Lets talk lore/story in BF2042 and specialists, also get rid of them as "people"

Why is there even an attempt? Who are these specialists? Why should I care about them? Why is there any discussion of any kind of narrative for this game at all?

Sure, we can read the bio cards outside of a match but that's about it. I generally have a dismal view of this kind of delivery of lore/story/narrative since it's no different than handing someone a manual to read.

What do we know about them in-game though? Well in matches we know...literally nothing. They have 0 expression of their character, personality, relationships to other characters, or background through voice lines or anything else. Where aren't "home maps" for any characters where they can deliver voice lines that direct players to meaningful bits of their background/history, or even stumble across organically.

What else do we know? That they're a bunch of fun loving rapscallions who just love war so much! It's great! It's fun! Listen to those end-of-round quips! Sure, tonally it's massive whiplash from the large battle you just fought with explosions everywhere, but it's fun! War is fun, yeah!

Snark aside, the specialist system from the lore/narrative perspective has no reason to exist in this game. At all. They could rename the characters, or simply take away all their names, and delete their bio's and...literally nothing in the game changes in terms of how we experience and play it. Because none of this MATTERS to the game.

The rest of the world like maps and how it got to where it is? Meh, hope you were paying attention to the pre-release information, because they game has no expression of this through map design in the slightest. Maps don't tell any story at all just, "Here's an abandoned playground, go have fun."

BF2042 isn't a hero shooter, but let's take an example of this from a hero shooter to make this easy: Overwatch. Overwatch is filled with voice lines from the characters during maps. Event-specific lines, contextual quips with other characters that share information about their relationships, and nods to characters in maps that help provide more information about them. Couple this with the actually pretty darned good video shorts for many, and a big focus on building out the world and locations so that they matter and have a reason to exist outside of being "content".

Yeah it's small, but that's how you integrate narrative/lore into a game. You do it through world design, character design, and how characters act/interact. There is essentially none of this in BF2042, and what little there is - like the voice lines at the end of matches - is ludicrously tonally inconsistent with the rest of the game.

Honestly, I don't think most folks even care about this for average multiplayer matches either, and would much rather any time from DICE be focused on the game rather than trying to force in some narrative that doesn't really fit with DICE's skillset.

Onto removing them...don't panic! I actually like the specialist system as a concept, especially the freedom with weapon/utility item choices. But the specialists themselves are...divisive to say the least. However there's a solution for this that doesn't need to dig too far into DICE's history...

Character customization from BFV!

Nix all the current specialists wholesale. Sorry to the VA's, but they just don't work/make sense for the game. Keep the skills and the "roles" they filled though.

They're already listed under de-facto classes , so reinforce that. Instead of picking specialists, players will now pick the class they want to spawn as and then the "specialization" they want underneath - for medic it would be choosing between Falck's kit or Angel's kit. This helps reinforce the "class" design of the game without completely returning to it as an added bonus (sorry folks that like the class system).

To account for this, bring back the BFV character customization system. Pick your gender, there are a few options for face/hair/skin color etc, and then that's your character - it could be one for your whole account or one per class/specialist. Now we don't have dozens of clones of the same "person" running around in matches and have more variety overall, or at least enough variety so that when you're looking down your scope you don't see 5 Boris's running around.

It can work with the cosmetic/MTX system as well, and even allows for visual design to reinforce classes like in games of old. And with this, now a cosmetic for a "Class" becomes transferrable to all specializations within that class, not just the specific character it was for.

I know maps are up first for the "feedback loop", but if DICE isn't going to be actively searching out feedback and ideas then the least I can do is put something in the forums and hope it's read. It's just frustrating having a lot of members of the community actively trying to provide feedback to help the game improve while DICE remains silent and seems to have no urgency about fixing the game.