The ex DICE veterans are a huge loss to this series.
They have absolutely knocked that "other game" just released and free to play out of the park. The levels of detail & polish put this game to shame. Bring them back at all costs.
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@BFB-Praetorian2042 had devs working on a new version of the engine at (or around?) the same time which from what I've heard second hand from some dev podcasts might be the main reason and supposedly the engine work took 1.5 years?
I do wish info like that wasn't behind paid podcasts...I'm not gonna pay to learn why 2042 was bad, lol.
Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age Inquisition also blamed Frostbite, so I think that gives the engine issues even more credence. Unless you think it's become a meaningless excuse...
Besides that, 2042 itself also has larger scope than BF1 with Portal, 128 players, maps too big for 128 players, 5 platforms vs 3. I think the rumors about the game making a shift from BR late into development hold ground given the launch AoW map design and Exposure afterwards. 2042 launched with 14 maps, sure 6 were remakes however that's still work playtesting or making brand new assets for decently old maps, it's not just taking the last game's maps from 2 years ago made in the same engine, but removing the annoying blue filter.
The game has kept on improving, and that's with the clearly reduced resources after the mass refunds or old devs leaving. I think it's a safe bet to say that if the game took another 4-6 months to release with development at full speed, it would've equaled to 1 year or more of what we got post-launch (mostly bugfixes, huh?) and there would be a lot less refunds, and in turn a lot more development after launch, and in turn things like more maps.
BF1 released a year after Hardline, were they rotating studios like COD or was Hardline really just that much of a BF4 DLC? I really don't know.
@Lady_OneHardline was made by Visceral studios. Likewise Portal was developed by Ripple Effect Studios not Dice.
Dice themselves announced that amongst their many failures from management on down was that many of the developers are new to Battlefield and that a period of adjustment was going to be needed.
When the company themselves are saying the developers are largely noobs and need to 'Git Gud' then there's not much room for debate.
You are right that it's not entirely the developers fault. The disastrous decisions made by management and losing the software engineers that ran Frostbite for so long hurt too. BF1 ran on Frostbite and it played beautifully. (Haha for a Battlefield game I mean 😂)
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