Remember when we reported that the first season of Battlefield 2042 was rumored to start in March 22? If you thought that was a long wait, well, I have some bad news for you. DICE has today confirmed that the Battlefield 2042 Season 1 launch date is set for “early summer,” with no firm release date just yet.
This confirmation came from DICE and EA today, which I’ll be honest, doesn’t put the game in a positive light. For those unaware, “early summer” in the US means June/July, so yeah, you’ll be waiting a while for the first season of a game that launched in November 2021.
For those who bought the Year 1 Pass as part of the Gold and Ultimate Editions, EA is thanking fans by giving them an exclusive free bundle that will be available in the game’s next title update planned for “mid to late February.” This bundle will include a Specialist skin, weapon and vehicle skins, a melee weapon and Player Card.
In the same community message, the studio has announced how they are improving communications, and what the priority is in terms of upcoming patches.
BF2042 UPCOMING UPDATES
Here’s a snapshot of the features we are bringing into the game as soon as possible:
- SCOREBOARD – In our next update, we’ll be adding a refreshed in-round Scoreboard alongside further changes we’ve worked on since the holidays. This will be an ongoing evolution from what was shown in the work in progress we shared recently. We have heard your feedback around including two tables and separating your own team versus the enemy, and are working on incorporating that for the release. K/D scoring and End of Round reporting will also be coming in a future update.
- ALL PLATFORM VOICE COMMUNICATION – The arrival of voice communication (VOIP) is just the start of the improvements we’re bringing to enhance team play and communications.
- PLAYER PROFILE – Giving you a better overview of your career on the battlefield and how far you have to go for your next unlock.
For team play, you can expect us to incorporate a clearer, tighter squad loop, a refined ping system, and an improved reward loop for when you and your squad play the objective. Gunplay will continue to receive feedback-based improvements too.
Portal remains an integral part of the game and we will continue to expand its tools, modes, and tweak player experience gains. Finally, we have a team analysing Specialists and working on them. We’re not quite ready to talk about actions we’ll be taking, but as soon as we are, you will hear from us.
The studio has talked about a “new feedback loop,” which basically means the studio will be more transparent in their communication with the player base — something that they should have done ever since the game launched.
We’re committed to pushing up the quality of the game, both through our updates, and how rapidly we will respond to critical issues in the live environment. We are also going to clarify the direction we’re taking, and what’s motivating our decisions to bring improvements to the game. So expect to get more insight as we expand our existing feedback loops to involve you, our players, more directly.
Our team has identified several areas we’re targeting for improvements. This is how we will be incorporating your feedback going forward:
- We will present specific, major focus areas to you along with our current thinking, detailing where we’re planning to make changes.
- We’ll then take the time to observe and listen to the conversations that you go on to have about both the area of concern and our proposals for adjustment.
- Later, you’ll hear from us on the topic again but this time your feedback will have been factored into our consideration and guided the decisions made for improvements.
These conversations will be centralised, and accessible here on the Battlefield website, and summarised across our channels.
Later this month, BF2042 players can expect this more open communication to kick off with DICE talking about map design.
We want to outline to you our vision for how we’re going to approach and factor into our new maps enhancements to the gameplay experience, by addressing feedback on openness and lack of cover in key areas.
Big topics like map design will be loud and broadly shared, but for more nuanced areas of the game (such as Portal logic) we may have those conversations on smaller scales. The important part here is that all these conversations will happen publicly, and with everyone invited to take part.
Some of these feedback loops will cover bigger areas than others, and some loops will take longer to complete and realise in the game than others. That’s not an indication of how we might prioritise issues with the game, but a reflection on the nature of game development. Changes to our maps and core gameplay will take time.
Our commitment is to explain our reasoning behind future decisions and to make sure you understand where we stand on your feedback. We want you to see more of the big picture of where we’re going and incorporate more of what we’re already hearing to ensure that our work is meaningful to you.
I have to admit, while the communication thing is good, Battlefield 2042 Season 1 launching way later than expect means the player base will be stuck with the same launch content for at least six months! It’s honestly quite hard to take in that we’re here, but it is, what it is.
Source: EA