Veterans Far and Wide

I think @ragnarok013 nailed it with his first post, at least that's what i'm leaning towards personally (for that sake, @gruntbrews_vicv theory is just as plausible).

If i think they miscalculated anything so far, it was as you all say the specialists and their implementation.

Not the idea in itself as at worst we'd just have "named" classes, i don't much care for it myself but if they functioned much like the old classes it would be "fine" (which they on paper do, right up to the point where you can customize the loadout entirely from any old class and they're useless for figuring out what a pug squad might need), but what we're seeing in the beta is a bit more concerning.

In the tech test i didn't much care as "it was a tech test", but seeing the clone wars in the beta makes me twitch a bit more, and that nobody at Dice went "this might be a problem for friend or foe recognition" is pretty astounding unless it's already been addressed in newer builds (at which point making that 100% clear with a few screenshots might be a good idea)

Said it a few times already on the beta forum, but the lack of rapid visual identification of targets is by far my biggest issue after a few days of playing.

Going with the last paragraph in @gruntbrews_vicv's second post, this complete inability to discern who's running what in your squad will rapidly become a major issue for non-organized gameplay going forward imo.

I do like the call-in system in theory for breaking obvious deadlock points and as a counter to "*, nobody in the squad has any anti-armor" but i agree that part of what made the older games fun was a certain amount of predictability in the flow of each map and being able to adapt accordingly.

This feels more like a chaotic free-for-all in that sense.

Regarding, BF5, I guess i'm in agreement and will say i thought the elites in 5 were "meh" at best, but they really didn't bother me either.

If they hadn't been in the game i wouldn't have cared, and i didn't mind them being available either, again it felt like one of those olive branches the game didn't really need but also didn't change the game enough that i really cared if they existed or not.

And so it's said, i don't mind the specialization gadgets in 2042 in themselves, they all add variety (of varying effectiveness granted) but did they need a named character just for that?

I'd argue no.

Could have just used the "specialization" tab to add the passives/gadgets to the existing 4 standard classes and put all that fluff/backstory into why the kits were set up like they are, rather than make them actual characters you have to play.

Specifically regarding @gruntbrews_vicv's theory, since BF4 they've been trying to "convert" players to BF from CoD constantly, so the trend itself isn't terribly surprising, I'm personally just annoyed they went so far in trying this time that they (to me) ditched something that's at the core of what makes battlefield what it is in the process, and i'm 100% in agreement that portal is literally a failsafe more than a "love letter" at this point.

I realize and can understand they might want to be pragmatic and keep trying to pull players from CoD, but based on their first trailer it was pretty clear the message was "we get it, we're going back to what you loved during our heydays, look at all the references to 3/4 and the gameplay!" and then the clone wars breaks out and doubt creeps in that any message was "gotten" to begin with and it's more a marketing hook with a fallback via portal.

People liked BF because it was a different experience to CoD, and trying to meet halfway over and over again rather than just going back to what made battlefield a hit and collected a large group of fans seems somewhat tone-deaf after the marketing material.

With all that said, i will say i'm actually positively surprised about certain aspects of the core gameplay, namely the pacing which feels closer to 4 (for me at least) and that it's not a sniping fest due to the bullet velocity/drop factor.

(i actually like this version of sniping, it's challenging, not a laser beam easy headshot fest and might make recon more utility/support and less "i'm just sniping". Granted, it would be a lot easier to evaluate with more than one rifle).

Gunplay in general is good (even if the SMGs probably need a sharper fall-off) and i like the T-menu.

While i still wish they'd gone a little harder on weapons that feel unique or have clear strengths and limitations (see 3 vs 4 as an example, i felt 4 went too "safe/generic" and at the time figured that was a CoD player olive branch) we don't have the full weapons roster so much like sniping that will remain speculation until launch i suppose.

Other major gripe i have is sliding, but that's actually taken a backseat to the IFF-issues the more i've played.

I still dislike the near-spammable implementation, and if someone had asked me a month ago i'd say that needed fixing first or complete removal, but after the last two days of specialists, the IFF problem needs to be solved one way or another *first*.

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@gruntbrews_vicv wrote:

@ragnarok013I mean and here is another thing, while I wasn’t a tremendous fan of the “Elites” in BFV, it doesn’t hurt gameplay, they could roll these characters over as being “Elites” and just call them “Specialists”, go back to the class system, and what I thought was great personally, was the customizability you got for your character in BFV. Now sure you’ll see some people running around similar to you, but you could choose how you looked for the most part, set yourself apart. In today’s day and age the capabilities are there, so why not take advantage of it? For example, maybe they can harken back to to the old days and slap on an old Interceptor plate carrier or maybe you want to wear a modern minimalistic plate carrier, maybe have a war belt, so on and so forth. These are just ways they could of given it a “flair” if you will without the need for this “hero”esque driven Specialists. Part of the immersion of BF, and this is my opinion, is feeling like just another person out in the middle of a battlefield working alongside others to take an objective and win the day. When I’m seeing 100 McKays or whatever it kind of throws me off. This is all my opinion of course.

And to add on, part of the class system worked so great is I think it made people have to have some fore thought on how to approach an objective. For instance I know that on Zavod on Rush in BF4, in those first two objective, I can run pretty much run whatever, but come those last two, I am going to run something with AT capabilities to combat their tank. I think the class system encourages balance and teamwork.

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@gruntbrews_vicv you and I share many opinions. In my tech test feedback I suggested bringing back BF3 classes and making the Specialists the 2042 Elites.  I didn't like Elites in BF5 but they didn't destroy the game play like Specialists do.

Regarding the BF5 customization that's where this whole debacle started, the only reason it wasn't as bad as now was the cosmetics were faction locked but people still complained about not being able to identify friend from foe quickly (and never being able to identify classes) because the uniforms weren't...uniform in order to identify the enemy. But as bad as BF5 was it was no where near as bad as seeing Boris Gudenoff and Boris Badenoff on the same Battlefield.

Now if DICE makes a customization killswitch where I can turn off cosmetics and everyone runs around as a generic uniformed US or Russian soldier on my screen (World of Tanks has a switch like this and they're a F2P game who lives on monetization) then Bring back the BF5 uniform customization.