So the Battlefield 1 beta is officially over and after putting in a bunch of hours and testing out as much as you can expect in a beta here are the things I noticed.
Good:
- Graphics, the Battlefield 1 Beta took place on the Sinai Desert and just like Battlefront it looked amazing. However next time they might want to go with a another map since this really made it feel like we were playing Battlefield on Tatooine.
- Horses, the horses were fun to ride, galloping in with your steed and slashing groups of infantry felt amazing. They didn’t feel as tight as something like Red Dead Redemption but felt pretty good.
- Destruction, it feels like DICE has dialed the destruction up a tad; we can crumble whole buildings but also take out some rock formations.
- Sound, I would say the sound was good, I tried every mode and they were all fine. I wouldn’t say they were up to the level of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 but I would like to compare them once the final comes out.
- Terrain Deformation, separate from destruction the bombs, shells and explosives in Battlefield 1 finally take their toll on the surface of the map. There’s some compromise so not every single thing can be blown up, but you’ll find yourself thankful for that blast crater when a tank rolls by.
- Flamethrower, the flamethrower was super fun to use and seemed to do its job of being both scary and pretty effective in medium to close range combat.
- Train, the train was fun to be in, I’m sure like the zeppelin and other map specific features, they can really turn the tide of a match if used right. All around it seemed fair, not like AT-AT’s in Battlefront, if you coordinated your efforts as a team it didn’t stand to much of a chance but if no one focused on it you could rack up some seriously good kills.
Bad:
- Graphics, yeah they were amazing but the backgrounds didn’t seem to fit in with the actual assets. Where as Battlefront has a fantastical setting of playing space war Battlefield 1 is suppose to be a real setting and it feels closer to a picture perfect diorama with highly detailed toy miniatures for me. This could be due to beta glitches but I think it’s that the map looks incredible where as the players just look good.
- Horses, holy shit do horses have insane health, seriously, we should just give up our tanks and jeeps and ride in on horses because they take a tank shell to the face like nobodies business. Clearly lowering them to far would make them a nonviable option but they need their health reduced before the final game for sure. The range of the sword needs to be adjusted and if the rider aims high I want to be able to duck or prone out of the way without getting insta-killed.
- Anti-Tank Weapons, again I think this might have to do with the non-Hardcore nature of the servers but the anti-tank weapon we have just feels super under-powered right now. Also I think slightly increasing the blast radius of the dynamite would be good since they do not stick to the vehicles now.
- White Respawn Button, DICE, I know you want this slick clean looking interface but a white button with a white progress bar is to far down the rabbit hole in minimalism.
- Melee, to go along with the horse riders sword the melee kills need some adjustment still. During a bayonet charge if you light someone up it should end their charge or melee attack. Unless you can actively kill them during the animations they will win out every time and that just feels cheap. I would say something like if an enemy is tagged three times during a bayonet charge or melee kill they should be stopped cold to give them a fighting chance.
- Weapons, I wouldn’t call them bad but they just felt ok. This could have to do with the fact that the beta did not let us play in both regular and hardcore mode opting only to allow for regular servers. I’m interested to see how lethal they feel on a hardcore server but I’m not exactly sure what they are going to do with sniper rifles since they already felt about as deadly as they should be. Basically every class felt under-powered next to anyone with a sniper rifle. Also during LMG vs SMG battles damage output seemed to heavily favor SMG’s at any distance which shouldn’t be the case at all.
- Gas Grenades, what’s the point of using gas grenades if everyone has a gas mask available to them? The gas mask needs to be an item you equip to add more risk reward into choosing what you take into a round. I get that you can’t aim down sights when using it but if everyone has a gas mask it really hinders its usage.
- Medic Revive, how do you not display to the player which one of the bodies on the floor are his teammates he needs to revive, especially on a normal server? I could maybe see that if you choose to play Hardcore you need to ask for a revive but the fact that they are now making this a separate option seems to be a huge misstep. Not to mention that the few times I saw someone drop and immediately went over to revive them didn’t always seem to work. I couldn’t tell if I just wasn’t hitting their corpse correctly with the needle or if that just spammed spacebar so fast to get back in the fight I really was to slow, it took all the fun out of playing a medic class.
- Map Zoom Respawn, I get it, the maps have always been huge in Battlefield, it’s the selling point of the franchise. However when I have no idea what the hell I’m spawning into nor how far away I’ll be from an objective you might need to rethink your options. Just like previous Battlefield games getting a live feed of what is going on when spawning on squad members would be super helpful. Also with the map so zoomed out sometimes I think a squad member is pretty close to the flag only to find out it probably would have been better to spawn at the point.
WTF:
- Mantling, still in this version of Battlefield trying to mantel over a small, less than waist high object is a crap shoot. You just never know if it’s going to work. Oddly when going over a tall object like a wall the outcome seems to be more than 90% successful but when it’s something small you can really get stuck. The worst being that if it didn’t play the mantel animation a regular jump probably would have worked just fine but since it locks you into an animation sometimes you’ll be pushed up and over an object only to be pushed right back to where you were by PHYSICS! I had hoped that DICE would have finally come up with a decent solution to this with the ever changing nature of a destructible map but I guess my hopes are dashed.
- Progression, I know this is a beta but the fact that your career rank can progress without your class rank progressing seems absurd to me. The mere fact that we have to level each and every class is bad enough. Just give me points each career rank to spend on classes as I see fit. We’re already getting war bonds to pick what weapons we want to unlock as it is just go a tiny step further. The biggest issue of all is that you get zero points for your class if your in a vehicle, I’m hoping this a beta bug and not something permanent.
All Around Impressions:
The Battlefield Beta was a decent representation of the final product however it didn’t really sell me on the game, as a huge Battlefield fan I was actively waiting to get to try it and now it’s just feels OK. Looking over everything I wrote I think the biggest issue I have is that weapon and class diversity does not feel right to me. I think the classes have gotten paired down to much and all the weapon choices just felt like different skins on the same type of weapon, pistol, shotgun, bolt action, smg or lmg. I would really like another beta on a new map, hardcore mode and weapon attachments to really get a feel of how I play Battlefield.
Source Link: http://www.battlefield.com
