EA Games held an early-access Battlefield 2042 beta night for press and content creators earlier in the week, followed by a QnA segment with developer DICE.
The devs were pretty tight-lipped about anything outside of the beta itself, but I still learned some things.
Some quick tidbits:
-
They wouldn’t touch on Hazard Zone, other than saying we’ll learn more before launch.
-
Vehicle load-outs are a thing, and there is a progression system, but DICE said nothing more on the subject.
-
In the full release, you’ll have access to a compass.
-
At this stage, weapon attachments only affect weapon handling, not movement speed.
-
There is no form of suppression in the game.
-
The beta doesn’t contain all of the accessibility features that DICE plans to launch the game with, although it currently includes a colourblind option.
A couple of bits of information on Orbital, the map that you’ll be playing on during the Open Beta.
-
The rocket’s launch is automated and comes down to time passing, not players having to achieve a specific condition or activate something on the map. However, when the launch sequence begins, players have six minutes to destroy it, if they wish, or just let the rocket launch.
-
The chance of a tornado spawning is 10% for the beta, but this will likely change for the game’s full release.
Here are the four biggest pieces of information I thought came out of the QnA session.
-
You currently cannot pet the robot dog in the game, although DICE acknowledged it’s a “fun meme to have in the game.” Which sounds like it’s something they might look into adding.
-
The contextual ping in the game is the preferred ping system by DICE, where the player only needs to press one button once to get across what information they need to communicate. If players do want a ‘pinwheel type system, that is something that DICE is also open to looking into after the game is live.
-
Although the beta doesn’t let you do this, you will be able to change your load-outs so that you spawn in with a specific gun and attachments as a default in the full release. You’ll also be able to change the attachments you bring with you to swap on the fly. This was my question for the segment, as I was finding it annoying to have to change all the attachments on my guns at the start of every match, but this is just a dilemma for the beta.
-
Health regeneration in the open beta is faster to trigger but slower to heal. This is, so the healing gadgets in the game feel more significant than self-healing. However, DICE doesn’t want to punish players who don’t have a healing character near them, hence the faster kick-in of health regeneration.
