Hopping admittedly a little late on the Battlefront news band-wagon (see - "I'll get round to it once work quiets down / I have some free time / hopefully it'll happen magically overnight without me having to put any actual effort into it") I thought I'd give you my two cents on the subject.
With the franchise now placed squarely on DICE's shoulders we have seen in the brief glimpses revealed so far considerable influence of the studio's style on the game. ("It's Battlefront Jim, but not as we know it" - that reference ought to rustle a few jimmies). DICE, known most prominently for the Battlefield series (yes AND Mirror's Edge; calm down) is familiar with how to handle a shooter. They've also gone out of their way to express their love for Star Wars as well. In fact, if you don't feel you haven't been beaten over the head with their efforts to quell the fear of the masses then please do let them know. I'd quite like to see the hope leave Patrick Bach's eyes when confronted with another salvo of "you've ruined my childhood". Jesting aside; DICE do seem to have gone to great lengths to make a video of them going to great lengths to make this an authentic Star Wars experience.
Enough sarcasm.
I do genuinely like DICE and appreciate the efforts they are going to.
Scene setting aside; I wanted to focus on a key area in this post rather than cover the topic as a whole.
TEAM SIZE
One of Battlefield's more contentious issues is the appropriate number of players to map size ratio. 64 player Operation-Locker-meets-rebel-base-on-Hoth would turn me off quicker than I turned off [insert film you love]. On the other hand you have the ghost town Bandar-Desert-meets-Tatooine-on-last-gen-only-with-a-Star-Destroyer-instead-of-an-AC130. There's a broad spectrum of spacing that DICE has really yet to nail. Which is why a 40-player max count strikes me as a decent proposal. 20 on 20 seems to me the perfect balance for objective gameplay whilst not jamming the map with Battle of Pelennor Fields levels of infantry. However, I have some concerns about the number of vehicles on the maps. From the short video we've seen of Walker Assault on Hoth there seem to be a large number of pilotable air vehicles comprising of X-Wings, TIE Figthers and Snow Speeders. This brings up another ratio I find critical to Battlefield enjoyment; vehicle:infantry.
I'll expand on that in two ways:
1) No matter how good you are as an individual solider; Battlefield games can normally be played out by numbers; with superior numbers normally trouncing skill. Anything that detracts from those numbers i.e. players in jets fighting their own separate fight from the rest of game detracts from useful infantry numbers on the ground.
2) In my opinion the best part of Battlefield is infantry combat supplemented by vehicle gameplay, The worst part is having the majority of players in vehicles necessitating playing as an Engineer to deal with this.
With fewer overall player count but a large ratio of available vehicles (specifcially air vehicles) to player count it seems we may fall in to another DICE regular issue of lots of irrelevant air battles with little objective focused ground gameplay (which itself will be dominated by the remaining land vehicles; AT-STs etc.).
I will add that this may be just a feature of the Hoth map. I can't imagine they'll be much air combat on Endor. Despite what I may wish DICE will still try to create a product that appeals to as many styles of gameplay as possible. Some people like the scenario I have described and even more so if it involves playing as a bad-ass TIE fighter swatting X-Wings out the air (or just flying around shooting so you can listen to that sweet, sweet laser sound effect). Having Hoth dedicated to appeasing those players whilst I and others enjoy infantry fights peppered with an AT-ST or two on Endor makes business sense.
- Norris.
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