2012-07-17 21:18 , edited 2012-07-20 06:42 by IvanHellhound

Hello DICE Developers! With the recent news of BF4 around the corner, it has sent the BF Community abuzz with anger, happiness, worry, and distrust. EA's market shares have taken a nose-dive over the last year, and it seems that Battlefield has been the only thing keeping it afloat. I ask you, dear DICE devs, if you want to make the BF Community happy like you set out to do with BF3, (but ultimately didn't, let's face it), then you need to do a few basic things, and keep these things in mind while developing BF4:1.) First and Foremost, please, do not make this a console port. The BF Community's main grief is that BF3 is a console port. It was not developed purely for PC. It seems limited to what consoles can do, and as such, it has lots of problems. If you have to, simply make a PC version, and a console version, so that the PC community can be 'unlimited' to what they can do, and the console players can still have their satisfactory experience. If EA is pushing for this, then you need to push back. The game is dying. Let's face it, it seems a lot more like Call of Duty than a Battlefield reboot. This leads me to....2.) Go back to your roots. Make BF4 as much like BC2 and BF2 as you can, but add new features. Don't throw out important things like VOIP just because some people don't use them. A lot of people did, and it angers the community when useful things are sent down the river because you don't feel they are used enough. Some of the basic things from even Bad Company 2 were gotten rid of, such as something as simple as a main menu. Please put in a main menu with a server browser. Battlelog is pretty cool, but having to launch a game through a web browser seems old and cheap. Even crappy FPS games such a Soldier Front are planning on a dedicated main menu. That game is free, and has been around since 2006. If you want to keep Battlelog, perhaps you can do something to implement both. To see your stats, you have to go on to battlelog. Really, you could make Battlelog simply optional, and make it appealing to players by adding different features. Forcing things on gamers usually doesn't go well, and at least to me, Battlelog doesn't seem right.3.) Be more involved with your own community. Have discussion forums where you and the commmunity actively discuss things. Don't do it once in a blue moon, but have the Devs maybe take turns thinking with the community, letting the community play a part in the development. Our ideas may be hard to implement, and they may never be implemented, but just the fact that you'll sit down and talk with us makes us very happy, and eager to throw our wallets at you when you ask us to buy things. VALVe and Mojang actively listen to the communities, and even discuss with them about things, and look where they're at! You can be there too, if you listen to us, and respect us. Recently, it doesn't seem like you do. A simple twitter account saying "Okay we'll pass that on" seems like you're doing something, but it's not much, believe me.4.) Shooting bullets. Recently, you've moved from a more recoil-based weapons system to a more weapon-spread system. This is backwards. Fix it. BF2's weapon-spread based gunplay was just about garbage, and moving to a more recoil-based one made BC2 amazing. You could even add to it, and make it seem (animations-wise) that a heavy-barrel and foregrip do things. Those small details are great to add, and would really add to the depth of the gameplay, and would really make a lot of people happy.5.) Unlimit the vehicles. It seems in helicopters and jets, you can only do so much. I can understand keeping it simple, but helicopters not being able to roll erratically? Come on, it'd be hilarious to see a bad pilot falling from the sky upside down. Helicopters are more than able of doing such things, and in the hands of an expert pilot, it'd make sense to allow him to distance himself skill-wise from the rest of the players.6.) For this one, I'd like to re-iterate the importance of this game NOT being a console port. Why does the game have to be one? You do not have to keep versions the same for gameplay reasons. PC is where you started with Battlefield, and it should still be the platform that gets the most attention. Allow the PC game to be updated regularly, as you don't have to pay some rediculous fee like you do with XBLM, and PSN. Put out hotfixes. The MASS bug plagued us for months, yet you wouldn't do anything because you wanted to update all the platforms at the same time. That was a huge dealbreaker with the community. It's seemingly indescribable how mad you made people. One time, VALVe put out a TF2 update that broke something as small as the Crit-a-Cola's affect on players being that of the BONK drink. Do you know how long it took VALVe to fix it? 25 minutes. 25 minutes from the previous patch, they fixed the problem. It makes players very happy to see that a company will try and make things right.So, I really hope you take these things into consideration. These few things will really help DICE, and subsequently EA's "community cred" going forward. EA tends to mess things up, so don't let them kill your flagship series. When you guys get to work on a PURE PC Version of the game, I can feel that amazing things are going to happen. Please, take 1 and 6 into serious, heavy consideration. Also, you don't have to limit the PC Version to what consoles can do. That's just silly, and can and will lead to the ruin of the Battlefield franchise.~Ivan Teh Fennec FawksBL: SwiftFenneCEdited 1:29AM, Fri, 07/20/2012I would like to add, that I simply speak what I believe might really change the gameplay of Battlefield for the good, and that if EA is the one pushing for this, they need to stay back, and let DICE have some breathing room. When they can do what they really want with the games, the games they produce are truly remarkable.Want DICE to see this? Send this: http://pastebin.com/N6dRcr0z [pastebin.com] To the BF Twitter, https://twitter.com/Battlefield/with_replies [twitter.com]