Has Battlefield Died?

[Bravo Company]

So, I've been in the mood to play a respawn online military shooter. I play counter-strike and team fortress 2 but I want to play something a little quicker pace. I have Battlefield 3 and the back to karkland dlc; I mosey my way over to the battlelog thingy and see the servers, I set my filters to my preferred game settings (hardcore, 64 players, with the dlc I have) aaaannndddd nothing. So I broaden my search to just games in North America aaaaaaannnndddd 5 servers with people playing.

"Okay, maybe everyone is playing BF4, I'll buy it because it should be fairly cheap right now, but first I'll check the battlelog thingy"

So I head to the BF4 battlelog and decide to just see North America servers to find....7

"Well, I really don't want to play Payday 2 Hardline, but I wonder what the server population is"

Hardline has a reasonable server population, but I don't want to play cops and robbers plus I don't know if anyone will be playing that game 3 months from now.


My only conclusion is that battlefield died when BF4 launched. I was disappointed with BF3 (for a multitude of reasons)so I didn't bother with BF4 but I read that it had a poor launch, I've seen that Dice has been patching and releasing stuff so I expected more than just 4 servers with population. I mean....CSS still has 8k+ people playing at any given time. What happened?

 

[theSovietConnection]

I no longer have BF3 installed, so I can't actually say for certain, but I do remember reading something earlier that there was some issues with the Battlelog system recently. Could just be people aren't on it because they don't realise the system is back online yet.

 

[Aerosteam]

Such a shame. I really wanted a sequel for Bad Company 2...

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

Well, hardcore may be your problem. I have found plenty of servers for 64p conquest when I just checked now. Naturally not all servers are necessarily going to be filled when you have time to play so that may be a factor. I think you must be having issues with either the time of day when you search or search criteria themselves.

Battlefield has not died by any means, but I would say these last few years have tarnished its reputation somewhat.

 

[Skops]

That's funny, cause when I look at BF4stats.com I see nearly 10k online on PC right now. Hardline doesn't even have 2K...

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Problem is you're looking for hardcore. A lot of BF players don't play Hardcore, they play vanilla.

Battlefield 3 is mainly played for the default maps, like Norshahr Canals and Damavand Peak. It's got a moderately dedicated community, especially since they have had it for discounted or free a few times in the past.

Battlefield 4 has a fairly large community playerbase, especially since DICE LA just announced they're releasing a ton of free content (including maps and weapons) in apology for DICE Stockholm's frankly terrible handling of the game on launch and up until Naval Strike's release. I still think it's one of the best modern FPSs you can play, regardless of the unforgivably unreliable Frostbite engine and the game's lower tickrate. Tons of people still are all over that game, even though it has practically no future in competitive due to its unreliable engine.

Battlefield Hardline is failing hard on PC but is staying alive on next gen consoles solely because there's not many other games that next gen consoles have. I have around 400 hours in BF4 and I absolutely, absolutely despise Hardline, uninstalled it within a week of playing the release, because of how Visceral is handling the game's egregious weapon balancing and gameplay killers. The multiplayer modes are fun and unique, but Operator is horrifyingly overpowered and there is close to no reason why you would play anything else, and it really makes the game suffer, and it really sucks that Visceral has done very little over the past three months to address this. I would entirely suggest buying BF3 or BF4 multiple times and gifting them to strangers rather than picking up Hardline, it's simply a lesser game with balance that really boggles all logic.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I never get why people want to play Hardcore in shooters because it actually doesn't make it more realistic. You can already kill someone in a game (with normal health) faster than in real life even though it takes more bullets to kill because aiming is so much easier even with a controller let alone a KB/M. Hardcore just makes the game less skill based when you can spray and land a few bullets for a kill instead actually having to aim and stay on the target for at least a little bit. Overall, it just makes the game more campy and can easily unbalance certain guns like SMGs can kill much easier at range with lower health. I don't really have issue with the other things Hardcore disables. But, what's the fun in playing a game where you'll actually die quicker than you would in real life?

 

[Bob_McMillan]

A Battlefield thread? It must be my birthday.

Usually when people ask I say that BF4 is my first BF game, but that's not true, I have literally played all the BF games ever released. BF4 is just the first I have played online.

Anyway, I think Hardcore has never been popular. Only snipers play on that mode. Its the only mode where they're worth anything.

You probably just caught BF4 on an off day. It happens. One day there are no servers and it's really laggy, another day servers are so full you can't get into them.

Hardline failed because of three reasons: 1) It's a copy and paste of Battlefield 4 2) It's a bad copy and paste of BF4 3) It's balance is crap. If they had foregone the campaign and focused on the multiplayer, then the game could have been cheaper and actually worth the money.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I never get why people want to play Hardcore in shooters because it actually doesn't make it more realistic. You can already kill someone in a game (with normal health) faster than in real life even though it takes more bullets to kill because aiming is so much easier even with a controller let alone a KB/M. Hardcore just makes the game less skill based when you can spray and land a few bullets for a kill instead actually having to aim and stay on the target for at least a little bit. Overall, it just makes the game more campy and can easily unbalance certain guns like SMGs can kill much easier at range with lower health. I don't really have issue with the other things Hardcore disables. But, what's the fun in playing a game where you'll actually die quicker than you would in real life?

A lot of shooters should rework their entire gunplay design.

Assualt Rifles aren't fucking machine guns Devs. You don't go around spraying and firing full auto with them. There is a reason half of the weapons in your games are called semi-automatic rifles. How about we have a game where you actually use firearms like they're designed and not require half a clip to take down a single person?

There are almost literally billions of mil-sims out there. The gameplay I've seen is crazy, they really do have massicve amounts of recoil. I don't know why you would want to have that kind of gameplay in Battlefield though, as much as BF fans want to believe it, Battlfield isn't a sim.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I never get why people want to play Hardcore in shooters because it actually doesn't make it more realistic. You can already kill someone in a game (with normal health) faster than in real life even though it takes more bullets to kill because aiming is so much easier even with a controller let alone a KB/M. Hardcore just makes the game less skill based when you can spray and land a few bullets for a kill instead actually having to aim and stay on the target for at least a little bit. Overall, it just makes the game more campy and can easily unbalance certain guns like SMGs can kill much easier at range with lower health. I don't really have issue with the other things Hardcore disables. But, what's the fun in playing a game where you'll actually die quicker than you would in real life?

From what I've heard from my friends that stuck around with Battlefield after BF2, Hardcore is essentially the way that they can continue playing the games in as close to the style of BF2 as possible. Basically, a lot of fans, particularly those who started at BF2 rather than Bad Company, were put off by a lot of what DICE was planning on doing BF3, most notably adding regenerating health and regenerating armor. In a game that had classes designed to, at least in part, deal with keeping other people's health up or vehicle's armor up, this was seen as a way of further reducing the significance on classes that focused less on being lethal to the other team and more on being helpful to your own team. Now I personally never got a chance to play Hardcore before dropping BF3 because I just didn't like it, but most of my friends exclusively played Hardcore simply because it (mostly) fixed a lot of the problems the BF2 community had with BF3.

After that, it depends on the game. Some people perhaps, you know, just enjoy the way things flow differently as people adapt to having less health. Some people enjoy the less cluttered HUD. Some people actually like the thrill of knowing it takes so little to be killed but also may enjoy taking others down very quickly. Yeah, there are people that do think its more realistic, but for a lot of people, it is just that what they find fun in their games is different than what you do. That's why some games offer both options: Because different people get enjoyment from different things. And if done properly (e.g. CoD4), both modes are balanced well enough that players feel free to choose their preference and large communities build around both modes.

Assualt Rifles aren't fucking machine guns Devs. You don't go around spraying and firing full auto with them. There is a reason half of the weapons in your games are called semi-automatic rifles. How about we have a game where you actually use firearms like they're designed and not require half a clip to take down a single person?

Spoiler: Nope, can't resist!

 

[Wasted]

The Hardcore filter may be the reason you are having trouble finding server. It lowers TTK on all weapons and essentially breaks the weapon balancing because of it. Personally I feel hardcore makes the game too easy and frustrating since camping and "whoever sprays first wins" are rewarded greatly.

 

[baddude1337]

as much as BF fans want to believe it, Battlfield isn't a sim.

Well, unless you install Project Reality, a mod for Battlefield 2. Plays like a mix between standard Battlefield and Arma. It has it's own servers since the BF 2 servers shut down, and there's usually a fair few people playing. It's quite high skill and teamwork is essential for the online though. I just play with bots myself, which you can have around 100 of per map.

But yes, vanilla Battlefield remains firmly in arcade-y shooter territory. As for why you couldn't find servers, well, not a huge amount of people stick around playing an older game when a newer title comes out. I did have fun with BF3 on Xbox, but EA really killed it with a lot of gun nerd patches, and the absolutely toxic admins when they introduced rented servers, who would boot you for insanely petty reasons. Funny most dedicated servers disappeared around that time too.

 

[fix-the-spade]

"Okay, maybe everyone is playing BF4, I'll buy it because it should be fairly cheap right now, but first I'll check the battlelog thingy"

Xbox version maybe?

On PC there are plenty of Bf3 and 4 servers everywhere except Asia, Hardline still has a highish number of servers on the Xbone/PS4 but is dead as a Dodo everywhere else (2'213 players on PC right now, in the world).

As for what happened, EA frantically monetises everywhting and splits the player base again and again, so 200'000 players are split between three games, three season passes and possibly eight DLC packages if they were buying separately. Versus Counter Strike's 'buy game, get game' pricing strategy.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

From what I've heard from my friends that stuck around with Battlefield after BF2, Hardcore is essentially the way that they can continue playing the games in as close to the style of BF2 as possible. Basically, a lot of fans, particularly those who started at BF2 rather than Bad Company, were put off by a lot of what DICE was planning on doing BF3, most notably adding regenerating health and regenerating armor. In a game that had classes designed to, at least in part, deal with keeping other people's health up or vehicle's armor up, this was seen as a way of further reducing the significance on classes that focused less on being lethal to the other team and more on being helpful to your own team. Now I personally never got a chance to play Hardcore before dropping BF3 because I just didn't like it, but most of my friends exclusively played Hardcore simply because it (mostly) fixed a lot of the problems the BF2 community had with BF3.

After that, it depends on the game. Some people perhaps, you know, just enjoy the way things flow differently as people adapt to having less health. Some people enjoy the less cluttered HUD. Some people actually like the thrill of knowing it takes so little to be killed but also may enjoy taking others down very quickly. Yeah, there are people that do think its more realistic, but for a lot of people, it is just that what they find fun in their games is different than what you do. That's why some games offer both options: Because different people get enjoyment from different things. And if done properly (e.g. CoD4), both modes are balanced well enough that players feel free to choose their preference and large communities build around both modes.

I understand the other changes in hardcore but the lower health makes the game too easy (no aim required) while unbalancing it. I hate regenerating health as much as pretty much anyone, just give me a freaking health bar and no fucking jam on the screen (that's so annoying). The only time I ever played a good amount of hardcore was COD4 because it removed to stupid killstreaks; COD4 has caused online shooters to suck for nearly a decade now. Something simple that would create a sorta big change would be simply losing all the bullets you had left in your mag when you reload to a new mag so you can't just reload after every kill. I would play MOH Warfighter and run around with literally 4 bullets of high-powered ammo left (the exact bullets needed for a kill) because my aim is good enough to actually not miss those 4 bullets. Without a HUD, that bit of resource management isn't possible. Outside of maybe ARMA (never played it), does any shooter even play a pace slow enough to actually say have your character remove his mag to see how many bullets are left? That's why there's a HUD and why I don't get the people that want more realism yet play the hardcore modes that only causes games to play less realistic because no shooter flows anything near an actual gunfight. Some things that are "game-y" make the game better and sometimes real-world elements make the game better too (like how bullet deviation has no place in shooters).

 

[MysticSlayer]

I understand the other changes in hardcore but the lower health makes the game too easy (no aim required) while unbalancing it...Some things that are "game-y" make the game better and sometimes real-world elements make the game better too (like how bullet deviation has no place in shooters).

Note: I know we've already had discussions in other threads about our shooter preferences and regenerating health, so that's why I cut that section out.

Anyways, personally, I do agree that in most games, Hardcore mode is rather shit. When I said I felt CoD4 did it right, I was talking very specifically about the PC version. In that, "Hardcore" was essentially given to any server that flipped on the "Hardcore" option, but they could configure the server to match anything even up to the standard "Old School" mode. The result is that "Hardcore" often meant that the server was running some Hardcore rules at least in part (e.g. a lot of servers changed the health to be somewhere between Hardcore and Old School), with a twist (e.g. changing the rules of friendly fire), or not at all (e.g. almost no server I played on took a way Killstreaks). So, to me, Hardcore in CoD4 wasn't some "uber-realistic" option meant for people that got lost while looking for a military sim. Yes, it had less health, often no HUD, and some other things associated with Hardcore, but it also gave the option for the community to make it something that was easier for more people to enjoy. And when games do that, I am very much going to stand behind how fun Hardcore can be.

That said, despite not fully understanding how a lot of games' Hardcore modes are enjoyable, I do have friends that almost refuse to play anything but, and it doesn't always come down to "IT'S MORE REALISTIC!" As a result, I'm not going to say that Hardcore is objectively bad. For some people, it is just the way that they prefer to play, and for whatever reason that is, I'm not going to act like I understand their preferences better than they do and say that they are totally misguided in juding what they have more fun with.

 

[Bravo Company]

I would play MOH Warfighter and run around with literally 4 bullets of high-powered ammo left (the exact bullets needed for a kill) because my aim is good enough to actually not miss those 4 bullets. Without a HUD, that bit of resource management isn't possible. Outside of maybe ARMA (never played it), does any shooter even play a pace slow enough to actually say have your character remove his mag to see how many bullets are left? That's why there's a HUD and why I don't get the people that want more realism yet play the hardcore modes that only causes games to play less realistic because no shooter flows anything near an actual gunfight. Some things that are "game-y" make the game better and sometimes real-world elements make the game better too (like how bullet deviation has no place in shooters).

Red Orchestra (1 and 2) allows you to remove you mag and feel the "weight of it" to determine how much ammo you have remaining. You can also keep track of how many bullets you have remaining in your clip (not so much the magazine) by counting. I don't play Battlefield because I want uber realism. I play battlefield because I pretty much want Call of Duty, except with destructible terrain. I still play CoD4, the PC community still is fairly active. However, I really just wanted to play Battlefield recently. If I want a slower more "realistic" (as far as a game is concerned) then I'll go play Red Orchestra. I have a very broad spectrum of games I enjoy.

I'm playing the PC version, I quickly perused Battlelog for the servers around 11 PM EDST to determine the server population. I don't make any claims to be perfect so I could've just caught it on an off night.

I don't have any particular attachment to BF hardcore mode. When I bought BF3 all my friends preferred HC, so I've exclusively played HC. I plan to reinstall BF3 tonight so I'll definitely make sure to check out the standard servers.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Anyways, personally, I do agree that in most games, Hardcore mode is rather shit. When I said I felt CoD4 did it right, I was talking very specifically about the PC version. In that, "Hardcore" was essentially given to any server that flipped on the "Hardcore" option, but they could configure the server to match anything even up to the standard "Old School" mode. The result is that "Hardcore" often meant that the server was running some Hardcore rules at least in part (e.g. a lot of servers changed the health to be somewhere between Hardcore and Old School), with a twist (e.g. changing the rules of friendly fire), or not at all (e.g. almost no server I played on took a way Killstreaks). So, to me, Hardcore in CoD4 wasn't some "uber-realistic" option meant for people that got lost while looking for a military sim. Yes, it had less health, often no HUD, and some other things associated with Hardcore, but it also gave the option for the community to make it something that was easier for more people to enjoy. And when games do that, I am very much going to stand behind how fun Hardcore can be.

That said, despite not fully understanding how a lot of games' Hardcore modes are enjoyable, I do have friends that almost refuse to play anything but, and it doesn't always come down to "IT'S MORE REALISTIC!" As a result, I'm not going to say that Hardcore is objectively bad. For some people, it is just the way that they prefer to play, and for whatever reason that is, I'm not going to act like I understand their preferences better than they do and say that they are totally misguided in juding what they have more fun with.

IIRC, COD4 Hardcore on the PS3 did remove killstreaks except for the UAV (I tried looking it up but couldn't find a solid answer). I do remember using the gun I thought looked the best just because with lower health, it really didn't matter what gun you used as they all killed so fast. That's my issue with hardcore modes as the lower health unbalances guns and there's really no point is using the higher recoil higher damage guns as everything kills so fast, you just might as well go with the lowest recoil gun or whatever gun that looks the best to you. In MOH Warfighter, hardcore basically made the Point Man class useless in many regards because they had a single mag of high powered ammo but with lower health, that ammo really did nothing but give you more recoil as you didn't need the extra damage anymore. The guns are balanced to normal damage in every shooter and messing with the health totally unbalances the guns and can make classes useless or overpowered as gun types are usually class restricted (as lower health makes something like SMGs way better guns). I'm sure there's probably an instance where a game was unbalanced on normal and hardcore's lower health "fixed it" but that's a rarity.

I do feel there's quite a good percentage of people that think hardcore requires more skill and feel hardcore is objectively better and it's where the "real" players play. I know you aren't saying that but that's the sentiment I get that quite often.

Lastly, I think "game-y" stuff helps make the game better quite often. Several shooters allow to link with teammates and see where your teammates are (even seeing their silhouettes and exactly what they are doing) and I feel that helps teamwork immensely so you don't have to constantly be asking everyone's location and such. The second I spawn in any shooter, I'm looking at my teammates' positions through the mini-map (or silhouettes) and then I go where there's a hole/gap in our line and fill in the gap much like a good football run defense (stay in your gap). Game-y stuff like that I feel streamlines teamwork and communication and makes it easier for randoms to coordinate vs a clan/team of friends. I do feel all shooters should have a public lobby/room system where the room creator can set basically everything on/off as well, which is just as possible on consoles as PCs, so you can play anyway you want.

Red Orchestra (1 and 2) allows you to remove you mag and feel the "weight of it" to determine how much ammo you have remaining. You can also keep track of how many bullets you have remaining in your clip (not so much the magazine) by counting. I don't play Battlefield because I want uber realism. I play battlefield because I pretty much want Call of Duty, except with destructible terrain. I still play CoD4, the PC community still is fairly active. However, I really just wanted to play Battlefield recently. If I want a slower more "realistic" (as far as a game is concerned) then I'll go play Red Orchestra. I have a very broad spectrum of games I enjoy.

I'm playing the PC version, I quickly perused Battlelog for the servers around 11 PM EDST to determine the server population. I don't make any claims to be perfect so I could've just caught it on an off night.

I don't have any particular attachment to BF hardcore mode. When I bought BF3 all my friends preferred HC, so I've exclusively played HC. I plan to reinstall BF3 tonight so I'll definitely make sure to check out the standard servers.

I'm no gun expert. I do recall seeing in movies where a character removes the mag to see there's one bullet left (it's always one bullet lol). With the pace of pretty much every shooter, you don't have time to be doing something like that and the HUD gives you that kind of information that you could get in real life but without a HUD (obviously), you then have no way of getting that information besides for counting every round you fire in a game w/o a HUD. Having no HUD is realistic (as humans don't have a HUD) but yet less realistic at the same time. Ghost Recon Future Soldier, while flawed, was great in the fact your HUD was there due to the augmented reality tech your character had so when you get EMPed, you even lose your crosshairs so it may actually be the only shooter where having actual crosshairs makes sense.

My main issue with hardcore modes is the lower health as it unbalances the guns, which in turn can makes certain classes useless/underpowered while making other classes overpowered when classes have restricted gun types (like a SMG class is overpowered with lower health as SMGs basically become assault rifles that fire really fast). Balance is key to pretty much any competitive game of any sort IMO because if a game is unbalanced, then everyone just uses the same overpowered stuff.

 

[MysticSlayer]

IIRC, COD4 Hardcore on the PS3 did remove killstreaks except for the UAV (I tried looking it up but couldn't find a solid answer).

Yeah, this wasn't the case on PC. If you didn't want killstreaks, you needed to search for them, but I think most servers used all of them, or at least up through the Airstrike. Then again, on PC, the higher player count sort of changed the nature of killstreaks. Rather than being a thing that added on to how good good players did (though it did do that but less exclusively), it was simply something anyone, regardless of skill level, could potentially get. The result was that UAVs were almost always up, and once the first few players managed to get an Airstrike, air support could be a constant for the rest of the match. Yeah, it wasn't particularly great from a competitive standpoint, but the sheer chaos of it was a lot of fun.

And yes, there were servers designed more for competitive play. I played those less and less though as time moved on, so I don't know what they ended up like.

I do feel there's quite a good percentage of people that think hardcore requires more skill and feel hardcore is objectively better and it's where the "real" players play. I know you aren't saying that but that's the sentiment I get that quite often.

I understand that and am hardly saying that those people don't exist. I'm just saying that they don't make up everyone who plays the game modes.