A large amount of the feedback was aimed towards War of Attrition, a design pillar going into Battlefield V that’s making a significant difference in the game’s ammo and health economy throughout its modes. The attrition mechanic makes it so that players are spawning with less ammo, and can only recover small portions of health through taking cover. Full recovery of those vital resources now requires finding health and ammo packs, making it so players need to put in quite a bit more thought into their engagements.
EA decided through community-created polls that many players felt like attrition was having too much of an impact – creating an experience where many players felt as if they were simply running from spawn and immediately dying. DICE will be giving some weapon types more ammo on spawn, and are considering giving players a health pouch in their inventory on spawn to give them more of a buffer if they get hurt.
Additionally, some supply stations will be removed from the game. Players will now be able to construct some stations, giving them another way to score construction points and help their teams. The change may add some more impact to attrition by letting players interact with it more often, hopefully making it more to the liking of skeptical users – and making it quite a bit more interesting for players in the new Firestorm battle royale mode.
DICE is also tweaking the user experience of the game in a few meaningful ways, on both the balance and interface sides of things. For one, the visibility of player characters is being fixed up in the background with changes to lighting in some maps, and the addition of distance haze to help differentiate players from their environments.
Time to kill for some weapons is also being adjusted in accordance with the balance data received from the test. While no weapons were named and shamed by DICE, they mentioned that some weapons were overperforming and would have to be tuned down by the release of the game. Fans of certain weapons should keep an eye on DICE’s balance team to see if their favorite toy is on the chopping block.
Other changes include tweaks to visibility for pilots, the addition of new vehicles, and an extended vehicle damage system but nothing particularly groundbreaking should be coming to the release version of the game. While EA’s commitment to transparency about their balance process is admirable, it’s going to be up to the open beta impressions to make up the minds of undecided customers when Battlefield V launches later this year.
Battlefield V is launching on November 20th for PC, Xbox One, and PS4.