BF6 open beta feedback and experiences
Dear Dice,
I've had some time in the BF6 open beta and got to play and get impressions of the vertical slice of the game thus far. I have some feedback to improve upon the game to make it better (in my opinion).
I started playing Battlefield a decade ago, starting at 1942. My favorite Battlefields which I've sunk the most hours into are BF2 and BF3. I refer to these games as the golden era for Battlefield. These 2 games are what Battlefield is for me. I don't want Battlefield to be CoD, Medal of Honor (yes thats old), Unreal Tournament or Apex Legends copy.
So for the feedback:
- GameplayThe conquest mode feels good as always. There is a decent amount of cover and I feel like the 2 maps included in the beta had lots of paths to choose so that's really nice. The comeback of the classes feel good and is nice. The merging of the ammo/medpack was something I had to get used to but is okay now. Back in the days I've always complained about the ammo guys not handing out the ammo but that is over now.
- Vehicle balance
Ground vehicle balance was good in my opinion. The MBT and IFV's where vunerable in dense urban area's when alone and that's how it supposed to be. Just like BF2/3. No comments here.
The F-16 aircraft was weirdly balanced. It feels like a glass cannon and is way to vunerable in my opinion. Both for other aircraft and for ground based stingers. Tips for improvement: increase the health, increase the top flight speed. Have us be able to dodge missiles through movement alone (no countermeasures). So reduce the ground-stinger missile speed and reduce the maximum angle on the missiles to go though a corner in order for us to dodge missiles with movement.
The Apache helicopter was weirdly balanced too. In BF3 it had the perfect balance in my opinion. The weaponry feel okay on the helicopter, but the movement is such a pain on the heli compared to older battlefields. It feels very stale and straight-lined, while in older battlefields we had way more room to wiggle around (not including 2042, that was way, waaay to arcady). Tips to improve here: Allow us to strafe up and down faster and like 20% faster roll speed. As for the missile dodging, I also think we should be able to dodge stinger missiles if they come head-on through movement alone.
As for the air-physics, they in general they feel arcady to me, I don't feel the airdrag once I'm in a jet or heli, as I did in BF3. Please look into this, I would appreciate a non-arcady feel. - Infantry movement/physics
The movement speed felt to fast for me with boots on the ground. I felt like I was playing Unreal Tournament rather than Battlefield. I feel like a 20-30% reduction in overall movement speeds would be better here. Reducing movement speeds allows for more tactical gameplay because other players dont cross the (small) maps so fast. Right now, I feel like once we've even neutralized a flag the whole enemy team is already on top of us. There is no time to do stuff because of this fast movement speed and short traversal distances. I feel like the balance is off here very much!
I feel like the strategic and tactical gameplay suffers from the short traversal times. Compared to older Battlefields I feel like we had more tactical headroom in the past than we have right now.
In 2042 (not a good game tbh) there was more headroom because the maps were so big, but in BF6 maps are smaller.. Again, I feel like the balance is off here and I feel like this takes it away from a Battlefield game and pushes BF6 more into Unreal Tournament or Quake territory. Which is not a good thing I believe. - Destruction
The destruction and vaulting over everything here is awesome and I feel like is a good succession to the BF3 system. The freedom in movement is bigger than past games I feel like and feels nice. The destruction is something I feel like could be somewhat toned down a bit, as 1 RPG into a facade should only destroy a part of the facade in my opinion, like 3x3m not the whole thing at once. I think it would be better to make it harder to fully break a building down to bits, give the buidling more pieces to shoot off of (not 1 RPG for an entire facade) - Weapon handling/recoil
I noticed that there is random spread added to the FPS weapons even though we ADS. This has been a thing in 2042 and BF5 as well and creates this weird sense to me that I'm not actually aiming with my weapon but just spraying and praying even though my crosshair is on target. Can you please make it so, so that we have no RNG spread and have a true-to-mouse recoil so we can actually compensate the weapon recoils with our mouse? - Network performance/hitreg
Just a quick note here, not sure if it's got to do with the stability of the vertical slice of the game but I felt like alot of my shots were either registering late or not at all. Got shot plenty of times while dodging behind a wall and felt like other players sometimes just didnt have the same issue. Wasen't a ping related issue (20-40ms) - Options menu
I feel like there are just too many layers to this union I have to peel off just to get to the settings I want to. Please simplify this and have me click 3x maximum before I need to get to something I need. Right now it's more like 10 clicks. Menu's also seem to overlap (2 menu's for the same thing?) Please remove this overlap.
I'll be honest, as a Battlefield-veteran I'm in doubt whether I am going to buy this game. I feel like the old movement (and thus game-)speeds were definitely better and more Battlefield-like. I am missing the tactical-feel that defines a Battlefield game in my opinion. The non-true-to-mouse-recoil also doesn't help either. I feel more like playing unreal tournament or apex ledgends with nice graphics. That's not why I play Battlefield. I don't want a copy of those games.
Hope you appreciate the feedback, It looks promising but I as a veteran I honestly have to say I'm still in doubt whether this game is for me as I feel it's lacking the core-Battlefield sens.