Battlefield 2042 is off to a rough start. After a week of early access, the launch of 2042 has been met with a barrage of negative reviews and disappointed fans. Calling this game controversial would be an understatement. Most of this disappointment stems from core design changes and bugs.
We agree with most fans that 2042 needs more time before it truly becomes a game worth playing, but what changes does 2042 exactly need? Balance changes, optimization improvements, and Portal additions are just the tip of the iceberg. Here are the ten biggest fixes Battlefield 2042 needs to win back fans. This list is in no particular order.
10 Vehicle Tuning
Vehicles are overpowered right now, it's hard to argue otherwise. Hovercrafts in 2042 combine the speed of an ATV with the armor and firepower of a tank. DICE has thankfully announced that the Hovercraft and Nightbird are getting nerfs soon, yet certain vehicles will still need some tuning.
Attack helicopters in 2042 lack secondary weapons for gunners, unlike past modern-era Battlefield titles. Osprey pilots don't get assists for kills their gunners make, and gunners have rather lackluster weaponry. While not tied to vehicles themselves, the M5 Recoiless Launcher is underpowered in its current form. Reloading the weapon takes an eternity, and the damage output is rather lackluster on armored vehicles. The 2042 RPG needs a buff, and some of the vehicle roster needs some tweaks.
9 PC Performance Improvements
Even with a Day One patch and updated GPU drivers, 2042's performance on PC hardware is much worse than it should be. CPU bottlenecking is a serious issue for most PC configurations, resulting in frequent frame stuttering. 128-player servers also seem more prone to FPS dips and rubber banding. There's not much you can do to remedy this issue, even with top-of-the-line PC hardware. There's not much to suggest here except the game needs some major PC optimization patches.
8 Adjust Gadget Unlocks
A common complaint in the Battlefield community is how 2042 doesn't encourage squad play. Specialists do have a large part to do with this, but the order of gadget unlocks is a major reason for this as well. When you start 2042, you have access to health kits, ammo kits, a repair tool, an RPG, and AA rockets. Your first gadget unlock is armor plating for yourself, not an armor kit.
Most of the early-game gadgets you unlock focus entirely on helping yourself, occasionally helping your team as a byproduct of what the gadget does. The dedicated support gadgets—SOFLAMs, Motion Sensors, etc.—are unlocked much later. Want to spot enemies for your team? You'll need to be level 24 to use a Proximity Sensor. Do you want to mark enemy vehicles with a SOLFAM? You'll need to be level 56 to unlock it. Disregarding the existence of selfish gadgets, team-oriented gadgets should not be locked so late into 2042's progression system.
7 UI Tweaks
Quite a few Battlefield players have criticized the user interface (UI for short) since the game was announced, and it's hard to disagree. The player heads-up-display does a poor job showcasing what gadgets and weapons your team are running, your health bar is extremely small, the deploy UI does a poor job telling players they can customize their weapon attachments before deploying, and the scoreboard—if you can even call it that—is a complete disaster.
These are technically user experience (UX) issues, but even the UI design is less than ideal. The blue teal and blocky style of the player HUD is distracting and makes parsing information mid-gunfight much harder than in previous Battlefield games. The Commo Rose in 2042 is the worst it's ever been, having nested options in a menu meant to be used mid-gunfight. Adding objective capture states to the minimap, not the top of your screen, is also quite jarring. And we haven't even mentioned all of the UI settings that are missing from past Battlefield games. Simply put, DICE needs to let players fine-tune the in-game HUD themselves and overhaul the UX of 2042's menus.
6 Add A Scoreboard
Technically speaking, 2042 does have a scoreboard, but it's so poorly designed that it does a terrible job displaying any information about your team. You also can't see the enemy team's core unless you're playing Free-for-All, meaning you can't compare your stats against the enemy team.
Scoreboards are fundamental for the social systems of any team-based competitive video game, especially for shooters. Comparing your stats against your team and adversaries is needed to gauge your performance. It also gives ammo for players to flex their skill, something that's needed in a team-oriented game like this. Removing scoreboards doesn't combat toxicity; it only makes it worse.
5 Remove Combat Vehicles From Hazard Zone
Vehicles with mounted weapons have no place in Hazard Zone, period. This game mode is focused on team synergy and careful decision-making. Throwing vehicles into the mix completely ruins it, as players can charge into squads and take them out from the safety of their vehicle. Counters to vehicles, excluding Sundance and Rao, also cost Hazard Zone's currency to purchase. Non-combat vehicles built solely for transport are fine, but armored vehicles have no place in Hazard Zone. They need to be removed.
4 Squad Management Changes
For a game that features 128-player servers, it's shocking how hard it is to manage player squads. Unlike past Battlefield titles, you are unable to join specific squads in your team. You can leave a squad and join a random one, but you can't pick a specific squad your friends are in. Joining specific squads needs to be added ASAP.
Even worse, multiple squads can't matchmake together. If you want to play with seven other friends, good luck finding the same lobby. Server browsers would help alleviate this issue, but this feature is currently only present in Portal—a mode where custom servers don't grant XP as of writing. The cherry on top is how the squad limit is four, which is way too low for a game that can house 128 players in a single game. Consider increasing the squad cap, and let multiple squads join each other to make matchmaking easier. Alternatively, just add a server browser to 2042's core offerings.
3 Audio Improvements
Battlefield 2042 has the worst audio out of any Battlefield game in recent memory. Footstep audio doesn't account for distance, vehicles are surprisingly quiet, and suppressive fire is missing core sounds to signify someone is unloading a hailstorm of lead your way. Battlefield used to be known for its excellent audio, but 2042 does not live up to those high standards. Footstep audio needs tweaks immediately, followed by some adjustments to the rest of 2042's soundscape.
2 Expanding Battlefield Portal Support
Battlefield Portal is arguably the best part of 2042, allowing players to create servers that mimick older Battlefield titles or something entirely new. After using Portal's server and logic editor extensively, it's clear that this mode still needs a few things before it can truly become a game-selling feature.
Here are a few things Portal needs:
- Logic editor support for Conquest and Rush
- Adding Rush support to 2042's maps
- Adding vehicle support into the logic editor
- Allowing players to make custom objectives and AI behavior in the logic editor
- Additional maps and weapons
- More centralized documentation and a proper DICE-curated tutorial on how to use Portal
Portal is already a phenomenal tool that the community will surely create some interesting modes with, but the barrier to entry is quite high. And for those who can utilize Portal's powerful tools, they'll quickly hit roadblocks when attempting to make any custom mode with vehicles or more advanced AI. Fix those issues, and Portal is shaping up to have a bright future.
1 Remove Accuracy Bloom
For those unaware, Battlefield 2042's weapons feature a mechanic where their accuracy gets much worse as you continue to fire the weapon. For clarity, this isn't recoil; this is bullet deviation from where you're aiming. Most of the community is referring to this as "bloom," referring to the blooming of your crosshair as you fire.
Players have been complaining since launch that 2042's weapons feel inconsistent. Bloom is why. It seems SMGs and marksman rifles suffer from virtually no bloom, resulting in those two weapons taking the meta by storm. Assault rifles have so much bloom that they're less effective at range than SMGs. This mechanic is heavily overturned right now and needs to either be reduced or flat-out removed from the game.