THE STATE OF BATTLEFIELD

THE STATE OF BATTLEFIELD
Articles
by Redd_Dragons, 12/19/13


It is safe to say we’ve been here before. Back when DLC was a new acronym, map packs were free and BC2 had cemented itself as our favorite free-time-waster.

The game was broken then too. Slugs were OP, the SV98 was the bane of many and it was Heavy Metal or bust. Then came BF3, where  you would fall through the map and get sucked into the pit of despair on Operation Metro, get killed by rookies running the latest IR scope on Damavand Peak and lose your shit as your teammate pointed his 16 billion candle-power tac-light at your retinas.

Has anything changed?


For almost three years I’ve been plugged in, helping create the “pulse” of the Battlefield community, watching validated, and sometimes overblown, anger slowly take over a once positive and inclusive community destined for greatness.

Painstakingly-crafted montages of amazing gameplay have been replaced by glitch and “troll” videos. Clans have disbanded and moved on to other games. Tips and Tricks have been replaced with overwhelming “sighs”. Community-driven Battlefield sites have closed up shop. And all of this is happening in what is arguably the second-biggest FPS on the planet.

So what are we to do? Do we “blackout” again, as folks begin to do that on their own? Can we rally the Community Managers, even though they aren’t given the tools to manage the community? Do we just go dark? Do we just give up?

2014 is on the immediate horizon. Isn’t it time we stop hoping for games to be finished at launch and start requiring it? When do we stop apologizing for others actions and start making waves with our wallets? Are we so afraid we’ll miss out on a day one DLC or the newest dog tag that we give EA access to our cash any time they ask for it?

I don’t know what the solution is yet, and I don’t know if I ever will but I do know I’m not having fun in a game that takes so much and gives so little. Until I can play a round without a bug causing me grief, I won’t be playing. I would rather spend that energy on something else during my free-time.

With that said, I want you to keep playing because I hope there are individuals in the community with the mental fortitude to tough it out. Hell, I want to keep playing, but I can’t right now for multiple reasons, and in the end it breaks my heart. I’ve given a lot to this community — helped others build it up from almost nothing — and I’m sick of seeing it rise up and slowly wither away time and time again.

If you’d like to join me on the battlefield you may just have to wait awhile.
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Reader comments so far

   JimmyTheSnake
   • 2 hours ago

   I'd like to think our previous efforts have had some sort of positive effect on the post-release "development" in the series, however, I feel like at this point, no matter how pro-active we've been or pleasantly responsive we are concerning bugs/fixes/patches, we're putting a lot of effort into something we shouldn't necessarily have to... If our opinions matter and we ALL want to see the game prosper (from both the gamer and developer standpoints), why is this series becoming progressively worse, more-so from a programming/technical standpoint?

   Yes we contribute ideas and implementations to game functionality, support DICE and encourage them in their creative process, but when it comes to these bugs (some recently game-breaking for me), how are we supposed to contribute? How are we supposed to correct "netcode" and programming/compatibility issues? Quite simply, we're not, it's a quality control issue. It's an issue of time vs. money that we DON'T get a say in. Some one, or entity, should be held responsible for the lack of quality control.

   The sooner the better too, I'd like to get back to being a gamer and not an unpaid game consultant
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   Christian Holzer
   • 2 hours ago
       −

   Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 should have never happened. Period.
   They are just mass products, quickly thrown on the market before CoD to earn on the initial sales and then move on to the next iteration.

   DICE would have been far better of doing Bad Company 3 instead, and then after that a "Battlefield 3" that actually DESERVES THAT NAME and makes the original, core franchise (niche) fans happy!
   No Sp, just MP, focused on teamwork, skill and tactics like THE OLD GAMES!

   Instead, DICE fucked everything up. Essentially killed the original community, lowering the threshold with every iteration of the game.
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