Experience Report and Feedback for BF6 devs

This is my personal take on the bf6 beta after 50hrs and is intended as a direct report of relevant feedback to the devs- presented in a calm, straight-forward and hopefully digestible format/tone. 

To start, I personally enjoyed the beta significantly. The overall presentation, atmosphere and gameplay should be praised as a welcome return to form and refreshingly grounded experience. Even if many would have preferred it to be identical to bf3/bf4, the reality is this is still a significant improvement on 2042 and a fantastic (if understandably flawed) first impression. So good work devs! I hope you are all as excited about this game's future as I am. 

I'm not here to glaze the game though, the beta speaks for itself and it has its share of flaws, shortcomings, and bugs that I wish to outline here in a way as to be the most helpful and informative for the development process. If the devs truly wish to consider any of our feedback in an actionable capacity, hopefully this will assist: 

General feedback:

1. The shotgun is too effective in most scenarios with very little downside. Adjust range, fire rate, and damage values per body part.

2. Tank/IFV shell impact splash damage against infantry seems a bit weak or too small. Consider increasing total splash radius and or lethal splash radius. 

3. Sniper glint size is excessive and occurs on all sights. Limit to 4x and up.

4. Suppression seems very ineffectual. In addition to preventing health regen and squad spawn, suppression should also cause weapon-specific levels of ADS sway and or ADS vision narrow/blur to help combat snipers. Additionally, landing a hitmarker on a sniper that is mid-ADS should also cause effective flinch. 

5. Spotting is broken across the board. It is simultaneously inconsistent to manually spot (I.E. Pinging a heli but marking the mountain behind it or marking invisible geometry, windows, etc) and too effective when auto spotting while looking at foliage, into smoke, or prone players- making it difficult to hide. Auto spot needs to be tweaked to be more contextual with proximity, stance, obstacles etc. and manual spotting needs to be more consistent/clear to the player doing the spotting.

6. Kits are an obtrusive element on the battlefield. Kits being dropped by players who are downed but not KIA creates an overlap of interaction that often leads to picking up a kit instead of dragging a player, opening a door while prone, interacting with a prone medic for health, etc. Preferably, kits should never drop unless the player is fully KIA via bleed-out or sniper headshot and in the case of a downed player overlapping another kit, the drag mechanic should always be prioritized. (Maybe kit pickup should be a different button than drag or interact?)

7. RPG blast radius vs infantry is ever so slightly TOO small. It is refreshingly good that RPGs are very ineffective against infantry but it might not be too problematic to make RPG blast radius more consistently cause lethal damage to players directly on top of, or within a foot or two of, the impact site.

8. Increase the fatigue system to prevent slide-spam b-hop momentum-launching. This is battlefield, not APEX or COD. A player should not be able to maintain momentum for so long after consecutive slides/jumps on a flat surface. I'm okay with the movement abilities allowing for a faster paced battlefield experience but at the moment, it's too extreme. 

9. Add revives stat to after-action squad-performance screen or main scoreboard if possible. This incentivizes ticket preservation and distinguishes players keeping the team in the fight. 

10. Assault class grenade launcher should have a minimum safe firing distance like the RPG. If fired at point blank, the grenade should not detonate. This will prevent accidental and intentional suicide kills. 

11. Maps such as Cairo and Iberian Offensive have roof-top access exploits. Based exclusively on the limited beta sandbox, this requires adjustment. Possible solutions include but are not limited to: tweak the map to prevent roof access, add more intentional rooftop access stairs so players can make counter-attacks, allow rooftops to be fully destroyed/made inaccessible by explosives/tanks etc, or add limited air support to these maps.  

12. While the spot system makes enemies too easy to see in most cases, there are a significant amount of cases where enemy character models are also extremely difficult to see against the colors, tones, and shadows of the landscape. Without negating the benefit of good positioning and camouflage, changing the saturation or sharpness of character models may help with visual clarity and prevent enemies from becoming effectively invisible in shadowy corners and well-lit landscapes. (This issue may be lessened by a fixed spotting system but likely still require special adjustment to fully address)

13. Motion sensor mines seem inconsistent in deployment/triggering and when a successful hit is landed, deal a bit too much damage. It would potentially be more balanced to slightly reduce damage dealt to tanks and or consider adding a blast radius more likely to kill engineers within repair range.

14. Server region select should be manual or based on party host region.

15. Any downed player should be able to be pinged by a support class to indicate their intention to revive them. (not just squad members)

16. Downed players should have a limited communication wheel to request revive or thank a player mid-drag animation. (Cooldown to prevent spamming of course) 

17. Add distinct color or allow player color to be inherited by players in user's friends list. This allows quicker/clearer identification on-map/in-world and in cases where friends aren't in the same squad. 

18. Menu UI is cluttered, over designed, and needlessly organized horizontally instead of vertically in most cases. (Similar to Netflix/COD UI design where flashy graphical elements are prioritized over ease of use and conveyance of information) Adjustments/reduction to these aspects would greatly improve user experience and increase performance. 

19. Closed weapon sandbox should be default. Limited open weapon playlists should be offered as the alternative, not the definitive experience. Experience suggests game balance benefits greater from closed weapon combat. 

20. A grounded, faux realistic/limited tactical fantasy approach to cosmetics would be greatly appreciated for artistic cohesion and immersion. If more distracting/flamboyant skins must be on the table, please add a "realism" toggle in the options to limit visibility to cosmetics that loosely fit within a realistic setting. (I.E. non-historical camo designs, made-up tactical gear, etc. still fit within a realistic setting while vibrant colors, unicorn helmets, dinosaur masks, unrelated IP tie-ins etc. do not.)

21. I'm fine with having a selection of smaller maps but please ensure there are significantly larger maps being offered after launch. Part of Battlefield's identity is rooted in large maps with vehicle combat focus. (I.E. multiple tanks/ifvs on each side, and if possible, map specific options like player directed, naval strikes, air strikes, special vehicles, etc.)

Bug report:

1. Deploying some types of equipment sometimes results in nothing happening and the equipment being consumed. (I.E. Smoke grenade not popping and motion sensor mine disappearing on placement)

2. Mantling or jumping on some geometry/steeply sloped surfaces results in vertical launching. 

3. Defibs unable to revive players partially clipped into rubble and other obstacles. (usually only fixable by dragging player) In some cases, it could be considered intentional game design where player must be dragged out of rubble to be rescued but more often seems obstructive to gameplay. 

4. Character model, weapon model, and SFX loss triggered at random on spawn-in. Seemingly tied to shader cache?

5. Some general server instability.

6. Rare instances of entity texture stretching across map.

7. Minor hit registration issues.

8. Triggering C4 seems to be inconsistent. Sometimes c4 explosions destroy unexploded c4 before they have a chance to detonate, preventing the intended damage output of a full set. While still avoiding making c4 too easy to deploy and detonate too quickly, adjust to be more reliable in the cases where c4 is deployed properly.

9. Thermoberic grenade launcher flames are almost always invisible- making it impossible to perceive area of effect.

Im sure I missed a few things but these are just my thoughts and experiences. Thankyou for considering these issues. I hope BF6 can be the great success everyone wants it to be! o7