The Battlefield 6 beta is officially a Thing That Happened, and now comes the terrible ordeal of Learning From The Experience. Here is what developers DICE, Criterion, Motive and Ripple Effect have learned from the experience: you are all playing the game far too much like Call Of Duty. Goodness me, it’s like 2007 never ended.
Doing headshots in midair? That’s an updatin’. Doing a parkour while carrying a light machinegun? That’s an updatin’. Bunny-hopping with prejudice? You’d best believe that’s an updatin’. Never mind that those multiplayer reveal montages emphasised footloose quickdraw almost as much as they incited a murderous contempt for helicopters. It’s time to play Battlefield the way Battlefield should be played: lying in a hole praying that one of your team-mates spawns on you before a tank rolls over your head.
This, at least, is my addled Friday afternoon summary of EA’s just-announced post-beta plans, via Mecha-Hitler.com. Let’s squeeze into our thinking caps and break it all down.
Firstly, the developers are doing a “general pass on recoil and tap-fire characteristics across all weapons”, to make them feel more unique, especially in terms of range. They’re also making changes to encourage more controlled tap and burst-firing. In particular, the M87A1 shotgun has been defanged, and they’re “investigating the Time-to-Kill and Time-to-Death experiences”, with news of changes to follow.
As for movement, they want it to feel more “balanced and traditional” in the final version of Battlefield 6. There will be less carry-over of momentum and particularly horizontal speed from a slide to a jump. Jump height will also be lowered during consecutive jumps, and you’ll be less accurate while jumping or sliding.
“These changes are designed to make sliding and jumping more situational, so they are no longer ideal options for engaging in gunfights, and will contribute to a gameplay pace that rewards skillful movement without becoming too fast or unpredictable,” the devs comment. You won’t get as much acceleration when opening a parachute, either, “for more controlled aerial movement”. I hate being in control of my aerial movement. In practice, it just makes it easier for people on the ground to shoot me.
The game’s smaller maps are being tweaked to stop naughty people getting onto rooftops and venturing out of bounds. “This gameplay is not intended for these maps, and the upcoming ladder for the Assault class is also not designed to access these areas,” the devs sternly explain. Bad ladder! Down!
They’ll be testing two more maps in Battlefield Labs before release, a remake of Battlefield 3’s Operation Firestorm and another map set in Mirak Valley, both of which offer “the full complement of vehicles” and “a more vast combat space”. Vaster, EA, vaster! How am I supposed to trust you to fine-tune parachute physics when you can’t even optimise your sentences. Yes, I realise I have just held up a red cape to all the amateur copyeditors in the comments.
Modes? Well, they’ve found that Rush gets a bit smeary when there are too many players involved. Apparently, “when a player tries to arm the M-COM while more than 20 opponents are defending, the intended gameplay becomes less tangible”, presumably because the attacking player’s head and torso also become less tangible. As such, they’re lowering the player count for Rush “to improve the flow of combat and restore the tactical, methodical experience that defines the mode”.
Anticipating pushback on this front, the post points out that people can mess with the count as they please when playing Rush via the Portal editor. Breakthrough, meanwhile, will receive “map-by-map balance adjustments towards our goal of 50/50 win ratio for both Attackers and Defenders”.
In general, EA are taking an ad hoc approach to player counts based on the individual map and mode. “For example, at launch, some Breakthrough layouts will support 48 players, while others will have 64,” the post comments. “It’s the one of many factors we adjust to create the right balance and feel for each scenario. In Breakthrough higher player counts work well on open, dynamic maps, while smaller player-groups offer a more focused experience on denser maps.” They’ve found that “8v8 provides a solid starting point for small-scale, fast-paced modes like Team Death Match, Squad Death Match, Domination, and [King of the Hill]”. Again, you can jimmy the workings in Portal if you wish.
Some final bits: open and closed weapon playlists will continue to be available in Battlefield 6, “and we are looking for ways to keep them easily accessible”. I’m not sure why that would be difficult? They’re also trying to fix matchmaking so that you won’t have too much difficulty finding games in which to complete the Challenge of capturing sectors in Breakthrough or Rush.
Expect some of these improvements to materialise in forthcoming Battlefield Labs playtests. The game launches on 10th October. Our hardware editor James attended a preview event recently and came away with the verdict that it “looks like a Battlefield game”, thereby demonstrating the granular insight that got him promoted to CPU Wrangler First Class.
Even more granularistically, James noted that “there are also reasons to be optimistic that this is a series getting itself back on track, from its renewed emphasis on breaking shit to the replacement of show-off specialists with that old unspoken rule of ‘Stick with your squad or perish.'” Did you play the beta? How did you find it?
