Battlefield 1: 9 Big Worries We Have After The Beta
Hey DICE? You got some Battlefront in my Battlefield.
Okay, so Battlefield 1 may not be returning to the historic war period that everyone perhaps wanted, but it does still feature bayonets, bolt-action rifles and slower-than-a-snail vehicles, so the only thing we're really missing from that other abhorrent conflict is the ability to mow down endless numbers of fascist, goose-stepping Nazis.
With the pre-release beta period now over, advocates of the shooter's non-futuristic setting have had plenty of time to go hands-on with the Great War setting, but is it all it's cracked up to be?
As a longtime fan of the Battlefield franchise and the FPS genre as a whole, I'm not so sure. There's a great deal of praise to be heaped on DICE for its dedication to authentic sound and visual design, but as my total play time increased, so too, did my concern in regards to the rough nature of its underlying gameplay mechanics and balance.
I've been left with several questions following the conclusion of the beta, some small, others major. If DICE truly wants Battlefield 1 to contend for title of 2016's greatest shooter, it needs to address some of these...
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9. Snipers, Snipers Everywhere
The abundance of players choosing to deploy into Battlefield 1's Sinai Desert map as the Scout class shouldn't really come as any surprise. I mean, when you're presented with a map that's made up of 90% sand and 10% brick, how could you, or anyone, possibly resist taking advantage of all that open space that serves as a breeding ground for long range combat?
Unless you purposefully refrain from leaving the confines of a small collection of buildings in the north eastern portion of the map, it's almost a given that you're going to get domed as soon as any attempt at relocation is attempted.
Of course, these issues all largely come down to the terribly lopsided nature of the Sinai map rather than the Scout class itself, but if future stages feature the same level of imbalance, expect the same problem to occur with other archetypes.