Game design decisions that killed a franchise.
Below is a list of game design decisions and how they killed a 20-year franchise.
1. Cloud Server Hosting: Ever wonder why in there is a lack of granularity in the server pings these days? For example, in NA you get two choices East or West and nothing in between. Every server has the same ping in one of two zones.
Welcome to gaming, cloud data center style. The first game to jump to this type of hosing was Titanfall and after a less than favorable reception in that game it has fast become the go to standard for online games.
What's the problem who cares how they host it? I'm betting you do but you probably don't know why. The issue is not in the hosting itself; the servers can maintain performance it’s in the pricing model.
You see when you spin up a virtual machine (VM) instance of your game server you are charged for every second its running. So right off the bat you must concede that you can't run static dedicated servers without forcing a match play system to fill them one at a time. If you don't fill them, you're paying for servers sitting around doing nothing. (Very expensive to do in the cloud)
The way they "fixed" this in previous games was to have match maker spin up new servers when all the others were full, but players were still queuing for games. Simple right just spin-up new servers when match maker says there is demand. The only issue with this method is that it relies on a large base of users continuing to use matchmaker. Ever wonder why they hid the BFV server browser so deep in the menus? Now you know.
That’s not the whole story. In 2042 they took the next step; they removed the server browser entirely therefore guaranteeing the most efficient use of server VM’s possible. However, they ran into another problem in what to do when going from peek hours to slower periods? Let’s say you have 100 servers running during your peek period and as the evening progresses less and less players are queuing for games. With 128 players it kind of sucks to be on a server with only 40 or so players so they had to fill them somehow, enter stage left mindless AI.
The final cherry on the top of one bad decision leading to another is the removal of the persistent servers. The one definite way to 100% guarantee you will never run out of players in your matchmaker queue is to dump all your servers back into the queues after a single round is played.
There you have it folks how the decision to host on cloud servers eventually led to the removal of the server browser, persistent servers & map rotations.
2. Individual player focus: Developers and publishers really love their data sets. They study their consumers in every way possible, they are always looking for the next trend, what’s hot and how can we capitalize on it.
Battlefield has for the longest time bucked this trend, in its hay day there were thousands of clans/communities creating their own fun on dedicated servers managed and policed by their community. Dice seemed to embrace this during the BFBC2 and BF3/4 days however the winds have changed.
The new focus is you. The individual player. They want you to buy into individual hero characters and invest in them. This was extremely hard to do for stock soldiers as the word uniform does not gel easily with funky hats and day glow camo colors. They knew this was a problem with BF5’s skin monetization system. Players really disliked seeing multiple identical individuals on the opposing team. One thing that’s often overlooked is that DICE of the past spent huge amounts of time on their class animations and gait so that you could tell what class a player just by seeing him run. That all went out the window with the inclusion of elite models.
So, jump forward to 2042 and what do we get? We get a complete removal of the class system. The one truly consistent stable of the franchise for 20 years. A bold step for sure, this would not have been a light decision to make, someone extremely high up in DICE would have had to sign off on this one. The knock-on effects of this one decision will no doubt come to haunt whoever signed off on that one.
Individuals are hard, they take a lot of effort and animation resources. Each one needs to feel unique in its movement, sounds, animations, and skins. It’s a huge undertaking and doubly so if you must build two sets. One for the good guys and one for the bad right? No rewards then for guessing how we got no-pats then. Half the work is an easy executive decision.
And finally, we get to the straw that broke the camels “individual” back. The removal of class restrictions. This rock paper sisters’ approach had allowed for tight management of balance between vehicles and infantry for the longest time. Who can ever forget how helpless you felt the first time you turned the corner as a Medic to be confronted with a tank! That classic Han Solo 180 moment was a stable of BF games for years. No more.
Without a way to balance infantry by roles, teamwork left the building. Why do I need these other guys? I’ve got everything I need to Leeroy Jenkins this. The rise of solo play and lack of any discernable teamwork is a defining factor of 2042, in fact you could say that it was 2042’s objective. Its not like you could talk to each other or offer any real tactical movement. No one could tell what on earth you had to offer the team, do you have meds, ammo? What are you?
Finally, we get to the specialist gadgets that make teamplay a personal hinderance. Why move as a squad when you can grapple hook places they can’t get to? Why take and hold when you can squirrel fly behind enemy lines. In fact, why do anything together at all? What are the point of squads in 2042? Honestly its anyone’s guess, I’m pretty sure you could get rid of them entirely and the only thing anyone left playing the game would get upset with is their mobile spawn point.
3. Dynamic vehicle spawning (DVS): This one is the proud winner of the Skippy “unintended consequences” award. On paper it sounds fine right, I’m pretty sure a lot of us long time players had the idea that it would be restricted to unarmed transport vehicles and the robo-dogs. Fine that should work what could possible be wrong with that?
Oh let me count the ways.
A. Points used to offer advantages when capped. You used to get tanks and planes when you capped an important objective. You know risk vrs reward stuff, we really need to take objective C because we get a bomber. You get it right, it’s been in every BF game until this one. DVS killed that. Thanks DVS.
B. Letting players call in lethal vehicles anywhere on the map removed the concept of supply lines. In the past you always knew that when you killed that tank it was going to take it a while to get to the action. It had to travel all the way from the uncap. Mine the road for extra credit.
C. Destroying vehicles used to feel like you accomplished something. You denied the enemy a powerful resource. Take down that helicopter and you knew you had a few mins of air superiority minimum. Yeah maybe 15 seconds now, what’s the point again?
D. Vehicles on buildings is just plain dumb, this made it past all levels of play testing. Really?
E. Vehicles are always in the fight and from all angles. Let one single flying squirrel past your lines and ((poof)) you have a tank plowing through your back lines.
F. Apparently to allow you to call in vehicles pretty much anywhere the maps were made quite flat to allow for easy traversal. No one made the mental leap from flat maps to no cover? Maybe a field trip to soccer field for a game of paintball would have fixed that one? Seriously did they even play the maps? It took me 5 mins to realize the lack of cover was a HUGE oversight. Weird.
Sorry for the long post but I had to get these off my chest. If you haven’t guessed already, I’m a 20 year BF-Vet. It kills me that DICE has fallen so far. Like others have said before me there is a clear opening for a good studio to do what Cities Skylines did to SimCity. Take the formula and make it your own, clearly DICE is done making real BF games.
