I think we’ve finally returned to some form of normalcy in Battlefield. 6 feels like an odd amalgamation of everything in between Battlefield Bad Company 2 and 1 (BF WW1). The gunplay will feel normal to anyone who has played Battlefield 3, transport helicopters are relevant again, and defibs are stronger than ever. I think it’ll be fine to play in the long term, much better than 2042, but I think the series has reached a tipping point where “we want the Call of Duty audience” has done serious damage.
Table of Contents
- Open classes
- Weapon balance and meta
- The war on spotting
- The map pool
- Old problems compounded by new ones
- That’s cool but what’s the verdict
Open classes
The “open classes” idea they came up with that lets you equip any weapon on any class is simultaneously hot garbage and not as bad as it sounds. There’s a lot of incentive to use weapons intended for your class, but if you feel like using an assault rifle on Engineer or Support, you can do that now. Conversely, there’s also not a crazy huge reason to build-a-bear your class’s primary weapon outside of preference for a specific weapon that’s on another class, or you’re trying to be a meta slave.
I think “open classes” also really gives Recon purpose as a class versus being the designated mongoloid magnet; much like Bad Company 2, you’re encouraged to break the “bushwookie” mold and slap a Carbine, DMR, or modified-for-close-range bolt-action with all the spotting gadgets. In practice only a select few true gamers actually do this, but it’s very nice to have.
The bad part of “open classes” is that you can do some annoying build-a-bear character that just doesn’t have to rely on anyone outside of Support for ammo and doesn’t have any of the downsides the four classes have that makes them rely on one another. Additionally, and this goes into my next topic, you can equip the meta weapon on any class in the game and ruin the spirit of the game just to see your kill count go up.
The weapon balance is weird. Every bullet weapon essentially loses any recoil penalty once you put a vertical grip on it, and there’s no reason to not have a vertical grip. You still need to do a little recoil control for ARs and LMGs, but once you put a few very easy to get unlocks on a SMG, all of that just goes out the window. If you ever wanted to be as good at aiming as someone who has spent a copious amount of time across multiple subgenres of FPS games, all you need to do is spend a little time playing Engineer and unlock the first few unlocks on the stock SMG.
SMGs with several unlocks basically become miniature lightning guns from Quake, similarly with Carbines. They outperform ARs and LMGs at their own mid-range distances while also excelling at their own close-range distance. Bullet spread is minimal, recoil is mostly nonexistent until you get to the point where you’re dumping the whole magazine, and SMGs have enough rounds per magazine that the sheer firerate and accuracy make up for the lower damage per bullet. SMGs and Carbines are essentially the only “relevant” weapons in the game and it’s very common to kill people using ARs or LMGs twice in a row and the next time you encounter them, they’re hosing you with a SMG or Carbine.
There’s not a whole lot of difference between the ARs outside of slight variations in firerate, whether they kill in 4 bodyshots or 5, and their recoil patterns. This is “good” in that you can really just choose the AR that’s coolest to you and have a blast, but this also sucks because there are no meaningful niches for rifles to occupy. Example that stands out is that the SCAR and Kord, despite having different firerates and bullet spread, essentially behave the same as midrange brawler rifles with some long and close range capability. They’re only slightly different from SMGs and Carbines, and outside of personal attachment to the cool factor of an AR, why use an AR when you can use either one of those?
Pistols are probably the worst they’ve ever been. There’s no meaningful difference between either of the first two pistols you have (the first everyone has by default and the second everyone unlocks around Rank 20ish), and the 1911 unlocks at level THIRTY EIGHT. Until then, the two you get early on are like worse SMGs: insanely accurate, no spread when aiming down sights, extremely little spread when hipfired, and extremely little recoil.
Weapons are in a weird spot, and EA’s BF6 team has said they plan to do a balance pass on at least SMGs for the Season 1 start patch. I think if SMGs get touched in a big enough way, it might make ARs more relevant, but it also may make Carbines even more relevant. There’s not enough to go on until EA does whatever initial tweaks they plan to make. At least almost all the guns are usable and the attachment unlocks let you get creative.
The war on spotting
DICE & EA have been gutting the ever-loving shit out of spotting since Bad Company 2. BF6 may have some of the worst spotting in the series, and it gets worse the more you learn about it. In BF6, spotting is incredibly critical because IFF (Identify Friend-Foe) is way harder due to how similar the uniforms are between NATO and Pax Armata in addition to the per-class visual customization that’s possible.
Additionally, the “blueberry” dots that appear above allies aren’t persistent either, meaning you can spend time shooting at a shady-looking figure that’s got line of sight on you, but after a second or two of firing at it reveals the “blueberry” dot signaling they’re on your side. Compare this to the consistent visibility of allied units in Battlefield 2, Bad Company 2, 2142, even Battlefield 3.
The orange spotting diamonds vanish either after a second or two or the instant a target hides behind cover, rather than persisting for an extra second, making it harder for impromptu coordination between silent teammates (different squads, no mic, etc.) to happen. This is made worse by the fact that modern audiences have largely forsaken pinging enemy targets because they’re part of the aim schmoovement community or something and have zero desire to treat anything differently from Call of Duty or Fortnite.
However, there’s a very minor beacon of hope. Recon, home to the dreaded bushwookie, has some of the absolute best tools in the game for doing mass spotting to reveal enemies for the team. Recon’s drone auto-spots enemies and can be left stationary midair and it’ll autonomously spot targets, and the ol’ faithful spotter grenades from Bad Company 2 are back on the menu. Recon also has a laser designator that works on both airborne and ground vehicles, making it easier for your team to spot them.
However, DICE was so dead-set on making spotting unnecessarily difficult and unrewarding that neither tool Recon has actually bends their rules for spotting, depending on class unlocks & passives some players are sometimes straight up not spottable despite being in full view of a given drone, and no matter how many spotting assists you rack up from enabling your teammates to actually see and fight the opposing team it’s not reflected in a Recon player’s score at all.
However, when spotting multiple enemies as Recon actually does work, or even when spotting as an individual works, the game feels like Battlefield again. Your team can see theirs and they have a distinct advantage in the fight, and if they’re even marginally able to point and click their gun, it’ll reveal itself in your team’s score.
What doesn’t help this is:
- EA implemented “auto-spotting” where if you aim down sights at an opponent, it’ll automatically spot them for you, but the majority of barrel tip attachments negate this AND the barrel tip attachments that you’ll end up using as you tweak your guns will negate auto-spotting
- Natural smoke present on maps disables spotting on opponents like smoke grenades do. This translates into some lone dude, or even worse a tank, completely protected from spotting even though you can see it clearly
- Spotting in itself feels buggy because of the “forced cooldown” between attempted spot attempts AND is just buggy in general
Spotting is entering its death throes with Battlefield 6 and I think that’s genuinely tragic. If this doesn’t course correct either within Battlefield 6’s lifespan or in Battlefield 7 (perish the thought), I think the series is doomed to become another Call of Fortnite amalgamation. Spotting needs to be emphasized and rewarded.
The map pool
EA got clever and made 9 general purpose maps that have their boundaries modified based on the gametype. The way they reuse the map pool outside of one map that’s mode-limited (Saint’s Quarter) is by reconfiguring where team spawn points, what vehicles spawn, and where the “no man’s land” areas that will autokill players are. It’s pretty smart from a software development position, even if it means there aren’t maps hand-crafted for a specific game mode.
Some maps are really good for one gametype and downright abysmal for another. Example, Iberian Offensive on Conquest is really good with a lot of fun push & pull, but on Attack/Defend it’s absolutely miserable as the attackers because defenders have height advantage built into the map.
Mirak Valley is actually insanely fun on either Conquest or Escalation from my experience, but it’s pure misery when played on Rush or Breakthrough. I’ve been in too many Mirak Valley games where my team is absolutely stonewalling the opposition at their initial spawn and the opposite team doesn’t even really get to play, and I’ve been on the receiving end. It’s sucky and I’ve seen the last point of Mirak Valley a whopping two times in 80-ish hours.
Personally my favorite map is panning out to be Siege of Cairo because the map design is kind to my favorite Battlefield gametypes (Rush, Breakthrough, Conquest, Escalation) and I think there’s a lot of variation in height and cover, but it never gets too crazy. Iberian Offensive has provided a lot of fun moments and engagements in Conquest & Escalation.
Manhattan Bridge is a weird one. It’s probably the most average map of the 9 (8 “global”) release maps: the layout is decent overall for Conquest, Escalation, Rush, and Breakthrough, but without some kind of coordination it can become a grating experience. Being an attacker on Manhattan Bridge for Rush or Breakthrough can try your patience at any point because it’s easy to defend, but once the attackers have a good vantage point it’s not a huge stretch to breach the opposition’s defense. Liberation Peak has the same issue: so long as the map isn’t being exploited for nigh incontestable height advantage on Conquest or Escalation, it’s a decent time.
Operation Firestorm is similar to Mirak Valley, as well; it’s more of a giant but softly angled hill (goes up for NATO, goes down for Pax Armata) with multiple midsize buildings to fight in (vs Mirak’s two huge towers). It has more hills that are exploitable by Recon being airdropped and making them borderline un-counterable directly, but you and your team can choose a different area to attack most of the time and render the bushwookie invalid.
New Sobek City is similar to Manhattan Bridge in that in a perfect gameplay scenario, it’s pretty average across all gametypes but with more going on in terms of elevation. Unfortunately, it’s the second-worst map in the game because it has the same issue of uncontestable Recon bushwookies but there’s no way to circumvent them. You are entirely at the mercy of aircraft being able to take them out or their ADHD brains rendering them useless because there are so many targets to choose from. If it was easier to use rappels to get to them or completely demolish buildings so the height advantage was more contestable, New Sobek City would be much more bearable.
Empire State is the peak dogshit map of the 9. It’s completely irredeemable across all gamemodes. Its design funnels people into kill hallways in attack/defend gametypes, and is a disorganized clusterfuck of height advantage, weird doorways, blinding sun & smoke, and ring-around-the-rosie capture points on Conquest/Escalation. Empire State has the worst visibility of all 9 maps in the game bar none, chock-full of map-based smoke and rubble that interferes even more than usual with spotting and IFF. Probably one of the easiest maps to get “skybox flashbanged” on where you try to look up at someone and the sun just completely blinds you.
All in all, I think the release map pool is pretty good despite the presence of Empire State and how the gametype can drastically alter the “fun” level of the map. If they got rid of Empire State completely and fixed New Sobek & Liberation Peak so that it’s easier to counter-push even with the currently super-short global respawn timer, the map pool would be surprisingly good.
Old problems compounded by new ones
A lot of the old-school problems are still there: people who have no business playing Recon being useless bushwookies who can’t even countersnipe, people not spotting for the rest of their team, medics who don’t revive people, “line of fire” revives, people grabbing air vehicles who haven’t even done the tutorial for flying, and so on. Not much can really be done about it. Genuinely, it is what it is and it’s what creates winning & losing games.
There’s a much larger problem present than things like bad pilots, though. I think there’s a certain kind of decay present in BF6 that is both not easily resolved and going to be a major problem throughout the game’s lifespan and possibly from hereon out: BF6 represents the tipping point where Battlefield is noticeably less like Battlefield and more like Call of Duty. My first impression of Battlefield 6 from the open beta was that it felt like playing Call of Duty 4 (2007).
Yes, I know Call of Duty is a popular bogeyman. No, this doesn’t mean Call of Duty doesn’t belong in the market. Yes, I know this has been happening for some time across multiple unrelated games and series. No, this doesn’t mean that the Call of Duty competitive circuit doesn’t take skill. This is about reaching a tipping point where wanting the Call of Duty audience has truly fucked the unique gameplay of a long-standing series to where it has lost what’s made it unique.
There are five key issues that all contribute to the “CoD-ification” of Battlefield 6:
- The loss of the commander role
- The loss of meaningful respawn timers
- The loss of defined spawn points
- The loss of player visibility
- The increase in movement speed
Ever since the commander role was completely killed off in Battlefield 3, the series has lost a very key part of what made the series unique and helped manage its pace. Commanders could support their team with UAV recon flights to reveal opponents for a brief time, deliver artillery & precision strikes, passively direct squads to attack certain points, and provide resupply to forward players.
With the loss of the commander role, loss of gameplay direction followed soon after. Even if the orders were shitty, having someone be able to direct the flow of gameplay was critical to keeping people engaged. Even in Bad Company 2, a game without a traditional commander role, the player who took up residence in the UAV station was able to highlight targets and perform precision strikes via guided missiles, smoke grenades, or machine gun fire (depending on what the UAV pilot equipped theirs with). If opponents can be seen both on a minimap and on screen via spotter dots, players intuitively know that’s where the action is and will move accordingly.
In BF6, players really just move by vibes despite orders, and I felt this way about Battlefield 1 as well. Everyone does what they want without any real cohesion or reasoning outside of “they’re capturing a point”; granted that this was an issue in older games, but the audience in the past was more willing to give the “play the objective” thing a shot before giving up. The illusion of trying to do it is completely shattered in BF6. An anomaly in BF6 is people who spend 25 minutes getting some kind of KDR 6/10/2 with 2000 points, indicating they’re not even participating half the time they’re playing; someone putting up a bad KDR means they’re at least in the shit. When people go AFK, their stats don’t budge. These players are actively moving around the map.
What further compounds the effects of “vibes-based gameplay” is that the game will automatically assign a point to attack if a squad leader hasn’t pinged a point to attack; the game is arbitrarily deciding where any given squad should probably go based on some loose algorithm of “there are lots of or no enemies here”.
One new problem that’s come up is that respawn timers for the major game modes are now 4~5 seconds across the board. In the true progenitor games like Battlefield 1942 through Bad Company 2, respawn times were longer across the board, making slightly slower than usual play the name of the game. Moving with your squad was favored, opening fire so the opposition looks at you while your teammates move, knowing when to let your downed teammates respawn versus reviving them, etc.
Now, 4~5 second respawn means everything is a clusterfuck. There’s no penalty for dying on defense when playing attack/defend, and it’s incredibly easy to “vermintide spawn” behind someone who just killed you for a revenge kill without any gap on conquest modes. Short respawns keep people in the game, which made things like 24/7 2fort popular in Team Fortress 2, but it absolutely neuters the actual objective-based gameplay of capturing the flag on 2fort. Similarly, it neuters the objective-based gameplay of Battlefield; on attack/defend, capturing the point is a side effect of fighting instead of the other way around.
There are also no “static” spawns outside of round-start spawn at HQ. When you spawn on a control point, the game will put you somewhere approximately in range of that control point. Sometimes it’ll be way in the back in the middle of fucking nowhere and your HQ, sometimes it’ll be to the left and you’ll get sniped by some dent who has been sitting in the corner of a map waiting 6 minutes for someone to show up, sometimes it’ll even be right in the line of fire because that spawn just so happened to become the new front line.
Another new problem is that the alternate skins are making the already bad IFF even worse. Visual comparison are in order. I’ve sourced several videos from around YouTube for prior Battlefield games to ensure my analysis is untainted by nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses. First up is Battlefield 2:
Note that while there’s some volumetric fog, there isn’t a whole lot in terms of map entities that are obstructing vision. When “MartN” spawns near or moves towards allies, they immediately light up with either a blue nameplate if they’re teammates, a green one if squadmates. Even if enemies had “dark” uniforms, they stood out as they would either have no label or the red nameplate label would appear when spotting them and it would persist.
Jump to Battlefield 2142 next:
The same pattern repeats: allies immediately light up with either a blue or green nameplate, enemies either have no nameplate or have a distinct red one. Even better for 2142 is that the EU and PAC factions have very distinct armor styles so if you’re on one team, there’s no question about who you’re shooting at when looking at opposing player models.
Bad Company 2:
Same pattern continues! Easy to determine who’s friend and who’s foe. EA successfully replicated the uniform distinction between US and Russian forces that they had for EU and PAC forces in 2142. If I look at an opponent, they light up with an orange nameplate as indicator. Hell, if I ping a tank and I go into cover, the ping doesn’t go away and I have an approximate idea of where the tank is until the ping fades!
In Battlefield 6, this just doesn’t exist. Maps are chock-full of rubble and props, complex shadows obscure uniforms, smoke grenades go off constantly, minor explosions obscure vision, the game seems to use its auto-spot feature when it feels like it, the list of gripes goes on. This is just one singular 30 second clip of one singular short life:
Two seconds in, there’s already weird lighting where one room is pitch dark and full of fancy shadows & graphical spotlights, then the next room might as well look like a house in Bad Company 2. Instant I leave the house I’m greeted by my first smoke grenade miasma, then two more pop up. If the bushwookie at 11 seconds didn’t have a blue dot above his head I’d have no idea if he was an ally or not.
With how crazy the movement speed is, an opposing Engineer is just booking it through the smoke to the point where we’re ALL caught off guard that he’s there in the first place. 16 seconds there’s some bizarre winter camo uniform that could be USMC, could be Pax Armata? Who knows? I take a guess and shoot at him and the game only decides to mark him as an enemy as he’s fucking dying.
This is a bit biased because I think they’re a terrible addition, but the very end of the clip is your typical Reddit player with a flashlight who you can’t spot because of the flashlight even though the flashlight isn’t completely blinding me like it’s advertised to. There’s a CoD-born “bloody screen so real” covering my monitor with strawberry jelly and the dude still gets touched by an allied bullet and dies anyway because I slathered his screen with strawberry jelly too.
I think the footage also speaks for itself in regards to bringing all of these pain points together. At the end of that 30 second clip, it didn’t matter who lived or died because we’re all back in 3~5 seconds. Kills don’t matter, deaths don’t matter; nothing matters, even capping the points. Defending the point doesn’t matter because we’re all just gonna rotate to cap another point while the opposing team takes the point we just capped.
If the team vibe nicely divides our team between points so we stay in the lead, we win. If the vibe is in shambles, we all end up just playing several Call of Duty matches across a map’s points and nothing gets done. Sometimes the vibe shifts in my team’s favor because someone was like “what if I had a VEHICLE”, but sometimes that vibe doesn’t matter because no one picked Engineer to help the driver out.
We all have a rough idea of who we’re supposed to shoot at but we’re all getting jumpscared by one another anyway because it’s hard to tell who’s who and it’s so easy to sonic speed into the opposition by accident. Some people purposefully ping, some people purposefully use drones when playing Recon, but it doesn’t matter if the map interferes with spotting or there are 6 different smoke grenades creating a foggy miasma which means the auto-spotting feature doesn’t alleviate Call of Fortnite players not spotting.
That’s cool but what’s the verdict?
Battlefield 6 is a mess at its core, but the gunplay is good, the maps are acceptable, and despite the series bending itself to capture the Call of Fortnite audience, there’s still nothing like it on the market. It scratches an itch I’ve been wanting to itch for years at this point. I think it’ll lose some player count and stabilize at a more reasonable total playerbase population, but EA will prop this game up for a good few years given the battle royale that’s attached to it.
I think the game itself is worth investing your time into because there are meaningful decisions you can make in terms of guns and kits. The sheer size of the game is still Battlefield, and there’s lots of impromptu teamwork, but you’ll feel that something’s off. It’s not really Battlefield even though it feels like it; you’ll feel it from the map sizes, the gunplay at longer ranges, the spawn timers, the “no man’s land” zones the game draws for the attack/defend gametypes. Community servers are squirreled away deep in multiplayer search menus and not the face of the game, and you’re limited to parties of 4 for searching as a group.
It’s fun, it’s clear we’re returning to the old days of Battlefield, but I think too much damage has been done to the series since Battlefield 3. The company responsible for 20 years of Battlefield doesn’t remember how to make the games they made 20 years ago.