Battlefield 2042 - DICE Goes Back to the Future, Just Not the 2142 Future

I think the last probably was Hardline or BF4.

Yeah, map voting has been sorely missing for the last few games.

Yep it was the last game that had it.

It was also the last battlefield game that felt good to play, like the previous games.

Ah… I think most servers never allowed it. Maps were on a rotation. DICE servers were and still are anyway.

Played a bit of the update. It’s fine. If you didn’t like BF2042 before, I doubt this will change things enough for you to like this, but for the people playing this the update seems to be shaking things up enough to get them excited. If this were a more popular game, I’m sure there would be stacks of think-pieces debating the changes to the class system.

Guess I oughta play it since I bought the flippin deluxe edition back in 2021.

Well, that was a good trailer, and it looks fun. Maybe they are really doing what the game needs.

Too late?

It’s never too late for this series. BFV imrpoved tremendously over time and people still play it today.

I just played a couple of co-op/SP rounds (pretty much w/ AI). The game plays and looks great. I’m not enough of a die-hard to know what I’m missing I suppose. I’ll definitely dive back in with the next season release.

Trailer for the next battle pass:

PS5 owners should wait two weeks.

Oh nice! Been wanting to try out the patched up 2042 to see how it plays.

Yeah, after wasting $100 for a year of EA Play, I’m happy to receive it for “free” now.

More about the upcoming new map and details of the new character:

Sponsored by Razer? lol

The rumor is that there’s another year of BF2042 content coming.

Been playing this a bit again lately. Still seems pretty fun and the classes definitely make it feel more like “Battlefield”. The newer maps are pretty good and I really think the game would have been received better if they were in it at launch instead of the ones that were.

Out of curiosity, does anyone play with with a controller or are most people playing on PC? In the past I’ve always played on PC, but this time I’ve been playing mostly on Xbox. I have mixed feelings about the controller and kind of feel like I’m playing with a handicap. The bit of auto-aim in the game makes close-quarters combat seem ok, but it seems like any medium or long range shooting is significantly more difficult.

I’m on PC and exclusively M and K. I even fly with it but mostly choppers. I had 27 flag caps last night in the little bird. One man back flag wrecking crew. I just basically flew a figure 8 pattern between 2 capture points and lasted half a round before dying. Had to be very annoying to the other team. Some sniper finally shot me outta it, prolly hacking 😉

@DaveLong is a big controller guy for fps iirc. Maybe he has some tips on setting it up.

I switched from mouse and keyboard to controller with Halo back at the turn of the Century. There are things you do better with the controller than MK players and things you do worse. Ultimately, the tradeoff is usually sniping in a game like Battlefield where you’ll be slightly poorer once you’ve practiced a lot.

Where you gain a significant leg up IMO is in vehicles and at short and medium range. That said, Battlefield has quirky configuration that you should investigate to make sure you’re not handicapping yourself.

Unless they’ve changed it recently, by default the Battlefield control setup for controller enables “Acceleration”. That means turning left and right or looking up and down increases in speed as you tilt the stick. It’s… awful… and you should turn it off. There’s a slider in 2042 IIRC that you just set to 0 for no acceleration and you’re good to go.

Less quirky and more preference, but a good one IMO, is to also have your sensitivity set higher for left to right movement than it is for up and down. Typically, you want to turn quickly but not adjust your aim height nearly as much when moving quickly through a map and aiming at players. It’s much better to have a steady vertical motion with little deviation while you spin around in a flash. I set my sensitivity probably at a 2:1 ratio horizontal:vertical.

Another really important tip for Battlefield specifically is you do NOT need to Aim Down Sight (ADS) all the time. In fact, much of the time within about 20-30m, you really shouldn’t, especially in that 5-20m range. It’s wasted time, can thrown your aim off, and you need to pull the trigger ASAP. Battlefield weapons are just really great at hip fire, and you can kit them to be better at it, but don’t really need to too much. Just do it. Get in the habit of shooting people without pulling the left trigger (or bumper if you flip those buttons). You will get more kills.

DAVE EDIT: As an aside to this, Battlefield accounts for your body position while shooting. If you are standing, you are less accurate than when you are prone. Ideally, you want to move, then fire, then move, then fire, or just plain set up prone in cover and let that LMG cook!

By the same token, when you start getting attachments for the guns, use the ones that make vertical recoil as little as possible. The less you have to account for recoil with any control device, the more accurate you will be. A rule of thumb for all WW1, WW2, Modern and even Future FPS games like Apex is to prioritize minimizing Vertical Recoil and Maximizing Bullet Velocity on all SMG, AR, LMG, DMR style weapons. By doing those two things, you will make your life much easier as your bullets will travel the closest to a straight line, as fast as possible, with minimal requirement from you to pull DOWN on the stick to keep shooting straight. You can practice this by shooting a wall in game and looking at your bullet pattern while firing a full clip.

That brings us to Jack’s video from yesterday…

Yup, Battlefield makes it easier to control recoil on controller compared to mouse and keyboard. Some people will get upset by this, but as Jack states, it’s just plain easier to control recoil with a mouse.

Finally, I use the highest setting for Aim Assist in Battlefield 2042 but some people don’t like it because they think it’s too magnetic to players. They feel like it can throw you off when players cross behind one another… things like that. I don’t think it’s that big a deal tbh.

As with any of the above, personal preference plays a role as does simple practice. I was a good/great mouse keyboard Quake player back in the late 90’s. I played a ton and had tons of practice. When I picked up an Xbox controller to play Halo at @Mike_Cathcart’s place the first time, I was pretty lost, but then he created a still legendary match of King of the Hill that lasted for what seemed like hours with about 12 of us playing via LAN and by the time that was over I was comfortable and within the last 20 years I’ve gotten pretty damn good and can wipe the floor with lots of kids even though I’m 51. It just takes practice and not being hard on yourself because man, it’s Battlefield. Yer gonna die a lot. And if you’re not dying a lot, it’s because you’ve learned to play Battlefield well… use cover all the time… run away when you can’t win a fight… move to create a flanking attack… hip fire often… throw smoke to cover your movement… etc.