There is an argument to be made that a lot, not all, of the outrage at DICE and EA for Battlefield 5 is manufactured by those members of the gaming public who can’t stand inclusivity in the medium. However, it is also hard to deny that DICE and EA have a habit of putting their foot in their mouth as often as they can.
The most ample evidence of this came when they tweaked the TTK (better known as time to kill, or, as the name suggests, the time it takes to kill a player) values in the game to make them longer. The change was made in an attempt to make newcomers stick around (since they would feel less discouraged if they didn’t die right away).
There was outrage and overwhelming negativity from all quarters at DICE’s decision, and while a lot of this was probably bandwagon hopping as I noted above, a lot of it was also probably just, because a major change had been made to the flow of the game without any consideration for the community.
In the face of the backlash, DICE has decided to go back on the decision, noting on the Battlefield sub-Reddit that the change was made to welcome new players, but that they were mistaken, and that they will be reverting the changes back to how they used to be as of tomorrow, December 18 at 4am PT/7am ET. The changes will be made server side, so players won’t have to download an update either.
Good on DICE for acting as quickly as they did, and hopefully, on the gameplay and mechanics front, they can be more collaborative with the community going forward. If you are interested in the game, you will probably be happy to know that Chapter 1 of Tides of War is now available.
