As EA prepares a major Battlefield 6 update, the game’s reputation has only grown more polarising with fans, in the months after launch.
Last year, it seemed like Battlefield 6 was on top of the world, having managed to beat Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 both critically and commercially – marking the first time EA’s series outperformed its Activision rival.
This is partially due to how badly Activision fumbled Call Of Duty last year, but EA doesn’t seem to have taken as much advantage of the situation as it should have, considering Battlefield 6’s popularity has clearly dwindled since launch.
However, EA is hoping to win back fans with its upcoming season 4 update, which is not only adding naval battles but also a potential Top Gun crossover.
Battlefield 6 season 4 launches next week on July 21, introducing the Tsuru Reef (which EA boasts will be the game’s largest map to date), ‘where sprawling islands, dynamic waves, boats, jets, helicopters, and ground vehicles collide in massive battles.’
This also means two new boat vehicles – the RCB-90 Patrol Boat and 7.7m NSW RHIB – as well as four new weapons, including a new sniper rifle, and the return of Wake Island, a recurring location throughout the series, later into the season.
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EA hasn’t said anything about the Top Gun tease at the end, but it’s unlikely this is just meant to be a cheeky reference given how overt it is.
It presumably means a proper collab, although that begs the question of whether it will only be limited to vehicles based on the film or if Tom Cruise himself will appear as a skin.
Such crossovers are the sort of thing Call Of Duty’s been lambasted for years over, and EA even directly mocked its reliance on celebrity cameos as part of Battlefield 6’s marketing.
We’ll need to wait and see how Battlefield 6 handles Top Gun, but it’s at least thematically appropriate (as opposed to Activision shoving random celebrities like Nicki Minaj into a soldier’s uniform) and the trailer has been received positively on YouTube, with 16,000 likes at the time of writing, and on the Battlefield 6 subreddit.
Nevertheless, the playerbase has been growing divided since Battlefield 6’s launch, as some players have become frustrated with EA’s post-launch support.
Bot lobbies, in particular, have been a source of complaints for months, as the game sticks players with computer-controlled allies or opponents, which is causing some people to think there aren’t enough real people playing.
‘If I want to play in the morning or do some late night gaming, I can’t find non-bot lobbies. During the weekend I tried to play at 10am, but I couldn’t find a single match that wasn’t filled with bots and I tried every possible game mode,’ reads one post.
‘The introduction of bots along with this s***ty matchmaking and disbanding lobbies has completely turned me away from this game. I actually don’t know how people are still playing it considering you’re just fighting bots,’ reads another.
Recent negative reviews on Steam also criticise the general state of the game, citing boring gameplay and copious bugs in need of fixing. But there’s also been no shortage of positive reviews from players, old and new, who say they’re having a lot of fun with it.
An undisclosed number of staff across all four of Battlefield 6’s development studios were laid off earlier this year, which is bound to have impacted the game’s post-launch support.
EA clearly sees Battlefield 6 as an important investment, to have that many studios working on it (it even looks like Criterion Games won’t now return to the Need For Speed series), but it will need to do something about the game’s polarising reputation if it doesn’t want to lose its lead to Call Of Duty so quickly.
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