Home Gaming DICE provides in-depth details on how its fixing Battlefield V’s time-to-kill problem

DICE provides in-depth details on how its fixing Battlefield V’s time-to-kill problem

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Battlefield V has a problem with people dying too quickly. Well, some people think it has a problem with people dying too quickly. I think it has a problem with people not able to GIT GUD! Jokes aside though, Battlefield V’s gunplay is significantly more unforgiving than previous titles, as the slightest mistake in approach or positioning will get you dropped before you know what happened. This reduced time-to-kill has actually been praised by huge parts of the community for rewarding skilled players, but the issue is that for any new players, the learning curve in getting to grips with the combat is painfully steep.

Developer EA DICE is aware of this, as they recently stated that they want to get the community involved in fixing this rather sensitive issue. As outlined in a post on the Battlefield subreddit, Battlefield Global Community Manager Dan Mitre revealed that the team is very conscious that many consider the current TTK to be “perfect as is”. However, he went to state that while “not extremely vocal within our deeply engaged community, we see from our game data that the wider player base is dying too fast leading to faster churn – meaning players may be getting frustrated with dying too fast that they choose not to log back in and learn how to become more proficient at Battlefield V.”

To that end, DICE is not changing the TTK itself but rather tweaking damage stats that will make the experience a bit more forgiving. Mitre outlined these changes in extreme detail, showing how bullet damage has been changed depending on which body parts get hit. You can check out the changes in the table below, where the values in red are the originals.

On top of these damage model changes, weapon stats are also being tweaked with the overall effect being that it will now take more bullets to kill an enemy in certain situations. You can see the changes below, with the original values in bold.

  • Semi Auto Rifles:

    • Gewehr 43, Selbstlader 1916: Drop to 4 Bullets To Kill around 39 m (never).

    • Turner SMLE: Drops to 4 BTK around 28 m (50 m), 5 BTK around 68 m (never).

    • Gewehr 1-5: Drops to 4 BTK around 13 m (30 m), 5 BTK around 44 m (50 m), 6 BTK around 63 m (never).

    • M1 Carbine: Drops to 5 BTK around 39 m (50 m), 6 BTK around 63 m (never).

  • Assault Rifles:

    • Can no longer 4 hit kill with body shots only.

    • Drop to 6 BTK around 21 m (50 m), 7 BTK around 53 m (never).

  • LMGs, MMGs:

    • Can no longer 4 hit kill with body shots only.

    • Drop to 6 BTK around 21 m (50 m), 7 BTK around 57 m (never).

  • SMGs:

    • Can no longer 4 hit kill with body shots only.

    • Drop to 6 BTK around 15 m (25 m), 7 BTK around 32 m (50 m), 8 BTK around 49 m (75 m), 9 BTK around 70 m (never).

    • MP34 does not drop to 9 BTK at range.

  • Self-Loading Rifles:

    • Will now require one extra shot when hitting the lower body, arms or legs unless the other shot is a headshot.

  • Buckshot Shotguns

    • Unchanged: Same damage.

  • Slug Shotguns:

    • Slightly adjusted: Will deal less damage when hitting lower body, arms or legs.

So yes, DICE is proposing changes to the game that will cater more to the newer players, but the way they’re doing it is unexpected. What they’ve essentially done here is to just nerf ranged combat, and make the weapons that already have low ammo counts now require more ammo to kill people. Naturally, this has left the veteran community rather riled up, as the flood of negative comments on that thread can attest, with many fearing that the drop off in ranged effectiveness will promote “zerging”, where huge groups of players just run across open sightlines instead of approaching engagements tactically (though it could also be said that a slower TTK at range makes more sense as you generally tend to have more people firing at you than at close range).

I actually agree with a fair bit of the criticism, but the anger about now running out of ammo quicker should actually be directed at the bloody annoying Support players who run right by you without dropping ammo packs even when you ask for them (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND I HOPE YOU GET A PAPER CUT!). So too, as some have pointed out, headshot damage is not being affected at all, so skilled players who can make those critical hits consistently won’t be affected by this. Also, pistols and bolt-action rifles will also perform better now.

On top of that, during all this vitriol, a fair amount of people are completely overlooking the fact that as DICE promised previously, these changes will be running alongside a “Conquest Core” playlist that has all the original settings still intact. DICE want the players to compare the two extremes, and then, based on feedback, will adjust accordingly.

It’s definitely still not a perfect situation though, as community sentiment is already soured by a number of bugs that have crept into Battlefield V since release. DICE is addressing these bugs – a patch just dropped yesterday to fix up a number of issues – but more persist, with a couple of them really hampering the experience (I’ve been a frequent victim of the “double loading screen” issue that forces me to drop out of a server after a round ends). There are also other requests the community has been very vocal about, particularly around matchmaking (joining a group of friends in a game when they’re already in a full squad, something that had always been possible before, is a ridiculously cumbersome process now) that is just holding the game back a bit from really being as good as it could be.

Last Updated: December 12, 2018

3 Comments

  1. I actually really like this approach and I’m keen to see how it feels.

    Reply

  2. Magoo

    December 13, 2018 at 08:03

    Good riddance to spray and pray. Learn how to aim, alleged “veterans”.

    Reply

  3. Admiral Chief

    December 13, 2018 at 08:23

    Wow, bullets killing people fast?

    😛

    Reply

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