The Latest Casual Playlist Sparks Heated Discussions Regarding Bots, Experience Points, and Queue Times

Over the weekend, Battlefield Studios launched a new playlist titled Relaxed Breakthrough. In essence, this option resembles the standard Breakthrough setup but features several key changes:

• Each team has only eight human participants, with the remaining filled by AI-controlled opponents.
• Activities performed by human gamers award full XP, while AI activities offer reduced XP.
• Just a pair of locations can be played: Siege of Cairo and Empire State map.
• Elements like Player tags, accolades, and stat tracking are disabled.

In short, this mode lives up to its title: it's a casual version of Breakthrough. At face value, you might think there's nothing wrong, since it provides additional choices for gamers looking for alternative methods to have fun with the game. But, gaming history have taught us anything, it's that you can't please everyone. In other words, many BF6 players are upset.

Player Responses: Anger to Praise

"Gamers prefer real players. Don't repeat the errors of your competitors," reads a response to the official announcement. "Absolutely shocking concept," comments a different user. At the same time, on the Battlefield subreddit, one user notes, "It's unclear where we are headed with this game," while another lists all the issues they believe to be broken in the game: "Resolve glitches, address drone issues, correct rocket mechanics, fix [the] bloom after sprinting bug, fix awful hit registration. We do not require this bot mode."

On the other hand, for every complaint, there are players explaining how much they're liking the new mode. "It's enjoyable to warm up, human participants prevent it from being a complete grind but it's very relaxed," reads one Reddit comment. "The community fails to see that there are gamers who actually go outside and don't play this title 24/7. Let them strike a balance," states another. One reply via social media explains that as they're "a parent gamer with busy schedules, this is perfect for me," and another applauds the mode for "avoiding intense competition."

Constructive Criticisms and Player Input

All that said, there are valid points to complain about Casual Breakthrough. A few folks have pointed out that it could increase wait times even longer for different playlists due to the large amount of playlists currently available. On a similar note, certain regions often face mostly bots in the existing playlists. It also seems a little backwards that the mode does not begin without a required amount of real players, even though it focuses mostly on fighting AI opponents.

Finally, a major complaints is that Battlefield Portal was promised to provide full XP, even against bots, but that got canned when they attempted to remove XP farming from the mode. Thus Casual Breakthrough seems like the player base compromising halfway, according to a Reddit comment. A different user labels this addition as the devs "making a mistake so hard, I had so much fun in the initial release, why did they feel the need to adjust it?"

Looking Ahead: Will Changes Be Made?

If Battlefield Studios has proven anything to date with the latest installment, it's that they're listening and responding to feedback. Assignments that were overly hard got fixed rapidly, just like the specific battle pass objectives. It is likely that, should analytics shows this new playlist isn't performing to their standards, they will not hesitate to make further modifications.