"The most critical thing is optimization."
Although I still habitually play one or two "Battlefield 2042" (hereinafter referred to as "2042") every night, whether it is from the discussion atmosphere in the friendly crowd or the relevant posts on the forum, I can very clearly perceive that the popularity of this game that has just been released for a long time and still has residual warmth is rapidly declining.
In recent days, there have also been rumors of amazing discounts in offline stores.
Graph source network, fidelity
It's not just my personal feelings. Although it once won consecutive titles on the Steam Hot Weekly List at the time of its release, and received no small discounts in both Epic and Steam promotions, the number of people online in 2042 has slipped quite quickly: as of the time of publication, Steam has only 6800 people online. This figure does not count online for other platforms, but considering that "2042" has been released for less than two months, it is really a bit of a shame.
But the great man said it well, there is no voice without investigation. I don't like some of the discussion atmosphere of listening to the wind is rain, and I just happen to be a player who has been playing intermittently since the "2042" B test experience, and at this node, I also want to talk about my real play experience during this time.
Of course, due to the fact that I have more games to play in my leisure time, the time left for Battlefield 2042 is actually only about fifty hours (B test played for about ten hours, but not counting inside), because it is a player who focuses on infantry combat, except for greedy rapid deployment, there is almost no experience of the vehicle system.
You can say that this time is not enough to play this game, but I can now break through the offense to get an average of 30 kills per game, and when I play blindly, I can also ensure that the KD is higher than 1, which is basically more enjoyable to catch fries.
What changes has Battlefield 2042 made since its official release?
Since the launch of "2042", it has received a total of 3 larger updates, which are mainly for bugs in the game, and some adjustments to some development teams that are unreasonable - such as increasing the reload time for the NTW-50 so that its anti-vehicle efficiency does not exceed the RPG.
Unfortunately, the 3.1 update has also been a long time ago, and it seems that employees have to wait for the Christmas holiday
There's also some new content that wants to extend the length of the game for players. For example, the new weekly missions, the weekly rotation of the portal mode gameplay, and the 64-player battlefield mode.
In my opinion, one of the most effective changes is undoubtedly the adjustment of the stronghold in the breakthrough mode. When it first went live, Break Through Mode had some confusing stronghold settings — like the roof of the last war zone of the hourglass. The attackers could only reach this place by elevators and cables on the roof of the building next door, and the defenders could place airdrop vehicles on the roof with a big swing, and rely on the formed anti-aircraft forces to completely disintegrate the attackers' only means of attack.
After the update, Battlefield 2042 canceled these high-rise points, so that the game experience of the attacker and defender returned to a relative balance, or most of the time, the attacker who dared to fight and rush was actually easy to win the game.
Now it's harder for the defender to win
To be sure, this series of changes does solve a lot of problems, and after three large-scale fixes and updates, the current experience of "2042" can be called good. But these contents, although they can stabilize the current players in the game, can not recover the declining prestige of "2042" in the field of public opinion - players who have AFK will not care about these bugs and unreasonable designs that have been fixed, and they want to see new content that they are interested in rather than tinkering.
Of course, there is a more important issue, which will be mentioned below.
Is it really a failure to eat chicken and drive it out?
This is a highly discussed argument in the anecdote after the official launch of "2042": "Battlefield 2042" was originally planned to be made into a game of eating chicken + escaping from Tarkov, and when this plan was shelved, the development team rushed to make a traditional battlefield in a hurry.
At present, it seems that this argument is becoming more and more true in the field of public opinion, so that when I was chatting with my friends one night, some people used it as a reason for the rottenness of "2042".
But this "eat chicken to build a failure to turn the traditional battlefield" statement, I searched the Internet for a long time and did not find evidence. Most of the rumors actually came from an IGN contributor named Tom Henderson.
In his articles (or videos, both anyway), he analyzes the dynamics of DICE and EA's Battlefield, but he himself says that the conclusions he draws are based on his own inferences. As an unincorporated employee, it is naturally impossible for him to get the so-called "real hammer". Obviously neither can we.
However, when most players believe this statement, whether it is really or not has become less important. Importantly, the gameplay of Crisis Mode is vague and the mechanics are too complex, resulting in people not showing even the slightest interest in Crisis Mode.
Veteran battlefield players who agree with this argument are listing the parts that "Battlefield 2042" lacks compared to previous battlefield series one by one, trying to confirm the part of "rush work".
These entries are not listed in a day – after the initial wave of experience, more and more contrasts and omissions are like straws constantly pressing on the back of "2042", making people's disappointment more and more increasing. In fact, a new model that makes people less interested does "replace" the details of the battlefield that players are familiar with, which is like you go to KFC on Thursday to happily consume an 8-pack egg tart, but this package is replaced by 2 egg tarts plus two large boxes of fries, and you don't really want to eat fries.
An unbalanced expert experience
It may be that the legends of Apex Legends have gained good popularity among the community, and in Battlefield 2042, the player's role has changed from a soldier to a famous expert for the first time. You can customize their tactical suits and helmets, and you can check out the backstory of each expert in the collected avatar cards.
The expert system brings a unique skill mechanic. I think that's something to be encouraged. But it also makes some old players in the series feel uncomfortable - for example, due to the small number of experts and the relationship between too few personalized costumes at this stage, players will see "clones" in the squad interface relatively frequently.
And the experts who launched it, how to say it - as far as my aesthetic standards are concerned, their designs pay too much attention to the "authenticity" of the human design, and the fun filling is relatively small, which seems decent and somewhat mediocre. And if you want to get the love of players and achieve a certain spread in the community, it is not enough to be "real".
Pixiv may not be a sufficiently objective reference carrier, but there are only 4 "2042" works on Pixiv, and there are no fan creations of experts, which can also reflect the dilemma of experts in the creator community to a certain extent. They may be attractive, but players don't get the brilliance of these experts.
On the other hand, although in the game environment of the big battlefield, the expert balance problem of "2042" will not affect the player's game experience as clearly as "Overwatch", but it still determines the horizontal playability of the game - for example, if you are tired of playing and want to change to an expert cool or something.
After a certain period of time, the expert ability of "2042" was screened to a certain extent, and soon under the results of the player's voting with their feet, there was a very obvious trend.
In terms of the number of players, the Pharr doctors and angels who can achieve self-sufficiency occupy the largest number of players.
The second echelon is Mackay and Sun Dance, two experts who are very mobile, and once the battlefield is in an area with complex terrain, they can significantly surpass other experts. The most noteworthy of these is the Sun Dance, as long as there is a tall tower or tall building near the stronghold, the Day Dance can rely on the flying squirrel suit to quickly reach any area around it, quickly cut into the weak rear of the enemy, and even can make a cameo bomber drop a scattering grenade during the taxi, which is very strong.
Another expert on the outside is scanning Gokaspa. Basically, you only need to find a safe place to squat pit, you can quickly start brushing assist rubbing experience, and all used is good.
Compared with the above five popular experts, the remaining experts are either not interesting enough, or relatively weak, or because of the limited use of the situation, the appearance rate is much lower in comparison.
The experts who often show their faces on the squad checkout page are very telling
The urgent problems to be solved...
The gameplay issues are all secondary – although I'm saying this with a bit of a "leave the facts alone". But here, I would like to quote a reason why IGN gave a very low rating to games such as Predator in the early years:
These games have serious bugs that can cause them to run unsmoothly and can't even ensure a smooth play environment for players.
In my opinion, this is probably the biggest sticking point in Battlefield 2042 — at least on the PC side. The silent majority probably chose to leave because of this.
Even though it was updated several times and the gameplay was patched, it still didn't solve the problem of fluency. My play machine configuration can basically meet most of the PC game needs (10 generation i7 + 6900xt + 32GB 3200 memory), but after the "2042" special effects, the frame rate can still only be maintained at 70 ~ 110 frames, and this frame number is not stable, there will be a sharp drop and stuttering, playing the feeling of stumbling is quite obvious. In FPS games with similar graphics, what I can get is an extremely stable and flowing game experience. This can only be understood as the cost of the Frost engine is still very lacking in the necessary polishing.
What is more ridiculous is that I don't know if it is to imply that the player's fluency problem cannot be solved in the short term, "2042" also added a 64-person battlefield mode after the update.
It is also difficult for me to accept that there is a very serious stutter in the first 5 minutes of the first game of the game every day, basically any action must be illuminated once, as if the accompanying animation of these actions is loading on the spot. As well as the fact that there is still a high probability of archive loss, occasionally you need to reload the tutorial when logging in, and you need to completely re-open it.
Honestly, any substantive update to the game's content is less important than "being able to keep it fun". If the team at 2042 still wants to make the game better, I really want them to push the envelope.
I want it to be "the future is promising"
I still think people love Battlefield. So when "2042" was first released, many people had a whole list of friends playing the game, so you will see a lot of players who are disappointed in "2042" will choose to go back to "Battlefield 1" or "Battlefield 5".
The appearance of such a satirical work as "Battlefield Clown 2042" is no different - there is no huge sense of gap, and people simply do not bother to ridicule and ridicule.
I can understand all too well the anticipation and disappointment that people feel before and after the release of 2042. The battlefield series experience is unforgettable, where the balance of heroes becomes less important, cooperation or lone wolf, can be done at will, after getting used to small-scale, fast-paced PVP battles, the multiplayer experience of Battlefield can really make people feel a rare sense of freedom and comfort - at least, I don't care about my average damage and KD as much as I did when I played Apex Legends.
This is also the main reason why I wanted to write the "DLC" of this review article. I still hope that 2042 can get a chance to nirvana in the future, and don't let those players who are now active in Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 be disappointed.