This weekend, the lead designer on Battlefield 2042 took to Twitter to answer plenty of player complaints and concerns. Posting to social media isn’t enough, however, and EA Dice is about to make a real attempt to make amends to the player base with two massive updates. Why do game developers seem to be taking the approach of ‘release now, fix later?’ I’m not sure, but if the patches manage to fix the majority of player issues, maybe there will be room for a little forgiveness. The first patch is coming tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, while the second will hit the game in early December.
EA DICE announced the updates in a statement on Tuesday. “The teams across the globe are working 24/7 to evolve and deliver improvements to the game. We have confirmed at least two major game updates in the coming weeks, and we’ll be here communicating consistently about the changes we are making, as well as new content coming to Battlefield 2042.”
Tomorrow’s patch is set to fix excessive weapon bloom and a number of revive bugs. It will also deliver a nerf to the Hovercrafts. Sadly, the more hefty and substantial update is the one coming in early December, though it does look like some much-requested additions are actually about to be implemented. The downed screen will actually show players capable of reviving you within a 50-meter radius, and a notification will inform you when a medic is on the way. Health bars will be more prominent, and player world icons will scale depending on their distance from you. Audio will be improved, and AI bots will be more reliable. To see the huge list of upcoming fixes, check out the official blog post.
Battlefield 2042 was released on November 19, 2021, on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. A huge number of bugs, performance issues, and absent features have been plaguing the title since launch day, and DICE will have to do some serious work to win back players’ trust. After all, how do you explain having a multiplayer-only game with no basic voice chat?