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Vince Zampella thinks EA ‘strayed too far from what Battlefield is’ with 2042

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

In an interview with Barrons (paywalled, transcribed by VGC), the Respawn and Infinity Ward co-founder, who is now the overseer of the entire franchise, suggested 2042 moved too far away from the classic Battlefield experience.

“I think they just strayed a little too far from what Battlefield is,” he said. “They tried to do a couple of things that were maybe ambitious: grow the player count etc. I don’t think they spent enough time iterating on what makes that fun.”

Zampella continued “It’s not inherently a bad idea. The way they were set up and the way they executed just didn’t allow them to find the best thing possible.”
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
That's the problem with games where the first bullet point to promote is bigger is better. No other shooter promotes bigger maps and bigger player counts like EA does with BF. When the key point is bigger is best, they got to force themselves to scale up everything even if they cant handle it.

Ya, I know COD has giant Warzone maps for BR mode, but their tried and true MP is still focused on classic 6 vs 6. Yes they got the adjustable 8 vs 8 or 10 vs 10 option, but most people still stick to classic map sizes and 12 people matches. I dont think the average size of these maps have changed in 10 years (they were definitely smaller in the COD4/WAW days).

I'm sure Activision could had forced COD over time to be mandatory 12 vs 12 or 16 vs 16 by now. But they havent.
 
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MiguelItUp

Member
He's absolutely not wrong. 2042 was a huge mess in so many ways, and honestly it hurt a lot of their fan base more than they probably think. I mean, aside from it straying so far away from Battlefield in general, so many other things just felt like a gigantic step backward.
 

chromhound

Member
Oh No Reaction GIF by The Great British Bake Off
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Did they ever fix that issue where gamers posted videos where if an enemy is kind of far away (assault rifle range), there's a chance the game doesn't recognize your shots hitting him?
 
Zampella continued “It’s not inherently a bad idea. The way they were set up and the way they executed just didn’t allow them to find the best thing possible.”
Not sorry for the state it realised in
Not sorry for the mess the game was
Just pissed off the idea wasn't swallowed by gamers.
 

Saber

Gold Member
No shit 2

Give the fans crap work and still say they are wrong(while blaming them for their own failures), what could possibly go wrong with that?
 
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Sentenza

Member
Here's a free hint: replacing "classes" with "hero characters" was a garbage idea to begin with.
Not the only problem by a long shot, but a clear sign that whoever made that decision was completely out of tune with what BF is even supposed to be.
 
I think they didn't care about what their fanbase wanted in the first place and went totally audience blaming since then
we just wanted better Bad Company 2 & Battlefield 4. and instead they made that Star Wars game that felt like a watered down BF. And it was like ok whatever. But then Battlefield One felt more like the star wars battlefront game than it did BF 4
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
That's the problem with games where the first bullet point to promote is bigger is better. No other shooter promotes bigger maps and bigger player counts like EA does with BF. When the key point is bigger is best, they got to force themselves to scale up everything even if they cant handle it.

Ya, I know COD has giant Warzone maps for BR mode, but their tried and true MP is still focused on classic 6 vs 6. Yes they got the adjustable 8 vs 8 or 10 vs 10 option, but most people still stick to classic map sizes and 12 people matches. I dont think the average size of these maps have changed in 10 years (they were definitely smaller in the COD4/WAW days).

I'm sure Activision could had forced COD over time to be mandatory 12 vs 12 or 16 vs 16 by now. But they havent.
This is so damn true. In BF1, they had two different modes for their wildly popular Operations mode. One had 40 players (20 v 20) and the other was 64 players (32 v 32). Same maps and objectives, just a larger player count. The 64 player mode was just a chaotic grindfest with way too many players all converging in a tiny sector resulting in grenade spam and bottlenecks that mimic'd WW1's trench battles but it was simply not fun to play an entire 30 minute round on the same 10% of the map because it was impossible to advance.

Now the 40 player mode still had the grenade spam and against a good team, you could get bogged down on some of the harder sectors, but it flowed much better. Everyone loved it. It made BF1 so fucking popular it sold 20 million units.

Around a year in, they had to remove one of the two modes because of a shriking player count and they decided to keep the larger modes. It's like they didnt even play the game themselves. Reddit was on fire. They didnt care. I left the game because I no longer felt that I could be the difference maker that I once was in 20 v 20 matches.

When BFV came around, they replaced the operations mode with a bullshit mode and completely destroyed everything good about BF1, the best selling game in franchise history. Why? Because they listened to angry youtubers who hated the more arcadey feeling BF1 but ended up going back to it after realizing BFV sucked without that arcadey feel. Now i see the same youtubers go back to BF1 and make youtube videos declaring that it is still amazing. GTFO.

CoD doubled down on Modern Warfare after COD4's success with it. Every game after that had the same arcadey feel and 15 years later, we are still using the same formula and mechanics. DICE threw it all away after finally hitting CoD numbers with BF1. I will never understand this studio.

P.S I have mentioned this before but this studio is so stupid that their solution to fix grenade spam was to make grenades automatically restock essentially giving everyone MORE grenades. It is by far the dumbest thing ive ever experienced a developer do.
 
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Northeastmonk

Gold Member
Battlefield is a weird series. I played a lot of 3 and 4, but I don’t think I’d buy anymore. BF3 was a cool experience. The series isn’t as appealing as it use to be. I wasn’t even a Bad Company player and I can tell they’ve gone with creating trends rather than sticking to why people love the franchise.
 

I Master l

Banned
i hate battlefield so much. Not only have they been ruining the franchise since like 2016.......but now i can't get TitanFall 3 because the creator has to go deal with this BF mess

Creator said years ago he is done with Titanfall after he realised that nobody cares about COD rip off with mechs
 
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Facism

Member
This is so damn true. In BF1, they had two different modes for their wildly popular Operations mode. One had 40 players (20 v 20) and the other was 64 players (32 v 32). Same maps and objectives, just a larger player count. The 64 player mode was just a chaotic grindfest with way too many players all converging in a tiny sector resulting in grenade spam and bottlenecks that mimic'd WW1's trench battles but it was simply not fun to play an entire 30 minute round on the same 10% of the map because it was impossible to advance.

Now the 40 player mode still had the grenade spam and against a good team, you could get bogged down on some of the harder sectors, but it flowed much better. Everyone loved it. It made BF1 so fucking popular it sold 20 million units.

Around a year in, they had to remove one of the two modes because of a shriking player count and they decided to keep the larger modes. It's like they didnt even play the game themselves. Reddit was on fire. They didnt care. I left the game because I no longer felt that I could be the difference maker that I once was in 20 v 20 matches.

When BFV came around, they replaced the operations mode with a bullshit mode and completely destroyed everything good about BF1, the best selling game in franchise history. Why? Because they listened to angry youtubers who hated the more arcadey feeling BF1 but ended up going back to it after realizing BFV sucked without that arcadey feel. Now i see the same youtubers go back to BF1 and make youtube videos declaring that it is still amazing. GTFO.

CoD doubled down on Modern Warfare after COD4's success with it. Every game after that had the same arcadey feel and 15 years later, we are still using the same formula and mechanics. DICE threw it all away after finally hitting CoD numbers with BF1. I will never understand this studio.

P.S I have mentioned this before but this studio is so stupid that their solution to fix grenade spam was to make grenades automatically restock essentially giving everyone MORE grenades. It is by far the dumbest thing ive ever experienced a developer do.

i always preferred cq large maps with 32-48 players in bf3 and 4.
 
I’d be happy if they used Battfield 2 as the basis of their next game with that battlefield 4 layout and feel. I’d also like to see better vehicle physics and would prefer they ditch the crushed blacks when it comes to visuals.
 
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They were told over and over from fans that the state of the game wasn't good in the beta and things needed to change. EA just said it was ahead of schedule and that it was a game made for the fans......

no way bullshit GIF


I usually wait about 6 months after release since all their recent games come out broken and bugged. I figured out by 6 months it's fixed but I didn't even get the game this time since not much changed from the beta.
 

Cyborg

Member
ATTENTION:

I played BF games since BF2 and I was not planning on buying BF2042 but found it very cheap (€ 14 with a Steelbook). I'm getting punished for my greed.

I can only say DONT buy this game, this game is a mess and is in no way a BF game. From how to join a squad (you need to google it) to AI bots influencing a match heavy to empty servers. The lack of intense battles and proper classes is just mindblowing. Constantly running due to the size of the maps and lack of team play is insane.

This game is a complete chaos and so complicated that you easily get lost. It's even not worth 5 EUR and it brings me only frustration.

GTFO
 
They were told over and over from fans that the state of the game wasn't good in the beta and things needed to change. EA just said it was ahead of schedule and that it was a game made for the fans......

This is the crazy thing to me, I wonder if the pre-orders were still so high that they decided to continue to roll with it. I know I canceled my preorder after the Beta, and I rarely pre-order to begin with but the game just looked so incredible from the previews. But the amount of people who believed that it was a 3 month old build was astounding, here, on Reddit, pretty much everywhere people kept talking about how it’s a 3 month old build, and it will launch great, not realizing that even if it wasn’t absolute bullshit how little times 3 months is in game development time, the core problems could not be fixed by then. It’s nearly been a year and the game is still very buggy, with a lot of core issues still in place.
 

recma12

Member
Zampella is right.
Battlefield will simply never be as big as CoD or Fortnite, no matter what they try at this point.
BF was never as big as CoD to begin with and they completely missed the boat on Battle Royals, Mobile and F2P.

But I do believe there is a place in the FPS market for a good Battlefield that leans hard on it's strengths.
 
we just wanted better Bad Company 2 & Battlefield 4

Absofuckinglutely. Those are my two favorite Battlefield games and they were fantastic. All they had to do was just build on those and keep improving them and rake in the cash, good ratings, and goodwill from player base but you know, EA's gotta EA.

As sad as it is, I would pay $5 for an update to increase res/framerate for BF4 on the XSX. If they did that I'd be playing it more than just about anything.
 

HTK

Banned
If you played the beta you didn't get suckered in. Beta was the big reveal of what a shit show that game is/was/will be. Beta basically told me this was a steaming pile and I didn't waste my money, for those that played it and bought it anyway, well the warning signs were there you just chose to ignore it.

We all know by now that Beta represents 99% of the game, expecting any big changes by release is a big mistake.
 

Orbital2060

Member
I think EA made a mistake by moving on from battlefield 1 too quickly. They had something going on there (also vs CoD) which should have/ could have been branched out into its own franchise.

Really loved the combination of grand operations and ww1.
 

Holammer

Member
EA should do some old fashioned market research, check why the popular games in series did and what the general consensus among fans of said games is.
They like Activision got suckered into doing "innovation" nobody wanted.
 

Flutta

Banned
I mean DICE lost alot of talent that made Battlefield popular. Not surprised it turned out this way. Dafuq will Zampella do? Add jetpacks? Wall running. Pls STFU and let us be the judge if you’re the right fit for this title or not. So damn tried of todays devs, they just crave attention with nothing to show for.
 
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recma12

Member
I think EA made a mistake by moving on from battlefield 1 too quickly. They had something going on there (also vs CoD) which should have/ could have been branched out into its own franchise.

Really loved the combination of grand operations and ww1.

EA are mean SOBs but the slow death of the BF franchise is 100% on DICE imo.
They had a good thing going on with BF1, but followed it up with a WW2 game nobody asked for.
CoD had done WW2 the year before iirc and going from WW1 to WW2 isn't really a compelling change imo
Imagine how much goodwill was destroyed by DICE during the "If you don't like the robot hand lady design, you are a Nazi-Incel-Trumper" phase.
Never seen a studio actively insult their paying customers, equating negative feedback with hate speech. Wonder why BF5 didn't do well lol

Now, it would be unfair to blame 100% of 2042s issues on DICE alone but at the end of the day, they lied to customers "Day One patch will fix all the BETA issues".
 
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