@zschillzz wrote:
I'm curious to know what everyone's opinion is on the current state of Battlefield 2042. I have come across many issues playing the game, and constantly find myself coming back like an abused spouse. Clearly this isn't a great relationship right now. Furthermore I figured if enough people comment on this thread we can get EA's attention and see if we can get some changes faster. And if the game doesn't start changing things up, I'm going to start shorting EA Stock and get my money back from the pre-order.
As you've seen, opinion is rather divided on the game.
Many, many comments I've seen (not on this thread, I would add) seem to suggest that the posters basically wanted BF4 on Frostbite 3. I think a lot of players were expecting BF4 due to the similarity in setting and hardware.
Personally, I never really liked BF4 all that much - I much preferred BF2, BF3 and BFV. In that respect, I'm not disappointed in the game because I'm not... fundamentalist about BF4. It's still active, it plays amazingly on contemporary hardware (thanks, Moore's Law!) and if I want to play BF4, I'll just... go play BF4.
I'm not particularly fussed about the specialist system, although I do find the end-of-round lines to be pretty cringey. I just view it as an elaborated class system anyway - the individual perks and features are within broader "classes," but you have more freedom of loadout. I don't think specialists break teamplay either; there are more direct causes of that, namely the lack of VOIP and, initially, the 'balance' decisions made around certain vehicles, weapons and team actions (I'm looking at you, revive animation that could be used to tell when your boiled egg was going to be ready).
The early game balance was a mess. As the devs have tweaked, players have learnt, and weapons and gadgets have been unlocked, it's become much more playable. Even Hourglass can be pretty fun as infantry if you equip the SOFLAM and your team actually run M5s. In that respect, the dunes in the centre of the map make sense from a gameplay perspective. Initially, the bowls around the B, C and D flags were just a deathtrap for infantry, but now there's a definite risk-reward relationship for armour or CAS that might want to farm there.
You might have inferred that I love the SOFLAM. This is correct; my love for it is proportional to my hatred of low-skill helicopter farmers. Seeing multiple rockets climbing up and obliterating the Nightbird is something I like rather too much.
Overall, I think 2042 is all right. It's not, in its current iteration, the greatest Battlefield installment, but it's by no means as bad as is claimed. Can it be improved? Sure! There are many areas where it can be made better. Did the developers murder my family while they slept? No.
