Portal going ftp, positive feedback, possible ideas

Portal going ftp seems like they are trying to get players into portal and then from portal into bf 2042, imo this is wrong and won't work, 2042 is damaged beyond redemption at this point.

Portal itself however has something going for it so..

Just throwing this out there, i realise there's always a financial side to everything so i tried to frame it all that that in mind since i doubt anything in the business world ever gets put through purely with good intentions.

I feel portal can evolve into something else, like a bf metaverse, because it is situated outside of the bf proper this allows for more variation, customisation and monetisation without sacrificing the thematic loss that comes with trying to put those into the main bf titles. 

Having a business model that has portal as a backbone with the ftp elements while having the main BF titles at full price and trickling assets/maps into portal over time could be the best thing for bf as a whole.

So 1st off the portal logic editor... some  basic improvements, no real financial gain...just improvements that can help the whole thing.

- for a game mode creator it has no customizable objectives, you can't spawn objectives with the logic editor and there is no 3d objective markers which are crucial to making new modes.

- you can not spawn in vehicles/weapons in these game modes

- you can not spawn at a location...you always need to be teleported

Next off how to monetize portal.

Portal being...extra...meta... means people will allow for variation in gameplay and themes, 1st off is your characters/specialists. 

While people may buy specialists as is you still need to make them more special to encourage purchases from the more reluctant users, if you give them abilities that others don't the pay 2 win element gets bought out and the game suffers, so i suggest combining them with the player cards. The current player cards are a nice touch, but i feel like they need to head towards a more object based entity separated from the player. Like at the moment it's a customized label for the player, if you instead make them like collector cards where you get one per character and can build them up in quality over time you'd get longer engagement of people.

This is done by:

-Allowing full 3d rotation of the cards, this means you can have front and back information, on the front you have the specialists (also make them for the bf3/bc2/42 soldiers), on the back you  have the data when playing as those characters, kills, deaths ability use etc..

-The cards evolve into chrome/hologram versions with gold trim etc by levelling up those cards/characters and then those cards are what's displayed depending on the character you play as. You can still keep the weapon and gadget player 'medals' on the cards but make them look more embossed(like it is actually a 3d card) and allow the player medals to be selected individually to the cards(ie assault rifle medal on the irish card, lmg on another etc.)

-At the end of round below the highlight characters show their cards, 5 seconds front side, rotate to back for 5 seconds.

Honestly the more "treasure-like" you can make the cards the more you will sell the characters.

Now you've got a collection of something special that you can work towards and can be expanded without limit with a reason to buy characters that isn't pay 2 win.

Next in-game:

-Currently heal and ammo kits give a circle marker on the ground to indicate proximity, this is also something that can be monetized, allow players to purchase animations for the ground markers, nothing crazy like rainbow polka dots, but shrinking circles, arrows facing inwards etc would give a players medpacks and ammo more visual appeal while also being more personal. Could even allow multiple to be stacked so you get inward facing arrows combined with the shrinking circles.

-When marking objectives as squad lead you only give a minimal outline around flags, an icon above the objectives may be buyable as well, again nothing crazy but some variation would also allow the squad leader make their orders stand out. This same icon could also be displayed next to your name when telling a teammate your coming to revive. Also your ping indicator could use this as well. 

Scenarios:

As development goes on and the logic editor possibly becomes more versatile the possibility exists that people could create entire singleplayer/co-op experiences spanning multiple maps. This could also become monetized as they become a whole package more substantial to be paid for and could allow bundling of maps/characters/weapons

To do this there may also be a need for more generic voiceovers associated with mission type messages to be added to an asset library inside the logic editor/portal somewhere.

Customization/clothing:

I'd say drop them, or have limited variations, portal being able to zone out entire sets of characters kinda makes the reliance of skins as a source of income...less...stable.

If portal becomes your main income the individual characters are what the focus needs to be on.

Servers:

Give an option to keep them going for a fee, something cheaper than regular server providers, since they can "power down" ala amazon servers but will keep their place in the server browser and spin back up if people join.

Community sites:

With portal modes means different communities can evolve around their regular modes, building on this and allowing websites to be linked in portal while playing would quickly establish regular players, obviously you can't just be linking anything so bf needs to host it's own similar to the squad pages in battlelog. This creates an opportunity for purchasable templates, backgrounds and features to make true communities.(for instance a voice chat addition that allows squad chat out of game and auto groups when dropping into game)

Timed offers:

Every month highlight monetized portal features like weapons, characters etc...instead of a one off microtransaction have say a month rental of those items just to get the cards at say 1/2 the price, you get to keep the card but lose the rest at the end of the time period, like a cheaper way of accessing that content.

Subscriptions: 

Once the above has been added a subscription model appears possible, for instance a community model that packages squad page/template/voiceover with a fixed server and a set co-op scenario/month becomes an option.

Going forwards:

Map editor, plain and simple, i know frostbites quirky but using a ftp model it can only help spending some time making it usable so that people generate their own content, you can still charge for those maps as long as there is reasonable profit sharing with the players, even if it's just in bf 'coins'.

What to avoid:

At all times never...ever...try to charge creators for assets etc., that will be dead in the water, it's one thing to be charged for a map as a player, but to charge the people creating content is a very bad idea.

Lastly going ftp is your last chance at this, you only get 1 crack and it needs to be a big one, you can't trickle feed this in, you need to step back give it a little hype get it functional and drop it hard. Otherwise it's just going to be seen as the defective game people already tried with some small tweaks.