There’s been a constant struggle between EA and the Battlefield community ever since Battlefield V was announced. Sure, the whole faff surrounding women at war and customisation was excessive, but the community’s issues do extend to the actual game itself. The latest little spark has been the reveal of Battlefield V’s weapons and vehicles.
The key problem that the community have is that a number of these guns were previously in Battlefield 1. Of the 30 weapons that will be in Battlefield V at launch, 7 of these are carried over from the last game– credit to jman014 for the comparison – and there’s not necessarily the historical grounding to back up their inclusion. A gun like the Selbstalder 1916 was a prototype during WWI and only 1000 were made.
DICE’s counter for this stems from gameplay and time period. Guns can be adapted and specialised in a different way, while weapon handling and recoil is calculated more accurately in BFV. The Tides of War seasonal content is also planned to be a thematic way of doling out new content, and they’re focussing on the start of the war, though that hasn’t stopped a number of later guns and American weapons sneaking in.
I understand the initial reaction – but consider these weapons are not remotely close to playing the same way given new gunplay direction – they feature specializations & part based customization. We felt these weapons were needed at the start of the war, given usage at the time
— David Sirland (@tiggr_) October 2, 2018
In many ways, it’s yet another repeat of the reaction to when COD reused a warehouse building model and motion capture, and when these are all real world weapons, there’s only so much leeway that DICE have. That said, there’s an understandable wariness surrounding the Tides of War and whether that’s coming at the expense of the game on day one (not to mention the snails pace of updates to Battlefront II).
Battlefield V will launch with eight maps compared with nine in Battlefield 1 and 4, ten in Battlefield 3 and a whopping twelve in Bad Company 2 (some of which came from Bad Company). Thankfully, DICE have reversed course on Grand Operations mode, which will now be in the game at launch, but for single player fans there will only be four Episodes at launch, with another coming after release, compared to five and its prologue in Battlefield 1.
The jury should still be out on all of this for now, but for a game that’s hoping to keep its community engaged and active, it feels like there’s a worrying disconnect between developers and fans right now.
