Battlefield 2042

 My take on Battlefield 2042 in EA forums:

"Hi.

I don't know why I am writing this garbage, because I know EA/Dice does not listen. Maybe I am miserable and sad, or maybe I have a slight hope for 2042, but it is also vanishing when I realize the game is turning sour with every patch. I have been playing video-games since 80s and i have seen lot of sh*t. Battlefield 2042 is one of the worst Battlefield entries there is, because it looks like it does not have any aspiration. IMO one reason is that it represents the Bad Company and COD generations. Battlefield 2 was a magical experience, even though it was buggy, but was extremely fun to play. Then the BC2 came around, and it was the bad turning point, mainly because the map designs were small, tight and flat, including chokepoints and design which forced the player to go head to lead. After BF2, that was very disappointing, and it echoes through ages to 2042 and players playing it.

Tactics:

In 2042 Breakthrough, ally players are always behind a capture point or just hanging around it, while the other capture point is captured by the enemy and usually the match is over at that point. This example is the most common thing in Euro servers. There is probably one guy from a squad going around the cap zone, trying to cut the enemy intrusion and besiege the enemy infested cap zone, but this does not work if there is one or two guys facing 5 to 20 enemies. I am not trying to be old and stiff sod, because hey kids can have their headless chicken experience, but as far as i remember the game was advertised as all-out-warfare, which it is not. Honestly, I don't know how to teach people to use brain cells and L2P. Maybe the game should enforce and encourage the tactical experience and decisions, which is rewarded somehow. Forget the COD; Not everything, which is successful in the game market, needs to be redone in every franchise. Put in a commander, which could orchestrate the field and put in some tactical objectives which are rewarded for troops when doing them.

What are weapons made from:

In common sense, weapons do NOT have a damage model. Bullets are ones which cause damage. Some can argue, what if bullets are filed, what shape it does have, what casing there is ... and honestly, i don't know what or how many bullet models there is in the world, and i think it is not relevant to the game design in that great perspective, and the idea needs to be simplified for the game. For a game, there could be only 3 classes of bullets: Small are for pistols and submachine guns, medium are for assault rifles and carbines, and biggest are for rifles and machine guns. Each class has their respective damage. Shooting with a sniper rifle or machine gun, does not have any difference per bullet.

Then we are coming to the argument about different weapons, which all affect greatly and differently to the bullet damage (in real life). I don't think the developers have any idea either, because guns are imbalanced and behave irrationally. Some are just useless and some are just overly popular. This could be tested in the R&D in EA/Dice headquarters. In there, developers could round up some executives, game designers, studio directors and everybody who made 2042. Reveal their butt cheeks, put on blindfolds and earmuffs. Take let say two sub-machine guns in real life, for example Uzi and Mp5 (which i don't have any idea what they actually are), in 5 meters, one a$$ cheek takes a hit from the Uzi and other from MP5, and ask the test subjects, can they identify the difference from the pain. If they can decisively identify which gun was which, then I was wrong. If they can not, the correlation between guns and bullets does not matter in game design wise. To notify everybody delicate, THIS WAS NOT A THREAT.

Bullets do the damage and guns only possess how they behave and affect trajectory/ballistics. NO, okay.

I try to reason about the subject with a sniper rifle and a machine gun. In 2042, a shot to the head from a sniper rifle kills instantly in any distance. With a machine gun (LMG), you can not make a kill from a head shot with one bullet, because machine guns are designed to spray rounds around and sniper rifles are the comic book version of camping. If you meet a sniper as far as 300 meters and you start to shoot him with a machine gun, he could easily eat 50 rounds to make a kill, while a sniper has easy time to retaliate and make a kill from one bullet to the head. Maybe i'm a bad shot or i can not understand the logic or i won't understand the design or i refuse to understand the cartoon. Are people happy with this? Since BF2 guns made no sense, but BF2 had way better maps (Infantry only in Karkand as an example).

Next subject is why snipers are always pampered, while they are doing nothing constructive? Is it enough that there are dozens of snipers around the map just for attraction to opportunistic behavior. If you are having blasting time with fellow enemies, there is always a sniper ruining the experience for both sides, either stealing a kill or killing. Can they be limited to, like 1 sniper per side, or make the sniper gameplay a little bit more challenging. I have played my time with a sniper, and all i can say it is the easiest "class" there is. U just sit down and try to make easy kills from a safe distance. From a bullet damage perspective, can a sniper rifle do the same damage as a machine gun bullet does, since they practically shoot the same size bullet? If this is disputed, it can always be tested with the butt cheek test.

Another swell time for opportunists are vehicles. Is it possible to have an infantry mode? Of course not. Can helicopters go to base like refueling and stock up their rockets, instead spraying them around like no pause. Could the vehicle controls be more sophisticated? Can battle tanks lose fuel, when camping behind their own lines?

Random questions:

Why are squad sizes only 4? Ought to be more? Why are squads dismantled after a match? Why is there no proper scoreboard? Why are maps basically bowls and plains? Why are there no more foliage and all sorts of stuff on a ground in 128 player matches? Why are there heroes with the most embarrassing voice lines after every match? Can there be faceless soldiers like there were in BF2? Why are there an overwhelming amount of repetitive intros and video materials before the actual match starts? Why is 2042 all over the place? What is going wrong in the studio? Who is in charge of the development? Can pencil pushers and people, who only know how to use credit cards and look at the revenue from excel spreadsheet, be fired or transfered to a room where they cannot affect the actual development? Can a master developer/designer be a guy who knows games from like the 70s to this day, and has played and seen a lot? Have these questions circulated already? I am a bonehead? Is there life in outer space? Did Klaus Barbie's life in South-America make any sense?"