YMMV / Battlefield 1

• Accidental Aesop: Although the developers have likened the multiplayer to a sports game, some commentators consider the multiplayer mode to be the most unintentionally poignant anti-war game. The random deaths, grueling game modes like Operations and Frontlines, and the Scenery Gorn in many ways perfectly captures the brutal attrition conflict of the actual Great War.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Clyde Blackburn of Friends in High Places a plucky adventure seeker who rose to the call of heroism or is he a smug glory hound? Did he really save Wilson and save the day during the climax in London or did he actually mercy kill Wilson and escape during the carnage in London? Also, did he spin a fantastical retelling of his experiences as a way of coping with his personal guilt and trauma after witnessing the horrors of war?
  • A lighter example is Frederick Bishop: Did Bishop really know that he was going to die to cover the ANZAC retreat at the end of The Runner? It's heavily implied he does realize this—he tells Foster to immediately begin shelling the Ottoman fort once Foster and company made it back to the Dreadnoughts, implying he knew he wouldn't make it out of the fort alive, and at the start of said mission, he mutters either "guess this is it" or "c'est la guerre". And anyway, he should logically realize that taking on that many Ottomans, no matter how badass he is, would result in his death. Either way, it's still a heroic action to do, and it says volumes about Bishop's character that he volunteers to do this.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Airplane rockets? In World War I? They're real, known as Le Prieur rockets.
  • The heavily armored Sentry elite class looks unreal, but their heavy armor is historically accurate, being issued to immobile sentries and some machine gun crews. It is Rule of Cool however to combine them all into a mobile heavy-armor sentry with a portable machine gun.
  • Black Germans? A case of Politically Correct History? Not so if you consider Germany's African colonies.^*Though historically, only five soldiers showed up in records for European campaigns.
  • A bayonet for a double barreled shotgun? Those do exist, and they date back to the American Civil War.
  • The gun sights are all real and based on real WW1-era gun sights (of varying rarities), including the round lens sight, which are experimental British sights known as Gibbs Magnifying Sights. That being said, the game allows them to be mounted on many weapons with which they were never mated in real life.
  • Surely nobody would invent something as pointlessly tiny as the Kolibri pistol in real life. It has to be something the devs made up as a joke, right? No, and no.
  • The Trench Raider elite kit is based on the real tactic of Trench raiding. While they are exaggerated for gameplay reasons, their focus on close combat and use of melee and grenades with ranged handguns as backup is indeed what real trench raiders would do.
  • The support class wears a huge variety of strange helmets◊, but they all existed.
    • The British Support wears the Wilmer model eye defense◊.
    • The American Support wears the Model 8 full-face helmet◊.
    • The Italian Support wears the Dunand visor◊.
    • The German Support wears the Gaede Helmet◊.
    • The French Support wears the Pollack visor◊.
    • The Austro-Hungarian Support's helmet is modeled after this helmet found in a museum.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Commentators had long questioned the viability of a World War I setting for a big-budget AAA shooter. The game's massive positive reception both critically and commercially seemed to put to rest those claims.
• Awesome Music:
  • After 3 and 4 had electronic remixes of the classic Battlefield theme that were met with mixed reactions, 1 brings the main theme back in all its powerful, orchestrated glory.
  • Pretty much all of the tracks that play at the main menu. Standouts include "The War to End All Wars" and "Dawn of a New Time (Zadji Zadji)".
  • The round end buildup music, Hunted, can really make things intense when everyone's down to that last objective and are going all out.
  • The soundtrack that plays towards the end of Storm of Steel perfectly captures and intensifies the sense of desperation and hopelessness of the grueling battle taking place. One has to wonder why the hell the devs didn't use this track as a round ending theme.
  • The Apocalypse DLC theme is a dark and orchestral soundtrack fitting perfectly with the theme of the DLC.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The pigeon sequence in "Through Mud and Blood". Of all the FPS cliches DICE pulls, one would not imagine being able to play as a pigeon. Also, it is a controllable sequence without telling you, so the first time may end up with your pigeon wandering into an out-of-range zone and dying.
• Broken Base:
  • The prevalence of automatic weapons and prototype firearms, instead of the bolt-action rifles and melee weapons that were so common in the real war. Some think that it is a disservice to the setting and reduces the game to a reskin of past entries in the series. Others don't mind it, citing that past Battlefield games also had a large number of guns not used by actual armed forces, and that it was a necessary move to sell the setting to mainstream shooter audiences. This is partially mitigated by the fact that bolt-action rifles are by far the most numerous weapon on the field and that infantry variants of the single-action rifles are beloved by players, to the point that one of the most popular custom gamemodes, Back to Basics, is centered around this concept.
  • There is an ongoing debate about the prominent representation of minorities in a game mostly set in the European fronts (this is somewhat justifiable as many forces did use colonial armies, but the representation method of having one class in the faction being a different race has the result of making the representation vastly higher than the actual numbers), with some claiming DICE is revisioning history to suit their views, but that kind of discussion is to be taken elsewhere.
  • There exists a long-lasting debate of Air-vs-Land balancing. The problem stems from two issues. One is that most infantries don't have access to AA weaponry. The only reliable and effective AA weapon ground players have are the AA guns scattered throughout the map, but they are extremely limited in number, leaving most infantry with no hope of challenging strafing pilots, they make the user into sniper bait and the air units are easily capable of avoiding them or attacking these fixed points from a different direction, which have been issues for static AA all the way back to Battlefield 2. The other side is that the AA guns are really powerful to balance out their rarity, to the point of becoming frustrating for air players. Air players often find themselves dying over and over again due to the massive splash damage that the AA gun deals. Both sides claim that the other side is making their gameplay frustrating and impossible to play, making the whole situation a mess to balance.
  • The overall gameplay removes mechanics made since Battlefield 3 and brings back elements from the Bad Company and the Refractor engine games like more open maps, more powerful vehicles, more specialized classes, fewer yet more distinct guns, a longer TTK, and heavy bullet spread on automatic weapons (albeit not nearly to the extent of entries like Battlefield 2). The gameplay shift is generally praised by old-school players who criticized the "consolized," lone-wolf style of gameplay of the previous Frostbite games, while fans of said Frostbite games accuse this of making the game too "casual" and generally reducing the importance of individual skill.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Landing a successful melee kill or bayonet charge on another player.
  • Destroying an enemy behemoth. Taking out such an enormous threat will make you feel accomplished, not to mention the oh-so-satisfying destruction visuals.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • During the beta and upon the game's release, most players immediately favored the M1911 as their sidearm of choice, due to it being the sidearm most familiar to modern gamers and being available for all classes alongside the Luger, FN M1903 and Borchardt C93.
  • The bolt-action/lever-action rifles. In spite of their lower fire rate, many players can dominate the battlefield with them, with their ability to down a player in one hit. Not to mention the Difficult, but Awesome Martini-Henry, which is essentially a One-Hit Kill machine, despite it being incredibly outdated compared to the other rifles.
  • The AT Rocket Gun also gains its popularity for being a BFG available for the Assault class at the very beginning and being another One-Hit Kill machine due to being an anti-tank weapon, although it requires your character to be prone before firing it.
  • Battlefield history repeats itself again, as mostly every person who plays Assault regularly will agree that the Automatico, the weapon with the fastest fire rate in the game at 900 ROF, is the best choice for any Assault player worth their salt on account of the sheer amount of bullets it can throw up before anyone can react. Targets up close get 'chainsawed' as the community puts it, and medium ranged weapons can still get outgunned with proper burst firing.
  • Any Assault players who don't use the Automatico would almost always be using Hellriegel, which offers an impressive 60 bullet magazine and has decent accuracy at range.
  • With the release of In The Name Of The Tsar, just about all Medic players switched to using the Fedorov Avtomat, due to its high damage per shot, good rate of fire, quick reload, and full auto ability.
  • Good luck finding a match without any heavy bomber plane or cavalry, because you're gonna have a bad time.
  • Even though the game makes it very easy to switch weapons in mid-fight (you can pick up any weapon \ kit a dead player dropped) most players will stick with their gun until it runs out of ammo. As for picking up a different kit just to use its ability before switching back (drop a medic \ ammo crate, use a spotting flare) - that's a once in a blue moon event, despite how useful doing so may be.
• Cliché Storm: While the singleplayer campaign, or rather War Stories, was far better received than the usual stock Excuse Plot common in modern FPS games (much less the last few Battlefield games, which even at their best have been criticized as being bland Modern Warfare clones like every other shooter for most of the previous decade), a lot of the narratives on offer can feel a bit... predictable. "Through Mud and Blood" especially falls victim to this, playing almost every cliche straight. A Vanilla Protagonist with no real growth or development joins a new tank crew consisting of: a mustachioed Officer and a Gentleman who performs a Heroic Sacrifice; a Jerkass who deserts but changes his mind and returns; a Sacrificial Lamb who is played up as a Nice Guy and meets his end extremely quickly to demonstrate the horrors of war, and one other guy. The only thing that sticks out as somewhat original is that the Jerkass survives.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Flametroopers in the singleplayer campaign, if you try to take the stealth option. They are Incredibly Durable Enemies and cannot be attacked with melee from behind like normal enemies can.
  • The Sentries you can encounter in some parts of the Stories are also very lethal and durable, and although they're rare compared to their Flametrooper counterparts, they can leave quite the impression on the unprepared. And the final battle in Avanti Savoia has you fight potentially three of them at once, conveniently after you've lost your own armor.
    • One aspect that makes the sentries even stupider to combat is that, like the flametroopers above, they can't be melee'd from behind^note And unlike the flametroopers, there's no justifiable reason for this, as the sentries' backs are practically the only spot on their bodies that aren't covered in thick armor so you can forget about trying to take one stealthily. Did we mention that the first part of the final level of "Nothing is Written" actually requires you to kill one of the bastards to proceed?
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The messenger pigeon in "Through Mud and Blood" is a strange case of this, because nobody expected to actually play as it during its scene. However, most players adored the "pigeon scene" for being a quiet yet haunting way to examine the damage caused by the war.
  • One of the characters in "Nothing is Written" is Lawrence of Arabia. 'Nuff said.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • To the previous main entry, Battlefield 4. Battlefield 4, while well-received and well-played (after many, many fixes), had a whole host of Scrappy Mechanics and a buggy release. Battlefield 1 managed to fix many of its issues and kept the release smooth, and combined with an unexpected and well-played theme shift, won the hearts of many critics and players.
  • The campaign was seen as far better than anything in 3, 4, and Hardline by many. While not without its flaws and its quality compared to Bad Company is debatable, the praise it has received says a lot about just how terrible Battlefield series campaigns got and how much 1 improved.
• Fandom Rivalry: Once again the Battlefield and Call of Duty fandoms are feuding with each other following the release of both Battlefield 1 and Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare in 2016. Battlefield 1 was universally praised by fans and critics while Infinite Warfare received a more varied response from critics and gamers with some calling it a serviceable entry and others deriding it. Things only heated up with 2017's Call of Duty: WWII, which was accused of ripping off Battlefield 1 given its historical throwback angle after several games set progressively further into the future.
• Fandom VIP: Fabian Siegismund, a German video game reviewer who made several well recieved tutorial videos on Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 already, was approached by EA to make a sponsored tutorial series for Battlefield 1.
• Fan Nickname:
  • With the current Behemoth mechanics, players have taken to calling incoming Behemoth support the "welfare train/blimp/ship/tank" because of their purpose to help a team get out of a huge defeat.
  • The A7V tank is called the "box tank" or the "toaster tank" for its blocky appearance
• Franchise Original Sin: The Politically Correct History approach that Battlefield V would be heavily criticized for got its start in this game: non-white soldiers are far overrepresented among the American, British, French and German armies, In the Name of the Tsar presents the Russian Women's Battalion of Death as an active combat unit rather than the ceremonial one it was in reality, and the "Nothing is Written" War Story centers on a Bedouin woman, Zara Ghufran, who takes a far larger and more direct role in the Arab Revolt than any real Arab women are known to have done. While there was some criticism of this, Battlefield 1 had a far greater historical basis for the more creative choices like this: every female and non-white figure in the game is based on real historical women and people of color who served in the conflict, like the African-American 369th Infantry Division, aka the famous "Harlem Hellfighters"; the real actions of male historical figures are still attributed to those people, such as the aforementioned "Nothing is Written" War Story heavily focusing on Lawrence of Arabia; and the game came with smooth performance and authentic aesthetics to fit the period, including an in-game codex to give historical context for the more creative choices. In contrast, Battlefield V has women playable in historically male-only factions like the SAS, a campaign that in no way tries to accurately represent history (the "Nordlys" War Story, for instance, presents the sabotage of a heavy water plant and the scuttling of a ferry with its surviving heavy water in occupied Norway as the work of a mother-daughter duo who both die dramatically to finish the mission, rather than all-male teams of SOE-trained commandoes and resistance members who survived their respective operations), several immersion-breaking bugs, the introduction of wacky customizable uniforms that in no way fit the time period or setting, and, perhaps most damningly, the developers defending all of these not by giving historical context for the choices, but by deriding critics who pointed this out as being "uneducated" and "on the wrong side of history".
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • The Battlefield 1 fandom gets along pretty well with the fandom of the sleeper hit, Rainbow Six Siege. This despite, or maybe because of, their differences (open, massive WWI war zones of the former to the small, intimate close quarters contemporary terrorist situations of the latter). This might also have something to do with Siege's Tachanka crossing over as a meme in the game as well with Sentries, especially considering that WWI was where the actual Tachanka (a Russian horse drawn carriage with a machine gun) originated.
  • Battlefield 1 fans are rather amiable towards Wonder Woman (2017) fans owing to the WWI setting of both works. Both have been praised for renewing interested in World War I and proving that the conflict can work as a setting for mainstream blockbuster media.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: For some reason, the game is surprisingly popular in Japan despite its historical setting and the country's general aversion to shooters. If this chart is anything to go by, it joined the top 20 best selling games in Japan of 2016.
• Game-Breaker: The Heavy Bomber (Ilya Muromets), if left unchecked by anti-air, is the recipe for a massive killstreak, given the pilot can spot many enemies at once via photograph, then drop a payload that spreads over a large area. God help you if you're up against one of those while your team rushes to secure an objective, making you easy pickings for a multikill. In addition, because it doesn't require any skills to be lethal, it will be much harder to die than actually kill if a crewmate can repair the plane.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • A number of these popped up during the beta period, including soldiers on horseback clubbing the enemies dead in one hit with the barrel end of their rifle instead of a sword like they should.
  • If the Behemoth airship is destroyed, its burning husk will slowly fall to the ground. Unfortunately it's still susceptible to vehicle physics. And aircraft bumping into it tends to produce... violent results.
  • A humorous one tends to happen to the Heavy Tank if they ever get tipped over on their side somehow. Trying to move forward while stuck on your side will result in the tank levitating into the sky, higher and higher the longer you keep stepping on the gas.
  • The British at Gallipoli may just have a flying dreadnought◊ reinforcing them.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Upon release of the game, there was a mild controversy over accusations of Politically Correct History especially involving African soldiers serving in the German Army, but the fans quickly decided it wasn't a big deal as it was mostly historically accurate. Then, in mid-2017, Call of Duty: WWII released a trailer showcasing character customization, which revealed the option to play as a Black woman in the Wehrmacht, in turn ignited an absolute firestorm of criticism, but this too quickly died down as it was still limited to the non-canon multiplayer mode. When the trailer for Battlefield V dropped in mid-2018 and it not only included female Wehrmacht soldiers in multiplayer, but also two fictionalized female soldiers in a real life mission that was carried out by a male-only commando unit, social media exploded.
• High-Tier Scrappy: The Scout class is considered to be rather overpowered. In Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, the sniper class was considered next to worthless since they can be easily outgunned by the other classes and lacked versatility. However, in Battlefield 1, the longer "time-to-kill" of the other classes means that there's less of firepower gap and while also having a "Sweet Spot" mechanic that turns their sniper rifles into One-Hit Kill machines at certain ranges.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: While critics praised the way the campaign's plot was handled, with it focusing on personal vignettes rather than a single sweeping war story. The most common complaint was how short it was, as most players would take only 5 to 10 hours to complete them all.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Gets this from some fans and critics (most notably TotalBiscuit) who were disappointed that the game did not really take full advantage of its WW1 theme and feel that the game is not different enough from previous installments to really stand out.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The line 'One can only speculate...' is a popular Catchphrase players use as a sarcastic opening sentence or as a vague answer. The line itself is said by the announcer when the Central Powers win in an Operation that they historically lost. It amounts to 'You won, but really you're still the losers.'
  • There seems to a be a strange tendency for tank drivers to sometimes spare enemy players if they shake their heads from side to side in-game, as if they are begging to be allowed to live. The tanks will sometimes oblige. This has gotten to the extent that one can feel the outrage of a tank driver if a member of his crew kills a player he has decided to spare.
  • The title is cited by many as an example of the gaming industry "forgetting how to count".
• Narm:
  • The announcer voice that calls out when you gain or lose objectives, for a couple of reasons. Number one, although the voice uses historically accurate British naval WWI military phonetic alphabet, many people find the names "Objective(s) Apple/Butter/Duff/etc." to just sound silly. Some also say that they sound overly artificial and the default female voice doesn't help the matter. Youtuber The Russian Badger even poked fun at the objective names in one of his earliest BF1 videos. That said, he also addressed how DICE added the option of using a male announcer voice if they disliked the female one.
  • Though It Makes Sense in Context,^note Radio communications had not been perfected in World War 1, so extensive use of runners and pigeon couriers were used and tanks had a pigeon on board for exactly that purpose the scene in "Through Mud and Blood" where Townshead and McManus are shouting at each other about Edwards grabbing a loose pigeon in the tank can come across as a bit silly, especially considering the overwrought dialogue and above-mentioned Cliché Storm issues, this being the "soldier struggles with following orders though it may cause him harm" scene in your typical war film.
  Townshead: Edwards! Release. The pigeon!
  • Some players found the crutches that Medics carry on their backs in multiplayer hilarious.
• Nightmare Fuel: The game turned the brutality of the takedown animations up to eleven. Instead of the graceful and bloodless CQC maneuvers seen in Battlefield 4, the ones in Battlefield 1 are rough, bloody, and painful. Good hard stabbing, clubbing, and chopping are commonplace, accompanied with audible screams and grunts from the victim. Even worse, the attackers often follow up with gratuitous attacks, like following up a stab to the rib with a punch to the face, and the victim will visibly recoil in pain. And it's worst when it happens to you in the middle of a chaotic warzone.
  • The random "insane" chatter and screams various soldiers can speak during a match are all horrifying, to say the least, as they range from mentally deranged talk to screams of terror.
  • This especially true with bayonet attacks, since usually to work at all they have to catch you off guard, so out of nowhere you hear a yell and suddenly find yourself with an angry enemy soldier shoving a bayonet into your chest.
  • If you're on the receiving end of a charging Cavalryman's lance, your character has a rather drawn out death as they're stabbed through the chest and taken off their feet while grasping at the lance before being tossed aside. Being stabbed from behind is equally horrifying as all your character can do is look down and see a lance through their chest before being thrown off the lance.
  • The trailer for Apocalypse, which combines brutal footage of gas-masked soldiers butchering each other in nightmarish hellscapes with haunting scenes of soldiers going mad from shell-shock, all set to a voiceover that seems to have been taken straight out of All Quiet on the Western Front.
    In the end, there will be no one left.
    We are no longer innocent.
    We are lost from this world.
    From home.
    We no longer believe in such things.
    We only believe in war.
  • The very beginning of Storm of Steel. As hearing that quite song as chaos is all around you, it's quite unnerving.
• Older Than They Think: A fair amount of gamers complain about the fact that the game uses weapons that were rarely used in WW1, such as submachine guns and assault rifles. However, even in the older games, the various factions have used rare and experimental weapons that aren't officially used in their respective armies. This goes all the way back to the very first game Battlefield 1942, which lets players use the Japanese Type 5 rifle even though that gun never saw service.
• Polished Port: The PC version is so well-optimized that even lower-end graphics cards have no issues hitting 60fps even at the highest settings, which is an amazing feat considering how insanely good the game looks.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Grenades and explosive weaponry in general is the subject of much debate for players on the official forums. There exists a significant number of complaints about the obnoxious Grenade Spam that rewards cheap tactics with plenty of kills. While the mechanics for grenade remained mostly unchanged for many Battlefield games, Battlefield 1 is where the problem really stood out to many players due to there being no pin-pulling time, allowing for far more suicide grenade throws. DICE's eventual decisions on balancing grenade resupplies eventually reduced grenade spam greatly, resolving player issues for the most part.
  • Operations are only available through game searches, and for whatever reason the game has a habit of matching the player into empty servers, expecting it to fill up. This had resulted in the slow death of Operations as people become frustrated at the difficulty of playing a game of Operations with a good number of players, making more and more people abandon the game mode altogether.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Selbstlader 1906 (not to be confused with the much better Selbstlader 1916) can be considered the worst primary weapon for the medic, despite the fact that it's unlocked after leveling the class up to the max. While they both fire the same round at the same rate-of-fire and have identical ballistic characteristics, the older Luger toggle-lock rifle is inferior in every other aspect, notably magazine size (5-round internal mag vs 25+1 detachable box mag), and reload speed (The Luger rifle will ALWAYS take longer to reload than the Mauser rifle no matter what state it's in)... However, with the advent of the Selbstlader 1906 Sniper variant, things may be looking up.
  • On the Support spectrum, the Huot Automatic is the reward for reaching level 10 in the class. It's positive attributes include a built in bipod (after the Fall Update), and a recoil so low that it can be fired smoothly from any reasonable distance. The negatives though, are a low bullet count, a rather mediocre fire rate for an automatic weapon and a damage model that matches the Lewis Gun, but the aforementioned ammo capacity and fire rate hold it back. A lack of a scope to make use of the range and recoil on the LMG also means that one could use the MG15 Suppressive to replicate the lack of recoil with a bipod, have a good scope of their choice and work with 200 shots. But like the Selbstlader 1906, the Huot will obtain an Optical variant.
  • The M1903's Experimental variant is often regarded by the community as a bit of a joke weapon for the Scout when compared to other options. The Experimental is essentially a rifle modified to fire a very large amount of pistol rounds instead of sniper rounds. While on paper this sounds like a good way to give Scout players an option to both play Scout and enjoy some CQC at the same time, the damage model on the rifle can be outdone by basically anything that doesn't get surprised by it. That being said, some of its positive traits include an impressive semi-automatic fire rate of 450, a high magazine capacity and ease of control. However, a patch rebalanced it a higher damage against a 360 RPM instead, and another patch gave it an alternate firing mode that allows you to use it like a regular bolt action rifle. After these changes, while it's still far from the most popular Scout weapon, it has found a niche among Scout players looking for something more versatile.
    • That said, it shouldn't be surprising to see players use both the M1903 Experimental and the Kolibri, a genuine Joke Item, together for maximum torture on the users part. Or generally just for the fun of it.
  • The signature Airship is argued to be the weakest of the behemoths for its Glass Cannon tendencies, with too much emphasis on Glass. While it does indeed carry an intimidating amount of firepower to destroy infantry below, the cabins where the weapons are housed are hilariously easy to destroy. And if they don't get destroyed, the gunners will more than likely die as the splash damage of AA Guns (which are justifiably abundant in maps where the Airship appears) can hurt them, or even regular bullets from players below can snipe them out of the seats. Other Behemoths in comparison merely get disabled while the player inside is forced to wait for their piece of the Behemoth to auto repair without the risk of dying. The actual Airship itself can even get blown up in under a minute in some maps where there are plenty of enemy planes and AA guns to shred it apart.
  • The 12g Automatic shotgun can be seen as the in-between of the M97 Trench Gun and the Model 10-A. Unfortunately, this Master of None status is its downfall as the medium it can thrive on is rarely seen in a frantic and chaotic game like this. While tries to make up for this with having the highest rate-of-fire It also has the lowest number of pellets per shot (Eleven), compared to the likes of the Model 10-A and M97 Trench Gun (20 and 15 respectively), mitigating the usefulness of the weapon.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The previous Battlefield game, Battlefield Hardline, while classified as a spin-off, was big enough to be considered an entry in the main series. The game was highly controversial, and many did not like it. Battlefield 1 managed to win back the attention of everyone for the Battlefield series.
  • The game's single-player campaign was seen as a remarkable improvement over past games and as the best since Battlefield: Bad Company 2, with many considering it a dramatic step-up in terms of writing and design in comparison to the usually phoned-in campaigns featured in most mainline games.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The game caused serious outrage in France for not featuring the country as a playable multiplayer faction at the game's launch, since it was undoubtedly one of the major countries of the conflict from the very beginning ^note most of the major battles of the Western front happened on French soil from 1914 to 1918, the French army was the most numerous on the Entente / Allies side, and it sustained the third heaviest (and, proportional to pre-war population, the heaviest) death toll of the conflict behind Russia and Germany, with up to 1.4 million military deaths and it showed its strength and pugnacity in battles such as Verdun. Whereas nations that entered the conflict much later and on a much smaller scale (such as the USA, in 1917) were playable from the start. While developers confirmed French armies would be available in future downloadable content, accusations of Hollywood History and anger at the wasted opportunity to subvert the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey stereotype were still all over the place.
  • The outrage was even worse in Russia, since they also weren't playable in multiplayer and, for a time, there was no news about them being present in either the single-player or DLC. This was later alleviated by confirmation that the Tsarist Russian Army would be released as DLC.
• That One Achievement:
  • Any which require you to melee an enemy such as "Charged into Battle" for 25 accumulation kills with Cavalry Lance (In the Name of the Tsar), "Firefighter" for a single melee kill on a Flametrooper Elite, and "Modern Technology" (latter two from Apocalypse) as explained below:
    • "Charged into Battle" has jank lance horse controls which makes it harder to get a hitbox towards an enemy player. Even using the charge cause troublesome when the enemy prone cannot reach towards them.
    • "Modern Technology" requires you to kill a player with a Broken Bottle. Sounds easy, until you realized it require 5 accumulation kills from three Apocalypse maps (Passchendaele, River Somme & Caporetto) to pick up an empty bottle. This is tedious as the bottle do not respawn once it pick up by the players (unlike other Elites). What matter worse is if you drop it by switching to another weapon or get killed by the enemy trying to attempt that, then the bottles in the map is permanently gone until the round is over.
  • "Rough Seas" in Turning Tides is harder than you think as you have to look at the mini map where the enemy location is, even if the enemy is marked by you and your teammates.
  • For "Perform a kill with all expansion weapon variants" (except They Shall Not Pass which requires a single kill with 5 Weapon Assignments of your choice), see That One Sidequest below.
• That One Level: The "Devil's Anvil" Operation, especially with 64 players, is considered to be a nightmare for the attacking side, where nearly every sector can end up as a stalling point that depletes entire battalions. Ironically, in the midst of all this unbalance, the Operation perfectly captures the German offensive's Pyrrhic Victory, where they lost way more soldiers than they thought they would.
  • The first map, Verdun Heights, is a literal uphill battle with everything stacked against the German side; it offers next to no cover on the attackers' spawn while giving the French defenders a complete field of view that allows them to turn the match into a campfest were the Germans become sitting ducks. The objectives are also placed far apart and close to the defenders' spawn, making it hard to overtake them unless your squads are extraordinarily skilled at keeping incoming defenders at bay. Not even the reinforcements of 4 Elite Classes for the attackers are enough to overturn the lopsided defensive positions.
  • If the attackers somehow conquered Verdun Heights, the next map, Fort de Vaux, offers no solace; the two beginning objectives are so far apart that it's easy to keep exchanging objectives until the attackers run out of lives. Subsequent sectors are full of bottlenecks that defenders simply have to sit on and keep spamming grenades until kingdom come.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Getting 10 revives in match when you don't have a coordinated team. You need it to complete the medic's basic challenge. The issue here isn't revival not being any good, it's very useful, but having people stay around long enough to revive them, or not having it taken by a teammate first, can range from problematic to rendering it impossible. Players can choose to forego any revival to move to the spawn screen, and it's quite possible to have it happen a lot in one match, or you might just not get anybody who dies in a spot where you can safely revive them.
  • Some of the challenges needed to unlock weapons are really annoying (especially for the three subsections required to unlock to "perform a kill with all expansion weapon variants" above That One Achievement):
    • One of the two challenges required to unlock the Optical variant of the SMG 08/18 is to destroy five tanks with anti-tank mines. Sounds simple, but it's not when you realize two details: for starters, the challenge specifically refers to destroying tanks - and only tanks; lighter vehicles like armored cars don't count - outright, as opposed to merely disabling them, and second, one mine is usually not enough to completely destroy a tank unless it has already been damaged by other means. Crafty players who try to plant two mines right next to each other to create a larger blast will also be disappointed that the game prohibits you from planting mines too close to one another.
    • Similarly, one of the challenges required to unlock the Low Weight variant of the Parabellum MG14/17 is to destroy two airplanes with light machine guns. Just two. Again, it sounds simple in theory - this is an era where aircraft are easy to damage with small arms - but again, the challenge specifically refers to destroying airplanes outright, which means landing the killing blow, and that's actually harder than it sounds.
    • Unlocking the Carbine variant of the Vetterli-Vitali M1870/87 requires you to destroy a single vehicle with K-Bullets. Keep in mind, K-Bullets deal Scratch Damage to anything heavier than a motorbike. Although, this challenge becomes a bit easier when you realize that horses are considered vehicles in regards to the challenge.
    • Quite a few other weapon challenges require using weapons locked by other challenges. For a particularly notable example, unlocking the Annihilator Storm. First, you have to unlock the Trench variant of the Annihilator^note Which is actually pretty easy, if a bit grindy. It just requires, as the assault class, getting 100 kills with primary weapons, then getting 25 kills with sidearms then get 50 kills with it. Then, the other challenge requires getting ten kills with the sickle... but to unlock the sickle, you first have to get five kills with the Welsh blade in one match. Thankfully, the Welsh blade is unlocked by default, but still.
  • The challenges required to unlock the dogtags added in the Apocalypse DLC. For the most part, the challenges require using afflictions - "specializations" that actually handicap the player in some way. However, each one also has one more challenge that borders on the impossible:
    • "Looming War" requires you to kill 25 players with the Dud Club in one life. To begin with, the Dud Club is one of those melee weapons that have to be assembled from puzzle pieces randomly obtained by opening Battlepacks. Then there's the fact that getting a 25 killstreak with any melee weapon without dying is ridiculously hard... And did I mention that the Dud Club is actually a goddamn grenade, and it actually has a small chance of literally blowing up in your face upon killing someone?
    • "Creeping Death" requires you to destroy a Behemoth... with the Kolibri. To reiterate: You have to destroy one of the following: an airship, a Dreadnought battleship, an armored train, or a super-heavy tank; with a tiny, underpowered gun that requires four headshots to kill someone!
    • "Suffocating Pestilence" requires you to get 1,000 meters worth of headshots in one life.
    • Last but not least, "Withering Famine" destroy an aeroplane with a tripwire bomb. Let that sink in: You need to destroy an aircraft with a bomb that sits on the ground and is triggered by someone getting too close.
    • Amusingly, the latter three seemingly-impossible feats were actually achieved by the time Apocalypse came out, as these three videos can attest.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some veteran fans of the Battlefield franchise have complained how the new mechanics have made the game too casual. Most notably, inclusion of bayonet charging, Behemoths, Elite classes, and the sniper sweet spot mechanic are derided as cheap tactics that allow inexperienced players to beat more experienced and skilled players.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Some felt that the lack of a Central Powers Campaign was a huge oversight that undermined the game's Grey-and-Gray Morality message, as underlined in the prologue's ending.
  • Despite being featured on the cover and much of the promotional material, you only play as a Harlem Hellfighter in the brief opening sequence, rather than a full story. The mission they are in also consists of the player repeatedly dying. This hammers home how awful the war was, but perhaps unintentionally turns this into a case of Black Dude Dies First en masse.
  • Who makes a game with a Gallipoli campaign and sets it on the day after the landings? We were so close to having WWI D-Day.
  • Similarly, while there is a level where British Tommies are depicted going over the top. Unfortunately, the Player Character is not one of them and is instead the driver of a tank supporting then.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: From the point when the first trailer came out, there was an outpouring of interest in World War I, which many players were barely familiar with or knew nothing about. The game itself also contains a codex with a variety of insights into the war and the time period. All this seems to be an ongoing theme of the game to revitalize the interest in World War I.
• Unexpected Character: In the Name of the Tsar featured the The Red Army as a faction, which nobody expected to be present, and was kept in secret by DICE and EA before their reveal at Gamescom. To emphasize just how hidden they are, not even the official trailer showed them.
• Vindicated by History: A minor example. At launch, the game received some backlash from veteran players who felt it was too shallow and casual compared to Battlefield 3 and 4. However, these same players gradually warmed up to the game for its overall polish and further improvements compared to Battlefield V and Battlefield 2042, which languished throughout their lifespan in a broken state of mediocrity.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • On debut, the very fact that it was a mainstream, big-budget shooter focused on World War I — a setting that has long been considered by publishers as poisonous to sales numbers — gained the game significant praise and won over many who were disillusioned over the trend of modern-day and futuristic shooters.
  • For the first time on PC since Bad Company 2, the in-game server browser is back! No more Battlelog!
  • Also worth noting is that while Battlefield 4 had most of its crippling bugs patched out post-launch, and even became one of the more played entries, some felt that the damage had already been done and refused to go back to it. This game managed to win even those people back to the franchise.