4 years ago
Is Milsim a thing anymore?
I remember in BF3 and BF4, Milsim was a pretty popular thing. Private lobbies for training new recruits and you're assigned one role whether that be sniper, pilot, medic, engineer, support, etc.. Sin...
BF isn’t Milsim like Squad but it has always had elements of a war simulation that differentiated it from other types of game. Hence the appeal for me.
to say bf isn’t a Milsim is to basically be a pedant.
I would argue that BF is more Milsim than other games because it combined many elements, with an Arcady approach. Elements that were geared around teamwork and meeting goals and objectives. it also has a mix of vehicle and ground roles that need to work together to balance each other out.
The points systems helped to reinforce the objectives amd roles, as you were rewarded for playing those roles well, and doubly so if the team worked together.
Various versions of BF also tried out different types of map progression/game types, likely based on tactics that played out in real world scenarios. (Something that more experimentation might be good for BF).
If I cast my mind back to way back when bf first came out, the big thing I noticed, was how difficult it was if your didn’t play as a team, fortunately I was doing lan parties back then so had 30+ * heads battling each other as teams. It was great. Though I admit, counterstrike held over as the main game of choice. That said, BF certainly for a while was something we played semi regular as you mentioned. And whilst we didn’t go all out sim with ranks and so forthe, we did play it in a more Milsim way than say straight up death match.
basically, I’d say BF is as milsim as you can get before actually being a Milsim. An arcade Milsim.
i guess arma and squad are strictly speaking more Acurately milsim.
everyone entirely misunderstood the post. in my experience, milsim was organized in private lobbies. Im not talking about the game itself, i'm talking about clans that do milsim in battlefield, in private servers. I used to get recruitment messages on xbox all the time
Someone posted about the lack of the platoon feature. They ran a whole Milsim on bf4. Look for it in the posts here, that person clearly ran it as a Milsim.
also, I randomly got invited to a PS party chat and when I play bf4 I usually check that party to see if someone is on. It’s not strictly run as a Milsim, but it is organised to some extent. So it does happen.
the issue is, all of the squad based features and in game voice chat are all missing. So I can’t see how it would happen naturally anymore.
Rather , players will have to look for discord and in line forums first to find players. Rather than being able to just find some playing and invite them to a party.
I earned my invite by being a regular player in a server and being a team player. As well as chatty on comms. None of which will happem with the current implementation of bf2042.
@RiffLife81 wrote:everyone entirely misunderstood the post. in my experience, milsim was organized in private lobbies. Im not talking about the game itself, i'm talking about clans that do milsim in battlefield, in private servers. I used to get recruitment messages on xbox all the time
Yeah, I get what you mean. More like roleplaying as is common in some other games. For example, there were groups that RP'ed in Ghost Recon Wildlands that took coordination, communication and their overall approach to missions, engagements, movement, etc. more seriously. Some simply took a more tactical approach like my friends and I did while others were much more into it with ranks within their group, tryouts, etc. RP'ing in some games, the servers even have rules about breaking character. All that is too serious for my taste. We just like playing as a team, coordinating, communicating and trying to approach things with a more tactical mindset.
So yeah, playing the game as a "military simulator" in that sense, I understand. The BF formula has always stood apart from other twitch shooters like CoD in that it could be played more tactically. It had those aspects to the gameplay that allowed and encouraged that kind of play. I still don't consider the BF franchise in the milsim genre. Play a game like Hell Let Loose and then BF2042 and it's not hard to see the difference. .....but folks can certainly find ways to play it that way just as they do with other games. Again, look at the example of Karmakut's creations in Portal which capture some of that essence but even he points out aspects or missing options that prevent it from being more immersive in that regard.
In either case, Portal is still our best bet with this game as we mentioned before. It gives you the ability to adjust damage, projectile velocity, assets you wish to include/exclude from the game, etc., etc. My friends and I are having a blast with it as we enjoy a more hardcore gaming experience in our military shooters. ....and this is as close as we can get to it in BF2042.