Season 3 feedback: changes that would reduce frustration and increase enjoyment.

Hi!

First off, I want to say that I'm really ejoying BF6 more with every season's update and I am looking forward to Battlefield's continued updates and progression. Season 3's changes have been pretty good and I agree with most of the changes so far. However, there are some things that I would like to touch on that I personally feel are lacking and need improvement, or are (still) broken in the game. 

First I would like to start off with the big 3 modes: Conquest, Breakthrough, and Escalation.

Conquest is still being plagued with game balance from match to match, and I'm still finding that most of my matches end with a point differential between teams of 500 or more. I'm also finding games that should've been a sure-fire win or loss are suddenly flipped right near the end. I have won games that were 1000-0. I have lost games 0-1000. I have also won games that were 55-343 and even one game that was 300-900, which was an insane comeback that ended with my team winning 17-0 at the end. That is for sure an outlier, but the fact that it was even possible shows just how bad the ticket-mechanic is for this game mode. These games are too chaotic, not consistent enough, and at many times extremely frustrating. So, please look into this and work towards making it more balanced and consistent across matches so that games don't feel so unpredicable any longer.

Breakthrough is pretty good. However, the biggest issue is again matchmaking. Constantly getting games where I'm only defending or only attacking multiple times in a row is frustrating. I keep having to quit to menu and restart matchmaking until I find both the map and side I want. Sometimes I'll get the side that I want, but it's too far into the game and I get jipped out of the whole match, and that's also frustrating. All of this would be avoided if Breakthrough brought back the switch-sides mechanic from BFV where after a match ended, it would replay again but Attackers are now defending and Defenders are now attacking. This gives every single player a chance to play on the side they prefer and imrpoves fairness across matches.

Escalation is interesting because it's like conquest that slowly turns into domination by the end the game, but with 64 players instead of 24. I have two issues with Escaltion at the moment that, if changed, could make Escalation an even better gamemode than it already is. The first issue is that Escalation is still too short of a game mode for me to enjoy. I like Conquest, and I enjoy matches that are 20-30 minutes in length. With 64 players, I would expect a big game-mode to have longer match length like Conquest, but Escalation rounds tend to last between 10 and 15 minutes, which is much shorter than Conquest. If the length of time required to hold Capture Point Majority to score a point were increased, It would make Escalation longer, therefore better. That was the first issue. The Second issue with Escalation is when one team scores a point and both teams were close to scoring. The scorebar for the team that didn't get the point also get reset to zero, completley negating that team's progress, and artfificially puts them at a bigger disadvantage than the other team. "My team just spent the last 5 minutes trying to score a point, and now you're just erase all that effort like it never happened!?"  Very frustrating. One team's progress towards scoring should not be erased as soon as the other team scores a point. This just puts the winning team even farther ahead since they're progress didn't get erased, and they're a point(or more) ahead. So please fix that.

Okay, Now that modes are done with, I'd like to move on to vehicles. There are 2 that come to mind, namely the Mobile AA and now the IFV that are lacking in the capability category.

We'll start with the Mobile Anti-Air I have not had experience with the new gadgets for the MAA, so that may change after impression with them. That does not detract from the fact that the MAA is abosolutley god-awful atrocious for actually shooting down aircraft vehicles. Let's use BF1 and BFV as examples. Both games had anti-air vehicles that had advantages and disadvantages. advatanges being that they were very effective at killing aircraft and sometimes infantry, disadvantage being that they weren't very fast and not very armored so they were killed easily by infantry, other vehicles, and well-positioned enemy aircraft. the MAA from BF1 had limited range with it's airburst rounds which gave aircraft a chance as long as they got high enough above or far enough away from the MAA to avoid being shot down. BFV's MAA also had limited range, or extremely high rate of fire with limited ammo depending on which faction's AA you were in. Both games' MAA were accurate though, allowing them to be effective within their respective ranges. When you compare that to the MAA in BF6, it becomes immediatley apparent that the MAA is inneffective at all ranges except very close, as It's overheat mechanic is way overtuned, It's accuracy is extremely low, and the 2 missles it has take too long to reload before the enemy target gets out of range to fire a second volley. Even if you only fire one missle that gets defended by flares and fire the second missle after relocking, the enemy aircraft will always be out of range before the next missles can be fired. Simply put, the MAA is barely useful on small maps with small airspaces (not anymore) like Blackwell Fields and New Sobek City, and straight up useless on bigger maps like Operation Firestorm, Railway to Golmud, and Eastwood. I would suggest that the accuracy on the MAA be increased so that it can still hit aircraft consitently, but the range that it is effective is limited to around the same distance as it's missle lock-on range. This would improve the MAA's ability to be an effective Anti-Air vehicle in it's defensive dome while still giving aircraft the ability to maneuver around it or find a good position to flank and attack it.

The IFV is a tactical vehicle that provides support for infantry by attacking enemy infantry and defending them from enemy armor. The updates that have come to this game has severely diminished the IFVs effectiveness against enemy armor. First, the TOW missle was nerfed into oblivion, making it an almost non-issue for enemy armor rather than being a weapon that is to be respected and feared. The TOW missle is supposed to be the IFVs ultimate deterrent for enemy armor, with a very high damage capability at the cost of limited ammo capacity. The second statement is true in that the IFV has only 4 missles before having to resupply, but the first statement is not true, as it's damage to enemy armor and aicraft is so low that it takes 3 TOW missles to take out a tank when hitting right in the rear-center, 3-4 TOW missles to kill an enemy IFV if not rear-center, and it's maneuverability was nerfed so badly it can't even really hit helicopters that aren't stationary or moving directly away from or towards you anymore. Please add some balancing to the TOW to make it an effective anti-armor weapon for the IFV again. Second, The Season 3 changes to the AP shells have made armor vs. armor fights a long, drawn out slug-fest rather than fun, short engagements. They have also made killing infantry with direct impacts in one-hit impossible at any range outside of point-blank. AP shells now do less than 100 damage against infantry players, making it a minimum 2-shot kill, which, with the now redcued fire rate and magazine size, exasperates situations where choosing higher damage against armor at the cost of explosion radius against infantry no longer feels like cost was worth it. Speaking of damage numbers, Having no base-line damage numbers from previous seasons before season 3's changes and thinking that the change in damage was to off-set the reduced fire rate and magazine size, i am dissapointed to find that this has not been the case. I now feel like AP shells are almost as useless as regular HEAT rounds for fighting against enemy armor, and they're more of an annoyance than anything. Please increase the damage of the AP shells as well as making them a one-shot kill for infantry with direct impacts again so that using them is an effective alternative to HEAT and canister shells and more viable against enemy armor. Finally, Hit registration against aircraft with the AP shells is egregiously bad. I have fired full magazines of AP shells at helicopters at close range(<150m) and while seeing the visual impacts of the shells hitting, I'm not getting any hit markers. This is not the case with HEAT shells though, as I have not seen any issues with hit registration when firing at aircraft with them. so please look into this issue as well.

A couple more things that could use or need improvment in Battlefield that I've noticed in the past 400 hours that I've put into this game:

• Bipods on LMGs need more buffs in recoil reduction, recovery rate, and accuracy benefits to outweigh the extremely high cost of being stationary. Bullet velocity in BF6 is the highest of all previous games and TTK is also the lowest, meaning a more stationary target will die even faster in this game than a moving one. That means that being stationary with a bipod better be worth it, and right now it isn't. This needs to happen
• Suppression needs to be brought back. Snipers are too powerful with their insanely high bullet velocity and damage and no suppression mechanic in the game right now to make it difficult to fire back when under fire. There needs to be an increased sway, blurred or dimmed vision, and/or a flinch mechanic when hit by bullets to throw off your aim if you're exposed to take a shot, because right now, shooting at an emey sniper means nothing if they can just respond by left-clicking on your head and returning you to the deploy screen even after taking 3-4 bullets and still being shot at when they return fire.
• Stationary emplacements like the TOW missle should be able to turn a full 360 degrees instead of these pre-defined 45-90 degree limits. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to take out a vehicle only to miss my shot because the emplacment can't rotate any further left or right. Please take a pass on all maps and allow TOW missle emplacements to rotate all the way around freely.
• All Capture Points should have resupply stations for infantry and vehicles. This was a thing in BFV, albeit because the game had the Attrition System, but it allowed players to not completely rely on their inattentive teamates for ammo, gadget refills, or rounds for their vehicles. Too many times I have run out of ammo and followed a nearby support class while constantly asking for ammo and being completely ignored. This detracts from the game and prevents me frm being able to get back into the fight faster.
• Stadiametric Sights for zoomed POVs on for the MBT and IFV (Maybe the GL gunner seat even) should be added. Every single shell type in the game has a different velocity and bullet drop, which makes changing between them constantly, like in an MBT, difficult to effectivley range and hit targets the farther away they are. MBTs and IFVs already come with a laer rangefinder, but with just a static dot and lines as a reticle, you have to guess and check when shooting targets at range. If the zoomed POV had a ranging sight that indicated where the round would land base off distance and round type, it would make the laser rangefinder an effective tool to help armor players attack with more accuracy at range.
• The bunny hopping and sliding mechanic needs more nerfing/removing. I don't know if it was intentional or not in the beginning of the game's development to have this mechanic be in the game, but it's been repeated as having no place in the game by the devs, so why is it still here? There was much rejoicing when it was unintentionally gutted early on in season 1, only to be immediatley reverted hours later. There is not enough acuracy penalty for shooting while jumping and/or sliding. There is not enough momentum drop when sliding. Sliding should have players to a omplete stop in either a crouched or prone position at the end of the slide. There should be NO ability to jump out of a slide. Weapons need to have way more movement when landing after a jump and ADSd'd. This Jump-Slide-Jump mechanic is not humanly possible and should not have a place in this game whatsoever.

I'd like to end this post by thanking all of you who actually spent the time to read this whole post, agree or disagree. I hope that as someone who has thousands of hours and 25 years in the Battlefield Series and other First Person Shooters, that my feedback does not go unheard, and perhaps someday be acknowledged and put in the game. I love Battlefield. I want to continue supporting this great series so that it can be the best it can be and bring the most fun to many players who, like myself, grew up with this series and want to see it be succesful. I have refence photos in the attachments for those interested.

5kyhawk out.