Update: Seems like we'll be finding out what form the next Battlefield game in a few days when this timer hits zero.

Lots of speculation abounds, especially with those weird rumours about WWI and DICE posting footage from 1942 on their instagram account. As much as I'd love a fresh look at WW2 with their new tech I'd have to guess the new one will probably be a 2142 prequel because "near-future-but-not-too-scifi" is the hotness for shooters these days.

I can't edit this old post to include a poll but I'm curious A. What you think the setting will be and B. What you want it to be?

Poll 1 and Poll 2

Original post below:

Alternate thread title: Do you want a next Battlefield game?

My own history with the franchise is an interesting one. 1942 rocked my world by being like Tribes 2 sorta only I wasn't being curbstomped and it was Saving Private Ryan/Enemy at the Gates etc. LAN cafe sessions full of probably offensive Vietnam movie quotes/lingo defined my adolescence thanks to BF:Vietnam making it probably the best times I'll ever have with a shooter. By the time BF2 came out I'd grown up a bit and so had the game, a serious game for a overly selfserious teenager. Despite my conceptual love for 2142 it was the first one my friends didnt also back so I dropped off for a long time and got into CoD 2/4 and similiar impulse, animal instinct shooters.

When I saw that Bad Company 2 was coming to PC I had been away from the series for so long that I wasn't even sure if I wanted that sort of thing anymore. I played the beta on ps3 and was fucking loving it and had a thought akin to "wait I hate console shooters and I still love this...maybe on PC..." so I took a punt and bought it. And boy, BC2 is maybe the 2nd best time I've had with a shooter. It was grown up modern but had that sort of devil may care style that I felt was more what you saw in Vietnam than in BF2. When BF3 came out I was pumped and I loved the final game. Maybe it's because I was never all that married to BF2 and had my stint with CoD that it worked for me and not others.

Thing is when BF4 got announced I was left a bit cold. I mean, sure, I'd probably love more BF3 but it seem too similiar too soon so I held off. Trainwreck of a launch aside every time I looked at the game I felt like "well shit this looks like I would like it. It's BF3+new stuff" so I played it a bit at net cafes and had a blast but never brought it home because of Battlefront. So the announcement of Battlefront ticked all my boxes. Series I love, dev I love what could go wrong? So I figured forget BF4, I'll save myself for Battlefront, that way I'll have less big DICE shooter fatigue and be even more keen.

Well I imagine most people know that DICE vision for Battlefront is very stark from what their other games offered. So with my buttons unpushed it leads me to today. Wondering what's next and what I'd what want.

I hope they give the franchise a bit of a trim but not the Battlefront treatment. BF4 has a bit of weapon/gadget bloat which makes it all a bit too chaotic in that players cant quite counter enemy strategy without knowing the ins and outs of 20 or more gadgets perks etc.

I thought BF3 had a good balance there with each class having enough tools that you can play them in many different ways but not so many that classes have no real archtype.

Setting wise I'd love 2143 or similiar. EA rarely makes brave moves but hopefully they are emboldened by Advanced Warfare and Black Ops 2/3 to give us some speculative tech. A good mix of gadgets that aren't slaves to fact could lead to some good gameplay design here's hoping. And the stompy mechs. Few things aren't improved by a stompy mech or two.

This ended up being way more about me than I had planned but really I want to know about you and your thoughts. How do people who dropped off years ago feel? What about people still deep in the dirt playing the newest games today. Feeling the burn or burning strong? Let me know

Another 5 years of waiting, also drop the un-inspired modern military setting.

@korwin: As in you want another 5 years of waiting? I'm with you with the modern setting, 4 realistic modern Battlefields is more than enough.

Battlefield 2 HD Edition or Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam HD HD Edition OR Bad Company 3.

Yep, publishers need to understand the importance of letting a brand rest to rebuild momentum.

You should feel ashamed of your words and deeds.

@korwin: Ah yep I get you. Probably a very tough line to sell to investors though.

I would much like 2143 but I'd also like a Vietnam. It's hard to say I'm not sure what would please me in terms of setting just as long as it's not present day.

I have a lot of gripes with the recent Battlefields so bare with me. One of them is I don't like how they've balanced the Aircraft/Ground Vehicle/Infantry/Water Vehicle hierarchy in the games post BF2. They gimped a lot of the air vehicles in order to nullify the complaints (they failed air is still top gun) but in gimping the air vehicles they nullified their overall usefulness in team play and made them more of a chore to use and survive rather than a blast. Dual jets were removed, helicopter mobility was reduced and every single ground infantry player can potentially be anti-air equipped. I also don't like the vehicle load out systems they implemented I found them always to be poorly balanced and resulting in a less focused role for each vehicle type in how they should be used in a match.

This goes for infantry classes as well, like you said BF3 and 4 started hitting content bloat there were so many guns and attachments most of them became superfluous. DICE failed to balance each weapon and provide reasons to use a lot of them outside of someones personal preference. The classes also began to homogenize and their roles devalued when comparing to the older games which from my point of view ultimately resulted in a lot more lone gunner behavior being viable which made public matches kind of just a bore.

The map design is another thing that needs a major injection to it's quality. There doesn't seem to be any specific design methodology behind a lot of the maps in 3 and 4 they seem to just create a space to play in then place the flags in a relatively even spread and call it a day. BF3 particularly forced a lot of chokepoints and only allowed for minimal movement around the maps making flanking maneuvers and non-conflict play far less valuable. One of the causes from my point of view that the map quality suffered was the pressure DICE probably felt to have as many modes as possible. Making maps that cater to Rush, TDM, DM and whatever other shitty modes they put in besides Conquest really hurt a lot of the maps scale and flow. I would much prefer they just ditch everything and just stick to Conquest and no other modes or at least remove the single player and have Conquest and Rush but have them use maps specifically designed for each mode none of this re-purposing bullshit. Still remove TDM and DM, garbage modes.

As for modes however (kind of going against my last point), I would VERY MUCH love to see a return of Titan mode. That is one of the coolest modes in an FPS I've played and it's a real shame that 2142 died so quickly in my area and DICE showed no interest in returning to it's formula.

Weapon handling as well needs to require more focused and controlled fire. Guns in BF became too close to lasers and spray was too viable. The shooting ended up being designed for short to medium range environments but then the bullet behavior wasn't adapted for the scale of the maps resulting in stupid shit like people use of assault rifles and sub machine guns at sniper ranges.

So if I was to answer your thread title with 2 words (3 if you count 'and') it would be "focus and balance." The BF games stopped being what made them initially so impressive and fell to a lot of copycat design in order to compete with Call of Duty. Now though Call of Duty has dwindled in popularity a significant amount and I'd love to see DICE (god willing EA allows them) focus their efforts and make the franchise once again about its unique scale and interplay between infantry and vehicles.

Side note: I'm aware BF4 received a boatload of post launch support but I never got around to playing it. I heard a lot of good news (much better tickrate servers, community input map design etc.) but I never got around to playing it. Premium is $60 and the base game was $89 here iirc so after their botched launch of 4 I pretty much just dropped it after awhile with no intention to return. So some of these issues may have been addressed, I don't know.

The only thing I really want is.. that the game is not broken upon release.

this is not a joke.. as coincidentally all of the battlefield games on the PC have always had technical problems
starting with 1942 infamous memory leak and a huge patch to finally fix it... to battlefield 4 that was so broken it took dice almost 9 month to make the game playable.

so whatever they end up making I am sure will be fun to play... just for f*** sake I hope they don't rush it out the door like they normally do.

@baronsamedi: I heard the air game is dramatically different since launch but for better or worse I can't work out because I don't really fly well enough to notice haha.

I wonder if the genie can ever go back in the bottle when it comes to the shooting though. Even if it's perfect for balance a lot of people, and critics are pretty guilty of this, will say the shooting is poor and reject it. I think Halo is the only MP game that gets away with slower TTK these days.

Bad Company 3 and a monthly subscription option for premium content. Also, robots. Big ones.

Battlefield: Civil War

The English one.

@gaggle64: Regarding shooter subscriptions I wonder how Call of Duty Elite is going

Less guns, gadets, attachments and game modes. Proper 5 flag Infantry focused conquest maps like grand bazaar and seine crossing, stop with the gigantic 7 flag maps. Don't want monthly sub, Bad Company 3 or Vietnam, would love longer TTK harder to use guns and Battlefield 2142 remake.

Basically BF 2143. But I also loved BFBC2 Vietnam on consoles.

The could just take heavy inspiration from the latest Black Ops, and I wouldn't mind that.

@wuddel: maybe they'll put all their nostalgia eggs in one basket and make it Bad Company 214_3_ and have the main cast unfrozen to fight in that war.

@hayt said:

Damn I'd pledge that kickstarter if they ever want to do it.

Despite BF2 and BC2 being the entries I've played the most, I'd love to see their take on another 2142 style game.

A cross between Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 4. So fun, destructible maps on the small scale, along with other maps that were as massive as B4. So just a variety and a mix.

Bad Company 3.

I want DICE to finally stop acting coy and add goddamn dinosaurs to Battlefield.

Bad Company 3 or bust.

Well 4 just felt like a copy/paste of 3. So I want some kind of new game.

This is a really hard one. I have a very similar history with the series as the OP.

First off I hope some kind of settings change. I would not like sci-fi super soldiers (because it's overplayed right now) but that could be done pretty well by DICE even. Just something else from 3 and 4.

I would love WWII actually but I'm sure many hate that. I would like dialing back the tech and having a LOT of destruction. I think DICE has done some cool things with maps in their games and I would like to see them get back to WWII with that technology and scale. I agree with some thoughts above on how there are too many guns that can be used on too many classes to make them too similar, and dialing it back in history would help. I also do not like the mixing of medic and "assault" roles that has gone on and I hope that changes.

I also think the progression systems are a bit overdone and could be dialed back some. I say that as someone who likes progression stuff and RPGs and all that. It's just a little much. I think it could be done better or at least in a more interesting way. Like how in MGS V I am building up a base as I progress. I just think staring at bars and menus go up in a shooter doesn't do a ton for me these days. Maybe let me really customize my character and/or the vehicles, kind of like you could in Rainbow Six: Vegas.

A lot of people coming out to support a Bad Company 3. I love BC2 but I'm wondering what people think the key points that need to come over to make a Bad Company 3. Is the lower player count important to people or is it just the more focused design? (5 guns per class, minimal customisation,a few vehicles, no jets).

Like if you had a checklist of what defines Bad Company what would it be?

Yea I'm sure a lot of balance tweaks have been made but I highly doubt the mobility and speed of the air vehicles would have returned.

You're also probably right about the shooting, people just seem to want to hold down the fire button and dump bullets in a general direction to get kills. That makes boring shooting to me, it's so 1 note and it's defined by more often than not first shot gets the kill.

Another thing I'd love to see is a total removal of health regeneration, that shit like I said before gives less purpose to the classes as well as enabling lone gunner behaviour.

Probably a new 2142, it needs to mix things up a lot.

BC3 would be great too, but I'd like them to step away from modern setting for a bit.

I've been playing the Battlefield games since they first came out. My Favorites are 1942, 2142, and BFBC. I've played all of them except Hard-line and BF4 (I fell off of BF3 a few months after launch).

What I would want would be a 2143 game. An updated version of that with some added vechile and weapons would be awesome. Titan Assault is still one of my favorite game modes in a shooter that really hasn't been done anywhere else.

@Hayt to me what makes a BFBC game would be the non serious campaign. BFBC 1 has one of the best FPS campaigns in my opinion. Light hearted with great characters. Fully destructible environments is also a point (I understand why they had to change it though).

I think Battlefield works best when it stradles the line between realism and arcady play. I should be able to switch on the fly between a good tactical team player one round and then a crazy balls to the wall, loading c4 on a jeep player the next.

Also bring back prop planes. Jets and helis are to fast and suffer to harsh a learning curve. While in BF1942 with an hour of practice you can be doing reasonable bombing runs.

Here is what I want...which I think will work better for for everyone anyway.

- Classic Battlefield game mechanics and MP modes
- Campaigne is a tight six hours with a good story and likable characters
- Game comes polished and working on all platforms from day one, any other issues that crop up are fixed in a timely fashion when found.
- No paid DLC, all DLC is free
- Game comes with 12 MP maps on day one, after two months every month two new maps drop...again for free.

I get where you're coming from with this. I loved that they did it with BC2 but do you realistically think they'd ever do this? The free dlc was part of their petty feud with cod but now that's over and I just don't see them leaving money on the table like that.

I would like for it to work.

@hack1501: The fact that Battlefront and Hardline both came out working fine mostly has me encouraged about the next thing they do, technically speaking anyway. That said no one expected the BF4 scenario so maybe it's not the sort of thing that you can base on past record.

@hayt: While I agree those two games came out and performed well, they were small in scale and very underwhelming in my opinion. I loved Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 was ambitious and came out on brand new consoles so I can forgive them for that mess. I just hope they can build on what they learned from their previous mistakes

they need some kind of setting change, fantasy battlefield or cyberpunk battlefield, modern military pretty much got squeezed dry.

@marz: re: Fantasy Battlefield there was that (sort of awful looking) Lord of the Rings Conquest game. I think it's hard to balance games with melee only classes and ranged ones in that scale though.

I'm constantly surprised by the lack of games about the Korean War, so I'd probably go with Battlefield 1952 or something. And don't feel the need to put a campaign in there. They took the campaign out of Battlefront, so why not Battlefield as well?

No, they wouldn't do it, but it woudl get them out of their slump. They need to put out a game that is a 'great value', that works day one, and keep that value going. Maybe, not all free DLC, because that could paint them in a corner for the next game, but far more FREE dlc would be a good selling point.

Updated the original post because DICE is teasing the new game and I don't think it warranted a totally new thread. Check out the polls and the super trendy blue and orange contrast.

Battlefield: Primal

@isomeri: I'd love a BF1952, but the game would almost certainly be banned in China if they tried it. Dunno if that figures into their sales or not. Personally, BF1982 would be my dream setting

EDIT Ah geez, 2 month old reply

@ripelivejam: My friend said the exact same thing so clearly you're onto something

@giantstalker: What conflict would it be in 1982 Lebanon? Falklands? Could do a World in Conflict style invented war between NATO and Warsaw pact countries.

"...the future of Battlefield."

That sounds like some free-to-play, long-term platform language to me.

Hey, have the Bad Company boys been discharged yet?

I like your latter idea, because:

A) You can build plausible conflicts into realistic settings, locations, etc

B) World in Conflict is a great game

@spoonman671: It's been an age but wasn't the end of Bad Company 2 them landing in the US countryside as Russia invaded? I want to have my cake and eat it too. Put "B" Company in cyro-sleep until 2142 and then put them in the future game.

Would you guys want them to do another season pass for the DLC or would you want the DLC maps to be free and have the game have heavy micro-transactions like Halo 5 or Rainbow Six Siege? I personally am fine with either and actually enjoyed the Premium offering of Battlefield 4.

@acidbrandon18: When it comes to DLC I'd say season pass is the lesser of the evils. However if it was like Rainbow 6s system without the xp boosters (ie. You are buying cosmetics) that's fine. Put all the awful gun skins behind a paywall if they like so long as they don't effect game play.

For the damn netcode to work on launch. I still feel kinda burned by buying B4.

I'm willing to bet it is called Battlefield 5 and will be something that I still don't give a shit about because it's not Battlefield 2.

If it's modern or sci-fi-ish I'm going to be bummed at this point. Just really tired. It'd have to do some really cool other stuff to get me interested. And this is a big fan of the series talking.

If it was WWII I would actually be most excited. I would love to a see a AAA shooter made now in that setting. But various historical settings would work too.