This is a letter to the entire Battlefield team, DICE, and EA.
This is a letter to the entire Battlefield team, DICE, and EA.
For about 10 years now, this series has lost its way. Undoubtedly, the best installments in this series were BF2, BF3, BF4, and Bad Company. All the battleground games you've created since have lost the essence of what you offered us.
Why abandon our core battleground essence to be like other companies and other shooters?
And to be honest, maybe you're currently winning the battle against Call of Duty. But our real battle isn't against them. Our true objective should be to create a game as good as, or better than, the versions mentioned above. All the veterans know what I'm talking about because we dedicated countless hours to playing these games and we know the impact those games had on our lives 10 years ago.
Everything from the old games worked; what you've created now doesn't.
Therefore, I would like to explain what I consider to be the essence of Battlefield and what we need to recover:
1. Parties limited to 4 players: Battlefield has never been a typical shooter where you only have 4 friends. Communities and clans of up to 50-100 players are created here, and with how advanced streaming is compared to previous years, a community could now create clans of 500-1000 players, simply by a player following their favorite streamer. But this new system doesn't even let me play with 5 or 10 friends together in the same match because it's limited to 4 players. And Portal mode is garbage; we don't want to play with AI bots. I don't know who thought playing against bots was fun.
2. Rented Servers: We need to be able to configure our servers to our liking and under our rules. This would greatly help with better management of custom servers. They should include all game modes and all the necessary tools. Is it really that difficult to bring back the rented servers we had in BF3 and BF4? There was never a problem with rented servers. And if they don't want to use rented servers, they need to quickly improve the portal servers because they're not really suitable for creating and customizing a server according to our rules and conditions.
3. The Portal: To be honest, I consider this complete garbage until proven otherwise. This portal system has only served to be misused, allowing players to exploit it by leveling up ridiculously fast and obtaining absurdly high stats. Is this the portal's objective? To make players mediocre and stupid? To pay $100 for a game only to level up with bots? Is this the Battlefield you want to offer?
4. AI Bots: How does having bots in our online multiplayer matches benefit Battlefield? Do you think it's fun to play with bots in online multiplayer? Do you think it's healthy and enjoyable that players are farming XP for hours on end and abusing the system to unlock all the game's content in less than a week? Bots disrupt the natural progression of levels, unlocks, and achievements. Less than two weeks had passed, and there were already players farming XP at level 200+. In the current state of the game, it's no longer relevant or important whether you're level 10 or level 200. It no longer matters if a player has unlocked all the weapon and vehicle achievements. It no longer matters if a player has a K/D of 1.00 or 5.00. Progressing in this game is no longer relevant.
5. Natural Game Progression: You've made the same mistake again. Have you realized that bots in multiplayer are a disaster? What will you do to solve this problem? Will you remove bots from multiplayer or let them continue to negatively impact the game? At this point, they made the same mistake as Call of Duty by including bots in their game. AI bots should only be in campaign or offline mode.
6. The competitive world of Battlefield: This was lost many years ago. The last Battlefield game I played with competitive play was BF4. Before, it was important for a player to improve their game. Improve their accuracy, improve their gameplay, improve their stats so others could see they were a good player. There used to be many clans that competed against each other, and tournaments were organized by the community or official tournaments. I remember there was once an ESL One in BF4. All of that has been lost, and only the Battlefield developers know the real reason.
7. Platoons: When will they bring back the creation of platoons? Is the competitive world and the identification of communities by platoons not important to you? We've been waiting for this for years.
8. Tournaments and Clan Wars: All veterans of the series remember the good times when we organized wars against other clans to see who was the best. We organized friendly matches and tournaments for fun. Once you reach the maximum level and have unlocked everything, the next step to stay active in the game is the competitive scene, and this is also a lot of fun for a large part of the community. To encourage competitive play in Battlefield again and get players to take the game seriously, they need to give us the option to fully configure servers. I repeat, the portal doesn't allow for this.
9. Battlelog: What happened to Battlelog? Why did it only work up to BF1? This was the best system and the best official Battlefield website to keep up-to-date with our stats, to check the world or national rankings, and to find and discover new clans and players. For me, Battlelog was a success, and many players had the apps downloaded and used them frequently. Third-party websites like BF6 Tracker are really bad, to be honest. But it's all we have. You have no idea how many players were active, keeping an eye on their stats and improving, as well as checking their position on the leaderboards. Bring that back; we need it.
You have the potential to keep growing. But what do you want for Battlefield? To be just another shooter, or to have its own unique identity? We're paying $100 for your game, but believe me, this is your last chance to redeem yourselves because the veteran Battlefield community won't support you forever. We've been waiting for the Battlefield we deserve for over 10 years.
