Since my original post on 17th December 2018, I have found that there are more issues that I forgot to add. There have been some updates since this original post so, I will treat this as an update to that. Let’s get started.

Time to kill changes

A couple of hours after my post Battlefield 5: 1 and a bit months later, Dice announced they were reverting the time to kill changes that come into effect on 12th December. The announced change was well received by the Battlefield community.

Bugs/Issues

Client issues

• ‘spawn location no longer exists’ error – this issue occurs once every one to two games and may occur once or twice during a game. When you are selecting where to spawn the error can appear. When it does you cannot spawn on that location until you have selected another spawn location. You can then select the original spawn location and spawn. This issue can occur when spawning on to players or at flags in Conquest
• automatic server finder isn’t optimising player geographical location to the server – I’ve not got anything to back this up but, from my experience, the automatic server finder seems to put players into servers far from them. This means the player has higher latency and can cause netcode problems for them. I would suggest the lack of optimisation is adding to the current netcode problem. From my experience, when I have stopped using the matchmaking feature, and I use the server browser, I seem to be getting a more consistent experience
• when customising your weapon(s) or in the weapon menu before a game starts, when the game does start it kicks you out of the weapon menu, bringing you back to the Deployment Overview screen. This is very frustrating as I am in the middle of customising my weapon(s) then the menu disappears. I then have to go back through the menus to where I was. I understand my game is starting but I can’t always change my customisations for that game/squad in time
• when joining a game through server browser, the game starts to load but then I end up at the server browser screen. If I go back into the same game it then loads. It seems to do this more often when you’re queueing for a game then you select and join another server

User interface

• reporting players is painful – the UI does not allow you to easily report or even view a profile of another player. There are 3 problems with reporting a player, 1) you HAVE to have the Origin Overlay turned on, 2) it is not intuitive, 3) you can’t do it in-game, you have to wait for the round to be over. For point 1, this is silly as the functionality of viewing profiles should be built into the game itself, just in case the overlay is turned off. For some streaming applications you have to turn it off.

Gameplay

• unable to launch JB2/V1 – the issue may be when multiple players on the same team are launching the same vehicle. The binoculars may work and you may get the reticule but nothing launches. It also seems to bug-out the JB2/V1 bomb when you try to select it, you can’t launch it and/or your hands glitch over the screen so you can’t see where you are wanting to launch the bomb
• sounds not being in the right place – the main issue I have is where sounds are not being projected in the right place or, sounds aren’t sounding at all or until the player is right next to me. This issue is acknowledged as a footsteps problem but, from my experience, it is the majority of sounds that come from players moving or shooting around the map. BF5 has a bit of a problem of overlaying/projecting the correct sound at the correct volume level
• trying to throw frag grenades away does not always work – when in a panic or rush to get a grenade away from you I can never find a good, consistent way to throw it away from me. I always wondered why players would run away from them rather than throwing them away
• players that are moving feel as though they get an advantage – lets say if I am prone and waiting for an enemy to come around a corner to where I will shoot them, in a firefighting situation it feels as though I die before I even get to react, even though I know the player that has killed me is right in front of me
• tank sounds are stupidly loud, making it difficult to hear other sounds near you. This issue fits into the general sound issue noted above

Suggestions

• scouts need something like the Gewehr 43 – I feel as though, with scouts, you can only play them one way, that is to camp. I have been trying to PTO with scout and it somewhat works but it depends on other team mates/how good my team is. I wish there was a self-loading rifle that fired faster than 200 rounds a minute. It would allow scouts to be more aggressive. This is something I miss from BF1
• rent a server – the great thing about BF is renting your own server. This allows players to set up and tweak servers to how they see fit. This means you can get some interesting servers/maps/modes. At the minute, since everything is controlled by Dice, you get the same map rotation which is boring. Because of this I now end up leaving servers more than what I previously did in BF1
• conquest assault on Hamada – get rid of it
• add additional columns/info to server browser – it would be good to understand how much time or tickets are left or, how long the current game has been running for. This would allow players to understand if a round is almost finishing. There is nothing worse than joining a game when it is about to finish then, going onto a map you don’t like
• going from the Deploy Overview to the Player Overview so you can see if you want to spawn on them – I am not sure why you can go from Player Overview, when you die, to Deploy Overview but not back again
• testing – at the moment Dice are not set up for testing, they never have. For Battlefield 1 there was a separate client that was required to be installed to allow you to test the latest and greatest changes. To be able to test the latest changes there needs to be only one client. With the way that Dice have migrated client-side actions to server-side actions, it feels as though Dice could incorporate testing into one client but, there has been little to no movement on this
• better way to deal with cheaters (aimbots, 1 shot kills, etc) – Dice have never had a good way of dealing with those that choose to cheat. Battlefield 5 was set to have some automated AI that could detect if a player is cheating based on where they are, where the player they killed is, how they killed them, etc. But so far nothing appears to have been implemented or it is not active in banning/kicking players.