Today marks the end of the launch week for Electronic Arts' (EA) new large-scale multiplayer shooter Battlefield 6, and boy, what a launch week it was. Not only did the FPS open to very positive review scores and a colossal concurrent player count of 750K+ on Steam alone, but it also went on to sell over 7 million copies in three days and has remained Steam's top seller since the day it came out.
But while Battlefield 6 has undeniably been massively popular and a massive success thus far, it also hasn't been without problems, including numerous bugs and launch issues and a handful of gameplay and system-related snags.
Perhaps the largest of these is the state of its progression system, which players have criticized for feeling too slow and difficult compared to past Battlefield titles. Indeed, the lengthy process of unlocking new weapons, attachments, and gadgets has been a pain point for many — and one that I agree with, after putting 40 hours into Battlefield 6 myself.
Thankfully, though, the developers at Battlefield Studios have taken this feedback to heart, and have taken some important steps to improve the pace of a progression in a new patch first detailed in a Community Update post, and then released on Friday morning.
"We’ve heard your feedback around the pace of progression, especially how long it can take to unlock hardware such as gadgets, and weapon attachments. We know progression is an important part of feeling rewarded for your time on the battlefield," wrote the developers.
"As initial steps," the team has implemented the following adjustments to progression in an effort to make it feel smoother and less grindy:
- The XP gained from match completion and the daily bonus are being increased by 10% and 40% respectively.
- The XP needed to unlock the first 20 attachment ranks is being reduced, so you’ll start earning useful attachments almost twice as fast.
- Please Note: For weapons that are already being progressed, the UI might display something abnormal at first, but this should resolve itself once a match is played while using that weapon.
- The assignments that required career ranks 20, 23, and 26 to begin will now require career ranks 10, 15, and 20, respectively.
Between raising base XP gains, reducing the XP needed to unlock weapon attachments, and giving players access to Challenges gating some new weapons and class gadgets at lower ranks, these tweaks should do a lot to speed up the overall speed of progression.
What is arguably the biggest issue with Battlefield 6's progression system, however, is how difficult, tedious, and downright baffling the objectives of its Challenges are, such as one that requires you to damage enemies by hip firing light machine guns (LMGs) even though shooting them that way is insanely inaccurate.
Players have been slamming how frustrating these are to engage with since launch, so it's disappointing that they haven't gotten any changes yet. The good news, though, is that it sounds like some are on the way.
In the aforementioned Community Update, Battlefield Studios acknowledged how vexed players are with Challenges, and explained that adjustments to them will come at some point in the future.
"While this allows these assignments to be started sooner, we are aware of the frustrations regarding the challenges themselves and are actively working on reviewing them, but it will take more time to develop, test, and implement these changes," the developers noted.
Battlefield Studios has acknowledged how vexed players are with Challenges, and explained that adjustments to them will come at some point in the future.
It is a bummer that we won't see tweaks to Challenge objectives come for a while, and I have to question how difficult it would be to just revamp some of the particularly egregious ones with less unreasonable requirements. Still, I'm glad that they're at least in the works.
It's also great that we've gotten some substantial progression buffs just a week after Battlefield 6's launch. The game has been a blast to play in spite of the issues with its progression, so now that it's gotten some major improvements, I'm feeling even more incentivized to jump into it every chance I get.
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