Battlefield Core Feedback - Maps - Feedback Thread

62 person breakthrough: yes, i like this a lot more. would love to see both 128 and 64 person versions stick around.

maps that need help: Hourglass. It's way too easy for someone to take a Wildcat and just sit on the dunes over C and B points and just suppress all infantry in sight. They will be too far away to get SOFLAM lock, and too far to reliably hit with rockets. Once again, broken mobile AA.

First of all, I appreciate the structured approach you are taking. Nevertheless, I'm wondering why there is no update on all other topics, that are way more problematic than map design:

• community response to specialists is absolutely negative
• it totally kills immersion to be surrounded by several players that look exactly alike while clearly they don't look like soldiers
• I never played a game that crashed that much on PC, all other BF titles hardly ever crash
• performance is horrible compared top other titles with better graphics
• the low amount of weapons and the lack of absolute standard equipment (e. g. flash bang grenades) is not acceptable
• the decision to remove gaining XP in Portal modes against bots basically killed Portal, there is no way you create a Portal experience and wait a day until you have enough players for a 128player match - not sure how that was supposed to work
• no server browser is is an absolute no-go for a game that is in such a bad state, it makes no sense that we have to join random matches until we find a map that is not completely broken --> at least give us the option to decide on which map we want to play
• description on which stats a weapon and attachment has is in most cases misleading or wrong, there should be much more and accurate information available in-game

To the map design questions:

• Breakthrough 64 is the best compromise between performance impact and compensation of flawed map design
• 128 players clearly causes a significant hit on fps and stability
• Vehicles in general are really not balanced, you constantly get run over by the Bolte or killed by the easy-mode Littlebird. In combination with the bugged anti-vehicle weapons, gameplay clearly favors vehicles and vehicle camping. There is hardly a way to avoid vehicle heavy areas. Additionally, damaging vehicles or piloting attack vehicles is not rewarding enough - only for the player that actually gets the kill
• Too many invisible walls that can be abused and tree stumps your vehicle can get stuck on - better remove those (or their hitbox) completely
• Snow maps give a big advantage to players with the white colored skins like "Snow Burn"
• On nearly all maps the opening in Breakthrough is really annoying for attackers without a vehicle, it would be better to have more transport vehicles but less attack vehicles
• additionally, the maps look far to clean and undamaged - it's supposed to be an apocalyptic war-zone and not something that gets cleaned and freshly painted every week

Bringing back classes would solve any and every problem that battlefield is facing right now. But no fr. Give us maps like BF4 where you know what you routes to take or like BF5. We need an operation locker is something. All seriousness y’all should focus on bringing back classes. The maps can wait.

@edgecrusherO0 wrote:

"Man, no clue why it took two full months to put this post together but oh well. Feedback I have at the moment -

Infantry vs. vehicle balance on breakthrough - It's garbage. Hot, utter, massive garbage. There are too many vehicles that can spawn and infantry have little counter to them outside of some lame C5 drones or hacking them, which is only available to a one character consistently.

If both teams can "handle" armor/air the matches are fairly fine, but it requires your armor/air and their armor/air to largely be matched. If you CAN'T or they CAN'T, it's a steamroll where armor/air just wipes the floor with the other team with little to no recourse. It snowballs and it feels like *.

Beyond that half the vehicles feel like garbage to play against. Bolte is a prime offender since it's easy to position it defensively so you can't shoot the driver/gunner and is quick enough to evade most anti armor rounds. Vehicles in general feel like garbage

And that's it for now. I'm not sure why you're asking this, though, even from what little reading I've done this is all * that's been discussed extensively while the game still had a community.

Now the community is dead and y'all are expecting to get tons of qualitative feedback and it's way, way, way too late. All that's being shown off for the "bigger work" is a few capture points moved around? Like, that's bad, DICE. It honestly looks like nobody is working on this game.

At least the blog post is nice. To respond to that -

Traversal: Still blown away that the game ended up being a "walking simulator" and nobody on the team noticed. This was apparent literally within the first few matches in open beta. How'd y'all not notice?

Intensity: May, maybe y'all should have listened to DICE from a decade ago when they said 128 players wasn't fun (I think it is) and is hard to design around. Maybe don't get super ambitious if you don't have an experienced team.

LoS: I'm glad you feel and hear us, I'm not sure how this was missed in internal testing either since it's GLARINGLY OBVIOUS WITHIN A FEW MATCHES.

Paths: Why should we have confidence y'all can figure this out when you thought capture points on top of rooftops in breakthrough was a good idea?

Cover: Basically the same issue as LoS.

I mean, we're 3 months into the year and you still need more time to move capture locations and spawn points? You're just starting feedback now?

Does anyone at DICE even actually work on this game or have y'all moved the team onto the next one?

I was expecting a lot more detailed and better delivered communication than this given that y'all haven't said * for a few months but hey, I guess this is better than continued silence.

Lost of, "We agree with your frustrations." not a lot of "We're sorry we delivered a half-baked game with glaringly obvious design flaws and mistakes."

This man sums it up quite nicely. I could not express myself like this due to my language limitations but I completely agree with everything said here. Thank you for the post.

The post from them is very nice but that all. They had so much time to fix stuff, and after 4 months they come up with "Here, we have a small range of fixes incoming". Small?

How are they hoping we can trust in anything they said here?

And another thing I find confusing is why don't they FIRST FOCUS on all the bugs, and then talk about everything else...

I don't know, I was hyped about the recent blog, than I just thing that there is almost nothing in practice... it's all "Trust us" bullcrap.

Until I witness MASSIVE changes I won't change my mind. At least in the TWO MOST PRESENT ISSUES - bugs and performance.

These are my (lengthy) thoughts on the AoW maps of 2042 as a primarily CQL player. 

tl;dr The general issue with the 7 ‘All-Out Warfare’ maps in Battlefield 2042 is a lack of variety in terms of gameplay, frustrating vehicle spam resulting from the poor vehicle categorization and overall, an uninteresting experience both from an aesthetic and gameplay perspective. 

AESTHETICS AND DETAILING 

All of the maps have a very barebones aesthetic which makes it very uninteresting to play and interact with the environment. Every single object in the game is far too pristine and squeaky clean which ruins the immersion that had become a staple of the franchise since Bad Company 2.

Understandably, this might be a direct response to the visibility complaints from Battlefield V where some players complained about not being able to spot enemies due to the highly detailed environments, but with the increased spotting abilities in Battlefield 2042 and some lighting improvements, this probably wouldn’t have been an issue.

The maps in previous games felt a lot more alive and 'war-like', especially with the environmental effects (both audio and visual) that have been lacking in 2042. Smokes and distant gunfire in the background, visual changes to the levels as the round progresses, additional props like destroyed armoured vehicles, abandoned civilian vehicles, etc.  

DESIGN AND LAYOUT 

Personally, I don’t find the scale of the maps to be a problem. I fully believe that Conquest plays better when the combat is focused in and around the capture points, with the area in between restricted to smaller skirmishes and mostly travelling.   

Travelling between objectives should be supported efficiently with transport vehicles but it should also take time and effort to reach new points in order to better balance the attack/defend flow of Conquest, something that has been missing in games like BF1 and BFV because the capture points were too close to one another, leading to the awful zerg-rushing meta. The dead area between objectives also needs more permanent cover to minimize situations where travelling on foot becomes a death sentence   

The biggest issue however lies in the capture points themselves. A lot of the capture points are weirdly placed, and they’re quite uninteresting from a gameplay perspective.  

D1 on Hourglass CQL is a good example of a poor capture point. It’s pretty much just a flat bit of land surrounded by houses that are outside the capture radius. Fighting on this capture point is boring because there is nothing interesting going on here. Even if you’re in a vehicle, you are still prone to getting ambushed and attacked from all angles with no way to protect yourself. I would love it if the area was condensed so the houses are part of the capture zone, with more permanent cover scattered in and around the objective.  

Other maps face the same problem on various capture points. Some other examples of uninteresting/poor capture points (all on CQL) include: 

• Kaleidoscope B/C sectors (far too open and copy/paste in terms of layout)  
• Discarded B1/C1/D1 (extremely open and bland) 
• Orbital E1 (tiny and restrictive 2 tier layout surrounded by flat ground with zero cover to move around) 

Capture points in Conquest should be treated as genuine points of interest and it should make sense to fight over them instead of fighting over a random house. Renewal is one of the maps where you genuinely feel like there is a ton of variety, where each sector has a strong identity and offers a fairly unique experience. 

VARIETY AND IDENTITY 

The levels in 2042 suffer from a lack of identity, unlike previous games where there was a clear distinction between infantry/combined arms/vehicle maps, offering something for everyone. Right now, every map is dominated by vehicles and it is pretty much a nightmare for infantry players. However, this isn’t necessarily down to the map design but rather the extremely poor vehicle categorization.   

Almost every vehicle in 2042 has powerful weapons and because of the vehicle organization, it results in a high level of vehicle spam. Vehicles like the M5C Bolte are sectioned within the ‘transport’ category, which means there can be anywhere between 5-9 Boltes per side depending on the map. That’s an awful lot of firepower and it results in extremely frustrating moments for infantry players. The same applies to air vehicles.  

Instead of nerfing vehicles into the ground and making them useless, I would prefer if the vehicle categories were re-assessed and looked something like this: 

LIGHT TRANSPORT 

• Most abundant class of vehicles mainly focused on smaller scale transport 
• Quadbike / Hovercraft / LATV4 

HEAVY TRANSPORT 

• Focused on larger scaled transport and moderate firepower 
• MAV / Condor  

ARMOURED VEHICLES 

• MBT / LAV / Bolte 

• MBT has the most endurance and firepower to deal with vehicles. LAV acts as a multipurpose vehicle. M5C Bolte acts as a Light Tank with powerful anti-infantry weapons 

HELICOPTERS 

• Attack Helicopter / Scout Helicopter 

AIRCRAFT 

• Stealth Jets 

 
Apart from the vehicle category issues, the maps also suffer from having every vehicle type available on each and every map.  Tailoring vehicle types based on maps would really help give the existing maps a strong identity and provide a far more unique experience. 

By mixing these vehicle type restrictions, there could be a greater variety of experiences such as Infantry Focus / Tank Focus / Ground Combat / Combined Arms / Vehicle Focus. 

Maps like Kaleidoscope and Discarded are obvious candidates for an infantry-focused experience and the current number of vehicles on those maps are extremely frustrating to play against. Having a fewer number of vehicles and limited vehicle types would allow infantry to breathe and move around more comfortably. 

Manifest suffers from air vehicle spam and would fare much better if it were a ground combat map that mostly involved tanks and LAVs instead of all vehicles. 

Orbital, Renewal, Hourglass and Breakaway would be great choices for more combined arms/vehicle heavy maps. Hourglass in particular could become a tank focused map while Breakaway allows for a greater number of vehicles due to its size and layout. 

An example of an ‘Infantry Focused’ vehicle layout 

An example of a ‘Combined Arms’ vehicle layout 

An example of a ‘Vehicle Focus’ vehicle layout

An example of a ‘Ground Combat’ vehicle layout 

An example of a ‘Tank Focus’ vehicle layout 

I cant believe what i just read. 

First... ok. You understand there are problems with the map layout and too long ways without cover. 

Your fix is : change the locations of the points. 

Ok, thats the easiest way with minimal work. The same way this whole game is made of (and a cause why it flopped) 

A really good solution would be: create covers, destructible buildings, change the terrain, spawn more civilian vehicles for transport on the maps. 

That requires work, sure. 

Second: You seem to be focussed on kaleidoscope. ok, you have to start with a map. 

But you want to release those changes "in season 1!". You didnt even wrote at the start of season one, only while the first season is running. You seriously need ANOTHER 3 MONTH to change the capture points??? 

I dont have words for this. I thought about giving a longer specific feedback on the maps, but you still dont get what the gameplay should be, it would be ignored anyway. 

Good luck. 

Cut the maps up for 64 player versions

I know DICE worked hard for 128 players but so far its not being loved.

Run a trial maybe?