BF3 Interviews

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Battlefield 3: Lars Gustavsson Community Interview
14 OCT 2011

Question: Does he feel that some creative aspects of BF3 have been affected by the current popularity and trend of the Modern Warfare style of FPS, while maintaing the spirit and important elements of the Battlefield franchise ie comments that the Metro map are more similar in style and gameplay to MW than previous BF?

Lars: Ah… I guess we’re always inspired by the world around us, but when we build games – and we’ve been building Battlefield for 12 years now – we focus on our way. If you run your race and look at your competitors, then you’re bound to stumble and fall. Yes, we take inspiration from movies, games, and books, but I wouldn’t say that we go around changing our design in fear of competitors or anything. I only fear what’s living in my cupboard back home!

Question: A popular consensus seems to be that Operation Metro plays very much like CoD.

Lars: I mean, with the open beta, you can probably see our train of thought. We showed Operation Metro at E3, then Caspian Border at Gamescom, and now the open beta. We try to get data out of both of them. They are each other’s counterparts. One is infantry-focused, tight combat, and one is that typical all-out war. But going back through our games throughout the years, you’ve had Stalingrad, you’ve had Karkand; many of these levels that have been more infantry-focused. So I wouldn’t call it CoD-esque. I’d call it another flavour of Battlefield.

Question: What was the reasoning for cutting private servers/LAN?

Lars: I would say, like this: When we ship the game, that’s where it all starts. Many times the perception is when we ship the game, that’s the end of it, this what we’re going to get. That’s totally not it. If people know DICE and our previous titles, Battlefield 2 is still out there, alive. So yeah, good things come to those who wait.

Question: With the BF3 Beta build so old and with most of the issues that were raised by testers already patched for the final build, what was the point of the beta? Was it to test back end infrastructure, netcode and battlelog? Or was it a thinly disguised demo to build demand for the game or did it serve another purpose?

Lars: I would say, especially the first chunk there with checking servers, checking backend… it’s rare that you get the possiblity to have this many gamers in there to test your backend before launch. With 1943, we totally underestimated the onslaught of happy customers, so we don’t want to repeat that again. So for us, it’s been a huge success to get all these people in there to game and of course also give us feedback on things in and around the game.

Question: Have the changes from then ‘til now been drastic or minor?

Lars: When it comes to the actual game, there’s already been… I mean, we branched off the open beta build a long time ago, so we already tweaked and tuned that and did so many changes and polish. Putting up lists of them, it’s almost impossible! Overall we still take all the feedback seriously so we can kind of run through it. We talk to the community, gather this feedback, and see if there’s things that we have missed out.

Question: And what kind of things do you think you’ve missed out?

Lars: Eh… there’s definitely input in a lot of areas that makes us wonder, and makes us look ahead and see maybe this is something for down the road. But it’s also about staying a bit cool, and not kind of overreacting. It’s very easy when you make games, where a competitor comes out or shows a movie of their upcoming game. It’s all CG, you don’t know what it’s going to be, but everyone gets nervous everywhere. Sometimes you just need to have a little faith in yourself, and this time around to take in the feedback from the community, and then when we ship the final game, we’ll see if we still have issues or not. Since when the game gets out there and more people start playing it, it really… it changes from day to day. People have a tendency to apply new tactics where, for example, the level stalls, and it’s about not being totally nervous and trying to change everything all the time to the latest and greatest.

Question: What inspired the move to a more abstract and significantly less informative HUD design compared to previous Battlefield games? Specifically the move to a non-persistent single colour text chat box.

Lars: Okay. That text chat box is just a rudimentary implementation. It’s not the final one by far. It was just put in there to give you an idea.

Question: News coming out of DICE, is that PC Voip will not be run in-game, but will be handled by a module running from Battlelog (similar to console voip running outside of the game), but it only has the ability to talk to people in your pre-defined battlelog party (i.e friends only), not other random players in the team/squad. Can you confirm this?, and if so - why the active step away from active cooperation between team/squad-mates if they are not your friends?

Lars: That is true for what we will ship with, but of course we’ll look into what will happen in the future.

Question: In regards to 64-player matches, why is the squad size limited to 4 players? I feel the large 64-player Conquest maps warrant a return of BF2's 6-man squads. Is there any chance of this happening?

Lars: At launch we will ship with four players, and the main thinking here has been to not create any magic rabbit holes. You know, there is a certain satisfaction to actually being able to wipe a squad in order to take a flag. So yeah, we will ship with four players.

Question: I’m sensing a recurring theme to these answers of yours…

Lars: All the changes we do, we do for a reason. It’s not like we have a big hat and we write down lots of solutions and then draw them. There’s always a lot of thinking that goes into this.

Question: Given that females are now allowed to serve in combat roles in many armies are there any plans to introduce a female skin?

Lars: That’s not in the plan, no. It’s something we’ve been talking about since, I think, even Battlefield 1942. There weren’t that many women fighting in active duty during those days. But overall, short answer: No.

Question: Will there be a DAY/NIGHT time cycle throughout maps? I watched a demonstration video of the engine showing this feature off. Obviously it would be awesome to have in the game!!! So please do it!!!

Lars: No. It’s definitely been part of the demo to show what the engine can do. There’s definitely changes of light as levels progess and so on, but we don’t, as far as I know, work with the full day/night cycle. Especially not in multiplayer.

Question: Will it be possible to practice flying without having to be in an active multiplayer server? Such as a large training map or something of the sorts so people can hone their skills in the flying vehicles.

Lars: Nothing in the game at launch, sadly.

Question: It seems like people want a a lot out of this game. They want everything!
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Wanting is good! But are you worried that expectations may be too high for you to ever reach them?

Lars: When I go to bed at night, I sleep well based on the fact that we have played the game every day in the office. It is a great game, it’s rock solid, a very organic experience. The vehicles are better than ever. We, as well, want to do everything – but usually, the studios that crash and burn are the ones that try to do everything. I would say it’s a touch of the mature studio mentality that stops us from going completely haywire!

[pershainovitsh]

So... When asked about why don't they include LAN, they say nothing at all? Or is it just the greedy EA that wants money from those servers?

And the reason for 4 player squads: there's a certain satisfaction from wiping an entire squad... Yeah. But I heard a rumour of a platoon, which is formed by combining two squads. I hope it's true.

And no way to practice flying offline? AGAIN? For the entire BC2 campaign I hoped to get my hands on a chopper, and finally I saw a few wrecked ones, and after that a flyable one. Guess what? The whole helicopter sequence was scripted, and I was just a door gunner. No wonder so many crash their helicopter immediately after takeoff, since multiplayer is the only place to practice. I guess we'll see the same thing again in BF3.

At least the text chat will be improved. (not that I would know what was it like)

They should have asked if Commo rose is the one seen on the previous games, or have they managed to ruin that too. And if squad leaders could give orders on the map. And if there even was a full map. And will the mini-map become more than just lines on a blue background, the maps in BF2 were a lot better.

Other things disappointing:
- No in-game VOIP, so absolutely no way to talk with your team unless you add them as your friends in Battlelog. I think even the consoles get a proper in-game voice chat.
- No ping in scoreboard. What is this? I don't even have words for this. I could understand most of the changes to be thanks to DICE wanting to make a game for the casual gamers, but this is just utterly stupid. Was ping over the Complexity Treshold that was too high in the previous games? Are the gamers of today really so stupid they can't understand ping? How can you then see who's the Japanese person causing massive lag on the server? Ping is such a basic feature in every. single. pc. game that I couldn't even think of not having it.
- No mod tools. Well, I think there never has been mod tools at launch for pretty much any game (except Max Payne, they came with the disc), but it doesn't look good for the modding community. What would Forgotten Hope and Project Reality be like with Frostbite 2? I hope we'll see.

[swfwebmaster]

This is the by far the worst interview by DICE to date:

IGN
Battlefield 3 Post Mortem: What Went Right and What Went Wrong
by John Gaudiosi
3 JAN 2012

What were your goals heading into this game?

We wanted to create a game that strikes a balance between depth and accessibility; something that feels fresh and truly next gen. We wanted to create the biggest and best Battlefield ever. The most immersive and physical first person shooter ever. And we wanted to build the true successor to Battlefield 2 while explore new ground and pushing technology forward.


How do you feel the final game lived up to those goals?
I think we pretty much nailed it. I am very proud of the game and what the team has accomplished. I feel we have created a great platform from where we can keep evolving Battlefield 3, Battlelog, and the series as a whole.


What impact has DLC had on the development process, especially with ideas that weren't able to be fit into the final product?

Pretty much anything we wanted in the game, we got into the game. The way we work with DLC is we can expand upon the existing experience while being bold and experimenting to a degree. The Back to Karkand expansion pack that just launched is only the beginning in our quest to wholeheartedly support Battlefield 3. We will keep exploring new ground for Battlefield 3 in the future.


What are your thoughts on the fan feedback that the game has received?

We absolutely love feedback, and I am very happy that we have such creative and constructive players out there. The feedback overall has been overwhelmingly positive. At the same time, I think it is important as a developer to listen to issues that can crop up when millions of people start to play your game at the same time. It's almost like the game takes on a life of its own at that point, and we are listening to feedback and looking at how people are playing so we can keep fine tuning the game. If you have any feedback at all, we're grateful if you keep in touch and leave it at the Battlelog forum.

How will that feedback impact DLC and future games?

Some of the tweaks are made to balance what our players feel are non-balanced situations, like the recent IRNV nerf (where the night vision scope was reduced in its effective range to keep it from being too powerful). On a more overarching level, we try and always listen to our community so we don't produce games in a vacuum. Case in point: After the Open Beta, we realized that our persistence system at the time made people rank up too quickly, so we tweaked it for release. It's the kind of thing you can judge and react on when the community really can sink their teeth into your game and that is hard to simulate at the workplace.


Can you give us any specific examples?

Just a totally hypothetical example: If it turns out every Battlefield player suddenly hate jets, we'll have to think about why. Is it the jets themselves they hate or something how they played in the last game, and if so, how can we make them awesome in the next game? Also, we have a lot of expertise here at DICE. We will keep creating games that we love to play, and hope that the community loves them just like we do.


Once your game was completed, what did you do that you'd been putting off because of the production schedule?

I haven't been playing a lot of games other than Battlefield 3 lately, so it's great to be able to get my hands on Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, Uncharted 3, and more this winter.


How much time do you get to enjoy a game's completion before your mind turns to what comes next?

I've experienced some crazy Battlefield Moments in Battlefield 3, and I love watching all of the crazy gameplay videos that keep popping up and I love to play the game. But once a game is out there, my work is more or less done on that title, and at DICE we of course have a long term plan for the studio and what we are doing going forward.


What's something that you're most proud of when it comes to this game?

My goal and my job as executive producer is to make sure that all of the moving parts in this huge game fit together, so I tend not to think so much in terms of what specific features I like the most. If there's one detail I'm most proud of when it comes to Battlefield 3, it's the fact that everything fits, the game feels like a complete and homogenous package, while having a unique personality and identity.


What's something that you would change if you had been given an extra few months of development time?

You can always do a bit more polish with extra time, of course. I wouldn't have changed any significant features with more time, though.


What do you do for fun when you're not focusing on game development?

I like to work out, play soccer, and go places. If there's something interesting to see or experience, I want to go there, even if it's to a suburb of Stockholm I haven't been, or the other end of the globe.


What's next for you?

I have noticed developing games is pretty fun, so I think I'll make another one.

The distant ledge is a proper BF2 sequel, the cat is DICE, and EA is the slick surface.