Dice Listens To Its Player Base and Reverts BFV TTK

[jasonvp]

A bit of back and forth in this one.  Sometime last week, Dice decided to "sneak" in a change to Battlefield V's TTK or "Time To Kill".  The basic overly simple definition of TTK is: the number of bullets it takes to kill an enemy.  Dice has (supposedly) been worried that the quicker TTK of Battlefield V has made it less approachable by new players.  The change wasn't accepted well by the community and manager Dan Mitre sent this out on Reddit:

 

Battlefield V Letter to the Community - New “Core” Playlists Coming

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Hi Battlefield Community,

 

On behalf of the Battlefield team, I’d like to apologize for the silence over the past couple of days on the TTK topic. We’ve seen it’s been a big talking point and causing a divide in the community, which was never our intention. We have been listening closely to what you’ve all been saying.

 

Changes to the game carrying this kind of weight needs clearer, earlier communication before getting rolled out. We will improve how we roll out updates in the future and respond more quickly when you have questions or concerns.

 

So, why change TTK now? The intent came from us observing that new players are having a very hard time with the game compared to our core players, and we wanted to see if we could improve this over the holidays so more players can have a great time.

 

As many of our veteran players know, Battlefield games constantly evolve and change over time in our collaboration with the community. Battlefield V is no exception. We heard your feedback that many of you prefer the old TTK values, with one playlist featuring only Conquest using the “Core” settings clearly not being enough. To fix that, we will be adding a “Core” version of all playlists in the game next week, giving you a clearer choice between new and old settings. We’ll update you early next week on when the new playlist will be added.

 

We want to hear from you about the changes we’re making. We’d also like to thank all of you for the constructive discussions and feedback we’re seeing. Thank you.

 

What they ended up doing for most weapons is changing the damage multiplier from 1 to .85.  Meaning: more rounds to kill a guy.

 

Needless to say, the BF vets (myself included) weren't happy.  Lots and lots of YouTube videos went up decrying the change.  Reddit and Twitter blew up over it, as well.  But the only feedback we kept getting from Dice was, "We hear you.  We'll have more data for you in January."

 

Well.  It's not yet January, and it appears Dice realizes they whizzed into our collective Wheaties.  As of this morning:

 

Battlefield V Letter to the Community - TTK Changes Reverting Tomorrow

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Hello Battlefield Community,

 

We’ve committed to giving you an update this week around Battlefield V’s TTK (Time To Kill) adjustments, as seen in last Friday’s letter to the community. After rolling out those changes last week, we’ve listened to your feedback, reviewed our statistical data, and have made the decision to return to the original TTK values seen at launch.

 

Our intent with the TTK changes was to see if we could evolve the Battlefield V experience and make it more enjoyable for new players, whilst also making sure the Battlefield vets have a choice with a more “core” experience suiting their preferred play-style. Clearly we didn’t get it right. Veteran players didn’t ask for the change, but as game developers, we took it upon ourselves to make those changes based on extensive data and deliberation. It truthfully wasn’t an easy decision for us.

 

It’s important to acknowledge that we have a challenge bringing new players into Battlefield V and onboard them to become more experienced Battlefield players. It’s been a challenge across our games for a long time, as many will know, and becomes even more important for us to improve upon our post-launch experience with consistent updates to the game through the Tides of War. Our desire to service a game that caters to old and new players will continue. How we get it right isn’t easy, nor will it be quick, and we appreciate when the community comes together and helps us on this journey.

 

We have learned a lot over the past week. We’ve gained clarity on the issues you’ve shared with us around Time To Death (TTD), we’ve identified imbalances in weapons, and have recorded real-world data on how TTK changes our game and impactS our players. With that knowledge we have a better idea of how to improve the game going forward, and have already begun taking steps to improve the experience for all our players, new and veteran.

 

Starting tomorrow, December 18th at 4am PT / 7am ET / 1p CET, we will revert the TTK changes to their original launch states, we will remove the “Conquest Core” playlist, and we will not introduce any new “Core” playlists as mentioned in last week’s letter. This will be a server-side update and does not require a client download. We’ll continue to identify how we can improve the Battlefield V experience and will have more information for you around those changes starting in the new year.

 

Thank you for your feedback and patience. We’re excited to be on this journey with you.

 

 

Another quick defintion: TTD - Time To Death.  It differs from TTK insofar as the perspective.  TTD is basically: how quickly do I die after I've been alerted to the fact I've been hit?  BFV has, since launch, had a pretty nasty netcode issue with TTD that Dice has been unable to figure out.  There's some amount of damage stacking going on, where you get "hit" by a bunch of rounds in a single server update and it seems to you like you've been insta-killed.  Dice knows they have this issue, and the TTK changes they made last week were an attempt to... um... hide that?  But it didn't matter.  The one-update deaths were still happening because that isn't a damage multiplier issue.  It's a rounds-per-update issue.

 

Ultimately, TTD is what they need to fix, not TTK.  And they've ack'd that and will revert us back.  Thank... Dice?

[Dabombinable]

Well EA was trying to make the game more like COD to convert its fans. But it really hasn't worked out for them as a whole as this demonstrates.

[PCGuy_5960]

While I do think that the community overreacted, DICE's reasoning for changing the TTK was flawed. Longer TTK doesn't really help new players, who is more likely to be able to hit multiple shots in a row? The guy with 500hrs or lil Tim who got the game for Christmas?

[jasonvp]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

While I do think that the community overreacted

To be fair: I don't.  The changed TTK wasn't the game we purchased.  We were told that the fast(er) gun play was a big thing with respect to BFV.  Then they went and pulled the carpet out from under us.  So from that perspective, I think the community's response was valid.

 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

While I do think that the community overreacted, DICE's reasoning for changing the TTK was flawed. Longer TTK doesn't really help new players, who is more likely to be able to hit multiple shots in a row? The guy with 500hrs or lil Tim who got the game for Christmas?

Is lil Tim a new rapper?

[PCGuy_5960]

15 minutes ago, jasonvp said:

To be fair: I don't.  The changed TTK wasn't the game we purchased.  We were told that the fast(er) gun play was a big thing with respect to BFV.  Then they went and pulled the carpet out from under us.  So from that perspective, I think the community's response was valid.

I get it, but did we really need that many threads about it? I swear, the entire Battlefield V subreddit was filled with "New TTK sucks" posts.

 

Also, BF1 had a pretty big TTK patch and no one really complained. What I'm saying is, a TTK change isn't necessarily bad if it's done right. IMO, they should have tested this new TTK on a separate playlist or even better, the CTE, so that everything can be properly balanced. 

[Blademaster91]

10 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

While I do think that the community overreacted, DICE's reasoning for changing the TTK was flawed. Longer TTK doesn't really help new players, who is more likely to be able to hit multiple shots in a row? The guy with 500hrs or lil Tim who got the game for Christmas?

It took a lot of community disapproving of the change just for the TTK to be reverted, when EA/Dice said they wouldn't change it in the first place. Even the Battlefield youtubers weren't happy about it. If EA/Dice would allow custom servers the TTK wouldn't be such a huge issue, though they need to at least fix some bugs that shouldn't have made it into the game launch like buggy bipods, getting stuck or not being able to jump over objects, or not staying prone.

[Arika]

This entire game seemed to be marketed to new players which is pushing away existing players. 

 

Also who are these people that want to play a BF game but think it's too hard? 

[jasonvp]

1 minute ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

I get it, but did we really need that many threads about it? I swear, the entire Battlefield V subreddit was filled with "New TTK sucks" posts.

Yep, I agree.  It was challenging to page through the threads to find any real meat.  But it did have the desired effect, I believe.

 

Quote

What I'm saying is, a TTK change isn't necessarily bad if it's done right. IMO, they should have tested this new TTK on a separate playlist or even better, the CTE, so that everything can be properly balanced.

Correct.  Ninja-patching the servers to change the TTK by adding a blanket .85 damage multiplier is dirty pool, IMHO.  Specially without communicating it before hand. 

 

[Brooksie359]

21 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

While I do think that the community overreacted, DICE's reasoning for changing the TTK was flawed. Longer TTK doesn't really help new players, who is more likely to be able to hit multiple shots in a row? The guy with 500hrs or lil Tim who got the game for Christmas?

It feels a bit better if you are new and you don't instantly die. If you die extremely quickly it feels like you have no way of escaping it while if it takes longer you think that there was maybe something in your power that could have changed the outcome. I play alot of battlefield V and personally like the ability to kill rather quickly but I will say that it gets a tad frustrating when you first start playing mad you feel likely you are just randomly insta dying. 

[PCGuy_5960]

6 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

It feels a bit better if you are new and you don't instantly die. If you die extremely quickly it feels like you have no way of escaping it while if it takes longer you think that there was maybe something in your power that could have changed the outcome.

Idk, I think that even with this slower TTK new players still die fast, but it's even harder for them to get kills. /shrug

 

Plus, you can still instantly die, because TTD is kinda bugged.

[Brooksie359]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

Idk, I think that even with this slower TTK new players still die fast, but it's even harder for them to get kills. /shrug

 

Plus, you can still instantly die, because TTD is kinda bugged.

They may still die fast but it won't seen as instant. 

[ARikozuM]

An EA division listened to the fanbase! Holy sh#t, hell might be freezing over!

[Drak3]

44 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Also who are these people that want to play a BF game but think it's too hard? 

For me, it's not a question of if BF is too hard, it's that the game seems to be constantly broken.

 

And the whole "fast TTK" in Battlefield is a revolutionary concept to me, from what I remember on 3 through 1, TTK was excruciatingly long compared to every other FPS that wasn't Halo.

[Yeroh]

I appreciate it. Had a couple of one frame deaths during a play session today and I generally noticed zero improvements with the new ttk. Hopefully they‘ll actually fix the problem instead of trying to work around it.

[Blademaster91]

54 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

For me, it's not a question of if BF is too hard, it's that the game seems to be constantly broken.

 

And the whole "fast TTK" in Battlefield is a revolutionary concept to me, from what I remember on 3 through 1, TTK was excruciatingly long compared to every other FPS that wasn't Halo.

The TTK in BF3 and BF4 wasn't problem IMO,most of the weapons have high enough fire rate or damage to make the timing balanced.

[Drak3]

5 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

The TTK in BF3 and BF4 wasn't problem IMO,most of the weapons have high enough fire rate or damage to make the timing balanced.

The TTK was an eternity. Except for the few times that high level players one shot you.

[Thony]

As many youtube BF players mentioned, BF1 was made to suit new players, to be easy and simple. BF V was presented as more hardcore game with higher skill gap and the new TTK changed that....

I am glad TTK is going back where it was. I like the challenge no matter how annoying it is to die a bit faster than Im used to from BF1 which was extremely forgiving for bad positioning.

[Delicieuxz]

On 12/17/2018 at 2:37 PM, Thony said:

As many youtube BF players mentioned, BF1 was made to suit new players, to be easy and simple. BF V was presented as more hardcore game with higher skill gap and the new TTK changed that....

 

Battlefield 5 still is a Fisher-Price Battlefield that isn't anything resembling hardcore, though. Actually, Bf5 is even more dumbed-down than Battlefield 1 was in a bunch of ways:

 

In Bf5 you can't choose when to throw out ammo or health etc, but can only throw it when a teammate in front of you needs it. Can't throw it around a corner, over a wall to a teammate, or someplace in preparation where it will be useful. And, squads have been reduced to 4 players on PC when even Bf1 PC had 5-player squads. Also, now every player is a part-medic, reducing the value of the medic class and taking away the emphasis of playing well since everybody can pick everybody back up.

 

And then most of Battlefield 1's dumbed-down aspects are still present in Bf5: No physical bases, no physical vehicle spawns, a terrible revive/skip-revive system, no detailed server browser or custom server options...

 

Battlefield 5 is still defined as a very casual game and as an extremely over-simplified and gutted Battlefield, regardless of the TTK.

 

 

I hope that with Patrick Soderlund being fired from DICE over marketing and PR scandals related to Bf5, and with Patrick Bach having left the company shortly after the release of Bf1, that maybe DICE will start to find their way again. The company was entirely mismanaged under Patrick Soderlund going back all the way to when DICE sold themselves to EA shortly before the release of Battlefield 2 (which, by the way, is still, by far, the most popular Battlefield game, as % of total release-market profits and by player retention, that DICE have ever released). And Patrick Bach is someone who advocated for smaller, tighter maps and more CoD-style gameplay at DICE.

 

I've said that DICE was the worst thing to ever happen to Battlefield, the history of which has been all about selling-out, dishonest marketing, chasing sleezy dollars, and I think that those two people are a big part of why. With them gone, DICE might be able to steer itself towards something more credible. But, then again, EA might instead tighten their game-sucking grip on the studio and make it more subservient to corporate and focus-group-based design ideals.

 

 

Battlefield 2 has:

 

6-person squads

7 classes each with unique and relevant abilities

Expansive team and squad command controls (more than in any other Battlefield)

Commander role

Limited sprint stamina (makes it more tactical and creates wonderful dynamics)

Squad-leader spawning only (no spawning on every squad-mate, makes the game more tactical and increases the importance of squad leadership)

The biggest and most interesting maps in the series

A variety of map styles including maps with no uncaps and maps where one team starts at a ticket and base disadvantage but the map favours them

Skill-based aircraft that are actually thrilling to fly and that actually contribute to the ground battle

More vehicles than newer Battlefields along with maps that can better accommodate vehicle play

[Noctus]

1 hour ago, Drak3 said:

The TTK was an eternity. Except for the few times that high level players one shot you.

Lol no it wasnt. BF3/4 were fine in terms of TTK. It was the TTD that was a problem (and evidently in BF5 aswel) aka Getting all the "damage" packets in one tik making it seemingly instadeath or "vaulting" over a fence and getting "you have died" or tripping over a brick and getting the same message. Or hitting something invisible in mid flight and blowing up, instantly dying.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Noctus said:

Lol no it wasnt. BF3/4 were fine in terms of TTK.

Only if you've ever only played BF games, and maybe Halo.

[Noctus]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

Only if you've ever only played BF games, and maybe Halo.

Umm no. It's TTK has been consistent in the series, with no REAL difference in killing since the 1942 days and fit's the pace of the game. Pointless comparing Halo or COD or R6S or any other of the hundreds of FPS shooters you could be referring to. They are not in the same world.

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, Noctus said:

fit's the pace of the game

It definitely does not.

 

11 minutes ago, Noctus said:

It's TTK has been consistent in the series, with no REAL difference in killing since the 1942 days

So like I said, fine if you only play BF.

11 minutes ago, Noctus said:

Pointless comparing Halo or COD or R6S or any other of the hundreds of FPS shooters you could be referring to.

Not really, it's a huge reason so many of them are better.

31 minutes ago, Noctus said:

They are not in the same world.

Most of them take place in analogous ones: Modern US military, Cold War, or the World Wars.

 

And the ones that don't are the ones where longer TTK fit in.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, Delicieuxz said:

 

Battlefield 5 still isn't anything resembling hardcore, though. Actually, Bf5 is even more dumbed-down than Battlefield 1 was in a bunch of ways:

 

In Bf5 you can't choose when to throw out ammo or health etc, but can only throw it when a teammate in front of you needs it. Can't throw it around a corner or someplace in preparation where it will be useful. And, squads have been reduced to 4 players on PC when even Bf1 PC had 5-player squads. Also, now every player is a part-medic, reducing the value of the medic class and taking away the emphasis of playing well since everybody can pick everybody back up.

 

And then most of Battlefield 1's dumbed-down aspects are still present in Bf5: No physical bases, no physical vehicle spawns, a terrible revive/skip-revive system, no detailed server browser or customer server options...

 

Battlefield 5 is still defined as a very casual game and as an extremely over-simplified and gutted Battlefield, regardless of the TTK.

The only thing "hardcore" in Battlefield 5 is there no longer being 3D and minimap spotting.

I played BF4 mostly as a medic, DICE nerfed it down to nearly being useless. Every class within the same squad being able to revive, and the medic class only being able to use SMG's against others with more powerful assault rifles and machine guns makes the medic class frustrating to use.

You can place down medic crates, when they aren't bugged disappearing into the ground people do pick them up but DICE ruined health crates turning an area effect item into you having to pick it up manually.

I know a lot of people don't like the detailed battlelog broswer based server browser, but its so much better than what DICE implemented in BF5 which feels like a rushed console UI that requires too many clicks to get through menus or join a game.

 

[RuffRuffmcgruff]

14 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

An EA division listened to the fanbase! Holy sh#t, hell might be freezing over!

Battlefront 2 has got extra 50% xp until the 27th as well, EA is my new senpai