Battlefield 2042

Tried the trial of this today with a mate, gotta say this needs A LOT of work, I have a Series S but for my mate I dl the og Xbox version and Christ, is it a severely gimped game. Had people walking through the floor and the reload prompt was stuck on my screen amongst other bugs. In this landscape of free multiplayer experiences especially as a product without even a campaign I can't really say if it'll last the distance. On a positive note Portal was a night and day experience it was fun, stable and stuff just worked plus it was felt good to have classes. If they flesh out that mode more I could see it being the better experience overall especially as I can't abide the specialist system.

I probably will, I've got a fair amount of time on the trial left still.

This is from the guy who has been leaking a lot of the BF information over the course of the game's troubled development. No idea about his credentials, so I'd obviously take some of it with a pinch of salt, but there's some interesting information/speculation in here about what went so badly wrong (though he seems a little uncomfortable talking on video and the delivery is a bit stilted):

Oh the pandemic did, of course, have a massive effect, as can be seen elsewhere across the industry.

Here, though, I think more is being made of the general development direction prior to 2020, the changing of the guard in terms of the dev team and the publisher's vision for the franchise, and the various pivots and cuts that had to be made along the way due to a myriad of factors (the pandemic obviously being a big one).

I've clocked nearly 90 hours on it, so I agree they've definitely got something right a lot of room for improvement, though. And if I keep getting the progression bug, rolling back my kills/assists, I may have to cry in a dark corner.

Nah, I reckon that the devs were just wanking off at home and forgot all about stuff like scoreboards, voip, and joining friends in games.

Absolutely! A baffling decision.
As for the Tom Henderson stuff, well, anyone could guess that stuff and join up the dots, I’m not sure how much info he really has. Seems like a Jason Schreier wannabe to me.
Anyway, still playing, still enjoying!

I’ve got shedloads to unlock weapon wise. I think I’ve only used a sniper for maybe one match. I don’t know if I’ve ever used a shotgun. It’s all good. Still having fun but I don’t like the nerfs to vehicles as I think it’s swung too far the other way now (of course). I don’t get why the ranger was nerfed too. He was useful and now he’s pretty shit. He wasn’t causing massive problems.
I fucking hate Sundance with her wing suit and bag ‘o magic grenades.

Sorry just seen this. Well, I'm on a mid-tier PC and the decreased player count/tighter maps (on Conquest; I haven't tried Breakthrough) definitely helps the overall performance and I seemed to encounter far fewer instances of severe FPS drops or stutter. That being said, I did only play a couple of rounds, so not the most robust case study.

There are, unfortunately, still many many performance issues. Had a really weird one for a game or two last night (back in the AOW 128 mode) where I was encountering frequent 'hard' freezes for 5-10 seconds, which basically made the game unplayable. I think it was tied to some server issue, as when I came back later the freezing had stopped but the lag and seemingly buggy hit req remained, but I hadn't ever seen that particular problem before.

Thanks bud. It's going f2p on PC atm so I might jump back in to see what has improved. My PC isn't that great either (2600x, rtx 2060 and 16gb ram) but I really want to play 2042 as the era in BFV isn't to my liking despite it playing/performing very well.

Does BFV perform well now? I stuck with BFV for longer than I probably should, as I thought the core on foot game play was great. I just couldn't take the completely erratic performance (and the cheaters on PC that seemed to be in every other match). I would be getting 100+ FPS on one map and then suddenly barely 40 on the next. Settings appeared to make no difference and even when I upgraded to 2080 Super it would randomly struggle for seemingly no reason. This seemed to get worse with each patch that came out and I eventually gave up on it.

Dgzter's mention of freezes for a few seconds also sounds similar to what I experienced in V.

I do think one of BF's biggest problems is the Frostbite engine. Reports from devs of using it are regularly negative too. The sooner they ditch that the better.

I like Breakaway. Also Manifest. Most maps have good areas but do feel quite separated. There’s a lot of areas that have hidden routes that turn out superfluous. Lifts and tunnels into basements for example.
Still working on weapons and vehicles. How some people have tier 1 in various things is beyond me. Clearly these people have no life. I’ve played Falck almost exclusively and am still just about halfway to T1 in revives and heals.

Yeah, the PC performance and particularly CPU optimization is still pretty ass, unfortunately. I just play with absolutely everything on low now, which makes it bearable at least.

I tend to only play 128 Conquest mind, so can't really speak for performance on Breakthrough.

re: Specialists. I've just fallen into the habit of only playing Sundance; the wingsuit special just makes traversing the larger Conquest maps so much less tedious and provides some pretty cool options for flanking etc. The one thing I would say with regard to how the new specialist system and customizable loadouts are potentially impacting the way people approach games of Conquest is that there is very little traditional squad play. I'll be honest and say that I simply don't even glance at my squad's positioning or specialist/loadout composition anymore; when it comes to redeploying the squad is basically spread all over any given map as people are just off doing their own solo things. I'm not really complaining, as I effectively just kit myself out with the weapons/gadgets I want and then go where the action is chasing kills and playing whatever objective. The wider faction/team play is still there, of course, but the actual squads seem irrelevant now.

Played a bit more, although still not huge amounts. I'm increasingly confused as to the absolute hate that this game has managed to generate and have had an enjoyable time everytime I've sat down to play.

The maps as a whole seem to be pretty good. They are fairly sameish and none really stand out, but within each there is a lot of variety, with some nice open areas for vehicle fighting and more enclosed parts for some close quarters infantry fighting. The larger player count definitely feels like a good thing to me, making this larger maps work quite well. Take a look at 32vs32 on Hamada in BFV, where you could spend your time just jumping around empty points to recapture. By comparison, here you are pretty much always going to have to battle for a point.

Similarly, we have an increase of vehicles around at a time. The last couple of BFs in particular felt like they were constantly trying to restrict the number of vehicles in play, often only letting 1 or 2 out along with 1 or 2 air units. Have that 1 person on your team that grabs a tank right at the start and sits it out of the way on a hill for the entire game and there was never any chance anyone else will get one. Not sure on the numbers here, but it no longer seems to be an issue and the start of the game you will see a whole attack force of vehicles rolling out. It feels so much better and like an actual combined arms battle.

The specialists seem mostly fine and the abilities aren't crazy powerful. I've felt mostly comfortable using the medic specialists, although I've also liked Boris with his sentry gun. I did briefly try the hacker guy yesterday and hacked many things, but wasn't really sure what I was achieving. It feels like they have been fairly subdued with the abilities and none really standout as gaming changing, which is probably for the best.

The selection of weapons and gadgets is a bit lower than in previous games, although I would say that they are all pretty unique. I've still got quite a few to unlock, but they actually look to serve their own purpose. Definitely moved away from the hundreds of basically the same weapons, which isn't a problem at all.

General movement and combat feels pretty good. I personally prefer the weapons you get in historic FPSs, but for a modern shooter this feels pretty good. I've not tried the snipers much or the shotguns, but the LMGs and assault rifles all are enjoyable to use. Vehicles are also nice to control, although I haven't tried jets yet. My one time in a chopper ended badly, so still need to test those properly.

My only real downside with the game is the Portal mode, which isn't very well implemented. I don't care much about the custom games, as I was fully expecting them to be mostly garbage, but I do like being able to play the older maps on rush or conquest through there. If I was in charge of the game, first thing I would do is to make sure there was a dedicated team who was responsible for porting over old maps. I would be splitting off those legacy modes into its own section away from Portal. Honestly, I would happily pay for DLC that brought over the maps.

Not played Hazard Zone, but that looks to be a mode that isn't really viable unless you have a full squad, which I'm unlikely to have.

So, definitely doesn't seem the dumpster fire that people are painting this to be. My main concern would be content and how long what is there will actually hold my interest. I've only played 6 hours and could see myself playing many more, but not sure how much I will be playing by the time the next content drops, which isn't supposed to be for another 3 months or something. Still, it seems like a good base to be working from.

It's not 25% on steam reviews bad, but it's also an example of a game in which every single element has been done better in previous installments. It's just messy.

To me, the maps just feel empty. Like acres of sparse, cover free space between POIs that are little larger in most cases than in 64 player battlefield. They don't utilise the extra player count well, because you rarely get in fights and notice the increased player count. The multiple-flags per sector are the best ones because they keep the action going at a reasonable pace usually. Single flag sectors are essentially dead the whole match, and you spend so long moving between them often, especially if vehicle airdrops are taken. Should have had maps that weren't quite such a step up in size, with fewer sectors and make sure they're all multi-flag ones. 

Renewal is worst for it, there's what feels like miles of empty, dead map space that just isn't used in conquest at all. You have B1 just miles away from anything else, and halfway between it and C1 is a big complex of buildings dying for a flag that just doesn't get used. A1 and A2 meanwhile are also just miles of no mans land from C1. Similar story with E1, it's just... there. Meanwhile stuff like hourglass feels hopelessly disconnected for the most part, the stadium works nicely but everything other than the sector immediately connected to it just feels like it's dropped into the map with no thought for how it connects elsewhere. E1/2/3 are cool but it's just a massive dead end in the map. C1 feels isolated as a result and so that whole half the map might as well not exist after the start of the game. It's just the line from E1 to B1 through to A1/2/3.

Because of all that I didn't even notice the increase in vehicles. The fights don't really feel any bigger, and the increase in vehicle numbers is basically in line with the increase in map size, so you see about the same number in any fight as you would anyway. The numbers are bigger but the density is the same.

Specialists just don't really add anything. They don't break anything but they're a solution to a gameplay problem that doesn't exist, and mostly just feel as though they are there for driving microtransactions of skins etc. Not to mention, endless "showoff" screens rather than focusing on getting you in the game.

The combat itself has been adjusted, but at launch it was one of the worst playing shooters I've ever experienced, partly due to the bugged insane movement penalties where bullets would always come out of your gun at a 45 degree angle, but you could also could have a DMR, be prone and watch as your shots just go in random directions. Was dreadful. 

Of course, it is still often fun because the proven formula is still in there. It's just executed in a worse way than usual. At best it's just kinda OK. And a massive missed opportunity.