Upcoming Battlefield 4 Tweaks Aim To Improve Objective Play, ‘People Play a Little Too Much on the K/D,’ Says Producer

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In the coming weeks and months, the Battlefield team at DICE LA is not only heads down finishing up Battlefield 4’s fifth expansion, Final Stand, but is also undertaking a new initiative that aims to inspire Battlefield gamers to more efficiently “PTFO”.

With core gameplay improvements already in the bag, Battlefield 4’s Community Test Environment will now shift focus to testing new ways to promote teamwork and to better incentivize objective-play in multiplayer.

DICE LA Producer David Sirland took a moment to explain to us in an interview a few of the ways the studio hopes to accomplish this.

“For instance, we want to revamp how Field Upgrades work and change the rules a little bit and make team-play more viable using [Field Upgrades] as a tool,” he explained. “Maybe even add a Field Upgrade selection, if you will — a team-play-based one.”

Furthermore, like Battlefield 4’s latest update elongated gun-on-gun battles by lowering weapon damage, the studio also hopes to make playing the objective a more engaging experience.

“Kind of like the change to weapon balance that we did now to make the engagements longer, we will do the same thing to the objective play. We think people play Battlefield a little too much on the K/D,” Sirland added.

“And, we want people that come into the game new or people that haven’t been playing in a while, or whatever, we want them to come in and feel like, ‘Oh, hey. Playing Conquest, grabbing flags, and defending them actually gives me more or as many points as the guy that’s the best at killing people.'”

“It’s always been a staple, to me, anyways, in Battlefield that you can succeed even if you’re not the best killer because you can be in a squad that kind of works together. So, scoring is obviously a way to promote that. There’s some UI overhaul that we want to do. We want to potentially add a little ‘Mission Widget’ that kind of tells you how you are supposed to be playing. So, for instance, if you’re playing Conquest, it would show, ‘Primary mission: Capture a flag,’ and how many points I get.”

Don’t expect updates or patches any time soon, however. As was the case with Battlefield’s “Fall Patch”, its likely that participants of the CTE have a few weeks — if not months — of testing ahead before any of these changes make it over to the retail version of Battlefield 4.

There’s also more in store, including updates to vehicles.

“Also, what we missed in the ‘Fall Patch’ is a vehicle pass,” Sirland admitted. “We want to do a balance pass on vehicles and bug fixing and improvements in general to vehicles as well.”

Lots to come, it appears. What’s your take on the current state of Battlefield 4 when it comes to team-play and objective-play? Does it need improving?

Stay tuned for our full interview with Sirland later this week and keep your sights locked right here for more on Battlefield.