A Recurring Pattern of “Unintended” Overpowered Features

And I was wondering why planes weren't using my paints...

This live service is incredibly sloppy. Some things are changed on the spot, others are left lingering in limbo, all without rhyme or reason. Whatever its faults, the initial release felt tight; what came after wasn't necessarily bad, but you can tell it does not have nearly the same focus. 

I see it a little differently.

I believe the development team genuinely has a vision for how these changes can make the game more enjoyable. Otherwise, quite a few of the updates we have seen would be difficult to explain.

For example, increasing weapon spread while introducing more large-scale maps seems intended to make weapon choice at different engagement ranges more meaningful. Similarly, what may look like excessive buffs to vehicles could be a response to players moving between objectives less than originally expected, making stronger vehicles necessary to create more movement and fluidity across the battlefield.

Overall, many of the recent changes seem aimed at correcting a game that initially leaned too heavily toward individual gunplay, and bringing it back toward large-scale battles and objective-based gameplay.

I generally believe DICE’s recent direction is bringing the game closer to what Battlefield should be, and I think the game has definitely become more enjoyable as a result.

The problem is the lack of communication about how each change is supposed to improve the gameplay. What is also missing is a longer-term vision for the game. A roadmap telling us what weapons and maps are coming is useful, but I would much rather hear what kind of game DICE ultimately wants Battlefield to become.

Sharing that vision would make it much easier for the community to understand why these changes are being made, rather than judging each update in isolation.

Agreed 100% on the lack of communication on their vision.

But I see changes that are very hard to explain. For example: why do so many gadgets now have a pause? What is the purpose, who was asking for this? Does it really improve anything when there’s a one second delay before you can put down the recon beacon?

And then there’s the incredibly sloppy implementation of said pauses. 3 cases:

• I regularly get an “out of bounds” red message when trying to put down the recon beacon, even if in the middle of the road. It’s not actually out of bounds, and the thing goes down fine after the normal delay, there’s just a bug there.
• The medic bag has no such bug, but the delay comes without any indication whatsoever. Your input just does not work for half a second, which feels completely unnatural.
• When you put down the claymore, the pause comes AFTER you put it down. And the animation is just weird: you look at your two empty hands for half a second, then your weapon comes up.

All those gadgets used to behave exactly the same way, same timing. Now, they all have their quirks. How was it that this was not standardized, with proper animations to provide clear indications of what the timing is?

I do believe the game is going in the right direction, but why spend time on this, and why make it so sloppy? My take is that he live service team is too small, and many things are done very haphazardly. 

I feel similarly about this delay.

Much like the way spotting and pinging were separated while still being assigned to the same key, it often feels as though DICE tries to balance features that are considered too strong or too useful by making them slightly more awkward to use. The impression that this may be regarded as a clever way of balancing things is, in my view, one of the things that makes the gameplay frustrating.

Some issues are probably just technical design mistakes—for example, gadgets incorrectly sharing collision or placement checks with carpets and other pieces of cover, resulting in “out of range” errors, or decoys behaving as though they are only meant to be placed on perfectly stable, flat surfaces.

But there are quite a few other cases that cannot really be explained by technical limitations alone.

What matters is a simple explanation of why that delay is necessary and how it is supposed to help maintain the balance of the game.