Crunch Time

It’s been a while since I posted. A lot has happened. Hardline has fallen off the radar. Battlefront is chugging along. I hear it’s doing rather well, even though I don’t really know anyone that is playing it myself. The biggest thing though is the ramp up of Battlefield 5 coming soon. The last time I recall there was going to be some type of Battlefield released in October. Further evidence that Battlefield 5 is rapidly approaching is the confirmation that Battlefield 4 support has come to an end. Well, no new content. As long as BF4 has been released, it had a very long run. Only took two years to stabilize the game. Two years and another dev team, a CTE system, and a lot of testing and revamping. But I’m not here to talk about the past. No. I’m here to talk about the very near future.

October is not really that far away. As of this writing it is seven months. That’s it. So lets talk about what needs to be done to improve Battlefield and not make it the Battlefield 4 disaster it was. These are the items I think it will take to pull everything back together again, regardless if Battlefield 5 is set in the past, present, or future of war:

Netcode – Yes, once again, netcode. The very issue that stopped me from buying Hardline. Some of the same issues that I saw in early Battlefront footage. Netcode has been a problem since the start of DICE using the Frostbite engine with certain settings and timing variables being locked down. It took Battlefield 4, the CTE, and an adamant community to get those settings unlocked and adjusted better improving game play and helping save BF4. We’ve seen the same bugs and glitches follow game after game. Patched in one game only to be seen in the next. Netcode really needs to be a home run for Battlefield 5. Three tickrate options, 30MHz, 60MHz, and 120MHz should be doable. Why only three? I will go into that more later.

Teamwork Focus – Scoring, the point system, the leader boards, gadgets, field upgrades, and even weapons need to be re-evaluated and re-focused. DICE has taken to “play it your way” to Battlefield for some time now. More and more things have been put into the game so everyone has a “fair” chance and is able to do what they want in the game. Unfortunately all these improvements have changed the game of “play it your way” to “don’t mess with me, I’m playing.” There is nothing wrong with being a lone wolf and doing whatever, but people have complained over and over about how things are “over powered” and “not balanced” when in fact they are, but people don’t want to adapt or rely on someone else to have to assist.

This has caused a huge breakdown on relying on your team and everyone just running around and doing whatever they want. It’s already bad enough that you don’t need an engineer or medic because vehicles and health auto generate, but now there are talks about taking ammo directly from stingy support players that won’t lay down bags. They put this mechanic in Hardline and people loved it! They were free! Support no longer had to do their role and everyone else no longer had to rely on Support! More teamwork was removed.

Don’t get me wrong, random teamwork is a myth in Battlefield. I should know, I’ve witnessed it since 1942 and it has been an issue in every game. The real issue now, however, is the mechanics to support teamwork are disappearing. The mechanic and tools of teamwork need to be there. People now declare that if they have to change their kits to counter something, that something is just OP. It is hard to tell what is actually overpowered and what is just someone complaining and being lazy about the game. There are even “hardcore” “pro-gamer” Youtubers going on about how there needs to be teamwork in one breath and how there needs to be mechanics that take it away. In honesty, I don’t believe they know what they are saying.

Commander Mode – It needs to either be overhauled or it needs to go away. It’s seldom used anymore and most admins have it disabled on the server. There were little to no way for the team on the opposite side of the commander to counter them, other than having another commander. Becoming commander for a server while you are in-game is tedious and not worth the hassle. There is no way to fully counter anything the commander does. So I say take it away or remake it. Why put all those resources into the game for it to end up the way it did? I’ve wrote more about how Commander should be re-done anyway here.

Stealth – It needs to be added back into the game. Some of the features are already there now. You can crouch to lessen your footsteps and they FINALLY fixed the screaming soldiers giving away positions. So what is missing? Gadgets for one. There should be counter gadgets to the TUGs, UAV, Comamnder Assets (If there is going to be a commander), and Squad Leader abilities. That would also improve teamwork. You can counter enemy team items. have jammers and “dead zone” style TUGs. Have Squad Leader beacons and abilities as well. These things would also affect 3D spotting. If you’re in the dead zone, you don’t get spotted out. The 3D spotting should also be adjusted where you don’t see enemy movement, but where they were last seen. A stationary blip on the mini-map. Fine, have the dorito follow if its line-of-site, but true stealth is gone with all the anti-stealth gadgets and mechanics in Battlefield 4.

Gadget Adjustments – I mentioned the counter gadgets above, but more can be done to the gadgets we have already seen. Get rid of the gadgets that people cannot counter. The UCAV should have never been in the game. There was no way to counter it and now it’s just been “adjusted” to the point it’s not used. So why put it in the game? Unmanned mortars. Adjust it back to BF3 style. Bring back strong hits to vehicles when the Recon class is actually locking on to targets for the team. That will promote teamwork. Speaking of lock ons…. It’s time they get adjusted to not cripple vehicle gameplay like they did in BF4. It’s not too bad now in the game, but it took a lot of patches to correct it. Don’t even try to fly the first YEAR of BF4. It was just wrong what was done to the aerial aspect of the game. Speaking of which…

Balanced Vehicle Play – Now it’s not so bad, but again, I gave up flying in Battlefield 4. I feel the boats were the only well balanced thing in the entire game. Tanks had weird things with their gadgets and armaments. AA was the tank to have for everything. The feel and control of the vehicles were just wrong and it took a number of patches to really fix things.

Levolution – This is a bit like the commander for me. Either do it or don’t. There were some great levolution events that changed the map and how you played in it. Then there were some that I had no idea why DICE even bothered. For me, levolution events need to be either very map changing or don’t have any.

Lock Down Server Features – There. I said it. Some features need to be locked down on servers. The main one that gets me the most and breaks Battlefield, that I am referring to, is instant vehicle respawn. There should never be instant vehicle respawn on a ranked or official server. Once again this is taking something away from teamwork. Steal a jet and crash it in the mountain, there is no penalty for that. In BF2 and 2142 people did a good job making sure that didn’t happen often because it really hurt the team. Having to wait a certain time gives people time to re-group, re-supply, and heal. It puts defense and strategy back into the game instead of non-stop bull rushing in, only to be over-ran by wave after wave of tanks, infantry, and whatever other vehicle. There is no reward for taking out a vehicle when it’s going to come right back. Yeah, it’s true, not everyone is going to get a vehicle or maybe a chance to play in one. But that is also part of balance. We all can’t have tanks. We all can’t just waste everything. We all can’t just take off and leave our teammates behind because another chopper is going to spawn in as soon as I dump the one I took. The same goes for respawn timers.

Weapon/Explosive Balance – Lets stop the nerfing and the circle-jerk “adjustments”. There is nothing wrong with weapons in a catagory being close to the same of each other. Rate of Fire shouldn’t equal a win. There should be recoil, drift, and sway. Where you aim is where you should be shooting. No more imaginary spread. Two C4 should destroy a tank. Same thing with mines.

The M2 Slam nerf was moronic. If an engineer slips up to a vehicle and plants ALL the slams on a target and was never seen, they deserve the kill. Same if vehicles drive right into them. They beep and make noise! They can be shot and explode! Be smart, don’t dumb things down.

Same with all the bullet damage adjustments that were done that then made what was once useful weapons meaningless. “It only takes one more bullet!” That one bullet means a lot if it takes several or if you have a limited magazine size, that never gets adjusted.

The weapons and gadgets changed so much in the last year of BF4 I felt like I was re-learning the game over and over. Some like that and they say it makes the game “fresh” and “new”. Well, some don’t like that. I just want to play with my favorite things, not do calculus to try to figure out what changed.

How about that Shield gadget? Amiright guys?

Not everything has to be extremely different, but everything should mean something. Otherwise, why even do it?

Togetherness – I think I am going to wrap up this post with this; There are so many options in Battlefield now that the community and players are stretched too thin and its causing entire maps, game modes, servers, and configurations to be left empty. This issue is very large. We all like options and different styles. I get that. I just hate it when I can’t play a map because no server is running it. “But Crunch! If no server is running it, doesn’t that mean the map just sucks?” That’s a very good question and the answer is yea, it could be. The problem though is Vanilla maps and the popular game modes will always be chosen because that is where the most people play and server admins don’t want to buy a server for it to stay empty. I totally get that and agree. The problem is there are now entire game modes, maps, DLC, and settings that are dead, totally, in Battlefield 4.  Not just because BF4 is now an “old” game and people moved on. Its been that way for some time. Again, why make all those options and resources for nothing? Another example is the tick rate I mentioned earlier. There are currently four tick rates. You check one or just two of them and now a ton of servers are no longer available. Having a low, medium, and high gives something for everyone. I’m a prime example. I play the first two tick rates all the time because I don’t have the video card to get up to 120 fps to play the third. However, why should my card  limitations stop someone else from going a bit higher? But do we really need four seperations?

I will write more about the “Togetherness” and what can be done to improve the next Battlefield another time. Thanks for stopping in and let me know what your thoughts are on what should be done for the next Battlefield game.