EA’s Ripple Effect Studios is working on a new Battlefield game, though we don’t have a release date or official title yet. However, the publisher announced that it hired two military veterans to improve the game’s authenticity.

What do we know about EA’s next Battlefield?

EA hasn’t revealed much about the next Battlefield game, though its development team is reportedly the series’ largest. The project draws talent from four studios: DICE, Criterion, Motive, and Ripple Effect. The latter recently hired two former military personnel through the Hire Our Heroes program. The development team will use their experience to make the next Battlefield game a more authentic experience.

Madison Daugherty’s military career began as an enlisted military police soldier before becoming a logistics officer and battalion operations officer. She was assigned to the Third Infantry Division, where she was the distribution platoon leader for 30 Blackhawk helicopters. “The best way to describe it is as the most expensive mobile gas station you’ve ever seen,” she explained on EA’s blog.

After a three-month fellowship with EA’s Battlefield team, she joined Ripple Effect as a Product Manager. “I have been able to give good feedback on what realistic military stuff looks like,” Daugherty said. “We’ve put together executive summaries on military realism.”

Meanwhile, Ripple Effect’s new Associate Game Manager, Aaron Johnson, is a former green beret and small unit tactics instructor. Johnson’s career saw him stationed everywhere, from Afghanistan to Japan and many other places. “I was there to manage the assault force and maneuver them on the ground at first,” he explained. “And so, when I was on the other side of that, I was the guy leading the charge somewhere.” Later, as an instructor, Johnson trained soldiers to move, shoot, and provide medical aid in combat.

However, after his long military career, Johnson is just as enthusiastic about game development. “I wanted to be part of the Battlefield team as much as I wanted to be a Green Beret,” he said. “When I got placed on that team, I cried tears of joy.”

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Battlefield 2042‘s latest update has arrived on PS5 today, May 19. Update 4.1 removes Breakthrough 128 from the All-Out Warfare playlist on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, while stock weapons now have better base recoil. These are just some of the changes made in readiness for the much-delayed arrival of Season One, which will be making an appearance at the start of next month.

Battlefield 2042 Update 4.1 patch notes

One of the main changes in Battlefield 2042 Update 4.1 is the removal of the 128-player version of Breakthrough on PS5. DICE felt that Breakthrough didn’t really suit itself to the chaos of 128 players and that a 64-player version meant squads could work together in a more effective and tactical manner. To help with this, each Breakthrough map will now have a fixed layout with Discarded, Manifest, Orbital, and Kaleidoscope keeping the 128 layouts. Hourglass, Breakaway, and Renewal will have the 64 layouts. There will also be a reduced number of vehicles on each map. Conquest mode will still have a 128-player version as the larger maps are better suited to that number of players.

Base recoil on all weapons has been improved so that they handle better without any attachments. As such, the impact of attachments that affected recoil has now been reduced. Some of the Specialists have also received changes. For example, Boris’s SG-36 Sentry Gun is not as powerful as it was before, while angel no longer includes Armor Plates in his Supply Bag. For a full list of gameplay changes and bug fixes, you can check out the patch notes on EA’s website.

In other news, the Xbox Series S managed to outsell the PS5 in Japan last week, but only because of console shortages. Elsewhere, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition PS5 upgrade is now planned to be released during the final quarter of 2022.

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The Battlefield franchise didn’t play much of a part in EA’s financial report, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a future. EA CEO Andrew Wilson explained how the publisher is taking a “long view” of the franchise, but future investment and its growth depends on what the team manages to achieve with Battlefield 2042.

The future of the Battlefield franchise

EA views Battlefield as “one of the great franchises in our industry” and they’re not giving up on it that easily. As Wilson explained during EA’s earnings call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha, the company is taking “a long view” on its future and it will “be a really important part of our portfolio for many, many years to come”. The Battlefield team is now led by Vince Zampella and they are “rethinking the development process from the ground up” to make sure players can “get to the fun as quickly as possible,” something Zampella’s studio Respawn perfected with the Titanfall franchise.

Despite the poor reception of Battlefield 2042, the game has since received thousands of bug fixes and gameplay improvements through a series of patches. The latest of these finally added the much-requested VoIP for Party and Squads. However, Wilson acknowledged there is “still more work for us to do there”. Until the game gets to the point where EA feels its core experience and gameplay is “in the right place”, we’re unlikely to hear much about any new content. It’s only once that point is reached that players “expect us to invest and grow beyond where the game is at today”.

In other news, the PlayStation store has also started a Games Under $15 promotion to go with the earlier Extended Play sale. Elsewhere, Ubisoft has confirmed Skull & Bones and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will still be released during the current financial year.

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Battlefield 2042 will be getting its next major update later in April. While DICE and EA are yet to make any official announcement about the update, Battlefield Community Manager Straatford87 has told players there will be “a few hundred changes” included.

What will be included in the next Battlefield 2042 update?

DICE is currently looking at including a “few hundred changes” in the Battlefield 2042 April update. According to a game forum post by Straatford87, as spotted by MP1st, these changes will mainly cover bug fixes but vehicle balance, weapon attachments, scoreboard functionality, and voice communication. More specifically for vehicle balance, vehicle spawns will be reduced in 128 player maps to reduce vehicle dominance, while vehicle cooldown will also be increased.

The next will be considerable (April), and we’re currently looking at a few hundred changes. It’s mostly bug fixes, but we’re also looking to make further changes to for example vehicle balance and the current behavior of attachments for weapons.

We’ll provide more details on what exactly is in the update closer to its release date via a full set of update notes. I know you would like to know more now, so I want to clarify that I’m not trying to tease you by being vague – I’m simply still compiling the full list of changes for you all because it’s a lot.

Edit: the update will also contain the End of Round Scoreboard functionality, and VoIP. I think this is known info, but want to share it again for those who missed it.

The developer also revealed changes they would be making to the game’s maps following player feedback. Season 1 will include revamped versions of Kaleidoscope and Renewal. Both of these maps will feature shortened distances between Base Spawn and Flags and adjusted vehicle spawns to help with traversal. Additional cover and altered terrain will swing the balance of combat away from a focus on sniping to boots on the ground, as well as looking more realistic. More specifics on this will be revealed closer to the release of Season 1 this summer.

In other news, Among Us turned Horse Mode into a reality for April Fool’s Day. They also released PlayStation exclusive Ratchet & Clank cosmetics as part of yesterday’s update. Elsewhere, regulators are being pressured to assess Microsoft’s intended acquisition of Activision.

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Battlefield 2042 has been recognized to be a failure by players, critics, and even its publisher EA. The game was filled with bugs and was missing several features familiar to players of previous games. A new rumor claims the “valuable lessons” DICE has learned from this game will be used to shape a new game in the Battlefield franchise, which is already in the early stages of development.

What we know about the next Battlefield game

A new Battlefield game is in active development at the pre-production stage, with EA providing as much resources as needed to bring Battlefield back into the limelight for all the right reasons. The next Battlefield game will be set in a modern or near-future setting, according to XFire‘s sources within DICE and EA.

The title was originally due to follow on from Battlefield 2042, with 2042 acting as a new foundation for future titles. A former DICE developer said the upcoming title was first intended to be a “hero shooter” where specialists became mercenaries, but it is believed these plans have now changed since “valuable lessons” have been learned from 2042. An insider source thought that “we’ll be reverting a lot of the changes we made in Battlefield 2042”.

Meanwhile, DICE also continues to work on DLC for Battlefield 2042. This includes four specialists, four battle passes, new modes, weapons, vehicles, and maps. One such map called Exposure is due to be released this summer. Ripple Effect will be adding more content to the Battlefield Portal too. More news is expected on this content very soon, especially as Season 1 is due to be released in the summer.

In other news, Season 2 Reloaded is live in Call of Duty Warzone and Vanguard. Warzone players get Rebirth Island Reforced and several new game modes, while Vanguard gets a host of new features, including a game mode, map, vehicles, Operator, weapon, and Zombies additions. Elsewhere, Rocksteady has confirmed Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice Squad has been delayed until 2023.

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Following the Russian invasion of the Ukraine this week, DICE has pulled the weekly mission system in Battlefield 2042. Those who completed the weekly mission were to be rewarded with a skin depicting a grinning Russian helicopter but the removal of the system now prevents any more players from earning the skin.

What is the weekly mission reward now?

DICE has removed the weekly missions from the game this week “in light of current events“. As there is no longer a mission to complete, there is no longer a weekly reward to unlock. The Grin Reaper Mi-240 Super Hind Russian attack helicopter skin is no longer available to unlock. The timing of the skin was made even worse because the official translation of the Grin Reaper name into Russian was “Friendly Death”. Players who had already completed this week’s mission and had already unlocked the Grin Reaper skin will be able to keep it, according to a statement from the Battlefield Direct Communication (thanks Polygon).

In light of current events we have disabled the Weekly Missions system for this week, and this weeks reward is no longer available to unlock #Battlefield2042

Players who have already completed this weeks mission will not be affected.

Weekly Missions will return next week. pic.twitter.com/Pnn1V1H9jK

— Battlefield Comms (@BattlefieldComm) February 25, 2022

EA DICE is still deciding whether the skin will ever return to the game in the future according to EA’s Lead Community Manager, although he did say it was “something we will discuss”.  Weekly Missions will return next week as normal with a different challenge and a different reward, although the details of this haven’t been revealed yet.

In other news, Bungie, CD Projekt SA and 11 bit studios are amongst many in the gaming community who are making donations to help fund the humanitarian aid efforts in the Ukraine. Other Ukraine gaming studios have also made statements clarifying how people can help. Elsewhere, “superhuman” AI agent Gran Turismo Sophy will be added to Gran Turismo 7 in a future update. The AI could have several uses although its final implementation is yet to be decided, and Sophy is still being fine-tuned.

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Following on from their financial results earlier this month, EA held a company-wide meeting call with a focus on their executives’ perceived failure of Battlefield 2042. While several reasons for the game’s failure were mentioned, some of which were already known, one of the more surprising outtakes was the game’s popularity dropping due to the surprise release of the Halo: Infinite multiplayer.

Why did Battlefield 2042 fail?

DICE has always had issues with bugs in their games at launch. EA admitted as much during the call that was reported by XFire. Despite Battlefield 2042’s bug count ratio getting to “historic levels for a DICE game” and mock reviews providing scores of the “high 70s to low 80s”, EA thought the problem was manageable. While patches did reduce the bug count, it became obvious the situation wasn’t great when Halo: Infinite multiplayer was released. Halo was a very polished title. Battlefield 2042 was not. At this point, EA realised players no longer tolerated a buggy mess in their live service games and that the game needed to improve for the future.

Another reason was the use of the Frostbite engine. The engine has been powering games since 2008. While it has been updated over the following 13 years, it needed a significant update to be able to power Battlefield 2042. This update took the team 18 months and the process became “basically putting the game on a new engine” according to EA’s Chief Studios Officer Laura Miele.

One of the reasons we’ve heard before for the game’s lack of success was the work from home environment enforced upon many due to the Covid pandemic. Miele said:

Add up all of this new innovation, all of this ambition for the new project, and then you add a global pandemic halfway into the project, where the game teams had to work from home, we ended up with more new variables in development than we have ever experienced before.

EA has promised that they won’t ignore this feedback for future releases. As for Battlefield 2042, DICE will continue fixing bugs and adding new features as time goes on. Player testing will be extended and the development process will be streamlined. Only time will tell if DICE can turn things around.

In other news, a lawyer believes Horizon: Forbidden West’s pricing could be grounds for a class action lawsuit due to the difference in price between PS5 and PS4. Elsewhere, the Planet of the Discounts PlayStation Store sale on PS5 and PS4 is offering discounts of up to 70%.

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Today EA became the latest company to reveal their financial results for the previous quarter and there was one game that clearly didn’t perform as well as the others: Battlefield 2042. EA CEO Andrew Wilson declared the game “did not meet expectations”. The company later refused to reveal actual sales figures or even player numbers when pressed during the Q&A section of the call, despite doing so for other titles.

How well has Battlefield 2042 sold?

Battlefield 2042 has not met EA’s expectations for its sales and they have refused to reveal how many units it has sold. EA did say it is making up less than 10% of their business at the moment and the company has reduced the amount of money they expect to make this year by $100 million solely due to the game’s poor launch. EA only expects the game to account for around 5% of the company’s business next year.

Reasons given for the game’s disappointing launch included the challenging difficulty of working from home for two years on an ambitious title. While the team believed the game was ready for launch, it became clear during the beta period that “there were unanticipated performance issues” that needed to be addressed. Finally, Wilson said “some of the design choices we made with the game also did not resonate with everyone in our community.”

DICE is making efforts to sort out the game’s problems. There will be “meaningful updates to continue in the weeks ahead” and Season 1 has been delayed until the summer so the team can focus on fixing the game rather than new content. However, whether the game will ever get to a state where it will be able to “do really well over the course of time”, as claimed during the conference call, remains to be seen.

In other news, Worms developer Team17 has canceled their MetaWorms NFT project after backlash from players, their own team members, and their developer partners. Elsewhere, Far Cry 6 got an update today that introduced the second free crossover mission based on a Rambo superfan.

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Battlefield 2042 Season 1 apparently won’t go live until March 2022. After datamining the game’s client, Twitter user temporyal found enough preseason weekly missions for another 12 weeks. He also found details of the season one map, now called “Exposure”.

Battlefield 2042‘s preseason was to include content like weekly missions and rewards, limited time modes, featured creator spotlights, and Battlefield Portal content. After datamining the Battlefield 2042 client on PC, there are weekly missions intended for the game’s preseason that will last for another 12 weeks. This would mean the earliest Season 1 would arrive is the middle of March 2022, although temporyl did add that some of those missions may turn out to be backup missions in case Season 1 is delayed from an earlier release window.

Season 1 was already scheduled to arrive in 2022 and would be introducing a new Battle Pass, a new Specialist, new Battlefield Portal content, and a new location. Dataminers had previously uncovered a map with a working name of “Ridge”, and temporyl believes that “Exposure” is the final name for that map, which will be introduced in Season 1. He also uncovered a pre-match exposition for both factions. US troops will hear:

Seismic activity in British Columbia has damaged a Canadian-US research facility base. A landslide has exposed the interior and damaged the surrounding area. The Russians wrongly allege that this has revealed a military weapon and are deploying forces onto Canadian soil to secure it.

Meanwhile, Russian forces will get:

A landslide in the Canadian rockies granted us a view inside the Black Ridge facility. And what we see is a direct threat – a weapon that cannot be allowed to continue to operate. Today’s mission is urgent. You will travel to the base along with our allies, then secure all sectors on-site.

DICE has already released the game’s final update for 2021, which added major improvements to hit registration, multiple audio improvements, and balance changes. The team promises to drop more details on further improvements and Season 1 after the holiday season has ended, and then we’ll get to see how accurate this datamine will be.

[Source: Twitter via Eurogamer]

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Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella is getting a bigger role within DICE and will now become the overall head of the Battlefield franchise. According to Gamespot, the shake around has come after their Vice President and General Manager Oskar Gabrielson decided he will be leaving DICE and EA for a “new adventure”. One of the things he aims to do is to create a “connected Battlefield Universe” with multiple interconnected projects.

Battlefield 2042 will “continue to evolve and grow” as part of this new connected universe. In the long term, Ripple Effect, the studio behind the Battlefield Portal, is currently working on a new experience within the 2042 universe. Halo designer Marcus Lehto is also putting together a new development team in Seattle to focus on narrative, storytelling, and character development within the Battlefield universe, especially after 2042 garnered a lot of criticism for launching without a campaign. For now, both teams will work on expanding upon Battlefield 2042 with content that isn’t expected to appear until the game’s later seasons. Meanwhile, the game’s latest patch arrived today, adding new Portal features and a plethora of bug fixes and other improvements.

Details on the universe and its new projects are scarce for now, but Zampella did explain a little more:

We intend to build a Battlefield universe, one with multiple projects that are interconnected with the player at the center. We plan to grow Battlefield and meet players where they play through various experiences and business models, including our upcoming Battlefield Mobile coming in 2022 from Alex Seropian and Industrial Toys.

In this universe, the world is interconnected with shared characters and narrative. This universe is also built with our community as we harness the power of Portal and user generated content that puts creativity in the hands of our players.

The new universe fits into the idea that everyone “should think about Battlefield as a service“, something Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson told investors back in August. The aim then was to release a new Battlefield game every two years and it remains to be seen if the new universe still fits into that ideal.

[Source Gamespot (1, 2)]

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