Battlefield 6 just announced massive gameplay changes...

Battlefield are on a bit of a winning streak at the moment. Over the course of season 2, despite it being light on content, both of the maps were pretty good, and they've pushed several updates that have made big improvements to the game. The sentiment online is starting to lean positive again. However, after showing off the road map a couple weeks ago, what they revealed in the last few days will have massive gameplay changing implications for BF6. And there are some fantastic additions to look forward to here if they can follow through and deliver. So, we're going to take a look at some of the big news and highlights that they've announced in two of the latest updates that they made this week. From massive vehicle improvements, yeah, they're actually doing it to gunplay changes, mortar nerfs, finally, soldier visibility, matchmaking improvements, and much more. So, let's dive in then. The first big hitter here is the combat improvements. And they said, "With season 3, we're building on the work that we did in season 2 with additional updates aimed at making combat feel more responsive, readable, and consistent. You can expect clearer communication of incoming damage, faster feedback when taking damage or being eliminated, and overall improvements to how engagements play out in fast-paced situations. And this is all good stuff for player feedback when you're actually in the game. And hopefully, it's going to stop those instant time to death feelings. We're also continuing to evaluate weapon behavior and time to kill. Our focus here is on improving consistency and depth and making it more demanding to hit targets at longer ranges while encouraging more controlled and deliberate engagements. As part of this, we're making adjustments to recoil behavior across inputs, including reducing how much recoil is automatically mitigated on controller, helping bring consistency across different control schemes. These changes aim to make weapon performance easier to understand while rewarding positioning and accuracy across different combat ranges. This one is a very big deal and will change how the game feels, making it more demanding to hit targets at longer ranges. I like that one a lot. The gunplay in BF6 can feel very laser beamy, especially with the meta weapons. And the biggest change by the sounds of it here will be felt on controller, and it's going to demand a bit more skill from players when you're firing fully automatic weapons. Cuz if you didn't know, when you play with a controller on BF6, you automatically have about 20% less recoil than when using the mouse. And this is obviously a balancing thing for crossplay, but they're going to nerf that recall value in an update soon. In parallel, we will continue to test combat focus updates through Battlefield Labs. This includes continued improvements to hit registration and net code, as well as targeted improvements to soldier visibility on new season 3 maps. We're also continuing work on broader visibility systems, including updates to the soldier visibility filter that will roll out later in the season. Additionally, we're also exploring new ways to better communicate weapon behavior, including experimental features that help visualize dispersion while aiming down sight. soldier visibility. That's still an ongoing problem on certain maps and lighting environments. So, it's nice to see them still striving to improve on this. I'd love to see them post before and afters, too, when they're ready to go with it, just so we can see how much of a difference it's going to make. And with that communicating weapon behavior thing, too. This was actually leaked in BF Labs, and it looks like a really intuitive system to explain the spread on your weapon when you're aiming and shooting. There is a subtle UI element around your aim that grows and shrinks depending on how much spread is currently being applied to your gun. So, I suppose the point of this is to help players understand the gun a bit more and incentivize them to burst or tap fire at longer ranges. It looked like an option that you could turn off, too, which is good for those players that don't want to see this or use this. Next up is a big one, too. Mortar changes and nerfs. Though DICE buffed mortars a few patches ago so you could deploy them in the out-of-bounds team areas and this has unsurprisingly had a big negative impact especially on game modes like breakthrough. The mortar spam has been insane from both the attacking and defending teams. So what have they done? They very recently made an adjustment to how mortars are resupplied from crates, increasing the resupply time from 10 seconds to 30 seconds to address feedback around frequency of use. That's a good start, but the next one is the kicker that will have a big impact. Here we go. With the launch of season 3, we're introducing further adjustments that reinforce this role. The mortar will no longer regenerate ammo while an active instance is deployed, and the accuracy will decrease at longer ranges, discouraging long-distance camping. These changes are designed to encourage more active and coordinated gameplay. We will continue to monitor gameplay data and your feedback as these changes roll out. And we already have additional updates planned that build on this direction with the goal of reinforcing a more mobile shoot and scoot play style rather than encouraging static longduration use from a single position. So when you put all of that together, if you want to have accurate shots with the mortar, you're going to have to deploy closer to the front line where you can more easily be killed or countered when using a mortar. So, it's going to be riskier and you're not going to be able to fire the mortar anywhere near as much or as often as you used to because of the ammo nerf. I think these are good changes. Personally, I don't think that mortars add much positive to the overall experience for the majority of players in a Battlefield match and are just typically annoying except for the person using them. I'll definitely try them after the update though to see how effective they are, but I'd bet that we don't see anywhere near as much more to use in Breakthrough after this update. Next up, matchmaking improvements. So, while I don't have any issue in the UK finding matches and playing in full lobbies with real players, I've read comments on my videos and I've seen posts online about players in other regions, the matchmaking has been a bit of a letdown. So, let's take a look at what they've said. We're aware of ongoing discussions around matchmaking and are continuing to make adjustments in the back end to improve match availability and overall experience. As we head into season 3 and with the introduction of ranked battle royale, we'll be closely monitoring how matchmaking performs across our experiences, particularly in modes that require higher player counts. Our focus is on ensuring that players can consistently find matches while maintaining a quality gameplay experience. Players with crossplay enabled will see the greatest impact from these improvements. This is an ongoing effort and we'll continue to evaluate and refine matchmaking as we gather more data and feedback. Good. So, it looks like they're actively pursuing improving this for those people who have a bad matchmaking experience, whether that's lobbies filling up with bots or putting you in out of region servers. Fingers crossed this helps. And I hope with skepticism that what they announced in the road map about the new server browser coming to the game is true and we actually get official quickplay community and persistent servers in that new server browser which it could solve a lot of these matchmaking problems automatically. I know some people will prefer just clicking quick play nowadays. I like both options and I often think well why not both? But you need quick play to work well if it's the only option. Obviously, it hasn't been working as well as they intended, so they're looking at fixing it. Good. Moving on to playlist structure changes. This is all about improving the front end and simplifying everything there. Finally, we're updating how playlists and experiences are organized to help you get into matches faster and surface experiences that are more relevant to how you play. You won't see any major visual changes, but you will notice a shift in how content is organized and presented. The featured row is now being replaced with a new quickplay row that highlights modes and experiences based on your play history and preferences. So I guess if I click that then it would always be conquest at the front followed by escalation. We're also reorganizing the multiplayer row to make it easier to navigate, reducing the need for horizontal scrolling. Thank god for that. While separating core options like custom search, featured modes, and single mode playlists from mixed mode experiences. With the addition of ranked battle royale, we're introducing a new ranked row to better highlight competitive play. Good. We're also tailoring how content is presented depending on how you play Battlefield 6. For players with full game access, the goal is to surface a wider range of relevant experiences based on play history and preferred modes. For players starting with RedSe, we're prioritizing playable experiences more clearly, reducing clutter and making it easier to find content that's immediately accessible. Our goal is to reduce friction and help players quickly find relevant experiences. This is an evolving area for us and we'll continue refining how experiences are surfaced across the front end over time. So that's cool. They're kind of simplifying the front end UI a bit. For me, I would love it if I could just pin stuff to the homepage or the front page. So I can load up the game instantly. I'm on the main menu and I can just click conquest or breakthrough or server browser when they have that. I'd love if I could do that like feature a playlist right there on the splash screen. Why haven't they done that yet? They should totally do that, shouldn't they? There's then some more updates to battle royale here. They're improving early game loot. Tanks will be easier to track when they're nearby. I assume that means you'll actually be able to hear them now. Transport vehicle health and weapons are being nerfed. The transport helicopter included. The drone is being nerfed and they are upgrading anti-tank options. All good stuff here. Rank BR for quads is coming too, which will be popular for those players who are looking to grind that. There was a note about solos though, which I was a bit disappointed in. This is the only bad point about this post in my opinion. I'd expected BR Solos to launch at the start of season 3 because I quite enjoyed playing it when they tested it previously and it was in a pretty good state from my perspective, but they're saying that it needs more time. I just really wanted to jump into that at the start of season 3 and I think it would be a really good time to drop it too because I don't think War Zone has solo in the normal modes at the moment. Maybe a missed opportunity there. There's some nice updates coming to Portal 2 which they mentioned further on. Lots of great additions all around really. But now moving on to those huge vehicle updates. This is the juicy stuff. They did a whole big separate post on this that we're going to take a look at now. There's a bit of an intro where they're talking about stats, what players have told them, and what they've learned. But skip to the actual stuff that they're changing here. Starting with making vehicle combat more predictable. Previously, many anti-tank tools were capable of eliminating tanks in only two hits with the exception of some specialized tools. This will be increased to three hits across the board. Blanking vehicles will remain the most effective way to neutralize them, but will offer vehicle players more opportunity for counterplay. They're making damage more consistent based on the angle at which the vehicle was hit to. They're also making changes to guided weapons, so their damage is no longer affected by impact angles or hit location. Weapons that are not manually aimed will deal a consistent amount of damage, though. We're also making improvements to how anti-air missiles interact with counter measures such as flares to improve the reliability of those tools. In terms of vehicle survivability, they're making changes to how vehicles recover health and how repairs behave in and out of combat. Instead of repairing at a constant rate, they will begin strong but weaken over time while a vehicle remains in combat. Additionally, we're introducing diminishing returns when multiple engineers are repairing the same vehicle at the same time. These changes keep coordination valuable while ensuring repairs don't scale in a way that becomes overly difficult to counter. At the same time, we are reworking health regeneration by removing health brackets from all vehicles. Vehicles will take longer to begin regenerating health after exiting combat, increasing from roughly 6 seconds to 12 seconds. Once regeneration begins, however, it will be significantly faster, increasing from around 5% of health per second to 10% per second and will continue all the way to full health instead of stopping at a set threshold. Massive deal. Even when critically damaged, vehicles will no longer be prevented from regenerating entirely. Instead, regeneration will continue at a heavily reduced rate, roughly 80% slower than normal. Overall, this means that vehicles will take longer to safely recover during combat, but are more self-sufficient once they successfully disengage. Together, these changes help make survivability more predictable and reduce extreme outcomes, helping players better understand when to push, disengage, or commit to repairs, while also ensuring vehicles remain effective without requiring constant support. So, armored vehicles will definitely get a big buff here. And I feel like their intention is to help people use those chunky powerful vehicles at the front line and not be scared to do that rather than just sitting on a hill near spawn far away from objectives, which is pretty much what we've seen so far in BF6. And in terms of control, the vehicles are getting improved responsiveness, improving acceleration and turning to make vehicles more responsive in movement. We're also increasing turret rotation speeds and improving how aiming behaves, especially in firstperson view. It should help tracking targets feel more aligned with player input, particularly during close-range engagements. Additionally, we're reducing how often armored vehicles lose mobility as a result of taking damage. Immobilization will be tied to specific tools such as anti-vehicle mines rather than being triggered by general incoming damage. This allows players to retain control in critical moments while still creating clear counterplay opportunities. Air vehicles were also making improvements to threat awareness, including new UI indicators that help pilots better identify incoming missiles and nearby threats, giving more time to react and make informed decisions in combat. So, I think that's their first iteration of an air radar. To support these changes, loadout options for vehicles and engineers are being changed and buffed with new passives and modifiers that will make them more useful on the battlefield. They're also running a full rebalance of all of the engineer launches, including buffing the Igl and MBT law, so maybe the RPG is not going to be the obvious go-to option anymore. The post wraps up with some future updates coming down the line with more vehicle survivability, better handling, UI improvements, further improvements to air vehicle gameplay, too, as they evaluate feedback and live performance. So, make no mistake, this is a big buff overall to vehicles, land and air. And the goal here, I suppose, is to offer a healthier balance between infantry and vehicles, supporting more active and engaging gameplay in the Battlefield sandbox. And we'll see how it lands when we get to play it. It might be a huge shakeup of the game, and I'm really interested to see what impact this has, positive or negative. But with that said, that's all of the big headlines from this week. It really does seem like Battlefield Studios are cooking now, and I'm looking forward to the future of the game a lot more than I was a few weeks ago. Let's just hope that they follow through with this and they can figure out a way to deliver more maps, guns, vehicles, and gadgets per season. Fingers crossed. With that said, that's all for today, folks. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. How we feeling about these updates coming? Drop a like if you enjoyed the video. Thank you. 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