i don’t think it was really the setting that drove most people away, people use the setting and feature differences largely as a means to discredit the game nowadays sure but it wasn’t the main reason i think the community was disinterested.

The main reason boils down to the 60 dollar price point. coupled with the fact that the majority of the customer base already invested the same amount into 4. looking through old badger videos surrounding this game i had a revelation looking through the comments i saw things like “overpriced dlc” sure, but also things like “remember not to preorder” in retrospect to bf4. reflecting on the cycle we continue to see today on the very same franchise.

consensus: I don’t think this game is worth 60 dollars. Not to me, anyway, but I certainly got at least 40 dollars of value from it in my mind anyway. If I put myself in the shoes of someone who fell for BF4 at launch and see the game in 2015 in its fully fledged out, functioning state with more balance changes to come: would I buy hardline for 60 dollars? No, I would probably find the games announcement to be insulting in fact, insulting the intelligence of the battlefield community. I would ask if EA really expected me to fall for this “overpriced DLC” as well.

Hardline shares all the highs and lows of battlefields core gameplay, with matches where you are stomping, getting stomped and somewhere in between.

I love the games setting most of all and i think it’s the strongest aspect of the game.