Will Battlefield Ever Have a Smooth Launch?

Let me just start off by saying that I am a huge fan of Battlefield 1. I finished the campaign in the first couple days and have actively been playing online since then. There is no denying that the launch of this game has been night and day compared to the horrible launch experience we went through with Battlefield 4 in 2013 (we won’t even talk about Battlefield: Hardline).

Having said that, there is still tons of room for improvement. Even playing through the campaign, which should be a lot simpler than the online, there were some pretty major bugs. On a regular basis, most notably in Through Mud and Blood, I was experiencing enemies that could not be shot (they could still be killed by explosives) and other enemies that had issues like a missing torso.

Is It Really a Big Deal?

Those types of issues may sound small, but they can become extremely frustrating when that enemy you can’t shoot is the last one you need to kill to advance the mission. These were just a couple examples that became the most game-breaking throughout the story for me.

And let’s not forget, that’s just the campaign; the multiplayer has it’s own set of issues, such as the fact that EA released Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 in back-to-back weeks and the entire Origin servers went down twice.

There are also some random bugs that are more fun than anything, such as this awesome fiery zeppelin twister:

Credit to EA

All in all, the truth is that the state of Battlefield 1 is not that bad. There have been lots of games that have had way less bugs at launch, such as the new Gears of War 4, but those games don’t have the scale and complexity that the Battlefield games do.

One thing that I have to give credit to EA for doing, which a lot of people are writing off as a cash grab, is the Early Enlister edition. While this may have seemed like a way to get even more money from the fans, it brought the player base into the game more gradually. By doing this, EA was able to better prepare their servers to handle the load when the game launched to everybody 3 days later.

While the servers did go down twice, they have been relatively stable when they are working. So, even though it may not have been the smooth launch we are waiting for, it was certainly a large improvement from the past.