Second ‘Battlefield 6’ Beta Annoys With Open Weapons, Bad Rush Mode
Battlefield 6 hype is losing a bit of steam with changes to its second beta run, involving new additions, controversial decisions and rough retreads of old modes.
The main problem is that players are now getting a larger taste of open weapons, the idea that any class can use any weapon without being locked into a true specialist classification. It’s a concept that was never in any Battlefield game until 2042, and players didn’t like it then either. No one can really understand why it’s back again.
Players feel like DICE is trying to force the issue, and now by showing it off significantly in the beta, players will come around. As of now, that is not happening, and an additional complication here is that the once-beloved Rush mode has forced open weapons right now.
Rush is the second problem. Besides open weapons, the 12v12 setup is not working, the maps are unbalanced and the core game mode feels like it’s totally lost its way. Some are calling for it to be shelved until DICE can figure out how to bring it back to its former glory.
The controversy has so far not hurt the playercount of the second beta. It rocketed up to 380,000 concurrent players on Steam, and it will likely top 400,000 by the time I finish this article. The all-time peak was 521,000 for the first beta, which is higher than any Call of Duty game has ever been on the platform. Some believe that Battlefield 6 is set to take a major chunk out of Black Ops 7 this year, or even beat it in sales, but that remains an incredibly high bar that may not be possible to hit.
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Dampened enthusiasm for the second beta is not exactly what Battlefield 6 needs right now. Messing up a core game mode and continuing to force the open weapons concept that 90% of the community hates is not earning the kind of goodwill we saw from the almost universally beloved first beta. DICE has commented on open weapons mixed with signature weapons before this, and this is what they had to say:
“Signature weapons came from BF Labs feedback,” DICE game design director Damien Kieken said. “Players told us, ‘we miss the connection between classes and weapons.’ So we rebuilt that connection.” Each class in Battlefield 6 now has a signature weapon, though players are still free to customize loadouts in regular modes. There are also “locked experiences” where you’re restricted to your class’s weapon.
And here’s DICE producer Jeremy Chubb talking to PC Gamer:
“We had this idea that the class experience could transcend weapon choice, that it could be something you choose to do, married with a flexibility in weapon selection that gave you more options.”
You might be able to see the goal, but player feedback has not been positive, and now that the mode is here, that has not changed. We’ll see what happens next.
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