Earlier this month, EA made the unexpected call to let players have the classic “closed” weapons ruleset in next week’s Battlefield 6 beta, seemingly contradicting its “open” weapons vision for BF6 that lets any class equip any gun.
The unprecedented decision to support two opposing rulesets at once begged a question: Come launch, which format would Battlefield 6 settle on?
Turns out, it’ll always have both.
In a Q&A with press and creators in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Battlefield Studios devs said the closed/open weapons playlists aren’t a test or an experiment—they’re both officially supported modes at launch, and there are no plans to change that.
“It’s a proper thing,” DICE lead producer David Sirland said, referring to the closed weapons playlist. “It’s not like this is a test where whatever you play more we will [choose]. No, we will support both.”
That might come as a relief to classic BF fans (like me) who worried they were being momentarily placated for the beta. That said, I’m not convinced the classic ruleset will be treated equally to the new loosey goosey loadouts.
For one, the event I attended this week was designed to debut BF6’s multiplayer in all its glory, and sadly, that did not include classic classes. I also noticed some fine print (in a fact sheet provided to press) that described the closed weapons mode as a “Community Experience”, Battlefield 6’s name for modes created in Portal. So it’s a Portal mode?
Maybe the final game will present the classic mode differently, but placing it in the same bucket as community creations doesn’t scream “we think this is important” to me.
Unsurprisingly, Battlefield 6’s developers are genuinely excited by the freedom of open weapons, but acknowledge it won’t be everyone’s thing.
“We had this idea that the class experience could transcend weapon choice,” DICE producer Jeremy Chubb told PC Gamer, “that it could be something you choose to do, married with a flexibility in weapon selection that gave you more options.”
Chubb describes the scenario where you’d like to be your squad’s information gatherer, so you pick Recon, but since the mode is Team Deathmatch on a small map, you equip an SMG instead of a sniper rifle. In the live Q&A, Sirland cited the same scenario as the reason he was ultimately swayed by open weapons.
To Chubb’s credit, he also acknowledged a key criticism of open weapons.
“What we kept hearing again and again was that people felt the identity of classes was not as strong as a result,” he said. “And so we chose to give people the choice.”
Choice is nice, but let’s be real: We traditionalists are being placated, and that’s fine. DICE and co. want the Call of Duty-style loadout in Battlefield 6, and all signs point to that becoming the default style.
We have a lot more Battlefield 6 coverage coming off today’s reveal: I played four hours of the open beta and had a blast (open weapons be damned), Portal is back, and the release date is set for October.
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