Battlefield 2042 is DICE’s controversial 2021 entry in their long-running Battlefield series of first-person shooters. Players have ingrained expectations about what makes up a Battlefield experience, including large matches, chaotic vehicle and infantry combat, character classes, and a singleplayer story to accompany multiplayer game modes. Battlefield 2042 has come a long way since release, but a shaky start, poor map design, and minimal content on release prevented it from reaching the success of its predecessor Battlefield 1 or even Battlefield 4. Read on for a game designer’s perspective on the biggest troubles Battlefield 2042 encountered in its development cycle.
1. Unpolished release state
Battlefield 2042’s unpolished release state meant that the small amount of content available wasn’t enough to engage players. One feature of a game that players ought to never notice is the UI. The cluttered, laggy, and inconsistent UI made it hard not to be aware of the poor user experience. The UI issues were further accompanied by performance problems and glitches with netcode.
Interviews with developers inside the team suggest that UI was a major sticking point during development. Jim Hejl, former engineer with EA, said that he joined in May 2021 and discovered that the UI marker above a vehicle was just as computationally expensive as the whole vehicle itself. This startling problem brought EA’s attention to the understaffed and underfunded UI team, but it was too late to fix everything. Even six months later, UI prompts came up at strange points, with the hacker getting prompted to hack at random times. No clear UI element showed the cooldown of abilities such as Paik’s Scanner. World icons placed in the environment by other players didn’t scale down with distance, so the screen would get cluttered with distant icons. Despite the messy screen, no indicators existed for players who needed a revive, health, or ammo.
Refining the game’s performance was a challenge when COVID interrupted the development cycle. Many developers didn’t have direct access to devkits. DICE employees needed to ask other remote workers to test their changes. A significant amount of optimization occurred in the year leading up to release as a result. EA even had to send extra employees to make sure the game worked on last gen consoles. Laggy matches had to be addressed with patches two days before and six days after release. Performance drops occurred specifically after destroying silos on Breakaway, although lag spikes were an issue across the board.
UI and performance are unlike most aspects of a game because they’re only working when players don’t notice them. Not factoring in the user experience until the end of post-production guarantees a rough experience on launch.
2. Poor map design
Poor map design worked against the large, chaotic matches that Battlefield 2042 aimed at. DICE upped the chaos from the traditional 32v32 to 64v64 in 2042. The amount of mayhem possible with larger matches is impressive, but the maps didn’t keep up with the rising number of players.
The maps themselves are less dynamic due to optimization challenges. Each character chooses a Specialist, who has a set of facial animations that run during matches. The tech team decided to go with Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA), an algorithm which needs to know how fast and in what direction objects are moving. The hardware needs to render more frames ahead of time to keep up with the TAA. BF 2042 was also coming out on previous-generation consoles, making both these challenges even harder. As a result, the environmental interactions have been ramped back from previous Battlefield games. Some destruction is possible, but nothing like the building-razing in Battlefield V or the Levolution in Battlefield 4, where players were able to change the entire map.
The maps at launch included wide, barren spaces between battles. Kaleidoscope and Hourglass were the most noticeable examples of poor map pacing on laucnh. Rather than better accommodate the 128-player matches, the lack of cover made playing as infantry a frustrating experience, as aerial vehicles had a clear view of anyone crossing from one POI to another. Land vehicles were equally susceptible to fire from above, too, and the lack of anti-aircraft weaponry gave players few options for crossing these spaces.
Battlefield 2042’s maps have positive design choices worth mentioning, but not enough to get around the fundamental issues. Depending on the map, storms rip through at random points, adding more fun and chaos to the already huge matches. Hourglass has sandstorms which block visibility, and most maps have tornadoes that suck up players, vehicles, and debris. The tornado has minimal impact on gameplay, though, as it doesn’t take down buildings or jets. The lack of other major weather events (earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.) makes the weather system feel like a minor feature rather than a core aspect of gameplay.
The map Orbital deals well with the large map sizes while making the map feel like a classic, chaotic Battlefield arena, showing what the other maps are missing. The layout encourages multiple different kinds of battles at once. The map features wide open terrain for vehicle battles and a dense network of roads and buildings near the launch site that provide cover for infantry. The map has a dynamic Levolution event in the form of a rocket that takes off halfway through the match, killing unlucky players nearby. Players have the option to destroy the rocket with heavy artillery and prevent the launch if they wish. This interactive component is heavy on the spectacle, but makes for a memorable map. Orbital is considered one of the best alongside Manifest, but two out of seven maps catering to the large match size is a small consolation.
3. Technical issues and bugs at launch
Technical issues and bugs at launch resulted from challenges with COVID and updates to the Frostbite engine. The sudden shift to at-home work during 2020 made a multi-platform launch difficult. Devs needed to access devices remotely or ask other devs to test their changes on platforms that they didn’t have access to.
The Frostbite engine upgrade and challenging toolset added more time to development. There’s no way to know whether issues with the engine are a cause of technical issues, but a lack of polish isn’t helped by struggling with the tools. DICE upgraded the engine for Battlefield 2042, but several senior Frostbite developers had recently left, turning a 6-month process into a 16-month delay. Even after the upgrade, BioWare and EA engineers have discussed elsewhere how Frostbite is difficult to develop with. The editor itself is difficult to teach to new devs when they’re used to industry standards like Unreal Engine and Unity.
DICE knew the game was coming in unpolished. DICE was asking for help in May 2021 to get the game shipped, and Triple Threat, Criterion, and EA employees all joined the team to make the game work. Engineer Jim Hejl said the #rendering thread in Slack alone had 300 members when he joined, showing the mass of talent that was brought on to finish the game in the last six months.
The development challenges show in the problems that appeared on release. The matchmaking itself faced issues alongside in-game problems such as the audio system. Players had to search over and over to get a workable match. Errors popped up when loading into games, requiring players to try again. The game failed to prompt players to pick their loadout when coming into the game. The game mode Breakthrough got stuck between rounds, failing to trigger the next objective and ending the match prematurely. Bugs that prevented players from reviving or kept them in a permanently downed state didn’t always end matches, but added more fuel to the fire.
Issues with the sound were noticeable for FPS players accustomed to tracking other players through footsteps and gunfire. Directional audio simply didn’t work as intended. Some enemies sounded distant but were close, and others sounded close but were several floors away in the building. Certain vehicle sounds such as the LCAA Hovercraft weren’t hearable when behind players.
4. Lack of standard features
A lack of standard features such as leaderboards, a server browser, voice chat (at first), and a singleplayer campaign felt like a downgrade to players. Part of the playerbase found the lack of leaderboards liberating, but it seemed like an unintentional exclusion to most players. The server browser was another missing feature that Battlefield players had come to expect. Server browsers give players more control over multiplayer, making it possible to sort by ping, region, player count, map rotation, and game mode for the highest level of customization. While minor features, their exclusion made players feel like the game was a step backward from previous titles.
The lack of a singleplayer campaign gave further evidence to players this was a downgrade. The main draw of Battlefield is the multiplayer, but a campaign is still a feature players were accustomed to enjoying. The reasons for its exclusion potentially lie in the game’s early development. Battlefield 2042 started life as a response to the popularity of battle royale. Apex Legends released to great success, however, and, since its developer Respawn had recently joined EA, DICE’s battle royale was going to compete with another internal project. The early ideation for the battle royale mode turned into Hazard Zone, an extraction-shooter game mode where players must pick up data drives and exfil successfully to earn credits. The small number of game modes and focus on multiplayer is possibly a result of this pivot.
5. Insufficient content
Battlefield 2042 shipped with three game modes that offered less variety than previous Battlefield titles. The low quality of maps themselves made the lack of game modes even more of a pain point. These three game modes are titled All-out-warfare, Hazard Zone, and Portal, with All-out-warfare including two flavors, Conquest and Breakthrough. Each game mode brings a piece of classic Battlefield chaos, but comes with issues due to the match sizes and a reliance on player-driven content.
All-out Warfare consists of two sub-game modes, Conquest and Breakthrough. Both game modes task players with controlling points on the map. These game modes are variations on staple modes in the Battlefield franchise, but the 64v64 format makes teamwork impossible. Additionally, the game modes themselves are rather similar to each other. Conquest is a classic battlefield game mode where two teams battle to control the most points on the map. Breakthrough instead makes one team the attacker and the other the defender. Each time the attacking team takes a control point, the defenders are pushed back to another control point. The attackers win by taking every point. This game mode focuses players on a single goal, making teamwork in large matches easier, but it doesn’t change the player’s objectives.
Hazard Zone is Battlefield 2042’s answer to the low team-based gameplay in All-out Warfare. Gameplay works like a battle royale or extraction shooter where groups of four players drop into the map to find Data Drives. Twice per match, an MV-38 Condor flies by to pick up squads. Extracting successfully with data drives earns players Dark Market Credits (DMC), while players who don’t lose out. The more DMC players have, the better loadouts they’re able to afford when entering a match.
All-out Warfare has too little variety to keep players engaged on their own. Both game modes shared the seven launch maps. Hazard Zone felt like too much of a departure from the series, so player numbers were low. DICE stopped supporting the mode with new content six months after release because of the small showing. This meant that fans of the game only had two options to get excited about: All-out Warfare, or BF 2042’s freshest, most unique game mode, Portal.
Portal focuses on user-generated content, providing select maps from Battlefield 1942, Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 3, as well as all the factions, classes, weapons, and vehicles from those games. Players are free to mix and match factions from these games or recreate game modes from the series’ former entries. Portal mode comes with the Rules Editor, a visual scripting system that lets users create their own modes from scratch. The tool is powerful, letting players connect virtually any event to any in-game outcome. One of the developer-made modes requires players to jump five times in order to reload.
Portal relies on high player traffic to be a contender for the other game modes. Having many custom servers with a few players on each makes finding large matches difficult in Portal mode. The server browser intersperses the fun game modes between many low-quality ones, without indicating which is which until players join a match. A server where every weapon is an instant-kill sounds interesting, for example, but spawn-killing then becomes a much larger issue. A player who’s an expert with a pistol outclasses one who’s unskilled with a sniper, which doesn’t feel fun or rewarding for either side. Such a game mode is frustrating for new players and boring for the skilled players who pick them off. The lack of quality control means a player is rolling the dice on whether their time is about to be wasted.
6. Simplified vehicle combat
The simplified vehicle combat makes for less variety in maps and a more frustrating experience for infantry players. A typical balance exists for previous Battlefield games where attack helicopters are effective against infantry and jets are effective against helicopters. Ground forces with anti-aircraft (AA) weapons are effective against helicopters as well, giving players options in how they counter harassment from the air. Unlockable equipment lets players counteract a normally deadly obstacle, such as a helicopter equipped with countermeasures being more resistant to AA fire. Battlefield 2042 was less balanced in these regards, though, in particular due to the layout of the maps, nerfing of AA options, and reduction in unlockable customizations.
A major complaint from players is the imbalance between vehicles and infantry. The lack of cover in maps exposes players to air vehicles, especially in the launch versions of the maps. The traditional counters in place for dealing with aerial vehicles have been disturbed by changes to jets and AA weapons. Heat-seeking missiles now take several shots to take down a helicopter in what was one or two in previous titles. The ability for vehicles to repair over time out of combat and for engineers to repair while airborne makes them even more challenging to take down.
Traditional counters between vehicles don’t work as expected based on previous games. Jets are a hard counter to helicopters in 2042 because of the helicopter’s weakened countermeasures against missiles. Instead of destroying a missile, the countermeasures often cause it to veer off. The missile shortly reacquires and strikes the target, meaning a helicopter is only able to delay, not prevent, an attack. On the ground, tanks face more serious challenges which make them less effective as anti-infantry, encouraging players to take to the air. Several specialists, instead of a single class in previous games, have access to the Recoilless M5, a weapon that’s exceptional against tanks.
Vehicle mechanics such as the call-in system and a reduction in equipment options make vehicles feel like a downgrade from previous titles. All vehicles are now available on any map. Battlefield is known for chaotic, large matches, so this seems to contribute to frantic and crowded engagements. The fact players are able to call any vehicle to their location, though, reduces the variety between maps and makes it impossible to design a map that refines the experience for a smaller number of vehicles. Flood Zone in Battlefield 4 had a breakable levee which turned a dense, urban environment into a place suitable for naval combat, which made boats available for engagements.
Tank and helicopter operators had access to several types of optics in previous Battlefield titles, including thermal and IRNV, the latter of which works as night vision. Given that infantry in Battlefield 2042 have thermal scopes, the loss of this ability in vehicles feels like a downgrade. The optics had the potential to create interesting encounters in the sandstorms on Hourglass.
7. Misleading marketing
The misleading marketing of the game’s development and the shift in its live service plan damaged player trust in the months following release. A lack of communication between EA management and DICE was evidenced in statements made to shareholders. The chaotic launch prevented DICE from following up on live service plans as well. A change of plans in project management is common, but premium editions of the game were sold at a higher cost on the promise of certain content coming out in year one.
Players make much of what the EA CEO said in February 2021 about the state of the game. The EA CEO and CFO said in an earnings call that Battlefield had passed its milestones early and was “way ahead of schedule” compared to previous titles at similar stages of development.
The fact that 2042 had yet to figure out key gameplay systems by Feb. 2021 showed that the CEO’s statement wasn’t coming from the team. The UI team’s issues were causing serious performance problems three months after EA’s statement, and there was no possibility of the game being in a more playable state before that. The set of blend shapes for facial animations, a major system for the new specialist, wasn’t finished until that summer. Given the nature of managing large projects and game development, the only lesson to be learned here is to avoid making promises without knowledge of the team’s progress.
The Battlefield seasonal content is viewed as misleading marketing by some players. Battlefield 2042 sold with a year one pass pack that offered the first four full battle passes for ~$40, but the rollout of content was much slower than expected. The given timeline was a 3-month season, but players who paid the extra $40 had to wait seven months. The team was delayed by making sure the product was finished and balanced before adding new content. The promised four seasons came out in about 15 months given their quick second season, meaning DICE did follow through on the content as quickly as possible given the rocky release.
What can game designers learn from Battlefield 2042’s failure?
Game designers can learn from Battlefield 2042’s failure what happens when nothing is allowed to push back a release date despite serious challenges. Going fully remote makes QAing content a serious challenge, and that QA cannot wait until the last few months. The result is to guarantee the first six months of live service are spent fixing issues that belong in a closed alpha.
A number of external factors meant that DICE certainly had the ability to make a better game given more time. The shift from unplayable alpha to release in six months shows what the devs are capable of with the resources of EA behind them. The Frostbite upgrade, COVID-19 pandemic, and deadline pressures got the better of them, though. Losing one year to developing the engine and another year to working from home meant Battlefield 2042 only left pre-production in August 2020, according to Tom Henderson’s interviews with DICE developers. A 15-month development cycle was simply too short for a major Battlefield title, and a delayed release was likely the best solution to the problems the game encountered.
QA issues don’t wait until the end of the development cycle. The whole team is crucial for shipping the game, and unexpected issues in any area, like UI, have the potential to strain the whole release. QAing the game’s performance and stability early, especially for a multiplayer shooter, is crucial. The UI team was known to be understaffed, underfunded, and over budget already before production, but a major effort to deal with the UI issues waited until EA engineers discovered the issues six months before release.
One design lesson to be learned here is that larger maps require more than scaling up. Increasing the space between landmarks creates empty zones that feel unfinished and affect gameplay. The lack of cover and safe routes through maps like Hourglass or Kaleidoscope made the experience frustrating for infantry. Players need cover and clear, guiding routes between locations. DICE’s rework of Kaleidoscope two years after release shows they understood these principles. The rework removed half the map and limited vehicle spawns to the map’s open side, establishing open areas as vehicle-only zones while infantry uses the city for cover.
Leaving expected core features out gives the impression of an unpolished release. The lack of a scoreboard is a small feature, but an oft-mentioned one in criticism of the game’s launch. Players don’t know the designer’s intentions. The design team possibly wished to try something different by obscuring the player’s position during the match, but players don’t receive the developer’s intention—just the game as it is. Even if the decision was unintentional, it brings us back to point 1, that issues with UI ought to have been identified earlier.
Publishers need a clear idea of the key benchmarks in any game’s development. DICE developers interviewed after the fact said they weren’t sure why the EA CEO said Battlefield 2042 was ahead of schedule, as none of the developers at DICE felt that way. An anonymous developer interviewed by Tom Henderson suggested that the high number of art assets making it into the game suggested a high stage of completion, but they didn’t see anything else that indicated the game was far along. Making all the gameplay systems, mechanics, netcode, audio, and UI/UX components work properly together requires extensive QA and playtesting. Knowledge of game development would make it obvious that the look of a game isn’t a metric for its completion. A close connection between the teams working on the game and management is necessary to present a united front to the community.
