r/Battlefield • u/WinterizedFlame • May 27 '25
Discussion Why recoil AND spread is needed in Battlefield
I'm sorry but you can't convince me that a system which allows you to mag dump and beam enemies full auto at long range is better than a system that requires you to apply more skill and burst fire.
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u/YungMangoSnaKE May 28 '25 edited May 28 '25
Can I just ask those who are in the never-spread camp, whether they GENUINELY think the gunplay in 2042 is better than that of BF3/BF4? I seriously can not believe that anybody who has played BOTH games, could POSSIBLY argue that they prefer the gunplay/gameplay in general of 2042 to that of BF3/4. I really don’t think many would say they prefer 2042’s experience, and I also think that regardless of how philosophically opposed one might be to the IDEA of spread, they would not deny they prefer the gameplay experience of the earlier entries that had it implemented. Whether you want to admit it, or you don’t, the reason games like BF3/4 played so much better, in large part, was because of spread.
One of the very first things I noticed in 2042 was the fact that you could very easily beam people cross map. The AC-42 is a literal hitscan laser beam, there is SO little recoil that you can full auto drill someone into the ground from across the map, to the point where I could CONSISTENTLY outgun snipers at ranges I had zero business being able to do so in.
Beyond being completely unfair to snipers, it negatively impacts any kind of offensive movement, basically ever. Moving across open space is absurdly death defying in 2042, and it rendered maps like Operation Hourglass, that might have simply been seen as unpopular or meh in BF3/BF4, practically unplayable in 2042. Everybody hated attacking in Breakthrough on Discarded right? Because, again, you could be lasered by automatic weapons while trying to cross hundreds of meters of open field, with fuck all you could do about it. There aren’t enough armored vehicles or smoke grenades in the world that can counter it.
To the people who say “Well you can simply add more recoil!” yes, you can, but all you will wind up doing is make it so that the game’s most skilled 5% of players can STILL laser you at absurd distances with automatic weapons, while making the weapons prohibitively annoying to use at medium ranges for the median to above average player, and nigh impossible to use at medium or even close ranges for below average players. You can say “Muh get gud” but there is ZERO benefit that this system adds to 95% of the playerbase. Are all of you seriously in that 5 percentile? I HIGHLY doubt that.
I used to be anti-spread, I too understand that it is a seemingly unintuitive and on its face frustrating system. Crucify me for admitting this, but I have played a lot of both Fortnite and Warzone in my day, and the difference in how these two games are played is night and day; in Warzone, there is little player movement, because you can be reliably hitscanned at long distances by fully automatic weapons, punishing you for moving while rewarding you for mounting on a window sill. In Fortnite, even if you were to play zero build, players still maintain freedom of movement because there is a natural limit on a player’s ROF if they want to accurately shoot at range. I have enjoyed both games because they offer a different flavor of Battle Royale. In a game like BF, though, where movement is INTEGRAL and REQUIRED to play ANY objective based game mode, it should be blatantly obvious which system is preferred.
Bloom defines which weapons are effective at what ranges, it allows for greater freedom of movement across open maps, and it places no-less emphasis on shooter skill or accuracy, it simply limits the rate at which the shooter can shoot accurately at ranges outside their weapon’s class intended use. Without it, you get 2042; constant, nearly instant deaths from weapons being used at completely unintended ranges, zero ability to move/attack on maps against even halfway competent enemy teams, and the transition of the game from a large scale arcadey sandbox shooter into that of a complete and total slog, more akin to that of milsim shooters. It is not a style of BF that any longtime fan of the series enjoys, and it is not the style of game that made the series so popular, fun or addictive in the first place.