What is the fascination with classes?
why are people so wrapped around the axle on not allowing the flexibility that we have now and insisting on restricting the playstyle of others? people can set their loadout however they like so the...
Forum Discussion
Being a medic with only healing gear and a designated class of weapons naturally forces a medic meta, even for lone wolves - that's just the Battlefield way. I love having options but for Battlefield to feel like "Battlefield", I don't think the current system helps.
Give a medic the ability to naturally heal themselves without the use for a medpack, give them "better" primary weapons and anti-vehicle gear, they are given more incentive to become greedy/selfish.
Angel can literally give himself unlimited heals, anti-vehicle, ammo, added armor, and any weapons he so chooses at the same time...
@TTZ_Dipsy wrote:Being a medic with only healing gear and a designated class of weapons naturally forces a medic meta, even for lone wolves - that's just the Battlefield way. I love having options but for Battlefield to feel like "Battlefield", I don't think the current system helps.
Give a medic the ability to naturally heal themselves without the use for a medpack, give them "better" primary weapons and anti-vehicle gear, they are given more incentive to become greedy/selfish.
Angel can literally give himself unlimited heals, anti-vehicle, ammo, added armor, and any weapons he so chooses at the same time...
I believe you are wrong. We all know the support that doesn't drop its ammo crate and the medic that doesn't revive and drop medic crates.
Battlefield 4 generated the ultimate meta with medic dna, assault with assault rifle and under barrel grenade launcher and med pack and defensive perk.
That is pretty much what you get when Falck uses a SFAR-M GL und armor plates.
So when you are fascinated with classes, you speak about BF3 classes and earlier?
Angel is the Meta of BF2042 and needs a lot of changes to get his ability on par with the other specialists.
Team balance wise the team revive ability could be removed, the loadout crate needs to be redesigned.
I have seen the argument that enforcing classes somehow encourages team play. I would love to see the in-game statistics on that!
I have played BF since BF2, and the number of times I have played with a specific squad, I can count on one hand. If I had to guess, I think the number of people playing as a 'lone wolf' is in the vast majority. This has gradually become worse with the increasing casualisation of the player base. Judging from the playing behaviour of my children, they seem to dip in and out of games constantly, always following the latest trend (Fortnite, Apex, etc.).
The gaming landscape has changed a lot since BF2. Hoping for a return to the 'good ol' days' is just wishful thinking IMHO.
@Lancelot_du_LacI agree and will add that what people call teamplay today in a game like BF 2042, is mainly "support": revives, ammo, armor, a little Soflam, ... when they happen.
In my book, teamplay goes way beyond: it's about coordinated squads working together on voice, BF2 / BC2 (rush) were the pinnacle for me, and it was still possible in BF3/4, on some specific servers with awesome communities.
As you say, "casualisation" has had a great impact on how games play and the BF franchise is no exception to this.
Classes alone cannot be seen as a solution against lonewolfing.If you want teamplay nowadays, you have to pick a game like Hell Let Loose or Squad, which by design entirely revolve around it. BF 2042 just doesn't.
- @kregora
If Angel was so " META " then why in every games on thousands of games i have seen a blend of pretty much anything ? All classes , all guns , all gadjets being used constantly ? And i have over 90+ raw 30minutes each videos that represent my saying ?
I have never seen a game where you had like 50% angel and nothing else .. I see Mckays , Dozers , Boris , Sundances , Rao , Paik , Falk and Angel everywhere ..
OF course almost every squad based on teamplay will have at least 1 angel to have resuply and plates .. wich is very usefull especially with low mag count of the prefered amo types ..
But there is no real " META " in this game .. pretty much all weapons ive master 40+ are very capable for their intended use . Every single one of those weapons are kinda really good in their own rights . I just think the AC42 shouldnt be a 1 burst headshot and 2 burst bodyshot .And i stilll think the SVk might be a bit to punchy .. but beside that all other weapons are pretty balanced to me - @kregora Thats the funny thing , everyone trying to push the classes arguments when confronted with BF4 classes reality simply try to push it under a rug and pretend it never happened ...Just to justify the narrative against specialist etc..
BF4 never got flak for not using the " classes " yet said classes were basically so custumizable they were the extreme of the spectrum .. allowing carbine shotguns etc.. on all classes anyway
The so call rock paper scissor dosnt need classes to exist ... A sniper will be the papper to the K30 at long range etc.. And the C5 will be the rock to the tank scissor in CQC .. and so on ..
Depending on the loadout poeoples choose these same rock paper scissor senarios unfold .. - @Stew360 An even distribution of all characters would be 10% of each. Currently as you observed yourself, 20-25% of the players choose Angel, over any other specialists. This should be enough to see, that there is something wrong/special with this one.
One of the advantages to have no weapon restrictions is that META weapon and META specialists can be used independently from each other.
I am always surprised when I spot a Rao on our or the enemy team.
And we are far from an equal distribution of the other specialist.
I agree with your observation about the weapons, and I even believe there are more than one viable configuration for most weapons.
(M44 and NTW-50 are boring in that aspect)
I believe the magazine numbers for the ammo types are fine. Sure, you may need to change to a less preferable ammo type, but that may be the biggest plus point on the plus system (pun intended) @Stew360Yeah, when I say, classes are better than specialists, I think in terms of BF4 classes.
In BF4 I got shouted at for not equipping a defibrillator on an assault, or asked frequently why I didn't placed a spawn beacon with my recon.
The thing was, players were free to play BF4 classes, as they played their BF3 classes.
I believe the central issue with the specialists is, that there is no way to emulate a BF3 / BF4 anti-vehicle soldier. Which combines badly with the increased number of vehicles on the field.
@Lancelot_du_Lac wrote:I have seen the argument that enforcing classes somehow encourages team play. I would love to see the in-game statistics on that!
I have played BF since BF2, and the number of times I have played with a specific squad, I can count on one hand. If I had to guess, I think the number of people playing as a 'lone wolf' is in the vast majority. This has gradually become worse with the increasing casualisation of the player base. Judging from the playing behaviour of my children, they seem to dip in and out of games constantly, always following the latest trend (Fortnite, Apex, etc.).
The gaming landscape has changed a lot since BF2. Hoping for a return to the 'good ol' days' is just wishful thinking IMHO.
I think you have hit the nail on the head here.
The gaming landscape has changed, the market has changed and those playing video games has changed.
The market demands different things these days and studios have to follow that if they want to survive.
Some one said in a thread a while back that Battlefield is (relatively) niche and returning to the 'good old days' as you mention would make it even more niche.
Times are changing unfortunately.
- @kregora Then your arguments does a complete 180 compare to the premise of other " pro classes " narative wich pretend it was because it brought " predictability " and " limit and restrain poeoples "
Now you claim classes specifically BF4 classes were better because you could gets everything in the book to deal with vehicles ?
Ever heard of RAO + stinger combo ? Or Sundanxe EMP Grenade + m5 rockets ?
Or EMP drones , Soflam , mines and so on ?
This game has EMP everywhere and when playing against half decent player .. playing in a vehicle is insanely hard and insanely anoying .. with disable parts that hirt your turret turning speed , top speed etc ...
Vehicles are far from " OP " when you know how to deal with them and kniw your tools EMP being one of the most important eich prevent any repairs that cancel disable parts nasty effects on the vehicle when timed right .. vehicles players are screwed when EMP or hacked - @kregora The only reason for this is that the game just like all BF since bad company are " Squad centric " based on squads of 4 so most poeoples will ask for a Angel as part of the squads because he plate and give Amo wich can be sometime crucial .. Amo box insane cooldown isnt the same as angel quick resuply for the squad so of course in teamplay oriented senario Angel is required not a " META " also the low count MAG such as Mp9 or 12mm DRUMmag makes it even more important to have angel as part of the squad .. lacks of VOIP and larger command structure is also faulty here ..
Besides that many underestimate many specialist they dont even bother playing them RAO is insanely good to destroy vehicles in coordinate attack .. PAIK is used a lot even dozer .. Boris is used a lot with his turret and so is IRISH with his trophee system and walls ... There is no meta specialist in this game ... Anyones experienced enough in 2042 knows that..
There is also no meta weapons its pretty balanced across the boards at different ranges and in different situations certain weapons shines mire than others in the Rock paper scissor fashion
@kregora wrote:
@Stew360An even distribution of all characters would be 10% of each. Currently as you observed yourself, 20-25% of the players choose Angel, over any other specialists. This should be enough to see, that there is something wrong/special with this one.Well until Dice give out any data that's just your anecdotal viewpoint.
I see all of the specialists well represented and if I was just going by my squads, Boris is easily the most played specialist. So many times 3 or 4 of my squad are Boris, rarely do I see more than one Angel in my squad.
I say remove classes and Specialists. Let us create our own character and then have weight attributed to that character based on what you are taking onto the field. You want to be an engineer with a repair tool and AT rocket launcher? Well you are going to have to run a smg since an M4 or saw is going to put you over you weight limit. Want to just run an M4 with extra grenades and magazines go for it! Want to be a medic running a saw, well that's all good but you are going to be giving up something else. This makes it more realistic instead of limiting what gun I can used based on a certain class etc. Oh and no character should have special powers like the specialists lol
- @Stew360 In my opinion, most players that dislike the specialists, most likely also disliked BF4 classes, for the same reason.
This is, of course, a lot of speculation on my side.
People complain there is less team play with the Specialists, and I believe the reason behind this is, that the BF3 class defining gadgets now are only secondary gadgets, and that way are less likely to be used in the players loadouts.
And yes, I still think, I am allowed to say, that the BF4 classes are a superior design compared to Specialists, and Specialists and BF2 and BF3 classes are pretty much the same. - @Tank2042Man Maybe it depends on the modes you play.
I mainly play Breakthrough-64 and -128. I guess in an asymmetric mode, player choices are quite different from symmetric modes like Conquest.
Sure I see more Boris turrets defending objectives, but the attacker usually knows where to expect them, and you can usually disable a couple of the easily with one EMP grenade.
But usually you see a lot of Angel crates plastering the field on both sides. - @kregora Yet BF4 was classes system base and far less predictable than 2042 wich is the middle ground between totally unimaginative locked classes like BF2 and overly custumizable classes like BF4 ..
Specialist are 50% predictable at least while BF4 was 100% unpredictable .. Thats said the hate campaign toward specialist isnt justified neither is it justifiable ..At this point we know poeoples just love to hate on EA even if EA is far less worst than Sony , nintendo , Activision , 2K , Taketwo etc.. All those companies have far worst shady practices and yet here we are ..
Specialist system is by far the best system to build squad synergy while provinding enoug queus on what to expect from x and y specialist ... - @Stew360 Where do You get those statistics from?
"unimaginative locked classes like BF2" - dude, like seriously.
Assault in BF2 translates into Rifleman, Rifleman Grenadier as in USMC. Support is basically Automatic Rifleman with ammo crate. Sniper is a Marksman. Anti-Tank is AT Grenadier. I would quarrel and say that META builds in 2042 have no ground in even reality. Just holding a certain weapon type indicated and determined a certain playstyle and behavior.
"we know poeoples just love to hate on EA even if EA is far less worst than Sony" - so what, EA is supposed to be a lesser Evil amongst spawn of Evil, that`s a very noble notion...
"Specialist system is by far the best system to build squad synergy" - if You`re aiming at Planetside and Apex crossover then You`re absolutely right. - @Stew360 But abilities of the Specialists is only one side of the medallion. The other side is a faction specific representation.
I'd rather don't know what someone is capable of, than not knowing if they are friend or foe.
The Hero Approach let to some design decisions, unfitting to a military shooter with a gritty backstory. This feels like encountering full squads of the same Legendary in BFV all over again, all the time.
