After all this time, DICE:
- cutting away at community servers (once a staple, now thrown aside for funneled matchmaking)
What's funny is that they introduced the RAS program on consoles, to where the matchmaking could've been entirely avoided. But Demize99 has a bug up his ass because "lol who uses server browsers, I DON'T!" when most of the community does to find populated servers quickly.
So they started to cut back on that to force people in the matchmaking.
- avoiding CTEs (having even less community engagement after recent shitshows)
Being fair and as a CTE person: The CTE was a disaster. They NEVER listened to minority mode opinions (me being a primary Rush or Obliteration player in 4, for instance) and instead listened to Youtubers like DannyonPC (*spit*), JackFrags, and others over those of us that are like "while this may work for Conquest, changing the balance here will fuck over Rush/Obliteration in some regards to balance." And the CTE community was already SMALL. So 1's CTE (in addition to the disaster that was it's launch and initial reception/balance) killed the CTE of that even further because "Why bother?"
- offering up non-existent anti-cheat systems, and non-existent team balancers
The Team Balancers in general fuck over people too much to where I can't be on board with that.
*Play for an hour, stomping the other side, suddenly they all leave before the winning objective blows*
YOU'VE BEEN TEAMBALANCED, GOOD LUCK!
#GeeThanksDICE
The issue is with leavers and the pub-stacks of clans. But that throws in the shitty matchmaking and not filtering out folks that have a full party (or 2-3 players) with the same clan-tag to where one side is 20 "[ABC]" or whatever clan-tag while the other side is public people that can't work as a team. It's like "what the fuck do you expect me (someone trying to play the objective) to do? I can't fight 5+ people for every 1 of me on this team because the rest of the team wants to snipe?"
The anti-cheat system is whatever. The game already had hackers with Punkbuster (which is shit, for the record: There's a reason a lot of game companies started to drop it around mid-2012) and FairFight was already useless since it only looks for KDR or whatever and doesn't actually LOOK at the processes/etc to ban with. But even before these, BF2 had hackers, so rent-a-server programs/admins needed to be in their servers/etc.
Which runs into another issue with RAS: The community is "toxic"/can't handle losses because "muh rank/stats" to where they kick people that are kicking their/clans asses to the point where the "team balancer" has to kick in [but doesn't because RAS turns that shit off or balances non-clan folks onto the other side] to make up for the fast losses because they're salty.
Honestly the series needs to:
-Drop the rent-a-server program or keep it and expand it
-Drop stats entirely. They're pointless e-wanking that does nothing for the "play the objective"/sandbox nature of the game. If we lose? So fucking what? It doesn't hurt your stats.
-Maybe have a "half the team can't be sniper" limit, which is something I LOATHE to avoid recommending (because then it becomes impossible for folks like ME that actually know how to use the class and spot folks/shoot priority targets) get fucked over because someone loads in faster than you/me and gets the slot before you
-Rebalance the classes or
-Allow you to actually steal health/ammo/grenades from folks. Something Hardline did right (thereby you could heal if the person was a complete idiot and wouldn't put down kit items), in allowing you "team play" even if the person that wasn't supporting you was a complete idiot.
-Get rid of the ammo requisition system: Nobody plays as a team, to where running back to the ammo boxes in V is an annoyance and takes you out of the front-line for longer than need be
-Make better sight of enemies to where they don't blend in (a problem in V)
-Have CTE go from Alpha to launch [and beyond] and include folks that play minority modes in addition to Conquest instead of listening to solely Conquest-only [majority mode] players to get a vast wealth of opinions
-Get Gordon Van Dyke, et. al. Bad Company and earlier folks back to DICE, which is impossible but at least get their consultation because DICE
Doesn't know why folks like Bad Company 2. Hint: Because it was fucking fun.
-Get rid of the progression system (goes with dropping the stats) or have the progression system, but have it be done pretty fast like Bad Company 2 [IIRC, BC2's can be done in 20-40 hours MAX and doesn't have gazillions of attachments]
-Balance the destruction (which they seem to have done pretty well IMO in 4-1-5)
-Balance the guns/perks (3's suppression issues, 4's... forgetting been a while, 1's Gas Grenades spam, 5's whatever-I-Never-Played-5-Past-The-Terrible-Beta)
I think chasing innovation kinda fucked them. They would be killing rn still if they had taken BF3 and just...CoD'd it. Little and incremental system changes on a year by year basis. Then maybe a bigger game/engine change every 3 or so years. Imagine instead of going for collapsing buildings and massive map changes they did a game with more realistic or detailed interiors? I think at it's core, the best aspect of BF is that it's a giant sandbox. Instead of always changing the sandbox, maybe just add more toys instead?
CoD'ing it isn't what the series fans want.
The Frostbite engine being made into a middleware fucked over DICE. I honestly feel if they didn't need to rework it for EA, we'd have had Frostbite 2 for 4 instead of them announcing "FB 3" for 4's release/redoing the engine after putting work into FB2.
Also they need to:
-Work on their fucking pipeline. The fact they can't port maps over to the next entry is DISMAL. Having to "redo/reimagine" the same fucking map (Caspian Border 3->4, Operation Metro 3->4->1[IIRC?]->5) is bullshit.
Imagine instead of going for collapsing buildings and massive map changes they did a game with more realistic or detailed interiors?
Or do both. But that requires performance-balancing act. I honestly like collapsing buildings [but it runs into destruction balance and having both sides be able to get around the map/have proper cover].
I think at it's core, the best aspect of BF is that it's a giant sandbox. Instead of always changing the sandbox,
And Bingo was it's name-o: That's exactly what Series fans know/want from the series.
maybe just add more toys instead?
SystemShockNah.wav
BC2's unlock system/toys were fine (Magnum Ammo and Body Armor aside). There's no need for gazillions of attachments. There IS a need for:
-Conquest
-Rush (though given DICE has nobody from BC1-2 left now a days... maybe not)
-Oblieration (best mode introduced in 4 and then forgotten because it was minority played [like 1-2% of the base played it because "LOL WHO WANTS TO BE A BLINKING LIGHT WITH THE BOMB I'M JUST GONNA SNIPE SINCE IT'S POINTLESS TO MOVE AROUND/BE A MOVING TARGET" (#REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE @ stupid fanbase)]
-Team Deathmatch
-Operations/Shock Operations (maybe, this is a mix of Rush/Conquest so could drop both of those modes and have this or drop this and have the two separated and distinct from each other)
Not keep adding more modes past launch that are only played for like a week max and then dropped (Chain-link, Frontlines, etc.)