Due to the large amount of changes taking place with Season 5, we have had to split this Update Note into two parts to fit into Steam Articles. Below you can read the remaining changes taking place with Season 5.
Added: Canister Shot, Minigun with Thermal vision, HMG with Thermal vision & 20mm Flak
LCAA Hovercraft
Removed: TOW Missile from the passenger seat with these changes, to ensure that it further aligns this vehicle into its combat role. We feel that despite this item being skill based, a hovercraft should not have access to such a deadly item.
Added: LMG with Thermal vision, Minigun with Thermal Vision & HMG with Thermal vision
EBAA Wildcat
Removed: 57mm cannon, Rocket weapon pod, Mortar Pod & 40mm Volley pod
Added: 35mm Dual AA Cannons, Minigun with Thermal Vision & HMG with Thermal vision
MAV:
Removed: Flak Pod
Added: Incendiary Grenade Launcher
M5C Bolte
Removed: 30mm Cannon
Moved: Repair System to Slot 1 from Slot 2
Moved: Missile Launcher to Slot 2 from Slot 1
Added: 50mm Cannon, Incendiary Grenade Launcher and Passenger Detection Pulse.
M1A5, T28 and EBLC-RAM:
Added: Minigun with Thermal Vision & HMG with Thermal Vision
Increased: Heatseeker Missile Damage to Air Transport Vehicles
Weapons
Fixed an issue that caused the camera to shake erratically when firing the NVK S-22 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Fixed a visual inconsistency between the AEK-971 weapon model and its icon.
Fixed an issue where the Factory Barrel Muzzle on the LCMG was invisible while looking through a x2 scope or higher.
Fixed an issue that causes the RPK Flashlight to cast a shadow of the RPK's muzzle.
The SWS-10 and DXR-1 no longer clips through the ground while shooting from a prone position.
Increased the AK24 aim down sight movement speed to be inline with other Assault Rifles.
Incendiary Grenades now keep doing damage after you've switched weapons.
Enemy nameplates no longer have a bright glow when looked at through T4 Thermal 2.5x scope.
Fixed an issue where the SVK bullets were zeroed at a different distance than the rest of the weapons, resulting in high inaccuracies at medium and longer distances. This issue became increasingly visible with the addition of Thermal Scopes.
Fixed an issue that caused the M26 Mass Underbarrel Launchers to share ammo pools across all the variations
Fixed an issue that caused the M320 underbarrel launchers on the M16A3 to all fire HE instead of their intended variations.
Reduced the maximum bullet capacity of the MTAR-21's extended magazine from 50 to 40
Longshot scope has been updated to read 12x instead of 40x.
Fixed an issue that caused Weapon Scope Glints to not appear on several 4x and higher scopes and weapons.
Fixed an issue that prevented the M416's flashlight from being turned on.
GOL Sniper Magnum now displays its Fire Mode as Bolt Action instead of Single.
Fixed an issue that caused the Kobra sight to clip through the M16A3
Fixed an issue that caused the 40mm Smoke Underbarrel Launcher on the LCMG to display an incorrect name in the kill log if a player got a kill with it.
*Requires Season 5 Battle Pass (sold separately) and Year 1 pass to unlock. You must log in during the first 2 weeks of the season to claim your reward. Failure to log in and claim during this period will result in forfeiting the reward.
This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.
Battlefield Briefing - Development Update, May 2023
It’s a New Dawn.
Today we invite you to join us for our latest Development Update where we give you an overview of everything new in Season 5: New Dawn for Battlefield™ 2042*.
Let’s take a look!
If you’d like to read along instead, then we also got you covered below.
New Map: Reclaimed
In 2048, war descends upon an abandoned industrial facility slowly being retaken by nature in Czechia with the battle taking place over a secret train route.
The Crash Site, featuring the derailed train, is designed primarily as a vehicle combat area, with the Landing Zone an area of forest providing a circular area that will enable close-quarters combat and new sightlines opening up when trees are destroyed.
You may see the inspiration we’ve taken for the Abandoned Turbine and Military Warehouse. The indoor space of the Abandoned Turbine will enable crossfires due to its verticality and cover. While the Military Warehouse’s floors will no doubt attract snipers and a range of gunplay experiences due to the narrow layout.
Hidden inside the nearby mountain lies The Bunker, forgotten and made up of a central room whose linear space will bring intense, short-range, close-quarters combat. In comparison to this, The Silos is another outdoor area set up for vehicle combat with its generous roads perfect for tank battles. Easy to spot due to its four towers rising up from the ground, The Silos also provides plenty of elevated areas for infantry to get a shot at vehicles dominating the ground.
Map Rework: Hourglass
Since Season 1 we’ve brought you re-worked versions of all our launch maps. Our commitment with these re-works was to address your feedback to improve the distance to travel between flags, the intensity of combat, sight lines, paths towards objectives, and cover.
Later in Season 5 we’ll bring you the final re-worked map: Hourglass.
New Weapons: XCE Bar, GEW-46, BFP.50
The weapons arsenal is expanding this Season with not only new weapons, but also further much community requested improvements to Vault Weapons.
XCE Bar The XCE Bar is a high-precision bolt action rifle. It has expanded attachment capability to accompany its stopping power, allowing you to quickly swap through attachment options to engage the enemy at various distances.
GEW-46 The GEW-46 assault rifle offers high stability with short-burst fire. Great for the medium-range environments that you’ll experience across the Reclaimed map.
BFP.50 The BFP.50 is a powerful hand cannon, giving you another sidearm that dishes out heavy damage at close range. We know it’s been highly popular due to its size, sound and power and we just know you’re going to love this updated version for The World of 2042!
Evolving Vault Weapons
We will be adapting Vault Weapons for use with All-Out Warfare attachments during Season 5. To start, we’ll focus on Assault Rifles and Sniper Rifles with attachments for the M16A3, A-91, M416, MTAR-21, AEK-971 and the GOL Sniper Magnum.
We’ll continue to roll out All-Out Warfare attachments for all other remaining Vault Weapons during the Season.
We are also addressing your feedback to customize the skins of your Vault Weapons. As part of Season 5, all Universal Skins such as Forest Multi-terrain (Unlocked at Rank 0) and Desert Technical (Unlocked at Rank 19) will be extended towards all Vault Weapons. As an added bonus, Universal Skins will also be available within Battlefield Portal, allowing you to show off your flair as you venture back in time.
New Gadgets: Spring Grenade, Anti-Tank Grenade, Mini Grenade
With this Season we’re also expanding our arsenal of grenades, which will help you push the objective or flush out the enemy.
Spring grenade An old familiar projectile behavior as seen before in the form of the S-Mine or Bouncing Betty. It operates through a spring-activated thruster to reach head-height altitude before imminent explosive detonation.
Pro tip: going prone will make you take less damage from this grenade.
Anti-tank Grenade Detonates on impact against vehicles while dealing substantial damage.
Mini Grenade An anti-personnel grenade that can be thrown a longer distance, and after a short delay explodes across a small area.
RPG-7V2 A returning fan-favorite from Battlefield 3 is making its way into All-Out Warfare.
Reworking Vehicle Loadouts
We’re restructuring vehicle loadouts to ensure their combat roles are clearly defined. This will also add further readability on the battlefield to ensure you know what to expect from vehicles when you encounter them.
The restructuring of loadouts primarily focuses on our ground vehicles, and we’ll both remove and add weapons to each available vehicle loadout. For example, explosives will no longer be an option for all vehicles, and overall you’ll find more choice through a larger selection of weapons available to you.
Let’s use the LATV4 Recon as an example of what that looks like.
The LATV4 Recon is one of the most used vehicles in the game, and having explosive weaponry readily available pushed it outside of its intended role as a transport. We’re removing all its explosives, such as the 30mm, 50mm and Grenade Launcher, and will replace them with anti-infantry weaponry instead.
Specialist Improvements Dozer and Irish will receive improvements to ensure they provide similar gameplay experiences as others within their class.
Dozer For Dozer we will be enhancing his movement and animations when using the SOB-8 Ballistic Shield. You will now be able to strafe, rotate and pitch with your shield more quickly than previously, as well as being able to traverse ziplines with your shield equipped! Lastly, we’ll also be including two new XP Events to reward further acts of teamplay when playing with Dozer.
On the receiving end when firing at his shield, we will be increasing its spread and introducing more bullet trajectory upon hitting his shield. This will ensure that during these encounters you still have a fighting chance, and at the very least, won’t be as impacted by your own bullets as before.
Irish Irish will receive a balancing pass to the capabilities of his APS-36 Shootdown Sentinel. We’re doing that by having it cycle through new intercept and recharge states alongside an added short cooldown, versus its previous always-on state.
We’ve also improved its audio, alongside adding new colors to help you identify which state the APS-36 is currently in. Tune in to our Inside Battlefield Podcast, or read our latest Dev Notes blog for full details.
Squad Management Improvements
Alongside the Season update we’re also adding improvements to the current Squad functionality.
Squads and Players The Squad Menu is now separated to give you a full overview of all squads on your team. In this menu you can make someone else the leader, and see how many players or friends are in a squad. It also shows class icons so you know how to best complement a squad before joining it. And to add some personal flavor, leaders can also show off their Player Card Tag as the squad icon.
We also worked with the narrative team to come up with code names for each squad for that additional personal touch. One of our personal favorites is Gravedigger -- surely the Gravediggers know how to PTFO. We definitely don’t mess with that squad!
Create and Join At any time you’ll be able to create or join a new squad directly via the Squad Menu. Previously you could only switch to a random squad, and only from the deploy screen. If you create a new squad then we’ve also added a short waiting period before other players can matchmake into your squad to ensure you can play together with your friends.
Easy navigation The Squad Menu was created to make it easier and faster to manage and navigate through squads on your team. While before it was unclear when and how to change squads, you’ll now be able to do that at any time and with only a few clicks.
We hope that with this new improved Squad Management experience you feel that you have the control over who you’d like to play with during a match. Once this is in your hands, please stay in touch and give us your feedback about how you feel about it!
Later during Season 5 we’ll also add Squad Orders functionality which allows you to work together as a squad to receive increased XP rewards. In short, PTFO - and get rewarded!
Tune in to our Inside Battlefield Podcast, or read our latest Dev Notes blog for full details.
New Battle Pass
Season 5 brings with it two factions - one that’s cutting-edge, calculating and professional versus a more survivalist group who are savage, independent and ruthless.
You’ll see this in the cosmetics available as you play through the Battle Pass, some of the best we feel we’ve ever brought to Battlefield! From Falck’s ‘Regenerator’ Skin at Tier 0, to Dozer’s ‘Overthrower’ Skin at Tier 100.
There’s a whole load of items to unlock across 100 tiers of the Free and Premium Battle Pass including cosmetics, XP boosters, and the new premium Seasonal Booster! Additionally, those that were Year 1 pass holders will also receive an Epic Skin and XP booster during the first two weeks of Season 5, as a thanks for continuing to play.
Lastly, we’re continuing to work on the game beyond Season 5. We are committed to continuing the Battlefield 2042 journey and are working through the best ways to bring new content and experiences for you all. Expect to hear more from us on what’s planned later in Season 5.
And that’s all we have for you today! Season 5: New Dawn becomes available for play on June 7, and we’re excited to start this new journey with you.
This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.
*Requires Battlefield 2042 (sold separately) and all game updates.
Battlefield 2042 | Season 5 Development Update
Tune into the upcoming Development Update and get new details on Season 5: New Dawn. Get a first look at game improvements and new exciting content coming to Battlefield 2042!
Packed with value, Battlefield 2042 Elite Edition contains the base game plus five Seasons worth of content. Battle on 17+ maps, wield over 35 weapons, and enjoy the “Lost World” Bundle.
Battlefield 2042 | Season 5: New Dawn Gameplay Trailer
Show no mercy and never back down in Battlefield 2042 – Season 5: New Dawn.
Head to Czechia, where the warmest welcome you’ll get is down the barrel of a gun. Battle by an abandoned factory retaken by nature on the new map Reclaimed.
Expand your arsenal with the XCE Bar bolt-action rifle, the GEW-46 assault rifle, and the powerful BFP.50 hand cannon. As you gather your squad, load up with three new types of grenades and show your foes just how sharp your teeth are.
Enjoy a plethora of improvements to Battlefield 2042, including a rework of vehicle loadouts, new weapon stations like thermal tech and heavy anti-air, rehauled Vault weapons, and a reworked version of the Hourglass map.
Play through 100 tiers in the Season 5 Battle Pass to unlock Free* and Premium** content including new weapons like the GEW-46, XCE Bar, and BFP.50, gadgets, cosmetics, XP boosters, and the new premium Seasonal Booster.
Today we’re back with a new note from the vehicles team about Quality of Life improvements coming to Battlefield™ 2042 as part of the Season 5 update*. We’ll talk about how we’ve seen vehicle gameplay evolve over the past few Seasons, and which changes we’re making based on that.
Explosives and Vehicle Roles
As a start, we’ve heard your feedback on the current prevalence of explosive weaponry. While explosives have their place on the battlefield, they should be a strategic choice and not the default choice or available option for all vehicles. Not only because their prevalence provides an unforgiving experience to infantry gameplay, but also because it undermines picking the vehicle that meets the current needs of your team.
We also feel that the changes to the vehicle categorization, while leaving their loadouts unchanged, has resulted in the removal of clearly defined combat roles. Transport vehicles are a good example of this, as they are meant to swiftly carry you and your squad towards an objective. While they still have weaponry available to defend themselves during that journey, they are not meant for direct offensive purposes and… blowing shit up.
That means we’re restructuring vehicle loadouts to ensure their combat roles are clearly defined. This will also add further readability on the battlefield to ensure you know what to expect from vehicles when you encounter them.
Loadout Changes
The restructuring of loadouts primarily focuses on our ground vehicles, and we’ll both remove and add weapons to each available vehicle loadout.
Explosives will no longer be an option for all vehicles, and overall you’ll find more choice through a larger selection of weapons available to you.
While we won’t fully lay out all loadout changes today, we’ll take a look at a few examples where we feel you’ll notice the most impactful changes.
LATV4 Recon The LATV4 is one of the most used vehicles in the game, and having explosive weaponry readily available pushed it outside of its intended role as a transport. We’re removing all its explosives, such as the 30mm, 50mm and Grenade Launcher, and will replace them with anti-infantry weaponry instead.
EBAA Wildcat The Wildcat was previously able to compete across multiple vehicle roles, such as Anti-Air, Air-to-Ground, and anti-infantry. However, it was always intended as an Anti-Air vehicle, and we have therefore removed its 57mm Cannon, and replaced that with 35mm Dual AA Cannons instead.
As part of these changes we’re also moving the ELCB-Ram from Light Armor into the Heavy Armor category, which will allow both the Ram and Wildcat to be more readily available, alongside being for their intended roles.
M5C Bolte The Bolte wasn’t intended as a stationary vehicle which shoots explosives from afar, but rather to help push the team forward while deploying hit and run tactics towards enemy vehicles, or objectives.
To encourage this more active role, we’re making its glass impenetrable from all projectiles and will grant passengers spotting capabilities. For its weaponry, we’ve removed the 30mm Cannon, and instead added a 50mm Cannon and 40mm incendiary Grenade Launcher.
Once the update is available, be sure to check the Collection -> Equipment screen to find out how to unlock the newly added weaponry across your vehicles.
Thermal sights for vehicles
Now that we're overhauling vehicle loadouts, it also seemed like the perfect time to make thermals available!
We know it’s something you’ve been asking for, and the team has been looking forward to adding them. You’ll now be able to choose between using either thermals, or optical zoom on some of our vehicle weapons stations.
Thermals as an additional loadout option for vehicles will be a great benefit to your team, allowing you to spot enemies or their gadgets such as Anti-Tank Mines with a lot more ease.
Jet gameplay improvements
We’ve also heard your feedback on improvements you’d like us to make to jet gameplay. This has mostly centered around how responsive they feel once you’re gliding across the sky.
A large part of this comes from the camera movement, so we’ve made improvements to help you feel more connected to your jet. This should also have the effect of allowing them to be more responsive and controllable when dogfighting an enemy jet.
We’ve also reintroduced vehicle control when using the rearview camera.
We believe that jets should still feel useful even if there are no enemy jets or dogfighting opportunities available. So to ensure you stay engaged with enemies, we’re adding Rocket Pods to the jet loadouts.
Other changes
Another change that we wanted to mention is that for tanks we’ve also reintroduced the decouple aim from turning option. This means that you can now turn your tank without moving your aim to offer more control over your Heavy Armor.
We have also reworked the STAFF Shell for tanks so they no longer lock onto enemy ground vehicles on their own. Instead, it can now lock into all laser designated targets to deal extra damage. The aim here is to encourage working together with your team’s tank crew to create a more powerful offensive move.
Lastly, while previously only available for the CAV-Brawler, we’re also adding the Cyber Warfare Protection System as a loadout option for all vehicles except the LATV4 Recon.
And that’s all we have for you today! There are a lot of changes to vehicles incoming, so we’ll continue monitoring how that plays out once you’ve gone hands on. Please also stay in touch with us on how you feel about these changes, and what else is on your mind for vehicle gameplay. We continue to read your feedback, thoughts and ideas, all of which greatly helps as we plan towards any future QoL improvements.
Season 5 is not too far away now, and we’re looking forward to giving you a full overview of everything that’s new in the near future.
//The Vehicles Team
This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.
*Requires Battlefield 2042 (sold separately) and all game updates.
Dev Notes - Improving Dozer & Irish
Hello there,
With Season *5 just around the corner for Battlefield™ 2042, we’re back today to talk about some additional Quality of Life (QoL) improvements that will be launching alongside the new Season.
Dozer and Irish are the subjects of today’s discussion, as we feel they need some improvements to ensure they provide similar gameplay experience as others within their class. We’ve observed that both are underutilized Specialists within their respective classes, and we’re hoping these improvements will help towards rectifying that.
Dozer was always meant to be played as the up-close and personal breacher, but we’ve noticed his gameplay can be improved to emphasize this further isn’t as satisfying to play as we would like.
For Irish we wanted to focus primarily on the APS-36 Shootdown Sentinel, not only its interceptive functionality but also the communicative and defensive capabilities of the gadget.
Before we dive into the details, now would be a good time to remind you all that this is only a part of the improvements coming with Season 5. If you’ve missed the news on All-Out Warfare Attachments coming to Vault Weapons, Squad Management, and more, head on over to our Dev Notes and Inside Battlefield Podcasts to learn more.
Now let’s take a look at the Dozer and Irish’s APS-36 Shootdown Sentinel changes that are part of Season 5.
Dozer Areas of Improvement
Zip & Smash
One area that we’d like to immediately touch upon is the mobility that Dozer has when using his SOB-8 Ballistic Shield. We’ve heard that you feel this is often a hindrance compared to the sense of maneuverability that other Specialists have available to them.
We will be enhancing Dozer’s movement when using the SOB-8 Ballistic Shield. When equipped, you will now be able to strafe, rotate and pitch with your Ballistic Shield more quickly than previously.
We’ve also improved some animations such as for bashing enemies, and slightly increased the speed it takes for you to deploy and undeploy the shield. This will aid in your ability to swap to weapons and respond to situations with more than just a shield.
Dozer would find himself most vulnerable while traversing across ziplines. We’re ensuring that you’ll now be able to traverse ziplines with your shield equipped. This allows you to continuously push the objective with your squad mates across these vital points of entry. Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.
Receiving End We’ve covered some areas that will make playing as Dozer a more enjoyable and competitive experience, and it is only right that we also look at what it feels like to be on the receiving end of this Specialist too.
If you come up against an enemy Dozer and you’re firing at his shield you will notice that his bullet deviation is too linear. The end result here is that you end up meeting an untimely end from your own bullets.
While we want to encourage this aspect of Dozer’s gameplay, we feel there is room for improvement.
We will be increasing its spread and introducing more bullet trajectory upon hitting his shield. This will ensure that during these encounters you still have a fighting chance, and at the very least, won’t be as impacted by your own bullets as before.
Do it for your Squad Finally, we feel more can be done to reward further acts of teamplay while playing with the SOB-8 Ballistic Shield. With this in mind, we’ll also be including two new XP Events as part of Dozer’s changes:
Damage Assist - If an enemy shoots at your shield, and a deflected bullet hits that enemy and dies within 5 seconds then Dozer will receive a “Damage Assist” bonus.
Distraction Assist - If an enemy shoots at your shield, and a friendly kills that enemy within 5 seconds then Dozer will receive a “Distraction Assist” bonus.
Irish Areas of Improvement
One Projectile Too Many One of the key changes that will be taking place for Irish is a balancing pass to the intercepting capabilities of Irish’s APS-36 Shootdown Sentinel (Sentinel).
Going forward, the Sentinel will now have a 5-second window from its first intercept to take down any additional projectiles it detects, such as Frag Grenades and Anti-Infantry Rockets from Specialists and Vehicles.
Once this initial intercept time has elapsed, the Sentinel will enter into a recharging state and will no longer be able to intercept any further projectiles for 7.5 seconds before being able to intercept projectiles once again.
The ability to counter opponents is an important part of Battlefield. Alongside the new recharging state of the Sentinel, you will also be able to take it out with a suitably placed EMP Grenade. Or if you prefer, a more explosive approach with C5. Tank Shells will also solve that task with ease.
Additionally, we have done an audio pass on each of the states the Sentinel goes through to provide more readability as to what is happening at any given time.
Through these accessibility improvements, you will also be able to assign a color of your preference via the Team, Squad and Enemy team colors within the options menu.
-
That’s all we have to share with you for today! We truly appreciate your continued feedback that you share with us. We hope with the listed improvements the quality of your gameplay experience for Irish and Dozer will greatly improve.
Stay tuned for more Quality of Life Improvements taking place in Season 5, See you on the Battlefield!
*Requires Battlefield 2042 (sold separately) and all game updates.
This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.
Save up to 90%* with the EA Publisher Sale
Get deep discounts on great titles and game bundles.
Whether you're ready to embark on an amazing adventure or for a little friendly competition out on the pitch, the Electronic Arts Publisher Sale gives you a chance to grab some of your favorite titles at huge savings. Get great deals on Battlefield™ 2042, FIFA 23, WILD HEARTS™, and more!
Plus save big on Steam bundles including BioWare, racing, classic gems, and The Sims. You can also download new stickers for It Takes Two and Dead Space™ from their shop pages and four free DiRT Rally 2.0 DLCs, now through May 29, 2023:
DiRT Rally 2.0 - Finland
DiRT Rally 2.0 - Wales
DiRT Rally 2.0 - Germany
DiRT Rally 2.0 - Sweden
*OFFERS MAY VARY. SEE RETAILER SITE FOR DETAILS.
Battlefield™ 2042 EA Play* Dismemberer NVK-S22 Weapon Skin
Join EA Play to make your games more rewarding with access to great player benefits and a library of top titles. Members get more from your game including monthly member-only rewards like this month’s Weapon Skin in Battlefield 2042. And when it’s time to find your next favorite game, we’ve got you covered with an ever-expanding library of our fan-favorite series and premium games. You can even try out select new release games for up to 10 hours of playtime with no commitment. If you decide to buy, your saved progress will carry over, so you can continue where you left off. Our members also save on purchases of EA digital content, with a 10% member discount. Letting you save on full games, points packs, and DLC. Find out more about upcoming EA Play benefits at https://store.steampowered.com/subscriptions/ea or follow us on Twitter @eaplay! *CONDITIONS, LIMITATIONS AND EXCLUSIONS APPLY. SEE https://tos.ea.com/legalapp/eaplay/US/en/PC/ FOR DETAILS.
Dev Notes - Squad Management, Squad Orders
Hello there!
Today we’re sitting down with our Engagement Team for another preview of Quality of Life changes coming during Season 5.
As one of the most frequent requests by the Community, we wanted to let you know ahead of time that Squad Management will release as part of the upcoming Season 5 update. We understand that you’ve been looking forward to this feature for quite a while, and we want to start with acknowledging your patience while we’ve worked to make it available for you. The team is keen to get it into your hands, so let’s take a closer look at how the improvements will work.
Improving Squad Management With Squad Management we understand the importance of having a smooth experience for your squad experience during a match. That means we set several design goals when adopting this feature for Battlefield™ 2042:
Provide an easy overview to see and manage squads in your team
Being able to create, or join a squad of your choice
See in which squads your friends are playing
Easily navigate through squads
Squads and Players The Squad Menu is now separated to give you a full overview of all squads on your team. In this menu you can make someone else the leader, and see how many players or friends are in a squad. It also shows class icons so you know how to best complement a squad before joining it. And to add some personal flavor, leaders can also show off their Player Card Tag as the squad icon.
We also worked with the narrative team to come up with code names for each squad for that additional personal touch. One of our personal favorites is Gravedigger -- surely the Gravediggers know how to PTFO. We definitely don’t mess with that squad!
Create and Join At any time you’ll be able to create or join a new squad directly via the Squad Menu. Previously you could only switch to a random squad, and only from the deploy screen. If you create a new squad then we’ve also added a short waiting period before other players can matchmake into your squad to ensure you can play together with your friends.
Easy navigation The Squad Menu was created to make it easier and faster to manage and navigate through squads on your team. While before it was unclear when and how to change squads, you’ll now be able to do that at any time and with only a few clicks.
We hope that with this new improved Squad Management experience you feel that you have the control over who you’d like to play with during a match. Once this is in your hands, please stay in touch and give us your feedback about how you feel about it!
Later during Season 5 we’ll also add Squad Orders functionality. Let’s take a look at how that works.
Squad Orders Sticking together with your squad is not only the most effective way to play Battlefield. We also think it’s the most fun. However, we've heard your feedback that with the present approach to squads and their management there is no clear role for being the leader of a squad.
The current ping system does allow a squad leader to give orders, but offers no incentive for other players to follow those orders. With Squad Orders we’re giving leaders a common goal with their squad members to encourage collaboration and teamwork, alongside keeping the squad together.
What you can expect from Squad Orders is that you’ll be able to ping an objective as a squad leader (be it attack, or defend). Your squadmates are then able to confirm that order to work together as a squad to complete it. If successful, then the whole squad receives additional XP for completing that order. You’ll also receive personal bonus XP for your contributions to either attack or defend the objective while the Squad Order is active. The more you contribute, the more XP you earn.
In short, PTFO - and get rewarded!
Thank you for reading along with us today as we gave you an early preview of what to expect for Squad Management, and Squad Orders. We’ve got further improvements on the way, but for now we’re looking forward to getting this in your hands during Season 5.
//The Engagement Team
BATTLEFIELD 2042 UPDATE #4.2.1
Hello there,
Next week we’ll release Update 4.2.1 with a series of fixes and Quality of Life improvements. We’ve seen you enjoy gameplay on the Discarded rework, and we’ve made sure that you will no longer spawn out of bounds.
Stay tuned for further news throughout May on Quality of Life previews coming in Season 5 through a series of Dev Notes and Inside Battlefield Podcasts. The first previews on Vault Weapons are available now via Dev Notes - Evolving Vault Weapons, and tune in via the Inside Battlefield page!
Squad up, and we’ll see you on the Battlefield!
//The Battlefield Team
Stay Informed Follow us on the @BattlefieldComm Twitter account to stay informed on the roll out of our updates. You can also follow along with our tracking of Known Issues and further game changes we’re making via our Battlefield forums.
Changelog
Maps
Players will no longer spawn out of bounds on Capture Points D1 and D2 on Discarded
Resolved an issue that resulted in an unintended visual effect being placed on weapons when stood in heat sources / explosions of vehicles
Collection & Customization Improvements
Resolved an issue that displayed incorrect attachment stats for ammo and rate of fire fields when equipped into the first slot of the Plus Menu
Resolved an issue that sometimes displayed the incorrect attachment upon selection within the Plus Menu customization screen
Resolved an issue that resulted in the “Replace” button overlapping the Class text on the Classes customization screen
Resolved an issue where equipping a melee takedown for a 2042 Specialist would also equip it for the other Specialists of the same class
Gameplay Improvements
Resolved an issue that resulted in the camera being pulled down too significantly upon landing while aimed down sights
Air-to-Ground Missiles will now deal higher damage when fired at a laser designated target
Resolved an issue where players would sometimes count as occluded when standing in front of smoke
The vehicle cooldown timer on the deploy screen will now countdown in real time
End of Round
Resolved an issue that resulted in Marksman Kill stats being incorrectly calculated at the End of Round screen
Battlefield Portal
Custom Experiences will now correctly gray out characters if they have been restricted as part of the construction of the mode
Weapons
Resolved an issue that caused a broken recoil animation when firing the MTAR-21 on PlayStation® 4 and Xbox One consoles
Vehicles
LCAA Hovercraft engine damage will now correctly display a damage indicator
Explosive damage will now be applied towards Transport Helicopters, alongside the impact damage of the projectile.
Specialists
Resolved an issue that resulted in Dozer having the ability to skywalk when climbing down ladders. It’s not that type of game!
Resolved a visual issue where grenades sometimes clipped through Dozer’s shield
Rao’s Cyber Warfare Suite will now transmit designated lock-on targets to friendly vehicles
This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.
