>> "The gaming landscape has changed drastically since BF2 days, and that means a little more flash and Hollywood is needed."
But what's enjoyable to players hasn't changed nearly as much. Just because DICE chose to ridiculously over-simplify the important parts of Battlefield while making useless complexity in other areas doesn't mean it was what the gaming market wanted. It wasn't, as I'll next show.
>> "BF1 was well received by the community and for me, it's their best title since BF3."
Bf1 absolutely was not well received by the Battlefield community. Coming off the success of Bf4, and promising a return to Battlefield's WW2 origin, Bf1 gathered the largest release sales in Battlefield history. But then it had the worst player-retention in Battlefield history and the number of players dropped like a rock after its launch and as soon as people played it and realized... 'this isn't the Battlefield I wanted, and this isn't very good'.
That's not the player trend of a game which was well received. By contrast, Battlefield 4's player-base continued to grow from Bf4's release right up until Bf1's release - the sign of a game that's well-received.
A series' next-game release sales are a comment on how good the previous game was. But it's player-retention is a comment on how good it is. Battlefield 1 stank in the view of the existing Battlefield community. And as happened when Battlefield 3 released and almost all the 1942 and Bf2 fans left the community because of the huge and awful dumbing-down and over-simplification of the series, the same thing happened with the Bf3 and Bf4 player-base with the release of Bf1, except on an even larger scale.
It was the new-gamer, console crowd which loved Bf3. And it was impressive to them because they hadn't played something similar or better before - it was their first-time experience. But most of those who had played something similar and better before were not happy at all with Bf2 - which is why the DICE forums were filled with criticisms and anger to the point that DICE permanently shut-down their forums (which had become nicknamed "Mordor") and wiped them of all the posts.
Bf3 would have sold huge no matter what it was, because the gaming market had grown many times in size since the release of Bf2, and people had loved Bad Company 2 (which the classic Bf fans had, incorrectly, unfortunately, assumed was a warmup for a full-scale return to the Battlefield main series, and so were satisfied with it), and because the console audiences had never played anything like a full-scale Battlefield game and were primed to be blown away. But then Bf3 was not the return to full-scale Battlefield that classic series fans had hoped it would be, and was instead more Bad Company 2 than it was a true sequel to Battlefield 2.
If DICE had delivered Bf2 style with Bf3, it would have been an even bigger hit and more impressive to those who got into the series with Bf3.
DICE have, so far, completely failed to understand what they have with their series, and have always thrown away the proverbial baby with the bathwater, seemingly oblivious to it when they do it.
Just because today's Bf audience is mostly fan of a certain gameplay style (because, for many of them, it's all they know, and also because the large majority of the fans from the previous games have left due to awful changes to the game design) doesn't mean it's what the gaming audience or Battlefield fan wants. If it were, then the large majority of Battlefield players wouldn't have left the series when the changes to today's style were implemented.
As the Battlefield forum feedback at the time made clear, that is simply not the case. And 80%+ of the people who stopped playing Bf1 after its release (especially the console players) probably couldn't tell the difference between DICE and community servers.
Also, saying that people left because of a lack of custom servers is saying that Bf1's core gameplay sucks so badly that the menu is more interesting than the gameplay. In the end, you're affirming what I said, which is that Bf1 did not impress and was not well received by the Battlefield audience, and so did not hold people's interest.
While good custom server options are important to have, just because people were playing on custom servers in Bf4 doesn't mean that's why they were playing. Due to too many large concessions and constrictions to its design, Bf1 simply didn't deliver on its promise to return to Battlefield's roots, and didn't provide nearly as detailed an experience as the game people had just been playing, which was Bf4. In fact, Bf1 is the shallowest experience ever offered in the main Battlefield series.
I didn't find Bf1 a dull game to play because of its server menu (though I really didn't like its server browser and limited options available, either). I found it a dull game to play because everything in it was maximum reduced to the point that it wasn't stimulating and engaging at a level that would be just average for the series, and it wasn't worth my time when I could play other things, including Bf4 - which, for the last few years, has had more people still playing it than Bf1.
@DingoKillr No, it isn't a myth that Bf4 has had more players than Bf1 for the past few years. Until maybe a couple of years ago, the player stats for both games were directly comparable, and they showed since the first-half of 2019, more people were online in Bf4 than Bf1. And if you log into both games right now, you can see that there are more populated servers and players in servers in Bf4 than are in Bf1.
Detailed player stats for both games stopped being publicly available in October 2019.
In October 2019, there were 28,236 people still playing Bf4.
In October 2019, there were 23,816 people still playing Bf1.
No, every Bf game doesn't have the same graph trend. As I already said, Bf4's player-base continued to increase until the release of Bf1. And Bf4 also had a huge surge in players for the 5 months before Bf1's release. Bf1's player-base dropped like a rock in the early days after its launch and never recovered - a player trend not seen in any other Battlefield game before that. And Bf1 had a short-lived modest spike in players for only 1 month before the release of Bf5.
Can we please not make things up and misrepresent history in the course of trying to defend a game?
>> "Are your seriously saying people left BF2 because BF3 was more inline with other online games of the day."
I can't answer that because I don't know what that means.
>> "When did BF1 promise to delivery on BF roots? It never did."
Actually, retuning to the series' roots was a recurring marketing slogan for Bf1.
https://www.polygon.com/2016/8/11/12443234/battlefield-1-new-gameplay-vehicles-tanks-planes-dice-ea
https://techreport.com/news/30093/the-battlefield-franchise-goes-back-to-its-roots-in-battlefield-1/
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/2016-s-battlefield-will-return-to-military-style-r/1100-6423674/
Again, can we please not make things up and misrepresent history in the course of trying to defend a game?
>> "As for being BF1 shallow that is your opinion not fact while stating BF4 was more detailed that much more funnier. The majority of BF players today do not want a remake of BF2 including me."
Actually, it's a quantifiable fact that Bf1 has a much simpler design than Bf4, with less variables to the experience. So... I have to suspect that you didn't play Bf4. And if you did, you either don't remember it, or are presenting it in a dishonest manner.
You don't speak for the majority of gamers, and I'm quite sure that you've never played Bf2. You've expressed in another thread that you barely want a game at all, but just want a heavily-managed experience where there are no surprises or challenges, and where you get to do whatever you want in any moment without interference from other players or the systems in the game. You more want an interactive environment than you do a game.
It is very telling that a game that was released in October 2013 (BF4) is still this day and time now played by more players than a more recent game in same franchise and genre which was released in October 2016 (BF1).
