and over again to players who they can’t identify.
I would bring spotting back, it’s painful at times being in a squad with people who have no idea where the enemy are.
Next up is the netcode. The instant deaths and the deaths behind cover have been a thing in the series before, but always intermittently, here it’s been most the lifetime of the game.
Attrition has been a mixed bag. Less explosive spam has been good, ammo and health crates on most objectives seems to defeat the purpose of the whole idea though. Likewise letting tanks retreat to their spawn to resupply, that’s like an anchor to a lot of players. Rather than resupply stations drawing poor players to flags, they seem to have kept good player stocked up. I think the whole thing has discouraged proper use of the crates as well, so less teamwork.
Fortifications are also mixed. Anti-tank guns and some of the ways to rebuild buildings with sandbags and barricades are a decent addition. No one seems to use the MMG emplacements and the ability to turn a flag zone into a maze for your own team isn’t great. The whole thing sometimes feels like busy work for people who aren’t planning on shooting at the enemy.
Balance in general is terrible, but the majority of player have been encouraged by the game to find a hiding spot to sit and wait, hoping that someone will step in front of their 3x scope, meanwhile the squaded up players at the top of the scoreboard will be running and sliding about the map and never stop moving.