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Steam issues refunds for Battlefield 2042 as player count plummets

rolandss

Member
Is this the beginning of the end for the Battlefield franchise? Like even previous Battlefields that were buggy messes, or unpopular, still got WAY better numbers than this. Or is it just that this game is so much of a trainwreck that the next one can't possibly be this bad and will end up recovering?
Battlefield 1 was spectacular and I really liked 4 and 3 too. But after about 6 months playing BF1 I got randomly permanently banned on PlayStation, for god knows what - I’m a bit of an FPS noob and don’t even use those controller attachments and shit, and both technically incompetent and against any form of cheating. I emailed EA a number of times and never got any reply, still to this date don’t know why but assume someone I killed just reported me for something out of sheer frustration. I gave up on the series after that. Kinda lucky I did, it seems to have gone downhill from there.
 
Hard to say. In a move of desperation EA put Zampella in charge of the franchise going forward. That alone should get the series trending in the right direction again.

No clue what’s happening at DICE. Did all the talent leave and it’s just a bunch of randos now? I saw the former EIC at Game Informer is their paid shill now. Western studios in general seem like they’re in a state of decay after the 360 era. It’s like we’ve entered the era of cosplay video game development, similar to what’s happened in the pro wrestling business.
Don't blame the devs. Almost every time after a big game fails it turns out that the fault is in some fucking execs (usually EA/ACTIVISION) who have mandated shit like 18 month dev time for AAA title, unsuitable game engine, mtx, changing vision halfway through project etc.
 

DeaDPo0L84

Member
Good on Steam for allowing some to get their money back but to a certain extent when do we become responsible for how we spend our money? This game had two "betas" and for me that was enough to cancel my gold pre-order I initially had and not give them my money at launch rather than still buy it then bitch and moan for two months.

This happens far too often with these big AAA mp games. Did the people who had horrible experiences in the beta expect it to the be an entirely different experience at launch when DICE has never proven to be able to deliver on those expectations?
 

winjer

Gold Member
Battlefield 1 was spectacular and I really liked 4 and 3 too. But after about 6 months playing BF1 I got randomly permanently banned on PlayStation, for god knows what - I’m a bit of an FPS noob and don’t even use those controller attachments and shit, and both technically incompetent and against any form of cheating. I emailed EA a number of times and never got any reply, still to this date don’t know why but assume someone I killed just reported me for something out of sheer frustration. I gave up on the series after that. Kinda lucky I did, it seems to have gone downhill from there.

That's EA and Dice for you.
At one point in BF1, they started banning players based on K/D ratio. Not on some investigation, or detecting cheats.
This resulted in bans for good players that were better than the average.

Battlefield 1 Players Accidentally Banned for Being Too Good
 

rolandss

Member
That's EA and Dice for you.
At one point in BF1, they started banning players based on K/D ratio. Not on some investigation, or detecting cheats.
This resulted in bans for good players that were better than the average.

Battlefield 1 Players Accidentally Banned for Being Too Good
Oh man, I had no idea. I bet something like this is what happened where I was just auto banned for no reason. Thanks for showing me this.

What a horrible system - punishes their best and most consistent players. This series is really dead to me now.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Oh man, I had no idea. I bet something like this is what happened where I was just auto banned for no reason. Thanks for showing me this.

What a horrible system - punishes their best and most consistent players. This series is really dead to me now.

This is why community servers are important, because when a company makes awful decisions like this you can do nothing but take it. Community servers mean that the servers that really care about there own community will moderate and admin themselves, they will investigate cheaters and ban them from there own server. So if you end up with a trigger happy admin you can often appeal on the servers forum or just move to anouther server.

Not so with this world of automatches and official only servers. Not only is the system automated and bad, but unless your some twitch streamer with 50,000 followers going through a verified twitter no one will even look at your report.
 
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HoodWinked

Member
Is this game so much more different than BFV?

If they're building off the last game's code, have 3 years, Criterion helping and no campaign this seems reasonably doable.
 

ethomaz

Banned
It is the first move against unfinished games...
Ask refunds... make your voice clear.

The actual gaming industry situation is bad for all of us so we need to make the publishers understand it is bad for them too.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Is this game so much more different than BFV?

If they're building off the last game's code, have 3 years, Criterion helping and no campaign this seems reasonably doable.
DICE is really bad at coding game.... their engine are very flawed with bugs and limitations.

In 2013 I compared them to Bethesda... they didn't improved from there.
 
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Spent ~15 minutes today trying to launch a game on ps5… zero, nada, zilch… DICE better get their shit together and at least communicate their intentions and timelines or they’re officially in the EA mass burial grounds.
 
Good on Steam for allowing some to get their money back but to a certain extent when do we become responsible for how we spend our money? This game had two "betas" and for me that was enough to cancel my gold pre-order I initially had and not give them my money at launch rather than still buy it then bitch and moan for two months.

This happens far too often with these big AAA mp games. Did the people who had horrible experiences in the beta expect it to the be an entirely different experience at launch when DICE has never proven to be able to deliver on those expectations?

I've always had the same thoughts. It's 2022 ffs, there is so much media and impressions out there to know what you're going into. If you bought a game and are disappointed it's on you man.
 

TwinB242

Member
I see posts on steam of people with dozens of hours of playtime rejoicing because Steam refunded their game. It begs the question of why so many people would play a supposedly broken game for that long that they hate. Its like they're just doing it out of principal so they can make a post about how and mighty they are for getting a refund. If anything it just makes steam look bad for circumventing their own rules and allowing that kind of thing.
 

KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
the-simpsons-he-is-already-dead.gif
 
Honestly…they should put all hands on deck for battlefield 4, its still the best one. Bring its resolution on consoles up to modern standards, add a battle pass for new weapons+skins, let us buy new maps. I would totally continue to support battlefield 4
I would love a BF4 or 3 remaster. Include all DLC and that would be glorious.
 

ymoc

Member
How broken are we talking?, What's the biggest issue with the game?
Everything bro.
Whats missing

A Glassdoor review from former Dice guy:

Former Employee
Stay away for the time being
28 Aug 2019 - Designer

"Leadership loved to manipulate data when there were creative disagreements. They cherry picked a limited subset of feedback from social media channels that aligned with their vision and insisted that it was actually from the overwhelming majority. It’s easy for them to do this since players parroted leadership’s propaganda. It hurt to be sidelined in favor of half-baked suggestions from strangers that mostly piggybacked off leadership’s already absurd ideas. It hurt even more watching the points of failure people indicated actually lead to the exact disaster they warned leadership about. To top it off, leadership drew terrible conclusions on where mistakes were made and will undoubtedly repeat them again. "
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
How broken are we talking?, What's the biggest issue with the game?



Why have a single BIG issue when you have so many "Minor" ones in every match...

I would say the largest issue however is even if they fixed all these the game is just not as fun to play as prior titles. Mainly down to poor maps and the specialist system, it plays radically diffrent without the way the prior titles funneled people into well made combat areas, due to the nature of specialists kits people can side step and literally just glide over anything designed around this.

it's just a badly designed game.
 
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DICE is really bad at coding game.... their engine are very flawed with bugs and limitations.

In 2013 I compared them to Bethesda... they didn't improved from there.
What amazes me is they picked Frostbite to be the universal middleware for all EA studios games, which then directly resulted in the disaster of Mass Effect: Andromeda.

At EA, wonders truly never cease.
 

winjer

Gold Member
What amazes me is they picked Frostbite to be the universal middleware for all EA studios games, which then directly resulted in the disaster of Mass Effect: Andromeda.

At EA, wonders truly never cease.

For a while, Frostbite was a really good engine, producing impressive results in BF3 and BF4 . At least in terms of graphics.
And having a single game engine across the company studios, makes sense. It saves money and allows for studios to work together.
But although it was technically advanced, it was lacking in accessibility and tools for devs to work with it.
When Fifa transitioned to Frostbite, EA sent a bunch of Dice engineers to help with the process. This is EA's big cash cow, so it makes sense.
But it left other studios with little support to make the transition. So with a game engine that is hard to work with, and with little support, Bioware studios suffered a lot.

Andromeda should have used Unreal Engine, one that Bioware knew much better.
And the transaction in Bioware should have been delayed for when the engineers at Fifa were available. Maybe for a sequel to Andromeda.
But EA management is incompetent and the results show, with failure after failure. Was it not for the money from Fifa and Madden, and EA would have already gone under.
 

MikeM

Member
So is Battlefield now up there with Cyberpunk? Any publisher that releases nonsense like this deserves to be forced into refunds.
 

ethomaz

Banned
For a while, Frostbite was a really good engine, producing impressive results in BF3 and BF4 . At least in terms of graphics.
And having a single game engine across the company studios, makes sense. It saves money and allows for studios to work together.
But although it was technically advanced, it was lacking in accessibility and tools for devs to work with it.
When Fifa transitioned to Frostbite, EA sent a bunch of Dice engineers to help with the process. This is EA's big cash cow, so it makes sense.
But it left other studios with little support to make the transition. So with a game engine that is hard to work with, and with little support, Bioware studios suffered a lot.

Andromeda should have used Unreal Engine, one that Bioware knew much better.
And the transaction in Bioware should have been delayed for when the engineers at Fifa were available. Maybe for a sequel to Andromeda.
But EA management is incompetent and the results show, with failure after failure. Was it not for the money from Fifa and Madden, and EA would have already gone under.
I only disagree with BF4.
The game was unplayable at launch and took them a year to fix some of the critical issues.

It was the first game with Frostbite for next-gen platforms at time.
 
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ToTTenTranz

Banned
Don't blame the devs. Almost every time after a big game fails it turns out that the fault is in some fucking execs (usually EA/ACTIVISION) who have mandated shit like 18 month dev time for AAA title, unsuitable game engine, mtx, changing vision halfway through project etc.
I've seen enough statements from DICE's devs to know this is on them too.
At least the part where they alienated their fanbase. The same fanbase that would otherwise be supporting them right now.


EA Appears to Mock Battlefield V 'Genderfield' Community Complaints Through  the Game's Launch Party


Karma's a bitch.
 

winjer

Gold Member
I only disagree with BF4.
The game was unplayable at launch and took them a year to fix some of the critical issues.

It was the first game with Frostbite for next-gen platforms at time.

That has to do with issues with development and the problems I talked about regarding lack of tools and accessibility. Not with the technical capabilities of the engine.
From the very start, BF4 looked great. And still looks great, despite it's age.

And consider that it was playable on PC, despite having many bugs.
It wasn't as bad as it was on consoles.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
That has to do with issues with development and the problems I talked about regarding lack of tools and accessibility. Not with the technical capabilities of the engine.
From the very start, BF4 looked great. And still looks great, despite it's age.
It was all due the Engine and DICE.
It is not about graphics but about a Engine that works... that was not the case with Frostbit 3 used by Battlefield 4.

Maybe I'm remembering wrong but Battlefield 4 issues were similar to Cyberpunk... the game crashed or froze each 5 minutes, you lose save frequently, performance was all over the place, netcode was ridiculous bad with connection error all the time, the hits from shots were heavy lagged, if the sever crashed in the middle of the match everybody lose all progress, etc etc etc.

Battlefield 3 didn't have any of these issues, and used Frostbite 2 for platforms with different architectures (PC, PS3, 360).
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I've seen enough statements from DICE's devs to know this is on them too.
At least the part where they alienated their fanbase. The same fanbase that would otherwise be supporting them right now.


EA Appears to Mock Battlefield V 'Genderfield' Community Complaints Through  the Game's Launch Party


Karma's a bitch.
One problem with large companies is that they need to maximize sales, so they'll skew to mainstream trends. Thats why so many of them have changed their games to be that F2P hero shooter, with attitude cut scene shit, and endless weird mtx because that's what many modern day shooter fans want.

So games like BF will get nailed with it too because EA needs growth in sales and mtx to appease shareholders. And the only way to grow is make games that interest the biggest pot of people. So they pray their new game can achieve success keeping the core gamer that grew up with the series and millions of potential new gamers who like the modern day Fortnitey trend. Mix it all together and hope both segments are happy with it.

On the other hand, games like Hell Let Loose or ARMA, the devs dont seem to give one shit about catering to the mainstream crowd looking for 10 or 20 million sales like a BF or COD game. They just make what they want even though their games look like they only sell a million copies tops.
 

winjer

Gold Member
It was all due the Engine and DICE.
It is not about graphics but about a Engine that works... that was not the case with Frostbit 3 used by Battlefield 4.

Maybe I'm remembering wrong but Battlefield 4 issues were similar to Cyberpunk... the game crashed or froze each 5 minutes, you lose save frequently, performance was all over the place, netcode was ridiculous bad with connection error all the time, the hits from shots were heavy lagged, if the sever crashed in the middle of the match everybody lose all progress, etc etc etc.

I played BF4 for a review, a couple of days prior to launch. The full campaign.
Got no problems with crashes or problems with saving.
Just random bugs with scripts not triggering, issues with geometry and collision, etc.
 

Soltype

Member
Everything bro.
Whats missing

A Glassdoor review from former Dice guy:

Former Employee
Stay away for the time being
28 Aug 2019 - Designer

"Leadership loved to manipulate data when there were creative disagreements. They cherry picked a limited subset of feedback from social media channels that aligned with their vision and insisted that it was actually from the overwhelming majority. It’s easy for them to do this since players parroted leadership’s propaganda. It hurt to be sidelined in favor of half-baked suggestions from strangers that mostly piggybacked off leadership’s already absurd ideas. It hurt even more watching the points of failure people indicated actually lead to the exact disaster they warned leadership about. To top it off, leadership drew terrible conclusions on where mistakes were made and will undoubtedly repeat them again. "



Why have a single BIG issue when you have so many "Minor" ones in every match...

I would say the largest issue however is even if they fixed all these the game is just not as fun to play as prior titles. Mainly down to poor maps and the specialist system, it plays radically diffrent without the way the prior titles funneled people into well made combat areas, due to the nature of specialists kits people can side step and literally just glide over anything designed around this.

it's just a badly designed game.

Did they lose key people, don't remember any other BF game launching this rough.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
One problem with large companies is that they need to maximize sales, so they'll skew to mainstream trends. Thats why so many of them have changed their games to be that F2P hero shooter, with attitude cut scene shit, and endless weird mtx because that's what many modern day shooter fans want.

So games like BF will get nailed with it too because EA needs growth in sales and mtx to appease shareholders. And the only way to grow is make games that interest the biggest pot of people. So they pray their new game can achieve success keeping the core gamer that grew up with the series and millions of potential new gamers who like the modern day Fortnitey trend. Mix it all together and hope both segments are happy with it.

On the other hand, games like Hell Let Loose or ARMA, the devs dont seem to give one shit about catering to the mainstream crowd looking for 10 or 20 million sales like a BF or COD game. They just make what they want even though their games look like they only sell a million copies tops.

ARMA 3 has sold 5 million copies as of June 2019, so it's safe to say it'll be 6, probably even 7 million copies now.

EA treats its players with absolute contempt by not just ignoring what they want, but actively antagonizing them not only by completely changing core gameplay elements of a decade old franchise but also with braindead PR statements like the infamous "if you don't like it, don't buy it" debacle and that pathetic "feminazi" gaslighting.

The entire concept of telling your most loyal patrons to fuck off and thinking everything will work out just fine is just mindboggling to me. Real life doesn't work that way.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
ARMA 3 has sold 5 million copies as of June 2019, so it's safe to say it'll be 6, probably even 7 million copies now.

EA treats its players with absolute contempt by not just ignoring what they want, but actively antagonizing them not only by completely changing core gameplay elements of a decade old franchise but also with braindead PR statements like the infamous "if you don't like it, don't buy it" debacle and that pathetic "feminazi" gaslighting.

The entire concept of telling your most loyal patrons to fuck off and thinking everything will work out just fine is just mindboggling to me. Real life doesn't work that way.
My mistake. I saw an article saying ARMA 3 was at 2 million, so I assumed their older games sold less.

However, your point about gameplay changes is what is weird. I'm not even a BF gamer aside from dabbling with trials and BF1 but so many of the missing elements arent even BF specific. No voice chat and no scoreboard are things even Xbox OG online shooters had.

I guess making a shooter is 10x more complex because if you look at racing and sports games, all the core mechanics carry over year to year, so why cant core mechanics carry over from BF game to BF game when they got 2 year gaps of development? If other shooters can carry over core gameplay, voice and scoreboards like it's standard why cant BF 2042?

As you said, one thing about DICE too is they arent afraid to lip it up. Just like the old BF ads calling out COD "above the call". Then them gaslighting gamers. They dont seem afraid to be combative with gamers.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
I played BF4 for a review, a couple of days prior to launch. The full campaign.
Got no problems with crashes or problems with saving.
Just random bugs with scripts not triggering, issues with geometry and collision, etc.
You were lucky.

Save issues for example: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/battlefield-4-campaign-gamesave-bug-all-platforms.720692/
And it was not fixed until 2016 (probably is not fixed yet): https://www.neogaf.com/threads/its-...battlefield-4-save-campaign-progress.1171994/

Crashes were reported all over the place in all platforms.

The OTs in GAF were named
Prepare to leave the beta... Nevermind: Is it fixed yet?:
It was definitively not just random bugs lol
 
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winjer

Gold Member

I got more bugs on the MP side. Most due to the terrible netcode.
But even then, the game was playable. No crashes.
 

ethomaz

Banned
I got more bugs on the MP side. Most due to the terrible netcode.
But even then, the game was playable. No crashes.
Like I said you were lucky.
It was not played for most including the campaign that keep crashing and losing save.

BTW from DICE themselves:

"Players on all formats have been experiencing game crashes and freezes while playing. We have logs of the most frequently occurring client crashes, and we are actively working to Obliterate the cause of these crashes in upcoming updates"

''We are working on a PC client patch at the moment and hope to release it soon. We will share the patch notes once we have the patch contents finalized. The main focus is to fix as many crashes as possible, starting with the issues affecting a large number of players"

It was posted on Battlelog on November 3, 2013... 5 days after the game released on PC, PS3 and 360... PS4/XB1 had the same issues but it was launched in mid November. That is talking about the client side... the Server side in November 3, 2013 already had 4 patch updates... it is basically a patch per day lol
 
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winjer

Gold Member
Like I said you were lucky.
It was not played for most including the campaign that keep crashing and losing save.

BTW from DICE themselves:

"Players on all formats have been experiencing game crashes and freezes while playing. We have logs of the most frequently occurring client crashes, and we are actively working to Obliterate the cause of these crashes in upcoming updates"

''We are working on a PC client patch at the moment and hope to release it soon. We will share the patch notes once we have the patch contents finalized. The main focus is to fix as many crashes as possible, starting with the issues affecting a large number of players"

It was posted on Battlelog on November 3, 2013... 5 days after the game released on PC, PS3 and 360... PS4/XB1 had the same issues but it was launched in mid November. That is talking about the client side... the Server side in November 3, 2013 already had 4 patch updates... it is basically a patch per day lol

I guess I was one of the lucky ones.
But regardless, BF4 graphics was the cream of the crop back then.
One of the best looking games of the year, if not the very best.
 
I played BF4 for a review, a couple of days prior to launch. The full campaign.
Got no problems with crashes or problems with saving.
Just random bugs with scripts not triggering, issues with geometry and collision, etc.

The campaign was fine. Online? Ooeeeee what a shitshow. It was basically unplayable for months on ps4/xbone.
 
Whelp, I'm done. Tried playing again last night, this game is just not good. I'm gonna get a refund and just go back to BF4, BFV, and Hell Let Loose for my MP fix.
 

R6Rider

Gold Member
Had one of my most fun matches on Hourglass Conquest last night. Still seems like plenty of people playing on PS5 as matchmaking was very fast.
 

BossLackey

Gold Member
I seriously do not understand why people are still buying Battlefield games. Series hasn't been good in 10 years. Played the "Beta" for 20 minutes and uninstalled.
 
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