opinion: The future of Battlefield 2042 is still on a knife edge. Fans are eagerly looking ahead to Season 1. But the rumours do not bode well.
I so wish Battlefield 2042 could still get its act together. Yes, DICE’s shooter is currently drawing more boos than Mister Burns’ feature film, but honestly, haven’t we had to endure enough negativity and disappointment in 2021? If Star Wars has taught me one important lesson for my life, it’s this: Hope is the key … well, and never handcuff a strange Wookie.
I hope all my disappointed friends get the shooter they saw in Battlefield 2042 all those months before release after all. I hope that DICE will quickly iron out all the game’s problems and add necessary content. But this is where the Boston Dynamics robot dog lies buried.
Fans’ eyes are currently all peering at one important event: the release of Season 1. The first season of Battlefield 2042 is supposed to show in early 2022 that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated. A steady flow of new content, maps, weapons, a Battle Pass, weekly rewards, in short: a Battlefield that really lives. At the moment, the game is in a kind of maintenance mode – all the bugs and balancing problems of the original release versions have to be patched, fixed, polished as quickly as possible.
Loyal fans grant DICE this grace period because a) several important patches have already been released in a short time and b) there is simply no alternative. Battlefield 2042 must now be put on course to pave the way for the hopefully great launch of Season 1. Because a successful Season 1 could turn the tide.
Season 1 only four months after release?
Famous Battlefield dataminer Temporyal has used one of humanity’s most powerful tools – mathematics – to bluntly count through Battlefield 2042’s data: There are Weekly Challenges in the code for twelve pre-season weeks. Or with a little less English: currently, the game runs weekly missions that – you guessed it – are replaced by a new set once a week (much like Forza Horizon 5, by the way). We are currently in the second week. The code contains missions for twelve weeks before the first season is due to start. So if you count up in the calendar, you end up exactly in March 2022.
The Battlefield2042 client includes weekly missions for 12 preseason weeks.
🗓️ Season 1 seems to be scheduled for March 2022 (unless they’ve added a few weeks as “backup”).
🇨🇦 “Exposure” is probably the final name for the previously datamined “Ridge” map.
🎄 Happy Holidays! pic.twitter.com/FBuxapZvjl
– temporyal (@temporyal) December 19, 2021
Of course, these may be buffers. DICE may have deliberately developed more weekly missions in case they need more time out the back. Wouldn’t be the first postponement for Battlefield 2042 after all, and when I asked EA won’t confirm or deny the rumours. But in the worst case, we’ll have to wait another two and a half months until the start of the first season. Of course, you can now interject: Mei, who cares? We waited 14 years for Duke Nukem Forever and that really didn’t disappoint anyone.
But for Battlefield 2042 this would be a fatal sign – even more fatal than the problematic release.
Battlefield 2042 dies
People are waiting. Anyone who has been playing Battlefield 2042 since its release should by now have really scoured all the content once and climbed every building once via buggy hovercraft. With only a few modes, weapons and maps, Battlefield 2042 is definitely not a scope beast, so even the portal editor can’t make people feel better about the lack of variety. This slump can unfortunately be seen in the Steam player numbers:
Don’t let the 30,000 or so players active right now mislead you: Battlefield 2042 is still benefiting from a Free Weekend here, as DICE is currently letting people get their hands on it for free and discounting the game by a whopping 34 per cent to €40 instead of €60. One month after release, this is not a good sign.
The player numbers looked even more bitter shortly before the free promotion. BF2042 shrank from over 100,000 fans to a meagre 17,000 simultaneously active users in just under 30 days. That’s a loss of 83 per cent! Even Battlefield 5 is still drawing just as many people to its servers at the end of 2021. Of course, many players don’t show up in the Steam statistics because they play via Origin or Game Pass, but that also applies to Battlefield 5 – and it only appeared on Steam years after release, so it had a much more difficult start here. Uff.
Those who avoided Battlefield 2042 at release are of course also waiting for the big patch, the lavish DLC that pulls the cart out of the desert sand. Since four months of fasting before the start of the first season are gruellingly long anyway – but for Battlefield as a franchise there is more at stake than that.
Because Battlefield 2042 had one thing to prove to the community. And this is where DICE fails – for the fourth time.
How many times will the fans put up with this?
No major shooter studio handles trends as badly as DICE. It pains me to type this because I love Battlefront 2, I like Battlefield 1 like 5.
DICE needs to prove they can be a modern shooter company with Battlefield 2042. And that’s not detached industry blablablub, it’s everyday gamer reality, because all Battlefields and Battlefronts in recent years have failed in the long run at the same hurdle: that DICE completely botches the first content year.
Battlefield 1 diminished the player base in 2016 with leisurely appearing, expensive DLCs – and this at a time when Rainbow Six: Siege was already running away from all the competition with its season model and free maps. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 was chained to movie contracts and took a whole year to get the first really good DLC hyperspace jump. Battlefield 5, without any film contracts, also needed a year to launch its grandiose Pacific add-on. That was enough here and there for short-lived comebacks like Battlefront:
But measured against their potential, all the DICE shooters of the last five years are failed service games.
The worst Battlefield launch
So the buggy release of Battlefield 2042 is almost sidebar. What I find much, much worse is that Battlefield 2042’s live service launches even worse than in previous DICE games. Battlefield 1, 5 and Battlefront 2 all managed to release at least some new map (Panzerstorm, Crait, Shadow of the Giant) by Christmas of their respective release years.
Of course, these were mostly just post-release marketing stunts, because the maps were not developed in four weeks, but were deliberately released to give the fans a good sign in the Christmas tree sock. Or to celebrate the release of Star Wars 8 with the Battle of Crait as a new scenario.
After that it was always quiet about Battlefield or -front, but at least we had something. In the case of Battlefield 2042, things are looking bleak at the moment. No new maps, no new weapons – and very likely this won’t change until March 2022. Of course the studio should have a nice Christmas holiday, switch off, because some things are more important than work.
But I am firmly convinced that if something doesn’t happen quickly in the new year, Season 1 will be the death blow for Battlefield 2042. A botched first half-year of content simply weighs too heavily for that, especially in Battlefield. I hope for the opposite, I really do. If we’re sitting here in six months’ time, playing Battlefield on a holiday night, laughing heartily at all our niggles at launch, I’d be a very happy gunner.
But if that doesn’t happen, there would be only one salvation: Battlefield 2042 would have to become Free2Play.
