Battlefield 2042 Season 7 is launching next week, and we’ve been given an opportunity to check out the newest map, Haven! Here’s a rundown of our time with it and how we feel about this new urban warfare map.
DICE Continues Learning From the Past, Putting It All Into Haven
Since we were mostly playing with AI bots, it’s hard to say where Haven will land once it’s out in the hands of the public. However, if it’s anything like our experience with Season 6’s map, Redacted, during the previous press event, and judging the reactions from other media and content creators, then Haven is in a very good spot.
DICE notes that they’ve taken inspiration from past maps, such as Arica Harbor from Bad Company 2, Strike At Karkand from Battlefield 3, and Amiens from Battlefield 1, and it clearly shows.
Haven is set in a desert location, though unlike Hourglass, where it’s wide and open, Haven opts for a more linear layout with roads cutting in and out of the town. On the outskirts, there’s a water reservoir and other key facilities that are more for open combat and suited for vehicle warfare, while the center is bustling with now war-torn homes and businesses, which suits the close-quarter infantry playstyle. It’s a midsized map, but the set pieces drive players together for what I would describe as a classic Battlefield experience.
I would say that during our Conquest mode playtest, the map seemed a bit too large for 64 players. I know the response to 128-player hasn’t been great, and I criticized it during my original review of Battlefield 2042. But the major difference here is that the original 128-player maps were built from the ground up with 128 players in mind, so while there were plenty of firefights scattered around the warzone, getting to them was rather a trip, with little else going on in between it, that made these maps feel empty.
It’s not quite as severe on Haven, given that control points are close to each other, but it did feel like some parts of the map were more underutilized, specifically the sides of the map. Despite being easily accessible, they did feel like they were going mostly unnoticed. Now, I’m not saying the solution is adding more players, but I think these built-for-64-player maps — Haven especially, — would benefit from a larger player count.
Still, Conquest on Haven did provide some superb moments of chaos, whether you’re on foot or using one of the many vehicles supported on the map. And I’ll mention it again: we were playing with mostly AIs, and those guys aren’t exactly known for their strategic gameplay, so those few locations that didn’t see as much action could play very differently once the public joins in. It could also be the way points and spawns are set up, which is something I’ll talk more about shortly.
But before I do, let’s talk a bit about Rush on Haven, which I found to be nearly perfect.
Haven is a prime example of how fun Rush can be. The points setup and the locations DICE brings you through during the match on Haven highlight how important coverage and structure placement can be. Though there are no vehicles to use during this mode, it really did feel like a proper Battlefield map with the moment-to-moment firefights as the power struggle between the teams unfolded.
I didn’t use many interior locations during our time with Conquest, given how big and open the map was and how easy it was to pick players off. For Rush, though, the lanes are narrower, giving a bit more of a close-quarter combat mixed in with wide open spaces. But the action always kept up, regardless of which lane was taken during the mode.
There’s a good push-pull dynamic on this map that attackers and defenders can experience. On the attacker side, there are plenty of opportunities around the map to push forward, but it’s just as easy for the defenders to fight back as they get the early advantage of setting defensive points. Verticality also plays a major role on this map, as many of the buildings are enterable, with rooftops to perch on and elevated points that dip to lower sections of the map.
Compared to past maps in 2042, Haven feels like it leans toward teamwork and plays the objective side rather than promoting a lone-wolf mentality. Several chokepoints are littered with overseeing rooftops and easy to hide in interiors. Mind you; this isn’t a game of camping but survival as bullets whizz past you and your teammates while you strategically plan for the next move.
What I love most is how destructibility comes into play on Haven. Granted, it’s not a return to something like Bad Company and is still restrictive in many ways, but there are many parts of the map where it added that much-wanted dynamic warfare.
Taking refuge in a small two-story building while the enemy fired across a street from another, covering both the exits and rooftops, left our team in a tough situation. It was not until we discovered that many of the walls in the building could be blown up, allowing us to create an exit point to retreat elsewhere. We used this to our advantage in another situation, creating new openings for us to return fire.
Again, don’t expect anything on Bad Company’s level of destruction (with the exception of a few buildings being completely destroyable), but I will say that DICE picked and designed some fantastic destruction points throughout the map. That’s something that became more evident during the Rush mode.
Now, the one criticism that I saw come from most folks in the playtest was about the spawn points of the Defender and Attacker side. While our team won pretty much all the matches from each side, it was clear that Haven was more lenient with the attacker side.
My first time playing as an attacker, I was surprised to see just how close to the objective we were and how quickly we could take the points from the defenders. When I finally switched over to defenders, it was clear why, as defenders spawned considerably further away from the points they were defending. By the time we had reached what we were defending, the attackers were nearly there. It didn’t help either that dying and spawning again put us a way out, which gave attackers even more of an advantage than they should have.
I’m sure the community will notice this, assuming it’s not one tweaked ahead of release. Hopefully, we’ll see some spawn balancing there, but beyond that, I’d say that Haven is nearly a perfect map that will certainly become a fan favorite.
If you’re wondering about Stadium, unfortunately, that wasn’t available during our playtest and won’t launch until later in Season 7, so I can’t give you any feedback on that front. But given the banger that Redacted was, and now Haven, I’m feeling good about the direction DICE is taking.
We aren’t sure if Season 7 will be the last season the game sees, but if it is, it gives us faith that DICE has truly learned from its past mistakes, and is a true “turning point.”
