Battlefield V: Beta Notes

It was quite a novel idea for DICE to put out the Battlefield V beta last week, what with the 1^st of September being the 79^th Anniversary of the Invasion of Poland and all. Once again, consoles and PCs roar with the sounds of Panzers, Spitfires, and explosions as soldiers – well, nerds – scream out for a medic.

It could almost make you nostalgic, which is what Battlefield V is all about! The devs have worked hard to make the game feel more like the older titles in the franchise in terms of gunplay and teamwork. But have their efforts succeeded?

Well, let’s start with the weapons, which feel far more lethal at close range than they have done in a while. The time to kill is pretty quick up close, faster than even Battlefield 1, but it makes the game feel far tenser. It actually encourages you to play a bit more cautiously, sneaking across the map and positioning yourself tactically instead of charging headlong into the hail of machinegun fire. At range things get a bit trickier; automatic weapons bounce all over the place if you don’t know how to control them, but sniper rifles have returned to a more ordinary damage drop-off model, making hiding in a bush at the back of the map satisfying once again.

But this is where the good things about the gun mechanics unfortunately end. Each weapon has an upgrade tree that is meant to act like the attachment systems of older titles in the series. However, trees cannot be swapped between once chosen and there are no downsides to your choices. For instance, in BF4 choosing a certain muzzle for your weapons would reduce that weapons vertical recoil in exchange for making you less accurate at range. There’s nothing like this in BFV so far, and I’m hoping that it changes soon.

DICE/EA, 2018

The cosmetic customisation is also deeply flawed. For instance, if you want to actually spawn into your game, you will have to customise your weapon in the main menu. “That’s a pain,” you may be thinking, “but at least it’ll be straight forward”. Well you’re wrong, because it takes about 20 clicks/button presses to get what you want, which is an absolutely appalling user experience.

Despite these issues, gunplay is fun in the beta. At first, it’s a bit of a shock to move back to a more cautious and tactical approach to combat, a la BF3, after nearly a decade of being encouraged to run and gun. But this move, whilst great, is at odds with the new soldier movement system. Players can run through the map in a far more fluid manor: diving through windows instead of having to manually break them first; crouch sprinting for improved sneaking; and falling onto your back and then backpedalling to escape danger. All of this pushes the player to keep moving, whilst the lethality of PVE tells them to do the opposite – to hold fast behind cover and take their time.

When the player inevitably gets killed, they can choose to either wait for a medic or a squad member to revive them, or to bleed out and return to the deployment screen. However, this system is quite controversial right now, as no matter if they wait in vain for a medic or skip straight to the deployment screen, players still have to wait a further 8 seconds to respawn, punishing players for trying to engage in the series’ signature team work.

DICE/EA, 2018

The destructible environments are back, but now there’s more to it. All players can build Fortifications to create and replace cover, including sandbag walls, trenches and foxholes, and support players can create more aggressive defences, like tank traps and MG nests. This is a really great idea, but, like everything else in this beta, it’s not been implemented well. It’s too easy to cancel construction, and building doesn’t continue whilst moving or transition to new objects, making the player excessively vulnerable in my mind.

There’s also a new system that affects both infantry and vehicles, and that’s called Attrition. This basically means player’s start with less ammo and have to seek out ammo boxes and stations around the map. This is a boon for Support players but detrimental to vehicles, which now seem to stick to the edge of the map because they don’t have enough ammo to actively engage in the match. I will also say that tank cannons feel really impotent, with barely any splash damage against infantry and tank battles taking between 5-8 shots before there is a victor.

Aircraft are an entirely separate problem, feeling slow and controlling like bricks, but worse. This sucks, especially in light of the recent Dev talk where Daniel Berlin described planes as being “significantlyimproved” since the alpha, and has but a real downer on my Dunkirk inspired Spitfire fantasies. Whilst more of a casual experience, BF1’s aerial combat was far more engaging and fun.

The removal of 3D spotting and “Dorito hunting” has really negatively impacted planes too, as targets are super difficult to pick out. Bombers feel especially useless because of this. In fact, player visibility on the whole is pretty poor, as several times I ran past enemies thinking they were friendly, or vice versa, and it is the lack of spotting that is the main cause.

Obviously, 3D spotting was a terrible crutch in the past few iterations, but class and factional silhouettes should have been reinforced, not rendered useless because of the overboard nature of player cosmetics. The devs claim that each faction will have unique colour palettes at launch, but right now they just blend into the same homogenous blur of muddy grey.

DICE/EA, 2018

Gamemode wise, DICE has nailed it. The return of old-school Conquest is such a relief, with matches usually resulting in close calls and squads actively defending objectives, not sprinting off to the next flag. Airborne and Breakthrough form the first two days of Grand Operations (a gamemode played over 3-4 in-game days) and are solid experiences. Airborne has players parachuting into the map to destroy the enemy’s artillery, and Breakthrough is a smaller variation on BF1’s Operations gamemode.

The maps demonstrated in the beta are mixed. The Arctic Fjord is really difficult to like, and this is the map where most of my gripes about player visibility stem from. Not just the enemy, but the UI is often lost to the snowy backdrop too. Airborne on this map, though, is great, set during the night with the Northern Lights dancing above the battle – simply stunning.

Rotterdam is the better map to play here. Inspired by BF3’s Seine Crossing, skulking around the alleyways and streets of the Dutch city whilst firefights spill over from the elevated railway station make for some really tense and interesting vertical gameplay.

Sure, this is the Battlefield V beta, and there’s going to be bugs. But what worries me the most is that all these great ideas simply haven’t been given enough time to be properly implemented and optimised. Perhaps this is why BFV has been postponed to a November release date, but I really hope that the team are able to fix these issues, otherwise we may not see a World War II game like this again.