An Appeal to Common Sense: Unit Customization and One Small Point
An open letter to the developers of Battlefield 6:
Hello. My attempt will be to keep this brief, but I am passionate about BF and have some time on my hands, so I may not succeed. If you do read this, thank you.
Let me first thank you for your hard work in creating BF6. You have done well in resurrecting this franchise from the failures of BF2042, and it is fun to play.
1. Unit Customization.
Why should you read this? The implementation of these ideas are a win-win. The player base will be happy and you’ll make more money.
While I do not purport to be the authoritative voice of this community, and while I feel very corny for even writing this, I felt the need to do so as I have spent many hundreds of hours over the last 14 years enjoying BF games and the failures of BF6 are hard to understand.
My primary grievance is with unit appearance customization.
1.a. Issues.
It is difficult to understand how this was botched. The skins are neither grounded mil-sim, nor are they COD ridiculousness. They ride a middle line that appeases nobody, and most importantly disappoints your actual base (grounded). The neon, the airsoft style facemasks, and the edgy aesthetic are, unfortunately for us, not what we were promised, and have left a sour taste.
Not only are the skins not what we were sold, but they lack basic customization controls like gender. I’m all for people choosing whatever soldier they want, but that includes me too. I mainly play engineer. I do not feel immersed when I hear a woman screaming the entire time I play this game (which I cannot change, even when equipping a male engineer skin).
I will not ramble, although I could, and will turn to productive suggestions to fix this very real problem which will turn people away from BF6.
1.b. Solutions.
In short: implement the system used in BFV and release grounded mil-sim skins.
It is a simple and comprehensive solution to the customization issues this game faces. We would like to play as male/female soldiers, depending on our own choice, not according to the unit skin. We requested that weird non-grounded skins would not be added. That request was not accepted. We now ask that you at least honor our request that we have availability to realistic, grounded, mil-sim skins.
Battlefield has always been my favorite video game series. Do you understand the money I, and many others, would spend on this game if you offered the right skins and customization options? I would purchase 30 different helmets, torsos, pants, whatever. And not to belabor the point, but it’s not a big ask that I should be able to play as a male (or female) character if I want.
The most frustrating thing about all of this is that you have already done it correctly in the past (BFV)!
You will sell more skins; you will make more money; people will play your game longer if they are immersed.
2. Base Wall.
My second, final point is this: the invisible base wall must be fixed. On larger maps this would not be an issue, but sitting with a Bradley or AA on Blackwell Fields behind an impervious, invisible wall should not be a strategy that works (fyi, it currently is what half the tanks do on that map).
3. Conclusion.
If that was wordy and/or corny, my apologies. I could continue but I feel I’ve already used too much of my post-work time to write something that the intended audience will probably never see.
If such audience does ever see this, please do the right thing and implement the system the community is begging you for. It’s common sense. These ideas I have presented are not new or original, they’re on every board out there.
At the end of the day it’s only a game. But if you’re going to do something, why not do it right? Why not make something that people will talk about for years? Or instead, this game can become another throwaway that we might say almost felt like one of the GOATs (BF3, BF4). This game has potential to be the greatest BF ever made, but right now it’s seriously underwhelming.
Fix it! Okay, thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
A devoted fan.
