TO: Battlefield 2042 development staff RE: Feedback Battlefield 2042 v0.3.3
TO: Battlefield 2042 development staff RE: Feedback Battlefield 2042 v0.3.3 PART 1
Good evening Battlefield development staff,
I understand that you are all working hard to make deadlines and targets while balancing the concerns of the player base for your game Battlefield 2042. Seeing as you are looking for feedback and suggestions for the game I wanted to once again take the opportunity of submitting feedback through your forum.
I do type a lot but this is because I don’t wish to be misunderstood but I ask that you please once more indulge me and my feedback.
The points mentioned on:
with regard to map design seem to be inline with what can be seen in Battlefield 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I do not disagree with your points on creating better maps with regard to: cover, paths, ease of traversal and intensity but the aforementioned Battlefield games encapsulated these things and more in all of its assets such that players were directed implicitly to stay with their squads and PTFO as a team at relevant areas of the map. Each asset could both tessellate with one another without being overly dominant over one another such that there was a Battlefield harmony at play.
Not considering the other attributes that influence map design here and now might well create the same mistakes that many people are complaining about. Please understand I am not trying to quash your enthusiasm, I only wish to highlight that there are other aspects that have not been mentioned that need to be considered that relate to how your maps will look and feel; as such ignoring these things could end up creating more work later for your development team and more frustration for players.
Game mode/Rules
The game mode and its rules effects the way your map is played as the spawn locations for infantry and vehicles are most likely going to be in different positions and quantities. So a map that plays well for Conquest may not work well for Rush if the map has been optimised for certain assets. Now perhaps your development staff are already in the process of doing this but you express in your post as the “biggest action point” about big maps not offering more freedom and play styles which leads me to believe that the basis for your design decisions is focused toward having as many different ways to play your game as possible, or perhaps I misunderstood. If that is the idea though then your refactored maps may have less identity between them and may invite the same problems that you are trying to avoid.
Battlefield 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 are based around limitations or uniformity. This property penetrates all aspects of the game which allows maps and game modes to test various subsets of the teams competence more precisely, making for less random and more predictable fun experiences.
Lets look at the original Kaleidoscope objective being positioned on top of a building for the Breakthrough game mode for a moment. The decision to have the objective in this position is not necessarily bad as it adds quite literally a different dimension of play to your game breaking up the monotony and making the map more original. This is comparable to the experience of the Siege of Shanghai map in Battlefield 4 which in the Conquest game mode also has an objective flag on the top of a building. The position of which allows your team not only a view for: painting enemy targets or offering opportunities of suppression and spotting but also enables you and your team to paratroop onto other parts of the map to mount an additional offensive; all of this occurring while being disadvantaged by the limitations of the soldiers assets while being visible on a tall structure. Considering this, why does a rooftop objective work in Battlefield 4 but not in Battlefield 2042? The answer is that you have limitations. In essence what you cannot do in the game is what allows such an objective to exist in such a position. There is no rule or asset that allows players to maintain complete control of the roof top objective in that game. It is not that you are designed to lose but that the ability to win depends on attributes which have balanced limits. Limits mean that you must compensate or supersede them with other abilities and because it is a team game the limits are then team limits so you must compensate and supersede said limits as a team that is together via co-operation using your assets, playing skills and your intelligence.
With regard to Battlefield 2042 one of the offending assets would be vehicle call ins as you could use these anywhere so removing vehicle call ins based on the objective would be a solution to the problem.
Changing vehicle distribution mid game is another option and is not uncommon in Battlefield games. One such example of this can be seen on the Grand Bazaar map in Battlefield 3 during Rush as players do not get constant access to all vehicles during the game modes execution. In fact the attacking team only get access to the T90 when they have successfully taken the first pair of MCOMs. So taking this example into account you could do the opposite and remove some or all of the vehicles from the defending team when the game mode advances to a certain stage providing the defending teams assets give them a decent enough advantage.
These points are not only balancing attributes but are also inline with a basic reward system that relates toward the simple principle of a game. A game has winners and losers, that is you get something for doing something right and you lose something for failing. When games do not clearly distinguish between winners and losers through rewards and penalties is where the experience becomes blasé and stale.
An additional solution may well lie with adding more routes of infiltration to the roof which would help to pull the defence away from the elevators and the skies. You could use stairs to accomplish this or you could have players attempt to paratroop into the mid section of the building via a helicopter or combine this concept with an array of air vents and empty elevator chutes that players can access (think die hard the movie). This would provide another option of defence as well for the defending team so they wont all be clustered on the roof. The side access can be given by a destruction event that opens up the building in a similar way to how the underground metro section is opened up for players in Battlefield 3 Rush mode or alternatively it could be unscripted requiring player interaction with a weapon of some sort.
I am not trying to say that you are wrong with wanting to make more rectangular objective arrangements or adding more cover or removing jets from a map but you have to consider why your doing this in context of challenging players via what they cannot do easily. You need to ask the questions what is your Battlefield game and who is it for? It is not supposed to be a chaos engine or a glorified random number generator nor is it about explosions and nice graphics; that is a very low bar of achievement shared with many generic first person shooters of both past and present.
If your serious about making a good Battlefield game then you’ll find the answers in the older more defining entries of the series not in the competition.
Objective Deployment
Another problem is that there are no dedicated offensive vehicle deployment locations in Battlefield 2042, so no objective yields a tank or an armed transport vehicle.
This is an issue because vehicle deployment locations give added incentive for players to either defend an objective or attack an objective and as such helps to bring a layer of tactical focus and balance to the game.
A good example of how this is supposed to be done is with Wake Island in Battlefield 3.
The map alone does not simply give players random vehicle assets but offers players objectives that help your team to be fully combat capable in that: taking objective D awarded you an AA, objective C gave you an attack chopper, 2 jets and 2 buggies, A and E gave tanks and B awarded the team 2 more buggies. As expressed the teams in that map were not fully equipped or combat ready to take on one another directly that is to say the teams had strengths and weaknesses based on their spawn location and deployable vehicles which added to the need for team members to work together and maintain objectives. To elaborate: the US faction had air vehicles, transport boats and an AMTRAC from the get go but their base spawn position was much further away from the objectives than the Russian factions so they had the advantage of fire power but their spawn position meant that there was nothing to shoot at. The Russian faction had home team advantage and speed as their spawn were close to an objective that would give access to a tank and a buggy.
Once the objective was taken they could use the buggy to rush to the air field on objective C
or the beach on objective D and win an aircraft or an anti-air craft tank to offer resistance to the invading US forces.
If the Russian faction on that map did not work efficiently they would not only lose objectives and potentially lose more reinforcement tickets they would also lose the benefit of tanks, helicopters, jets, anti-aircraft and transport buggies since these assets all spawn on the maps objectives.
The opposite could also happen with the Russian faction dominating the objectives with a well organised arrangement of SOFLAMs and lock-on weapons.
Because of this there was a greater sense of symbiotic team play and vehicle discipline as individuals were more aware of the importance to play the objective because not doing so meant not just a loss of the game but also a loss of privileges while playing the game.
Vehicle Deployment Screen
The vehicle deployment screen is not considerate to the maps design; that is it is impossible to balance the map because vehicle deployment is currently generic and left up to the player to define. It is not a good design choice to leave responsibility of vehicle distribution to the player as: not every player knows what vehicle should be used on a certain map and it implies that there is no structure to playing Battlefield and that you just play it your way.
Both conditions lead to the outcome of either having to many of the same vehicle or the wrong vehicles on a map which further thwarts any ability for a team to adapt and overcome via communication or by the implied logic of a game.
This leads to knee-jerked based combat where players simply select or order in a vehicle to combat a visible threat with no additional consideration poised toward how that vehicle can defend other future threats on the Battlefield.
This can be seen when a player is dominating in a helicopter. The natural response for the enemy player is to shoot it down with an AA based weapon however, if the helicopter is too far out of range to hit with a lock-on infantry weapon then players will most likely try to deploy a Wildcat regardless of whether there is one on the Battlefield already or not. If you then have 2 or 3 Wildcats on the Battlefield protecting the skies the response from the other team would be to order in more tanks. This all goes full circle again when the opposing team retaliates with a fleet of air vehicles to combat the tanks on the ground.
Again this is happening in a way where no one is really communicating about what vehicles are best for the main objective and since vehicles are categorically arranged a team can easily unbalance the game through the wrong vehicle choices.
Yes, it is fully possible for players to talk with one another via chat and select the correct vehicle but it is not likely as players: may not speak the same language, may not read the chat box, may not care about the teams needs or may even disagree with the decision or suggestion offered. Whichever the case it is not sensible to assume that players will just work it out on their own and if they don’t then that’s Battlefield. You as the developers, directors or producers have to set the pace and the structure for the Battlefield to coerce the correct behaviour from your player base. You have to decide what vehicles exist on a map if any and why otherwise everything that happens will be no different to a roulette wheel.
Battlefield 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 did this correctly as some of the maps offer access to a small subset of the many vehicles that exist in the game while in other maps vehicles are removed altogether. This attribute is further diversified by the game mode such that each map has multiple identities as it tests different aspects of your teams capabilities.
Vehicle Base Deployment
In Battlefield 2042 there are no dedicated spots for vehicle assets to exist in the teams base. This makes the base feel less like a military type installation and more like a generic area no different from the rest of the map. Whereas in previous games you have dedicated placement of vehicles in your base, in some cases moving the very powerful vehicles further away either for: aesthetic immersion, balance of assets or protection from enemy fire.
For example, in Battlefield 3 jets spawn on an air strip and you must take off to be able to get to the action. Again this is not only immersive but it is good for balance as it stops players from trying to jet ram the enemy spawn as taking off will add additional flight time and require a certain level of capability from the player. In the same way, helicopters have helipads and must be piloted off the ground in order to be combat ready.
This alone forced players to apply themselves to learning the vehicles as getting airborne is part of the game; anyone who crashed their helicopter when trying to ascend for the first time in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 knows what I am talking about.
I am certain that there may be individuals that will say that having vehicles in base deployment means that they can be attacked and while this is true it is often dealt with in several ways:
1. Acceptance that this a tactical attribute of Battlefield
2. Create a dedicated rule on the server that prevents red zone attacking
3. Design the map such that vehicles are either too far to be shot at or that the terrain makes it difficult to tell where the vehicles are
4. Design the map such that the position of the vehicle is under or behind some form of indestructible cover such as a mountain
5. Add stationary defensive vehicles such as AA CRAM
Please note that number 1 was implemented in Battlefield 3s version of Wake Island and other such maps and it worked perfectly. Number 3 also occurred in other Battlefield 3 maps with servers implementing number 2 to help compensate for player problems.
Vehicles
In Battlefield 2042 all vehicles share similar attachments. The problem with this is that the vehicles can quickly unbalance a map as some weapons are naturally more powerful than the others and are freely available for the player providing they have unlocked them. This is evident with the Bolte being paired up with a 30mm cannon, since it is so powerful there is little reason for players to not use it over any of the other weapons. Another issue is that the many different weapon attachments and countermeasures that exist for a vehicle are found on other vehicles, blurring the lines between the vehicle types such that all of the vehicles regardless of how they look feel the same during engagements.
What is the point of variety if everything has similar variety? If you look at Battlefield 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 the vehicles do not share the most powerful of vehicle weapons and with regard to transport vehicles have no additional customisation ability. As a result there is a level of predictability that enables players to play the game tactically as a team without any annoying unbalanced surprises.
The physics of some of the vehicles is also an issue the obvious of which would be the hovercraft which floats through the air and scales vertical surfaces, but the acceleration of the vehicles in particular the Bolte is too quick and allows for players to easily mount a secondary ram attack if they failed in their first attempt. Adding to this the road kill mechanics are not balanced in this game as you can attain a roadkill by having enemy players touch the side of your vehicle while it’s in motion even if the speed of the vehicle is low.
This leads to people ploughing through and killing groups of enemy soldiers in quick succession with little to no difficulty and because being the victim of roadkill gives you an extended time on the deployment screen while also forcing you to spawn further behind the objective than usual a team can easily be evicted from part of the map by a single player skidding around in a vehicle. The effect is even more pronounced if this happens multiple times in a row as you will spend more time on the deploy screen and be positioned further and further away from the objective when you are finally able to spawn. This is very apparent on game modes like Rush or Breakthrough.
In Battlefield 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 the vector of the vehicle (I think) coupled with its speed in relation to the enemy players position was taken into calculation to confirm a roadkill, this makes roadkills difficult to acquire.
The speed properties and the weapon attachments for the vehicles in that game reinforce their correct usage as transport vehicles or attack vehicles so it is uncommon to see players throwing Jeeps or ITV Growlers at one another in Battlefield 3 and other such games. The health profile of those vehicles also meant that they are vulnerable to explosives which again makes them less likely to be used as soldier ploughs.
Another issue lies in aircraft seat hopping, this issue occurs even in the other Battlefield games whereby a player piloting an attack helicopter regularly switches to the co-pilot position and while in gentle free fall engages enemy players with its weapons. The solution to this would be to disable pilot to passenger seat switching for air vehicles unless the vehicle is on the ground this means you as the pilot must land your vehicle first if you want to act as the co-pilot, disadvantaging you such that you cannot use the helicopter as a mini AC130 while again adding to that immersive quality and skill level that I mentioned earlier as now you have to know how to land your vehicle as well as know how to fly and take off. Most importantly this reinforces the role of such vehicles as team orientated assets as you are not supposed to be using all of its functions on your own.
As expressed this is not an issue that can be solved with map design but if you are designing the map with regard to the vehicles current properties then the map will most likely be invalid if and when you do decide to change the vehicles properties.
Weapons
Weapons and gadgets in Battlefield 2042 can all be accessed by any soldier. With primary and secondary based weapons being customised dynamically in game using the plus system.
Plus system aside the soldier customisation is very similar to how Call of Duty 4 and other such games operate whereby you just choose what you want. A choice in one item does not restrict you in another item of a different type and though these feature give greater freedom of how players can express themselves it comes at a cost of structure, this structure is not just required to help guide players in a particular role but also guide other players in their responses to these roles.
The issue tends to lead to problems of player position on the map as it is unlikely that an SMG ammo support player will be engaging long range targets. You will probably find such a player that much closer to the action, so you being the player who needs ammo may be forced to go and get it from an SMG player who is on a hot point of fire and you may not notice this until it is too late. This would not be an issue in earlier Battlefield games as there are limitations on who could revive and who could support with ammo further balanced with what weapons an individual had access to based on their class. The result of this would be that support players would most likely be in a safe area; they wouldn’t be trying to shoot LMGs close range because of the recoil, spread and slightly lower damage per shot count.
Though it may seem contradictory, the support class would still be able to access shotguns and SMGs in Battlefield 3. How this differs from Battlefield 2042 is that the class does not allow players to revive other players and the gadget types for the support class are all indirect defensive types that are restricted to that class alone. Because of this design it further helps to lead the understanding of the support player around the ideas of defending the team by: minding doorways, suppressing distant locations and walking moderately safe perimeters.
Another issue with weapons rests with the function of the Carl Gustaf RPG which when combined with a laser designated target gains lock-on capabilities. The functions are not bad but by having these characteristics applied to the only anti-armour launcher in the game makes armour based engagements feel a little too simple and monotonous as I have less chance of being punished for using the wrong anti-armour RPG as there is only one anti-armour RPG in the game designed for both ground and air targets and its available to every soldier with no stipulation on my primary weapons. I know that 2 of the RPGs in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 possess similar functions but in the earlier games you must act as an engineer to use that feature which changes what weapons and tools you can use so you gain one privilege and lose another.
In Battlefield 3 engineers had access to Javelins. This lock-on weapon had the benefit of being able to execute an efficient top-down attack on ground vehicle targets but was impeded by: its engineer class based access, its range and its inability to lock-on to air targets without additional SOFLAM assistance. In having such a design the game would coerce Javelin users to not stand directly within close range of an enemy target as the weapon takes time to secure the lock and it does not have an unguided firing mode, so if you picked the Javelin in anticipation of a distant vehicle threat but instead found that a vehicle had moved in close on your flank you would have to either adapt to the new situation or call off your assault on the enemy vehicles; you could not just fire and forget at the last second.
A good example of this can be seen on Kharg Island in Battlefield 3 during Rush mode for the first pair of MCOMs. Players have to defend the island from an invasion of US armour based forces. The most efficient way to do this is to make use of Javelins and SOFLAMs but even with this it is still possible for the invading infantry forces to reach the island and open up a flank for the armour vehicles. So the defending team cannot rely entirely on the use of the aforementioned assets, you need some of your engineer team to have unguided RPG type weapons, mines and repair tools to repair your single tank and you also need players to resupply your team with ammo. Again this is not simply a case of selecting a weapon because the selection of the weapon changes what you are capable of doing in Battlefield 3 and has a knock-on effect of how players work with you as well as against you.
Given the above, I am not implying that we should have as many different RPG types as possible rather I am trying to say that we need just a little more variety designed to manage the different ways that armour threats can present themselves in the game and I really do feel that you need classes here as well to add and subtract from player ability otherwise the game will come across as more random and unbalanced.
A final weapon issue that I would like to draw focus to is with the NTW-50 which is one of 3 sniper rifles in Battlefield 2042. The gun is described as an anti-material rifle designed to work against vehicle threats and while you can use it this way the majority of players tend to use it more on other players. The properties of the weapon do not deter players from doing this as nearly everyone who has played a first person shooter that involves high powered scopes knows not to stand still and hard scope targets. Ignoring this attribute, it is not difficult for the average player to compensate for its: slow bullet speed, increased recoil and weighted handling which makes the experience feel very much like the days of Call of Duty 4 when server loads of players would casually run around with 50 cal sniper rifles in an attempt to shoot each other in the face (I am not speaking in terms of nostalgia here).
Battlefield 4 did this right in that you simply do not give players unlimited access to a 1-shot kill rifle, instead you make it a Battlefield pickup for certain maps and give it a limited supply of non-recoverable ammo of a single type.
No doubt players will use it against one another as they see fit so if you want it to be designed toward vehicle threats you need to buff its damage profile when used against vehicles while nerfing said attribute when used against infantry; you can make up some kind of lore that the ammunition is a kind of state-less magnetic hollow point round to justify this but that really isn’t necessary, players are not stupid and they know that they are playing a video game so complete realism isn’t the target here, balance and immersion is.
Again these are not problems that can be fixed with map design but if you are designing your map to accommodate these kind of problematic characteristics then you are not fixing the issue; you can’t just leave it up to the players discretion and if its not balanced call it Battlefield. You have to consider how these assets are designed to coincide with one another if you want a good Battlefield game.
[The feedback report had to be split into 2 posts as there is a 60000 character limit per post on EA forums part 2 should be visible below as a reply to this one]
