A YouTuber wants to statistically prove why Battlefield 6 feels wrong. And the survey is actually quite exciting.
It’s hard to say whether Battlefield 6 is really in crisis. Yes, player numbers have plummeted since its release, at least on Steam – from 747,000 concurrent players to just 34,000. This means that Battlefield 6 currently doesn’t even reach half the number of people that Arc Raiders has in tow.
On the other hand, many studios would be delighted with over 30,000 fans; Marvel Rivals doesn’t have any more than that at the moment. Ultimately, many factors come into play here, such as how much money the remaining players bring in. And what a transition, because Battlefield 6 is primarily supposed to make money with one thing: skins.
YouTuber Swaguley is certain: this is where the real problem lies. His theory is that Battlefield 6 simply doesn’t feel like Battlefield to many fans who are jumping ship, and that this has a lot to do with the look of the different factions and soldiers.
To prove his point, he created a poll on Reddit that revealed some interesting results.
Is Battlefield 6 sabotaging its own atmosphere?
First, the theory in detail: According to Swaguley, Battlefield has always been a fairly down-to-earth soldier fantasy, with largely realistic uniforms, factions, weapons, and designs. Battlefield 4, for example, managed to make Russians, Americans, and Chinese distinguishable through different color coding, while also making them appear authentic. And this “realism” (in big quotation marks, since we’re talking about an arcade shooter here) is important for the atmosphere that draws many fans into the action in the first place.
Since Battlefield 2042, Swaguley continues, DICE has moved away from this claim. Instead of real factions and nations, we got so-called no-pat military forces fighting on both sides, wearing colorful clothes that have nothing to do with military functionality. Battlefield 6 may give us NATO on paper, but the skins, uniforms, and so on for all factions are a colorful jumble of nonsense that cannot be visually distinguished from one another.
Swaguley believes he has quickly found the root of all evil: Fortnite. The immense success of Fortnite’s over-the-top outfits has manically inspired Call of Duty and Battlefield to somehow follow suit. This has been a big debate in CoD for years, but now it’s also an issue in Battlefield.
In the survey, Swaguley uses an 8-point scale to represent the… level of craziness (we just made that word up) of a game. At 1 is the classic Battlefield with very “realistic” skins and uniforms, in the middle at 5 is roughly what’s happening in Battlefield 6, and then at the very end at 8 is Fortnite.
What do you think the line should be for cosmetics in Battlefield?
by
u/Swaguley in
Battlefield
According to Swagley, most of the more than 2,000 participants draw the line somewhere between 3 and 4. He himself summarizes when people are out of the running in his eyes:
- When skins contain fantasy stuff, such as dinosaur helmets, ninjas, or samurai.
- When skins mix traditional uniforms with invented parts, patterns, and color combinations.
- When skins change the setting, for example, knight armor in Battlefield.
- Exaggerated stuff like skull masks, paintball equipment, and so on.
Of course, he correctly admits that his sample does not represent the entire Battlefield community, which is unlikely to be demographically identical to the active Reddit community. But still: over 2,000 votes is at least a statistically relevant number that proves that the setting is more important to many people than it sometimes appears on the servers.
We’ll probably find out in a few days what DICE and Battlefield Studios ultimately do with all the feedback, as the controversial first season is gradually coming to an end. We’ll keep you posted!
