The Battlefield franchise has always prided itself for its excellent gameplay and diversity. EA has been taking some major steps in moving their franchise forward. Apart from moving the franchise from modern day environments to World War II era environments, the company has made some drastic changes to the way how Battlefield plays out to be.
Ever since the launch of Battlefield 1, EA has made Battlefield V more accessible than ever. Anyone could jump in a game, rack a few kills and call it a game. The company has had fairly competitive tiles in the past. However, recent changes have changed the way how people look at the Battlefield franchise. Nowadays, people barely think of Battlefield 1 as a competitive title and it is fairly straightforward. I think most people would agree with me when I say that there’s barely any learning curve left in the recent Battlefield titles. You just run and gun and join the chaos, and this isn’t how the Battlefield franchise should move forward.
EA learnt this with the launch of the “Incursions mode” in Battlefield 1 with the recruitment of a former professional Battlefield 4 player, Florian Le Bihan (aka DRUNKKZ3), who had been on Fnatic’s Battlefield 4 team. Last year, EA recruited Florian Le Bihan to work with them on the new Incursions mode that clearly showed EA’s interest in the e-sports scene. Being a former professional player, it’s obvious that their new recruit had some excellent ideas to cultivate through his experience. Not only did he work on Battlefield 1’s Incursions mode, but is also now working on Battlefield V’s experience too.
Regarding his role at EA, he defines himself as a Competitive Designer:
My title is Competitive Designer. On a daily basis, I work on creating designs for a large variety of aspects of the game including gameplay, game modes and map design and for Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 1 Incursions.
Last month, we discussed what changes Battlefield V would bring to the table, and these changes are immense. These changes give massive overhauls to the HUD, spotting mechanics, spray patterns, health regeneration, ammo packs and a ton more.
Enemy players could no longer be spotted and marked as soon as you seed them. Unlike previous Battlefield titles where you would simply see an enemy pop up on the radar and have a marker on its head, Battlefield V wants to play otherwise. Previous Battlefield titles, especially Battlefield 1 wasn’t really challenging to play. As soon as you got down, you had the chance to see enemies you would had never seen in the first place and kill them off guard. This mechanic not only forced Battlefield 1’s gameplay times to be shorter as players racked in kills, but also removed the competitive factor from the game.
Spotting players would be much harder in Battlefield V. With Battlefield V, you would have to rely on your senses to detect enemy movement similar to CSGO where sound plays a major role in determining any form of movement. These factors would change the way how we see the Battlefield franchise immensely. We have a separate article covering everything that has changed in Battlefield V that you could read here.
Since Florian Le Bihan is responsible for making Battlefield V with new map designs and gameplay tactics, we could see EA heading into the right direction. And considering that EA is making some massive changes in the game, we could expect EA to release an open BETA of the game, similar to the launch of the open BETA of Battlefield 1 two years ago.
Considering his experience and his role at EA, the man has quite a job that he would excel at. As I expected, the former professional player has been looking for first-hand feedback on Twitter. He says that the number one thing that Battlefield fans are keen about is about how much the gameplay has changed with this release.
If there’s anything that I would love Battlefield V this year, it would be the fact that EA finally realized how important it is to make Battlefield V challenging again. I’m sure, within the next three months before its launch, EA would try to make the game as balance as possible. Can’t wait to look forward for this release personally.
Battlefield V is set to launch on the October 19th, 2019 on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
