My thoughts after a good amount of hours playing.
- It feels really arcade-like. I don't know how else to put it. BF1 and V were very gritty and rough feeling, like you felt like you were in the battle. I miss that in this game so far. Those previous mentioned games feel more realistic and immersive.
- The audio is way too boring. The voice lines are cringy and quiet. BFV's really felt like a commander was screaming in your ear. Also when just running around, there's barely any sound. Just faint gunshots in the distance. Explosions get cut out and air vehicles are basically just silent. The music from BF1 and V are what made the games amazing to me. We barely have any game music here.
All these things make it feel like you're just playing alone. I don't feel like I'm playing an online game with other people. Most of my time has been spent running to an objective, maybe seeing 2 or 3 enemies on the way and either dying or being too far to engage. I don't have the feeling that there's a massive battle going on around me, because there just isn't.
Last thing I want to point out. I don't know if this is because it's early acces, but I feel like I'm only playing against bots. Pretty much everyone just uses the standard AR and I haven't even seen a single sniper yet.
The gun play itself is also quite mediocre at best. Again, the sounds are just not good in my opinion. Same thing for the rocket launch. There's no music or announcer or whatever to indicate something is about to go down. I've seen it a couple times now and tbh, if you don't pay attention to it, you won't even notice it.
This is just a beta and I still have full trust in Dice. Immersion is for me priority number 1 and with the way the game is right now, it just isn't there.
Where is the scoreboard? I played a good amount of games now and I cannot find it. Relating to that, why do we get thrown back to the main menu the second the games finished? No podium like BFV, or a scoreboard overview, nothing. The HUD and UI in general is just plain garbage. I cannot see where any objectives are and I'll often just walk around aimlessly. There's also no sense of competitiveness. In previous installments I'd be rushing to objectives, healing teammates and really playing for the objective. There's absolutely none of that right now. The game feels like a cheap rip off and just soulless.
Performance wise it's not the best either, but I'll cut Dice some slack since this is still a beta. I feel like I should mention it though. There are a lot and I mean a lot, of visual and graphical bugs. The elevator in the big tower is glitchy as hell and when you see other players land, they'll merge into the ground before returning to normal. I also wonder how many frames I'm getting. I'm playing on a PS5 and it doesn't feel like much more than 40 or 50. That has to change.
Another thing I wish they hadn't done is the new classes system. The old class system identified and differentiated the series from other FPS. Why would they change that to a system that has been heavily criticised by countless other games? I really don't see the appeal in playing as a super soldier instead of a true soldier, among other soldiers identified by their class (medic, scout, assault and support). It's especially stupid when you play as like Boris the Destroyer whilst there are 30+ other Boris the Destroyers on the map.
The issue that come with this is that everyone looks the same. Battlefield always made the players compremise classes for weapons or med pack/ammo etc. This way there was rarely one class that was super dominent. Now everyone will just use the meta class, as there are no weapons restrictions per class. This change really pisses me off, also because there's just no way to fix it at this late stage of developement. We just have to hope this system doesn't return in future titles...
I'm actually getting nervous and almost scared for launch. If this is really it, I'll be so so disappointed. It'll be Cyberpunk all over again. I'd much rather have this game delayed again, I don't really matter for how long, it could be March or June, if that means we get the game in a really good state, significantly better than this beta, I'm willing to wait. Curious to see how Dice will fix this.
Thanks for listening to my essay.
My advice? Just don't read comments/opinions/reviews try 10 hour trial from EA Access (free with Gamepass, and on Playstation/PC without gamepass it is very cheap for a month) try it for yourself and decide if you want to play it or not.
