Battlefield Core Feedback - Maps - Feedback Thread

DICE, why are you asking us all these questions? You already got everything you need from past games. It sounds as if you've got zero clue on how to design a map. Or did all senior lead map designers leave as well?

And by the way, here's that list again from the entire bf community with all the feedback you'll ever need.

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield2042/comments/qw1mbw/fuck_it_heres_a_list_of_absolutely_everything/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Now please stop acting like you don't know how to fix the game.

• Which maps presently provide a poor opening experience because of the location of the Base Spawn?
  - The one that comes to mind is Discarded, Orbital to a slightly lesser degree.  I don't want to sound dramatic, but none of the new maps have a positive experience for me when trying to reach the action.
• Which maps are making it harder to get back into the fight in an all cap scenario?- I'm not sure if I have enough experience with all maps in this scenario, but I remember Renewal not feeling great trying to get back in the fight in an all cap scenario
• How do you feel about the current balance between Infantry and Vehicles in Breakthrough?
  - In terms of numbers, I think it's close to where it needs to be.  The Bolte's presence is felt a little too strongly but I'm not sure if that's in volume, strength or both.  The frustration comes with not feeling like I have a full inventory of tools available to combat vehicles as infantry.  It feels good to set up mines around common paths but also have the ability to launch rockets at air vehicles and repair your own as what could be an anti-vehicle type class.  I like to really dig into the set roles that a class system could provide that would give me enough breadth of responsibility to keep me engaged.
• Have you played 64 player Breakthrough, and do you feel that this is the better way to experience the mode?
  - I have played 64 player breakthrough, and overall feel like it is the better way to play it.  I do get to the action quicker, though, in 128 player just from sheer volume of combat opportunity, but that action usually comes in the form of me being sniped from a frustrating distance.
• On which maps and Flags do you see the most immediate need for more line of sight blockers?
  - I know you mentioned Kaleidoscope as a major offender, and I agree.  The next one that immediately comes to mind is the area among B1, D1, D2, and E1 on Orbital.  HO-LEE MO-LEE I have never felt more helpless moving between points than I do here.  The underground tunnel beneath the runway(?) seems to just be a cluster****, and funnel enemy fire, and does not feel good as an alternative to the wide open space above.
• Do you have specific areas on maps that currently stand out to you as lacking cover?
  Orbital B1, D1, D2, and E1 as noted above.  Even though the little villages in Hourglass have buildings and cover, I feel like the road itself and any engagements outside of a tight house are very one dimensional and could use more interesting cover and paths other than just the way the road goes.
• Do you have thoughts on how we can better define traveling paths between objectives to keep combat focused?
  I tend to gravitate towards paths that offer some degree of 2 sides of cover to the closest objective.  I think paths will naturally be followed if 1) they get you to action quick (are short) and 2) offer 2 sides of cover to an extent (overhang and wall or two walls, I consider a building to be 2 sides because its verticality prevents too much attention from directly above).  One of the pieces of feedback I hear a lot is that the game has a setting of a near apocalyptic and war torn world yet looks quite pristine (kaleidoscope).  Ideas for cover could be abandoned cars, street markets (hourglass), maybe additional buildings, tractor trailer units, stacked supplies, and construction equipment along the runway in Orbital? 
• Do you see improvement opportunities to make it easier to understand how to get from one objective to the next?From a UI standpoint, the nearest objective or the objective you want the path of combat to take the player could be made bigger and bolder on the screen compared to other far off objectives.  Other UI could be turned down, especially when scoped in to avoid clutter.  Placing cover as described above will do the rest in making an attractive path to focus the action.

Thank you for listening.  I'm disappointed that the beginning of potential changes won't be felt in game until at least the summer, but I appreciate being invited to the conversation.

would be great if you could enable EAC Linux suport, so we could play it on the SteamDeck and Linux gaming pcs

I’ll preface this by saying that I predominately play 128 Breakthrough, so most of my comments are specific to that mode and player count. Further, I think it is difficult to isolate maps as a topic because how they play is intrinsically linked to the design and balance of the game. I’m specifically calling out vehicle balance (number of vehicles, overpowered weapons, lack of counter measures, infantry farming) and specialists (the grapple hook and wing suit in particular).

Traversal

Maps need more pure transport vehicles, such as quad bikes and dirt bikes. These can be call-ins or just littered around the map. At the same time, transport vehicles need to be just transport vehicles and not armoured highly agile killing machines. This means reducing the number and lethality of Boltes, MAVS and Little birds. Trying to defend a point when there are 4 Boltes, 2 Little Birds and 2 attack helicopters and a couple of tanks all either trying to run you over or blow you up is not fun.

Intensity

I enjoy the focus and chaos of breakthrough, but it can become too much when it becomes focused on one point (i.e. there is only a single point in a sector, or the location of the points means you move from one to the next), especially when combined with the OP vehicle spam. For example, the last two points on Hourglass are single flags which focuses all the attackers on the single location. When you are not being run over by the many Boltes, or being pulverised by their 30mm cannons, you have the Little Bird pilots going 100+ KD circling around and destroying the defending infantry and light vehicles.

Line of Sight / Cover

I’m combining these as they are somewhat related.

There needs to be a degree of protection when deploying at primary spawn points – there are multiple maps where you can be killed by snipers or even close infantry immediately on deployment.

Part of the issue is specialists and the grapple hook / wing suit gadgets. These allow players to negate most map elements you put in to help address issues with being shot from anywhere at any time. With these gadgets you can get to pretty much any location, fly around any obstacle, and avoid any chokepoints (designed or otherwise).

Possibly the worst offender here is the wing suit specialist. Equip them with the PKP and ammo box they have infinite grenades (both as additional gadget and as a ‘throwable’) and e ammo for their large capacity weapon. The wing suit allows simple flanking and with the meta loadout you can wipe out a whole position. It is great for YouTube clips but no fun to play against.

The wing suit needs to be its own stand-alone gadget and shouldn’t be combined with the infinite grenades. Further it needs a nerf... when you land / crash into something you receive the same amount of damage as the angle you hit it at (i.e. glide gracefully to the floor and you'll take 1 to 5 pints of damage, slam into the side of a building at full tilt and suffer 90 points damage), have a minimum drop before being able to deploy (10 meters), and work with gravity, i.e. no upwards vertical gain while gliding.

Paths

Once again, I find one of the primary issues with forcing paths is the grappling hook and wing suit gadgets break anything you can try an build here. Address these gadgets / specialist and you’ll go a good way to solving some of the pathing issues

General Map Issues

You didn’t ask, but there are a couple of other issues with the release maps that I think it worth bringing up:

Map dressing: The setting concept of failed states and environmental carnage is great and the Exodus short film portrayed a gritty environment, littered with detritus of displaced people and waste and conflict. What we got in all the maps (bar Discarded) is a very clean and pristine environment with nothing suggesting the world is on the brink.

Map rotation: For whatever design decision, match lobbies are disbanded after each round and the game then searches for a new server. This works fine for BR type games, but fails for traditional BF for a number of reasons:

• You have to wait for a new lobby to fill up before a round can start (OK for BR, not great when you have just been on a full server)
• You can end up with the same map you have just played immediately after, which greatly reduces enjoyment. One evening I managed to get Orbital 5 times in a row, each as defender – was like playing the Beta again.
• Sometimes you can end up with a great bunch of randoms in a squad and you’ll like to stick with that for a while. With a new lobby each round that spontaneity is lost
• With a set sequence you know what will be coming next in the rotation

Map variety: There are only 7 AoW maps at release with two modes per map. This isn’t going to change until Season 1 (and even then not sure how many more maps we’ll see). This lack of maps and modes severely limits the longevity of the game and is also really poor value for money on a $60 game. To keep players active you need more content, so there are a couple of possible solutions:

• Promote some of the Portal maps to the AoW rotation
• Add more non-Portal modes to AoW – TDM and Rush would be perfect candidates
• Build variations of the existing 7 maps for the existing modes (and others). For example, you could flip Hourglass – start in the city, have the stadium as a point and finish in the deserted town, or for the smaller modes (i.e. TDM) you could utilise multiple areas from the larger maps (on Discarded, you could have a TDM area around the flooded village as well as where it sits now). Each time the round starts you’re not sure which version you will get so it will add interest and variation.

Environmental effects: The idea of the environmental damage is good in concept, but missed something in execution. For example, you are in a building and the fire suppression system goes off and you suffer cold damage once is OK, but then it keeps going on or off forcing you out of the building where you get picked off by snipers halfway across the map or killed by one of the many vehicles descending on the point. Keep the events in, but have them trigger only once and then be done for the location

Destruction: There is always a balance to be struck between maintaining cover and having a realistic environment that is affected by the conflict around it. Unfortunately it seems that 2042 doesn’t hit the right point on this. I think we need to see more destruction but coupled with greater amounts of cover so it becomes less of an issue when buildings are destroyed. I felt BFV hit the sweet spot on this.

Levelution: This is slightly different from destruction in that it can alter how a map plays out. I know Levelution was really only in BF4, but it set an expectation. In BF1 we had the wreckage of Behemoths to content with, though I can’t think of any BFV examples. Aside from the exploding gas / oil units and canisters, and tornadoes on every other map, I think we only have the following in 2042:

• Orbital: Rocket taking off or exploding
• Discarded: Can pull the sides of the derelict tankers down
• Manifest: Moving cranes / containers
• Kaleidoscope: Radio mast can be brought down, raise and lower bridges and bollards

I can’t think of anything that changes in Renewal, Hourglass or Breakaway

Conclusion

It is great you are starting to look at the maps, but you can’t fix the game by only updating them in isolation. There are multiple design decisions that result in the poor gaming experience we have with 2042 that has driven the payer base to be only 2% of what it was at launch

Anyway, this is a bit longer than anticipated. Hope it gets read! Time for a beer...

This!!! This is 100% correct.

Boltes are OP and so are helis.

Helis get way to much ammo and their respawn time is far to quick. 

Map feedback. Let's go

First of all get rid of the multi flag sector idea. Its fundamentally broken and I'll keep coming back to this as it affects all the points you made in the post. Why would I go for one flag in a multi flag sector where I could go for a sector with only 1 flag and get the same score and help the team more??? Its utterly mental. ⭐

Also, add more destruction. Its pitiful there is next to no destructive aspects to the maps. Won't dwell on this too much but sort it out.

Traversal:

Why is there no option to spawn in on vehicles at the start?

You get given a millisecond to pick a vehicle before they're all gone and if you're too late you are forced into the game and expected to run to the nearest flag (600m away on some maps!) What were you thinking when you made those decisions?

*add more flags! You've put bigger maps in the game, most of them twice the size or bigger yet not twice the number of flags? You mentioned areas/routes that aren't popular by players... put something there then??? Doesn't take a genius to come up with that surely?

Whether that's a new flag or defensive position etc?

Intensity:

Your vehicles are too strong. Tanks/boltes can too easily take over a position all on their own (partly an issue also with how you limit gadgets as you can either choose between anti-air, anti-tank or support, but not a combo. Would be far more effective to boost infantry strength against vehicles)

*again, multi flag sectors don't help this. Fighting endlessly over E1, E2, E3 for a single sector. Even if you take one flag, you still have to take others and it feels very unrewarding and boring. Take them out. Single flag sectors only!

Line of sight:

Flat open spaces.

You've even admitted it yourself.

You know how to fix that. Go fix it.

*again multi flag sectors. You can get shot from some of them whilst taking others. This is mainly a lack of cover but positioning wise its not fun. Take them out.

Paths:

Again, flat open spaces between objectives. Why?

People aren't going to run across flat open ground are they? Doesn't help that the maps are so big that you have to go even further round, but people will still rather go round than accept certain death? Put something in the gaps! Building, more flags, something!

*take out the multi flag sectors! Already mentioned but there's no point going for them. If they're the only ones the team have left however you have no choice. Therefore whats the only logical path choice? To get to the next flag in the sector. Its really really boring. Give us more options to take alternative paths. Fill the empty spaces with more flag points! But not multiple flags per sectors! TAKE THEM OUT

Cover:

This is already discussed in the line of sight and paths sections to be honest but yes. Add more cover.

Even the orbital map! I'm not personally a fan of that map as I find myself just going between the same 2 flags over and over. Very boring! The runway (or whatever its called for rocket launch sites) is relatively realistic of its open space, but it's a game? Why does it have to be empty? You could have the rocket move from the construction building slowly across the map like it might in the real world? Players given the opportunity to blow it up during transit and the wreckage would provide more interesting cover and paths across the map! Things like this would make that map so much more interesting!

Summary:

1) GET RID OF THE MULTI FLAG SECTOR IDEA.

IT DOESNT WORK

2) Give the players more routes by adding in more cover and add more flags 

3) Add some variation to the shapes of the maps. Why flat open spaces? Removes your cover and line of sight issues in the process too!

It's good that you have these forums and opportunities for players to add comments. I hope you take all these comments on board as the game has been a huge disappointment so far in all aspects.

I hope you fix this game. It has so much potential but far too many woefully bad decisions made so far. 

I look forward to playing it after the next big updates.

128 player Breakthrough is fine.

The issue is the amount of vehicles. You spend more time trying to avoid them than you do playing the game. Dont get started on Helis, most disruptive part of the game. I'm not saying to drop helis, they just need to calm down a bit and make them spawn less often. 

For me.. this is the number one issue of Breakthrough.

Breakthrough sectors with 1 capture zone is terrible too. The game needs splitting up across 2 or maybe 3 locations. For example Orbital on final sector is just impossible to defend and sector 2 on Kailidescope, they need a second capture point. 

Open areas do need cover as stated as distance shooting is acceptable but not trying to move from one zone to another without cover. 

Reviving, when the downed player has glitched into a wall and you can't revive. Please please sort this.