Over on EA.com, the Battlefield Team have shared an article talking about the Open Beta and some changes made as a result. Find some highlights below!

Movement

Significant improvements to movement are coming with the highlights being:

• Aiming for a more balanced and traditional Battlefield experience.
• Momentum, especially horizontal speed, carried from a slide into a jump has been reduced.
• There is now a greater penalty for consecutive jumps, which lowers jump height when jumps are spammed.
• Firing while jumping or sliding will result in increased inaccuracy.

Weapons

General improvements to weapon recoil and tap-fire characteristics are called out as well as the shotgun specifically:

• The M87A1 shotgun now requires more pellets to secure a kill.
• General changes to encourage more controlled tap-firing and burst-firing.

We are investigating the Time-to-Kill and Time-to-Death experiences, and we will share an update if definitive changes are made in these areas.

Maps

Changes will be made to stop players getting places they shouldn’t, which sounds like mostly the roofs on Siege of Cairo. Further changes will be made acknowledging the upcoming introduction of the Assault Ladder and not wanting to create opportunities to get where you shouldn’t.

Map offerings are also called out to reassure players of larger map support:

While the Open Beta featured smaller, more fast-paced maps, larger-scale maps are already part of our launch package, delivering action-packed gameplay and memorable, unique moments for every player. As part of the upcoming Battlefield Labs testing, we’ll be testing two new multiplayer maps: one set in Mirak Valley, the other a remake of the fan-favorite from Battlefield 3, Operation Firestorm.

Modes > Rush

A decent chunk of the debrief is spent talking about lobby sizes and calling out that some modes will change depending on the map for example breakthrough will be 32v32 or 24v24 to suit the play area.

There was strong (negative) feedback for the Rush mode in the second weekend of the beta, and the article does acknowledge “the conversation we observed wasn’t just about player count, but also about how maps play, and the tactical experience they offer.” However, player counts are the only part of Rush that gets discussed and it’s suggested we move to Portal if we want to do anything that isn’t 12v12.

The issues with Rush around spawn timers, map size (between spawn and MCOM), the map layouts generally and live count were completely missing from the article. It may reasonably be that there is not enough time before launch to fix the mode, but a call-out that it is on the list would have been appreciated (assuming, it is).

Stats

The article finishes with this below image highlighting some of the crazy stats from the Open Beta, and I would like to highlight that 6.85% of players were killed by shotgun!

Battlefield Labs

It is confirmed that Battlefield Labs will be returning soon and will feature two new maps including the return of Operation Firestorm. It sounds like Battlefield Labs will be expanded for new players but it’s not clear of the scale or whether or not Aussies will be able to get involved.

If these changes have got you interested, you can find more Battlefield articles on the site here!