[2020] DICE, if you have a 'bigger picture' and a roadmap, then explain at least a little bit why and what it is BEFORE the update. There's currently no such explanation and it has been over a month since the update was released, which makes this TTK change look quite unnecessary from our prespective.

Originally posted by GeeDeeF

Well if they're looking for some constructive feedback I've got a good sized wall-o-text that I'd like to think has a bit more meat to it

u/Braddock512 u/PartWelsh

If anyone has any well articulated things to add then just reply

Originally posted by gordonfroman

You have been saying for over a month that you are taking feedback to the dev team yet not one ounce of that feedback has been enacted or even addressed, care to explain?

Originally posted by Km_the_Frog

The silence speaks volumes. This is why I have uninstalled the game a while ago. 0 vision and shallow fruitless responses from the “community” managers

Originally posted by DLVittorio

Probably not talking about this single post, you know, but the thousands of posts and feedback the community always gave during the last year that you simply seem to not aknowledge.

Originally posted by LoZz27

very arrogant comment. u/Braddock512

"revert it" "it sucks" is valid feedback. It's just feedback you don't want to hear.

You can't have it both ways. As on exec once said this game is ether "buy it or don't, we don't care." or its built for "its community". You can't have it both ways, and worse, you can't change which development process your going with when it suits.

You can and have reverted unpopular TTK changes before (0.25 last christmas). So any notion that it can't be changed is a lie, dice just don't want to. Which is fine but you need to be honest and say that. Not preach about community engagement and accepting "constructive" feedback. At the moment that just seems that constructive means "only what you want to hear."

revert it is very valid. It means people are unhappy with the changes and preferred the game pre change. Please tell me what is not constructive or valid about that? i'm confused. Again I know it's not what you want to hear, but that's kind of tough really, its a consumer based market and your consumer is speaking to you. You (collectively) have failed massively on the communication front, i remember being told this isn't a ttk increase, but it is, ttk has been increased a cross the board.

this reeks of failing, as a company, to listen and communicate and then trying to blame others.

Dice MUST learn to respond quicker. even if its just acknowledgement, and they must communicate long term plans better, this bit by bit approach is not working. Remember BF4? we knew exactly how many DLC's there were going to be and rough number of maps/weapons on DAY 1! it was part of the advert for buying premium. I don't even know what is coming at the end of this month in BFV!

Dice is a professional and large employer. Having a near 3 week long holiday is not an exceptable excuse for poor planning and communication. Its a choice they made. No i don't mean i expect them to not take breaks, or be working on Christmas etc. But it is again poor planning and communication to make such massive changes and un-popular ones when you know you won't be in the office for 20+ days to fix it or communicate about it. They have now been back nearly 3 full days and there is not even the most basic of forum posts, or twitter posts or anything. Do i expect a patch now? no. But i do expect communication. Instead its pretending nothing is wrong and criticising your community. Its mind boggling.

Originally posted by Kingtolapsium

Just that easy, we’ll all write short novellas on the specific game state. We’ll drop a dissertation on the combat meta so that you and the team can parse through a few thousand books and find consensus? (I did this for all of BF4 and BF1, any changes that mirrored my feedback have been walked back in BFV, the f**k should I waste my time again for?)

 

This sub provides more posts than the ones you submit. There are more comments than the ones that show up in your inbox. There is more discussion than you could comfortably get through during work hours..... but that’s just not good enough?

 

How about... if you’re going to change the damage model, explain it first (...ACCURATELY!!!). If you’re going to cancel work on modes (like firestorm), don’t build it up like it’s a core pillar. If features are announced, make sure they’re actually coming. Community Engagement 101.

 

Literally a joke getting an explanation on how to engage from the DICE CMs. Your time to lead is well over, that’s on you, be gracious you still have a community and maybe things can start to heal.

 

Acting like you’re babysitting children is old. We get it, and you don’t. We paid for what we were promised at launch, and most of those promises have been totally forgotten. You’re yelling up from the bottom of a hole your team dug, you’d better serve the community if you could step outside of your position, and recognize the current state of affairs.

Originally posted by F4ll3nKn1ght-

Do you have any feedback or results from the survey conducted after 5.2? I think this would help us understand the vision and that data you guys see. Every poll I have seen is overwhelmingly negative towards the changes.

Originally posted by cord3sh

Wow. Just WOW!

DICE and EA are so disconnected from their player base, especially their faithful one. And I got to say that I agree with the OP in this case. The way they have pushed and handled the TTK changed is with no doubt an insult to the people that were still playing the game at that time (which I am no part of cause I quit this shit show a long time ago).

The changes were not an insult to you

Oh yes, they were. Some people took a year full a crap, bugs, false promises and cancellations with lack of new content and the removal of existing ones (dom/frontline)... But they stayed faithful to the game despite all those issues and how did you thank them? Basically by saying "we know you don't want it and won't like it but we don't give a damn." That's an insult for sure!

And they were discussed previous to being released

No, dear CM, they were not. They were announced, not discussed. A discussion is between more than one interlocutor. DICE talked, the community expressed their opinion and was ignored. That is not a discussion.

we pushed an hotfix to make adjustments

You forced the TTK change and tweaked a few numbers just before the holidays and going radio silence, so you wouldn't be annoyed by the backlash you perfectly knew would happen. Maybe in hope that after two weeks, things would have been settle down?

They have a plan and see a much bigger picture than you do regarding the changes and road forward for BFV

No kidding! Of course they do since you simply don't communicate at all about the road ahead. So they have a plan? Surely doesn't look like it.

Originally posted by Spectre_HD

It is an insult when the game does NOT have a team balancer, anti-cheat and multiple bugs, vehicle cosmetics in Coming Soon for over a year and the devs for whatever reason added this unneeded and nonsensical TTK change.

"It sucks" is as constructive as it can get because people LIKED the old TTK.

But if I were to be specific,

1. Semi-auto rifles are inadequate at close to medium range. Needing to unload the entire ammo capacity to get 1 kill is stupid. Assault rifles are better because they are at least good in close range. Even at range semi auto rifles' ability to kill drops significantly which considering their small magazine size is a major disadvantage. Just take the M1A1 Carbine. It has a 4 BTK from 0-10m. Sure it has a fast ROF but it will not win against anything automatic. Maybe even against SLRs from the recon class. Go beyond that and it is 5 bullets to kill. That is crazy amount. Since the patch I have only seen that gun used once.
2. Shotguns are barely used and the range nerf unneeded. Their spread ensures their power drops significantly just a few meters out.
3. MMGs have too many disadvantages particularly needing to be on bipod to get any accuracy. The Incendiary ammo specialisation is very inadequate considering the need for MMGs to be on bipod and limited angles of fire while on bipod needed to shoot at planes. The specialisation is not worth the CCs to spec an MMG with. Overall, the supports class just use LMGs and then only a select few. Personally, I would improve the hip fire ability of MMGs. This is balance by the lengthy duration to go into aimed hip-fire.
4. Related to No. 3, remove bomb sights from planes. This ability reduces their vulnerability to the Fliegerfaust and MMGs with Incendiary ammo as they can bomb from height.
5. Guns with low magazine capacity will need to expend most of their magazine just to kill anything beyond 20m. Of course at close range they don't kill quick enough before needing to reload.
6. Why does the Jungle Carbine have a one shot headshot at all ranges while SLRs on the recon class don't? I get that the SLRs have a higher rate of fire but they have very small magazine sizes.
7. The medic class now is probably the best class as they have great choices for short and long range engagements. When it comes to fighting infantry, the medic class is also better than the Assault class because they are more durable as they can just heal forever in addition to being able to survive more hits thanks to the TTK changes. I would personally put a cooldown for the medic's ability to self heal. The medic having access to the Type 2A now doesn't help. It goes to show how ROF wins and exemplifies how inadequate semi-auto weapons are with Assault rifles being the better weapons type for the assault with one being superiour than the rest (STG-44). This is purely confirmation bias but I notice players play the Medic more offensively than a class that heals especially revive fallen teammates. I wonder if you have stats for revives to confirm this.
8. Flares should NEVER be able to spot anything that is under hard cover and indoors. Planes do NOT need the ability to release flares either as they are already very potent if not the most potent weapon system in the game. They can be dropped from so high that they can be barely seen let alone be shot down and can penetrate hard cover to spot is nonsensical and game breaking.
9. If an Assault could manage to get close enough to put 3 dynamites onto a tank, it should kill the tank especially if the dynamite is placed at the rear.
10. It is ironic how the plan was to increase TTK but planes can destroy tanks so easily. I can understand if planes were meant to counter tanks but the counter to planes, but there isn't an actual counter to planes apart from another plane that is fully specialised and has a player of equivalent skill. Because I am a new player that got the game for the Pacific War, I only managed to upgrade the LVT but even my AA spec LVT it is hard to take out planes. Not sure how it is for the AA vehicles of other nations. Either remove the bomb sights so planes need to get closer or nerf bomb damage. Situation is even worse for infantry as mentioned in no. 4.

It is hard to talk about the recon class. I guess there wasn't much to talk about since their guns weren't touched. But Assaults and Supports are in a worse place now as their choice of weapons have been significantly reduced.

This is my opinion as a player that started in November 2019 so I am very ignorant on many things. But the unable to Fetch report bug was devastating for me as a new player. Even now the effects are still present as I do not have access to the Vehicle Buster specialisation on my German and British Assaults. I will have to contact EA support again after having it and the M1907SF unlocked on my American Assault.

Originally posted by TechnicRomance

Well, if you say something like "why", we would also like to know "why" you changed something without explaining...you know, equality ??? And if you say that the gunplay was shitty then say why or do a survey and don't tell us the pile of s*** you told bc we ALL know that's not true...we loved it!

To the Topic "survey" ever heard about transperancy??? I've never saw any results expect the first one, THAT'S IT, or are you scared that we see the results that we already know? I mean like if you would've done a survey for asking the people if they want a new TTK 90% would've said , no thanks.

But hey we all know that YOU "discuss" those things but without us. You know, you promised soo much stuff and everytime the community was exited you scrambeld it (lunge mine, 5v5,REAL tides of war...not jumping from beginning of war to end of war timeline i could go on and on...but we all know the rest)

And one last thing for your XYZ s***, you've promised so much and give a f*** about us (last year ttk change, ever heard of that PROMISE) by not holding on to your promises so why should we take a step towards you, INSTEAD you should come SEVERAL steps towards us until you did everything you promised then we can talk!!!

Originally posted by cmasotti

Hey Jeff, thanks for taking time to respond today, you are a top tier CM. People are just really riled up over this topic, understandably.

I will say that although data is great it is really important to understand there are basically no other games like BF (maybe a few on PC but not for us console players), and thus even though people are playing, does not mean all those players love, or even like the new gun balance. The other issue with data is that it can be often be misinterpreted to say what you want it to say, here is a made up example:

-Findings: We are seeing an increase in players since the patch, but see a pretty heavy decrease in overall time spent playing.

- Possible understanding: Well more people are playing, our plan has worked.

- Ideal understanding: Holiday season has drawn in some new players, but those players as well as our core players are playing much less, what is the reason? Lets consult with the community to see what is going on.

Just thought this is was important to mention and provide an example, as it is sometimes a bit frustrating when the "data" is referenced, and are always asked to trust the understandings drawn from it. I know we will never see that data for whatever reason, but would love for our voices here be taken into account when analyzing that data, instead of taking numbers and figures over the feeling of the community.

Originally posted by thegodkiller5555

Could you give a comment on firestorm though please, like so many things have been promised for it and then you guys just go silent and that's where alot of the frustration comes from. You make big sweeping changes put up a post about it, and then say you will follow up and the follow up never comes more often than not. Another example other than firestorm is the armory and tank customization, people have asked questions about the "coming soon" factor and that cosmetics previously stated to be only for company coin are now being locked behind paywalls. People are losing faith because, as the mocking bingo card someone on the sub made, your responses are always the same and the follow up is either silence or a statement saying "we will have an answer"

Originally posted by ImanOcelot

I pray that DICE as a whole doesn't think that just introducing a hardcore mode is really what will appease this community.

Originally posted by BETA_Neck

The HC mode is the only chance for a compromise to somehow get back the old TTK , probably this was the reason why so many guys here came up with this idea.

The developers may use the wrong data point, have you thought about that? Why the session length is the key for a game to success? I don't get it!

Your job is "community Manager", right? From my understanding you should be the voice of the BF community within DICE. It's hard to misunderstand what the community wants...it's the good old TTK before the Patch 5.2 and 5.2.2.

The day is not over yet .... it's time to stand up for the BF community wants!

Originally posted by RareBk

u/Braddock512

If I didn't already uninstall the game almost immediately after 5.2, this would have easily been the last straw with the game, and DICE.

"No meaningful feedback" is genuinely insulting, not just to me as a player, but to every single person who posted meaningful advice and critiques of the hastily put together 5.2 Which was put together quickly, like, there's no doubt about that, as different weapons in the same categories had borderline random stats compared to one another.

There were dozens of posts, dozens that bordered on essay length about how 5.2 was miserable, how the game lacked even basic features like autobalance or an anti-cheat that functioned (Seriously, punkbuster actually banned people, even if it was a complete nightmare of a program)

These included statistical breakdowns of how each weapon type was affected, how every playstyle would change, and why this overall turned the sandbox gameplay into a much more unfun and less rewarding experience.

This also includes claiming that Christmas 2018 never happened. This was a mistake that happened, you apologized for how poorly the TTK was received back then, and then did the exact same thing at the exact same time the next year to even worse reception.

/u/Braddock512 , saying there was no meaningful feedback requires you to actively ignore every single channel for feedback on the game. To actively be deceitful and dishonest, I would expect this from a higher-up trying to push a narrative, but not the community outreach individual, the one who would at least pretend to be honest.

There's no pretending here, this entire response you've posted is disingenuous, and shows how little you care about the playerbase. Both those pro and against the TTK changes, because god forbid we see even a response to positive feedback

Originally posted by RareBk

You explicitly claimed there was 'Discussion prior to implementation' and that "We're taking feedback to make adjustments".

The feedback was a wholesale revert. It was the top post as soon as you announced 5.2 It was the top ten posts of the subreddit for nearly every day for the past month. Including in depth discussions. These are posts by different individuals. The feedback already occurred when a surprisingly -better- version of the changes was implemented last year. To the point where you reverted them entirely.

I refuse to believe any data that took an entire year for the development team to come to the conclusion "No the playerbase is wrong again"

One. Whole. Year. And the same changes were made for the same reason. If the data stated that it was right for the players then, you would have kept it, but no, the feedback was there, people hated it. Had someone not made an executive choice of "Screw player feedback, they'll take a worse version of the original TTK change and actually enjoy it this time" we wouldn't be here, and they would have already been changed.

Player opinions suddenly didn't change. There wouldn't be posts every single day at the top of the subreddit, every. Day. The top post is "That's all fine and dandy, when's the revert". The top upvoted post of every official statement is explicitly, for the past month, been *please revert * with literally hundreds of upvotes.

If player feedback was felt to be meaningful, then it would have been listened to. These are not "A vocal minority" or anything else that can be used to brush legitimate criticism.

In the last month, and I just spent the last 20 minutes counting and checking, there have been 239 threads on how terrible the TTK is, and only maybe 20 of those have been posted by duplicate users, and at most, 12 positive responses, with 3-4 "Waah just leave if you don't like it" in there. Nearly every one that wasn't a meme (About maybe 25% of them were pictures) was upvoted enough to reach the front page of the subreddit.

There's your feedback. Don't pretend it didn't exist. Because some of these are essays. Legitimately 1500+ words with statistical analysis on the just utterly nonsense changes.

You're also coming across as embarrassingly flippant in these responses, mind you, as my post on this topic is several hours old, and if you weren't going to listen to what people stated hours ago explain the exact same thing, then I'm curious as to why you even bothered to respond to this one.

Originally posted by Homo-Deus

Well, you told that other guy in this thread that “valuable feedback” means we gotta explain why we want this reverted, why it sucks, etc.

...like we haven’t done that already with the thousands of posts made on this sub since the update.

Originally posted by Kapgunzz

u/braddock512 I understand your point about explaining why we should have a revert back to the 5.0 ttk. Here’s my reasoning.

I understand why your dev team increased the ttk as a way to help the more inexperienced players compete against more skilled players. The problem with that is the skilled players are always going to out gun them no matter what. I think increasing the TTK has kinda dumbed down the experience level player should be getting. They only way to adapt to something is to practice and push yourself to get better not handicap less skilled player and cater them.

The old values were also satisfying as well when you actually got kills. Yes sometimes getting kills at range with an smg was a little ridiculous but that’s the nature of the game. It’s a FPS shooter but above all it’s a battlefield game. Battlefield is meant to have long lines of sight and if you run out in the open and get killed without smoke or a group of players who can revive you then that’s on you. But changing a big part of the game that was working for a long time to cater to less experienced players is a real blow to the core community. We all need a challenge in a FPS shooters and making it easier to survive is not fun.

Hope that’s a good explanation! u/partwelsh

Originally posted by cmasotti

Thanks Mr. Jeff! I see what you mean with with a hardcore mode. I personally have never been too much of a fan of hardcore as those kinds of servers get pretty sweaty pretty fast, cannot speak for anyone else though.

I don't think the balance and damage value's we had in 5.0 were that close to a hardcore experience, due to the map design and gameplay those values made sense. BF has longer sight-lines and engagement distances than most other comparable FPS games, so most weapons being able to compete at a bit of a variety of ranges is almost required. I think these kinds of differences is what draws people into the BF franchise, that large scale combat. With the current balance and damage values you are forced to engage at shorter distances making a lot of guns obsolete on many of the maps, which is never good, infantry players need to be able to have versatility with their weapon of choice. Even if that weapon is meant for a bit of a shorter range engagement, it is nice to know you could throw some warning shots at a sniper causing them to either get to cover or make them heal up, hitting someone for 10 damage is not going to do that unfortunately.

I think alternatively to your idea with hardcore, is to instead make a casual playlist. This way the main player base who truly loved the addicting gunplay of 5.0 have it in normal servers, while people who want to get into the game as a beginner or just want to mess around can do so free of the higher level/more competitive player base. We grew to love the gunplay over the past year, and this love is directly related to the amount of passion you see in those "Revert Posts". It is never fun to see something you have enjoyed for so long changed so drastically. Cannot speak for anyone else but I find myself not being able to play for as long as I used to, now just an hour usually at night (used to be like 3-4 after work lol). Anyway, good luck to you and the team, looking forward to what is planned moving forward.

Originally posted by Beta1548

Not-so-hot take: Unless Community Games evolves to a full-fledged RSP program with a) persistent, rather than temporary, servers and b) full progression, Community Games is a useless feature.