Reaction to the launch of Battlefield 2042 last year was mixed. Disgruntled players copied and pasted a list of "missing" features and cited criticism from former Battlefield developers as evidence that developer DICE had lost its way; Steam user reviews were ruthless; and the game's release was met with a "noisy" response from the developers. (DICE delayed the first season of this massive war shooter for six months, and the average concurrent player count plummeted

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A year later, DICE wants to give Battlefield 2042 another chance.

Battlefield 2042 is now in its third season, adding railguns and a map set in the Swedish wilderness (the third free map since launch). Season 4 will arrive early next year (concept art below is a sneak peak of the Season 4 map), and DICE has just announced Season 5 to follow (opens in new tab). Battlefield 2042 was recently added to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play, and can be experienced for free on Steam and Xbox this weekend (opens in new tab). If "Battlefield 2042" was in Early Access, this would be the 1.0 release event. Ryan MacArthur, senior producer of [Battlefield 2042], told me in a phone call earlier this week. 'And we didn't get there early on. We didn't think it was fair to bring in new players to a game that wasn't being experienced the way it was intended to be. So: we're there. That's a good point for us. But from a live service standpoint we want to keep doing more. We want to make this game better."

"We have a very good feeling about the direction this game has gone and will go," associate producer Alexia Christofi said in a separate call. And not just by showing it in words, but by actually playing it and saying, 'Oh, yeah.

If they even look at the Internet, those who are about to play Battlefield 2042 will find many negative user reviews, Reddit threads, and editorials in the months following its launch, with every decision DICE made ridiculed, and the game's developer, DICE, and its team, DICE, and its team of developers, DICE and its team of developers, DICE and its team of developers, DICE and its team of developers, DICE and its team of developers, and its team of developers, The resentment still lingers.

"The launch wasn't easy," producer Nika Bender told me. Let's be honest."

Complaints were not just about bugs and performance issues. Battlefield 2042 was thoroughly focused on scale, doubling the normal Battlefield player count from 64 to 128 and creating the largest map in the series' history. While I liked the feeling (open in new tab) that Battlefield's gameplay was less optimized and more gangly, most players were not so fickle: they felt the maps were inauthentic and needed more infantry cover. They also lamented the disorganization of squads due to the lack of voice chat and clear class roles, and wanted more guns, more vehicles, and more features of the previous Battlefields.

During the development of Battlefield 2042, the goal, according to MacArthur, was to "push forward" and "be innovative." However, when the game reached the hands of players, it became clear that the "core essence" of what made Battlefield games fun was missing.

"Players loved the chaos. But in that chaos you have to feel smart and be strategic." Chaos for chaos's sake is sometimes uninteresting.

"We aimed for the moon and missed," Christofi said of the launch. And I think delaying season one was difficult for us." And I think delaying season one was difficult for us. It was hard, but the team realized that we were doing it for completely the right reasons and that we needed to focus on things like, 'How can we better embed community feedback into what we're doing?'"

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Over the past year, DICE has closely documented the embedding of player feedback. Among other things, the developers are systematically reworking the launch map for "Battlefield 2042" and have explained the major decisions in a detailed blog post (opens in new tab). Two new maps will be released later this season: "Manifest" in update 3.1 this year and "Breakaway" in update 3.2 early next year. After that, two more maps will be reworked. Update 3.2 will also bring back the class system on a limited basis. Specialist characters will not disappear, but their class designation will limit the types of slow abilities and secondary gadgets they can carry.

MacArthur does not believe that these fan-requested changes have abandoned the identity of Battlefield 2042, though the 128-player playlist, specialist characters, and custom mode tool Battlefield Portal are still present, This does not seem to be the same studio that DICE was when it surprised fans with the announcement of "Battlefield 2042," ran a short-lived beta, and then released the game. At least for now, the studio is fully committed to the philosophy that making a game is a collaborative effort between the player and the developer.

According to MacArthur, the creative director of Battlefield 2042 now sees player feedback "as a translator, not as a designer."

"A lot of the feedback we got was positive and aggressively negative, but that didn't make it wrong," says MacArthur. What was important to us was to scrutinize it and think about "what they would have said if we took the emotion out of it," and "what they were missing." [Like other developers, DICE pays attention to stats and conducts internal playtesting, but Christofi says they learned that it's a mistake to "build things in silos" and expect players to like them. Battlefield players have been playing and giving feedback on update 3.1, which includes some specialist tweaks.

"We are now very eager to get that feedback and recognize that our players are people who love Battlefield, they will always love Battlefield, and we have a lot to learn from them," Christofi said.

MacArthur hopes that Battlefield 2042, like Battlefield 4, will be "rough around the edges when it first came out, but now it's a really good game." Work toward that goal is ongoing, but one positive sign for the game is that the number of simultaneous players on Steam has spiked since the start of Season 3, reaching its peak since shortly after launch. Also, according to MacArthur, the tone of conversation is changing among critical players who are sticking with the game.

"They still want more content," he said, "and they still wish they had never learned our ways, but the conversations they are having are changing from negative to constructive and in some cases positive."

"Battlefield 2042" has at least two more seasons, and MacArthur said he wants to keep making "Battlefield 2042" the best game it can be. The new map for Season 5 will recreate an unknown location from "Battlefield 4" and depict a "vegetated" location in 2042, which sounds cool. While the extraction mode in "Battlefield 2042" didn't go viral and DICE set it aside, the custom mode in "Battlefield Portal" could still blow up.

There were also bigger comebacks: 'No Man's Sky', 'Rainbow Six Siege', and 'Final Fantasy 14'. Even if this free weekend did not turn out to be a sunny day for "Battlefield 2042," at least we should get a lot of feedback, which DICE will no doubt see.

While nothing is likely to be announced about the next Battlefield game anytime soon, there are some sparks: EA recently opened a new studio in Seattle called Ridgeline, which is working on a single player Battlefield campaign. Ripple Effect, the LA studio that led the development of Battlefield Portal, is developing its own. Battlefield GM Byron Beede also confirmed to PC Gamer that something new is in pre-production at DICE.

"Pre-production has already begun on a new Battlefield experience coming from DICE, Ripple Effect, and Ridgeline Studios. As a global team now spanning multiple studios, we are working to maximize the potential of this franchise to be one of the best first-person shooters ever made." This global effort will allow us to work on new experiences while continuing the team dedicated to the future of Battlefield 2042."