One of the biggest gripes seasoned Battlefield players have with Dice’s Bad Company 2 is its alarming lack of what have become pretty standard features for the Battlefield series of games.  Here’s a very short rundown of some of the key features between Bad Company 2 and its last BF predecessor, Battlefield 2142:

As you can see, with the exception of Destruction 2.0, on paper Battlefield 2142 is a superior game to Bad Company 2.  In fact many players would argue that in reality BF 2142 is a much better game.  So what’s Dice playing at?  Why would they remove features from a game franchise rather than adding to them?  The answer is contained in this single post from Bazajaytee, Dice’s Associate Producer on BC2 (and incidentally BF 2142):

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc-beta/897978-dice-senior-producer-patrick-bach-4-maps-gamemode-6.html#post12786923

To quote from the post:

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is NOT a sequel to Battlefield 2 or 2142, it is a sequel to Battlefield Bad Company and as such the list of features matches that of the original game and not that of past Battlefield games.

That, in a single sentence, is the entire reason Dice felt it was a good reason to remove features from BC2 rather than add to what they had with BF 2142 – they view BC2 as a continuation of the Bad Company franchise, not the Battlefield franchise.

That at least is Dice’s perception, unfortunately for them it is diametrically at odds to the community’s belief.  Put simply, the community’s attitude is, “It says Battlefield in the name, so it’s part of the Battlefield series”.  And who can blame the community for their attitude?  BC2 is the first BF game in more than 3 years – surely that’s enough time for Dice to create a worthy successor to the franchise?  With BF3 still a rumour, BC2 is effectively all we have – yet is does not allow user maps, does not allow competitive mods, has no spectator mode and does not even allow demos to be recorded.

There is hope though – lets be honest, there’s always hope if you’re desperate and look hard enough.  The new community manager, zh1nt0, is a devoted PC gamer, and his responses so far have indicated either a tremendous desire to help the community, or a remarkable lack of corporate marketing knowledge.  Time will tell which one it is.  The second ray of hope is the rumour of BF3.  At best it won’t be out till 2011, however it does seem to be real – at least according to this report from last year: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6211809.html

For now then we’re left with Bad Company 2.  A game that promised a lot, delivered somewhat, but could have been so much better had Dice decided it was actually a Battlefield game rather than a Bad Company game.  Lets hope they learn their lesson.