ESB Council #2 Recap

The main topic for our second ESB Council was deciding the game modes and player counts for these game modes. The main objective was to decide on a blueprint to start from for both Infantry based modes and the larger ones.

A blueprint was needed to be able to start organizing test cups and tournaments for when private servers are released. The decisions made in this council aren’t final for the rest of Battlefield 4, yet provide a starting point that teams agree on. Therefore, when test cups are organized, with the player counts and modes decided in this council, and we see problems or ways to improve things, we will change these things after the community has given us it’s feedback.

14 Teams and 1 organization where present during this council. Teams and respective representatives can be found below:

• Arsenic – ArSeniC_x_zR

• TG – jboi8u

• Fall – Derk

• xHBR – Fid0

• SnM – Zerk

• vVv – Breinbjerg

• HaVc – Sarge-1013

• SoN – Slipp1

• OpS – CodeName_Deus

• RPG – Txo-WhiteKnight

• pp – SoraXXS

• iCon – Bugsy

• WNT – Danni

• ExDs – Saint

The discussion lasted about an hour, and was split into five different parts.

Deciding Game Modes / Player Counts 

As a first topic, infantry based game modes and counts where discussed. An initial discussion was created highlighting a few ideas, and then each team representative was able to give their teams opinion on the subject matter and to list the pros and cons of certain ideas. The main debate became whether Defuse and Domination should be played as separate ladders/tournaments, or if they should be mixed together into a Domination-Defuse-Domination format. Each team voiced their opinions with about half of the leaders supporting each idea. Everyone was also asked if they wanted to play Domination on higher players counts (8v8 & 10v10) however the general consensus was to keep it to a 5v5 player count format to start with.

As a second topic, larger game modes and counts where discussed. This discussion was a little more complicated due to the fact that the PlayStation competitive community on Battlefield 3 played 12v12 Conquest for 2 years as the main large mode/count without encountering problems with numbers. On PC however Conquest was mainly played in an 8v8 format.  Now on Battlefield 4, the PC community upgraded to the 10v10 player count for conquest (they upgraded each team by 2), so the big question was,  does the PlayStation community take a step backwards? Or does the PS community make a push for a 15v15 format? The majority seemed to want to make the push, and for mainly one simple reason which leads back to Battlefield 3. On Battlefield 3, the 12v12 competitive community on PS3 played the vanilla maps only for 2 straight years (other than one WNT), mainly due to the fact that the DLC maps where too big for a 12v12 format. What having a 15v15 conquest competitive mode would mean, is that every map that supports conquest small would be viable for the competitive scene. Another key point that was made for the 15v15 format, is that at base it would be played on Conquest Small, but on a few maps, it would make more sense to play the 15v15 format on Conquest Large (i.e. Golmud Railway).

Team representatives where also asked about a mixed 10v10 format with conquest and obliteration, however the idea wasn’t supported by most. Going back to Obliteration, the vanilla maps aren’t suitable for competitive play, however we proposed an alternative. This alternative would be to try Obliteration competitively on the China Rising maps, because the bomb sites are perpendicular to each other, and the “drive to the bomb that’s further away” technique wouldn’t apply here (see image below).

 The 20v20 format was also discussed for conquest, however this format caused a few major problems:

• Hard to manage for existing teams; having to coordinate 40 players for each match is just 2 hectic
• High player count discouraging to new teams who want to enter the competitive conquest scene
• Risks becoming noncompetitive due to the high player count

Voting

After both the Infantry and Larger modes where discussed, everyone took a vote, with each choice previously discussed (and others) available as options. The results of this voting can be seen below.

NB: Each team leader had 2 votes per section.

As you can see from the charts above, Domination and Defuse events will remain separate for now, and 15v15 will be the team size for Conquest. There was also a unanimous vote not use commander in matches as a lot of the commander features would ruin the gameplay itself. ESB would like to remind you that these decisions are just blueprints to start off, they will change if the community notices that they won’t work.

Intro to Game Mode Specific Rules

To end the second Council, a brief intro was made to the next Council’s main topic so that the team representatives could already start brainstorming prior to the third Council. This means that while one gadget, weapon or accessory may be game breaking in one game mode, it may not in another.
An example of this could be the tugs. The tugs may ruin game modes like Domination or Defuse because it covers such a huge portion of the available map space, while in a 15v15 Conquest map it will be usable and not mode breaking at all.

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ESB International would like to thank once again all the teams that came to this second ESB Council. We look forward to seeing more of you guys in the next one.

Note: The whole Council was recorded, it will be available on the ESB International Youtube next week. Follow us on twitter to not miss the link.