So, a few months ago I had an article about how gaming has changed for the worst since 2016. Honestly, I feel like the world has changed for the worst since 2016, but as I stated in the post, 2016 truly felt like the last good year for gaming for me. I guess in retrospect 2021 was okay, between halo infinite, battlefield 2042, and COD vanguard, but COD was another generic COD title discarded after a year, and lets face it, both halo and battlefield had flaws. Halo just lacked the content updates necessary to retain players in my opinion, and the politics within the battlefield community are a complete crapshow (I made a post on that too). I mean, the game was flawed from the get go, but the community pushed it to change the wrong way, and now the game feels very offputting to play. And honestly, in the modern era, it feels like it takes forever to get games any more, as development cycles take years and often they're quite content starved. Modern gaming has a lot of problems. I dont think monetized cosmetics are an aspect of that, although many people will blame such things.
But then Battlebit came along and it did change everything, and just like an Arrash video inspired me to write my previous post on the subject, another one discussing the game inspired me to write this one. Because I quite frankly have been playing the game lately, and you know what? It's the most eventful multiplayer game release for me since at minimum 2021 and those trifecta of games, but possibly as far back as 10 years ago when Battlefield 4 launched. BF4 was, for me, the peak of battlefield, and while it did have its share of flaws at the time, like awful monetization, and high system requirements, game play wise it hit all the right notes, and was arguably the last truly great battlefield game. BF hardline kinda crapped the bed. BF1 was okay but not as memorable for me. Battlefield 5 and 2042 have been complete and utter crapshows as I discussed in the previous articles on the matter. But battlebit seemed to recapture the lost art of gaming, in my mind. Let me explain why.
First of all, the game is very accessible. The poor graphics dont detract from the game at all, but ensure that the game is very accessible. The game is a flat $15, there's no DLC, you just get the game, it gets regular updates including content updates (we already got one map post launch), and it basically runs on anything made in the past 10 years just about. I did try it on my old 2011 era laptop and it wouldnt start on that, but that was just slightly too old to give it a shot. But anything newer than that and not completely terrible? it'll run in some form.
In a lot of ways this actually works quite well, a huge problem with modern games is a focus on style vs substance. Newer games, like battlefield games, etc, look better than their predecessors, but never captured the game play properly. For as big budget as AAA games, what we end up getting in practice are several year long development cycles, meaning a huge content glut between titles, slow content updates (often 3-6 months between update), a content drip system where a lack of meaningful content is replaced by grinding via battlepasses and all that nonsense. When we get content its buggy. I know I tried the new map on BF2042 like a month or two ago and kept glitching through the fricking floor because the game is a broken pile of crap. The game runs like crap on not bad hardware. And yeah.
In the past, we got games quickly. We'd see yearly updates, with whole games. They'd release a game, then work on the next one. Maybe for longer franchises you'd get a new game every 2 years.
Heck if we wanna go way back, on PC, you'd have things like community servers and map making tools to make custom content that would allow games to survive and thrive for years or even a decade or more in some cases.
And let's focus on the game play. Remember what I said about games having to be hyper competitive? This game isnt. It's actually laid back, and it turns out, people MISS that. Every gme these days has to try to be an esport, and be competitive, and casual gaming is just gone. This game does have some hardcore elements, it did start life as a milsim shooter, but people didnt enjoy it as a milsim shooter so it was made more casual. It still has some elements of being a milsim, lowish TTK, high recoil on guns, bleeding out, combining magazines, but it is toned down relative to the original vision and has become arguably the best battlefield type game since BF4. For me, The early-mid 2010s were truly the peak of gaming, and this game really scratches that itch. This game brings me back to those days playing BF3, BF4, and Planetside 2 in the 2011-2015 era before gaming as I knew it went to crap.
Yes, the game has a class system, I know all the "make battlefield great again" idiots have also been rejoicing over this game, but lets face it, unlike recent BF titles, its not oppressive. Yes, people work together, but not because the game forces them to, but becuse its fun. Its an organic part of the game. Medic is the class most people are drawn toward because its very versatile, you get tons of points for reviving and healing. You CAN revive as other classes too. And much like BF3/4, the teamwork everyone goes on about just felt more organic. And if you want to foster team work, thats how you do it. You dont restrict player choices and punish people for playing differently than you want them to, which is what more modern battlefield games do, you incentivize people through rewards to actually want to participate in team play. And this game does it. Again, class systems arent inherently bad, trying to FORCE people and shoehorn people into them unnaturally is bad.
Oh, and another thing. I've been noticing something recently. I mentioned gaming having longer time spans between titles than in the past, and a lot of content we get is broken and unoptimized. This is in part because of the AAA game developer philosophy of relying on blockbuster graphics. Yet a game like battlebit can give people a lot more content, a lot faster, why? Because its less complex. The better you make the game look, the more complex it becomes, the more complex, the more the games break, become unoptimized, and it takes ages to get new content. Maybe we're beyond gaming's peak at this point, where developer cycles take way too long, games are getting too complex too the point of being unwieldy, and perhaps it would be better if we focused on simpler games that dont look as good but run better under the hood and we're able to make more content more cheaply.
I remember games of the 90s and 2000s were often so simple that normal people could make maps. Heck I remember making C&C and advance wars maps and playing on UT and Quake maps back in the day. I dont think custom player content is a great thing mind you, i mean, admittedly a lot of content was crap, with the player base acting like a cat ignoring that massive play environment you gave them in order to....play in the box it came in. Yeah. Some maps were as simple (and as dumb) as a plain white box.
Still, even if developers had some input, they could review maps and greenlight them into the game. A lot of counter strike and TF2 maps started life as custom maps the devs often came across and decided they were good enough to make official, it happens.
So yeah, if we hd simpler games, with more content, we'd rely less on needing to fill peoples' hours with boring grinding to keep them engaged. Seriously, it used to be people played the game because they liked playing the game. Now people play for dozens of hours to unlock battlepasses that feel like jobs. Im not saying battlebit doesnt have grinding. It has a level and unlock system too, but it reminds me more of BF4's system, rather than a newer system that feels based on FOMO and grinding just to keep people interested.
So yeah. Some people are acting like this game is revolutionizing gaming and sending a message to the AAA devs what they're doing wrong, and it is, but TLDR, what's it doing right? Basically it's just going back to how games used to be. First games are GAMES. They're not SPORTS. They're intended to have fun and screw around in, not sweat your balls off. Second, the game is cheap and accessible. Third, it actually has a good amount of content to keep people playing for a while at launch, with what seems like regular content updates so far.
What other games arent doing right: they take too long to make, they lack content to keep people engaged, they're buggy, bloated, and unoptimized, and they take themselves too seriously, prioritizing competitiveness and sweatiness over casual fun. Not to mention the gaming companies looking to milk every cent out of us through overly monetizing everything. "Gaming as a service" isnt really a good thing for gamers. I mean, I guess regular patches and updates and content is good, but given that the whole idea seemed to be designed as a way shoehorn excessive monetization into every nook and cranny. Capitalism may be the best system relative to all others, but lets face it, sometimes the profit motive isnt really aligned with the optimal customer experience. Without capitalism we wouldnt have a gaming industry quite frankly (and i dont think most forms of socialism allow the freedom to innovate such a thing), but over the decades monetization had gotten worse and worse. battlebit brings us back to a time where you pay a reasonably flat fee and get a finished product, period. No DLC, no battlepass, no cosmetics, just, give me $15 and you get a game to spend hundreds of hours on. Deal.
Im serious. This game might be the best I've played in a LITERAL DECADEon the multiplayer front. Since BF4. And I've played a lot of decent ones. Siege, Overwatch, BF1/5/2042, PUBG, titanfall, apex, various COD games, halo, etc. This is among the best. Because its design philosophy feels like something from 10-15 years ago, not 2023.
No comments:
Post a Comment