DICE promises smaller Battlefield 2042 maps, with layout changes coming to current ones

Battlefield developer DICE’s lead designer, Adam Freeman, has posted a refreshing blog explaining what his team intends to do to address Battlefield 2042‘s core issues. Titled ‘Battlefield Core Feedback – Map’ it focuses on perhaps 2042‘s biggest problem: its map design. More specifically, how the scaling of the maps in Battlefield 2042 has resulted in infantry combat becoming redundant.

The five issues identified by Freeman are traversal, intensity, line of sight, paths, and cover. These are all individually broken down in the blog, but the general message is that he believes that the gameplay in Battlefield 2042 is slow, unforgiving, and overly favors vehicles. A sentiment that a lot of the community will agree with.

Freeman even admits that at times Battlefield 2042 can feel like a “Walking Simulator,” and that isn’t satisfying. So how is this being solved? DICE is developing a huge rework for the majority of Battlefield 2042 maps. Kaleidoscope is being worked on first, with other maps following in the future.

These changes will see objectives squashed together, encouraging players to fight in a smaller space. Furthermore, objectives are being moved to areas that have better cover. This should make it easier for infantry to move between objectives without being sniped or picked off by an enemy vehicle. An exact release date for these changes is not provided, with Freeman citing that implementing this will require “substantial development time.”

The current and reworked layout of Kaleidoscope’s spawns and objectives.

Smaller lobbies, smaller maps

Outside of map design, another topic touched upon in the blog is player count. Currently, most Battlefield 2042 maps and game modes support up to 128 players. However, DICE recently trialed a 64-player version of Breakthrough which it believes provided a better experience.

With Breakthrough permanently becoming a 64-player mode, some players may wonder if the same applies to All-Out Warfare. The blog post never explicitly states that this is the plan, but numerous faults of 128-player game modes are discussed. Also, Freeman states that future maps will likely be both smaller in Battlefield 2042 and rectangular shaped. If this means DICE is considering halving the player count of lobbies, that has yet to be seen.