Class Archetypes or another way to limit player choice.

Battlefield V General Discussion
1

It looks like with BF5 closed alpha people forgot about soldier archetypes. And for some reason, youtubers like Westie think that archetypes will add more flexebility when picking right equipment for the job.

That is a big fat lie. Let me explain.

Right now we have a total freedom of choice in every modern BF game. We can use whichever gadget, weapon of grenade combination that is assignet to the class that we play. So if I want to use ammo box and ammo pouch on the support class, I can do that, or AT mine and AT grenade on the assault class, nobody is restricting me. Furthermore, I can assign my very own class preset using 3 available preset slots and name them as I want so that I can pick a preset that is designed BY ME for certain maps and combat roles.

In BF5 however, every class will have its own pre-made set of weapons, gadgets etc BY DICE, and we won’t have any freedom to pick gadget or a grenade combo that we like. Ringing any bells yet? EXACTLY! Its copy paste vehicle loadouts that we have in BF1 right now, slappedon top of class system and coated with ‘new and exciting way’ sauce made by Dice.
Great example was in the alpha. Support archetype with Bren Gun had access to ammo pouch, and archetype with MG34 had access to ammo box. So heres a problem, I want to use ammo box because I don’t want to constantly throw ammo pouches like a baseball pitcher, but I can’t because then I would have to switch archetype and use this useless MMG.

And this is only a tip of the iceberg. I can already see 2 archetypes having 2 gadgets that I want to use together, but I can’t because they’re locked behind different archetypes. I’m expierencing same issue in BF1, heres how. Assault tank, Field assault loadout has yolo pigeon strike and quick repair,and I like that, but its secondary canister shot is pretty bad because it doesn’t compliment my playstyle, so I would like to have HMG as a secondary weapon, but too bad because its locked for Standoff assault variant.

I just don’t understand Dice’s logic behind all this nonsense. Up untill BF1 we have a total freedom of choice when it comes to picking the right loadout for you. Why is Dice telling me how to play? I am the player, I must have a choice.

Honestly, after digging deeper and deeper into BF5, I’m getting closer to canceling my pre-order.

Thanks for listening.

2

  1. This is alpha. Not everything was ready and there’s possibly gadget customisation coming. We don’t know yet.

  2. Battlefield is RPG game in sense of character classes. They’re potentially going back to roots of BF 1942 and 2 in a way of having pre-selected equipments available for each archetype. You are playing the role, not “creating” it by mixing and matching available items together.

  3. Balancing. Now they can pinpoint issues into less used and overused archetypes and see if something is needing to be fixed. When classes are open, by patching one thing you patch unintentionally a lot of other combinations too.

  4. Complementing. Each archetype will have clear strengths and weaknesses now which must be complemented by others. This makes me think that it would make more sense to have archetype specific icons instead of general class ones which don’t tell that much about them.

3

This.

4

I’d rather have them apply some limitations in the attempt to keep things balanced

Sure, the free for all method gives you more explicit freedom, but it also creates clear “winner” and “loser” gadget options

Like Foot_Elite says, specifically points 3 and 4

5

I have yet to play BFV so don’t know how they play out, but archetypes do seem a good idea. They do restrict choice, but they would make balancing a lot easier.

6

We already have variants in BF1 that are completely useless like gas assault tank or mortar landship or squad support light tank, and completely overpowered like heavy breakthrough tank. And Dice haven’t balanced them out which resulted in 90% usage for one loadout, and 10% for another. And we’re about to face a situation where in order to use a usefully gadget, you would have to use garbage class. And no, Dice.are terrible at balancing things, so they’re digging a hole for themselves.

7

I agree with OP. More choices don’t hurt anyone. Less choices are a negative to the game. With the competition this game is facing this year from other games I’d recommend EA/DICE not screwing with their fans. They’ve already pi$$ed off too many as it is with the changes they’ve made that will cost them. Premade classes take away freedom of play and creativity and we should expect more choices of how we play not less.

8

I’m not convinced yet but I’ll wait until we see all the archetypes in action before saying if I like it or not.

It’s hard to judge the impact this will have on the game when we only saw a very limited number of archetypes in the alpha. Hopefully all of them will be available in the beta so that we can test this properly before release and give DICE some informed feedback on this new system.

I’m not sure that this will make balancing easier, I actually think that it could be the opposite. I think that the more sub classes you have in a game the harder it becomes to balance them all. I expect some archetypes to be a lot better than the others and balancing everything might become quite a challenge for DICE, even more than what it is now. We’ll see…

9

You don’t really have unlimited parameters to design your class, at the moment, in BF1. You only have some options. If you could redesign the Assault Tank/Field Assault loadout to incorporate the HMG it would probable put the vehicle over budget for it’s weapons output.

One can only speculate (hahaha) how devs come up with how each class/kit/archetype/loadout is defined, but they might use a points-based scoring system to manage the budget of each ‘type’.

If each of the Assault Tank’s loadouts had a total budget of 1,000 points, then each component of the loadout will have a cost. If the arty strike costs 600 points of the budget then it only leaves 400 points for the rest.

A simple budget like this would make it easy to balance the loadouts.

I think the devs are aiming to encourage cooperation or teamwork between players in BFV and to that end they may have made gadgets expensive items within the loadout budget in order to build archetypes that promote ‘teamwork’.

That would make the archetypes distinct from one another.

It also makes the vehicles loadouts distinct in BF1 which creates a feeling of emerging technology of vehicle warfare in BF1.

Or am I nuts?

10

I am mixed. One hand I don’t care for a thousand guns etc and to me less is more. On the other hand don’t think we will see greater balance. As was pointed out, the tanks and planes use this system and aren’t balanced.

I think they are mainly doing this for an esports angle or to ride the trends of other games or to make it easier for newcomers to get into the game instead of seeing a thousand choices.

In BF42 we had 5 choices for infantry which were the 5 static classes, and then you didn’t choose what tank or plane you wanted. You just clicked on the plane or tank that was available. The weapons/vehicles were slightly different on each side though.

11

The heavy breakthrough tank is far from overpowered. If you have a selfish tanker the auto cannons for the gunnners will hardly be of use and the main cannon of the driver is AT so it is worthless against infantry. The shotgun secondary is cool but not great for multiple enemies. It is balanced by this reason. We know nothing about how the archetypes will play out until launch day. Everything from now to then is up for fixing so until then crying wolf is unnecessary.

12

You can customize your character and make them look how you want, but god forbid you take what weapons and gadgets out that you want.

I totally didn’t realize how limited the BF1 tanks were when compared to past games, and now I do. That is dumb. If they really are bringing this into normal classes that is terrible.

13

I think the archetype system is a great idea.

14

I feel like that this is a good idea only if it is used as a template, like they can be edited, knowing how battlefield has been since bad company and bad company 2, they will probably allow customization to a degree.

15

Finally more people are starting to understand that Archetypes will poison this game, not cosmetics. The exact same thing happened to me in the Alpha, I couldn’t run the support gadgets or weapons I wanted because of the selected Archetype I had. This is a continuation of the rock paper scissors gunplay design that DICE wanted, play the game the way they want you to play or GTFO. If we could make our own archetypes, then what is the bloody point of even having them? Pigeonholing me into a restricted subcategory and restricting my choices is just bad game design. We already had specializations and class specific weapons to differentiate roles and specialize a niche role if we wanted to, no need to reinvent the wheel.

16

Everything is turning into either Overwatch, R6S, or Fortnite! Stupid AAA titles only go after trends instead of setting them nowadays.

17

Completely agree, Battlefield is just another slave to trends.

18

Why?

19

Sounds like bf2

assault
anti tank
support
medic
spec ops
sniper

like they’re trying to balance kit options with weapons. I’m not really for or against it as of now.

20

I have yet to play and we don’t know all the archetypes so can’t say if it will work or not. If we are going to have a class system then they must be balanced with their pros and cons. The problem is people want each class to be good at everything. Scouts want to be able to snipe people at 250m but also be able to easily kill people in close quarters - you can’t have both, so you have to chose between the Scout archetype with a sniper rifle for longer ranges or smg for up close. Similarly with supports. You can’t be able to run and gun with a 100round LMG with infinite ammo and a ready supply of grenades, so instead you get a choice between using a a belt fed LMG with infinite ammo, but poor hipfire, or a more mobile LMG like the Bren, which has a smaller mag for if you want to be Rambo.
.
Im someone who never liked the fact that in BF1 Assualts had the sniper rifle rocket gun to OHK from half way across maps when they are meant to be the close quarters class, or medics with rifle grenades. Once the system is up and running properly and we see all the weapon and gadget combos I may change my mind, but i like the idea at the moment.