[2019] Playlists in the Pacific - What will change next week?

Exact date's are still being locked down for the Update. It is our intent to release Update 5.2 in December however and I'll have more detail on what's in that update, and when to expect it closer to the time.

I see this comment frequently across my Twitter and Reddit notifications and I just want to clarify that we don't discuss our plans and current status around Anti-Cheat. That side of the gaming world is an industry and the less access to information they have, the better. I can respect entirely that this doesn't help alleviate folks concerns on the topic, and it's a lot to ask for your trust that we're working towards improvements if you're playing in a region where you're affected by it (without showing our hand). We're conscious of the conversation that happens on this topic, but please understand that I, or anyone else on the project won't be engaging in it.

https://www.ea.com/games/battlefield/battlefield-5/news/anti-cheat-in-battlefield-5

We've shared this feedback (and that suggestion) with the team. As I volunteered in late September, we have our resource allocated elsewhere at the moment and until I'm told otherwise, that will continue to be the case.

If we can make it happen, we will - but a point of clarification for you that whilst updating the weapons is certainly something we'd like to do, there's a lot of work that has to happen to make that change, and significant resource to test and validate that it's behaving properly. Last thing we'd want to do is risk ruining the existing experience by trying to do something without the proper levels of quality control.

Rotation will go in that order. We're not opposed to changing it up, but the belief from us is that the playlist we've proposed caters to players who just want to play the mode they love.

Breakthrough has found a lot of new fans thanks to these new maps (and the extended sectors that we've used in the Pacific), and we recognize that it offers a pretty distinct gameplay style that you can't get anywhere else in the game.

Under the current plan, each round lasts around 30 minutes or so, meaning that if you can hop in to the rotation on Iwo Jima, you get at least an hour and half worth of Breakthrough before you might consider switching servers.

The suggestion you've made is still great (and it will have fans too!) but the concern would be that we'd see more players jumping out of the playlist every two rounds if they only want to play one or the other mode.

This affects the players who stay on the server that need to wait for new people to join to balance things out, and it means more time in menus and loading screens for everyone else finding a new server.

Keeping people playing is priority #1.

It's a great suggestion all the same and we actively monitor things like quit rates to help us start a new conversation about what we can do in order to address that.

Wake is coming in December.

https://www.ea.com/games/battlefield/battlefield-5/news/all-you-need-to-know-chapter-5-war-in-the-pacific

Vote Kicks are open to abuse - but I get it the message and intent.

Private Games is on the Horizon.

I don't want to come into the office at Christmas to press the button.

Both have fixed dates. We'll share them as we get closer.

We're going to be reviewing some of the Playlist stuff for 5.2 regardless but I can see the picture you're painting.

The current design is focused on putting similar styles of maps together to ensure that if you're a vehicle player you're likely to stick around when the server changes from Panzerstorm to Hamada.

Absence of a better Team Balancer encourages us to focus on what protects the experience in the most achievable fashion and keeping servers full with like minded players helps us reach that goal.

As we progress with the game and help to introduce better systems we can certainly think about how we approach 'Next Map'

Glad you're enjoying it! Thanks for sharing!

We're investigating if we can make that change.

The issues we track are listed as priorities that we have resource dedicated to resolving and are expecting to be solved within the next pair of upcoming updates.

It's not to say that we aren't aware of other issues, like this one, or that it's not important for us to get them fixed but it matters most for us to highlight the priorities vs. listing anything and everything that we need to clear out of the system