It just has to be more like Battlefield 4 in almost every way. And I say almost every way because BF4 still has its quirks and its problems. And going back and playing it after it being out on the market for seven years is starting to show its age a little bit. I think we all remember the launch in the first eight to 10 months of SUPPOR not being very good, but by and large,
I think Battlefield 4 represents the best known direction the Battlefield 6 should be taking notes from. First of all, let’s talk about scale. Battlefield 4’s maps were large. In some cases they were huge and they were sprawling in many different locations. Seas of Shanghai. Good example. That was a concrete jungle, rogue transmission. The other end of the scale, a huge satellite dish with a surrounding forest. Parasail storm. A massive island hopping naval battle set in the middle of a huge storm with crashing waves and lightning.
Almost every location chosen for Battlefield 4 embodied large scale combat in its own way, whether it was urban or whether it was an. And that led to what felt like massive battles with infantry, ground and air vehicles, all coming together to fight over objectives and different landmarks. Yet it was still the same 64 player set up that we have today in games like Battlefield 5 and a lot of the time in Battlefield 5. I dont get that same sense of scale. 64 players on a round of Rotterdam conquest doesn’t even come close to the feeling that you get from 64 players on dorm breaker or seas of Shanghai.
The scale of those Battlefield 4 maps, they dwarf those in Battlefield 5 over the years, starting with Battlefield 1. I think dice changed their map design philosophy and has really scaled down the scope of the locations that they end up building. They’re taking out those larger open spaces and they’re squashing everything closer together. There are, of course, exceptions maps like Sinai Desert in Battlefield 1 and Panzer Storm in Battlefield 5.
But notice how those maps, instead of scaling down the entire map size, they shifted the capture points closer together. That shortening of distance resulted in a reduction of overall scale because those areas of the map then devoid of capture points, were rarely used. Battlefield for for the most part, utilized the full size of the map area that allowed vehicles of all types helicopters, tanks, ATV, transport buggies, motorbikes, all of those vehicles.
They became integral to the flow of that map and became almost a necessity to move from one flag to another. The vast scale of battlefield force maps deeply integrated vehicles into the core gameplay loop. Battlefield 1, a battlefield 5. They dont have that same integration and therefore they lose a really important aspect of the battlefield formula. Battlefield 6 needs to recapture the scale and if the game is going to take on a modern combat setting.
I think that will greatly increase the chance that dice will take that scale back then. Let’s talk about something. I like to call freedom of Choice Battlefield 4 when all out when it came to weaponry, vehicles and gadgets. It gave players the complete freedom to kill our soldiers and vehicles in any way that they really wanted to suppresses scopes, laser sights, grips, barrel options, weapon paints. Everything was there for the weaponry. Any weapon attachments came with positives and negatives, and that meant that you could create loadouts that would benefit you in certain situations and hurt you in others. But the ultimate decision came down to you, the individual player.
That level of freedom has almost been completely taken away with recent games. Battlefield 1, perhaps more understandably considering its historical setting, had practically no weapon customization at all, with Dyce instead opting for this strange variance system. You could pick from one to three variants of each weapon and each variant had different statistics depending on the role that it was crafted to perform.
You had trench variants that would work best for hit fire and close cause action. You had optical variants that would add scopes or sights to give you greater visibility and effectiveness at longer ranges and then storm variants that provided the holder with greater ADX accuracy whilst moving around. Now, this system was not overly liked by players because it took away an element of first person shooters that they’d been accustomed to seeing. The customization and personalization of their equipment. Battlefield 5 implemented something different, but in my opinion,
equally as disappointing. The weapons specialization system. This replaced the previous distinct variance system with a flowchart allowing users to pick and choose different invisible specializations for each weapon. Dice implemented this without applying physical attachments to the weapons that linked to the specialisations that you were applying, and instead they opted to put those attachments into the weapons skin system where a certain skin might have a muzzle brake or something.
This, in my opinion, made the entire customization system feel very shallow and extremely uninspiring. It was another system that was limiting control that used to be in the hands of the player in previous battlefield games. Battlefield 6. It needs to walk in the footsteps of Battlefield 4 and perhaps more recently, Call of Duty Modern Warfare implement a more jila weapon and vehicle customization system where different attachments and different parts can be applied to make visual and statistical changes, giving players the freedom to build the loadouts that they want to use.
This leans heavily into the sandbox element of the battlefield formula. Being You had trench variants that would work best for hit fire and close cause action. You had optical variants that would add scopes or sights to give you greater visibility and effectiveness at longer ranges and then storm variants that provided the holder with greater ADX accuracy whilst moving around.
Now, this system was not overly liked by players because it took away an element of first person shooters that they’d been accustomed to seeing. The customization and personalization of their equipment. Battlefield 5 implemented something different, but in my opinion, equally as disappointing. The weapons specialization system. This replaced the previous distinct variance system with a flowchart allowing users to pick and choose different invisible specializations for each weapon.
Dice implemented this without applying physical attachments to the weapons that linked to the specialisations that you were applying, and instead they opted to put those attachments into the weapons skin system where a certain skin might have a muzzle brake or something. This, in my opinion, made the entire customization system feel very shallow and extremely uninspiring.
It was another system that was limiting control that used to be in the hands of the player in previous battlefield games. Battlefield 6. It needs to walk in the footsteps of Battlefield 4 and perhaps more recently, Call of Duty Modern Warfare implement a more jila weapon and vehicle customization system where different attachments and different parts can be applied to make visual and statistical changes, giving players the freedom to build the loadouts that they want to use, able to play the way that you want to play balfa won and Battlefield 5.
They were both built as games having to deal with historical limitations, but there were ways that dice could have dealt with those limitations without passing on an inferior experience to the end user. The two games sought to shrink and narrow the gameplay experience of the battlefield franchise, and the result of that is a less fun, less sandbox feeling and then something else. I wanted to mention Battlefield 4 was all about multiplayer.
Yes, I know it shipped with a single player story and that helped to ground the combat happening in the game into a fictional war that was ironically set in 2020. The single player wasn’t really anything to write home about, however, and it was a sort of nowto experience that you expect from a game that’s almost universally known for its multiplayer Elliman.
Battlefield 4. From the moment that it launched was all about multiplayer. There was no post-launch single player DLC. There was no co-op experience. Battle Royale that didn’t exist in the way that it does today. So there was none of that to worry about. Battlefield 4 was straight up multiplayer 5 different premium DLC launch for the game, adding 20 new multiplayer maps and then after that DICE released another 3 maps in free DLC that were developed as part of an extended support period that came about after the sale was a battlefield hardline.
There were loads of new weapons added with those. DLC is lots of gadgets, lots of vehicles. The entire final stand DLC was basically a conversion to a futuristic war. It was an homage to. Field 21 42 many fans ended up calling it the 2:36 expansion for Ballfield for everything after the launch of Battlefield 4 was focused on the multiplayer experience.
And that is what Battlefield 6, in my opinion, needs to channel a multiplayer experience first and foremost and perhaps even only a multiplayer experience. I’ve said this in the past. I made a video about it not too long after the launch of Battlefield 5 that the next battlefield game should be multiplayer only. And as more time has gone past,
I’m seeing more and more people come round to that idea and thinking the multiplayer only would be a good direction for Battlefield to go in by only focusing on what Battlefield does best, the DICE team would be able to channel their energy into the one thing and make it the best that it can be. Rather than having time, resources and development team Talan essentially wasted on elements like single player has virtually no replay value. Co-op the I don’t know if anyone’s really interested in for a battlefield game and battle royale and that didn’t really work out with Firestorm.