Why Battlefield 2042 still fails to land with audiences

Despite its repeated support and patching, 2042 still fails to really grasp audiences. With a trend in population, at least on steam, heading ever downwards. While steam doesn't represent a total population, the trend lines can usually be a good guess on what the other platforms/launchers are doing. And I wouldn't be surprise if the few "anime style" skins we saw pop up these past couple of months could be them trying to appeal to an easy to milk audience as a result of the drop in pop. That being said, I think its pretty clear that 2042 isn't quite grasping audiences that many hope. While the game has improved tremendously since its abysmal launch, i still has a whole boat full of issues, poor designs, and general bad decisions. Now i wont be touching on the bugs, there's plenty of them and this latest patch did seem to introduce quite a few (infinite range casper drone, gun attachment icons failing to load, Lis missiles still going through enemy vehicles, etc). But I mainly want to touch on the various issues and how they impact the game. I figured the best way to go about this is list each one and how I think they're impacting the audiences.

1. The Cheese Spread - The thing about 2042 is it seems like there are a bunch of "cheese" mechanics and design. And the only way to counter these cheese mechanics is to play the other cheese mechanics. And if you don't find yourself playing these cheese mechanics, you feel like you're significantly handicapping yourself. For example. I find the Sundance wingsuit to be quite cheese. There's not really a lot of counters to it except being and insanely good shot (while the skill floor for using it is super low). On top of having godly grenades. I think the stealth helicopter's stealth/bombing mechanic is cheese. I find the Lis TV missile to be cheese and unfun design. I find the TOR tank to be the absolute cheese of cheese. But guess what, you need them all to counter one another. A Lis missile is one of the best way to put pressure/destroy stealth helicopters and TOR tanks (Littlebirds are of course insanely effective too, but i will touch on that later). The sundance wingsuit is one of the best ways to counter a TOR tank. A stealth helicopter is one of the best ways to counter a TOR tank. So if you find yourself in the middle of this fun group and you aren't playing some kind of cheese, you get curb stomped. For example you decide to play crawford. The skill floor to put pressure on a stealth heli/tor tank is WAY higher than that of Lis. Yet you don't really get anything for it. Things like that. You essentially have half the game that is designed poorly and feels very cheesey. While the other half is not. And if you find yourself wanting to play the non-cheese methods, you feel like you're running up a hill. Is it possible? Of course. But its way harder and not that much more rewarding.

2. Classes before there were classes - There were classes before the game released. People may not have realized this, but the classes were Sundance, MacKay, Lis, Flyk, and Angel. You could play something else, but you ham-stringed yourself. Hard. And these classes still exist. Sure you can play other specialists. But just like I reference in #1, their performance is significantly less. And its not because of a number tweak. Its because the design of these specialist is FAR FAR greater than the rest, especially within their role. Score performance playing this vs others feels so so apparent.

3. Reduction in Tactics/Stealth - Stealth and overall tactics in this game is HEAVILY diminished. There's an abundance of reasons for this. First, weapons. With tracers, and very noticeable ones at that, and hugely bright lights as scopes. The minute you open fire at someone, they know immediately where you are. And if its medium range or more on some of these maps...half the map will know where you are too. Its like you're fighting inside battlefront 2 sometimes. Along with this, you of course have the kill cam. The biggest mistake of the kill cam is that it shows the enemy location BEFORE being revived. So you kill someone and their buddy is around the corner to revive them, you just gave them a free "Here's a big red outline pointing exactly where I am". Showing the kill before releasing is such a big ball drop in terms of proper FPS design in games with reviving capabilities. Then on top of this you have sound, automatic spotting from firing, lots of different spot gadgets, etc etc. Trying to be stealthy, flank, and perform any tactics beside "run at enemy and see who has the faster reaction time" is not worth it.

4. Exclusion of Sniper Players - It doesn't matter what this forum thinks, snipers were part of this game's identity and draw. There were some players who liked sitting back on top of a roof top and sniping. Some who did that to help break up the routine and try something different. 2042 absolutely curb stomped this playstyle. You have the things in #3 that really help give away enemy positions. You have the new attachment based system and a lot of AR and LMGs have gotten quite good at competing with snipers at long ranges. You have Tor tanks that can snipe snipers from long ranges. You have sundances that can fly across the map to your location within seconds. You have Lis who can launch TV rockets at you. Sniping is just not in a good spot and this part of your playerbase just isn't hitting it off as a result.

5. Vehicle Experience - For the most part, most vehicle main players did not enjoy 2042's offerings. Ranging from low vehicle spawn count, the new vehicle spawn system, the overpowered-ness of a few vehicles vs the others, the specialist system, etc. It create a vehicle gameplay loop that just isn't appealing. With the vehicle spawn system, not only are there very long wait times (and no good instant vehicle respawns custom servers like in bf4 is someone wants to mainly do vehicles), but also multiple vehicles sharing the same spawn slot. In some cases this isn't too bad. But in order for this spawn system to work properly, each vehicle needs to have a define role. For the most part, all the ground vehicles do. They have specific uses. There are some issues with it, which Ill go into later. But for the most part, it works. The major issue arrives when we take a look at air vehicles. The little bird, stealth heli, and attack helicopters are all vying for the same role. The same playstyle. And as a result, there's usually one that comes out on top. There's not really a reason to not take a littlebird. Your main counters is a flak tank. You're so small, free fire rockets, lis rockets, and Tor tanks take quite a bit of skill to land a hit. You can easily hide behind anything. Ontop of that, you pack just as much firepower as the other helicopters. Stealth heli does have the added "bonus" of just roaming around bombing people. And most people will never leave stealth mode because of this. But the attack helicopter is an example of a vehicle that got absolutely decimate by the changes. Between the TOR tank and Lis missiles, plus the dominance of the littlebird...there's not really a reason to pick it. Yeah, you can run it and get kills. But again you're hamstringing yourself. Each of these vehicles needs to have a define role not a hybrid one. Another thing impacting it is how specialists interact with this game.  Especially specialists like sundance. Being able to fly to the location of a tank, land ontop of them, and do it from small elevation points...its strong. For the tank driver, its not fun. You're just sitting there doing your thing and boom, someone flies from off screen on top of you, C4s you, and kills you. Its not a great experience. The final other major point is the way the map design is. Because the developers seem to have this favor for having super high altitude areas surrounded by open-ness (skyscrappers, rocket towers, etc), tanks have this constant stream of parachuting infantry with C4. Ontop of the sundances. Vehicle players, especially ones that don't play LB/Hind, feel kind of left behind in the design of the game. Just like snipers, you excluded yet another portion of the typical battlefield playerbase.

6. Map Design - Lay off the high elevation areas with spawn points ontop of them. If I'm attacking a point, take it, kill someone, then they respawn ontop of some sky scrappe nearby and fly over to me...that's pretty much a spawn point that's right next to the flag. The sand map, kaledioscope, the launch pad one, shipping container one. A lot of these maps have these super high points that you can just go ontop of and fly anywhere on the map. Elevation is an insanely strong environment component and you went crazy with it.

7. Leaning - Leaning is a VERY important tool that is used primarily when attacking a location. It helps you clear out campers without overly exposing yourself. Without it, you create a significant advantage to defenders of a point/campers.

8. The overall attack vs defender/camper - Because of the experience of #3, #6, and #7; the experience of attacking a point is not a great one. Its significantly harder to do something effective as a small unit/squad vs just following your teams main zerg around. So those players who maybe like to flank positions, try to backdoor enemy campers, things like that. They're having a much harder time in this battlefield. Again, another player group that you're excluding/going against for your game.

So in short, those are the reasons why I don't think 2042 is resonating with people still and not pulling in numbers. Because of things like overall game design, specialist design, and map design; the game has created a gameplay loop/experience that is not enjoyable for snipers, ground vehicle players, some air vehicle players, and those who try to be effective in a small strike unit/squad. Along with this, you pigeonholed players into specific specialist via cheese designs. Where it feels like you're doing yourself and your team a disservice for not playing them. Nevermind the immersion and player character connection that you end up losing in these scenarios.

If you really want to land with audiences.

1. Give air vehicles a more define role 

2. Create a "fast vehicle spawn" portal game mode that would rotate 

3. Do something about how easy it is to notice snipers (maybe do something about the tracers? Scope glare? Something that doesn't make them feel useless) 

4. Rework the A tier specialists to be more balanced or buff the lower tier ones to compensate (for example, greatly increase the damage crawford's turret does to aircraft).  

5. Don't show the killcam till after the person has fully died.

6. Remove auto spotting on minimaps for firing. There's enough indicators as is. Just make silencers based mainly for sound.

7. Reintroduce leaning.

8. Do not put any spawn points or flags ontop of high elevation places (like sky scrappers). They can stay in the game. But all the fighting needs to be done on the ground and people can't just respawn up there without some kind of recon help.