Hi YouTube, Darth Here:
DICE has responded to all the feedback from the Battlefield V Alpha, and today I've
got a list of the things that they're looking at.
In a multi-page post made available this past week, DICE lays out where we're heading
and some of these changes were a little surprising to me.
There were some things I thought in the Alpha were standout problems that weren't mentioned
at all, and other issues (like time-to-kill balance) that I didn't think were as controversial
as DICE mentions.
But today I'm going to go over them all and give my thoughts, so let's get started.
The first thing that DICE laments in their Alpha follow-on was that matchmaking was somewhat
broken during the Alpha.
If you wanted to play with a squad, you had no choice but to use the server browser option
because the matchmaker was plain busted.
It's pretty clear from the alpha that they intend matchmaking to be the primary way for
players to get in the game, as the server browser is somewhat difficult to find in the
user interface.
I wasn't a huge fan of the matchmaker as it would frequently time out after three minutes
and just give up.
It was also placing some players in servers outside their region, causing the usual problems
that come with out-of-region players in the frostbite engine: dying behind walls and trades
are frequent with these players.
Specifically DICE stated: "There are many factors to juggle when it comes to matchmaking:
finding players with equal latency and skill level, and more – and these factors all
need to co-exist.
Getting the best possible matchmaking is a challenge of balance; we want to match you
into the best possible server and experience, which may take a few moments of waiting, but
at the same time not have you waiting too long to deploy."
This gives me some pause.
The primary reason I left Battlefield 1 was because of the poor matchmaking.
I even made a video about that -- which I'll link in the description below.
I got fed up with Battlefield 1 because even after you found a server worth playing on,
the individual rounds would quickly become terribly lopsided.
This is because their balancing algorithm was based on a very poor system that has been
in use since at least Battlefield 3.
Using it as a matchmaking device just ensured that a single good player or two would always
be put on a team of lackluster players.
High individual effort would be rewarded with more problems.
I really do hope they've revised how skill is calculated in this franchise, because the
previously used and outdated algorithm is a hideously bad measure for use in balancing.
Don't believe me?
Watch that video; you'll see what I'm talking about.
It didn't help that Battlefield 1's conquest scoring system is royally screwed up, and
has been left that way.
But thankfully, at least that has been fixed as of the Battlefield V Alpha.
In my Battlefield V Alpha review video, I expressed some genuine appreciation for the
revive system in the alpha.
I thought that the squad buddy revive system was absolutely fantastic, and really added
a lot of power to squads.
For those unfamiliar, you now do not need a medic to perform a revive on a member of
your squad -- you can just walk up to a squadmate and interact with them.
Now the time to perform this revive was a full five seconds -- which made it very different
from the medic revive which took about one second.
I thought this did two things really well: one, it gave a lot of reason to play medic
as five seconds is a long time to be out of the fight.
Two, it made sure that revive trains in squads were not easy to pull off.
A single squad member couldn't suddenly become a necromancer to the rest of his squad
before you could track him down.
But more importantly, it made the player have to make an interesting decision.
It increases the skill gap between players making judgement calls and those merely reacting
to stimuli on the screen.
Well in their latest alpha follow-up, DICE decided that five seconds was too long and
they have instead made that 2.5 seconds.
Half the time.
I find this decision a bit confusing, because I generally thought the five second mark made
it a real choice.
In previous Battlefield titles, I considered 2.5 seconds the break-even time for mild inconvenience
specifically in reloading weapons.
It's about the point where reloading became a detriment in close quarters.
So I don't think this change is a good one.
Specifically, you will no longer have to make sure a point is clear before reviving, and
I think there's another detriment here -- that the medic revive is going to be even less
valued.
Particularly if the game ships with the ability to drag downed buddies out of the way.
Then you don't even have to worry about getting in the line of fire.
Now, this decision may have been made in service of giving a close squad even more power together.
Or perhaps it was to discourage rushing to the redeploy screen to respawn.
But I think it's going to seriously impact the viability of the medics.
Revives are probably one of the most powerful tools in the Battlefield franchise.
The difference between a full revive and lesser revive is very minimal when compared to no
revive at all.
Which is, as of this change, the only major difference between squads that play together
and the medic's primary ability.
Given the really long window that revives have in Battlefield V, I think that this considerably
lessens the skill gap in the revive system.
It does speed up the game, and it does make buddy squads more powerful, but I think this
a highly questionable move.
In absence of the ability to playtest this, it's probably the change DICE mentioned
that I'm most concerned about.
Next up is time-to-kill, now DICE's response on time-to-kill was a little bit strange:
they seem to acknowledge that the community had a mixed opinion on the TTK: When it comes
to the Time to Kill, or TTK, we've seen some polarizing feedback where some players
felt they were being killed very fast when encountering enemies, while others felt the
TTK was just right.
This is something we will keep tweaking.
Their general response to this feedback seems to be less about tweaking the weapon time-to-kill
and more looking into external factors.
Specifically they said: We're looking at how fast can you assess a threat and understand
from where the fire is coming.
Giving you good communication on enemy fire will let you fight back and survive longer.
We're also fine-tuning the amount of camera shake that occurs when you're hit.
If these adjustments aren't enough, we'll look at tweaking the damage of weapons.
DICE also acknowledged that much of the feelings of TTK issues may come from the modes that
people are playing or their general map awareness.
Personally, I never felt like the time-to-kill was an issue one way or the other.
So I guess I'm in with the group that felt the TTK was just right.
But I must admit, it's a little bit hard to evaluate based on a limited pool.
If I think about the beta weapons that Battlefield 4 released with, we'd never have known about
guns that are absolutely built for shredding in that game.
Or for example, with Hardline we didn't see some of the more broken elements of that
game in their Beta.
So it's really hard to judge TTK based on the Battlefield V alpha.
But it seems like, based on what DICE is saying, it's a concern they're aware of and keeping
in mind with the design and balance of their game.
DICE acknowledges the limited selection somewhat later in the update: Important to note is
that the Closed Alpha had a limited pool of weapons and when we add more, the overall
balance will change.
The arsenal that was tested in the Alpha was a small subset and more passes will be made
to it and all the other Battlefield V weapons and gadgets.
And honestly I think that's all we can ask for at this stage of development.
If the shipped game plays relatively the same as the alpha, I'll be pretty pleased.
On weapon balance, two "issues" that DICE identified in the alpha were the recoil of
certain weapons and the general supply of ammo.
On weapon recoil, they were a bit vague but they stated that they have tweaked the recoil
of some weapons based on the alpha.
I'm genuinely curious what weapons they went after, as they did state: … it will
require a bit more effort and pacing between shots to be effective.
Based on previous games, I assume this means that recoil recovery has been reduced -- that
is the amount of time required by weapons to return to the center of the screen.
Given the prominence and effectiveness of the StG44 -- I have to imagine that was a
prime candidate for these changes.
But I could imagine them reworking the Erma slightly as well, as of all the automatic
weapons that felt the easiest to control.
We won't really know the extent of these recoil changes until the next build lands
in late August.
In general I found the weapons in the alpha to be really predictable and fair, though
the StG44 was a clear favorite.
As for the ammo, DICE stated that: When it comes to ammunition, we saw that players in
general liked the war of attrition and having a limited number of bullets when deploying.
We will tweak these numbers slightly for some weapons to get an optimal balance.
There are other factors that affect ammo availability, too.
For instance, the possibility of looting dropped ammo from dead players benefits certain classes
more than others, and we'll need to adjust the balance accordingly.
My take on this is that certain weapons could just keep going and going and players were
ignoring supplies because as long as they kept killing they would get a sufficient amount
of ammo.
I actually didn't notice this too much in the alpha, but I didn't play a lot of the
semi-automatic or bolt action weapons.
And for the most part, I could easily resupply at the supply stations -- which were one to
a point.
Which I think will be a bigger problem going forward if they're trying to keep resupply
as a role important for the medic and support.
The supply stations in the alpha were plentiful and easy to get to -- once you knew where
they were, it was trivially easy to resupply after capturing a point or on your way to
the next.
On reinforcements, DICE had this to say: In the Closed Alpha, we gave you the chance to
call in two of the several Squad Reinforcements of Battlefield V: the Churchill Crocodile
Tank and the V-1 Rocket.
Players had fun with these powerful weapons, but some aspects will be adjusted.
For example, it was way too easy to be reinforced with the V-1 Rocket in Conquest, and though
matches are supposed to escalate with these reinforcements at the end of a match, we will
tone this down.
Furthermore, details like blast radius and how you can be warned of (and potentially
counter) the V-1 Rocket are being investigated.
I can understand what they're saying here, as there were some particularly early V-1s,
and I'd wonder how players managed to get them that fast.
But by the end of the game, it was raining rocket call-ins.
I never felt like I had a hard time guessing where the V-1 was going to land and getting
out of the way.
Mostly it just caught unaware players -- of which there are always going to be plenty.
If I were DICE, I'd do less of a full-press mitigating the power of the V-1 and perhaps
try to make the other call-ins more viable.
For example, they call the tank powerful but it was anything but.
The tank was a far less productive choice and was easily destroyed.
In general, tanks were pretty much glass cannons in the beta -- much due to their limited arcs
of fire and ease of destruction.
So what didn't they mention?
Definitely missing from the update was any mention of vehicle balance.
Given the top-tier role vehicles have taken in previous Battlefield games, and the very
obvious power shift in the Battlefield V alpha -- this is kind of surprising.
Planes were basically an unplayable mess in the alpha.
Short of the one viable variant of Stuka, you weren't contributing at all to the battle.
Kills were exceptionally hard to come by when bombs did less damage than grenades.
I think planes have already received a pretty big nerf with the changes to the spotting
system.
Unless players are in the wide open, or in a vehicle, it's going to be very unlikely
that a plane will target them.
What's left to do here, I think, is to give them adequately balanced weapon damage -- for
example, if I drop a bomb on somebody's head they should probably die.
Then there's the question of tanks -- which felt like they had good amount of firepower
but very poor survivability.
Tanks are easily disabled and slowed, and the moment that they start taking fire they
buckle pretty quickly.
I was far more at risk from the infantry than any tank.
Which is a stark difference from previous Battlefield titles.
Usually I have an "oh crap, there's a tank" reaction.
In the alpha, it was more "hey there's a tank; let's blow it up and get back on
the point."
I think the problem with tanks is relatively easy to solve -- more hitpoints or fewer explosives
per player would probably do the trick.
As it is, each assault spawns with enough rockets to take out a tank and enough dynamite
to cripple another.
Which seems oddly opposed to the overall theory of ammo reduction.
Perhaps that was an oversight, but it required no cooperation between squadmates to blow
up a tank -- it was a task easily accomplished by a single player.
And as I said, it's an easy task to make tanks feel more powerful as if everybody spawned
with only a single rocket, tanks would suddenly feel a lot more powerful.
At least against lone wolves.
Finally, they didn't mention that they've fixed the spotting system to not passively
call out enemies.
Which I think was one of the bigger complaints about the alpha in general.
Allegedly this was a bug that was confirmed as fixed by one of their developers on Twitter.
Overall I think DICE's response to the alpha is a bit of a mixed bag combined with some
hand-waving.
I'm definitely not a fan of making the squad revive system less thought provoking, but
there's no follow-up build to play to judge it in person.
Additionally, I still have big concerns about the vehicle balance and gameplay based on
my time in the alpha.
It sounds like there will be another alpha build during gamescom from August 21st through
August 25th.
More than likely that will run until the following Monday on the 23rd.
DICE also mentioned that the open Beta will happen in early September -- likely using
the same build from the second alpha.
As for my hopes for late summer, I definitely want to see some of the promised customization
in the next build of the game, as it was sorely missing from this build.
DICE and their YouTube proxies talked up the game quite a bit back in May, and I'm curious
to see just how much of the hand-waving will make it into the final product.
Overall I'm still really positive on what we're going to get as a final product, as
even if it's just an expanded version of what's available in alpha -- that would
be pretty good.
But I'd love to see them deliver on some of their claims from earlier this year.
That's it for this video on DICE's follow-up to the alpha… but what did you think of
their responses?
Let me know in the comments below.
As always thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time, YouTube.
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