Malorn
2011-10-10, 04:50 PM
I was playing BF3 the past few weeks (I'm sure some of our PS devs were too!) and I think there are some great things to take away from their designs.
All bugs, hit detection, etc issues aside, I thought the game has a very good design. Particularly I want to touch on things which I believe have been expressed to some extent by the PS2 team.
The big theme I see form BF3 is tradeoffs and customization.
BF3 has a pretty sweet customization system with different slots on weapons that unlock over time. In PS2 terms these unlocks would be certs. There are clear tradeoffs.
Weapon Customization
Take optics, for example. There are tradeoffs to them. Reflex sight has no zoom but its very fast aiming. As the magnification of the sights increase, the time to acquire aim increases on the optics. They have a wide range of optics so you can pick the magnification, reticule, and aim speed that most suits you. The higher power optics also had a glare as a balancing mechanic t give away a sniper position (which teaches you to displace frequently). I also found myself switching optics depending on the map. For example the Caspain Border conquest map had longer typical engagement ranges than the Operation Metro rush map. So the ability to customize my weapon to my preference was good.
Other good weapon customizations were the tradeoffs between using a laser pointer, which tightened the CoF in un-aimed fire, a tactical light which could blind the target, a suppressor, a flash suppressor, or a heavy barrel. Choose one! Great balancing mechanic both between the devices.
Each device also had its own tradeoffs. The laser pointer had the red beam that could give you away both when looking direct. The suppressor lowered damage as its downside. The heavy barrel added aimed accuracy at the expense of recoil (so you get single-shot accuracy but worse multi-shot accuracy).
There is great design here with tradeoffs between which option you choose, and each option had benefits and hinderances.
The weapons themselves were a lot of side-grades as you might say with different characteristics. Some had differing ammo capacity. Some had more damage, or different recoil. Some were designed for full automatic spraying, others for more precise shots. This reminds me a lot of what Higby mentioned about the Cycler having 4 variants that were all side grades for different characteristics. When I think about how many weapon variants I saw, 4 seems about the right number when you think about how you want it to handle and the role for the weapon. So 4 different cyclers, maybe 4 different sniper rifles or heavy assault variants, etc.
Again the theme is tradeoffs. Take the SCAR-H. It only had a 20 round magazine compared to the 30 rounds of the M4. But it fires a 7.62 not 5.56 so it had a lot more power to each shot. As a consequence it has higher recoil on automated fire but more damage per-shot and a smaller magazine. Great balancing there and both weapons are good in their own respects for slightly different purposes.
But it goes beyond just the guns - the secondary weapons and gadgets also had tradeoffs. Engineers had two that were interesting to me, the "Launcher" spot and the "Gadget" slot.
For the launcher you had to choose between the RPG, the Stinger, or the Javelin. The RPG was general-purpose, good for a variety of things and close-range vehicles, but not good against far-away vehicles or aircraft. The stinger was good against aircraft but left you vulnerable to ground vehicles. And the Javelin was not in beta but I suspect it filled the gap of hitting distant vehicles and used an IR locking mechanism (based on what it is used for in the real world). So as an engineer I had to make a choice on Caspian on which one I wanted to use. Choosing the stinger meant I had to avoid tanks like any other infantry.
For the gadget you had to choose between a repair tool, AT mines, or a robot that could repair, arm, or disarm remotely. For a rush map with vehicles I can imagine the choice might be difficult as all could be useful.
Infantry also had a bonus they could give themselves and also their squad, such as faster sprint, more ammo, explosion resistance, etc. The thing I noticed about this bonus is that the damage/suppression bonuses had corresponding resistances. Flak countered Explosion, and Cover countered suppression. This is a cool way to do the perk.
Two things they did not have:
1) body armor giving more damage absorbing
2) more damage on bullets
Both of these are must-haves if they exist and so DICE left them out so there's a real tradeoff decision among the other options. A great design decision and one that PS2 should take note of. Damage bonuses that affect the main weapon are generally not good, but other perks like ammo, explosing istane, runspeed, etc can be good tactical bonuses to your team.
Vehicle Customization
I dont' know how many of you got to try out Caspian border when they opened it up last Friday but they had some great vehicle customization options which were again tradeoffs.
Take a tank for example. It had 1 gadget slot and 1 weapon slot.
Jets were the same way. You had to choose between having an air-to-ground bomb on the jet or heat-seeking air-to-air missiles. You had to choose whether you wanted one of you gadgets to be stealth, which increased lock times.
Just browse the different vehicle unlocks and you'll see some really cool stuff, from motion sensors, IR vision, larger radar, smart bombs, stronger armor, auto-repair, stealth, IR camoflauge, faster reloading, etc.
All are tradeoffs! We can't have all of them at once, but we can tailor our vehicles to the situation and use those cusotmizations to react to what the enemy is doing. If for example the enemy was using bombers I'd put some IR camo on my tank or some IR smoke.
If PS vehicle customization is anything like this then I'll be quite happy.
The design paradigm that BF3 uses predominantly has two key points that I want to drill home.
1) X number of upgrade slots, where certain upgrades go in certain slots.
This creates a tradeoff between upgrades and allows you to avoid upgrades that might be OP if used together. It also creates a meaningful customization decision. From making the choice between a flashlight and a suppressor, or the choice between using a stinger and an RPG, I have meaningful choices as a player that will directly impact my game.
2) upgrades have upsides and downsides
This creates side-grades for just about everything. For example I love suppressors, but I also hate that in some cases it increases the number of shots to kill someone. It matters! Seeing someone at 4% life in the kill-cam after losing the engagement meant that I lost that engagement because I was using the suppressor. Had I not used it the increase in damage would have killed the opponent. However, the fact that I was using a suppressor possibly made fewer hostiles notice me, allowing me to even get that kill opportunity in the first place. I've also seen laser-pointers and flashlight beams poking out from around corners which gave away my opponents before I saw them.
If PS2 follows these good design paradigms it will be in great shape!
All bugs, hit detection, etc issues aside, I thought the game has a very good design. Particularly I want to touch on things which I believe have been expressed to some extent by the PS2 team.
The big theme I see form BF3 is tradeoffs and customization.
BF3 has a pretty sweet customization system with different slots on weapons that unlock over time. In PS2 terms these unlocks would be certs. There are clear tradeoffs.
Weapon Customization
Take optics, for example. There are tradeoffs to them. Reflex sight has no zoom but its very fast aiming. As the magnification of the sights increase, the time to acquire aim increases on the optics. They have a wide range of optics so you can pick the magnification, reticule, and aim speed that most suits you. The higher power optics also had a glare as a balancing mechanic t give away a sniper position (which teaches you to displace frequently). I also found myself switching optics depending on the map. For example the Caspain Border conquest map had longer typical engagement ranges than the Operation Metro rush map. So the ability to customize my weapon to my preference was good.
Other good weapon customizations were the tradeoffs between using a laser pointer, which tightened the CoF in un-aimed fire, a tactical light which could blind the target, a suppressor, a flash suppressor, or a heavy barrel. Choose one! Great balancing mechanic both between the devices.
Each device also had its own tradeoffs. The laser pointer had the red beam that could give you away both when looking direct. The suppressor lowered damage as its downside. The heavy barrel added aimed accuracy at the expense of recoil (so you get single-shot accuracy but worse multi-shot accuracy).
There is great design here with tradeoffs between which option you choose, and each option had benefits and hinderances.
The weapons themselves were a lot of side-grades as you might say with different characteristics. Some had differing ammo capacity. Some had more damage, or different recoil. Some were designed for full automatic spraying, others for more precise shots. This reminds me a lot of what Higby mentioned about the Cycler having 4 variants that were all side grades for different characteristics. When I think about how many weapon variants I saw, 4 seems about the right number when you think about how you want it to handle and the role for the weapon. So 4 different cyclers, maybe 4 different sniper rifles or heavy assault variants, etc.
Again the theme is tradeoffs. Take the SCAR-H. It only had a 20 round magazine compared to the 30 rounds of the M4. But it fires a 7.62 not 5.56 so it had a lot more power to each shot. As a consequence it has higher recoil on automated fire but more damage per-shot and a smaller magazine. Great balancing there and both weapons are good in their own respects for slightly different purposes.
But it goes beyond just the guns - the secondary weapons and gadgets also had tradeoffs. Engineers had two that were interesting to me, the "Launcher" spot and the "Gadget" slot.
For the launcher you had to choose between the RPG, the Stinger, or the Javelin. The RPG was general-purpose, good for a variety of things and close-range vehicles, but not good against far-away vehicles or aircraft. The stinger was good against aircraft but left you vulnerable to ground vehicles. And the Javelin was not in beta but I suspect it filled the gap of hitting distant vehicles and used an IR locking mechanism (based on what it is used for in the real world). So as an engineer I had to make a choice on Caspian on which one I wanted to use. Choosing the stinger meant I had to avoid tanks like any other infantry.
For the gadget you had to choose between a repair tool, AT mines, or a robot that could repair, arm, or disarm remotely. For a rush map with vehicles I can imagine the choice might be difficult as all could be useful.
Infantry also had a bonus they could give themselves and also their squad, such as faster sprint, more ammo, explosion resistance, etc. The thing I noticed about this bonus is that the damage/suppression bonuses had corresponding resistances. Flak countered Explosion, and Cover countered suppression. This is a cool way to do the perk.
Two things they did not have:
1) body armor giving more damage absorbing
2) more damage on bullets
Both of these are must-haves if they exist and so DICE left them out so there's a real tradeoff decision among the other options. A great design decision and one that PS2 should take note of. Damage bonuses that affect the main weapon are generally not good, but other perks like ammo, explosing istane, runspeed, etc can be good tactical bonuses to your team.
Vehicle Customization
I dont' know how many of you got to try out Caspian border when they opened it up last Friday but they had some great vehicle customization options which were again tradeoffs.
Take a tank for example. It had 1 gadget slot and 1 weapon slot.
Jets were the same way. You had to choose between having an air-to-ground bomb on the jet or heat-seeking air-to-air missiles. You had to choose whether you wanted one of you gadgets to be stealth, which increased lock times.
Just browse the different vehicle unlocks and you'll see some really cool stuff, from motion sensors, IR vision, larger radar, smart bombs, stronger armor, auto-repair, stealth, IR camoflauge, faster reloading, etc.
All are tradeoffs! We can't have all of them at once, but we can tailor our vehicles to the situation and use those cusotmizations to react to what the enemy is doing. If for example the enemy was using bombers I'd put some IR camo on my tank or some IR smoke.
If PS vehicle customization is anything like this then I'll be quite happy.
The design paradigm that BF3 uses predominantly has two key points that I want to drill home.
1) X number of upgrade slots, where certain upgrades go in certain slots.
This creates a tradeoff between upgrades and allows you to avoid upgrades that might be OP if used together. It also creates a meaningful customization decision. From making the choice between a flashlight and a suppressor, or the choice between using a stinger and an RPG, I have meaningful choices as a player that will directly impact my game.
2) upgrades have upsides and downsides
This creates side-grades for just about everything. For example I love suppressors, but I also hate that in some cases it increases the number of shots to kill someone. It matters! Seeing someone at 4% life in the kill-cam after losing the engagement meant that I lost that engagement because I was using the suppressor. Had I not used it the increase in damage would have killed the opponent. However, the fact that I was using a suppressor possibly made fewer hostiles notice me, allowing me to even get that kill opportunity in the first place. I've also seen laser-pointers and flashlight beams poking out from around corners which gave away my opponents before I saw them.
If PS2 follows these good design paradigms it will be in great shape!