Repetition of the Same Mistakes
Watching the Hazard Zone reveal was an interesting experience, and highlighted several things for me. The first being that DICE is trying something somewhat new with a BR-like mode, which is cool, bu...
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Behind a pay wall? You mean included in the price of the game?
As I said in another thread, why must everything be free? We now get all DLC free because people whinged and now you want more free!
Alas, everything around BFV was far from a stellar success for numerous reasons so a free Firestorm would have made little difference.
For what it is worth, I enjoyed the occasional foray into Firestorm......
@Trokey66 Its not that "everything has to be free" .
When he was talking about Firestorm the issue was this - It was a BR ( not a normal mode for BF) and almost every single other BR ( outside of PUBG) is all free to play. In order to compete and try to draw in some other BR fans that maybe were not already BF fans, it really needed to be F2P to give them opportunity to get in and try it out . Many did not want to pay 60$ for it just to play a BR if they were not fans of BF already. They would think why pay 60$ for a BR when i can play others for free?
The other thing about it is , like COD or not ( I dont) , Making Warzone F2P but also tied to their COD game was genius in terms of business sense. Making that f2p got a lot more people to try it out that otherwise would not have. Seeing other parts of the full COD game while interacting trying to get to Warzone for sure got some more people to buy the full game that otherwise would never have. That in turns means more money made by the company. It is a really smart business move and BF dropped the ball by not doing it .
You are correct BFV had a bad launch and other issues and all that also contributed to Firestorm not doing well. It was not because it was not a good BR, because it actually was.
When he was talking about Firestorm the issue was this - It was a BR ( not a normal mode for BF) and almost every single other BR ( outside of PUBG) is all free to play. In order to compete and try to draw in some other BR fans that maybe were not already BF fans, it really needed to be F2P to give them opportunity to get in and try it out . Many did not want to pay 60$ for it just to play a BR if they were not fans of BF already. They would think why pay 60$ for a BR when i can play others for free?
The other thing about it is , like COD or not ( I dont) , Making Warzone F2P but also tied to their COD game was genius in terms of business sense. Making that f2p got a lot more people to try it out that otherwise would not have. Seeing other parts of the full COD game while interacting trying to get to Warzone for sure got some more people to buy the full game that otherwise would never have. That in turns means more money made by the company. It is a really smart business move and BF dropped the ball by not doing it .
You are correct BFV had a bad launch and other issues and all that also contributed to Firestorm not doing well. It was not because it was not a good BR, because it actually was.
I know this is hard for many people to really understand but just in terms of numbers think about this .
Apex legends is F2P BR , they have over 100 million active players . 100 million. In the height of any BF out there im willing to bet they never even seen half that many active players at once.
Lets say they had made Firestorm F2P and it drew in only 1/4 of that= 25 million players. Then lets estimate about as low as we can and say 1% of those players ended up buying the full game. That adds 250,000 players to the core BF game playerbase pool .Times that by 60$ for the full game = 15 million more made just off new game purchases that would have otherwise not happened. Not counting if any of them also bought any micros afterwards. All that extra profit goes in and can also help dev the game longer and go towards future games ( of course a lot goes in upper management and suits pockets too).
It makes great business sense to have a F2P aspect of your game that draws in potential customers that will end up purchasing your full priced game because they enjoy the f2p game you gave them a open gate in to try out.Also when games are F2P , people are more likely to spend money on micros because they feel like since they did not spend to buy the game, why not spend 10$ here and there for some skins.
I subscribe to the specialist thing because i value squad play. If your squad is important then you want to have broad resources to cater for different scenario. "Casper, put your drone up" "Webster, sort out that guy on top of the building" "Boris, stick the sentry on that entrance" etc. in that context the specialist work. Squads members then get the option to kit out individually, in a good squad, they will vary their choices "Who's carrying the Ammo" "Who's taking sniper". That adds engagement and complexity. The squads that get that right will fair better, That was my take anyway and I love that teamwork approach, planning attacks etc. I hoped that this was the intention and that Dice were trying push players toward and add value to teamwork. if you don't get serviced with ammo in a game you are not in a proper squad
But, in reality, not many players play that way do they, and that I think is the real depreciation of the game over te past few versions. If you have been introduced to BF over the last 7 years or so you won't know that squad play is a good thing only KDR... and that is probably the best part of the market, 15 -22 year olds?
I don't think though I have seen much else in the Beta that might encourage that kind of play. The Specialist thing should not be happening in isolation, it needs some tools around it. Coms between squads (DICE - NOT B****Y push to talk or reliance on Discord) and a scoring system that rewards teamwork more. But even then i was looking for a bit of innovation on top. For a while I thought the tablets (that all players have) would bring something, but they are not tablets are they? They are just a menu that takes up the whole screen while you are fighting .... what a missed goal! What about a Map, chat between players, intel as well as call-ins and much more. Tasks missions, lore building, could've all been on there.
So I'm now much more sceptical than I started out. I still think we haven't seen the whole build yet, but without clues that something else is going to happen my optimism is drifting away.
- @lzilchetl I think this new specialist system is made on the foundations of HZ, the teamplay will be a principle, if dice fix the issues around the system, cutting the selfish behavior by prioritizing teamwork ... Hazardzone have a chance to show how really this " teamwork" its done when the right choices (Right Specialists) has done. A lot of Hard Work
ahead for devs team, let see going to happen
I hear you, I get you, and I agree. I just hate Micro-Transactions. And at the end of the day, I would much rather buy a game and have full access to all game modes without having to micro-transact my way and spend double or triple what I would normally if I just bought the game at full retail.
F2P is nice and all to be able to try the game out. But BF isn't solely just Hazard-Zone. It also has its traditional game modes and Portal. They would have to create a F2P launcher just for Hazard-Zone with hopes that people bought the extra Game-Modes. I personally would feel this to be micro hell and would boycott any game that did this.
