Control the Battlefield: Hacker Mode

Hardline Agents,

Man, this Open Beta is a riot! After years of hard work, being this close to launch is electrifying. While we all eagerly await the final release, let me explain our philosophy behind another Battlefield Hardline feature: Hacker Mode.

Hackers are vigilantes, above the war on the streets and helping whichever side of the law suits them. Their arsenal consists of subroutines, used to gain access to useful systems such as GPS tracking on phones, CCTV cameras in buildings, and many others. With their plethora of subroutines, an expert Hacker has as many actions per minute as their agent counterparts on the streets below.

I’m not going to enumerate the many Hacker abilities – our game already explains the individual subroutines and their uses. Instead, I want to get into the design philosophy.

This starts with you.

Hacker is in many ways an upgrade from Commander Mode in Battlefield 4. In order to truly improve upon it, like many other facets of Hardline, we’ve listened to our community. Your reactions and anecdotes from previous Battlefield experiences, both positive and negative, guided our development of Hacker into what it is today.

Control the Map and Help Your Team

Hacker Mode has three core tenets: help the team, control the map, and make it fair. All of the Hacker’s subroutines were created with those ideas in mind. Note that none of those principles involve killing. Sure, Hackers have abilities that can be lethal but those are secondary to their main purpose. Take the Gas System Backdoor, for instance. Hackers can infiltrate a building’s security system to filter a noxious gas through its fire suppression terminals, essentially turning an entire room into a gas grenade. Were an enemy agent to walk through that room, the gas could indeed be lethal.

But that’s not how it usually goes down.

What actually happens is a bit more subtle: enemy agents see the hacked Gas System and avoid it. This is an example of the Hacker playing puppet-master, using complex systems to alter the player’s behavior and control the map. Now, the Hacker’s own team knows the room is dangerous for their enemies, so they can focus on bottlenecking other routes.

However, gassing a room for an entire match would be a bit too powerful. Eventually the gas will run out or an enemy agent with a Gas Mask can run into the room and disable the Gas System, making the Hacker’s system feel more grounded and fair. We’ve pushed to make every Hacker subroutine have a similar narrative. It helps friendly agents on the ground, it gives the team more territorial control, but it can also be countered either by agents or by an enemy Hacker.

Your Way to Being a Master Hacker

You should know that just as in the agent metagame progression systems, Hackers also have their own progress, upgrading subroutines while playing, gaining Coins and Bounties and vying for Assignments. Another FYI: we’ve removed the barrier to entry - you can take control of an open Hacker slot at any point in a match and once you feel you’ve had your Hacker fill, you can head directly back to the streets, playing as an agent.

I hope this post has shown you a bit of our theory – I’m excited to see it put into practice. See you all on the Battlefield...soon.

Ben Gaciu
Systems Designer | Battlefield Hardline
@TheSureBen