Taking these in turn:
- Which maps presently provide a poor opening experience because of the location of the Base Spawn?
I find the opening experience across all BF2042 maps quite poor, largely because of the reasons described in the update (takes too long to get to a first flag). I find this particularly annoying on Hourglass and Renewal. A good principle here for me should be that players on foot should be able to get to the first flag on time to contribute to its capture. This gives the initial minute of the game some purpose. It also avoids the knock-on effect of that not being the case, as it is currently, where you arrive at flag 1 to find it already captured and inevitably then have to continue running to the next point - this knock-on effect is what makes the opening few minutes genuinely dull at times.
- Which maps are making it harder to get back into the fight in an all cap scenario?
I feel like getting back into the fight on Kaleidoscope and to a lesser extent Manifest can be difficult as there seem to be fewer opportunities to sneak behind the line to steal a point, divert enemy resources/attention, facilitate a push on the main front line. I think this is because these maps have a clearer, narrower path for combat in that breaking out from your spawn is pretty one-directional.
- How do you feel about the current balance between Infantry and Vehicles in Breakthrough?
Breakthrough was my favourite mode in 1 and V, but vehicles feel too dominant in BF2042 and so I've reverted to just playing Conquest as the vehicles spread out more over different spawn points in that mode. Basically, because Breakthrough has the innate characteristic of concentrating the fight on one or two points, it allows the vehicles to cluster in a particularly dominant way. This is especially the case on Kaleidoscope, where air vehicles - when combined - just rain death and completely destroy the experience for infantry. Ground vehicles now largely feel like they are in a better spot at the moment, with damage being tuned down on the Bolte and the hovercraft receiving much-needed nerfs after the initial release.
- Have you played 64 player Breakthrough, and do you feel that this is the better way to experience the mode?
I have not, but as a player I would find it sad that the developers essentially decide that 128 is too difficult to balance for Breakthrough and therefore give up. I don't think the issue is caused by scaling up BF2042 from classic 64 to 128, but that the devs never thought through the consequences of pushing the scale up that far in terms of game design.
- On which maps and Flags do you see the most immediate need for more line of sight blockers?
As a rule, large open spaces between flags are an issue on any map. While this may reflect a 'realistic' setting, it creates a horrid game experience that is boring (long walk) and often unrewarding (picked off from a distance without the ability to counter). Strong examples of this on e.g. Renewal are the distance between E1 and D2 as well as B1, the result of which is that these lines of movement are not legit paths for engagement unless you have a vehicle (and because of that, as infantry you basically have no chance if you do go that way and run into a vehicle). For instance, if I move from E1 to B1, once I hit the desert side of the map, I'm basically a sitting duck running across a dull stretch of wasteland till I get to B1 - my choice to flank C1 is limited as I'd be similarly exposed to anyone already looking down from A sector sniping at C. The same is true of the other side of C (between A sector and E sector essentially). So while the wall across Renewal offers a theoretically wide range for engagements to happen, in reality your choices are very limited and you feel pushed into grabbing a long range weapon and just engaging in the mid-long range battle around C.
- Do you have specific areas on maps that currently stand out to you as lacking cover?
The desert space in Hourglass between the city with high rise buildings and the town/stadium area is too vast. The fact that it takes forever to cross that area AND that it has no cover (thus making it difficult to navigate) results in those two areas of the map being entirely disjointed - basically you choose to spawn and fight in the city or in the desert, but you rarely cross between both and the flow of battle never leads from one area to the other. It's a great example of vast spaces with no cover on a huge map leading to two distinctive and seemingly unrelated player experiences (those fighting over tower blocks and those fighting over stadium).
- Do you have thoughts on how we can better define traveling paths between objectives to keep combat focused?
I think this is one of the most important questions and the most difficult to answer. To expand the question, the issue for me in the BF2042 maps compared to the previous BF games is that the maps have no natural 'flow' to them in terms of how a game develops. This isn't to say that the previous BF games and maps had a strictly defined path, but that you kind of knew as a player once you were familiar with the game how to interpret the signs of how a map was developing to understand where your options were in terms of the front line, the sneaky flank, and the wild but rewarding edge-of-the-map-backdoor play. Just speculating, I feel like strategically designed maps like that give you straightforward options to understand the nature of an engagement and how to counter it - something I find very lacking in BF2042. So for example, if a map gives you an obvious combat area (a bridge between two sections of the map, a tunnel going from A to B) it should also give you ways to engage in combat with that area (the strategically placed building that provides sniping angles on the far end of the bridge, the tilted car at the end of the bridge that shields you from that sniper fire and allows you to engage vehicles attempting to cross, etc.). In BF2042 it feels like the core sections are there (the bridges, the tunnels, the main road, etc.) but that the design features sat alongside those sections that make them interesting to traverse and engage in combat from are missing. Worse still, the features that are actually there often don't contribute naturally to the way combat develops at all (on Hourglass for instance: the roofs offer horrible cover, the sniper angles from the hills are entirely exposed but simultaneously offer you a dream eagle-eye view of anything happening below). I miss knowing the layout around a certain flag and understanding how to navigate the combat situations that develop there or between flags.
- Do you see improvement opportunities to make it easier to understand how to get from one objective to the next?
I sometimes find it difficult to judge where the 'action' is and therefore where I might want to contribute. I wonder if some of the incredibly generic and slightly annoying voice-over messaging ("give me an update", "we're taking losses in all sectors") could actually be more attuned to what is going on - "heavy fighting across A sector").
DICE Team
