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April 21, 2025 • 16 mins
DICE is showing off their returning destruction mechanics for their next battlefield game. i have thoughts.
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Look, we all know Battlefield has been in a bad
place these last few years, between Battlefield five bearing into
topics and not being able to stay out of the
whole controversial mess that it was in, and then Battlefield
forty two completely changing it's still design philosophy by changing
out classes, removing some destruction elements. Battlefield's been struggling of late,

(00:25):
and we're seeing that response from the Battlefield devs ign
has the article where they're talking about destruction. We're only
going to be here for a second. We want to
look at the true article here because again, look at
this thing. This is what gets me about like games
journalism nowadays. They're just regurgitating the information that the Battlefield
devs have and it's like, okay, wow, this was worth

(00:49):
an entire article with a fifteen second clip, whereas the
community devs is this long. You couldn't make commentary on this.
But my own problem with games journalism nowadays is beyond
the point. We're here to talk about what Battlefield is
doing different because I played Battlefield three, I played Battlefield four,

(01:10):
I love Battlefield one still do. Played Battlefield five. Yeah,
it was meh and didn't really stick on it very long.
I only played it because it was on game pass.
But Battlefield is finally going back to the roots. We
all know that destruction has always been an element of
the battle Battlefield games. Blowing out a wall has always

(01:31):
been an option, and they're finally realizing that. I think
now Dice has again. They have been having problems with
their game and coming into it like this. They're like, Okay,
we need to focus on what Battlefield is destruction. They're
going back to the class system, which is very important.

(01:54):
The four classes of battle four or five, I believe
it was four, but the classes of Battlefield were very
important to the game. They structured balance, they and gave
them the room to make larger maps. Okay, let's get
back into kind of what they said. Goals for destruction
are centered around adding for the gameplay depth by allowing
players to reshape the environment and transform your surrounding cords

(02:17):
a tactical advantage. Now, this is where gameplay philosophy comes in.
Battlefield is very hard to balance gameplay wise because you
can't create unbalanced maps initially and the player because you
want the game to initially be balanced, and how a
lot of FPSs do that is through a lane system. So,

(02:41):
for instance, when you're looking at a general game of
any FPS, you have your two sides, whether it be north, south, east, west,
whatever side, you're planting them on spawn points, and then
you usually have lanes. These are attack lanes, These are
the areas. Some maps only have one lane, most maps
have three lanes. Some games have perfected the lanes a lot.

(03:06):
Games like Battlefield have an issue because how you do this,
how you make these lanes unique, is you don't let
them be straight lines. You let them curve around certain
areas backtrack. You can have lanes like that, or lanes
and side lanes and that kind of thing. Battlefield changes

(03:27):
that by not putting barriers to separate the lanes, but
allowing the players to change the map to their whim
blow apart. The buildings create their own lanes, create cross fire,
sect not crossfare, create fire fire lanes whatever. What am
I trying to say? Points of fire or overlapping fields

(03:50):
of fire, That's what I'm trying to say. They create
overlapping fields of fire between lanes large vehicles, and Battlefield
seems to finally get it. Let's take walls for an example.
A new destruction language. Once a wall takes enough damage
from an explosion. Smaller impacts such as bullets will also
contribute to allowing you to shoot your way through a wall. Yes,

(04:12):
so this is just talking again about their destruction. Different
surface types. Yep, new mcancula to create more distruction related opportunities.
We have their little clip here where they're showing somebody
blowing a part a building to create an access point.
This goes back into the gameplayed philosophy of we need destruction.

(04:33):
Battlefield has always been about its destruction. In Battlefield one,
you could drive a tank through a building. We did
that a lot, bringing down windmills, blowing holes open in walls.
This has always been part of Battlefield's DNA, and they
seem to have forgotten that, which is kind of frustrating.
The good news is fans have responded to this. There's

(04:54):
a reason why Battlefield forty two, even if people play it,
even if people love it, has kind of been missed
by a lot of players because Battlefield twenty forty two
is kind of meh. When Battlefield is already a hard
game to get into, its audience is already pretty well expansive.
It's not going to expand too much beyond that, especially

(05:15):
when you have games like Call of Duty of Coming Marathon.
Sorry sorry, I'm still crapping on Marathon. I don't know
why we're not here to talk about that game. And
then of course you just look through it and it's like, okay, well, yeah,
you removed a lot of essence from Battlefield from twenty

(05:36):
forty two, and so coming back to it, I don't
think they need to be praised for this. I don't
think they should be praised for this should have been
expected that, oh we need to course correct, and a
lot of games are seeing seeing this course correction now
as money has started to run out. The money has
run out, that's the biggest thing you see this with Ubisoft,

(05:57):
EA is probably feeling it a little bit, which is
why they're pushing a lot of their devs for games
to go back to what works to make money. We've
gathered range insights. We've gathered range from everything between destruction
as a tactical element to you as a player being
able to differentiate between non destructible and destructible environments. That's

(06:17):
really important. They did not tell us, like VISUALQ should
tell us what is destructible and what is not. It
shouldn't be absolutely clear, but we should be able to tell, oh,
if we hit that wall with a rocket, it's going
to come down. You don't want everything to be destructible,
because then what's the point. Everyone's just going to pack
some rocket launchers and bring down the buildings on everybody,

(06:39):
which honestly is great understanding the environments can or cannot
be destroyed the impact of collateral damage from debrize and
destructible elements. So my question for that is, Okay, if
this is what you're testing, are you implying that destroying
a wall sending shards and shrapnel everywhere deal damage. I'm

(07:01):
not sure exactly what they mean by that, Like, can
you be crushed by the rubble? I would really like
that to be crushed by the rubble. That as a
whole new tactical element where you're like, Okay, we're having
a firefight under a bridge, why not shoot out the bridge?
Tactical use of destruction to create new pathing or persistent environments.
That's what I was talking about before with the Battlefield's
philosophy for using destructible environments to create overlapping fields of

(07:25):
fire between lanes and other tactical uses to create bridges
between lanes. I don't trust that Battlefield's devs, because this
is all devs in these Triple A games seem to
think very similarly. They're gonna think of the lane system.
Some games like Battlefield, you don't need lanes. I don't

(07:47):
think Battlefield's map designed should be lane based because they're
so expansive and lanes like that just create a lot
of problems. You can have like one lane straight through,
but the entire battlefield should be its own lanes, balancing
the ecosystem of damage through firepower and destruction. Our goals
for our initial Battlefield Labs play sessions were to test

(08:08):
server performance, gunplay and movement, and for participants to get
an initial understanding for what's next for Battlefield okay, which
means this is something that they did not intend. They
didn't think this would be the biggest deal based on
this gunplay and performance gunplay and movement. They were not
trying to pest the limits of their destructive capabilities in

(08:30):
their game. This is just something that the participants in
I'm assuming it's some kind of yeah, it's a test
server test. The participants in this saw the destruction and
went yes, Battlefield's going back to what it's trying to do. Now,
I can sit here and be all doom and gloom.
Battlefield is not going to learn from itself. I can

(08:50):
say all of that, but that's not what I want.
I'm one of those people that's like, okay, I will
not judge a game until it comes out. Talked a
lot of crap on Marathon a couple of days ago.
I did a lot, but that's because I don't believe
that it will be a success. If it comes out
and I am completely wrong. Same for Battlefield. If they

(09:11):
it comes out and it's destruction elements are completely garbage,
I will happily eat my words because I want what's
best for the industry. I'm I believe that open communication
is what's best for the industry. So when they're coming
in saying we found this and it's not intentional, it
means at least they're keeping an eye out for what's
working in their game. We encounter initial issues with service,

(09:36):
stability and performance. That is one issue with these kind
of systems. When you add these physics engines, it requires
a lot more. I don't want to say processing power,
because that that can be like one of those meaningless
things where I'm completely wrong in the computer tech, but
it requires better performance for for devices, and when you're

(09:56):
building a console game, you're kind of limited on that.
Interested in learning a sign philosophy gunplay, we learned gun
play fields and we've learned that while gun play fields
in a good spots for yes, So that's another thing
Battlefield does really well. Even in twenty four to two.
Gunplay feels really well. Battlefield's gunplay has always felt amazing.
The reason Battlefield one was so good. Battlefield's gunplay is great.

(10:20):
It's the rest of it that has kind of fallen apart,
moving to specialists getting out of getting out of them,
not missing on modern day but bringing modern day aspects
into background games. You know, a lot of people complained
when Battlefield one came out that you're having fully out
of weapons when you're in World War One, when which

(10:40):
was mostly repeater based, rifle based, not necessarily automatic weapons,
and so but it's like, Okay, no, that's just design preferences.
And then I guess these weapons did historically exist then,
may not have been that common, but they did exist.
And then full prostags and Battlefield five everything like that

(11:01):
was like, oh no, we're not we're not playing those games. Honestly,
there's not as much here to talk about because this
is just a quick community update. Let's I haven't even
looked at the other community update. Let's just poka at
it a little bit. Yep, they're just talking about the gunplay.

(11:22):
This was I don't see a date on this. Dang,
I don't see a date on this. Uh here it
is March seventh, Wow, a month ago. What's new to
improve for gunplay? And ISSU? You select important errors, create
foundation to create fun and rewarding battlefield combat experience. The
big thing that they need to watch is going to
be balanced. They are going to need to watch balance

(11:47):
because if they don't watch their gunplay balance, it's gonna
be a problem if they don't balance their maps properly.
The issue with these kind of destructive environments is you
require so much play testing because you need to decide
how much destruction is allowed. If they just go, okay, well,
if you can blow up in five or six areas
between the buildings, is that too much? Is that too little.

(12:08):
That's one of those things where it's like, okay, you
have to be careful in gameplay design about this, and
they know it, which is great. I don't know if
like we're getting new devs for Battlefield or if EA
is just starting to back off a little bit because
they're going back to their foundational roots destruction, good gunplay,

(12:29):
large scale mass. It's like, okay, you're going back to
what works classes. I don't know why they ever moved
away from classes into specialists. I think it was EA personally.
That's the thing. I don't know how much of it
is their parent company going no no, no, no, no, no no,
you have to do it this way, versus how much
of it is Dice going. But we want to make

(12:52):
our Battlefield game. I honestly think Battlefield could be in
a good place and I'm looking forward to this next Battlefield.
I want this game to be a success. I want
Battlefield to go back to being Battlefield. I want games
to go back to being what they were great at doing.
I'm not saying we need to go back to the
golden age of video games ten fifteen years ago. I'm
just saying, like, hey, you can evolve mechanics without ruining

(13:14):
the soul of the game. I'm trying to think of
games that did this. I think there's not too many
left that really do that. Battlefield has tried. They kept
it up for a good while, but I haven't heard
of a good Battlefield game since Battlefield one took over.
And Battlefield one was phenomenal, but that was years ago.

(13:36):
A lot of these larger game studios have fallen off.
Larryan sorry, Larry is one of those that keeps their
design game, their game design consistent, and the game philosophy consistent.
But Larryan is an exception, not the rule. I would
love for Dice to be like, Okay, no, we're correcting
shit because they need to make some money, like you

(13:58):
be soft, Dice needs to make some money or else
EA's gonna start. I think Dice already makes a lot
of money for EA, so they probably won't be taken out.
But they don't want to show like, hey, if our
game audience keeps shrinking and we're not expanding, we could
be in trouble sometime. They're looking towards the future, which
is good. Honestly, I'm looking forward to Battlefield if it's good.

(14:26):
If it's what they say they're doing, go back, going
back to the class system, reintroducing the heavily destructible environments.
Battlefield forty two had its destructible environment, sure, but it
was nowhere close to what this is. And so Battlefield
being Battlefield, needs to make sure it's artistic identity is intact,

(14:47):
which big game companies have a knack for destroying, Which
is why I'm saying, Okay, I'm optimistic that they are
going to make a decent game. Of course, I'm gonna
wait until it comes out. Always wait till it comes out.
Never pre order, because pre ordering games is very detrimental
to the gaming ecosystem. Play it if it comes out,

(15:10):
see if it's good. Be honest with EA. I'm optimistic.
But again, if it comes out and it's completely horrible,
I'm more than happy to eat my words. What's good
for what's good for the industry is not necessarily what's
good for these developers. I mean, that's pretty much all
I've got to say on Battlefield today. We will see

(15:31):
you guys later. Oh right, before I go, Before I go,
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(15:53):
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later
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