Game pacing and number of players per mode/map.
Hello,
I've been playing battlefield since bc2, love the older games bc2/bf3.
I'm here to express a concern about the upcoming battlefield 6 title. More specific about the pacing of the game and how it relates to the number of players and shape of the map. To my surprise nothing about this (important) subject was said during the multiplayer reveal.
The older games had a lower player count. I remember rush on battlefield 3 being 12vs12 on playstation and conquest had 64 people on pc if i remember correctly.
Battlefield 3 is considered to be the best game in the franchise. One of the things that made battlefield 3 so amazing was the slower pacing of the game. Squad play was easier and more tactical. You had time to regroup and flank an enemy objective. When approaching the objective the battle got more intense and there were awesome moments of faster pacing, only to respawn and build it back up, from slower pacing to more intense combat as you approach the objective. In the newer games it's constant chaos and a very high pacing of the game all the time all around.
As our pc's and consoles evolved so did the number of players. Player count went up and with it the pacing and chaos of the games. To proof my point, in 2042 this reached it's sad breaking point with 128 players/map. I think it was made very clear that this didn't work. It became a soulless circus and it completely broke the game.
I saw screenshots of a battlefield 6 rush game where i saw 12 players within a few feet from the objective... As a rush player this has me worried! Player count might be too high for the game mode and map. Operation metro was an awesome map because it was different from most other maps. The thing that was different... bottlenecks. Creating extremely high paced and chaotic games from beginning to end. And this is fun,... once in a while. But not all the time.
If you have an infantry based rush game with 2 objectives, 12vs12 is more than enough players. When 1 objective gets destroyed you have 24 players jumping the same objective. This is more than enough! If you add vehicles you might go up to 16vs16, but without bottlenecks. Maps need to be wide enough so players can be creative in how they want to tackle the objective. If you make maps filled with bottlenecks and push players towards certain points you take away the creative freedom of the player. When you take this away, you take away the long lasting fun. People will be bored with the game within months.
As for conquest i feel the sweetspot is 32vs32 players on a 5 objective map. That's around 13 players/objective.
Why was nothing said about this topic? I understand that lowering player count and lowering the pacing of the game might not be a huge selling point, but nevertheless this is key to make a good battlefield game. I'm worried that battlefield 6 will continue it's path to complete chaos with superficial titles that have no long term fun. The type fun that makes people continue to play the game for 1000+ hours doesn't come from levelution or pushing 50 players into cramped space with grenades and rocket launchers to blow eachother up 20 times/minute. This might look cool, but gets boring really quick!
The real fun comes from giving a player and squad enough time and space to get creative in the ways they want to tackle an objective. What made minecraft such a great game? Creative freedom!
I am very worried that nothing about any of this was brought up by anybody so far...
Love to hear your thoughts about this topic!
