Battlefield core feedback
Specialists
Hey folks -
Today we’re set to give you a rundown on where we’re at with our designs and plans for improving the experience that you have with Specialists in Battlefield™ 2042.
Your feedback fits into 3 main topics which we’ll outline for you today, alongside what we know to be problem areas, and how we’ll iterate on that in our future designs.
Class Identity
The biggest point of feedback we’ve heard from you around Specialists is that their current design means you’ve lost the feeling of Class Identity and a more defined sense of role on the Battlefield.
We’re working to assign our Specialists into one of four recognisable Classes, and redefining the gear and equipment that they’ll have access to, to shape a more defined and understandable role on the Battlefield that you are used to.
Assault - Mackay, Sundance, Dozer
Support - Angel, Falck, Season 2 Specialist
Engineer - Lis, Boris, Irish
Recon - Casper, Paik, Rao
Within the game today, Irish presently fits into the Class role of Engineer in Battlefield™ 2042, and the current Loadout system doesn’t restrict him expanding on and accessing gameplay to push him towards a different role. For example, Irish can heal other players through use of Medical Crates, and when you encounter him in a round today, he may not be equipped to fill a Vehicle Support, or Anti-Tank role.
While that freedom opens up more opportunity to control how you want to approach your role, it also opens up a window to redefine what it means to be an Engineer on the Battlefield. As a result, this makes it more difficult to assess an enemy player when encountering them, or understanding what to expect from a friendly when Playing The Objective together.
We believe that freedom of Loadout is an important part of gameplay in Battlefield™ 2042. But we also agree that Class Identity is core to Battlefield, and something that many of you want to have.
So to achieve that, we’ll rework the range of Gadgets and Equipment that each Class can access in order to ensure that Class Identity is more pronounced. This gives us the opportunity to increase the pool of content available by introducing some of the gadgetry currently available in Battlefield™ Portal. These detailed design plans aren’t locked or final, but should provide a good understanding of our intended direction based on the feedback that we’ve reviewed so far, and will continue to read now that you’re able to see our thought process.
Class Loadouts
We’re repurposing our Open Gadget systems, and restrict gadgets from selection when playing as certain Classes. As an example, Casper is a Recon and in the future, will always spawn with an Insertion Beacon. He would be able to select between the T-UGS, Proximity Sensor or any of the other Recon gadgets, but not for example the Medical Crate (Support Gadget), as that would be locked to a Support Specialist such as Angel.
One new element we’re introducing is Class Equipment. When you choose a Class to play as, your Class Equipment cements and enables your core purpose, and because it never changes your allies will always know what you can do. An engineer can always repair a damaged vehicle, an Assault can always keep pushing the front line. How you specialize in your role comes with your choice of specialist and loadout, which we will get into next.
Class Equipment (Always available)
Assault - Med Pen
Support - Defibrillator
Engineer - Repair Tool
Recon - Insertion Beacon
Class Gadgets (You can choose 1)
Assault - Smoke Grenade Launcher, C5 Explosives, IBA Armor Plate
Support - Ammo Crate, Smoke Grenade Launcher, Medical Crate, M18 Claymore
Engineer - Anti-Tank Mine, Recoilless M5, FXM-33 AA Missile, FGM-148 Javelin, EOD Bot
Recon - T-UGS, Prox Sensor, SOFLAM, C5 Explosives, Tracer Dart Gun
Throwables (You can choose 1)
Assault - Frag, Smoke, Incendiary
Support - Frag, Smoke, EMP, Incendiary
Engineer - Frag, Smoke, EMP, Incendiary
Recon - Frag, Smoke, EMP, Incendiary
Under this system, Casper could spawn with an Insertion Beacon, and be able to select a SOFLAM to provide strong support to a squad or teammate playing as Boris, who could always spawn with a Repair Tool, and be able to equip a Recoilless M5, a loadout setup which was previously not possible with our previous systems in place and we are happy to accommodate your requests for this form of flexibility with Specialists. You’ll also notice that we’re actively exploring bringing in some of our Battlefield Portal gadgets to expand the range of gadgets that a Class based Specialist will have access to.
Pulling all of these changes together, we’ll rework various menus and screens in the game to ensure that Classes are prominent, and to give you the best experience when choosing who to play as, and what Loadout to set.
One final note on Weapons, and where our thinking is today on how we might approach this part of Loadouts for Classes. This is an area of the game that we’re currently happy to leave as it is.
We believe that our game plays best today when we allow you to play with a weapon that best suits your playstyle. If you want to hold a lane as Boris, we don’t want to prevent you from having access to longer range weapons, nor do we want to limit a Paik player from taking on a more aggressive playstyle and equipping Assault Rifles.
What feedback are we looking for?
We want to hear from you if you feel that Specialists are currently categorized into their appropriate Class? Which Gadgets and Throwables do you expect to see in the Loadout for each Class? And lastly, are there further changes to Specialists that you expect to see to help enforce Class Identity?
A thread is available on the Battlefield Forums where you can share your thoughts and your feedback. We’ll monitor conversations across the various hubs of Battlefield Communities, and will return to discuss the feedback that you share with us and what we’re doing with that feedback during Season 2.
Share your thoughts here.
Specialist Gameplay and Balance
Another area of feedback you’ve told us about is Gameplay. This relates to how each Specialist plays and feels on the Battlefield, and how they compare to each other in terms of performance.
We’ve designed our Specialists to be stronger in certain scenarios than others. For example, Sundance is designed to have greater mobility than other Specialists, and so shows up as our highest picked Specialist as they’re one of the most offensive options for fighting on the frontlines.
Instead, Boris and his SG-36 Sentry Gun is designed to be more effective defensively, holding a position, and controlling lanes. We continue to review balance changes for specific abilities, but we do feel it’s ok to have Specialists shine in specific situations vs others, as long as they don’t always offer a clear combat advantage in every combat encounter.
Sundance is a good example of where we currently feel this doesn’t play out well. Their ability to relocate across the Battlefield is strong, but their Wingsuit and Specialist Gadget has been under constant revision from us these past few months. Presently, their Grenade Belt can be effective for area denial, but is often viewed as an ineffective Combat Ability, and creates more moments of frustration than it does satisfaction.
What you’ve told us is that the overall line-up of Specialists currently doesn’t always meet your expectations for what their respective classes can do to ensure balanced gameplay on the Battlefield. There’s a good range of abilities available to Specialists, but knowing where they’re most effective and being able to recognise when it’s better to switch it up is an area of the game we want to bring improvements to.
Maintaining balance between the Specialties and Traits of all Specialists is something that we continue to look at. We also want to hear from you about where you feel we should be focusing on balance changes between Specialists? Let us know over on the forums .
Narrative
The World of Battlefield 2042 is undergoing catastrophic change brought about by violent weather events, dwindling resources, and global war. We heard your feedback that Specialists feel disconnected from this world, both in appearance and voice, which are inconsistent with the life-and-death events taking place around them, and you already started to experience some of the changes that we’ve made here.
In Update 1.2, we started to introduce new looks for our Specialists, and there are more of these revisions that we’ll rolling out in the coming months.
Earlier in Season 1, we also disabled the voice lines that were present during End of Round whilst we recorded new VO that enable us to better represent the tone that we want you to experience when playing the game. Work is ongoing on further changes and will let you know more as we get closer to deploying them in a game update.
Elsewhere we’re working on improved animations, poses, and facial expressions to ensure that the entire experience is better aligned to our expectations for how a Specialist should be interacting with, and reacting to the world of 2042.
When can we expect Specialist changes to be live in-game?
There is a lot of effort currently ongoing to introduce Classes into the game, based on the feedback that we’ve received from you so far. We’re also hoping to learn more from you after today about which areas that we’ve highlighted need to be prioritized.
We intend to bring our vision of the Class System to Battlefield 2042 during Season 3, launching later on this year. We’re targeting deploying these changes as part of Update 3.2 in the later half of Season 3, but this is a loose estimate based on the early progress we’ve made so far. If we can bring it to the game sooner, we absolutely will and we’ll keep you updated on progress when we follow up on your feedback during Season 2.
What's Next?
Today we posed several questions to you, and we invite you to share your thoughts and responses over on the official Battlefield forums. We’ll of course also read your comments across multiple other spaces such as Twitter, Reddit and Discord.
And lastly, thank you for your patience once again whilst we gathered our thoughts on this topic and identified the best path forward. We’re confident that our proposal for bringing Classes back to the game is another positive step for us all, and we’re grateful that in spite of not having these changes ready sooner, that so many of you have been enjoying Season 1: Zero Hour. We’re really looking forward to seeing you jump into Season 2 in the meantime.
GLHF
Freeman // @PartWelsh
Community Lead, Battlefield
This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.