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Karkand's a launch-day map, and it's based on Battlefield 2's Strike at Karkand. "We've made the play area quite a bit smaller, and we've got a very different kind of layout," says Salt.
"It looks like Battlefield 2 at first, but buildings and tactical spots have been moved around. There's still a lot of room, though. A lot of modern FPS games go for the really tight spaces, so it's been refreshing to open things out again."
Play4Free will ship with a new mode that revolves around capturing a series of flags and then holding them long enough to start earning points. The more flags you have, the quicker you earn, and the first team to reach the target level wins.
It's a game type so newly minted that DICE hasn't even named it yet ("What do you think about Assault?" asks Salt. I'll see how I feel after I've eaten, eh James) and despite the tightened confines of Karkand, there's still plenty of room for Play4Free's 16 vehicles to intrude. The game will support up to 32 players, too, so Karkand's going to get crowded.
Despite the relatively fancy visuals, DICE is aiming to keep the download footprint as close to the 500MB of Battlefield Heroes as possible. It seems that the other free-to-play concern – the economy – shouldn't be intruding into the warfare too much. The developers are more than aware that most players aren't going to want to pay a single penny, according to Salt.
