Battlefield 6 Beta Has Smaller Maps to Offer “High-Octane” Experience, Says Lead Producer

Thanks to the first open beta run for Battlefield 6 last week, EA and the developers at DICE, Ripple Effect and Criterion have been getting plenty of player feedback. In a new series of posts, lead producer David Sirland has revealed the reasoning behind some of the maps in the multiplayer shooter being smaller than one would expect from a typical game in the franchise.

Responding to a player who noted that “Maps are way too small,” and that the screen clutter factor is too high thanks to the various UI elements of Battlefield 6, Sirland explained that the specific maps in the beta were chosen to provide “the full-octane version of Battlefield”. He also confirmed that the shooter will also feature larger maps, and that the gameplay tempo will change accordingly.

“Speed is a factor of map size,” said Sirland on social media. “We picked these maps to make sure we hit the full-octane version of Battlefield on the head – and made everyone see we can handle that too. Large maps exist, and the tempo scales accordingly, you’ll be able to see soon enough!”

For the sake of context, the first beta for Battlefield 6 featured three maps: Siege of Cairo, Liberation Peak, and Iberian Offensive. The second beta, which kicks off today, will feature one more map – Empire State – which will focus on more urban combat thanks to the streets and alleys provided by Brooklyn.

It also features Rush and Squad Deathmatch modes on top of Conquest, Conquest: Closed Weapons, Breakthrough, and Domination as the available game modes. Of these, two more modes, Rush is the more objective-oriented one with one team needing to work together to plant bombs and destroy M-COMs, which in turn are defended by the other team. Squad Deathmatch, on the other hand, sees four squads fighting it out, and the squad with the most kills wins.

Sirland had previously also explained that the matchmaking system in Battlefield 6 takes a number of different factors into account before putting players in matches. He also confirmed that player skill is also evaluated; however, player skill ranks pretty low in the list of priorities for matchmaking. The most important priority, in fact, is ping.

“Clarification: Open beta used all matchmaking priorities we expect for launch,” wrote Sirland. “And they are the same as they have been in previous titles. We prioritize Ping, and time to game ahead of most things. Skill is a factor, but far down the list, and all our large modes need a spread of skill to work well. The sandbox needs many different types of skill to function well, and that’s also why the matchmaker teambalances to make the teams even as part of that process.”

The first beta for Battlefield 6 proved to be immensely successful getting more than 500,000 concurrent players at its peak on PC alone. The success of the beta also had a material impact on EA, raising the company’s share price thanks to stable servers and positive player sentiment and feedback.

Battlefield 6 will be coming out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 10.