Even with the barnstorming launch success of Battlefield 6, the multiplayer side of Battlefield Studios, led by DICE, are already starting to tinker with the game’s balance alongside early bugfixing patches.
Update 1.0.16 is now live, described as, “This minor Quality of Life update focuses on backend stability to help us prepare ahead of the upcoming Battlefield 6 Season 1 update.”
A hotfix has also been applied to try and address inconsistent bullet damage registration.
However, the more significant change is a shift to Conquest mode, reducing the starting ticket count from 1000 to as low as 700, depending on the map.
“We’ve reduced the starting ticket count across all Conquest maps so matches finish at a more natural pace,” the team explains. “Previously, many rounds were hitting the time limit instead of ending when one team ran out of tickets. We’ll keep monitoring feedback and data to make sure the flow of each match feels right.”
The ticket counts are now as follows.
- Siege of Cairo from 1000 to 900
- Empire State from 1000 to 900
- Iberian Offensive from 1000 to 900
- Liberation Peak From 1000 to 800
- Manhattan Bridge From 1000 to 800
- Operation Firestorm From 1000 to 700
- New Sobek City from 1000 to 900
- Mirak Valley from 1000 to 700
This has led to no small amount of consternation amongst fans on Reddit, causing uproar in the game’s vocal community, who are calling for the change to be reverted. It comes alongside some broader critiques and preferences for a slower pace of game again, shifting back toward  the pace of older titles, and for larger maps that are less infantry and city warfare focussed – something I noted in our review. It’s possible that DICE will revert or rebalance this again given the pushback, but with 7 million copies sold and so many more players than the franchise has ever had before, they have a vast wealth of telemetry to call upon to back up their judgment.
Really it’s a call of whether they actually need to make this change. Are they seeing people drop out of games before they’ve concluded? Are players actually sticking through to the end regardless because they’re having fun? After all, back in the day, players would gladly log in for vastly inflated ticket count grind fests on Operation Locker and stuff, so there’s no doubt appetite for longer matches amongst series veterans.
