Inside Dice - Topic

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Mar 3 2012 04:56am

Inside DICE #1

Last week with the detailed list of upcoming patch fixes to Battlefield 3, DICE also announced that they will be posting a weekly "Inside DICE" Blog series that gives the community much more of a insight to the operations that go on behind the scenes at the Stockholm based studio. To start the series, DICE GM Karl Magnus Troedsson gives us some tidbits about the community and the upcoming GDC '11.

It'll be interesting to see what more comes out of this series

''I’m very excited to open up our new “Inside DICE” section. Engaging in direct dialogue with our fans has been on my agenda for a while, and we will do that partly via the new blog series that you are now reading.
When it comes to upcoming game updates, tweaks, fixes, and new features, this is where the producers, programmers, and designers personally will tell you what they are doing, why they are doing it, and when you can expect to see their changes in the game. More than just information on dates and a change list, you will also get to meet the people behind the keyboards actually making it happen, how they go about designing these changes, what obstacles they stumble across, and how many semlor they had for fika. Besides keeping you better informed on upcoming updates, we hope this blog series will give you an insight into game development and post-launch game support itself, as well as into Swedish culture working at DICE, and working as a community manager.

Going Back to San Fran
So what’s on my mind right now? Well, I’m super psyched about putting the final pieces together for an exciting presentation we’re taking to GDC in San Francisco. For any fan, GDC will bring some very exciting news about the future of Battlefield 3.''

This post was edited by Swify on Mar 3 2012 05:04am

Swify

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Mar 10 2012 09:19am

Inside DICE #2

''It’s always a challenge for me to balance a Battlefield game after it has launched. Before a game ships it’s Our Game, and we can generally do what we feel is right with the game, even if it means entirely redoing some part of the balance (we did this multiple times on Battlefield 3’s development before we arrived at today’s combat pacing). It can generally be said that once a game ships, it’s no longer Our Game, it’s Your Game. It belongs to the community; I’m just a care taker; A Game Warden if you will.

So it’s a lot of consideration that goes in to crafting an update with as many fixes and changes as we have prepped for our next update. Sometimes the community comes together and clearly demands a fix: “The USAS-12 and FRAG rounds are Over Powered!” or “MAV elevators have got to go!” It’s easy to make a quick reaction fix, though every “fix” for an issue can be essentially ruining another player’s fun. What’s game breaking for balance to one player is the very thing that helps another enjoy the game. It’s my job to pick which issues to fix, how to fix them, and analyze their overall impact on the game.

Ultimately the community will make its opinions loud (though not always so clear) when an update lands, and many updates for many different games have come with unpleasant surprises for their respective communities. I really wanted to avoid that situation for Battlefield 3, so we’ve tried a series of different approaches. Various update change lists have been posted on Battlelog for all to see during the development of this update. And many changes and additions (and even deletions) have been made in response. As we went on in development, and after we had reached a feeling of equilibrium for balance in internal playtests, we released the specific data to a community site known for its in depth analysis of Battlefield 3’s weapons and vehicles: Symthic.com. Players then were able to look directly at the numbers, and the process of changing, adding, and deleting was repeated.''

This post was edited by Swify on Mar 10 2012 09:23am

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Mar 16 2012 12:14pm

Inside DICE #3

Hi everyone. This is Niklas Fegraeus, Lead Designer on Battlefield 3: Close Quarters. Above is an early test video we recorded during a play test to judge the effect of our new destruction. But first things first:

In 2001, while making games for the Sega Dreamcast, I began a career as a clan player in Counter-Strike. This eventually became a semiprofessional part time job, as I got a sponsor, won several LAN tournaments and competed in the Cyber athlete Professional League.

Now, in 2012, my competitive mouse is put on the shelf, but I consider the experiences from those days invaluable to my role as game designer making Battlefield games.

Counter-Strike is a very tactical and precise art of close quarters shooting, so I can comfortably say I know a little about how those tight shooter experiences play, and how they should play.

Battlefield on the other hand, is a huge game in more ways than one. Even we developers sometimes have a hard time realizing its breadth. You can go from clearing a house of enemy soldiers through careful squad tactics to soaring through the sky in a jet fighter, frantically evading enemy anti-air weaponry, all in the same round.

I can still recall the thrill of that scale and freedom I had when I first tried the game. It was the BF1942 demo on Wake Island (before I joined the crew here at DICE) and I was raging over those damn fighter planes that kept dropping bombs on my head! However, rage and confusion turned to evil grin as I found the AA-guns and used them to good effect!

Three years later, I landed my dream job working at DICE on Battlefield 2! Having worked as Animator and Designer on Battlefield 2, it was especially satisfying to be Lead Designer on Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand and bring some of the most classic maps from Battlefield 2 into Battlefield 3.

When I finished up Back to Karkand, I already knew I needed to start on our next themed expansion pack for release in June. This time, I really wanted to expand Battlefield 3 and give players even more experiences to choose from. But I didn’t know how to approach it.

Then I remembered those nights at my sponsor’s Internet café, where I and my clan for hours on end practiced the best way to attack a well-defended room, using only a few grenades and the business end of our rifles.

here is something very unique about an indoor fire fight. You have to cover angles in new ways, use sound to track your enemies, navigate with much more careful precision and most importantly, you’re never safe. Danger is always no more than a few meters away. It’s a scenario that always makes me feel 100% in the fight. There is no dull moment, you’re always on your toes, on the edge.

The closest you come to this type of tight combat scenario in Battlefield 3 is on Operation Métro. We know this is one of our most popular maps, which tells us that our gameplay has what it takes to perform in such unique and frantic conditions.

I had an approach for our new expansion pack. Now, I just needed to refine it. I needed to find those elements that make the adrenaline levels go through the roof and keep you constantly on that edge. I want the player to feel like Hudson in Aliens, as he is watching the motion scanner bleep faster and faster, realizing that the safety he thought he had isn’t there anymore, and that death is already in the room.

I sat down and spoke with Jhony Ljungstedt, my art director, and had a discussion about how we could achieve this. After bouncing random ideas for a while, he told me that even though that explosive scene from “The Matrix” was rather old, seeing Neo and Trinity turn a lobby into rubble in slow motion did leave a huge impression, and hadn’t ever been properly done in a game. We both agreed and Jhony said he really wanted to be able to create that sensation.

“Imagine tearing a place down using only bullets, watching chunks being torn off the walls, littering the floors like a dropped bag of grey marbles” he said. “I wanted everything to get shot to pieces.
Really, really small pieces”

And that’s when it occurred to me. We have a golden opportunity here. When removing large and process heavy elements like tanks, and scaling down Battlefield to a tighter scale, we are given some extra Frostbite 2 oomph at our disposal. The engine has fantastic destructive capabilities, and with more CPU overhead, we could put it to the ultimate test.

I wanted to see if we could destroy things in greater detail. I wanted everything to get shot to pieces. Really, really small pieces. In short, I wanted destruction to go High Definition.

After a series of prototypes and testing, we had a working model and immediately put it into practice. A grey and boring test level became the scene for a big floating stairway, with supporting pillars surrounded by temporary walls, just so we wouldn’t fall into oblivion.

We had incorporated some early HD Destruction in this test level just for proof of concept. Then, we simply asked the testers: “Shoot at everything”. And they did. The place immediately got torn to pieces, as bullets ripped through the grey prototype materials, spreading chunks of it everywhere, literally creating a carpet of debris on the floor. Walls had big holes where there was once solid wood or plaster. You could create new angles and ways of attack, just by firing your normal gun. This was new to Battlefield, as you would normally need heavier hardware like RPG’s or tanks to blow up walls in the base game.

We immediately knew this was something really cool and would have a significant impact on both how you play and how you experience that play. HD Destruction immediately became a key factor in bringing the intensity of the Battlefield experience into close quarters combat, and looking at it now, in its complete implementation, it feels great to finally be able to show it to everyone.

While HD Destruction has a significant impact on how you experience the second-to-second gameplay, we also had to tackle the challenges of bringing our tried and tested game modes to the smaller scale. We understood quickly that Rush, being a large and progressive mode that takes you on a journey from M-COM to M-COM, simply wouldn’t fit physically. So instead, we turned our attention to Conquest. How could we tailor this essential Battlefield game mode to fit our new type of environment?

I spoke to my Game Designer Gustav Halling who, like me, has a history of competitive FPS gaming. We remembered Unreal Tournament from way back in 1999. It was the first time the world saw the game mode “Domination”, which is very similar to Conquest. There are some differences though, and the Domination type gameplay usually takes place on smaller maps, much like the ones we were creating.

Inspired by these memories, we used the spawning systems from Battlefield 3 Team Deathmatch and came up with a Conquest mode adapted for smaller spaces. We called it Conquest Domination, and it worked beautifully. In particular, flag defense is suddenly more important, and you get different tactical layers due to the subtle differences the new mode provides. It’s reminiscent of those tactics I practiced to perfection in my e-sports days. Listen for the footsteps, spray the wall, throw your grenade, cover one angle each and constantly communicate. The experience grows with our tried and tested squad play mechanics, and the intensity and pure challenge of trying to dominate these close quarters is something I’m convinced will put even the best squads to the test.

Designing a new experience isn’t easy. Many things were created and tested, many things didn’t fit, and there are millions of fans whose wishes you want to fulfill. Ultimately, it’s about finding a meaningful core idea, and realizing it with relentless attention to detail.

We wanted the thrill of fighting in close quarters. We wanted the adrenaline rush that comes from always being one second from potential death. We wanted the world around you to be both your best friend and mortal enemy, by protecting you in one moment and in the next, completely failing you by opening up new ways for the enemy to attack.

Often when I remove my headphones from a playtests on Close Quarters, I’m shaking like a leaf from all of the adrenaline. So personally, I am very happy and proud of where we are with our next expansion pack. Most of all, I’m happy with how versatile our game is, and how my team has helped broaden it further.

Niklas Fegraeus, Lead Designer Battlefield 3: Close Quarters

This post was edited by Swify on Mar 16 2012 12:30pm

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Mar 30 2012 01:50pm

Inside DICE 4#

Following up on his last “Inside DICE” post, Alan Kertz returns with the inside story on the much discussed Battlefield 3 USAS 12 shotgun and FRAG rounds: Where the inspiration came from, how it was balanced shortly after launch, and how we’re rebalancing it based on community feedback.

I often get the question “who thought 12g FRAG rounds were a good idea?” Well, that would be me. 12 gauge FRAG rounds stem from two places. First, like nearly everything in Battlefield, FRAG rounds are inspired by an authentic shotgun ammunition (developed for military use and tested by the USMC). A FRAG round is a 19mm High Explosive round, making it of a similar caliber to the rounds fired by the cannons on the F-18!

The second inspiration comes from an Easter Egg weapon for developers in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The developers (or anyone who picked up their kit) could fire 12g FRAG rounds, with a similar ballistic performance as a standard shotgun slug, though slower. So popular was the round with developers and players alike that the FRAG round was made an unlockable ammo type for shotguns in Battlefield 3.

The addition of suppression in Battlefield 3 as a gameplay mechanic gave 12g FRAG rounds a clear target design. FRAG rounds would allow players with shot guns a round with limited combat effectiveness but the capability to harass and suppress opponents at longer distances. It almost worked.

Straight out of the gate, as players ranked up a bit of fun was had with FRAG rounds in the first unlockable shotgun, the 870. As players continued to rank up, the FRAG rounds were put to the test in the semi-automatic shotguns, with greater but still limited success. Enter the USAS-12. Arguably the FRAG round was developed primarily for combat shotguns, especially automatic weapons capable of quickly putting multiple rounds on target, since each round is of limited damage itself. It was clear that in order to remain balanced, and despite it not being completely authentic, the automatic and semi-automatic shotguns would need to have their own version of the FRAG round. It was quickly patched in, for balance.

And so it seemed that all was well again, at least for a time. The FRAG rounds are an interesting bit of study, statistically speaking. On the PC, USAS-12 kills account for just 1.8% of all kills (all ammo types are included in that figure, not just FRAG rounds). On the PS3 that number climbs to just over 3% and on Xbox 360 it climbs to nearly 4%. This is a unique behavior, as not only are the FRAG rounds and the USAS identical on all three platforms, but only the stats for USAS-12 and 870 vary so drastically between platforms. Furthermore, the 870 is most popular on PC and then drops in the same order of PS3 and 360. I’ll let everyone draw their own conclusions as to why this is, though I certainly have my suspicions. Statistically, there is a worst case scenario of dying from the USAS-12 1 out of every 25 deaths.

So why does it feel so frequent? Primarily, the FRAG rounds are most effective in Battlefield 3 exactly where they would be in real life: close quarters, urban combat. When broken down by map and mode, the USAS-12 is clearly more popular in TDM and CQB maps like Grand Bazaar and Operation Metro. Players in those modes are more likely to be killed by FRAG rounds than players who run around on Kharg Island Conquest.

And what do I plan to do about it? Well, one very little, but very effective change will take place in the near future. On all other shotguns, using FRAG rounds reduces the effective rate of fire. For semiautomatic shotguns this rate drops from 200-220 rounds per minute to 180rpm, a 10% reduction. The USAS simply did not have this reduction in place. As of the next update, it will have its 275rpm reduced significantly to 200rpm. I’m actually a bit worried it’s too much, and I’m eager to hear how players react to the change.

Shotguns are easily the most difficult weapons to balance in Battlefield. Given the wide range of combat distances in Battlefield 3, shotguns must feel powerful up close, without being over powered, and weak at medium distance without being under powered. Furthermore, each map has a unique combat distance feeling, yet the performance of the weapons must feel consistent. The relatively random nature of pellet spread, or FRAG round accuracy, makes this especially difficult. The update also includes some more minor tweaks to try and help players consistently identify the effective range of their shotgun by reducing the random factors involved.

Rest assured, this won’t be the last update for balance issues in Battlefield 3. I’ll be monitoring the situation closely, and working directly with the team to make additional updates and tweaks to keep the Battlefield balanced. Let me know what you think of the latest balancing tweaks here in the comments section on the blog.

Alan Kertz
Core Gameplay Designer

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