The long wait is over. After months and months of waiting, I finally had the pleasure of playing Battlefield 2042 from 6th of October until today, as the open beta is closing down very shortly.
If you read my other post about Battlefield 2042, you'll see me commenting whether the game felt like Overwatch. After playing it, I can renege on these words and say that, it doesn't even manage to feel like Overwatch.
The Good
Graphics are really good. I expect them to have more fleshed out textures and better settings to tune it however you want when the game is released, the already beloved aspect of Battlefield, good graphics and big explosions are here. It is fun.
Alternative play styles, being able to call a robodog and run with it is perfect.
In-field weapon attachment changing, this is where I start to get a bit weirded out. It's not a bad feature per se, but I think it's too "janky" in a sense.
The Neutral
- 128 players, Orbital was a really terrible map to experience 128 players. The map is way too big and it feels like there is no action overall in most places since people just hop on to the higher places in terms of altitude and start sniping people with snipers, the map overall, felt dead to me. Hopefully, in other maps, 128 players can really be felt in both close quarters and long-range combat.
The Bad
Alright, strap in. Here we go.
Cameras for gunners in any vehicle you cannot really see anything, they wobble and shake like crazy. I believe this is mainly a bug, but still it's subpar.
Helicopter controls are... something out of this world. Who thought this was something usable? What was wrong with BF4's flight system for choppers? I still don't understand the reasoning for this change. Another annoying thing is while doing gun runs and flybys, the colour of the cockpit in between the third person and first person are vastly different. It's super hard to see any foe while in first person so you have to constantly switch to and fro as well as the crosshair in the middle of the screen not being as accurate as it's supposed to be, shooting out rockets from way below the crosshair in general. This is very clear especially if you are flying fast.
Sound design is horrible, makes it near impossible to hear anything other than your character. No proper spatial audio. Guns sound and feel like sponges, as opposed to actual guns whenever you fire.
Optimization, horrible. No matter which settings you play the game at, there is constant stutters every now and then, adding on to the fact that stutters cause jets and helicopters to "spaz out" and teleport.
Scoreboard, it is literally impossible to figure out what is what, both for the tab menu and the one you access by pressing ESC.
Squad system, seriously? Doesn't exist? For real? I can't create a squad and have my friends join me later on? No private squads?
Bullet travel, the bullets are SLOW. They are really slow. Especially on a map with long distances, you probably need to aim towards the ISS if you want to actually shoot someone. There is NO zeroing for some reason, why was that removed?!
Revive, my squadmate was shot and I wanted to revive him... perfect. Until I found out I cant. Because I have to hold E to revive him and as I hold E, I change my kit to whatever kit he has which interrupts the revive. This is especially annoying on places with little to no space, near walls etc. Where is my defib?
The UI -- it's basically this. A longer answer: The UI is very convoluted, it's confusing and unexplainable it's a mess all around with things being hidden/shown during various actions. The screen is full with lots of UI elements, when deploying, you do not have a camera that you did in Battlefield 4 nor can you easily deploy into vehicles, you have to first click a certain button to open up the vehicle tab, which in itself, gets bugged sometimes.
Specialists, with no proper spotting and literally everyone looking the exact same with no faction colours and uniform, leading to constant rages as you dump your magazines towards someone, who ends up being a friendly player so you just wasted almost all your ammo that you keep running out of. Since there is no teamplay and is definitely not encouraged by the game itself, you will never be able to properly find extra ammo. If you are in a vehicle, especially through the cockpit of a chopper or a jet, it is nearly impossible to see enemy infantry since you can't be sure if they're an enemy or not.
Networking/Netcode for some reason, even though I am from the EU, I was put in Chinese servers for the first few matches I joined, then onto NA servers for a while. Had to Quit > Rejoin until the game decided to put me on an EU server so I could play with an understandable ping as opposed to 300-500ms. Even when I am put into a server with 40 to 50ms latency, the gun shots do not register most of the time.
Alright, that was quite the long rant.
For a game that is supposed to be released in about a month, this is unacceptable. Most of the gameplay elements of the game is changed when there was no need to change it (especially coming from BF4) is a complete madness. Things improved over time and was really liked and accepted by the community, such as Battlefield V's awesome movement system was completely scrapped in this game.
In my opinion, the whole removal of classes and specialists is basically to sell microtransactions. Because as far as we know and we've been told is that there will be seasons and battle passes added every now and then and you have to buy them if you would like to unlock extra specialists that come with extra perks and gadgets.
I am happy that I did not preorder, and I am not planning to at all after seeing this beta. Unless they delay the release for at least 6 more months and work on the game itself using community feedback, this game is pretty much DoA.
Rant over, for real.