Community ManagerThanks for taking the time to share such a detailed breakdown.
First, glad to hear that Operations and the story elements are landing well for you.
On the rounds you mentioned (2 quick wins and 5 quick losses), it sounds like you feel team balance, along with factors like map flow and vehicle availability or effectiveness, are playing a role. Just to better understand your point, when you mention team balance, are you referring more to K/D differences or to overall team coordination?
Regarding some of your other points:
In the "Hagenthal Base" breakthrough mode, the first area has always been very unbalanced for NATO! NATO needs the assistance of most players to capture objective point B, while PAX only needs a few players to recapture objective point A. Afterwards, NATO players are forced to return to objective point A, resulting in PAX retaking objective point B!
In the "Contaminated" map of Breakthrough Mode, the third area, "Hangar," is also unfair to NATO. It is similar to the first area of Breakthrough Mode at Hagentar Base, but slightly better. I played Breakthrough Mode for 153 hours and only 3 times did NATO win in this area to continue the game!
Then you merged those two maps, but only made minor balance adjustments, and this is what happened! I warned you a month ago, but nobody listened.
Community ManagerI can tell you’ve put a lot of time into Breakthrough.
I have to admit I tend to play more Conquest myself, but from my experience in Breakthrough, there are definitely moments when attacking can feel really tough and... discouraging.
Thanks for the summary. I’ll pass this along to the team for their reference.
Thanks again.
If it's any use, I monitored two more rounds of Operations for team balancing.
Round 1 had a mean average level of 230 for Pax, and 300 for NATO.
Not a massive distance between the two, however Pax had 3 players who were 500+, who tanked the rounds in their maps favour. The rest of the team was mostly 100+. NATO didn't have any players over 300.
This kind of imbalance can greatly speed up a match.
Round 2 has NATO at a mean average of 280, and Pax at 200. Not a giant distance like my original comment, but this time the higher level team did win, and fast. They again had a group of 300-500+. The other team had one 500 player, and everyone else was below 250 on average.
It lead to lots of camping on both maps, sometimes the winning team even going inside the timeout HQ area of the opposing team, shooting players, then running back to the border. The lower team was unable to progress into the map or leave, due to a barrage of explosives.
It's really affecting the enjoyment of an otherwise good mode.
Thanks for reaching out.
One of the biggest issues with operations (and the game as a whole), is the way players of certain levels and skill sets are sorted into a team.
For example, on one of my previous matches of operations, our team had a median level of about 245. The other team was significantly higher, being around 400.
This makes for very fast matches. (Sometimes you do get a well balanced couple of teams, which makes for a good battle of attrition), but most of the time, especially in conquest, the matches become very quick. Quick wins and losses.
I think the data needs to be looked at as to how teams are being sorted, as it feels like they don't last as long as they did back on BF1 or V.
Mortars, personally I don't have a problem as of yet.
Cosmetics, yeah, the toxin group isn't an "unlock" as advertised, and a lot of these skins are bundles with stickers that are clearly made with generative AI, which shouldn't be part of front end game design being sold to consumers. (One of the winter patches having a soldier with a gun that had two separate barrels).
Plus as I mentioned above, Vedmak and Coyote have too many skins. Panopticon has one or two variants per character for example, while Hastings has tonnes.
Vehicle wise, I don't feel the LTV trucks are doing too much, due to the linear map, and the fact they blow up fast. It feels a bit off balance.
Still enjoying the mode, but there's too many wider tech and map design issues at play.
Community ManagerI’ve noted everything you mentioned in my report, especially your experience with matchmaking and team balance. I understand how matches that swing too quickly, rather than having that back-and-forth, can make matches feel boring.
Thanks that's really appreciated.
Again, operations is a great mode at heart, but the rest of the game mechanics around it needs a polish.
I did another match earlier, and each batallion was wiped out super fast due to one team having large amounts of people 300+. It needs to be balanced better across all modes. You will get some balanced matches, but we need more back and forth overall.
