In my experience, there are two kinds of tank in Battlefield games. There are the ones driven by other people, which are cut from solid granite yet move like ballet dancers. And then there are the ones driven by me, which are made out of candy floss and handle like shopping trolleys. Possibly, this reflects some kind of underlying “skill issue”, but come now, that’s speculative reporting that flies in the face of logic. Clearly it’s a balancing issue. Here’s Battlefield 6 lead producer David Sirland with a little more, based on learnings during the new shooter’s multiplayer beta.
You may have found that the tanks, helicopters, jeeps and jets on show in said Battlefield 6 beta were somewhat squishy, versus the hardiness of infantry and especially, engineers equipped with anti-tank mines and rockets. Responding to an aggrieved Xitter post (as reported by PCGamer), Sirland acknowledged that there’s a balancing issue here, but also, suggested that developers DICE, Ripple, Motive and Criterion may have lowballed the rides to begin with, in order to set a good foundation.
“That is a balance issue wholesale, not specific to this special situation however,” he wrote, when one user complained about the potency of said engineers and their dastardly munitions. “And one we are actively working on. Rather have too weak vehicles over too powerful to start. Its a tricky one as players get better at using them over time as well.”
I find this both funny and interesting. Funny because Battlefield 6 has made a drinking game out of slaughtering vehicles in trailers: those choppers certainly don’t seem fit for much besides blowing up. And interesting because it’s a quick glimpse into the ever-gripping intricacies of game balancing.
There is arguably no such thing as “good balance” inasmuch as balancing is an on-going process – developers have to keep adjusting the mixture to keep up with the ingenuity and quirks of clashing groups of players, while hazily targeting some kind of optimal all-round experience. Sirland’s aside has made me consider the prospect that developers might deliberately ship a game they consider ‘unbalanced’ because they’re trying to anticipate how player behaviour might evolve. They’re trying to balance for how people will be playing in a few month’s time, perhaps. A fearful gamble, indeed.
Add these insights to EA’s longer, official account of how they’re changing Battlefield 6 based on the beta playtest. There are vehicle-heavy maps coming in future Battlefield Labs playtests, so we can get another sense of the curiously variable sponginess of those tanks, which assuredly has nothing to do with the steadiness of my thumbs.
The final game will release on October 10th. The single player story sees the US army trying to save NATO from a rogue PMC, which I think is a bit daft given the current US administration’s foreign policies.