Level Design
Emily Johnston
Battlefield 6
Project Brief
Battlefield 6 is a first-person shooter published by EA in October 2025. I joined the team in January 2025 to help ship REDSEC, Battlefield’s free-to-play offering. I worked on final passes for Fort Lyndon, the Battle Royale map, as well as on arena design for Gauntlet, a squad-based elimination mode.
After launch, I became part of the live-service team and worked on a variety of modes including seasonal Gauntlet releases, Obliteration and Operation High Roller (releasing Dec 8, 2026).
Battlefield 6 promotional material
Gauntlet
Nightfall
Gauntlet is a mode consisting of eight squads and four rounds. Each round is a different objective based sub-mode. The two lowest ranking squads in each round are eliminated and the highest ranking squad in the last round is the winner. The arena changes for each round.
For Battlefield’s season two, Gauntlet was released on a new map - Hagental Base - and featured a seasonal modifier as part of the Nightfall theme. While Nightfall modes were active, most of the lights in Hagental Base were cut and players were given night vision goggles to navigate the pitch black space.
A top down of Hagental Base. The highlighted areas were lit while the rest of the map was nearly entirely dark.
Development of season two happened early in the transition from working on a title for launch to providing live service. As such, there were still many kinks in our workflows. Consequently, the map, modes and mechanics for Gauntlet Nightfall were given to the team without a chance for consultation. This resulted in a series of challenges that I had to solve for.
Gameplay of Gaunlet Nightfall.
Dark
& Light
The Nightfall lighting in Hagental Base is largely pitch black but does feature several well lit spaces. The first pass layouts for Gauntlet included several of these lit areas as key parts of the arenas. The intent behind this was to highlight the seasonal modifier - I had thought that players frequently swapping between the night vision goggles and the well lit spaces would play up the mechanic. I had further hoped it would create engaging gameplay on the borders of these spaces with squads ambushing each other from the dark; however, the feedback showed otherwise.
A mockup showing the first pass of the arena bounds. I had tried to include a mix of lit and dark spaces.
The transition zones between dark and light were actually deeply frustrating for players. Players would get locked into an animation as they removed their night vision but it was impossible to enter lit rooms or scout bright areas with night vision active as it completely whited out players’ screens. This made it easy for players in lit spaces to ambush squads coming out of the dark. Additionally, players were already struggling to navigate the narrow spaces and twisting paths of Hagental - the feedback was that frequently toggling night vision on and off was exacerbating the issue. There was also a sentiment that having more of the gameplay happen in fully dark spaces would better fit the Nightfall theme.
A screenshot of Hagental Base showing one of the dark to light transition zones.
The optimal fix for addressing this feedback would have been to change the lighting in Hagental. Being able to work with art and lighting to thoughtfully design which areas were lit and which weren’t with Gauntlet in mind would have been ideal; however, because the map had been handed to us in a completed state, lighting was already locked down. Changing the lighting at this point would have required resources we didn’t have and created additional work for other Nightfall modes.
The next solution I attempted was to cut out the lit parts of the map. I blocked entrances to lit areas with doors or props and set up out of bounds volumes. I thought this would address the friction point in the transition zones by simply removing them as well as emphasize the Nightfall theme by having most of the playable space be dark. Although this attempt did successfully address these two concerns, it worsened the navigability issue. Additionally, there was a feeling from the team that the map shouldn’t be cut up in such a manner. Because of this feedback, I scrapped this change.
A mockup that shows which rooms I proposed blocking off.
The fix that best addressed this issue within the given constraints was to reduce the amount of transition zones within an arena. To achieve this, the layouts had to be entirely moved and rebuilt. The new arena bounds were selected with the condition that there only be one transition zone per arena - effectively, half the arena would be lit and the other half would not. This did not entirely eliminate the frustration players experienced with the transition zones but it did dramatically reduce it. It also helped to address players getting lost - the updated arenas were smaller by necessity to avoid multiple transition zones which meant fewer areas for players to get lost in. Reducing the number of times players toggled night vision also helped reduce confusion.
A mockup that shows the final arena bounds used for the modes - each arena only had one lit space to reduce friction in transition zones.
A final point that helped reduce frustration for this mode actually came from the gameplay team. The first pass on the night vision goggles included long animation cycles to toggle them on or off. This was an issue for Gauntlet as well as other Nightfall modes. The feedback was passed along to gameplay who were able to increase the speed of the animation. This, alongside the changes to the arenas, vastly improved the player experience.