Not really agreeing with this whole Battlefield DNA thing. Throughout the years, Dice has tried different things. What makes a BF game isn't individual mechanics, it's the overall game loop, which in my opinion would be Conquest. You work as squads to control the map best as possible. The maps generally give you enough room to find a play style that works best for you. I think it boils down to that.
If you're a developer, you should be aware of what's going on in the gaming market. You shouldn't be afraid of new ideas, and then possibly implementing them if they work for your game. If you're actually passionate about game development, you should be curious and influenced with what's going on in the gaming world. It's not a bad thing.
There's a difference between chasing trends to just try and get some quick cash, and genuinely believing it can make your game feel better. I think Dice's intentions for 2042 were mostly good, and kept to the overall formula of what is Battlefield. Where they went wrong were vehicle balancing, too many gimmicks, basic things like scoreboard and what firing mode you were in, lack of understanding of what makes maps good, and an endless list of bugs that have yet to be fixed.
There’s plenty of things that games like BF3 and BF4 had that made them so popular, which some of the game designers at DICE in all their wisdom decided were no longer needed. Which ultimately led to the decline of the franchise that already started with BF1 which initially didn’t have platoon support and RSP. Things they hesitantly added much later, as a lackluster afterthought.
In BFV they basically tried again, making the same mistakes but this time also introducing the live service model. And although BF1 was a commercial success, BFV became a failure that left the community with trust issues and a bitter aftertaste.
And with BF2042 they tried to redeem themselves with Portal, while at the same time going overboard on all kinds of other area’s of the game, again leading towards another failure. (Persistent servers? Platoons? Server browser? Etc.)
For some reason there have been forces at DICE that have consistently driven the franchise in an abysmal direction for the past decade.
The DNA is actually there, the blueprint lies in the success of BF3 and BF4…in part in BF1. But everything else was just a big failure, an experiment, an attempt to innovate in the worst possible way.
I sincerely hope they have seen the light and have really used those blueprints and layer them on today’s FPS market. And hopefully redeem a decade of disappointment.
