Battlefield 6’s battle against the bot farmers continues with a series of backend updates from EA. Amongst other things, the developers have reversed some “unintended” changes to XP progression and balance, and removed bots from “verified” modes available through the Portal editor.
Last week, the developers announced that they were taking action against players who’d created matches simply to murder computer-controlled soldiers en masse for easy XP. The argument being that Battlefield 6’s servers are filling up with XP factories, making it harder for players to find the weird and wonderful mode variations that Portal is supposed to be for.
As ever, the counterargument is that there might be fewer bot-processing joints and more flights of Battle-whimsy in Portal if the game’s progression system were less annoying. I didn’t find it particularly annoying during my pre-release time with multiplayer, but then again, I’m not very competitive-minded and was in no hurry to unlock any of those fancy scopes. Too busy lying on my back, enjoying the deep blue sky over Gibraltar (while bleeding out).
I neglected to note in the previous story that Battlefield Studios have a more straightforward monetary interest, of course, in stopping people short-circuiting the XP system. Battlefield 6 is a live service game with a forthcoming battle pass and options to pay for XP and tier skips. It’s harder to sell those special editions and Double XP boosters if people can accelerate the grind on custom servers.
Here’s an update on their attempts to remedy the situation from Battlefield’s social accounts. “We have organized a series of changes to emphasize our commitment to highlighting the player community and making this a space where you can celebrate creativity, find unique experiences, play with friends, and build communities.
“As part of this effort, we’ve rolled out several backend updates to support healthier matchmaking and better overall experiences in Portal. This includes resolving unintended systems that affected XP progression and balance across experiences, and for now, removing bots from Verified Experiences to help improve the overall quality of matches.”
Verified experiences are a more curated and grounded selection of Portal modes that mostly let you twiddle with the settings of Breakthrough, Conquest, and Rush. Unlike other custom modes, these modes award full XP, so you can see why EA would be keen to do away with botfarming in verified experiences.
EA have now introduced a change whereby you’ll need to disable “bot backfill” if you want full XP gain in a verified mode. Any verified experiences that have bot backfill will need to be unpublished and republished with the change.
“Servers, including persistent ones, may occasionally need to be restarted,” the developers add. “These brief interruptions may continue until ongoing improvements are fully implemented.”
The first season of Battlefield 6’s live seasonal seasonings begins on 28th October. It introduces a new map, some extra guns, a new mode, and a paid battle pass for those who partake.
