Played another session of it tonight. Played lots of Blood Money. Love the mode. It's a wonderfully dynamic take on capture the flag. Way awesome. Love setting up the mobile command just so, that my team inevitably clears out the enemy's vault.
What I don't like? The military grade tank-like ground vehicles have no place in Hardline, in my opinion. It's retarded easy to go on crazy killstreaks, and their presence feels out of place in the setting. Fuck the bearclaw. I'd love if they'd scrap all that shit, and rather focused on making the civilian rides even more awesome - like letting the driver shoot with a pistol while driving, and maybe even lob grenades. That'd be hella rad.
Also - the Stinger is worse than ever - it twohit-killing choppers is silly. Lock-on warfare is lame, and always will be just that. There's already small arms damage on choppers, and veterans shoot down choppers with dumbfire RPGs just fine. Just keep the firepower of the heli to medium-TTK miniguns with zero splashdamage - so that aiming at infantry makes the chopper all the more vulnerable to dumbfire RPGs and small arms fire.
Overall, I think Hardline will be a great time, yet it's obviously too soon for another Battlefield game. There's inherently much more meat in the Battlefield formula than in the design template of most of its competitors, due to it being combined arms warfare - each class and vehicle having lots of depth of their own, and the interplay of all these moving parts keep it almost indefinitely dynamic and fresh. I'm still looking forward to the last two DLC expansions for BF4. So yeah - I don't feel ready to move on.
Also - I think it's about time that Battlefield introduces animations for getting in and out of vehicles, as well as the forces of inertia affecting player characters jumping out of moving vehicles. The franchise lost so much incentive for thoughtful play when it turned-off universal friendly fire - some of that thoughtfulness could return with that. Such a thing would make Jihad jeeping an artform. Do it fast enough that it is effecitve, but slow enough that jumping out of the moving vehicle doesn't get you killed. I feel like I am one of the very few players who usually brings his vehicles to a full halt, before getting out. I think that's the kind of behaviour that should be incentivized by design - by having proper animations for getting in and out of vehicles, and player characters being subject to inertia, and ragdolling all over the place (and dying), if they jump out of a moving vehicle at full speed.
I'd prefer if they'd delay Hardline and evolved the Battlefield formula some more. Like with animations for getting in and out of vehicles, and having the force of inertia impacting players who're getting out of moving vehicles. Reworking movement is also something that's direly necessary, pretty much for the whole FPS genre. I think they should have some kind of *movement-mesh* baked into each and every assets from the get-go - so that it's possible for the will of the player to always be translated into movement, regardless of where he wants to go. By that I mean that when the player sprints, he obviously wants to move, so it makes no sense for surmountable obstacles to slow the player down. There's a tiny rock on the ground? Just move the fuck over it. There's a god damn hip high ledge? Just vault over it without any additional imput from the player. Same with windows and whatnot. A steep hill? Just crawl up that shit on all fours. And so forth.
If I sprint, I obviously want to move. Why put any additional input requirements as barriers between my obvious will, and the execution thereof in the game. It's movement. Not a Hadouken. Figuring that shit out should be paramount for game designers and software engineers working with the first person perspective. I'm sick and tired of getting stuck on shit with my shin, and being able to organically and easily move everywhere I want to, that's the dream.
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