Hitting just a few of those points
- I think no battlelog is a bad thing. I feel like a lot of the haters forget how often using older BF Server Browsers could be painful. Having to launch the game, sit through a bunch of dev/producer title screens, wait for the menu to load, press multiplayer, wait for the server list to work, and use the really shitty ingame filter systems, then hit join and wait for the map to load, and then you're in. Think how long it'll take to get back in a match after crashing if we go the ingame server browser route.
I loved battlelog and the "hit button, then go". I also liked that if there was a server issue, it was communicated easier and they could do things like patch the server browser without having to patch the ENTIRE game (and frostbite patches are always massive and spread apart). I think BL got a bit bloated, especially for BF4, but I also liked being able to look at my attachments and unlocks etc, without having to load the game or try navigate a really shitty fansite.
In saying that, they seem to be KEEPING some of the bloat - battlepacks are a thing.
The "DLC" thing I think has been an epic EA Marketing fuckup, by saying the French army will be a "DLC" army. How would a DLC army even work? I'm pretty sure what they mean is that future some DLC maps will feature the French army as one of the sides - this is nothing new and perfectly acceptable, the same thing happened with BF2 and its expansion packs.
- Fighting around what to do in place of commander mode looks like it'll be one of the bigger challenges for us. I imagine taht the "FC" role will basically be as a squaddie in the rear-defense squad who spends most of the time looking at the map
I've FCed BF3 and BF4 maps that way, and it wasn't too challenging (although we had MAVs). It's hard to tell, but is the spawn screen a real overview of the map? I see tankshells and planes flying around, but my screen is a bit to small to see people. If you can see all of that, the thing becomes pretty ridiculous.
- Seeing some scary poor map design.
Here is a vehicle at the very start of the map, in its spawn location, where driving forward immediately beaches it. From a map dev standpoint that's a really REALLY stupid thing to happen. Yes, it's super early alpha and will probably be fixed, but I'm a bit worried of the fact the thing was put there at all. It's so glaring an issue that II'm thinking maybe the vehicle wouldn't normally be in the map (it seems extremely armour heavy, if you imagine everything being fully crewed), and was just there for E3. That's just one example D:
- Robot announcer lady needs to go. It's way too clear, constant, and out of place, to a stage I think it's actually distracting from the game.
One thing I'm not seeing anywhere is - where is the premium edition. On the
Origin page All I see are the normal version and the preorder "deluxe" edition - nothing which says anything about "season pass" etc.
Some of the tanks have support tools - I saw one drops a medkit. I think things like that will see us making use of proper combined tank/infantry squads, something which wasn't THAT viable in previous games.