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Battlefield Briefing: What We Learned From The Open Beta

Straatford87's avatar
Straatford87
Icon for DICE Team rankDICE Team
4 years ago
Our Open Beta was a special moment for all of us who work across the project – you all finally got hands on with our game. Before we get into the various learnings, takeaways, and improvement...
Published 4 years ago
Version 1.0
announcements
battlefield 2042
supabeastboi's avatar
supabeastboi
4 years ago

@Straatford87 

I liked the briefing a lot, however, I do have some concerns:

I like the idea of specialists, but I also liked the traditional classes. So I'm not too torn or bothered by the idea of specialists... I think it's exciting, something new for a change :-). However, like most I can see an foreseeable issue and that is balancing; it's going to require quite some FTE to work on this. 

With regards to balancing and your introduction of the new agents, there is a HUGE balancing issue already with regards to the new specialist  Ji-Soo Paik. This has already been taking a lot of heat, but:

Specialty issue:

  • EMG-X Scanner - Shows enemies through walls for a short period of time.
    It's going to be a must use ability, regardless of how you play Conquest. There is nothing more valuable then knowing exactly where your opponents are located - live. Regardless of how short or long you make the cooldown on this ability it's just too good to pass up. Being to able to see in bright-red outline where people are through the walls.. doesn't feel good on the receiving end. I also personally think that it doesn't quite fit into the huge open battlefields in the Conquest game mode. Even in the smaller close-quarters gamemodes this is just too oppressing. I know another games like Valorant (Riot Games) has agents that are able to see people through walls - notably Sova - but it requires the agent to line-up his shot and shoot an arrow, which then pulsates and if the pulsation hits you, you get revealed through the wall. There is, however, counter-play to this ability and that is to shoot/destroy the revealing arrow. There is no counter-play against the EMG-X Scanner, other than maybe a niche specialist ability.
  • Idea: EMG-X Scanner - Ping enemies on the map and in-game by a pulsing audio-effect for 1-3 sec.
    Remove the "wallhack"-like aspect from EMG-X Scanner and redesign to only ping and/or pulse the pings with a audio queue to both the minimap and sound-wise in-game. 

Trait issue, or question rather:

  • Threat Perception - Ping players who hit Jin-Soo Paik.
    This would work fine in Conquest I think, but I do see issues with regards to close combat where it could also be a bit too much.
  • Idea: Make counter-play possible. - No idea how.

Still very excited to play Battlefield 2042. Keep doing these briefings, I'd love to hear more from you guys!