Some impressions after playing for a few hours yesterday:
PROS
- The new gun handling and gun accuracy. From my experience, bullets go where you aim and there's no more random spread (except I think on machineguns). This is a huge change from the RNG fest from previous Battlefield games. To compensate that the guns appear to have more recoil. All in all a great change and makes gunfights more skill based.
- Love that there is no more 3D spotting. I think it drastically changes how the game is played. You actually have to check your surroundings and look around yourself, not just scan minimap/game for doritos. It also gives more options to flank and not be immediately revealed to the entire enemy team as soon as someone presses a single button.
- The low ammo count and not being able to regenerate to full HP makes reliance on your squad and teamwork way more important.
- The above two points all make the game slower, which imo is a good thing. No more brainless rushing and constant chaotic fights. While you can still do that and some parts of the map can get chaotic, I think it's overall a big improvement to how the game plays.
- I thought Fortifications were a side-thing DICE put in so they can say "look here's some sandbox stuff you can build", but I was pleasantly surprised at just how many spots you can build fortifications. You can completely block off roads in Rotterdam map for example, and if you have a Support class, they can build advanced fortifications such as barbed wire and tank blockers, putting even more value to Support class, which was somewhat useless in previous BF installments.
CONS
- The weapon upgrade system feels somewhat mediocre. It's basically two paths that you can take and every tier you unlock is a straight upgrade. There's no decision making here, no side-grades where you decide if you want to sacrifice one statistic to improve another. Definitely a downgrade from previous BFs. It's also not related to attachments, which are purely cosmetic now, except for sights.
- You can't unlock new stuff mid-match. You have to go back to main menu to unlock new stuff, then you can swap to it mid-match. Hopefully this is something they'll change on release as it's completely retarded to have to do that.
- While it's nice having to rely on Supports to resupply your low ammo count, I feel like the ammo you spawn with is a bit on the low side. Hopefully they increase that so you don't run out of ammo as fast as you do now, but will still have to rely on supports to resupply you.
- The downed state system is a bit weird now, LMB speeds up your death, RMB calls for help but slows your death timer. Feels a bit unintuitive, but it's confirmed they plan to change that already by speeding it all up.
- Bipods deploy automatically and you're locked into this animation when that happens. Incredibly annoying and needs to change.
- The colors are a bit over the top, imo. Brights are too bright, dark is too dark.
