Battlefield 6 Game Systems Feedback
There are some basic game systems that urgently need to be updated. They're simple fixes and I'll show that.
1. First and most important: The spawn system is really really bad. It's possible to spawn onto a site on almost any map, and die instantly. The player can spawn into enemy line of sight, or even gunfire. Either the spawn needs to check enemy line of sight to prohibit spawning into it, or new structures need to be added to the map to provide cover for people spawning, or the spawns for any given site need to be further away from the site itself. I've personally picked up the habit of never spawning at certain sites; it's safer to spawn at HQ and walk. If this is sounding like some absurd nitpick, consider the number of times in a game that the player can spawn and die instantly in a row. Gets old real quick to spawn die spawn die over and over several times in a row before resigning to just spawn HQ and walk. On this note, the number of times I've been spawn-killed by the helicopter is absurd. I'm suggesting full-on immunity to specifically the attack helicopter for at least 10 seconds after spawning, so as not to waste the player's time being a target dummy with no agency for helicopter rockets.
2. Vehicle spawns: Make vehicles invulnerable to friendly fire in their base within first 60 seconds of each match. Why is it possible to destroy friendly vehicles in spawn at the start? Not exactly fun to just lose a tank or helicopter because someone felt like destroying it, and a very very simple fix to prevent it from happening. A second point here as well, and the cause of me writing this post: Vehicles should be invulnerable to some degree in the spawn for a short time after a player gets in for the first time. This is because I got into an attack helicopter; only for it to be destroyed by the enemy attack helicopter while I'm still on the ground. Miserable. Granted I was sitting in the gunner's seat, but I guess that's not allowed? I should be invulnerable until I at least take off, so that I can have a chance to fight back. If we're worried about people camping the helicopter in base and never moving, just boot them out by force if they sit in it without taking off for a too long.
3. Air vehicles are completely polarizing and miserable: This is mostly about the attack helicopter, but all of them are the same. Can any reader imagine this struggle: There's an enemy attack helicopter. Don't worry, I have the Stinger, the premier Anti-Air launcher. Can I get a lock? No, Out of Range. Okay, I'm closer. Can I get a lock? No, "Below". I can see him, he's just Below, can't lock. Okay, now he's above me and very close. Actually, he's too close to get a lock. After years of trying, I finally got a lock! He flares. Back to the beginning. I got another lock! He flew behind cover and the missile hit a mountain. Then another lock, and he has flares again. This is the most miserable thing pretty much ever. If that sounds like a pilot's dream, don't worry, you will be hit by a permanent locked on sound if you so much as breathe in a helicopter, or you will be shot down by any number of guided-missiles. This is what I mean by polarizing: Enemy helicopters are impossible to shoot down, just flying over the map for countless passes killing me within seconds of spawning (seriously it's happened so many times I can't even remember how many), but if I touch a helicopter, I get blasted out of the sky near instantly. The gameplay should be fun and engaging on both sides, not a completely polarizing one-sided nothing fest where the other side is always miserable.
4. What is going on?: One of my personal biggest complains about Battlefield 6 gameplay in general is: WHAT IS GOING ON? If that just sounds like I'm a confused old man, whining because he can't adapt from Battlefield 4, let me offer a few points. First, stealth tanks. Tanks are just invisible on the map until they're spotted, so we all get to enjoy, especially on tight maps like Siege of Cairo, walking onto a street and getting jump-scared by a tank. I think this sucks. Once it's spotted or kills some people, we know where it is, but it shouldn't pop smoke and lumber off into hiding again like some kind of giant smoke monster. This is also true of infantry to some extent. I can't find where any of them are until they shoot me, at which point I'm dead. This has several negative effects. First of all, it encourages camping a lot. Trying to push forward isn't exactly possible. If you turn sideways to check a corner, a guy will just appear at the end of the hallway and shoot you anyway. Another missing piece of intel is no indicators for dead enemies. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure BF4 had dead enemies markers on the map, so you knew if the guy you were hunting had died already. In BF6, that just doesn't exist, so I don't know if my teammate got the guy I was looking for. Imagine my surprise when, no, my teammate had actually killed a different guy, and now I'm dead because the guy I wasn't sure was there has now shot me in the back. WHAT IS GOING ON? How can swarms of enemies run every which way and be completely undetected? I think it's a really bad system to rely on Recons or teammates to spot enemies, because if they just don't do it, you get the wonderful invisible enemy experience. I miss BF4's system where I felt like I knew where everyone was and if they had died or not. I got to choose if I would take a fight, not get jump-scared or shot in the back for 100th time that game.
5. This is my most abstract criticism, which is difficult to pin down but I'll try to explain it. I'd describe it as a kind of "if it rains it pours" kind of thing. I've resorted on occasion to just sitting around waiting for enemies to appear after getting shot in the back 100 times and giving up trying to walk to the objectives. It's possible that there are NO enemies for minutes at a time. Again, even a small map, like Siege of Cairo. Just an empty, barren wasteland that supposedly has 32 enemies on it somewhere. So I just sit there in awe, waiting. I finally see someone, and I take aim, having found my target after several minutes of waiting. Then I get shot in the side of the head. Somehow, this is an incredibly frequent occurrence. It's right up there along with peaking a corner and getting killed by multiple enemies all looking at that corner. I can't tell if it's the map designs having no real cover, or the squad spawn system causing people to run in packs, but some combination of them creates a weird game flow. Shooting a person means getting shot by someone else, either right away or soon after. This is truly mysterious to me. Surely my teammates are doing things too? Surely other humans exist that are drawing enemy fire? No. It's always me. This is objective, not even a feeling, because I usually have more deaths than anyone else on my team. I feel like I have a giant neon bill-board above my head, and I don't know why. There could be 5 teammates and a friendly tank nearby, and that one random guy from the other team snuck over to our side of the map just to shoot me and then die from 6 people. It's like a running gag or something.
Overall, I like the game, but these flaws make it hard to have fun. I don't think BF6 can live up to the legacy of BF4's dynamic maps, but that's fine. It can still do many other things well, and right now, it's just not. The maps just feel like they have "fake cover", and everyone hits sniper headshots as easily as they breathe. The other result of "fake cover" is getting shot from multiple angles, like going behind cover from one guy and then getting shot from a completely different direction. It really gives me "what am I supposed to do?" energy. There's also an extremely odd field of vision thing where you can get shot and not even see enemies. I know it makes sense if I'm prone behind a dumpster and I get shot in the foot, so I can't see who's shooting. What doesn't make sense is when they're IN FRONT of me and I can't see them, like somehow they're shooting my shoulder or the top of my head over a lip and I just can't see anything but the cover. Just feels like the player POV needs to be wider and further back somehow.
