We’re back with another Community Update focused on destruction, and a summary of our initial learnings from previous Battlefield Labs play sessions.

Let’s start with a preview on how we’re designing and testing destruction for the future.

OUR DESIGN PHILOSOPHY FOR DESTRUCTION

Our goals for destruction are centered around adding further depth to your gameplay experience. From barging through walls and surprising your enemies, to taking down buildings that stand in your path, we want you to control the environment and transform your surroundings for a tactical advantage.

We're designing destruction around easily identifiable visual and audio language that lets you understand what can be destroyed, altered, or transformed through gameplay. 

We aim to make destruction an integral part of your experience to create an intuitive, fun, and rewarding environment where you feel empowered to choose how you dominate the battlefield.

DESTRUCTION AND GAMEPLAY

Let’s take walls as an example of the new destruction language. When a wall takes enough damage from an explosion, smaller impacts, like bullets, will also contribute to its destruction, allowing you to shoot your way through it. With added audio VFX, you will not only be able to see, but hear, whether your attacks are successful. 

Different surface types now visually degrade before breaking down through persistent surface damage. Buildings “apple-core” as they start to break down, leaving their core exposed as rubble and debris pile up around it.

New mechanics allow you to deal more destruction during gameplay, while being able to change your surroundings with different weapons or vehicle types. For example, rubble caused by destruction now remains on the battlefield, allowing you to create more cover for yourself and your squad.

Above is an early pre-alpha example that showcases the ability to destroy a wall to quickly get through a building, without having to either run around the block or navigate staircases. 

Remember: Be careful in how you use destruction to your advantage, as an advantage to you is also an advantage to your enemy… 

FEEDBACK AND VALIDATION

We’re gathering a range of insights, from destruction as a tactical element, to the player’s ability to distinguish non-destructible versus destructible environments.

At this stage of testing within Battlefield Labs, our main focus points are:

• Understanding which environments can or cannot be destroyed and which type of firepower is required for different material types
• The impact of collateral damage from debris and destructible elements
• Tactical use of destruction to create new paths and environments
• Balancing the ecosystem of damage through firepower and destruction

OUR LEARNINGS SO FAR

Our goals for Battlefield Labs play sessions have been to test server performance, gunplay and movement, destruction, and for participants to get an initial understanding of what's next for Battlefield. Now, after receiving thousands of pieces of feedback from participants, we want to share some of our initial learnings and next steps coming out of those play sessions.

We encountered some initial issues with server stability and performance, providing valuable data for us to adjust their configurations. We have already seen smoother gameplay sessions after our adjustments, which means we’re on the right track to scale up the number of participants for future sessions.

For gunplay, we’re looking to further balance different weapon types and their damage values. Feedback on movement suggests our work isn’t done on finding the right balance in speed, for abilities like crouch sprint, combat rolling, vaulting, and more. Be sure to check out our previous Community Update if you are interested in learning more about our design philosophy and goals for gunplay and movement.

Lastly, as we move our focus back to destruction, we have seen feedback around the balancing of destructible objects across the map and the fine-tuning of damage levels of surfaces. Destruction will be an ongoing topic within our playsessions, and we’ll continue to test these and other areas of destruction throughout upcoming playsessions.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Sign up for Battlefield Labs now if you’re interested in joining our squad as we shape the future of Battlefield. Read our FAQ if you’d like to learn more, and join the discussion on Battlefield Discord.

We’ll be back in the future with new Community Updates to keep you informed on ongoing testing and learnings within Battlefield Labs.

See you back on the Battlefield, Soldier!

//The Battlefield Team

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.