🔗 Share this article

Over the weekend, the game developers introduced a fresh playlist called Relaxed Breakthrough. In essence, this mode mirrors the standard Breakthrough setup but includes a few key adjustments:

• Each team includes only eight real players, with the rest filled by AI-controlled opponents.
• Activities done by human gamers award complete experience points, while AI activities provide reduced XP.
• Just a pair of maps can be played: Cairo Siege and Empire State.
• Features like Dogtags, achievements, and career stat updates have been turned off.

In short, this mode lives up to its name: it's a laid-back version of Breakthrough. At face value, you might think it's a good idea, as it gives additional choices for players looking for alternative ways to have fun with the title. However, if video games have taught us anything, it is that you can't please everyone. Which is to say, a lot of BF6 fans are mad.

Community Reactions: Anger to Praise

"People want real players. Don't repeat the mistakes of your rivals," reads a response to the official announcement. "Truly disappointing concept," comments a different user. Meanwhile, on the Battlefield subreddit, a player remarks, "I have no idea where we are headed with this title," while someone else details all the issues they consider to be broken in Battlefield 6: "Resolve glitches, address drone issues, correct rocket mechanics, fix [the] bloom after sprinting bug, fix awful hit registration. We don't need this bot mode."

On the other hand, amid the criticism, there are players sharing how much they're liking the recent addition. "It's enjoyable to practice, human participants prevent it from being a complete grind but it's very relaxed," says a forum post. "This subreddit doesn't understand that there are players who have lives and don't play this game all the time. Let them strike a balance," states a different comment. One reply on Twitter clarifies that as they're "a battledad with busy schedules, this is great for me," and another applauds the mode for "not being overcompetitive."

Constructive Criticisms and Player Input

Despite the support, players have constructive reasons to complain about the new mode. Some users have pointed out that it could increase queue times even longer for other modes due to the large amount of playlists in the game already. On a similar note, certain regions often face mostly bots in the current modes. It also seems somewhat counterintuitive that the mode won't start without a minimum number of real players, despite it primarily centers on fighting AI opponents.

Lastly, a major complaints is that Battlefield Portal was meant to offer full XP, even against bots, but that was removed when they tried to remove XP farming from the system. Thus this new playlist seems like the player base compromising in the middle, as per a Reddit comment. Another describes this mode as the devs "dropping the ball significantly, I had so much fun in the initial release, why did they feel the need to adjust it?"

Future Prospects: Adjustments Be Made?

If the development team has demonstrated something so far with the latest installment, it is that they're listening and acting on player input. Tasks that were overly hard were adjusted rapidly, as did the specific battle pass objectives. Chances are that, should analytics indicates this new playlist is underperforming to their standards, they will not hesitate to make further modifications.