Great to hear the ‘always on’ BF4 model of medals is the way you are thinking. That’s fantastic. I echo a lot if the other feedback here in that they generally seem meaningful and achievable- great!!!
I think I potentially had one bug with a support daily task to build one fortifications as support. In game I built about 5 at A flag on Rotterdam and saw the in game notification display as built. However the task did not pop for me. If there is more detailed requirements to do this then I would suggest making it clearer or as clear as possible what the specific requirements are, to avoid any ambiguity. If it’s a bug, all the better for squishing it.
We need to be able to work on any assignment, anytime. Having to track a medal for it to progress is an unecessary restriction, and it was so restrictive with random weeklies in BF1 I gave up on medals completely, despite being a completionist in most games. It's fine to actively track only a few, but be able to make progress on any. Progress should be shown more clearly too, I'm never sure whether I progressed on an assignment within a match or life until I see the end of round screen. Rewards are also not communicated clearly, I still have no idea what actually triggers getting shipments in the armory, and I never know I have a shipment until I leave a match and check the armory. The assignments themselves seem fine, most are centered around objectives and they don't seem terribly difficult like BF1's assignments.
^ This. No offense Mr. Rodders but I saw the artificial restrictions to progression built into the game coming from a mile away after seeing how medals were handled in BF1. Sure the medals in BF1 don't DO anything beyond just giving XP but I know that the perpetual carrot on a stick for this live service game NEEDS these restrictions. I don't want any unlocks to be gated behind timed exclusivity, especially not ones that can add statistical modifiers to the weapons. BF4 had the perfect system and tracking a medal or assignment was not necessary, it was just there for our convenience and could be done any time.
Not commenting on the what but the hows. In BF1 it was annoying that you had to follow weekly achievements, service assignments and community missions through different UIs (add Weapon unlocks to this list).
To be honest I feel like BF V isn't a lot better. You have those assignments you pick which seems to be an advantage but then there's tides of war and the assignments seem to stack up as well. I wish UX was more about interaction design than ui design at Dice. I'd really like to see how you do user tests as they could help clearing up the UI mess.
Reading the comments shows us the predicament you are in Rodders.
On one hand people want things quite simple and easy whereas on the other people enjoy the tricky stuff. Some want assignments to be stuff you do in normal gameplay, others like the more convoluted ideas.
I think that dailies should be normal run of the mill playstyle things such as capturing objectives, killing infantry, supplies, revives, building forts etc. The numbers are for you and the design team to decide, you have the player metadata and can tailor the requirements to the average playtime per day. Dailies serve the purpose of handing out some currency just for turning up.
On to assignments, firstly remove this 1 out of 2, 3 out of 5 idea. It trivialises things and has no place in assignments (for dailies it's fine). It also wastes your time as a designer coming up with ideas that players will just skip for the more simple requirements in order to get assignments done faster.
Have some kind of history tracking so we know what has been completed with maybe upcoming assignments greyed out to hide the requirements.
I like the idea of choosing 4 to work on out of the pool of unlocked. As previously said allow us to select them in-game too.
Don't be afraid of difficult or of things that have nothing to do with standard playstyles. Getting x kills etc is fine but simply increasing the numbers further on down the same chain is just lazy design and feels like unnecessary padding (You want us to get 500 kills ? just list that rather than have it accumulate over a number of consecutive assignments).
Be creative and make the original numbers high, you can always patch them lower based on feedback and statistics later if they really are impossible without having given away assignments on the cheap early on in the games lifetime.
Gating based on progression is fine, artificial gating just to delay things is not, random is an absolute no-no (think BF1 medals being randomly chosen 4 per week).
Special items and perks at the end of assignment chains gives players something to actually achieve. BF1 scaled this down with the top tier assignments just giving dog tags and weapons only rewarded through basic kill quests.
Bottom line, give us something to play for as most of us hit the boredom threshold pretty quickly with nothing more to do than play the standard game modes.
Can you change the circle progression to text or at least have text in the circles?
Also is there a way you can sort or categorize the assigments by class or gametype?
For the rest I like this Assignment system.
I really enjoyed doing the assignments in bf1 so knowing they're going to be in bfv is great news.
It would be good if the notification on accomplishing an assignment was more obvious, I got the beta dog tag without noticing which was a bit disappointing.
I don't mind dog tags and specialist equipment being a challenge but I think a tough assignment to get coins can be a bit of a chore and hardly worth the effort.
Great feedback on the feedback. This is what I like to see. ^^
Agreed. Thank you for taking the time to do this, Rodders. This was an excellent response and addressed many of the questions and concerns raised earlier. Much appreciated. Its refreshing to hear you acknowledge that some assignments aren't tracking.
For me personally, the new assignment system is one of the most positive changes in the BFV beta. I'm very glad to hear you are working toward the BF4 approach to the new Medal system. Allowing players to progress all medals simultaneously is exactly what I'd hoped for. I hope that intention makes it into the final game.
Same goes for the special assignments. I'm really glad to see that we are able to select and swap our special assignments at will, and combine those that we can simultaneously complete. Yes, this was fairly easy to do, and I did make a concious decision to do this a few times during the beta. As you said this adds another layer of "gaming" to the system which promotes fun.
Regarding your question of "How can we ensure that the community feedback feels addressed?" Responses in the relevant forum threads, as you've taken the time to do here, are the perfect way to show that community concerns are heard. Much prefered over twitter, reddit, etc. Patch notes seem sufficent for closing the loop on bugfix type issues. But, there can be long timespan between patches. So quick ack on bug reports in forums are always helpful (time permitting). On the topic of bugs. Will there be an official BFV bugtracker, like there is for BF1? Will be great to have this at launch.
It would be good if the notification on accomplishing an assignment was more obvious, I got the beta dog tag without noticing which was a bit disappointing.
One of the challenges with creating assignments is how to create them so that most players will be able to complete them? For me personally, I think it's important that the games we make are not impossible to complete -- and sometimes with just enough challenge to make us push our skills to that next level.
But in Battlefield the distance between our casual players and our expert players is very wide. So to that end I wanted to give you agency to choose how best to progress through an assignment with the intent that skilled players can complete the assignment faster -- getting more rewards more often. Effectively get better at the game to get stuff faster. While players who might not be able to complete the skilled task can still grind away and complete it eventually.
This is why there's open options in assignments: so that you have the power to choose what's the most fun for you.
This design intent is especially applied to the weapon "Proficiency" and "Mastery" chains where the reward is visual customization for your weapon. Which, by the way, is intended to be the only way you can earn those skins. In the Beta this was how you could earn the "Factory New" and "Custom Woodland" skins.
But those weapon assignments were a bit too repetitive. We had too many tiers with "Kills in 1 life" or "Kills". And the difference between "Proficiency" and "Mastery" weren't felt to be significant.
So to address the weapon and class assignment chains we're going to be re-designing them a bit. Here's the intent:
Assignment chains should feel like a journey which will improve my skills as a player.
Assignment chains will have less repetition (less but not removed all together).
"Proficiency" and "Mastery" will have the same pattern repeated, but will be significantly harder. Mastery should feel like a hard challenge that only the top players can complete.
For weapon assignments, the best parts of the skins will only be unlocked by skill: a harder, but faster skill challenge, or a longer, but easier skill challenge.
These changes are specific only to the assignment chains unlocked by leveling up a class or weapon.
Yes, our UI needs to be clearer. The team is aware and they're working on it, but I'm not the right designer to speak to any intent or changes there. For assignments, I'll strive to make it easier to manage them in-game.
Dailies and Assignments aren't the only challenges that can be chased in BFV, we will of course have Dog Tags and Medals too. Medals will see a return to something closer to BF4's medals where they're always tracking in the background and they're not time limited.
Bugs I found:
Support Proficiency III Challenge kills from Stationary not counting in Flak, HMG, or Anti-tank guns
Combat Medic Challenge revives not registering if done in objective area
STG44 Mastery VII description says to do 50 kills defending but in game counter is 50 kills attacking
There are several weapon challenges where it says in the description get 30 kills in a life, 40 kills in a life, or 50 kills in a life or 5, 7, or 10 kills … in game it correctly tracks the opposite (5/7/10 kills in a life or 30/40/50 kills)
I was able to multiple times run two challenges at the same time (example the Proficiency and Mastery challenges) and sometimes 3 if I was able to do a Class challenge as well … that is a really nice feature.
The Assault challenge with dynamite or anti-tank mine kills on a tank was very hard … I only got 1 tank kill with a mine. Might consider a destroy of any vehicle as I was able to anti-tank mine 6 vehicles during the Beta.
Overall, I found the depth and breadth of the challenges to be a really nice addition to the game ... it was one of the few ways I had fun during the Beta. I enjoyed working on and getting the Urban Tactical and Woodland camo skins for my weapons.
Dailies and Assignments aren't the only challenges that can be chased in BFV, we will of course have Dog Tags and Medals too. Medals will see a return to something closer to BF4's medals where they're always tracking in the background and they're not time limited.
@MG_79828994 No time limited and similar to BF4! SWEET!!!!
Dailies and Assignments aren't the only challenges that can be chased in BFV, we will of course have Dog Tags and Medals too. Medals will see a return to something closer to BF4's medals where they're always tracking in the background and they're not time limited.
^ This. No offense Mr. Rodders but I saw the artificial restrictions to progression built into the game coming from a mile away after seeing how medals were handled in BF1. Sure the medals in BF1 don't DO anything beyond just giving XP but I know that the perpetual carrot on a stick for this live service game NEEDS these restrictions. I don't want any unlocks to be gated behind timed exclusivity, especially not ones that can add statistical modifiers to the weapons. BF4 had the perfect system and tracking a medal or assignment was not necessary, it was just there for our convenience and could be done any time.
Thank you for noticing senpai, to this day I have not completed many medals in BF1 because I simply cannot be bothered to play a certain way for that weekly rotation.
In BF1 I wasted too much time on service assignments and played against the team to fullfil it. I'm planning to ignore these things in BFV. Also some tasks were too easy on a squad or rented server (e.g. tripwire plane kill) but very hard for casual gamers playing on their own. Please keep this in mind.
Hi,
My name is Rodders and I’m a Game Designer here at DICE working on the Daily Orders and Assignments feature in BFV. In BFV we want to reward you for playing the objective, so we have Daily Orders which are short, easy tasks you can complete every day; and we have Special Assignments, medium to long challenges that should take some effort to complete.
We'd like to hear your thoughts on the Assignments. Which ones do you find frustrating? What could make them better? Is the risk worth the reward?
Looking forward to your feedback, suggestions, and constructive criticism and continuing this conversation.
Cheers,
Rodders
I worry about directing the game flow to dumb things that distract from the game itself. Like "gas mask knifings while prone in smoke" making half the players stop playing the game to achieve the points doing just that!
Weekly is bad enough. Daily is micro managing the choice half the players will make.
In BF1 I wasted too much time on service assignments and played against the team to fullfil it. I'm planning to ignore these things in BFV. Also some tasks were too easy on a squad or rented server (e.g. tripwire plane kill) but very hard for casual gamers playing on their own. Please keep this in mind.
Well with no RSP (it will be post launch if ever) I don't think that will be an issue.
I liked the addition of special assignments in bf1 to earn dog tags I just feel it should have been in from the beginning. For example over the year as a casual player I probably killed 50 plus players while been gassed or on fire without realising but having to achieve that at the end of the bf1 cycle I had to find ways of deliberately setting myself alight which did wonders for my kdr and my team mates must of thought I was nuts. Add these tasks by all means but just get them in early to give players a chance to achieve them without having to change there game style.
I found most of the daily assignments reasonable enough, but a few just seemed tough to get through in one day unless I focused purely on that one task which kind of takes the fun out of it and can even be counter-productive to my squad: Sorry guys, can't help you with that tank right now, I have this goofy medic assignment I'm working on. These things should mostly fit into the normal course of play rather than being stunts that make little sense.
My intent with Dailies is to always provide a quick little general thing to do that isn't necessarily against playing the objective. My intent with assignments is to support playing the objective (game mode objective, class role, gadget use, squad play, team play, etc.) as much as possible.
Yes, conflicts can and do arise when the individual goals conflict with the squad goals. I have some ideas about how to fix that post-launch.
Comments
Great to hear the ‘always on’ BF4 model of medals is the way you are thinking. That’s fantastic. I echo a lot if the other feedback here in that they generally seem meaningful and achievable- great!!!
I think I potentially had one bug with a support daily task to build one fortifications as support. In game I built about 5 at A flag on Rotterdam and saw the in game notification display as built. However the task did not pop for me. If there is more detailed requirements to do this then I would suggest making it clearer or as clear as possible what the specific requirements are, to avoid any ambiguity. If it’s a bug, all the better for squishing it.
Keep up the good work
^ This. No offense Mr. Rodders but I saw the artificial restrictions to progression built into the game coming from a mile away after seeing how medals were handled in BF1. Sure the medals in BF1 don't DO anything beyond just giving XP but I know that the perpetual carrot on a stick for this live service game NEEDS these restrictions. I don't want any unlocks to be gated behind timed exclusivity, especially not ones that can add statistical modifiers to the weapons. BF4 had the perfect system and tracking a medal or assignment was not necessary, it was just there for our convenience and could be done any time.
To be honest I feel like BF V isn't a lot better. You have those assignments you pick which seems to be an advantage but then there's tides of war and the assignments seem to stack up as well. I wish UX was more about interaction design than ui design at Dice. I'd really like to see how you do user tests as they could help clearing up the UI mess.
On one hand people want things quite simple and easy whereas on the other people enjoy the tricky stuff. Some want assignments to be stuff you do in normal gameplay, others like the more convoluted ideas.
I think that dailies should be normal run of the mill playstyle things such as capturing objectives, killing infantry, supplies, revives, building forts etc. The numbers are for you and the design team to decide, you have the player metadata and can tailor the requirements to the average playtime per day. Dailies serve the purpose of handing out some currency just for turning up.
On to assignments, firstly remove this 1 out of 2, 3 out of 5 idea. It trivialises things and has no place in assignments (for dailies it's fine). It also wastes your time as a designer coming up with ideas that players will just skip for the more simple requirements in order to get assignments done faster.
Have some kind of history tracking so we know what has been completed with maybe upcoming assignments greyed out to hide the requirements.
I like the idea of choosing 4 to work on out of the pool of unlocked. As previously said allow us to select them in-game too.
Don't be afraid of difficult or of things that have nothing to do with standard playstyles. Getting x kills etc is fine but simply increasing the numbers further on down the same chain is just lazy design and feels like unnecessary padding (You want us to get 500 kills ? just list that rather than have it accumulate over a number of consecutive assignments).
Be creative and make the original numbers high, you can always patch them lower based on feedback and statistics later if they really are impossible without having given away assignments on the cheap early on in the games lifetime.
Gating based on progression is fine, artificial gating just to delay things is not, random is an absolute no-no (think BF1 medals being randomly chosen 4 per week).
Special items and perks at the end of assignment chains gives players something to actually achieve. BF1 scaled this down with the top tier assignments just giving dog tags and weapons only rewarded through basic kill quests.
Bottom line, give us something to play for as most of us hit the boredom threshold pretty quickly with nothing more to do than play the standard game modes.
Also is there a way you can sort or categorize the assigments by class or gametype?
For the rest I like this Assignment system.
It would be good if the notification on accomplishing an assignment was more obvious, I got the beta dog tag without noticing which was a bit disappointing.
I don't mind dog tags and specialist equipment being a challenge but I think a tough assignment to get coins can be a bit of a chore and hardly worth the effort.
Other than that I thought it was great.
Agreed. Thank you for taking the time to do this, Rodders. This was an excellent response and addressed many of the questions and concerns raised earlier. Much appreciated. Its refreshing to hear you acknowledge that some assignments aren't tracking.
For me personally, the new assignment system is one of the most positive changes in the BFV beta. I'm very glad to hear you are working toward the BF4 approach to the new Medal system. Allowing players to progress all medals simultaneously is exactly what I'd hoped for. I hope that intention makes it into the final game.
Same goes for the special assignments. I'm really glad to see that we are able to select and swap our special assignments at will, and combine those that we can simultaneously complete. Yes, this was fairly easy to do, and I did make a concious decision to do this a few times during the beta. As you said this adds another layer of "gaming" to the system which promotes fun.
Regarding your question of "How can we ensure that the community feedback feels addressed?" Responses in the relevant forum threads, as you've taken the time to do here, are the perfect way to show that community concerns are heard. Much prefered over twitter, reddit, etc. Patch notes seem sufficent for closing the loop on bugfix type issues. But, there can be long timespan between patches. So quick ack on bug reports in forums are always helpful (time permitting). On the topic of bugs. Will there be an official BFV bugtracker, like there is for BF1? Will be great to have this at launch.
Agreed! I think it needs to bigger enough to see.
One of the challenges with creating assignments is how to create them so that most players will be able to complete them? For me personally, I think it's important that the games we make are not impossible to complete -- and sometimes with just enough challenge to make us push our skills to that next level.
But in Battlefield the distance between our casual players and our expert players is very wide. So to that end I wanted to give you agency to choose how best to progress through an assignment with the intent that skilled players can complete the assignment faster -- getting more rewards more often. Effectively get better at the game to get stuff faster. While players who might not be able to complete the skilled task can still grind away and complete it eventually.
This is why there's open options in assignments: so that you have the power to choose what's the most fun for you.
This design intent is especially applied to the weapon "Proficiency" and "Mastery" chains where the reward is visual customization for your weapon. Which, by the way, is intended to be the only way you can earn those skins. In the Beta this was how you could earn the "Factory New" and "Custom Woodland" skins.
But those weapon assignments were a bit too repetitive. We had too many tiers with "Kills in 1 life" or "Kills". And the difference between "Proficiency" and "Mastery" weren't felt to be significant.
So to address the weapon and class assignment chains we're going to be re-designing them a bit. Here's the intent:
These changes are specific only to the assignment chains unlocked by leveling up a class or weapon.
Yes, our UI needs to be clearer. The team is aware and they're working on it, but I'm not the right designer to speak to any intent or changes there. For assignments, I'll strive to make it easier to manage them in-game.
Dailies and Assignments aren't the only challenges that can be chased in BFV, we will of course have Dog Tags and Medals too. Medals will see a return to something closer to BF4's medals where they're always tracking in the background and they're not time limited.
Support Proficiency III Challenge kills from Stationary not counting in Flak, HMG, or Anti-tank guns
Combat Medic Challenge revives not registering if done in objective area
STG44 Mastery VII description says to do 50 kills defending but in game counter is 50 kills attacking
There are several weapon challenges where it says in the description get 30 kills in a life, 40 kills in a life, or 50 kills in a life or 5, 7, or 10 kills … in game it correctly tracks the opposite (5/7/10 kills in a life or 30/40/50 kills)
I was able to multiple times run two challenges at the same time (example the Proficiency and Mastery challenges) and sometimes 3 if I was able to do a Class challenge as well … that is a really nice feature.
The Assault challenge with dynamite or anti-tank mine kills on a tank was very hard … I only got 1 tank kill with a mine. Might consider a destroy of any vehicle as I was able to anti-tank mine 6 vehicles during the Beta.
Overall, I found the depth and breadth of the challenges to be a really nice addition to the game ... it was one of the few ways I had fun during the Beta. I enjoyed working on and getting the Urban Tactical and Woodland camo skins for my weapons.
@MG_79828994 No time limited and similar to BF4! SWEET!!!!
Thank you for noticing senpai, to this day I have not completed many medals in BF1 because I simply cannot be bothered to play a certain way for that weekly rotation.
I worry about directing the game flow to dumb things that distract from the game itself. Like "gas mask knifings while prone in smoke" making half the players stop playing the game to achieve the points doing just that!
Weekly is bad enough. Daily is micro managing the choice half the players will make.
Well with no RSP (it will be post launch if ever) I don't think that will be an issue.
Yes, conflicts can and do arise when the individual goals conflict with the squad goals. I have some ideas about how to fix that post-launch.