Battlefield 6 has one big issue, and it’s something that has plagued many other games in recent years. Battlefield 6 is easily one of the biggest games of the fall, if not the entire year. In its first 3 days, the game sold 7 million copies and will likely only grow as word of mouth spreads, holiday sales occur, and the game begins to add new content, such as new maps and its battle royale. Battlefield 6 is a big win for the franchise, and it seems like people are pretty happy with the overall experience, but there are a few things still worth criticizing.
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Thankfully, the team at Battlefield Studios has been really receptive to feedback. The developers are active on social media and engaging with fans to find out how the game can be made better. There are some aspects, such as movement, that the team remains firm on and likely won’t change, but at least there’s transparency and an open dialogue between the creators and players. However, one aspect that hasn’t been acknowledged much by the developers is driving some fans crazy.
The Problem With Battlefield 6‘s Challenges
One of the biggest issues with Battlefield 6 is its challenges. I gave Battlefield 6 a glowing review, but cited its progression system as one of the notable issues in the game. In Battlefield 6, you must complete things known as “assignments” to unlock a variety of in-game items. Some of these are cosmetic items, which isn’t too big of a deal, but others pertain to a large pool of the game’s weapons and class gadgets. While challenges aren’t inherently bad, as they reward players for making an effort instead of gradually spoon-feeding them everything, they have to be implemented properly.
Battlefield 6‘s assignments can be pretty egregious. I have been stuck on one for the assault rifles since launch. I have to get 100 kills from 50Ms away with an assault rifle. It’s not necessarily hard, but it is incredibly tedious. It forces me to sit back from a distance to get kills and slows the pace of the game down tremendously, essentially rewarding me for not playing the objective because I am far less likely to get these longshot kills trying to capture a point. I don’t want to play like that, so I’ve largely given up on trying to complete it. Not only that, but the weapon bloom in the game makes it even harder to accomplish this.
This isn’t exclusive to me, either. I have played with multiple people who are trying to grind these assignments, but end up near the bottom of the scoreboard because they are hyper-focused on sniper headshots or some other grind-y challenge. This is something that has plagued other games as well, such as Halo Infinite and Call of Duty. You must grind extremely hard in order in to get the things that you want. It’s a live service phenomenon that, in my opinion, hurts the games because it makes you play in ways that are not only less fun for yourself, but hurt your team as well.
In many of these cases, you’ve paid $70 to be able to play these games and now you are forced to grind to unlock the things you want to use. They feel more like ways to drive engagement time with the game rather than something that’s challenging for the actual player, which is frustrating for games that aren’t free. I spend more time tracking if my challenge is progressing than I do actually playing the game for fun.
Despite my annoyances, I fully recognize that live-service games need to give players things to work toward. That said, I think the answer to this problem lies in the past. Battlefield 6 is not the first game in the series to have assignments, but I do think it may be the worst implementation of it. Battlefield 3 had a much better solution to this.
Some weapons were gated behind challenges in Battlefield 3, but these weren’t in the base game. These assignments were introduced in the game’s DLC, which I think is where the grind should begin. Everything in the base game can be unlocked by simply playing as normal, but if you want to chase more items, that’s a separate grind. Given that Battlefield 6‘s post-launch content is completely free, it’s much more sensible to make players put in some extra effort to unlock the new weapons.
It’s probably far too late to make any kind of changes like this to Battlefield 6, but for the future, it would be much better. Additionally, Battlefield 3‘s assignments weren’t as egregious with their requirements, so it would be nice to see a return to something that’s a bit more simplified.
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