Battlefield 2042

[Nerraw]

I understand that not everything is lost upon reboot, but 1.5 years for development? Actually less, considering last months are spent mostly on polishing and testing, not trying to add new feature one week before release.
Yeah, that's just wrong in all kinds of ways.

Same thing happened with Andromeda. 3.5 years pissing about, and then a year and a half scrambling to get something in a release state. It seems extremely common for AAA games in this day and age for some reason.

Edit: Supposedly Halo Infinite as well, though at least that game's campaign came out being pretty neat (writing concerns not withstanding).

[Edge-]

Shit's whack, yo. Still silence from DICE as the game is now already 40% off digitally on Steam at least.

Apparently EA paid some Twitch channel to do a tournament with some big names (I have no clue who these folks are). Didn't seem sponsored since they failed to tag their social promotions or the stream with #ad/#sponsored or anything, but they did shout out EA for sponsoring at the end of the video.

It went as well as expected. They had to manually tally scores because the scoreboard doesn't exist. They tried to stay positive even as they were falling beneath the map and bugging out, which was hilarious. And it seems like the channel was buying viewbots since it went to 25K concurrent viewers very quickly and stayed there with minimal engagement in chat.

Man, DICE has really killed their credibility. Folks are resurfacing all the "don't worry fam" posts from various DICE devs on their social media trying to convince folks all was well and the game wasn't looking at any problems months ahead of launch.

I guess we'll likely wait for updates until after EA's earnings call next week on Feb. 1, but I'm just wondering if they've even figured out how to unfuck the game and the path forward by now.

Oh, and they keep fuckin up the localization files for their weekly earnable cosmetics so they're displaying the wrong name in other languages. It's minor and doesn't really affect anything, but it's kinda a great example of the level of quality that the team seems capable of currently.



10/10, DICE doesn't know which way the sun rises and sets. Spoilers: It's not in the South, kek

[MuscleBobBuffPants]

This si super duper good.

[Nutri]

Got to level 82, must say I'm really starting to lose interest by now. Keeping myself occupied with unlocking the mods for all the weapons but that's getting tedious.

Still encountering wack stuff like not being able to ADS, hit registration is still problematic; When exiting a moving quad and start shooting while dismounting made my entire clip not register bullets from point blank! Also stuff like seeing the target hit marker budge on the crosshair multiple times but not getting assist credit. Bullets seem to have a hard-cap range; sometimes just not hitting a target and you can see the bullets flying through, then the enemy moves a few feet closer and the bullets do register.

Weapon mod wheel not showing up. Not being able to fire my primary until I die and respawn. Loading indicator text stuck on the screen.

I also only play Conquest, and the map pool is small, maps aren't really that great, sometimes you get the same map 3 times in a row. "Levolution" really absent and the stuff that does blow up or tumble down is just minor and non impact-full. Tornado is boring and can be pretty much ignored, also shows up way too often.

Apart from the game issues, getting a ress is pretty much one in a million. People just completely ignore ressing or are somehow oblivious to it. Picking people up can make or break a good push but most are just asshats or ignorant. I once did a little experiment how long it would take to get picked up - I got downed in a totally save spot to get ressed, it took 8 people walking over me before one decided to actually walk back and pick me up. There was no crossfire or whatever, people just simply didn't ress.

At least something changed about the hovercrafts, they seem a lot less dominant and annoying now. Other than that positive note, the fire is starting to fade quickly now.

[willtron]

Got to level 82, must say I'm really starting to lose interest by now.

It took you to 82!?

I played the EA access trial for 3 hours and knew it wasn't for me.

Still play BFV relgiously. Best movement and gunplay of the entire franchise.

[Edge-]

At least something changed about the hovercrafts, they seem a lot less dominant and annoying now. Other than that positive note, the fire is starting to fade quickly now.

They got nerfed fairly quickly last year. I don't remember if they nerfed damage a bit, but their armor/HP was lowered considerably. For some reason DICE thought launching the game with hovercrafts having almost as much life/armor as an actual tank was a good idea.

Probably because they didn't have time to properly respond to the volumes of issues QA was sending them as they rushed to put this game together in 18 months.

But hey, EA Q3 earnings call on Tuesday so we'll hear the executives talk about underwhelming sales and maybe start talking to investors about how they're going to try to fix the game. Hopefully around that same time DICE will have a plan forward finally and will say something since coming back from the holidays.

At this point it'll be a win if they can release the weekly skins without fucking those up. I think we're on week three where they've released the skin with missing localization files for non-English language versions, leaving folks seeing the skin like this -

[Nutri]

The Xmas emblems/images and tags also have placeholder names if you select them on your playercard. Even for English.

[willtron]

But hey, EA Q3 earnings call on Tuesday so we'll hear the executives talk about underwhelming sales and maybe start talking to investors about how they're going to try to fix the game. Hopefully around that same time DICE will have a plan forward finally and will say something since coming back from the holidays.

Investors don't give a shit about the franchise. BF will move to Ripple Effect, DICE Swe becomes a support studio, Portal goes F2P is my predicition.

Depending what Ripple can do in a year will depend if BF gets canned or not.

[Edge-]

Investors don't give a shit about the franchise. BF will move to Ripple Effect, DICE Swe becomes a support studio, Portal goes F2P is my predicition.

Depending what Ripple can do in a year will depend if BF gets canned or not.

Your prediction is what all the current rumors are so it's fairly safe, but we'll see once they decide to say anything.

And investors do care. Sure it's not as key to EA's success as something like FIFA, but it's still a major launch of a tentpole franchise for them, one that comes out every 2 years or so. Missing sales targets on that is big, because those sales estimates factor into their forecasts and failure to reach those, even with an otherwise strong quarter, often results in share prices going down.

[willtron]

Your prediction is what all the current rumors are so it's fairly safe, but we'll see once they decide to say anything.

And investors do care. Sure it's not as key to EA's success as something like FIFA, but it's still a major launch of a tentpole franchise for them, one that comes out every 2 years or so. Missing sales targets on that is big, because those sales estimates factor into their forecasts and failure to reach those, even with an otherwise strong quarter, often results in share prices going down.

They care about the franchise as far as the share price going the correct direction. I can't remember which bank it is, but one of the american ones has 308k shares in EA, do you really think they care about BF?

[Edge-]

do you really think they care about BF?

The quality of it? No, not in the slightest.

It failing to meet sales targets potentially resulting in EA missing their expected revenue/share price targets? Yeah, they care about that shit. That's literally what these calls are for.

[Edge-]

https://www.ea.com/games/battlefield...-to-season-one

"This could have been an email"

Radio silence is over and...it's meaningless. Legit, this is a 100% pointless post that says nothing. No real apology or acknowledgement of the game being fucked and their silence being frustrating. No information on a new direction or plans they have. No information about anything at all, actually. Just, "we'll work with you to improve the game." and restating that stuff like the scoreboard and VOIP are on the way. At least the scoreboard will show deaths and some additional information because their UI designers don't know what they're doing and need to crowdsource designs/feedback from the community.

Only "new" information - Season 1 ain't happenin in March, it's delayed to "Summer", and if you bought a bundle that included S1 you get some cosmetics.

Exciting.

Man, as much as I want the game to actually improve I'm kinda getting a lot of value watching DICE implode as a developer as the studio regresses in seemingly every possible way with this installment.

[aevitas]

Man, as much as I want the game to actually improve I'm kinda getting a lot of value watching DICE implode as a developer as the studio regresses in seemingly every possible way with this installment.

Yeah it must be nice to see someone's passion burn to ashes.

It's not the developers, EA is notorious for completely destroying studio's and then shutting them down after a game failed. Do you really think DICE decided they wanted BF to become a hero shooter, or did EA demand it because hero shooters might make more money with cosmetics?

I don't know if you ever read the Kotaku articles from Jason Schreier, but as far as I'm aware almost every developer disagreed with what they were forced to do in games that failed hard.

EDIT: DICE of course has some blame but it's mostly the leadership, but these are probably deep enough in EA's butthole to see what their dinner was last night.

[Edge-]

It's not the developers, EA is notorious for completely destroying studio's and then shutting them down after a game failed. Do you really think DICE decided they wanted BF to become a hero shooter, or did EA demand it because hero shooters might make more money with cosmetics?

No, by all accounts most of this is on DICE. Earlier bombs from BioWare were almost purely on them vs. EA forcing them to do X or Y.

EA may have had a hand in the initial BR focus for the game, but everything since is DICE. Their own devs were shit-talking on social media about how the game was "way ahead of schedule" and how "trust us, fam" and other garbage. They knew the quality of the build. Not to mention DICE has apparently let Frostbite spin out of control to the point that nobody at EA likes working with it - even their own teams - and that DICE has shown zero awareness since the bad launch.

Yeah, I do think DICE wanted to change up the BF formula a bit when returning to a more modeern setting and tried things like specialists. No, they're not remotely "heroes" from a hero shooter. Yes, it does also track with many design decisions from previous games and even Battlefront 2, though they are getting worse.

I don't know if you ever read the Kotaku articles from Jason Schreier, but as far as I'm aware almost every developer disagreed with what they were forced to do in games that failed hard.

He hasn't written for Kotaku in like, 3 years dude. And IIRC both his pieces on Anthem and ME:A while at Kotaku primarily placed the blame for the games issues with BW management and leadership blowing years of work on nothing, not EA meddling. EA is shit in many ways and for a lot of reasons, but they're not always the bad guy all the time.

I'm hoping we get a piece from him or one of the other actual games journalists about how shit went so sideways during development and just what the fuck has happened internally at DICE since launch.

[Zorachus]

DICE can make up for this, make a brand new Battlefield 6 game, using the Unreal 5 engine, and have it be the true successor to BF4.

[Edge-]

https://twitter.com/battlefieldcomm/...60643945152512

In which DICE delays the scoreboard update and it will now be releasing in March, 5 months after launch.

At this point EA needs to take the game away from DICE and have the studio spend its full time trying to make Frostbite not total ass, and hand BF off to Ripple or another studio. This is beyond a joke.

And they should probably invest in some gamedev bootcamps for DICE, because it seems like they could use some training.

[Pratt]

Back at launch I swore I wouldn't get the game until they added a proper scoreboard but at 40% off I'm not sure I can hold out till March, which probably actually means more like May.

[Edge-]

Bonus points: They pushed a fairly big hotfix live today, seems like it was upwards of 1GB depending on platform.

What's in the patch? So far literally nobody knows because DICE hasn't posted any notes or given any indication that they will be posting notes.

I wonder if that's another thing they abandoned and have to figure out how to do from scratch all over again.

EA, seriously, give this game to PopCap or something. They've got experience workin on shooters.

- - - Updated - - -

FYI: If you're on PC in the EU, ignore the ToS update forcing you to waive your right to a refund after two weeks. It should not supersede EU consumer rights laws.

[Graden]

FYI: If you're on PC in the EU, ignore the ToS update forcing you to waive your right to a refund after two weeks. It should not supersede EU consumer rights laws.

Unfortunately, I have like 50 hours played time...there's no hope for me.

[Nutri]

DICE can make up for this, make a brand new Battlefield 6 game, using the Unreal 5 engine, and have it be the true successor to BF4.

Dice made the Frostbite engine. I highly doubt any game coming from Dice will be something else than Frostbite.
Next to that, the game being so poor isn't the fault of the engine used.