Interview with DICE

• Manager
• Monday, June 9, 2008 | 4:31 PM
• 20 comments

Xbox 360 PS3

DICE has finished their work on EA's Battlefield: Bad Company, which will be released at the end of this month on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Many of you have already tried the demo released last week, and here's a Q&A from XCN which may answer some of your questions about squad features, the lack of prone plus more.

Answered By: Karl-Magnus Troedsson, Senior Producer

· What features are you bringing over from the previous Battlefield games, are there any unique relations? Excluding the obvious of course. E.g. will there be a squad system or a return of the hot swap feature from BF Modern Combat?
o Much of the core mechanics of previous Battlefield games are present in BFBC but a few are not. We’ve also worked hard to simplify e.g. team play.

· How does BF:BC relate to the PC version? Will the console version of Battlefield be more 'arcadey'?
o The controls of the next-gen consoles does change the way we set up the first person experience. However, not to the extent that it’s all just run and gun. The lack of mouse removes some of the pixel perfect shooting but it still takes skill to become truly successful.

· Can we expect more "Purchasable only" weapons to be added via the marketplace further in the game's life cycle?
o We’ve listened to all the feedback during the beta and all weapons will be free of charge. We’re not planning to release any purchasable only weapons.

· The TTK (time to kill an enemy soldier) seems a bit long right now. Are you still tweaking this through the data collected in the beta?
o A lot of people comment on this, indicating it takes too many bullets to kill an enemy. I suggest trying to be accurate in the aim, less pray and spray. Shooting in burst, no side strafing when shooting or even better, kneeling will greatly increase your accuracy. And of course, for those lightning quick kills you have to aim high towards the head. You’ll notice that when you manage to nail a burst here it won’t take much to drop your foe.

· How does Battlefield compare to the current market of next gen FPS titles?
o It’s leaner, meaner and created by a stunning looking dev team!

· What does it have to offer that other games don’t?
o Seriously, Battlefield: Bad Company is built upon the trademark, sandbox experience that is the pedigree of any Battlefield game. Huge environments, massive amount of weapons and loads of vehicle action is now also supported by the massive amounts of destruction we’ve implemented. This definitely sets us apart from our competitors.

· How has it improved from previous Battlefield games?
o The two biggest changes in BFBC comparing it to other Battlefield titles is the addition of the single player campaign and the new, tactical destruction. This both evolves the second to second play (online as well offline) and also gives players craving for a more story driven experience something to look forward to.

· Will you be using the camera at all (customization á la Rainbow Six Vegas)?
o No.

· How many maps and game modes will be available?
o Battlefield: Bad Company will ship with one game mode called Gold Rush but after listening to the feedback from the Beta we’re also going to port over Conquest and make this available as a free downloadable content.

· What's the maximum amount of people that can play in one game?
o Battlefield: Bad Company supports 24 online players, the same amount of players as we did in BF2: Modern Combat. Instead of simply increasing the number of players as a selling point we’re focusing our network and rendering power on what matters e.g. tons of weapons, vehicles and destructible environments.

· One of the main complaints we heard from the beta users is the absence of crouching, especially annoying for snipers. Are you going to introduce this in the final game?
o Crouch is definitely in the game but we don’t have prone. And the snipers is actually one of the reasons we took this out (the other was to simplify controls). In the sandbox experience we take great care to balance all weapons, kits, vehicles etc., against each other. The Recon class (i.e. the Snipers) are already very powerful with the only 1 shot 1 kill weapons, the deadly Laser Designator plus the protective Motion Sensor. Now if Snipers could lie down in the sub vegetation they wouldn’t only be deadly, they would also be near impossible to spot. Hence, remove prone. However, crouch still gives a lot of the aiming benefits similar to prone.

· Will the game support co-op play for the campaign?
o No

· A recent Xbox 360 FPS, Frontlines, raised the bar on the maximum number of players allowed to play a console game to 50. Did you think about following this path, using dedicated servers?
o The Battlefield experience defined the open, sandbox style of online play and our games has always run on dedicated servers. However, we’d rather spend our network and rendering power on large number of vehicles, all out destruction and big environments rather than adding extra players. Based upon our experience with e.g. BF2 we don’t think that just increasing the sheer amount of players will increase quality of play.

· More and more console games today offer web front-ends with match logs and statistics, images upload and so on. Will Battlefield: BC offer such a feature?
o Absolutely. For anyone interested in tracking their online games more in detail there will be a variety of features available online. Anyone into stats will be well set. Another new feature on the homepage will be that you can view the screenshots you’ve taken with the in-game tool. With the press of a button e.g. just before you knife your main adversary you can immortalize the moment with a screen dump which automatically gets uploaded to your page.

· Will it be possible for the gamer to configure the controls completely?
o No

· Is it possible to make use of the feedback from the beta-testing before the official release or do you plan to include slight changes etc. using Xbox Live Download Content or an update for the game?
o There’s definitely been time to make changes to the game. We don’t have time to answer all the questions from people but we scour the forums constantly for issues. And there have been tons of changes to improve the game since the beta.

· Can you tell us something about the destructible environment and how the gamer should/could use it? Will there be "penalties" if we destroy something we shouldn’t?
o The Tactical Destruction as we like to call it will change how you play the game but it’s up to you and your imagination as to how. Battlefield has always been about the Sandbox experience: open environment, lots of vehicles, weapons, kits. Start the game and you’re off. Strap C4 to a jeep and drive it into a base? Sure. Try wing walking the wing of a B17? Go right ahead. Play around with the destruction in the same way and you’ll find a lot of new ways to get an upper hand on the Battlefield. And no, there’s no penalty for using the destruction. Just watch you fire cone so you don’t hit or splash damage any friendlies.

· I noticed a driveable golf kart in the attract video of the Battlefield: Bad Company beta, as well as a level that looked like a golf course. Please tell us you're including an exclusive VIP Mode for that map where you have to protect a professional golfer!
o That’s actually from a single player mission but otherwise an interesting idea. J The golf cart is the latest additions of super high-tech weaponry on the Battlefield.

· As you will most likely know the squad system in the beta is very limited. Will there be more options in the retail version (if so: could you give us examples?) and are there clan management options in Bad Company as well?
o The squad system in the Beta is much limited, mostly since you can’t create your own and invite your friends. This will of course be available in the full version of the game.

· What’s the company's reasoning behind streamlining the Battlefield concept for consoles, seeing how there's a lower number of classes in Bad Company among other things? Does the team feel that something as deep as Battlefield 2 (PC) can't be fully translated to consoles?
o A game as complex as Battlefield 2 doesn’t lend itself well to straight porting over to console. It’s based upon quick, pixel perfect mouse movement (both in-game and in the menus) and the keyboard layout has tons of special hot keys that would be near impossible to fit to a hand held control layout. This is one of the reasons why we’ve built Battlefield: Bad Company, a separate version that is streamlined for the next-gen consoles. This also means that we’ve gone to great length to simplify and make things easier to control and to get into while still keeping a lot of the depth.

· Something I noticed in the beta, is that being a medic is next to pointless in Bad Company. Reviving your allies is gone, everyone dies pretty quickly so it's harder to heal them now also people tend to run away from you more often than before because they can't tell you're trying to aid them and the Assault class can heal themselves, etc. Will this be changed significantly in the retail version and if so, how?
o Actually, that’s probably more up to how you play the Support class. Our statistics show that a lot of people play this class and score very high with it. Yes we don’t have revive but if you’re active with dropping the med packs you can definitely keep your squad alive longer. Combine that with the powerful LMG’s, the ability to repair vehicles and dropping Mortar Strikes on incoming enemies this has proven to be a very versatile class on the Battlefield.

· Could you also explain why the Conquest Mode has allegedly been cut from Bad Company? Not that I'm against the Gold Rush mode, mind you.
o There’s several reasons why we focused our effort on creating Gold Rush instead of just bluntly port over Conquest. Our main idea was that we wanted more action! Players have a tendency to become spread out in Conquest, some fighting for a back base, others running up and down a vague frontline and some are just hiding in the periphery. So instead of having several bases we focused in down to one (or two counting the home base of the Attackers). This means we get much more focused attention from all players which we think is a great thing and the Beta feedback on Gold Rush has been very positive. However, other feedback from the Beta have been rather unanimous, many of our old fans really miss the old Conquest mode which is why we’ve decided to make this available as free downloadable content showing up after release.

· What do you think of the online modes featured in Call of Duty 4? Why do you think so many people love to play this game?
o COD4 is a very polished experience with a great multiplayer. We enjoy playing it here at DICE as well, but it is a different flavour of FPS from Battlefield. We truly believe that our vehicle experience, our destruction and our better opportunities for team play will set us apart.

· Persistent worlds in online warfare seems to be the next step, with "maybe" examples as Call of Duty online in the perspective. Will it be your next big thing? A persistent world Battlefield game?
o Persistent is a big word. Maybe we’ll start to see shooters try to blend into some MMO hybrids in the future but it feels this moves the focus slightly off from what otherwise is the core of shooters: skill, team play, competition and fun. So I’m unsure if this actually is a recipe for success.

· What were you hoping to achieve with the multiplayer beta? How will you use the data and feedback?
o The main motive with the beta was two fold. Firstly we wanted to test the game on all the gamers out there, see what they thought of it and listen to their feedback regarding anything from feature sets to balancing. The other main reason for the beta was of course for us to test to full back-end of servers and data centers, making sure we’re in a good position for launch. All the data and feedback that we’ve gotten has then been used to fix important problems but also guide us in decisions like e.g. adding Conquest as a free downloadable content package.

· Do you have any plans to give gamers the campaign mode demo before release?
o All gamers can get a taste of the single player campaign in the official demo coming out before release.

· Why did you decide to remove parachute from the multiplayer mode?
o The decision to remove the parachute was made for a couple of reasons. One of them was to lower the amount of Attackers landing behind enemy lines and creating an unbalanced situation for the Defenders. Another reason was to avoid having people bail out of a critical helicopter to avoid death which can be very frustrating to the gamer shooting it down.

· How does the squad system work? How important it is to stay together with your part of the team?
o The player can create a squad from people on his friends list which will stay together of matches. Team play is not forced upon the player but it definitely will help. In our test we can see maps being completely dominated by single squads if they act as a unit, using voice communication and help each other out. The tactical depth of the game will become more and more apparent when we start to see experienced squads pitched against each other on the Battlefield.

Thanks for your time!