An article on why Battlefield will never outsell Call of Duty

I find the argument intriguing. A few relevant bits:

Yeah, Call Of Duty seems to have a strong Deathmatch bent (considering that Activision used to be id Software's publisher, that's not too surprising), whereas Battlefield has stronger teamwork and tactical elements, like Command And Conquer: Renegade's multiplayer.

That's... one really upsetting article, to put it nicely.

One part of me thinks that the ONLY reason why MW 3 is doing so well is because of it's namebrand and popularity alone. Right now there's no way I'd buy MW 3 because I know that it's basically going to follow the exact same formula it's predessor did: linear, scripted shooting sequences and setpiece events meant to invoke shock from players. It was a good trick the first few times, but now it's practically expected, which lessens the surpise. Then there's the whole issue with the story, which was actually credible and realistic in COD 4, but got totally whacked out, illogical (the Russians managed to organize such a massive strikeforce to invade DC in just 2-3 days, and with barely any time to even confirm who the hell the CIA agent was... seriously?!) and full of plot holes.

Yet, another part of me understands why. Almost all of the people who play Co D really don't seem to care that much about either the quality of the story OR the mulitplayer; they just take all the online trolls, hackers, glitches and other stuff like it's to be expected and play on, actually enjoying the experience. They're even more likely to purchase it, never the touching the campaign or story, only for the sake of playing Spec-Ops mode with a friend online (or more preferrably at their house) if they know he's going to get buy as well. And yet when I asked them about the Battlefield franchise, only one of them ever heard of it, and that was because he used to play 2142 online with a clan for a while.

So... yeah. It's sad that the article may actually be right, that Battlefied will never reach the levels of success that Co D has simply because they're not as well known, but maybe it's for the better. At least we won't suffer as many 12 year olds and trolls since they'll all be playing Co D, eh?

EDIT: Hey Rocket, did you know that a LOT of the original battlefield devs from DICE were originally from Westwood EA, and were planning to make a sequel to Renegade? However because of executive meddling they decided to jump on the WWII bandwagon and create BF 1942 instead?

edited 12th Oct '11 3:01:09 AM by SgtRicko

With all the advertising and hype the latest Battlefield is getting, I expect to see lots of little screaming dweebs online anyway.

Give it maybe half a month or so for the kiddies to tell their friends "battlfeld SUX" and start nagging their parents to buy Co D instead, then the prepubescent population online might die down.

Thing is, we WANT more people to buy Battlefield. From the looks of things it seems like EA and DICE threw a shitload of money just trying to make this game, so the last thing we need right now is for them to see only "satisfactory" sales upon release day. Cause if that does happen, there's a chance they might say "screw it, there's no chance we can compete with the Co D franchise. Let's just stick to making cheaper games with yearly deadlines, or those moneysink 'free to play' online games. They seem to rake in the cash, so why not?"

This article...

I dont know about ya all, but I personally thougt than all of what it says was a given... it cant really get more obvious than that, but whatever.

When I started reading stuff like "Battlefield is the smarter shooter", I closed the tab. I don't know about the rest of you, but I find the ceaseless stream of "accessibility equates to lower intelligence" arguments to be arrogant and obnoxious. I'm not saying I have a preference; in fact, I generally don't play many shooters at all and both the Battlefield and Call of Duty games have given me some really fun experiences. But I think that making an argument of this kind is a cop out and prevents further discussion of the less obvious merits and the position of each game.

I guess what I'm saying is that "accessibility equates to lower intelligence" or other arguments with the same implication are anti-intellectual themselves.

Whatever, COD is dead to me since MW 2

Yeah, I don't really like labelling stuff like that so arrogantly either, but I'd have to agree Co D's less deep than Battlefield, since it has a big focus on being a stronger player with the most kills to get even more kills. The killstreak system practically discourages teamwork - the more kills are spread out, the less really powerful killstreaks your team will be getting. Only a very few game modes will encourage you to constantly play with your team - getting a 13+ killstreak and achieving the objective of the game mode just in the meantime because it's there and your killstreaks give you the opening for it rather then, you know, constantly trying to achieve it because it's the objective of the game mode happens way too much to make it a very conceptually deep experience, I would say.

edited 13th Oct '11 5:02:35 PM by VutherA

As with most things, I feel it reached a pinnacle in Co D 4. MW 2's killstreaks were just endlessly brutal at higher levels. In fact, MW 2 seems to be the dev team seeing how far they could take the concepts of Co D 4.

The other big thing that swings the pendulum of intelligence in Battlefield's favor is how a lot of their objectives work. In rush, the only way you'll ever be able to destroy the MCOM terminals alone is if the enemy team is poorly coordinated, full of camping snipers, or your team is overpacked. Otherwise, you're sure to get gunned down or grenaded/RP Ged to death as soon as the warning siren is activated. In domination you need to make sure that you're not attacking outposts on your own and are doing it with some sort of backup, or else you'll simply lose territorial control as soon as the enemy comes back to retake the outpost. And getting pounded by tanks or choppers sucks without engineers or support troops present.

The only issue in Battlefield is that you're at the mercy of your team if you truly want to win. Sure a great player can change the tide of a battle in their favor, but no amount of effort is going to get you a win if your teammates are obessed with getting kills to rank up or hogging the chopper, instead of taking the objectives, for instance.

In Co D, the only mode that truly encourages teamwork is probably search & destroy, since you'll need someone to cover you when placing the explosives, and also to defend them. The others... well, the above posters have pretty much summed it up quite well in my opinion.

edited 15th Oct '11 9:48:56 AM by SgtRicko