Battlefield 6 Open beta impression

[Worgen]

None of the maps looks as closely-knit as the likes of Cairo or Iberian. Builds can also be razed faster and more complete compared to what I saw in BF6.

Speaking of Cairo, Dear BF Studio; Either make the rooftops more accessible, make them a Killzone, make the rooftops collapsable, or give us weapons/gadgets that drops from sky, like the Mortal from BF3. I saw a ladder in one of the trailers, and I hope it can extend to rooftop. Because once again, snipers up there are nearly impossible to kill.

Recoils and fire rates also need to be corrected, because I swear I couldn't tell the difference between ARs, LMGs, and SMGs other than their sound effects and mag size. I think the TTK might feel fast because the spread in these guns are similarly small.

Grenades and Rockets could use a buff; Those used to be super fun to clear out traps and ambushes. Grenades especially, had reason for being hard to resupply once you used them in BF4. And RPGs.... IDK, if they are so good at taking out vehicles, why does it suck at blowing up a side of building, or cause splash damage to infantry?

They do trim down the operation size of the map depending on what game mode your playing in bf6, I think they did that in Bad Company 2 also. But it does look like there are much larger maps coming in the full release.

Dataminer casually shares alleged images of Battlefield 6's unreleased 'large' maps to reveal how big they really are

If accurate, Battlefield 6's definition of "large" maps might, in fact, be pretty large.

www.pcgamer.com

I found snipers rather easy to deal with with the support class. Just pumping rounds from the LMG tends to be good at killing them or at least forcing them to take cover. Also, you throw c4 further then you expect.

I suppose weapons could feel more different, but that tends not to be that fun since it means really emphasizing specific uses for the weapons. LMG can't hit anything unless your prone, stand and fire for assault rifles, smgs are good at hip but damage falls to nothing at range, etc etc.

Technically an rpg being bad against a building would be expected, they are lauching a shaped charge, not a high explosive. You would expect them to leave a small hole thought a good amount of material, not blow up a wall. Would be interesting to have multiple ammo types, like one that is a high explosive but sucks against vehicles.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Devs response after feedback from beta:


My favorite sections:

We observed some players finding a way to reach rooftops and venture 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. We’re actively working on adjustments to prevent unintended access and ensure gameplay stays within the intended boundaries.

THANK YOU!!!! Although I also was hoping for more easier access and have them collapable, but hey, at least people don't have to deal with those campers anymore.

Playlist Options
A limited variety of playlist options were created for the Open Beta to both showcase and test the flexibility of the matchmaking system. For more details on our playlist adjustments, see our post about Open Beta Week 2 Playlist Options. Playing with both Open and Closed Weapons will continue to be options in Battlefield 6 and we are looking for ways to keep them easily accessible.

We recognize that some players experienced difficulty finding games to complete the Challenge of capturing sectors in Breakthrough or Rush. It wasn’t ideal and we’re actively using your feedback and in-game data to review and improve the Matchmaking system, with the goal of providing a smoother experience in the future.

Okay, not a bad start, but I think having a dedicated server browser would've been nice. I heard it was going to be available in portal, but how about main game modes as well?

 

[meiam]

Wait, why is there response "we'll make sure people can't use rooftop" rather than "we'll make sure using rooftop is part of the intended experience.

I thought the battlefield selling point was big map with lots of freedom..

 

[FakeSympathy]

Wait, why is there response "we'll make sure people can't use rooftop" rather than "we'll make sure using rooftop is part of the intended experience.

I thought the battlefield selling point was big map with lots of freedom..

They probably meant the Cairo map. I agree they really should've made it more accessible, and also feature plenty of ways to flush them out (portable mortars are back, so that's one way). Nevermind the recons, they also probably didn't want the engineers camping up there while raining rockets, on a map that only has two vehicles per team.

Really hope this doesn't mean rooftops are inaccessible for every map. I.E. Operation Firestorm, since BF3, had the facility rooftops accessible. It would piss so many people off it that was no longer the case

 

[FakeSympathy]

Well, the launch is finally here.

So the game actually does have a background lore; Turns out the world has gone to shit (again), and now the world has been divided between NATO and PAX Armata. NATO still wants to preserve the military forces of the nations around the world, and PAX Armata says "Fuck that, we want to break away from world government". This sets the tone for both the campaign and the multiplayer.

And I'm sure you guys already saw tons of reviews mentioning this, but the campaign is indeed boring. Don't get me wrong, BF campaign has never been anything to write home about except for few, but each game had those jaw-dropping moments that you somehow live through. Nothing as crazy or corny as COD, but those moments were still great.

Here, I don't think I had those moments. Like, it's such a "okay" experience. Typical military/special ops drama that involves shoot outs, car chases, carpet bombing, squad party banters, etc. No massive earthquakes or surviving Jets like in BF3, or witnessing an massive EMP blast, surviving a monsoon storm, or being air-lifed by a carrier plane by a zipline like in BF4.

It's just...boring. Also, the level designs discourages you from exploring, as you get warnings to return to where your squad is if you wonder off; I mean why give such detailed environment, and collectibles, when you force players to literally stay on track?

There are a few standout moments, but they are rare in the 5.2 hours I put into campaign. There are total of 9 missions.

And at the end, It ends on a fucking clifhanger, the whole "yeah I may have been the big bad.... but I was only the part of the greater threat" type of clifhanger. It's trying to bait us for BF7. Fuck that shit.

EA has made strange decision to make the game always-online even for campaign, and while that is stupid, I promise you won't be missing much.

That's all I have to say for the campaign. I will put a few hours into the multiplayer and give my two cents on that side

 

[BrawlMan]

No massive earthquakes or surviving Jets like in BF3, or witnessing an massive EMP blast, surviving a monsoon storm, or being air-lifed by a carrier plane by a zipline like in BF4.

If I decide to buy these at a used price, which as the better campaign: BF3 or BF4? Both tend to be pretty cheap at second hand retail stores.

And at the end, It ends on a fucking clifhanger, the whole "yeah I may have been the big bad.... but I was only the part of the greater threat" type of clifhanger. It's trying to bait us for BF7. Fuck that shit.

EA has made strange decision to make the game always-online even for campaign, and while that is stupid, I promise you won't be missing much.

That's all I have to say for the campaign. I will put a few hours into the multiplayer and give my two cents on that side

EA can definitely fuck off. So it's not ever worth getting used.

 

[FakeSympathy]

If I decide to buy these at a used price, which as the better campaign: BF3 or BF4? Both tend to be pretty cheap at second hand retail stores.

Just to clarify, both campaigns have pretty bland writing, but still better than BF6.

BF3 did have a better story as a whole, but BF4 had crazier moments and character building within your squad.

Ironically, the order in which I prefer them is their numerical order; 3, 4, then 6. (not counting the campaign in other BF games)

EA can definitely fuck off. So it's not ever worth getting used.

Yeah, I kinda caved in and bought it at launch.

I forgot to add, some of the cutscenes that were shown in the singleplayer trailer HAS BEEN CUT. Hell, some characters in the trailer isn't even in the game.

Don't be like me. Get this game when on sale. Enjoy this game for its multiplayer portion

 

[Bedinsis]

I forgot to add, some of the cutscenes that were shown in the singleplayer trailer HAS BEEN CUT. Hell, some characters in the trailer isn't even in the game.

Ehhhh, isn't that standard operating procedure for trailers? That it may contain cutscenes that are not in the actual game itself?

 

[BrawlMan]

Ironically, the order in which I prefer them is their numerical order; 3, 4, then 6. (not counting the campaign in other BF games)

Thank you.

Don't be like me. Get this game when on sale. Enjoy this game for its multiplayer portion

I don't do online competitive multiplayer much, and I am not paying $60 for PS+. I do appreciate your efforts.

 

[Worgen]

Yeah, I kinda caved in and bought it at launch.

I forgot to add, some of the cutscenes that were shown in the singleplayer trailer HAS BEEN CUT. Hell, some characters in the trailer isn't even in the game.

Don't be like me. Get this game when on sale. Enjoy this game for its multiplayer portion

I had preordered the super expensive edition and was all excited but the Saudi and Kushner buyout proved to much, canceled.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Ehhhh, isn't that standard operating procedure for trailers? That it may contain cutscenes that are not in the actual game itself?

Hmm, I was comparing the reveal trailer, and the campaign trailer that was revealed a few weeks later.



The reveal trailer is the one w/ the missing cutscenes and moments in the campaign; I.E. The dude slamming on the desk never appears, and that scene where a heli crashes into an apartment building in NYC doesn't happen either.

Second trailer is much closer representation of the actual campaign, but they edited to make it look way more intense than it actually is.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Thank you.


I don't do online competitive multiplayer much, and I am not paying $60 for PS+. I do appreciate your efforts.

Now $80 min. Unless there’s some sort of discount out there.

 

[BrawlMan]

Now $80 min. Unless there’s some sort of discount out there.

Okay, PS+ is worth even less. Game Pass still sucks more, but not by much. Sterling called this out years ago, yet most people didn't listen or went along with it.

 

[FakeSympathy]

So I played a few hours of the multiplayer.

I will say the good things first; Yep, this is a Battlefield game, through and through. Big open maps, with vehicles, buildings crumbling down, grenades being thrown back and forth, and all those bs sniper shots.

Compared to the beta, a lot of my concerns were answered. One of my concerns was that the game might feel like COD. Well, this game is furthest thing from COD.

TTK has been nerfed, so you gotta actually aim and burst fire if you want to kill someone. LMGs, Carbines, Assault Rifles, and SMGs actually feel distinctive, with clearer shoot patterns, fire rate, spread, etc.

I am seeing a lot of newcomers who are trying to play this game like COD, only to see them get their asses kicked. And then they hilariously rage in the chat.

Playing objectively actually feels really rewarding. The best game mode to experience this is conquest. The conquest maps all seem to feature vehicles to some degree, the only exception being the small Brooklyn map from the beta. Conquest is how you can experience in full of the roles of each classes. I am definitely leaning towards either Support or Engineer. I love reviving my teammates or repairing vehicles.

It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. For one thing, the progression feels really slow. It took me about an hour to go from rank 1 to rank 13, and I can tell it's gonna keep getting slower exponentially. Don't get me wrong, progressional unlocks are nice, but my god I am dreading the rank 40+ unlocks. The daily/weekly challenges awards you with xp boosts, and the challenges themselves seem to be designed to be as annoying, or tedious as possible.

Also, while I appreciate the big open maps on conquest, I do think Operation Firestorm is a bad map. Yeah, I used to really like this map back in BF3/4, but compared to other open maps, I am starting to think how outdated the map design is. 60% of it is a vast field of nothing. And traveling between each capture points can take forever when walking.

Overall, the game is in a really good place. I am worried about how the live-service model is gonna look like, but for now I am having tons of fun.

 

[FakeSympathy]

More on the multiplayer; This covers maps and challenges.

Maps

Here are my reviews of each map; Keep in mind that I've played all of the maps with the two classic game modes; Conquest and Rush.

• Empire State

Prette much the same from beta; Close-quarter, no vehicles, and covers being blown up every 5 seconds. Just like in beta, it ended up being my second least favorite map.

• Iberian Offensive/Siege of Cairo

I take back what I said about feeling like a COD map; While the big streets are reserved for ground vehicles (provided they aren't littered with AT mines), after multiple sessions I think there is a good balance between big open spaces and tight streets, corners, and indoors spaces. They are what I consider to be the best examples of how a semi-open maps should be desgined

• Manhattan Bridge

This map has tanks, LAVs, Jeeps, and helicopters. One objective is in the roof top of a building while others are in the streets. I would say if you liked Siege of Shanghai or Operation Dawnbreaker from BF4, You will like this map. Chaotic streets, choppers flying around, and snipers can also get on the roofs to snipe. There are no convenient ways to get up there other than heli ride or someone dropping spawn beacons. This also means you can get stuck up there, and should any spawn beacons or ammo pack gets destroyed, you have no choice but to come down. The streets are pretty big too. However, there are no sewer or subway paths, which is kinda disappointing

• New Sobek City

A construction site for the titular city. Kinda cool to see the Pyramids off in ther distance. I feel this is where the destruction element could've been better, because I can kinda see finished buildings take more damage before falling down, but some of these structures are still in their foundation stage. So shouldn't they be more vulnerable for razing? Other than that, it has a good balance between big roads for the vehicles, helis and fly around the building and paths that can only be accessed on foot.

• Mirak Valley

Pretty much mini-version of New Sobek City, where the main construction site is in the middle of the map. There are two buildings in the middle, making a really cool hotzone.

• Operation Firestorm

I still think it's an outdated map design. Having some good snipers can absolutely pin the enemy team down.

• Saints Quarter

It's probably the prettiest-looking map. But I only played it once and never again. It's probably the most closed-spaced map currently. As such, this map does not support conquest or rush, and only is designed for Domination, King of the Hill, Squad and Team deathmatch. Aside from the fact that these modes are least played modes, the beauty of the map only lasts for a few min before things start to blow up. This is the only map that didn't feel like battlefield.

Challenges

As for the challenges, oh boy, I have lots to say.

There are of course, your standard daily and weekly bonus xp challenges. But there are also weapon and class challenges were you can unlock additional weapons and gadgets for each class. Some challenges are very do-able, such as C4 challenge for recon, where you have to earn points and spot enemies as recon. This makes sense.

But there are also ones where it is annoyingly designed; The very first challenge for the support unit is to heal teammates for 5,000 points. In the past games this would have been an easy challenges as all you had to do was drop medkits and teammates would heal from them. But there are no medits in BF6, and your teammates have to hit the interact button next to you to get healed.

This is annoying, because for one thing it's a mechanic that not many players are aware about and the prompt is kinda small, so they have no idea they can do this. Secondly, in a middle of a firefight, no one seems to have to both focus on the enemies and getting heals. I think this is why support unit should've had an option to drop medkit or ammo kit, because it gives them option to support the team either way.

There are also challenges that are near impossible! This means that if the match ends before you reach the goal, the count resets to 0. Probably the two biggest offenders are:

• Squad death match challenge: 30 squad revives in a match. Considering the winning score is 50 points, your team needs to absolutely suck and you staying alive to do complete this challenge. Notice how it ends with "...in a match"? This means that if the match ends, the counts resets to 0.
• Conquest Challenge: Win by holding all objectives. The opposing team needs to absolutely suck. Your team needs a landslide victory to get all objectives. The opposing team is given 1 min to take back at least one, which is actually plenty of time even with a semi-decent team. I have never won a conquest match like this

I really don't know who came up with these challenges, but they need to have their psychiatric checks, because holy shit, this is sadistic.

 

[Worgen]

 

[FakeSympathy]

Well, I have now clocked in 52 hours into BF6. And I think I had my fill.

I already explained how much campaign sucked. I also shared my praises and criticisms on the multiplayer.

There was one more mode that I had forgot to talk about; the Portal. Basically, you pay to host a server, and you can set your own rules, and even create your own map. However, it's broken. For one thing portal has its own server browser, and your creation won't always show. Instead, the top servers will be those boosting servers filled with bots. And the actual creations get pushed back to the bottom of the search list, thus leading to empty servers. So you essentially pay money for nothing. EA also promised there would be exclusive rewards for playing on portal, which was a lie.

So my main focus has been on multiplayer, particularly playing as support and trying unlocking everything for this unit. And I got everything I wanted to unlock, I can't imagine doing this 3 more times, with their own sets of annoying and grindy challenges.

Speaking of classes, while I love the classic four are back, there is a huge balance issue. Assault class' adrenaline injector, which is its unique ability, is useless. Recon unit, while their spotting equipment are nice, are kinda useless in close-quarter maps. Support is really OP, since they can heal, revive, supply ammo, throw smoke, and suppress enemies with LMGs. Engineers are also insane, since SMGs can somehow make a sniper shot and deadly in all range, plus they carry launchers.

It is very possible to win a match with just support and engineers.

And oh yeah, when searching for a multiplayer match, you will only enter open-weapon matches. The closed-weapon is apparently its own thing, and does not have a search option. Closed-weapon warfare also doesn't support other game modes except for conquest and breakthrough.

Don't get me wrong, I had tons of fun, but not nearly enough as I had hoped.

Maybe it's being online at all times, or it's my body rejecting the online shooter gameplay, or it's the flawed design, but I think I had enough.

....I really wish I got Ninja Gaiden 4 instead

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Well, I have now clocked in 52 hours into BF6. And I think I had my fill.

I already explained how much campaign sucked. I also shared my praises and criticisms on the multiplayer.

There was one more mode that I had forgot to talk about; the Portal. Basically, you pay to host a server, and you can set your own rules, and even create your own map. However, it's broken. For one thing portal has its own server browser, and your creation won't always show. Instead, the top servers will be those boosting servers filled with bots. And the actual creations get pushed back to the bottom of the search list, thus leading to empty servers. So you essentially pay money for nothing. EA also promised there would be exclusive rewards for playing on portal, which was a lie.

So my main focus has been on multiplayer, particularly playing as support and trying unlocking everything for this unit. And I got everything I wanted to unlock, I can't imagine doing this 3 more times, with their own sets of annoying and grindy challenges.

Speaking of classes, while I love the classic four are back, there is a huge balance issue. Assault class' adrenaline injector, which is its unique ability, is useless. Recon unit, while their spotting equipment are nice, are kinda useless in close-quarter maps. Support is really OP, since they can heal, revive, supply ammo, throw smoke, and suppress enemies with LMGs. Engineers are also insane, since SMGs can somehow make a sniper shot and deadly in all range, plus they carry launchers.

It is very possible to win a match with just support and engineers.

And oh yeah, when searching for a multiplayer match, you will only enter open-weapon matches. The closed-weapon is apparently its own thing, and does not have a search option. Closed-weapon warfare also doesn't support other game modes except for conquest and breakthrough.

Don't get me wrong, I had tons of fun, but not nearly enough as I had hoped.

Maybe it's being online at all times, or it's my body rejecting the online shooter gameplay, or it's the flawed design, but I think I had enough.

....I really wish I got Ninja Gaiden 4 instead

Ah, so they really are sticking with their stupid ass progression system huh? It was bad enough in BF4, I genuinely can't believe they keep bringing it back literally a decade later.

 

[FakeSympathy]

So the main game does not feature fully destructable buildings, but the f2p BR does? WTF.....

 

[Worgen]

So the main game does not feature fully destructable buildings, but the f2p BR does? WTF.....

Ugh, who chooses their music. They do otherwise good trailers but the musical choices are just weird.