EA DICE Announces Battlefield Labs

[TheLostSwede]

Today, the storied Battlefield franchise known for uncompromising all-out warfare and world-class gameplay for over two decades, announced the most ambitious community testing program in franchise history - Battlefield Labs. The work on the next Battlefield experience is entering a critical phase in development that will benefit from collaboration with the community like never before.

Sign Up for Battlefield Labs Are Now Open
The first phase of Battlefield Labs testing will go live in the coming weeks, and sign up to players is available now at battlefield.com/labs. Initial tests will include an invited group of players and servers located in Europe and North America ahead of plans to expand invitees and server locations in the future.




"I've been playing Battlefield long before I joined the team," says Vince Zampella, Head of Respawn & Group GM for EA Studios Organization. "This game has so much potential. To find that potential, with us being pre-alpha, now is the time to test the experiences our teams have been building for our upcoming launch. Battlefield Labs empowers our teams to do that."

Players can stay up to date on the latest public testing information by keeping an eye on battlefield.com/labs. Our community will receive published updates from the team throughout testing so that even those who are not selected for Battlefield Labs can still come along for the ride. All the feedback provided during Battlefield Labs tests will influence the development of the next Battlefield title and beyond.

Battlefield Labs plays a significant role in the development that Battlefield Studios is doing for the series. Battlefield Studios is comprised of DICE, creators of the Battlefield franchise; Ripple Effect, a studio led by franchise veterans working on an all-new experience for the series; Motive, the developers of the critically acclaimed Star Wars Squadrons and Dead Space; and Criterion, known for world-class racing franchises and playing a key role in several Battlefield entries.

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[The Witcher]

Meh, they know and I know that they have not learned anything and will simply repeat the same mistakes just to score few ESG points.

It will be a politicized game that will lack basic features like a proper score page, voice / text chat to "prevent toxicity" and will try to garner attention from new playerbase that are not that interested in this genre.

The BF series has been on a downward spiral since the release of BF1, I would be surprised if they actually learned anything.

A simple carbon-copy remake of BC2 would sell them more than whatever they are making now.

 

[dir_d]

I would like a 1942 remake, i played that forever.

 

[ir_cow]

Dice / EA needs to allow server hosting and mods again. Otherwise it's another dead Battlefield game. The reason why BF3 lasted so long was because personal hosting.

 

[evernessince]

This is a very roundabout way of saying "we cut costs and moved jobs to cheaper markets so please help us make our game because we bled the talent that used to know how to do that".

I do not understand the need to put everything behind marketing BS. Just be honest with customers for once.

 

[Jayzus]

they have done this for previous games too (it just wasn't called labs), they then launched a turd like bf2042 which missed basic features and included things like operators which were universally hated

 

[TPUnique]

BF2 was perfect, I just couldn't play it anymore due to their utterly idiotic and disgusting "anti-cheat" system which wouldn't let me enter a battle ‍

 

[wNotyarD]

A simple carbon-copy remake of BC2 would sell them more than whatever they are making now.

I would like a 1942 remake, i played that forever.

What the world needs, but can't handle, is a new Bad Company game.

Hell, say they're doing BC3 and I might actually pre-order it.

 

[FierceRed]

Battlefield 2 vet reporting in. I was too busy playing CounterStrike, Deus Ex and Halo to bother with 1942.

IMHO, if they released Battlefield 2143 (or Battlefield 2177 if they want meme points) with...

• The latest refinements and learning they achieved with the Veilguard version of Frostbite
• Titanfall-like Mech combat and infantry mobility
• CP2077-like cyberware that can be purged by particular digi-medic classes
• Titan sieges and defense on a Marvel Helicarrier-type sized environment so it doesn't lead to grenade spam hallway bottlenecks

...they'd be fine. That has all the ADD colours and explosions to keep the Zoomies in lobbies.
Hell they can even throw in their bullshit Specialist characters as hero-spawn units a la Star Wars Battlefront so they can continue to not sell skins.

All in all, back to basics. Scoreboards. Voice comms with intuitive mute controls. Incentives for teamwork and smaller incentives for lone wolves. A realistic "hardcore" mode that takes a 64 player map and makes it 12v12 so everyone is moving tactically over large areas likes its the return of Rainbow 6. A few chicks that look like First Descendent rejects.

What's not to love?

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

My favorite (/s) is the BF lobbies in BF4 that didnt allow you to curse in the server via chat but the voice acting of the characters would routinely say yell "fuck". Made no sense to me at all.

 

[thestryker6]

While BF4 was probably my favorite the telling thing about that was in beta where there was a crash associated with bringing down the skyscraper that they fixed, and then that crash existing again when the game launched. To me that spoke volumes about studio management and made me far less enthusiastic about hopping into any of the titles that followed. Battlefield is still the only multiplayer shooter I have any interest in so it'd be nice if the way they've been approaching the next title worked out, but I certainly won't be counting on it.

 

[Hecate91]

This sounds more like EA wants unpaid beta testers when you look past the marketing talk, EA did something similar with BF 2042 where they invited everyone to test the game before launch, claiming the beta version was 3 months old. Then EA didn't listen at all to input or any criticism and still launched a buggy and half broken game.
I have no confidence in EA launching anything decent anymore, and most of the talent that made past titles like BF3 & BF4 are probably working at other game studios.

 

[Random_User]

Dice / EA needs to allow server hosting and mods again. Otherwise it's another dead Battlefield game. The reason why BF3 lasted so long was because personal hosting.

That would remove the EA's ability to gouge ppl with useless DLCs and MTX, that fail at the concept of what ppl really want.

This is a very roundabout way of saying "we cut costs and moved jobs to cheaper markets so please help us make our game because we bled the talent that used to know how to do that".

I do not understand the need to put everything behind marketing BS. Just be honest with customers for once.

This sounds more like EA wants unpaid beta testers when you look past the marketing talk, EA did something similar with BF 2042 where they invited everyone to test the game before launch, claiming the beta version was 3 months old. Then EA didn't listen at all to input or any criticism and still launched a buggy and half broken game.
I have no confidence in EA launching anything decent anymore, and most of the talent that made past titles like BF3 & BF4 are probably working at other game studios.

Exactly! This video looks rather Battlefield "funeral" history, of the most "icionic" moments of the series.

The BF is dead. EA cannot revive the series, because the people working on it, have no clue about it. The people, who shaped, and put the vision of BF since it's craddle, are long gone from DICE and EA. EA wasted them, like countless of other studios. DICE just the "boiler plate", for the Frostbite engine.

EA hired so many people, with so radically different vision, many of which were leading and making the other games, with the style and genre not compatible with Battlefield, at all. You can teach the professional welder the woodworking, but it will stay welder, and vice versa. I'm not trying to hate anyone of those dev. people. But they will still add their habits and vision (outside EA's top management morbid concepts, and "vision") to the project, that is already mutated beyond recognition. This is not BF anymore.

These people from different studios, gathered in one place, not to make the new BF, not to make it "better". They are there to fulfil, the EA $$$ about what BF should be. And then, push this "vision" to the player base minds, as "evolution" and being "supperior". But the truth is, that one doesn't need to make the super expensive, and super complex game, for it to be fun and entertain with it's exceptional gameplay.

There's reason, that BF2 have came through the several "reincarnations" with several huge conversion mod projects. And for thousands to still play it, on daily basis. The same goes for other old BF, like 2142. The playerbase might have shrunk, but there are still some people, who refuse to play modern BF. Be these games still on sale, the amount of players would be massively bigger. That game deserves Frosbite "treatment", with BFBC2 physics and BF4-BF1 visuals.
Those, who ever played any of the "Northern strike" add-on map, be it "Liberation of Leipzig", "Port Bavaria", or "Bridge at Remagen" will get the point, as much as the scale of that game.

As I've said this many times before, EA has the basically the source of huge profit, just in front of them. They could re-release the "old"/"classic" BF series, from BF1942 till 2142, with original and remaster versions bundle in the same collection. While at the same time, prepare the true successor, to this original vision. Maybe even hire the original EA staff as consultants, if they will willing to invest their time into this blind/deaf and doomed company.

And there's not much variants left, in terms of BF timeline, and story. The logical (and inevitable) successor to the BF2042, should be BF2142, with maybe one short prequel to the main BF2142, as what have happened, between 2042 and the eventual ice age collapse. They had T-39 "bogatyr" asset during the RTX inception to show off, as much as countless of eastern eggs, intentionally made and put in many of BF games.

There is somewhat "successor" to BF1942 theme of WWII, as BF5, there are BF3,4 that somewhat depicts the BF2 era, there is even BF1 from WW1 period, never happened before in BF timeline. Also there are even Battlefield: Star Wars, ahem Battlefront. But it's baffling to see, that EA just avoiding 2142 as the true "next" title, for almost the decade already.

Maybe they have not prepared to such, I dare to say, grand project. This is HL2:E3/HL3 of Battlefield, after all. Maybe they lack vision, staff, skill. But they cannot avoid this, after they deliberately moved the plot, to the climatic cataclysm and formation of both PAC and EU coalitions, in BF4 and 2042.

And yeah, BC3 should be also become a thing, along with remaster versions of both previous chapters. There can't be enough humor and fun, even despite such bland asset variety, and half-arsed realization these games had. Yet, the BF: Portal comes as mere shadow, compared to the BFBC2, with both the gameplay, destruction, and sound.

 

[Scrizz]

Battlefield 2 vet reporting in. I was too busy playing CounterStrike, Deus Ex and Halo to bother with 1942.

IMHO, if they released Battlefield 2143 (or Battlefield 2177 if they want meme points) with...

• The latest refinements and learning they achieved with the Veilguard version of Frostbite
• Titanfall-like Mech combat and infantry mobility
• CP2077-like cyberware that can be purged by particular digi-medic classes
• Titan sieges and defense on a Marvel Helicarrier-type sized environment so it doesn't lead to grenade spam hallway bottlenecks

...they'd be fine. That has all the ADD colours and explosions to keep the Zoomies in lobbies.
Hell they can even throw in their bullshit Specialist characters as hero-spawn units a la Star Wars Battlefront so they can continue to not sell skins.

All in all, back to basics. Scoreboards. Voice comms with intuitive mute controls. Incentives for teamwork and smaller incentives for lone wolves. A realistic "hardcore" mode that takes a 64 player map and makes it 12v12 so everyone is moving tactically over large areas likes its the return of Rainbow 6. A few chicks that look like First Descendent rejects.

What's not to love?

I loved 2142. They should've made 2143 instead of the BS 2042 trash.
I was initially excited for the BF Portal thing in 2042 to play an updated BC2, but it was not BC2 it was 2042 with BC2-like assets. It didn't have any of the mechanics from BC2 like the bullet-drop, non-glinty scopes, etc