Update 18/12: Dice have released a letter to the community advising they are reverting the TTK (Time to Kill) changes. The letter was published 17/12. The changes have already been reverted.

More than a month ago I was part of the Battlefield 5 beta, testing the game for its release. It wasn’t just me or YouTubers, it was the world that was playing. There were obviously bugs and lots of issues, as well as a learning curve to the game (because of the TTK (Time to Kill)). But overall, it was a great experience. I was happy with where Dice was going with Battlefield 5 when compared to Battlefield 1. Where is Battlefield 5 now?

Lots of controversy

Since the release of Battlefield 5 there have been little bug fixes here and there, both for the client and server.

On 5th December 2018 Dice released the Tide of War Chapter 1: Overture update. This update came with a new chapter in single player called The Last Tiger, a new map for tanks called Panzerstorm, the Practice Range and a bunch of fixes, all of which can be found here. This was a well-received update giving players a new single player and multiplayer content (it wasn’t the best content ever) and fixing those pesky gremlins causing havoc.

Since the 5th there were a couple of minor updates to fix a few other bugs. Then out of the blue on 11th December 2018, Dice announced it was changing the TTK (Time to Kill) and TTD (Time to Death) systems, the next day. The majority of players enjoyed the current TTK, believing it had a good balance of killing quickly vs being able to react to being shot at. However, Dice had another idea which was to lower the TTK as Dice believed it would help casual players during the Christmas holidays. Dice had found many players had played a game or quit and would not return to play another round.

I understand why Dice have done this, even before them admitting it was more for the casual players that would buy the game or receive it as a gift during the Christmas holidays. For myself, I found the TTK was just over the edge of being a little too heavy. But for the most part, it was good. For the majority of players playing the game daily, it was an update that they did not want and still do not want.

A quick search for ‘ttk’ on Reddit under /r/Battlefield finds many posts where players are frustrated with the new TTK update. The problem with the TTK update is not the update itself, it’s what Dice need to do to weapon stats to get to the new TTK level. A lot of the weapons are performing worse, especially the medic class which should have received a buff (I’ll touch upon this later). Because weapon stats have changed most weapons, except for a few, are probably a lot worse than what Dice intended them to be.

The wonderful life of bugs and issues

Bugs are a pain in any software, especially games. The following lists issues or bugs I have experienced in Battlefield on the current patch and server updates, as of writing 17th December 2018.

Client issues

• Random client crashes – this one is painful as there is no warning or no errors after the crash. This is a rare problem and seems to be when my system is unstable; a reboot does “fix” the issue
• Random in-game stuttering – this is more of a half a second freeze from time to time. I am not sure what is causing the problem. I believe it is a RAM issue of some kind with Windows 10
• Exiting a game takes ages to load – when exiting a game, of let’s say Conquest, you go to quit the round then you’re greeted with a loading screen that is loading the menu for 20-30 seconds. All I want to do is get back to the main menu, not wait for a menu to load. Likewise, when starting the game, it takes plenty of time for the client to load the menu

User Interface

• Inefficient user interface – this is a big problem. I don’t think Dice will redesign the menu system but they may slightly improve upon it. What we have is what we’ll more than likely get for the rest of Battlefield 5’s lifespan. The main problem is there are menus and submenus and submenus and submenus. It is very inefficient
• Unable to add specializations in-game – this is a bit of an odd one. I don’t understand why, at the start of a round, you can add or modify your specializations on weapons. As you play the round, unlocking specializations for a weapon, you can’t apply it. You have to wait until the end of the current round
• Can’t apply assignments in-game – there is currently no way (that I can see) which will allow you to assign assignments in-game. This is frustrating as when you complete your assignments you will end up requiring to come out of your current game, go back to the main menu go into the assignments menu and apply an assignment

Gameplay

• TTD (Time to Death) / tick rate – whatever you want to call it all players can agree upon one thing. That is where you get killed within a minute of a second or “within a frame” as some players are saying. The TTD is a massive problem and should be on Dice’s high priority to do list
• Medic class sucks – the medic class is a very big problem whereby all it can do is revive players. There’s not much this class can do in terms of fighting other players head on. Mainly due to the TTK changes that took place on 12th December 2018 the medic class does not perform well. I enjoy playing medic. I think on Battlefield 1 I played this class the most. Whereas now, I end up playing Assault the majority of the time
• All classes need rebalancing – due to the sudden TTK change Dice needs to look at rebalancing all classes. The Assault and Support classes are currently the main classes in use, at least in the EU

What I’d like to see

• Some way of testing – In Battlefield 4 & 1 (I think in BF1 there were fewer problems so fewer players used it) but there was the CTE (Community Test Environment) where Dice would publish changes to the CTE, allowing players to test new changes before they were released. I feel as though we need a way of testing new updates but I don’t think it would be beneficial if there was a separate client to download and install. Perhaps Dice could have testing servers and players can join those test servers. That way players don’t need to install another client and the experience of moving from test to live would be seamless. You can only see the test servers in the server browser if you’re signed up for testing
• Hardcore game modes – I get Dice is starting to implement a Core series of game modes. This is to bring the old TTK back for those that want to play any mode on the old TTK. However, this doesn’t really solve a problem. I think the better way of implementing a hardcore game mode is to have a competitive or ranked style matchmaking
• Competitive gameplay – I don’t want to say Battlefield needs to get into the competitive scene because every other title is doing it but I do think that Dice can create it’s own niche for the competitive scene via game modes
• Iterative updates – instead of putting together a large release it would be beneficial to release in smaller chunks. This has its benefits as it allows bugs and issues to be resolved quickly when compared to releasing lots of different bugs and issues into one release. It also allows less time to download a patch and more than likely easier for Dice to release server updates. I do understand not every update can be released iteratively but if it can be done, why not?

Where is Battlefield 5 going?

Despite what Dice have done with the TTK update I think this was only a strategic move in which it would allow casual players to have a better experience whilst Dice fixed the TTD problem. The real question is when will TTD be fixed or be in a state where it is manageable? Until then the TTK will be unwanted.

I would like to see more game modes on top of the Battle Royale style game mode that is due to release next year. The game modes could be geared more towards the competitive scene.