Here are some better recommendations for games that aren’t owned by EA.
Operation Harsh Doorstop - free and moddable tactical shooter with big maps and vehicles, vanilla gameplay is fairly realistic but there are mods that totally change up the gameplay like Casualfield. This game has a dedicated group of youtube content creators who hate on this game… I don’t get it… because the gunplay is fantastic and the mechanics are an elegant evolution of Project Reality type squad spawns and player built basic infrastructure. Sniping is also a BLAST. Singleplayer is in heavy development but multiplayer is where it is at now with the game. It is in early access and is definitely rough around the edges, but the core gameplay is just straight up better than 99% of fps games I have played so I don’t really care lol.
Easy Red 2 - Really fantastic WW2 tactical shooter with big maps and LOTS of different period accurate vehicles and a quickly growing population of players. The general interest this game has in portraying WW2 beyond the tired and boring moments that are usually portrayed is very cool and the gameplay is ROCK solid. This game is extremely affordable for the amount of scenarios, weapons vehicles and historical context that is brought into the game design in a clearly thoughtful way and I recommend ALL of the DLC even as an impulse buy when you purchase the base game. It is worth it, Easy Red 2 is an absurdly easy recommendation at its price point.
Angels Fall First - A superb Battlefront-like/Battlefield 2048 that is first person. This game is in early access and has a small playerbase but the core gameplay is polished, locked in and very very fun. Weapons feel great, vehicles are easy to jump in and start using but clearly have a lot of skill depth to them… Overall the menu and UI is FANTASTIC, at the deploy screen the game will prompt you if a vehicle is available to take and let you spawn directly into it, you can also see a cue of vehicles that are going to spawn for your team soon… Check it out! Even with the low playerbase it is a great bot bashing game, the AI is fun to play against and uses vehicles.
Also, for kicks and giggles I am gonna recommend Empires Mod an old source engine multiplayer RTS/FPS team based hybrid that is actually still in development which is super cool. By now the UI has lots and lots of quality of life additions and tooltips and the whole thing is very impressive even if the age of the source engine and various components going into the experience are obviously very dated, Empires Mod is legitimately still an awesome game and it deserves way more players! There is a discord you can check out to find out when games are happening.
Ok I had to add another oldie but goodie that has an open source project around it now!! That game is Enemy Territory and if you know that game you likely have fond memories of spending hours playing it like I do. No vehicles but the teamplay is very objective based a lot like payload in Team Fortress 2 (which is TF2s best mode by far so…).
Some more obscure recommendations that didn’t quite make my main list of team based objective games with a lot of depth to them but also lots of action…
Unvanquished is a spiritual successor to Tremulous, I haven’t played it so I don’t want to recommend it in the main list but the idea of a team of alien monsters and space marines fighting asymmetrically is super cool and riffs on games like Empires Mod in a cool way.
Renegade X is a fan re-make of C&C Renegade a FPS/RTS hybrid game that was quite fun back in the day, the mod is still pretty rough around the edges so I didn’t want to put it on main list with others. The same developers also are making another game called Firestorm which is based on a different time period in the C&C universe. These developers are not employees of EA or making money off this I believe, you can see the developers really had fun making Renegade-X from my brief experience.
While I like the sentiment… most of those are just fuel for “This is why I only buy name brand stuff” and is right up there with “Linux is super easy. Just start from arch and…”.
Operation Harsh Doorstep: Fun as a proof of concept but I would barely call this playable as it is in VERY VERY early beta. And, scale wise, I would actually say it is more like Insurgency than a BF. Yeah, player/bot counts can get high but the actual objectives and mechanics feel a lot more like Insurgency if it embraced PvE.
Angels Fall First: Amazing back in the day. Deader than 2042 these days with a one week peak of 18 players. And the bots… aren’t great
ET Legacy: You are inherently going into a game that the players have been playing for 20 years but it is a REAL good game and I find you can still get a decent server
Of those, the only one I would even consider recommending as a BF Alternative is Easy Red 2. That game is AWESOME and it reminds me a lot of playing the SP campaigns of old Battlefront. I do think there are serious balance issues with AT infantry versus armor but… I also think armor in general is too powerful (it should not take three AP rounds to the engine to disable something…). That said, I can’t speak to it as an actual MP game since I haven’t actually tried.
Honestly? It gets a lot of crap but I would actually say to check out Battlebit Remastered if someone wants a multiplayer Battlefield that isn’t EA. Regularly still hits 750+ concurrents and I still genuinely can’t tell why the entire internet turned on it. I come back maybe once every few months for a couple of games and usually feel like I am contributing which is more than if I play ET Legacy or Tribes 2 online these days.
Hey, it benefits me when more people play these awesome indie multiplayer games!
It pains me when people put up with insane amounts of nonsense when they just want a battlefield like experience, they don’t want lootcrates, popups that distract you when you open the game… skins… casinos… battlepasses…
If that is your jam, great, but it is alarming how little indie big map multiplayer vehicle shooters there are for the health of the genre as a whole, I have made long rants about how EA fucked over the genre by dropping mod support after Battlefield 2 ughhh.
Because of that I get a lot of joy sharing these games because I know most people like me until fairly recently hadn’t heard of some of these gems and they are the perfect anodyne to all the AAA enshittification nonsense happening in multiplayer big map competitive shooters that actually have good vehicle gameplay.
Did Operation Harsh Doorstop add anti-cheat? I played it when it first was playable on Steam and the amount of cheating was so obnoxious I uninstalled the game.
Its not fun having your entire team have explosions spawned at your location when you spawn because one idiot decided to ruin the game for everyone.
yawn
Here are some better recommendations for games that aren’t owned by EA.
Operation Harsh Doorstop - free and moddable tactical shooter with big maps and vehicles, vanilla gameplay is fairly realistic but there are mods that totally change up the gameplay like Casualfield. This game has a dedicated group of youtube content creators who hate on this game… I don’t get it… because the gunplay is fantastic and the mechanics are an elegant evolution of Project Reality type squad spawns and player built basic infrastructure. Sniping is also a BLAST. Singleplayer is in heavy development but multiplayer is where it is at now with the game. It is in early access and is definitely rough around the edges, but the core gameplay is just straight up better than 99% of fps games I have played so I don’t really care lol.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/
Easy Red 2 - Really fantastic WW2 tactical shooter with big maps and LOTS of different period accurate vehicles and a quickly growing population of players. The general interest this game has in portraying WW2 beyond the tired and boring moments that are usually portrayed is very cool and the gameplay is ROCK solid. This game is extremely affordable for the amount of scenarios, weapons vehicles and historical context that is brought into the game design in a clearly thoughtful way and I recommend ALL of the DLC even as an impulse buy when you purchase the base game. It is worth it, Easy Red 2 is an absurdly easy recommendation at its price point.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324780/Easy_Red_2/
Angels Fall First - A superb Battlefront-like/Battlefield 2048 that is first person. This game is in early access and has a small playerbase but the core gameplay is polished, locked in and very very fun. Weapons feel great, vehicles are easy to jump in and start using but clearly have a lot of skill depth to them… Overall the menu and UI is FANTASTIC, at the deploy screen the game will prompt you if a vehicle is available to take and let you spawn directly into it, you can also see a cue of vehicles that are going to spawn for your team soon… Check it out! Even with the low playerbase it is a great bot bashing game, the AI is fun to play against and uses vehicles.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/367270/Angels_Fall_First/
Also, for kicks and giggles I am gonna recommend Empires Mod an old source engine multiplayer RTS/FPS team based hybrid that is actually still in development which is super cool. By now the UI has lots and lots of quality of life additions and tooltips and the whole thing is very impressive even if the age of the source engine and various components going into the experience are obviously very dated, Empires Mod is legitimately still an awesome game and it deserves way more players! There is a discord you can check out to find out when games are happening.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/17740/Empires_Mod/
Ok I had to add another oldie but goodie that has an open source project around it now!! That game is Enemy Territory and if you know that game you likely have fond memories of spending hours playing it like I do. No vehicles but the teamplay is very objective based a lot like payload in Team Fortress 2 (which is TF2s best mode by far so…).
https://www.etlegacy.com/
Some more obscure recommendations that didn’t quite make my main list of team based objective games with a lot of depth to them but also lots of action…
Unvanquished is a spiritual successor to Tremulous, I haven’t played it so I don’t want to recommend it in the main list but the idea of a team of alien monsters and space marines fighting asymmetrically is super cool and riffs on games like Empires Mod in a cool way.
https://unvanquished.net/
Renegade X is a fan re-make of C&C Renegade a FPS/RTS hybrid game that was quite fun back in the day, the mod is still pretty rough around the edges so I didn’t want to put it on main list with others. The same developers also are making another game called Firestorm which is based on a different time period in the C&C universe. These developers are not employees of EA or making money off this I believe, you can see the developers really had fun making Renegade-X from my brief experience.
https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/
While I like the sentiment… most of those are just fuel for “This is why I only buy name brand stuff” and is right up there with “Linux is super easy. Just start from arch and…”.
Of those, the only one I would even consider recommending as a BF Alternative is Easy Red 2. That game is AWESOME and it reminds me a lot of playing the SP campaigns of old Battlefront. I do think there are serious balance issues with AT infantry versus armor but… I also think armor in general is too powerful (it should not take three AP rounds to the engine to disable something…). That said, I can’t speak to it as an actual MP game since I haven’t actually tried.
Honestly? It gets a lot of crap but I would actually say to check out Battlebit Remastered if someone wants a multiplayer Battlefield that isn’t EA. Regularly still hits 750+ concurrents and I still genuinely can’t tell why the entire internet turned on it. I come back maybe once every few months for a couple of games and usually feel like I am contributing which is more than if I play ET Legacy or Tribes 2 online these days.
awesome. thanks for the list.
Hey, it benefits me when more people play these awesome indie multiplayer games!
It pains me when people put up with insane amounts of nonsense when they just want a battlefield like experience, they don’t want lootcrates, popups that distract you when you open the game… skins… casinos… battlepasses…
If that is your jam, great, but it is alarming how little indie big map multiplayer vehicle shooters there are for the health of the genre as a whole, I have made long rants about how EA fucked over the genre by dropping mod support after Battlefield 2 ughhh.
Because of that I get a lot of joy sharing these games because I know most people like me until fairly recently hadn’t heard of some of these gems and they are the perfect anodyne to all the AAA enshittification nonsense happening in multiplayer big map competitive shooters that actually have good vehicle gameplay.
Go play!
Did Operation Harsh Doorstop add anti-cheat? I played it when it first was playable on Steam and the amount of cheating was so obnoxious I uninstalled the game.
Its not fun having your entire team have explosions spawned at your location when you spawn because one idiot decided to ruin the game for everyone.