Swedish video game developer EA Digital Illusions CE AB, better known as DICE recently addressed some of the upcoming changes to its highly popular game Battlefield 4. Linnea Harrison, the level artist at DICE talked about the game’s night-time conditions and dynamic weather in the latest Battlefield blog post.
When being asked about the implementation of night maps, Harrison said, “In general, we tend to think that night maps look pretty darn cool. But there are a few things we considered with creating night maps. Statistically speaking, most people don’t play night maps – maps set during the day get played more. We know this from tracking the numbers of maps played through on Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2.”
She went on to explain that even if the map is well-designed, users are still more inclined to use day-time maps. In addition to that, players who take cover and wait a long time to shoot someone running by in the majority of maps becomes even more usual on night maps, where it is very difficult to recognize people from objects. Harrison also said that this has proved to be very frustrating in playtests and the studio has decided to concentrate on day-time maps for Battlefield 4.
When asked about the implementation of a random weather and time of day system and why this has not been done at the beginning, she said that the studio wanted the experience to still have an emotional impact, as well as to match the adrenaline curve of a regular gameplay round.
Photo Credits: Bf4Blog
