Battlefield 2042's next update will fix revives and nerf the monstrous hovercraft

News
By published

DICE revealed some of its planned fixes and changes for its first post-release patch.

battlefield 2042 hovercraft
(Image credit: DICE)

Electronic Arts says the pre-release Battlefield 2042 patch it released yesterday has "helped improve the smoothness of the experience," and promised that more changes are coming, including fixes for soldier revives and a nerf of the overpowered hovercraft.

The upcoming changes were detailed in a series of tweets:

  • Soldier revives: We're confident that we've identified the cause of the issue that was preventing you from always getting off a revive, particularly when a player is in close proximity to nearby geometry. A fix for this is on the way. Separately we're closing in on a possible server side fix for players who in rare circumstances find themselves unable to respawn. If that server side fix doesn't stick, we already have a further solution lined up for our upcoming update.
  • UAV-1 Interaction: We temporarily removed this whilst we could evaluate the best way to keep it balanced, and fun. That work is now complete and we'll be looking to re-enable this alongside the next update.
  • Missing Loadouts: A rare issue that could sometimes cause a data call to fail on our end now has a fix developed, and is presently in testing. We're keen to roll this one out to you all and make sure that you don't have that frustration of needing to reconnect to a server.
  • Vehicle Balancing: The LCAA Hovercraft will be re-equipped with lighter armor, lowering its health, and we're tuning down some of its weaponry The MD540 Nightbird will have similar tuning done on it's weaponry too We're keeping a close eye on early balance for future changes

Information on further fixes and changes will continue to be shared through the Battlefield Direct Communication Twitter account.

"It's been great welcoming you all back onto the Battlefield throughout our Early Access launch," EA said. "These changes, and more, are presently scheduled for deploy at the end of next week."

Despite the upbeat tone, Battlefield 2042 is definitely not off to a great start. It's cracked the top ten games by concurrent player count on Steam, peaking at more than 105,000 concurrent players, but it's also being hammered by Steam user reviews, which are currently "mostly negative." And for many players, the complaints aren't the sort of thing that can be patched: As Morgan noted in his analysis of the complaints, bugs are a problem but the bigger issues are with basic design decisions, which critics feel have moved Battlefield 2042 too far from a traditional Battlefield experience. 

That's not universal—"For what it's worth, I think there's a lot of fun to be had in Battlefield 2042 right now," Morgan wrote—but it will be very interesting to see how player counts hold up over the weekend and through to the end of the month. For our final verdict on Battlefield 2042, read Tyler's review.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.