Battlefield 3

THE BUZZ: Alan Kertz, Core Gameplay Designer on Battlefield 3, has discussed how player feedback plays a major part in balancing the game.

Basically speaking Kertz explains that even though players moan about needed fixes, such as “The USAS-12 and FRAG rounds are Over Powered” or “MAV elevators have got to go,” it’s not as simple as making a knee-jerk decision to fix it straight away. Fixing one players problem may impact another player who enjoys these things.

“What’s game breaking for balance to one player is the very thing that helps another enjoy the game. It’s my job to pick which issues to fix, how to fix them, and analyze their overall impact on the game,” he explains.

Kertz goes on to describe how other developers end up surprising their communities with game breaking bugs and nasty surprises with their update, but the DICE team has tried to avoid this with Battlefield 3.

“I really wanted to avoid that situation for Battlefield 3, so we’ve tried a series of different approaches. Various update change lists have been posted on Battlelog for all to see during the development of this update. And many changes and additions (and even deletions) have been made in response.”

“To me, this process has been a huge success. The clearly unnecessary changes were removed based directly on community feedback, and some changes that may have swung the balance pendulum too far in the other direction have been moderated,” he concluded.

EGM’s TAKE: The team has obviously put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that Battlefield 3 remains balanced and fair without removing too much fun from the game. We feel that they have doen a fantastic job with this and we hope they continue in this fashion. Getting fans more involved with potential updates will certainly help keep the community calm and happy.

Source: Battlefield Blog