quit

So—DICE recently posted a new job offering for a systems/weapons game designer.

What does this mean?

Well, let me take you back a few years, when BF4 was still struggling through a rocky launch.

You might not remember it, but BF4 had some weird weapon design choices. Defensive perk reduced CQ BTK by 1 on most weapons. So did leg shots. TTK was either inconsistently fast or inexplicably slow. The SMGs were originally pretty much pointless with a few exceptions. Some ARs were awful. It was BF3, but without the fun of the gameplay.

Enter the Symthic community. There were a few smart people who came up with some solutions to fix both core gunplay issues as well as balance. Surprisingly, advice was heeded and BF4’s gunplay, in the state that you know it today, was implemented. With this success, three people from the Symthic community were hired at DICE SE and DICE LA.

Julian Shimek was the guy who went to work in Sweden. He’s a good friend of mine and we all were pretty happy that someone who really understood both competitive battlefield and pub play very well would actually be helping to define the design process in the upcoming games.

Keep in mind here that this is the assessment of a 3rd party looking in—none of this should be taken as a statement from Julian on the issue. This video is my perspective as someone who has gotten quite a bit of insight on how he works. Thus, opinions expressed here should ONLY be taken to be mine. I hope eventually to have Julian on the channel to discuss for himself his experience working at DICE SE, but for the moment, you’ll just have to make do with my own personal insights

Well, the game that followed was BF1. With BF1, it became pretty clear to all of us that Julian was going to have a lot less ability to impact the direction of Battlefield design than we had hoped. BF1 was not a game designed by a competitive player, for competitive players. Even the gunplay did not reflect the sort of design that I know J likes—he shares with me the opinion that a balanced version of BF3 would be the pinnacle of fun; I find that the vehicles in BF1 are bland, uninteresting, and un-fun. Given that he was quite fond of BF4 and BF3 vehicle play, I suspect that he might hold a similar view.

Well, that was fine, right? Direction was already established for BF1 by the time he arrived. BFV was going to be the first game that he would be working on from start to finish.

Well, that didn’t go so well.

I actually enjoyed the gunplay of BFV quite a bit at launch. Not too fond of MMGs, but the game was certainly well balanced and the guns felt lethal. The rest of the game was terrible, of course—
Attrition is an anti-fun mechanic
the overall design is not conducive to enjoying oneself
something I’ve heard echoed again and again and can identify with myself: BFV is just not fun to play. It feels like work. I can jump in with my friends, or even solo, to MW and get a 1KD and have an absolute blast. Frankly, BF just isn’t fun to play when I drop below a 3KD. There are games when you feel like your actions have no impact, that you get punished for factors outside of your control. Visibility is awful and there’s no way to predict enemy positions like you can in games like CS or even MW. The removal of 3D and minimap spotting was a terrible design choice implemented by boomers—the more information everyone has, the better plays good players are able to make—BFV feels like you’re constantly playing blind. In the chaos of such a fog, a fight is more to chance rather than skill.

The one redeeming aspect that made BFV tolerable for short periods was the satisfaction of the gunplay. The Turner SMLE with the big box is one of the most satisfying shooting experiences I’ve ever found in a game, and I remember vividly some of the insane feeds I’ve gotten with it.

Enter 5.2.

WIth 5.2, it was clear that Julian essentially had no control over the game’s design direction. Not only was the balance garbage, it conflicted directly with his aim of having gunplay that was satisfying to kill people with. Remember this interview? In it, he specifically says that his goal is to have TTK that isn’t much longer than 300ms. Too much longer and it feels spongy and is unsuitable for high-playercount games.

So he quit.

Why? Well, it doesn’t seem very fun to keep with a job where you aren’t actually allowed to well, do your job, and have to meet arbitrary criteria set by managers who don’t understand the first thing about how to make a fun game. And on top of that? Anyone with half a brain can see how hated 5.2 is—the backlash is UNPRECEDENTED, and is beyond anything I’ve ever seen in any of the games I’ve followed. Would you really want to say that you’re the designer behind such a universally reviled design? I wouldn’t want to admit it—that’s terrible for someone’s professional reputation.

So 5.2.2 was an attempt to balance a system that can’t be balanced, because restrictive guidelines were set for design by people who don’t understand shooters. Do not expect that this patch will be reverted: the marketing team and out-of-touch managers are certain that they understand the situation better than the guy who fixed BF4 for them, or the community that plays their game.

SO what’s this mean?

It means that the second-to-last person who really understands Battlefield from pub to competitive is leaving DICE SE within the next two months. Godspeed, Florian—that job has got to be frustrating.

I’m beginning to suspect that BF3 and BF4 were more lucky accidents than intentional creations. I don’t know the situation at DICE LA, but given that they’ve generally demonstrated more competence than SE, I remain hopeful. For the moment, though? Move on. DICE creates games designed by their Marketing team around buzzwords like attrition and physicality. Their games are designed to be pretty and look good in screenshots.

Like Nickel and I have said, Battlefield is a franchise that is designed to sell copies at launch. It’s not designed for you to actually play it. Move on to other games, folks. You’ll have more fun.