opinion: Everyone is currently talking about a possible Free2Play conversion of Battlefield 2042. But just making a game free is not the solution
Next to all you can eat and tax rebate, there is hardly another word as nice as free. Free snacks at the department stores’, free perfume spritzes, 33 per cent extra shampoo – and of course free games on Steam and Epic, all of it a dream. So it’s no wonder that many people think it’s the solution par excellence that even the stumbling Battlefield 2042 is switching to Free2Play and being brought to the people for free.
I’ve already taken up the cudgels for the Free2Play switch myself when it became apparent at the turn of the year that Battlefield 2042’s first content season wouldn’t start until four (!) months after release (in March 2022). What else can the game do apart from Free2Play? People are leaving in droves, the Steam user score remains at a catastrophic low – and even after all the mistakes, there are still embarrassing blunders like the recent zombie mode, which went offline immediately after release because the thing can be so obviously exploited as an XP farm that even the game designer has to admit: I don’t know how we missed that.
But Free2Play alone won’t save Battlefield 2042. In general, no shortcut can save Battlefield – it won’t be enough to simply scratch off the five at the 50-euro price tag and then hope for cheering thumbs. In order to get Battlefield 2042 back on track, three of the game’s construction sites need to be reworked quite fundamentally.
Table of Contents
1. new content or: the wobble
Let’s get the obvious construction site out of the way: Of course, new content would help Battlefield 2042 enormously. New weapons, maps, vehicles – and I’m sure there’s someone out there who would even be happy about new specialists, even though their sayings are as off-key in their tone as this unforgettable flute cover from Titanic:
But I’m going to swing the painful realism club now: There won’t be more than one map for now – the leaks and info morsels so far suggest that with a high degree of probability. And I understand that, because a new map on the scale of Battlefield 2042 is enormously complex. Assets have to be built, playtests have to be conducted and layouts have to be tried out – that takes time.
But people will still have played through every corner of the new map after two or three weeks. Unfortunately, that’s how perception works – the fans also complain that Far Cry 6 is just a lukewarm rehash of part five, even though hundreds of people spent years building a completely new open world there.
I don’t want to open a can of worms here for a lack of creative appreciation, but just to state descriptively: DICE can’t rely on the angry community to respect how elaborate map development is when all they get is a new map after tens of months. Incidentally, another argument that the team may have overreached itself with the 128-player gigantomania.
So the hope rests on new modes, weapons and specialists. Given that Season 1 will, after all, primarily market the Battle Pass, I’m cautiously optimistic that things could happen here. But you can already tell: that alone simply won’t be enough.
2nd Operation Health
Rainbow Six Siege once dared an extremely bold manoeuvre years ago. Instead of introducing new operators and maps in an upcoming season, Ubisoft pulled the ripcord and said to themselves: “We’re taking the next three months to really fix our technology.
This so-called Operation Health was a risk, as the community was left high and dry for a long time, but in the end the patience more than paid off. R6 was a much better game afterwards – and a foundation for a glorious future. Unfortunately, Battlefield 2042 needs this Operation Health right now.
Scoreboard, voice chat, squad switching, balancing issues – there are so many inconsistencies with the current version of Battlefield 2042 that radically get in the way of any form of future. DICE has already announced plans to tackle scoreboard and voice chat in the immediate future, so at least there’s legitimate hope here: Battlefield urgently needs to sort out all these birth pains. And then it can get going.
3. All or nothing
There are a million ways to really screw up communication. And DICE can actually save themselves lip service after release, because the trust is – and yes, that is of course hard – gambled away with many fans for now. What counts now are actions. But even more than ad hoc patches, people want to see one thing: That the developers still believe in their game. That’s what ultimately saved Battlefront 2 from going under, saved Rainbow Six and made Fortnite a million-dollar success. Constant updates, constant feedback.
Hazard Zone mustn’t die a sad death like Battlefield 5’s Firestorm Battle Royale once did. Portal mustn’t remain a balancing shambles of shut-down XP farms and failed zombie experiments. And all-out warfare needs new modes, expansions, weapons. Not just in Season 2 in autumn 2022, but already during the first season.
Is that realistic?
Totally honest: If I were DICE (and DICE were a person), I would probably let Battlefield 2042 die. Unlike Battlefield 5 and Battlefront 2, the problems here reach deep into the game’s foundation – the road to long-lasting success is likely to be rockier than the road to a new, better game. But hey, I’d be all the more positively surprised if the game does get its act together.
But is that realistic? Only if DICE massively changes its development model. The team needs agile two-week sprints, quick fixes. Voice chat can’t be released in mid-April, it needs to come right at the start of Season 1. The architecture of Battlefield 2042 is actually designed for something like this: For example, DICE was able to remove broken weapons from the game in no time after release, without having to install an update.
But there have to be people who take advantage of these possibilities. And I’m very unsure whether the team can manage such a set-up. The fact that the first season will only start four months after release speaks against this. Obviously, the mindset to keep a modern service game alive in a flexible way is still missing here. But of course I hope I’m wrong and Season 1 surprises us all. Then the Free2Play conversion might actually save the game.
