"You got my money this time, but it's the last time" | DICE isn't reverting its Portal XP nerf, claims it's working on challenge difficulty

Battlefield 6 developer DICE is caught in a tough spot. The game has been live for two weeks, and it has sold millions of copies across PC and consoles. While many players are happy to enjoy the explosive military shooter as is, there are a lot of different (and loud) opinions flying around as to how the game should progress.

One particularly sticky point has to do with Battlefield 6's Portal segment. Portal is designed, in theory, to allow all players to realize their Battlefield dreams on a custom server.

While that's indeed still happening in some less-frequented corners of the Portal, the past two weeks have mainly seen a glut of XP farms full of dummy bots who are happy to take a bullet to help your soldier progress.

On Tuesday, October 21, DICE began quietly rolling out changes to the experience and challenge progression gained while playing on user-made servers. Gone was everything but a 150% match completion bonus — no more counting wins, score, accolades, mastery XP, daily missions, assignments, and other challenges towards your soldier's progression.

This was a reaction by DICE to the oversaturation of XP farm servers, which, in some cases, was blocking users from creating their own experiences, "legit" or not.

👉 Related: 5 issues I have with Battlefield 6 after Week One

Because there, up to this point, was no official communication from DICE regarding the Portal changes, a lot of gamers began questioning the developer's reasoning, with some going so far as to declare Battlefield 6's Portal deceased just weeks after it made its debut.

It's now a few days later, and DICE has shared an official community update via its Battlefield Comms channel on X; within are details about the future of Portal that I'm sure many players won't be happy with.

DICE says that Verified Portal experiences not using the "Bot Backfill" option — which populates a server with bots in order to start a match, rather than waiting around for enough real players to join — will continue to receive full XP and progression.

However, custom Portal experiences are not reverting to their original state.

DICE says that this week's Portal changes have already caused a decline in PvE servers, while at the same time, PvP servers are becoming more common. I guess that's a win of sorts.

DICE also says that it plans to explore "potential solutions that address current issues that would allow us to reintroduce bots in the future while continuing to deliver a great player experience." In the meantime, those who enjoyed playing Battlefield 6 against bots in the PvE style are out of luck.

This leads to a couple of major issues.

First, a lack of bot backfill means that most custom Verified servers won't ever start a match properly. There are countless thousands of live Portal servers from which to choose, and without some serious planning, getting a high enough population count (which is required to officially begin a match) without bots is nigh impossible.

Second, a lot of players simply enjoy the PvE experience more than PvP, and not everyone is playing with bots in order to cash in on easy XP. With no progression, custom servers largely become a lost cause, as laid out by one Reddit user who claims they have since requested a refund.

Comment from r/Battlefield

Developer DICE also acknowledges the fact that the Portal XP bot farm issue arose due to unbalanced challenges. It says it is "actively working on updates for challenges and will share details as progress is made in this area."

The future of Battlefield 6's Portal

A lot of the problems DICE is having with its Battlefield 6 Portal stem from earlier messaging.

Some "legacy" features that Battlefield veterans crave — which I guess now includes a server browser — not found in the official side of the game were glossed over because they'd be available in Portal.

Before launch, many Battlefield players pointed to the fact that Battlefield 2042's Portal experience didn't deliver as intended, and questioned how DICE would make this time different.

Well, DICE didn't really change the formula, and we're now seeing history repeat itself in almost the exact same fashion. Battlefield 2042's Portal never recovered from its launch issues, and I fear the same will happen to Battlefield 6.

DICE says it will "continue to monitor, adjust, and refine Portal and Community Experiences as issues are resolved," but that could mean just about anything.

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