In the second Battlefield V developer video, not only did the developers allay most of my fears regarding how they were handling feedback on the beta, a sentiment that seems to be shared with the wider community, but David Sirland – Multiplayer Producer for the title, said something that I found really interesting: for Battlefield V they have a specific goal to have “higher highs” for players in the game.

That goal really puts a lot of their design decisions with Battlefield V, which is a significant shift from the developers recent titles, into perspective. As players we sometimes get too caught-up with specific low level mechanics, with the way things are similar to how they were before, and in doing so can miss some of the bigger picture.

Since Battlefield 3 the developers, DICE, have had this concept of “Only in Battlefield” and “Battlefield Moments” as being a key selling point of the game. They even went as far as running a competition for the community to send in videos of their Battlefield moments, which lead to some truly amazing footage and no doubt changed the way a lot of people played the game – certainly the dog-fighting meta was forever changed!

But it’s more than just a snappy tag-line to shift more units, it really is those amazing moments, those highs, that brought many of us over to Battlefield and keeps us coming back for more. To see that this sort of high has become an explicit requirement of Battlefield V’s development, and that they’re willing to share that with us, is interesting and it puts a lot of their design decisions into context.

Shaken, not stirred

My favourite personal Battlefield Moment from Battlefield 3 was as a transport helicopter pilot – back in the glory days when they weren’t one-way disposable taxi’s. I was playing with friends on Operation Firestorm, going in low and fast to drop them at a contested objective.

As we rise over the hill to see where I want to land, I pull back sharply to scrub our speed to set down, and we start coming under fire. The rest of the squad leap out into cover in the surrounding buildings, and I pull-up to circle and spot targets until they’re ready to hit the next objective – a tactic that had been working very well for us.

Just as I get above the height of the surrounding buildings… BANG! I’ve been hit, I’m coming down hard. Before I can start to correct, the helicopter slams onto a roof and starts sliding along it – and it’s then I see the problem, two enemies we hadn’t spotted were waiting on the roof, one with an RPG.

I leap out of the helicopter and quickly take down the first enemy with my carbine, then switch to my pistol to kill the soldier with the RPG who probably thought his work was done.

I then turn around and sprint after my helicopter, but it just tips over the side of the building as I near it. I leap off the roof, following the helicopter down, and get in with just enough time to make the inevitable crash survivable. I climb in the back, get my blow-torch out and get to work repairing, then get back in the pilots seat and after a bit of thrashing around manage to get back in the air.

Just then the squad calls out for a pick-up, and I round the corner and drop-in like everything has been fine the whole time.. they’re none the wiser that I’ve just had an epic James Bond moment and I’m grinning like a fool.

It’s one of those moments that’s stuck with me, but it was just one of many over the course of playing games in the franchise, and is without question a key component of what made me stop playing games like Call of Duty and Counter-Strike in favour of Battlefield.

But in the franchise titles since Battlefield 3, I feel those moments became fewer and farther between. They’re still there, of course, but I think it’s a big part of why, despite things like the endless spawn camping, we look back at Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2 with such fondness – because they were so fun.

Clearly DICE have identified this trend in their titles, and have with Battlefield V set about not only correcting it, but taking it to new heights.

I’m still alive, only I’m very badly burnt

One of the biggest changes that Battlefield V introduces to the franchise are its new revive mechanics:

Squad mates can now revive each other regardless of which class they are.

Reviving someone takes a relatively large amount of time (several seconds), though that time is significantly reduced for medics.

NOTE: Medics can revive any of their team-mates, not just squad mates like other classes.

On the face of it, this is a huge nerf to the medic class. Not only has the medic’s previously exclusive ability to revive downed players been opened up to other classes, but reviving someone is now incredibly dangerous. To revive someone you’re motionless for several seconds at a location where the only thing you’re absolutely sure of is that someone just got killed there.

But playing the beta I actually really liked these changes, for me it made playing the medic class, my most played class in the franchise, more fun than it’s ever been before.

You can no longer just run around like a headless chicken reviving people in the chaos, it now requires thought and care, and that really ramps up the tension. And with that, comes a much greater sense of satisfaction when pulling off a successful revive in a tight spot – those higher highs in action.

Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast

One of my stand-out moments of the beta came directly from this nerf. Our squad was in a building overlooking an objective. We’d had a fight and come out on top, and were moving into position to take the objective. The first squad member out of the building was gunned down outside the doorway, just out of reach – we all freeze briefly as we process what’s occurred, then quickly take-up positions to see if we can see the shooter.

Now, it’s my job as medic to revive him of course, I can do it so much quicker than my squad mates. But if the person that killed him has even a scrap of sense, they’ll be using the downed man as bait – waiting to see who comes to their aid. I know this only too well, as I’ve racked up a lot of kills doing the same thing myself.

A smoke grenade would be really useful as a screen, though if there’s someone with a machine-gun trained on the downed man it could still be dangerous – but I didn’t have one anyway.

So we start looking around to see if we can get a sight on the shooter – nothing. They’re definitely using the downed man as bait. He continues to cry for help, and I look on.. I’m tempted to risk it, I wonder if they’ll later post on social media about how nobody ever revives them, but I’m still not comfortable to do so.

Eventually, after what feels like much longer than the ridiculously long death timer, one of my squad mates opens fire from an upstairs window. While I can see he doesn’t get the kill, he has spotted the building across the road and is laying down fire. So I leap out to revive our downed squad mate, sliding by his side and pulling him up, then continuing on into cover so I can flank the shooter, get the kill, take the objective, win the game, and all get back in time for breakfast.

It felt awesome, so much tension followed by so much action really is exciting, and I really felt like a hero in that moment. But it was just one moment, one of countless moments, and in the grand scheme of the game was irrelevant. But we all had so much fun.

If the old revive mechanics were in place, that whole encounter would have played out wildly differently – upon seeing my squad mate drop I would have instantly revived him. The newly revived team-mate would then spot the shooter, and we would have mercilessly tracked them down and exacted our revenge. It would have been entirely unmemorable.

It’s a strange thing, for a class to have a key feature heavily nerfed, yet for that nerf to make the class more fun to play.

Guns for show, knives for a pro

The other major change is the lack of ammunition that is available to players when they spawn in. The developers have addressed this, saying that they will for some guns increase the amount of ammo that can be carried, but they seem to imply that it will generally remain the same for most weapons.

My initial thought on why they made this change was that it was to focus on squad-based team-play, and to give the support class a much needed boost in utility as access to machine guns has been its primary selling point for some time.

While the support class has had a meteoric rise in utility in Battlefield V, with ammo being so tight and quickly constructing structures on the map being so important – I don’t think this is the primary reason for the changes to ammo.

Once again, it’s tied very firmly into getting those highest highs – getting that last ditch kill with your pistol or knife or scavenging for ammo and weapons behind enemy lines and still coming out on-top. It’s putting you in a seemingly difficult situation and giving you a chance of coming out ahead.

Of course you won’t always come out on top, those are the lows – and as the developers say, it’s a game of highs and lows – but those lows make the highs feel all the higher – and I think that’s what DICE is trying to achieve.

Another stand-out moment of the beta for me was where I was behind enemy lines harassing around an objective that we had been struggling to take all game. I managed to get a really great streak – my best in the beta at that time – which was concluded with two knife kills because I’d run out of ammo completely, and we ended-up taking the objective and sector.

Now, I have no illusions that it was my actions that turned the tide of the battle – my squad leaders kill count alone indicates that he played a very significant part – but in that moment it felt like I had done so, like I was some star of an action movie.

How many other people in that moment – on both sides – felt the same? A recon racking-up a high number of kills despite being wounded and having to make every shot count, medic’s barely keeping their team alive and in the fight against the odds, supports putting-up key fortifications that just helped their team hold their position, the crazy assault who made a daring run and managed to flank the enemy allowing his squad to advance, the lone soldier remaining who took down three others with them as the enemy advanced passed their position, and so on.

Keep the change, ya filthy animal!

Of course you can and do have highs in games like Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 – but they’re relatively few and far between, and don’t reach the same heights. In fact, no particularly amazing Battlefield 1 moment comes to mind despite it being my most recently played entry in the series and by far my most played in the last month.

I believe it’s also why the Star Wars: Battlefront reboot games have fallen so flat for me – despite them being a truly amazing tribute to a wonderful setting, those highs just aren’t there to the same extent. In-particular, every encounter in the Battlefront games really feels very similar – it has a grindy feel to it, something which you can feel in the recent Battlefield games at times.

If you’re always going into encounters with plenty of health and ammo, up against enemies with plenty of health and ammo – there’s going to be relatively little variation in those encounters. But if one person is low on ammo, another low on health, and so on.. it mixes things up and requires that different play-styles need to be adopted through any given life.

But to get the highest highs, you do need the lows. In tight competitive online games like DotA2, Overwatch, and Rainbow Six: Siege you’ve got to have those losses to make those wins feel so good. With a game like Dark Souls, you’ve got to get ripped apart by a Capra Demon to make your inevitable victory so sweet.

This is going to be a very fine line for DICE to walk. There’s a good chance that right from the word go they’re going to lose a portion of the player-base from previous games in the franchise, those that prefer the “flatter” nature of the encounters. But I think if they can pull it off, it’ll be worth it in the end and they’ll bring in more people to the franchise than ever before.

Wars are not won by evacuations

In the end this is all still very much a work-in-progress for DICE. In this video they said that they felt they didn’t reach the highs they were aiming for, and attributed that to the stupidly long death timer we all learned to loathe; at any given moment a large proportion of players were dead, reducing the action in the mortal realm.

But I think it’s going to take a lot more than that to not only match, but exceed the fun we all had with the likes of Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2. That they’re explicitly focusing on fun and excitement, however, should be justifiable cause for optimism.

They’ve listened to the community, clearly have understood what’s been said, and are acting on that, but not over-reacting. This includes delaying the launch of the game to give them more time to get it right, which I have no doubt was a very tough call to make due to the timing of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 launch.

They won’t get it right for launch of course, these things never are – but I feel it will be much better than it would have been without the help of the community, and the developers ability to listen and understand – something I’ve seen other developers fail miserably at.

It’s interesting that initially I was concerned that we would see a further simplification of the series, along the route of Battlefront, and now I’m cautiously optimistic that this might turn out to be a classic of the franchise. I look forward to their next developer video, and we’ll see come launch where the game is and whether it’s worth buying or not.

My last major concern, and it’a big one, is how they plan on monetising the game, and how that’s going to evolve going forwards. There are huge changes to how they’re looking to finance the game – cosmetics, no paid DLC, no Premium, no battle-packs, and the option to use a subscription instead of purchasing the game (through EA Access Premium). I hope that in the upcoming developer videos they address these elements of the game.

— Vampatori