Battlefield

[ytevo79]

Ok there is 2 seperate articles in here as they kind of fit together anayway.

DICE on Battlefield 3's multiplayer

Prised from our hands-on with Battlefield 3’s riotous Rush mode at this year's E3, we sat down with Lars Gustavsson, lead multiplayer designer and 12 year veteran of the franchise to talk about the series’ development, level design and tactics.

Is Battlefield’s hitherto insistence on big teamplay strategy, objectives, vehicles and classes too much to take in for a massmarket fed on COD’s twitch clicking carnage? Is that the thinking behind the introduction of simpler modes like team deathmatch?

When we were a young studio, we were extremely proud of what we did. We still are, of course - but we more or less told people: if you’re a team player, you’re a good citizen, and if you aren’t, there are plenty of other games you can play instead. Through the Bad Company splinter branch, we learnt so much about what our audience wants and doesn’t want; we’ve accepted the fact that people are different and want to play differently. Even though I stubbornly said that Battlefield is always about teamplay, vehicles and big maps, not everyone agrees - not even everyone at the studio.

We shipped 1942 with 24 people; I’m afraid of saying just how many people make this [Battlefield 3] game! We have so much more input in the design process, that we are really happy to be able to cater to everyone. We can provide a good lone wolf experience. We set up our kits to allow for that powerful teamplay unit, but separately they need to be able to stand on their own. We can cater for singleplayer, coop, multiplayer - we can give you the range from lone wolves who hate vehicles to, at the other end of the scale, all out war in Conquest with jets flying overhead. It’s enough of ‘you’re a good citizen’ - if you bought the game, it’s up to you how you want to play it.

Are there conflicting needs between single and multiplayer in terms of what the engine needs to be able to do?

Definitely. Singleplayer and multiplayer both have their own needs, but in the end I feel it’s utterly important that it feels like the same game. There’s no better way of proving your singleplayer run-and-gun experience than seeing what it feels like against a live human opponent in multiplayer. But we’re more than willing to make differences to deliver the best experience in each. For example, in multiplayer, we do an additional pass for animation. In singleplayer you don’t mind if a guard up on a balcony does a nice Hollywood death animation when you shoot him - stumbling around a bit before falling over. While in multiplayer it needs to be a one-to-one correlation between action and result.

A striking thing about the Paris-set Operation Métro level is the way it radically changes the shape of the battlefield in each of its stages - can you take us through the design process?

If people walk away from that level having been surprised - “Is that where we’re going? Will we really do that?” - those reactions make me really happy. It’s all about a journey - like Lord of the Rings: now we go into Mordor!

The Paris map could almost be three or four different levels.

Exactly. There’s nothing preventing us, if people had the time and the will, we could probably do a ten base Rush map! It’s definitely doable.

Do you have a plan for how the environments shape gameplay and which classes that benefits?

Battlefield games are always hard to balance, since for different locations different kits have advantages. The beauty this time around, with the gun attachments and upgrades, you can easily adjust to the location you are in. So out in the park area, you get snipers at the back, and if you’re a defender you want to go recon or engineer to take out the vehicles. When you go into the subway the support class comes into its own as you run through the tunnels. The challenge for me is to ensure that our telemetry data shows that all the classes are equally used across the whole map.

Bad Company 2’s complex tactics put some people off, leading to many resorting to standing at the back and sniping [a group known as Chewbaccas to the community].

We’re still in pre-alpha, so there are a lot of things you haven’t seen today. But for them, it’s part of an educational package. Nothing of this is set, but it could be anything from instructional videos to a lot of additional aiding systems in order to let people really know what it’s all about. I think our work with the Bad Company franchise on console, and what that makes you do when it comes to context sensitive systems, it made for a smarter and well thought-through design. Hopefully we’ll reel in the Chewbaccas!

http://www.next-gen.biz/features/dice-battlefield-3s-multiplayer

DICE on Battlefield 3's new direction

Battlefield 3 executive producer Patrick Bach tells us that taking on Call Of Duty won’t mean compromising Battlefield tradition, and explains why the title’s authentic tone is married to an intentionally fantastical plot.

There’s a fear among Battlefield fans that the singleplayer will look towards the strictly linear action of COD. Can you allay those fears at all?
In a way I do understand, and in another way I don’t. Most people that hate singleplayer are the ones that love multiplayer. That’s fine - you don’t have to play it! We want the product to cater for the people who do like singleplayer and also the people who like multiplayer - and we are adding co-op, too - trying to fill the gaps all the way from the hardcore full-on Conquest mode, to the narrative-driven singleplayer. People just have to understand that we aren’t taking people away from one thing or the other. We’re just making the product bigger.

There’s a clear tonal shift away from the humour of Bad Company here.
Now we are going back to the core series, we’re throwing away everything that has to do with the tone of the Bad Company series, and creating a completely new tone and narrative based on the more authentic focus we had of Battlefield 2.

So what were the touchstones - Generation Kill, presumably?
There were plenty of influences. Generation Kill, obviously. Everyone likes Black Hawk Down. We’re looking more towards the more authentic Hollywood movies, rather than Transformers. Andy McNab has been working with us for quite some time now, talking to our writers about authenticity when it comes to mission structures. And he’s been involved in motion capture; since he’s been involved in, for instance, the movie Heat, consulting on gun handling matters, he knows what it takes to make his experience fit onto an entertainment product.

We’re selling fun, and he doesn’t come from fun, but he understands the connection between his experience and the fantasy that we want people to live through our game. He’s a really, really nice guy, and extremely useful to the animator. He knows everything from the fire rate of any particular gun to what mortars actually sound like depending on the propellant you use - there are so many details he knows about. We have some gun nuts here in the office, but they were like, wow, this guy knows his *****.

The plot of Battlefield 3 sees Russia invading France, and there are US troops on the ground. You aren’t saying much about the story yet, but can you give us the geopolitical context for the game’s narrative?
First of all: it’s fiction. We’re not trying to base it on any political or religious conflict - controversy is probably a good marketing tool, but we make games. Our goal isn’t to make controversy. I don’t want people to feel bad playing our game. Our goal is to create a fun, entertaining experience. So we are trying to stay away from things that are real - authentic and real don’t have to be the same thing.

So, with authenticity in mind, we won’t see cackling Russian supervillains?
No, no supervillains. But you still want your enemy to be clear; you still want your player character to have a clear motivation - that’s something we’re working on to find the right balance.

As creatives involved in the depiction of war, do you feel you have a duty to show the moral context of war?
Since we are Swedes, we are neutral on paper. We have a tendency to not take sides. I think that reflects in our games. When we say Russians versus Americans, it’s like Red versus Blue. We try not to depict the reasons for the war, because then it can end up in a very bad place. We depict it from the perspective of an individual rather than an army - it’s about you as a soldier on the battlefield, because no matter who you are or on what side you are, it’s still drama. I don’t want to create a war simulation or a game which picks sides. I think that would be tasteless.

http://www.next-gen.biz/features/dice-battlefield-3s-new-direction

[GoldxFame]

Sounds nice, but i still cant decide which game i should buy.
MW3 or Battlefield 3..

Im more a CoD Fan but BF3 sounds great.

[nilet]

Very interesting thanks ytevo.

[Mr_Inconspicous]

---

GoldxFame wrote:
Sounds nice, but i still cant decide which game i should buy.
MW3 or Battlefield 3..

Im more a CoD Fan but BF3 sounds great.

---

MW3 will be pretty much the same as MW2 with different perks and killstreaks.  It will just be the same run n gun formular. 

BF3 will blow MW3 right out of the water in terms of graphics, sound effects and animations. Gameplay will be awesome to.