Question about game design regarding class system. A request for features.

Hello,

I'm a long time fan of the Battlefield series. I've grown older alongside the game as many of us have.

To that point, I have seen the many iterations of Battlefield's multiplayer - mostly from the console owner point of view - and have experienced several variations to the class and weapon loadout systems. As well as the squad system.

• BF 2 Modern Combat.
• Battlefield Bad Company
• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• Battlefield 1943
• Battlefield 3
• Battlefield Hardline
• Battlefield 4
• Battlefield ONE
• Battlefield 5
• Battlefield 2042

With that being said - from what I can see based on the beta gameplay reviews and deep dives into early reveals (I'll get my hands on it this weekend hopefully) - Battlefield 6 has apparently reduced the squad size to 4, abandoned the commander feature, abandoned the squad leader feature, abandoned the pilots and tankers system, abandoned the air drops, abandoned terrain sculpting/fortifying, abandoned create-a-soldier customization, homogenized the various classes and sub classes into 4 roles, and added a resource mechanic for weapon attachments.

Assuming that all of this information is correct and is planned for the final version of the game, I would like to make a few suggestions out of my own selfish desires to evolve the gameplay. Examples that I would consider to be a proper evolution to the systems given my own personal experiences and bias towards the systems of other Battlefield titles.

------

Please consider doing the following.

For starters I would like to talk about classes.

I'm basing my current knowledge on this video along with some other videos from popular youtubers like jackfrags.

https://youtu.be/yjyt93EqHYE?feature=shared

I want to separate the classes medic from support and sniper from recon. These two classes in my opinion are so highly specialized and distinct that they deserve their own classes.

While support as a word might mean "to assist" and by looking through a scope it is possible to provide reconnaissance - both situations limit the true objectives of the recon and support roles by pigeonholing 2 separate identities into one.

Medics exclusively focus on healing, reviving, and providing various forms of interactions with the health system.

Whereas support (or as I like to call it "fire support") is entirely focused on suppression and indirect fire - which is why ammunition packs and resupply drops makes sense - however, I have an argument for giving assault ammo packs. And that is simply because there are way too many gadgets and roles that fall under the "support" moniker if we do not define it as "fire support". Mortars, air strikes, etc.

Recon on the other hand is a valuable class that is often wasted by someone that wants to engage in HVT removal and extreme range engagements when reconnaissance is less about sniping and more about scouting. Yet - the weapon system encourages idle recon over spec ops and commando infiltration or scouting.

Snipers would be a beneficial class to add and build upon for both thematic and gameplay balance reasons. There are also many examples of gadgets that could fill the role of sniper gear. The purpose of snipers is already fairly defined. Permanent death from long range. The sniper headshots preventing revives is a simple, but genius gameplay mechanic and while it's against Geneva convention - focusing a medic as a sniper could all but be the difference between a team wipe and a failed push.

Recon could be centralize around spotting. This means that they could play the roll of spotter for supporting snipers or they could be a forward observer. Their perk could be that they don't get spotted as easily or that their spots have a unique affect.

-----

Beyond medic and sniper, I want to address the engineer class. I don't agree with the concept of the engineer class. You have a useless gadget without vehicles. Almost useless secondary gadgets without vehicles and more than anything - engineers are redundant and make vehicle combat oppressive when they're abused. Which is why I've opted to suggest the separation of the "mechanic" role into several "driver" roles (more on that in a minute) and a "demolition" role - which let's be honest. Sounds pretty fun in a game where the destruction is part of the desired experience and core mechanics) that utilizes anti-tank, anti-air, and generalized high power explosives both passive and active.

Drivers will be the repair tool users. Their purpose is to limit the restrictions to the core infantry gameplay by isolating vehicles into their own little sub game as a bonus feature rather than a missing cornerstone. This will reduce the balancing needed to correctly incorporate infantry only maps into vehicular combat and vise versa.

Drivers will also all be in the same squad based on the type of terrain their vehicles occupy. Due to the potential overlap of sea and land vehicles I've included a subset class "Sailor" that refers exclusively to water only vehicles. APC's with flotation features will still be under the "Tanker" class.

Should submarines, patrol boats, cruisers, destroyers, and other naval warfare vessels be added - this is where the "sailor" role comes into play.

Drivers spawn at HQ. Can resupply at HQ at their respective site (hangar/helipad, fuel depot, dock). Drivers can perform emergency repairs with their repair tool.

Transport vehicles (such as humvees, ATV's and RHIB's) can be spawned by all players and do not require drivers to operate. APC's that act as frontline spawners will require a driver to move them. As will all military vehicles other than strictly squad based transport including high occupancy vehicles like the Huey and Little Bird.

Military vehicles only spawn at HQ at the request of a player - however, civilian transport vehicles will spawn at the start of the map, but not respawn.

Drivers can spawn on other drivers of the same class since they're in the same squad. However, common infantry cannot if it is not a large transport vehicle such as the Huey or IFVs or a small transport vehicle that their squad is currently occupying.

The point of this is to eliminate players occupying gunner positions for forward traversal by prioritizing those that want to operate the vehicle. And to prevent post death  vehicle spawn camping by limiting those able to spawn vehicles to a specific number of players.

Transport seats will not have weapons. These will vary from 2-8 depending on vehicle. Infantry will not be able to operate vehicle weapons.

Infantry Classes:

• Assault (AR) - ammo/grenades
• Medic (SG) - heals/revives
• Support (MG) - indirect fire/fortifications
• Demolition (SMG) - AT/AA/C4
• Recon (BR) - spawns/drones
• Sniper (SR) - traps/concealment

And a set of "Driver" classes (PDW)

• Pilot - repairs/reserve parachute/air vehicles
• Tanker - repairs/land vehicles
• Sailor - repairs/sea vehicles

Squads:

• Infantry - phonetic alphabet squads consisting of up to 4 members. Up to 26 squads each containing 1 member.
• Tanker/Drivers - Players wanting to spawn and drive ground vehicles join this squad.
• Pilots - Players wanting to spawn and drive air vehicles join this squad
• Sailors - Players wishing to spawn and drive naval vessels on ocean or coastal based maps join this squad.

Driver squad participants will be equal to the maximum number of vehicles allotted to the server's current map.

For example if a map can only support 5 jets per side then there will be 5 pilot slots.

If it can support 5 jets or 2 Hueys then it will take the greater number of seats and apply those to the squad cap. If a Huey is designed to hold 4 pilots (pilot, copilot, 2 gunners) and 4 passengers then the occupancy of 2 Hueys is 8 pilots. If a jet holds 1 person the max occupancy of 5 jets is 5 people. In a situation where a map can support both the greater value wins. So 4 players could become pilots of jets and the remaining would be able to operate a 4 man Huey. Or whatever combination is within that 8 man, 5 jet, 2 Huey limit.

If the servers can handle the strain then I say make it so each player in a driver squad can have their own vehicle without waiting to spawn.

And if a server can support 5 jets AND 2 Hueys then make the pilot total count 13.

Since 13 is outside of the normal 4 man squad size - rather than list all drivers just make their highlight colors based on squad colors. Then at the bottom of the screen have a jet icon with 5 and a Huey icon with 2 indicating the total number of spawned vehicles and their classifications.

Or don't list them at all.

----

As for weapons - I'd like to see the weapons restructured into specific categories for each class based on my new restructuring of the classes. The current "specialist" feature irritates me because of the current 4 class system. 7 weapon types and 4 classes. I already explained why I don't like recon having snipers, so I won't continue to beat a dead horse.

Weapon Categories:

• Assault Rifle (AR) - secondary fire gadgets
• Battle Rifle (BR) - spots when wounding
• Sniper Rifle (SN) - no revives for headshots
• Machine Gun (MG) - deploy bipod
• Sub-machine gun (SMG) - hidden death markers on enemies
• Shotgun (SG) - faster reload
• Personal Defense Weapons (PDW) - additional ammo and grenades

And for the sake of argument

Carbines and DMRs (carbines are basically somewhere between AR's and SMG's. DMR's are basically somewhere between a sniper and BR)

But in actuality... DMR is not a real class similar to how PDW is not a real class. They're roles of a class. But that is splitting hairs so whatever.

Basically the idea is that damage goes down as fire rate goes up.

SR > BR > AR > MG > PDW > SMG

As a general rule caliber = damage : fire rate.

The bigger the caliber the harder it is to shoot quickly, but the more it will hurt when it hits something.

Shotguns are in their own category based on their own hierarchy. Slugs vs Shot. Pump vs Lever vs Break vs semi-auto. Mag, drum, tube, etc.

------

Class perks:

Going to mimic the class system perks to try and make my rework classes balanced. Format is:

Class

• Mandatory gadget
• Levels
• Weapon

Assault

• Ammo pouch
• Flak jacket, increased movement and ads, faster reloads and suppression resistance, pouch replenished grenades
• Can equip underbarrel gadget attachment

Medic

• Medic bag
• Revive, can drag and revive faster, you count as a medic bag, deployed medic bags pause bleed out timers
• Reload faster

Support

• Radio
• Can build fortifications, suppression effects last longer, fortifications are built faster, get a free radio request
• Bipods

Demolition

• C4
• Sabotage structures, damaging vehicles cripples them, c4 supply regenerates, can melee takedown from the front
• No indicators for kills

Recon

• Spawn beacon
• Spotting lasts longer for enemies and less for you, vehicles you spot indicate current health, squadmates that spawn on you or your beacon do so with spawn protection, can halo jump anywhere on the map from respawn
• Shooting targets marks them

Sniper

• Rangefinder
• Injuring an enemy will **bleep** them, cannot be spotted while prone, can hold breath longer, scopes will indicate bullet drop while ADS,
• Headshots prevent revive

Driver

• Repair tool
• Can drive vehicles and operate weapons (pilots get reserve chutes), increase the time it takes for locking on, reduce the time it takes to restock supplies, emergency repairs to extinguish fires to prevent vehicles from exploding or repair treads - can aid in crash landings not being fatal or to get moving again when tracked.
• Extra ammo and grenades

------

Gadgets

I want to provide some suggestions to specific types of gadgets and some controversial design choices.

Parachute - universal gadget - required to parachute by all classes except pilots who have a reserve chute. No more infinite parachuting.

Radio - call in supply air drops, infantry transports, and out of map support such as artillery strikes.

Signal disruptor - blocks comms and gps features including pings and mini map for immediate aoe.

Stim pistol - ranged revives

Riot shield - blocks directed fire.

Thermal optics - night vision for night maps

Crossbow - ranged lethal

Zipline - grappling hook harpoon to create ziplines for quick traversal.

Camera - deployable camera that provides live feed reconnaissance to the corner of the HUD

C4 drone - remote control car that explodes

Sound emitter - creates false audio loops to confuse enemies