What makes a Battlefield game, a Battlefield game?

And for the rant, I put a TL;DR on the bottom. Feel free to skip to it.

"Bring back classes." I keep reading this, and I had the exact same sentiment from even before the game was out.

I admit I had no faith in a Battlefield game having marketable hero characters with their own abilities and perks, and it sucks that I was right.

If anyone at DICE is reading this, please, the classes is what makes Battlefield, well, Battlefield.

IMHO, you nailed classes in Battlefield 2142, they were well balanced, limited, and their gameplay felt diverse. Battlefield 4 offered a great compromise in the freedom a class/kit can have, and I wouldn't mind going back to the way they were handled there either.

"Hero/Rainbow 6 Siege/Overwatch" type "unique" characters with abilities/gadgets and perks embodies the identity crisis Battlefield is experiencing, right next to the insane mobility soldiers have.

There's too much parkour. Jumping doesn't affect your accuracy enough, it's way too powerful. Crazy SMG bunnyhoppers anyone?

The series absolutely did not need any of the aforementioned, and really, none of these things fit in the series at all. In Battlefield 4 and older, soldiers were as mobile/agile as they should be imo. It was a good balance, but I still missed limited sprint from older titles. Whatever tho, I digress.

What about the mobility perks? I think the wingsuit user is way too mobile, they are way too good at being quick and stealthy at the same time.

The grappling hook guy is, well, honestly it's annoying to try to teamplay with people who use him.

Plus, wanna know why people aren't playing as a team anymore? Nobody is forced to. You cannot trust players to play as a team because of their good will, you need to force it like previous Battlefield games.

For one thing, commander mode. Why's it gone again?

And again take 2142, you could only spawn on your squad leader, this incentivized sticking together and helping each other. Plus, only the squad leader could use field upgrades, this was balanced. Letting everyone have perks/abilities and vehicle call-ins is nuts. Vehicles on the ground instead of spawning in them incentivized taking flags that spawned them, and made them much less disposable.

TL;DR

You don't need to remove features from the game. I bet a lot of players love the specialists, and I bet they also love being able to jump circles around someone and spraying them with an SMG! But a lot of us don't, and you can meet us at the middle by introducing a "Classic" series of permanent playlists that punishes players who jump around like rabid bunnies.

Let me make an example of such a mode and how it'd appear on the main menu, next to the main modes:

Classic Conquest 128

No specialists or perks. Loadout restrictions and limited mobility. Classic Battlefield action with the series' signature kits, combined with the massive maps, weapons and vehicles of 2042.

See what I mean? Doesn't sound that bad does it, the series is straying too much from the roots/pre-Bad Company games, and I think it's for the worse.

The old games definitely had a lot of things that can and has been improved today, but also did a lot of great things that are straight up lacking now.

This wouldn't be such a big issue, if I could just boot up Battlefield 2 or 2142 and just play it. But that's not so easy today without a lot of tinkering and planning ahead with others 🙂

(PS. I made a Portal experience that tries to implement this as closely as possible, but you can't turn off gadgets & perks or make your own kits in 2042 teams, so unfortunately I had to disable a lot of specialists (I wanted to let "generic" Battlefield 3 soldiers use kits with 2042 weapons and vehicles, but I can't do this in Portal).

You can try it with this code: aauk2v

Here's one with BF3 teams, friendly fire and squad leader spawn only: aauk3e

All have PvP AI enabled.)

Much love to you DICE, I hope my rant/feedback makes sense.