I've dedicated over 4,000 hours to the Battlefield series, with Battlefield 4 being my absolute favorite for its immersive, tactical gameplay and vibrant community. I eagerly played every title in the series until Battlefield 2042, which I found unplayable due to its departure from the core elements that made the franchise special. My frustration stems from a trend I see in companies like EA and even Samsung: chasing the "flavor of the year" instead of enhancing their unique strengths. If I wanted a Fortnite-style experience or an Apple-like ecosystem, I would have chosen those—I want Battlefield to be Battlefield.

One of my biggest issues with modern gaming, including Battlefield 2042, is the shift from community servers to matchmaking lobbies. I’ve never enjoyed lobbies, as they prioritize quick, transient matches over meaningful player interactions. Community servers allowed players to build relationships, strategize together, and create lasting memories, fostering a sense of camaraderie. Playing in lobbies feels like facing bots—there’s no human connection, and you’re unlikely to see those players again, making the experience feel empty and disconnected.

Gaming used to be my way of meeting like-minded people, and my Steam friends list is filled with players I met through Battlefield and other games. However, I haven’t added a new friend in years, as modern gaming’s focus on fast-paced, disposable matches makes it nearly impossible to form meaningful connections. I hope developers like EA return to the series’ roots, emphasizing tactical gameplay and community-driven servers to recapture the magic that made Battlefield a platform for both thrilling gameplay and lasting friendships.

In some sense, that's working as intended for a lot of people, not just developers.

A lot of people who consume games don't want to foster lasting relationships, they want to tick the box saying "played game for X hours today" and move on.

I think that's pathological and, as you say, leads to lots of knock-on toxic effects in gameplay and community.

But it is the reality this is engineered for - a lot of people who play multiplayer games do not want to feel like they're doing something with other people when doing it, which is part of why you get lots of toxic interactions or entitled complaints about something which might be a good strategy but ruins the game experience for some of the people in the match.

Partly agree with your sentiment. Made with friends on Valorant alone. Around 318 people and 100 people on Blizzard things, Diablo and Overwatch 2.

Battlefield 4 was amazing. It's sad that after all they went through with the community engagement and updates to that game to make it so good, they threw it all away to start from scratch making vibrantly coloured battle royale slop worse than everyone else was already doing it.

I put somewhere over 12k hours into BF4 alone, and I've barely touched the series since. That game had the special sauce that they've failed to capture ever since. An updated remastered Battlefield 4 would perform incredibly well; ironically, my biggest fear for it would be that EA wouldn't be able to help themselves, giving a huge budget to a massive team and completely wrecking it by doing too much.

12000 hours? That's 16 solid months. I can't imagine putting that much time into anything.

You are surely joking:-)

12000 hours is 4 years at 8 hours a day.

Not at all. It was over a longer period than 4 years though (BF4 had a remarkably long life) and included sessions of over 40 hours straight at my worst.

Biden can order seal team 6 to clear out scotus, appoint new judges. If congress denies, then send the seal team 6 to congress. Seal team 6 FTW

Istanbul is the city where the people feed both the cats and the birds in an incomparable level to rest of the world. I remember visiting a smash burger joint near emirgan area, where the owner is feeding stray cats with burger patties... Weirdly beautiful

I almost have like a kilo of dry cat food with me. The bird feeder attracts pigeond and they often shit all over the place.

I have noticed that corvids also like cat food. We have so many and they compete with each other.

Dogs love cat food too, I think it's because it's very rich in protein.

I recently visited Istanbul as well. Too my surprise, I ate the best burger I had in my lifetime. It was a smash burger joint in Emirgan district. Forgot the name. but remember finding it on google maps. Give it a try if you are passing by.

In Istanbul you can possibly find best examples of many if not all of international cousines. It is a city for the all types of foodies.

Maybe I'm spoiled coming from California, especially LA, but this is simply not true. You'll find phenomenal, quite possibly best, examples of Turkish (obviously) and a variety of middle eastern fare, and you'll find some stand-out good examples of various European cuisines. There are options for American food, but none I would even classify as "good". There is a notable shortage of Asian cuisine, and what they have is definitely nowhere near "best examples", and you'd be hard pressed to find anything from South or Central America, or even Mexico.

I may have exaggerated a bit and I haven't been in Istanbul for 5-6 years already. So let's say I stand corrected.

im asian and ive been to LA it’s definitely an americanized version of asian food. chinese is mostly greasy in la and koreans are good but far from what u get in top restaurants in seoul or busan. i had very good mexican food in the us but was am not mexican so who knows

I would definitely disagree with this. Apart from Turkish food you will probably only find good American, French and Italian ( may be few more) food in Turkiye.

But the good news is you really do not need anything other that Turkish food because it is just amazing.

Especially true for south / far-east Asian cuisines. Unlike many other major western metropolises, Istanbul simply lacks any authentic chinese, indian, vietnamese or japanese places. I wish (as a resident) we had more exposure to those cultures through better / relaxed immigration policies in the past.

I'd argue after having lived in China and Hong Kong for numerous years that very few major western metropolises have proper authentic Chinese (and Chinese food is vast there's a huge amount of differences between regions).

For example, try getting proper cantonese dim sum in Paris or Barcelona. I only know 2 places in Paris that are halfway decent after having searched quite a bit. Or try searching for good Zhejiang food (the Hangzhou or ningbo style) in Europe.

And Chinese food in most of the US is bastardized to make it much sweeter and oily to conform to the taste there making it absolutely terrible and far from authentic.

that's right. Turkish food is the best one Ive experienced so far.

You're being generous. Where's good French food in Turkey? Even Turkish food is getting worse every day.

A good burger place in Turkey? Best in your life? Please do try to remember the name. I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't think there's a burger place that's that good but i'd love to be wrong about it.

I had to google it but found it for you. It was this place: https://goo.gl/maps/cEEk21F9nP5rMvAG8

After trying Joplin (for several years), I finally decided on Obsidian instead.

It is the better product and has a better 3rd-party support.

https://obsidian.md/

every monopoly is created by the government (read: state and laws).

I always turn off all animations from developer settings. It makes the phone feel smoother and responsive.

I did that too on android but it still has this like stutter or bad transition to me that iOS with no animations does not.

I do the same with non-mobile browsers via extension which removes CSS transitions.

make the subscription super cheap at the start and lifetime access should have the opposite: unreasonably high price. subscription will look like a value deal in comparison.

3 weeks ago, I had just bought a mechanical keyboard for the first time in my life. I didn't have a chance to use it properly until I found out about this site. Thank you.