In a time of panic, it looks like Electronic Arts and DICE are showing their true colors this holiday season in a new “community letter” that reveals they want as many new players and folks who have no clue how to play Battlefield V money. This is all so that they can make something financially substantial from Q4 2018.
It’s nothing new to see a company try to capitalize on the holiday season or Q4 2018, but then there’s another thing to belittle your community, force in political elements and disparage folks who disagree with said political view and then create a dumpster fire of a promotional/PR movement that deters players away. Well, now EA and DICE are trying to “recoup losses” by dissing hardcore fans and preying on newbies this holiday season.
On December 14th, 2018, global community manager Danmitre took to r/BattlefieldV to compose a letter titled “Battlefield V Letter to the Community – New “Core” Playlists Coming.” Without wasting any time, you can read an excerpt from the letter explaining how newbie money this holiday season is more important than fixing core problems currently plaguing the game:
“So, why change TTK now? The intent came from us observing that new players are having a very hard time with the game compared to our core players, and we wanted to see if we could improve this over the holidays so more players can have a great time.”
Multiplayer Producer for Battlefield V, David Sirland, took to Twitter to address the situation regarding the TTK shift and stated:
Spent the day setting up communication around the TTK and what the next steps are – fret not if a fan of the faster TTK, we'll have you covered.
— David Sirland (@tiggr_) December 14, 2018
Disagreeing with the solution, BF YouTuber JackFrags expressed his thoughts on the matter which prompted Sirland to reinforce that newcomer money is more important than pleasing the very few people playing the game:
If it was permanent, yes. But the test really is about new players getting the slower TTK over the holidays, and hopefully we won't confuse the fast TTK preferring players too much in the meanwhile.
I personally agree it should be flipped and approached from that side too.— David Sirland (@tiggr_) December 14, 2018
The same tweet that flipped JackFrags switch to disagree with Sirland also enabled another user to call the quits due to community splitting decisions:
Sorry to hear that, new player split would always be a thing though – they need time and relative safety to learn the ropes?
— David Sirland (@tiggr_) December 14, 2018
Sirland explains that community splitting would always be a thing, which contradicts the “live service method” promoted in the past as featured in a piece that publication site VG24/7 (archive.is) posted featuring live service development director Ryan MacArthur saying:
“Players have things to look forward to and they can spend time with each mode. Otherwise you have a similar thing like with expansions where the playerbase gets fragmented.”
With all of that said, for a moment we will ignore all of the above and try to see how newcomers that aren’t doing well on the battlefield take to this holiday TTK change. According to the “Battlefield V Letter to the Community – New “Core” Playlists Coming” comment section we see user Zack_scholes with 857 upvotes (as of this writing) express:
“I’m a new player. I started playing two weeks ago, I had never played a fps online prior to that. I struggled the first couple of days and was getting k/d of like 0.2. I continued to play and improve and started getting at least a k/d of 1 on every match I played in the day or two leading up to the change. I think that one change that really helped me was the kill spot bug. Once I wasn’t spotted after a kill I could start stringing together some longer kill streaks. As a new player I can say that this ttk change is frustrating. I finally was getting more efficient at killing and now it takes forever to put someone down. I can’t string together as long of streaks as I now have to reload much more. I was always a bit frustrated but how fast I died (seemingly in one hit, often from the Sten) and this is still a frustration, but now it is coupled with the fact that it takes my whole clip (with my mediocre aim) to put someone down. I know I am a sample size of 1, but as a new player to battlefield and first person shooters, I can say that I prefer how it was before.”
Joining the above player comes that of user WantsToMineGold who holds 1.1K upvotes and two silver medals explaining:
“I’m a casual with a fairly shitty KD and my roommates are truly terrible at this game. Think 3-20 scores sometimes! We don’t want the new TTK and it doesn’t help us, the game is hard either way and the new system makes it harder to get multiple kills. We’re going to die a lot anyway so just leave it how it was, we were having a blast even dying a lot but learning and getting better.
Not everyone even cares about their KD as much as people think especially not casuals like myself. Making everyone a sponge makes the game more frustrating for me personally and I much prefer the quicker KD it feels way more realistic and intense.”
To summarize the aforesaid, EA and DICE changed the TTK to suit casual or newbies but pissed off veterans or long time players in doing so. Additionally, instead of fixing core problems found in Battlefield V the team instead wanted extra money from the holiday season, which screwed over the noobs, in turn, exposing the publisher and developers’ true intentions.
