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Tactically Inept

Battlefield 2042


kuhla

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Random thoughts:

  1. Class-based characters with abilities hmm. I am OK with this. lol Maria = Ana shooting you with healing darts.
  2. Season passes? I think they did this with BF5 didn't they. I have to go look back what they did. I don't like this but everyone is doing it now. Required for specialist unlocks?
  3. $60 - $90 - $110. Ooof.
  4. It's near future.
  5. Looks like dynamic weather and dynamic maps. Meh. Could be OK but usually doesn't work out imho.
  6. "With support for 128 players" . There is its. Expect lots of chaos grenade spam.

 

 

 

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Not a fan of the specialist system.  It's a crutch so they can charge you each season for a "new" character, which will invariably have better abilities and then get nerfed after everyone grinds to unlock them (see: rainbow 6 siege, apex, league of legends, etc.)  I'm also concerned that the specialist system limits what little customization options you can have, you get stuck with presumably that characters voice lines, and customization options instead of more general customization - less build a bear and more "buy these specific skins!"
Also my concern about balancing is that you could potentially create some nasty stuff like snipers that can grapple hook to hard to reach rooftops. 
I've yet to hear if there are squad restrictions that prevent people from all playing the same specialist class, that could be another potential balancing issue. 
@ kuhla - It has something you truly love, which is low risk high reward type abilities - automated turrets sound really garbage, I understand why these lower skill specializations exist but I hope they balance them (undertune) accordingly. 

I'm not positive about the pricing stuff because the new consoles are presumably going to be $70 and PC is currently listed as $60.  The various special editions are lame and mostly there because they have guaranteed beta access and early launch access which I dislike because it potentially gives an advantage to people who pay more for the game unlocking stuff faster.  I should briefly mention I think you can sign up for the EA play premium at $15/month which gives you complete access, that might be another option in case we have another battlefield 5 type situation - I suppose we'll know more after the beta. 

I'm glad this game is multiplayer only - I think often Dice spent their resources on a single player game that people didn't give a shit about instead of making the multiplayer shine.  That being said, if we're only getting 7 maps at launch I'm a bit concerned, hopefully all the season pass mumbo-jumbo means they're going to release new maps frequently, if they put out a map every 3-4 months that might be enough.  I'd prefer to see 2 each season/quarter. 
I'm also mildly curious about the AI bots - if it's strictly CO-OP against AI OR PvP system I'd be a bit disappointed.  Seems like they could "fill out" servers with bots as an option, especially for lower population regions. 

All that being said, I really hope this game is good.  It has some elements I really like, such as the near future setting, huge battles, and a mix of conquest and breakthrough game modes - sounds like they might even use the galactic assault style gameplay from battlefront 2.

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https://answers.ea.com/t5/Battlefield-Announcements/Battlefield-Briefing-Welcome-to-2042/m-p/10415599?utm_campaign=bf2042_hd_ww_ic_soco_twt_tw-battlefield-briefing

Quote

original?v=v2&px=-1

Also new is the introduction of AI Soldiers (Artificial Intelligence) to the series. As a multiplayer-only experience, it’s important for us to let you play Battlefield 2042 when and how you want. Here is what that looks like in the All-Out Warfare experience of Conquest and Breakthrough:

  • Multiplayer – AI soldiers are used for server-filling capabilities, ensuring your matches remain full, no matter your location.

[...]
These Specialties and Traits are unique to their respective Specialist, which for your Loadout means you can now fully customize it to your liking:

  • Primary Weapon
  • Equipment (items anyone can use such as a Medical Crate or Supply Crate)
  • Secondary Weapon 
  • Throwable (such as Frag or Incendiary Grenade)

Class type will no longer restrict what weapons, equipment or throwable you can equip, offering you more flexibility than ever before in the series when it comes to Loadouts. You can also save these custom Loadouts, and select them for any Specialist you’d like to play with.

So I guess I was right about the AI bots filling up servers.  I've seen some mixed answers on this, but that's straight from EA so... let's see if it stays in or is some sort of server option. 
Kinda neat that your loadouts can be equipped independent of your specialist/class.  Still not sure about some of their balance stuff.  I wonder if they'll borrow from call of duty and assign certain points values to weapons, to prevent people from carrying a sniper and rocket launcher or something similar. 

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  • 3 months later...

Played a few rounds yesterday.

My opinion and notes on a few items:

  1. TTK is too low. I would like to see some numbers and comparisons (especially older BF games) but it feels too low. I'm not wishing for it to be as high as Apex (too high) but higher than it is so I can actually have an exchange of fire.
  2. Performance is worrying. With everything (I think) on low I am upper 60s fps average at native resolution (1440p). I really hope that gets better. If not I will have to start messing with resolution scaling to push my FPS a bit higher.
  3. I was OK with the concept when it was first being described but seeing the loadout system in action I feel a lot more mixed about the issue now. Specialist + class + weapons is a little TOO flexible. You want to have grapple hook and AT rocket and sniper rifle? It's allowed. Battlefield is supposed to push you into certain roles and require a diversity of roles to really win/
  4. Maybe this is just first impressions but grapple hook is stupidly OP. It goes far and goes fast. You can traverse buildings like fucking spiderman. It puts your mobility on a whole other level. I guarantee we are going to see some super wonkey shit with it. Grapple snap to vehicles to quick plant C4? It's coming.
  5. I know this is an old problem but aircraft have a little too much HP. Even if you are in a ground vehicle, you have to put in some serious work to take down even a little bird. By comparison it's much easier to take out a ground vehicle.
  6. The skin/soldier visuals thing has already been discussed to death so I don't need to add to that. They look too similar. Friend and foe visual identification is hard.
  7. Tornado is cool.
  8. Destructibility is OK. Definitely had some "moonscape" moments already.
  9. Movement and object vaulting is OK.
  10. Every BF has solid audio.
  11. Menus need to change colors or style or both. Some of them are confusing with colors changing when you mouseover.
  12. The in-game HUD needs to be scaled down a bit and be a bit more readable (less transparency?) and that giant top of screen notification bar things has to be changed.
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  • I've seen plenty of people complaining the ttk was too high - I'm not sure how I feel about the current ttk.  I think there are some issues with recoil (especially the AK) and different ammo types that are having serious affects on the ttk at different ranges. 
  • Performance is not great - there's also no current settings for DLSS, but there are for nvidia reflex so... that's also concerning. 
  • Specialists are not working well.  The readability is trash - boris looks like boris on both teams and it's only going to get worse as cosmetics become available for the specialists. 
    • The loadout problem is even worse due to the ammo economy.  They limit your magazines heavily, they limit the rocket launcher ammo and in general it feels like you can only take 1-2 firefights before you're out.
      • You want a dumb bug/workaround for this?  If you swap magazine types it uses a different ammo pool - out of primary just swap mags and there you go.  This is clearly not working as intended and absolutely fucking stupid - you're welcome.
    • To make matters worse there is no current specialist that can repair vehicles and carry anti-vehicle weapons.  Seems pretty trash.
      They may instead want vehicle repair to be on a set cooldown similar to bf1 and bfv, but it still feels weird.
    • Falk (medic) also feels trash.  You can avoid taking the medic box with her and heal with the pistol, but I feel like ana from overwatch desperately trying to land shots since it has slow projectile speed and everyone has the same small character model size - at least in overwatch the tanks are fat as hell. 
      • The self heal takes like 3 full seconds of holding down 3, which feels terrible, not to mention it's not instant but heal over time.
      • Revives feel like absolute dogshit.  Even as a medic you run up and hold E on a downed body, it plays some weird animation that feels awful and leaves you exposed.  It's no wonder no one is reviving - I have literally yet to be revived in the match by a squadmate or medic.  You also can't pre-charge paddles, or anything. 
    • Macauly (Grapple guy) feels... ok.  I love mobility options and he absolutely has them, but this ain't titanfall or even apex.  It has a fairly significant cooldown and predictable path, there's almost no physics on the cable just straight A>B.  He's probably a good "default" character. 
  • I haven't done much with vehicles but I have shot a helicopter with a gustav and it just sort of tanked it and kept going - that feels wrong.  Every battlefield that I can remember if you hit an aircraft with an unguided missile it was a 1shot kill. 
  • Movement feels pretty good, I've seen some complaints about characters moving too fast, not sure that I agree.
  • Audio - I tried biaural 3d headphones as the setting, it's either mega broken or something because it sounded awful, the worst of any battlefield I've played.  I'll swap it back to standard headphones but so far I haven't been impressed.  There's also seemingly very little soldier sounds, I've ran face first into enemies without hearing them coming at all. 
  • Menus/UI is poor.  I know they won't fix it because some of this is console readability - they want people to be able to play this from a couch 20' away. 
    • I had some issues with squad orders, sometimes it was easy to assign "attack objective" other times I would look right at it and it wouldn't do anything except assign waypoints to nowhere
    • Why can I not see a global scoreboard?
    • Map still doesn't work for me.
  • Grenades - I hate the equip/throw style we have now.  I wish we could get our usual quick throw.
  • Map - I hate it.  I know they used this map because it's probably one of the simplest maps but it feels genuinely lifeless and soulless.  I recall most of the battlefield games having a decent beta map, this ain't it chief. 

Despite all that, I'm still having fun, even when playing solo.  But I think some of this is out of desperation for another battlefield / decent fps game. 
If Dice/EA really is considering delaying this, I would encourage it.  I know battlefield launches are always meme level bad, but this seems like it's going to be really awful and buggy.

 

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just delay it.

i feel ok with the ttk although i cant judge accurately before all the lag and stuttering disappear. I often get kills with headshots that feel like i don't deserve especially long ranges. it does feels like bfv gunplay soo im ok with that.

sounds feels like ambient everywhere. i feel like everyone have dead silence. VSM

helicopters and jets feels dumb. console model. i hope they have separate input models for PC

ui strange like ya'll mentions

i have a hard time snipping people the movement to jittery maybe some jank network manipulation. not smooth.

i don't have a good solution with AA and ground troops balance. but yes unguided shit should one shot anything in the air.

they need to make stinger 2 shots a minibirds and jets. they have the high ceiling and huge map but they cant harras me on a capture point. but now air units are too powerful.

the icons for friendly is hard to see against the map and the overlay filters on the graphics. and i feel like same skins for enemy is just dumb game design.

time to jump back in and play with the non preorder peeps

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Initial thoughts after putting in some substantial hours this weekend. 

  • Maps are bad.  They're large, but often without real cover or small light vehicles to help transport people from one spot to another.  I feel like ATVs and the rivian trucks need to be spawning at most points on a short cooldown because otherwise you're forced to run everywhere or attempt to call in hovercrafts.  The wingsuit specialist has some advantages for traversal if you can start from a higher elevation. 
    Conquest seems better set up and balanced than breakthrough on maps but in some ways suffers just as bad regarding the large map size and running between objectives.
    • Why did they hype up the sectors thing in all the promo-material?  Most sectors have 1 or 2 points, and there doesn't seem to be anything especially interesting about that except there's bonus points for holding both? 
  • Breakthrough is basically defenders win unless miracles occur.  I've only seen 2 attackers win ever, and some of the capture points are genuinely stupid - tops of buildings seem like a cool capture point mechanic until you realize that the attackers don't have enough air power and defenders are calling in anti-air vehicles on top of the buildings and camping the elevators.  Using hovercraft to spider man up the buildings only does so much when you have 20+ people on a rooftop with AA and rockets. 
  • Gunplay has issues.  They did something between the beta and full release - I see a bunch of posts about random bloom or heavy penalties for firing while moving.  What's worse is that it seems to be applied inconsistently, the beta weapons seem hardest hit with the rifles being absolute crap, but the bizon and SMGs are easier to use.  I had a mostly ok time with the LMG, but something is really screwed up with the bullet spread. 
    Oh and there also appears to be some nasty hit registration problems combined with server lag - overall it feels like gunplay has major issues. 
  • Vehicles feel overtuned.  I think hackerman can help balance that out by neutering a vehicle, but if a heli pilot is doing quick strafing runs it's hard to see hackman getting a full hack off.  Also the complete absurdity of tanks and transport vehicles beings split on the upgrades screen just shows how few actual vehicles are in the game. 
    • I have no idea where the weakpoint is on some vehicles.  I've had hovercrafts die in 1 hit when they were near full HP and same with tanks.  I've also personally landed 3 AT rockets into a hovercraft and it was still fine.  No idea what's going on here. 
    • I don't understand how the repair function works.  I've had times where I used it and quickly saw the vehicle repair and other times when I've used it and nothing happens.  Seems really inconsistent. 
  • Surprisingly enough the servers held up (mostly) throughout the weekend.  Yea I've had stutter and lag, yea I've had unlocks stuck until the server synced 20 minutes later.  I've even had a few errors.  But I haven't been kicked from a match all weekend.  I haven't had issues preventing me from playing.  I halfway expected servers to be a complete dumpster fire (maybe next weekend) but so far I can at least play the game.  Not sure if the wider release is going to suffer from bigger problems.
  • Graphically this game isn't special, but it performs poorly.  I think both battlefield 1 and battlefield V looked better than this game, and performed better as well.  Not sure why performance is so bad, the added map size and number of players must really be a serious performance impact. 
  • Bugs.  Yea there's plenty of them.  I've only run into 2 that were game breaking.  The doom bug where I can't aim up or down, that fixed on respawn.  And the bug where you can't interact at all, which often requires leaving the server and rejoining. 
    I find it extremely annoying to see that revives don't always work (and often get me killed in the process) and the visual bug where a friendly soldier doesn't have a dorito is also annoying especially since it looks server side (I see multiple people shooting them). 

Is the game battlefield?  Yes.  I'm still having fun, but I recognize this game is busted on multiple levels.  I'm not sure if Dice can fix this thing or how long it will take to fix it, but for now I'll just enjoy myself losing braincells. 

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  1. All guns need like a 20% reduction in their recoil. Way too much recoil on everything without mods.
  2. All guns need like a 20% reduction in their accuracy cone. Many of the guns are way too inaccurate without mods.
  3. Most of the games I have played so far I have struggled in gun fights of any kind with any gun.
  4. All vehicles need like 20% less health or need to take more damage from rockets. Yes C4 will still do the trick but that is just not realistic for air vehicles.
  5. Random lag spikes that affect everyone on the server are a problem.
  6. I am rarely getting even 70fps with all settings on low at native resolution. I have had moments I dipped into the high 40s too. If I can find a way to lower the settings even further I will because this is painful.
  7. I thought the "call a vehicle anywhere" would solve the problem of "ok I have to now run 400m on foot to the next objective just to die along the way" but that is not true. I still find myself doing a lot of running.
  8. The specialist system is a bit less broken then I thought it would be but there are definitely some loadouts which are way more useful than others.
  9. I really wonder if this game would play a lot better on smaller maps with smaller player counts. It's hard to judge certain things on the extra-large servers when it's just chaos everywhere and you are just dying without any chance to respond.
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I think the covid work from home excuse isn't some catch all for poor design decisions, bad UX and a history of broken releases. 

These games aren't made in 1 year or 2, they take 3+ years.  Battlefield 5 released November 2018 (3 years ago) and even if you think they kept their entire dev team on for another year to help with content (take a look at bf5's content and tell me that with a straight face) That's still 2 years of development.  I'm fairly certain most devs made the shift to work from home right at the start of the pandemic and have been dealing with that for nearly 2 years now.  If they really thought it wasn't ready, they could have delayed - if the choice was to release in this state with no delay, that's a management decision, not a pandemic decision.  EA isn't so broke they can't afford an extra year of dev time. 
Also, lets be clear, there are other games being released right now that had to deal with the same shitty conditions and they're not in such a poor state.  I may not like back4blood but that thing at least released feature complete and with major issues. 

Battlefield 4 released like hot garbage, battlefield 1 was a messy release and battlefield 5 was released ugly, even battlefront 2 released ugly and had to make major fixes.  Fact is Dice release some janky ass games that often are saved 1+ year later with a bunch of additional content and balance updates (mostly). 

What concerns me is that the bones of 2042 feel wrong enough that I'm not sure it can be saved.  Specialists feel meh, and the universal class system leaves a ton to be desired.  Scoreboard and UX stuff isn't going to be an easy fix, might not even be possible at this rate.  The lack of content and balance stuff can be fixed but I'm not sure what that would take and if it would even be worth it.  We might get an anthem situation where they just abandon it and move forwards to try and cut their losses. 
I'll still play because I'm desperate for a multiplayer game to sink my teeth into, and I enjoy battlefield, but I'm not going to sit there and act like there aren't severe structural problems with the game - or defend releasing games in this state.

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As my role is essentially a senior level project manager at my company, I've lost a lot of productivity with the work from home stuff I use to have while in the office. I was able to quickly get a sense on the state of a project/effort via "management by walking around." You lose that with COVID, and it makes it hard to pivot if you see certain patterns or behaviors going bad.

Meetings are too focused in COVID, and you lose a lot periperhal state of how bad things are really going on and an inability to fix stuff before its worse than you realize. I think that happened in Battlefield since a lot of bad ideas were just trusted and continued to developed upon and management didn't see the whole picture until it was too late to change.

I agree with you that the structural problems (decisions that were made early in the game process), makes the game just drop it and retry again probably the best case for this game and not likely fixable. most of those things are usually solved through things like Agile development etc.

This is a clear case of where feedback of where this shit sucks didn't make it to the design team early enough and they just continued on with it and resulted in the hot mess that we have now.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Updates/Battlefield-Briefing-Development-Update-May-2022/m-p/11510768?cid=73726

  • New Season announced, launches next month
  • Redoing art and voicelines (angel is going to sound super serious now 😡)
  • Hazard zone is dead
  • Rush is coming back as a 32 player mode
    • They're shifting focus on conquest/breakthrough to 64 players

I'll be honest, as much as this all seems good, it's going to take a minor miracle to make this game anything but mediocre.  I would almost prefer they cut resources on this game, and double down on the next one, but I understand that this is a no win scenario for the devs. 

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On 5/24/2022 at 9:19 AM, Malaphax said:
  • Hazard zone is dead

Still never played it 😕

On 5/24/2022 at 9:19 AM, Malaphax said:

I'll be honest, as much as this all seems good, it's going to take a minor miracle to make this game anything but mediocre.  I would almost prefer they cut resources on this game, and double down on the next one, but I understand that this is a no win scenario for the devs. 

I'm still not quite as negative as some people about this game. I feel like they got a lot of fundamental parts right but then made some big mistakes in other parts and it's just too little too late at this point. Games are more flavor-of-the-month now than ever. You (usually) cannot flop the release and build from there.

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